The Phoenix Encounter Read Free Page B

while his palm and fingerprints were scanned and the images run through the ARIES personal identification database. Like every other piece of equipment at the ARIES center, the security system was light-years ahead of its time and utterly fail-safe.
    Once the green light flashed to tell him his prints had been scanned and approved, Robert pressed the button to the underground level, and the elevator rushed him toward ARIES’s inner sanctum and Samuel Hatch’s private office a hundred feet below ground.
    He assured himself a second time that it wasn’t nerves gnawing at his gut. For one thing, Robert didn’t believe in premonitions. Still, he couldn’t deny he had a feeling about this assignment. Hatch didn’t call on his ARIES agents for anything but the most difficult of tasks. He wondered what the good director was going to ask him to do this time.
    The elevator doors whooshed open. Robert stepped into a large room filled with low-rise cubicles, about half of them occupied by men and women hunched over computers or speaking into communication headsets. He spotted Carla Juarez, who waved, flashed a dazzling smile, then turned her wheelchair and headed in his direction. Robert watched her approach and smiled for the first time that day. He liked Carla. She was young and pretty with a lovely sense of humor. Up until a year ago she’d been a field operative. Then she’d taken a bullet in her back during a deep cover operation in Eastern Europe. The injury had left her partially paralyzed. She’d been through hell in the last year—something he identified with even though they’d never discussed anything so personal. But unlike Robert, Carla had never grown bitter.
    â€œHey, Dr. Davidson, how’s it going?” she asked.
    Because he didn’t want to answer that truthfully, Robert put on a grin and lied through his teeth. “Couldn’t be better.”
    She rolled her eyes. “For an agent, you’re not a very good liar.”
    â€œThanks.” Leaning forward, he pressed a kiss to her cheek. “I think.”
    â€œPin bothering you?”
    Subconsciously, he brushed his hand over his left thigh. “Must be a front coming in,” he said shortly, not because he was annoyed but because it embarrassed him to complain about his leg to a woman with a severed spinal cord.
    â€œTakes time,” she said breezily. “Been able to run yet?”
    â€œI’m up to two miles.” It hurt like hell, but he ran. He’d be damned if he was going to spend the rest of his life letting the residual damage from a shattered femur keep him idle. “Played basketball a couple of weeks ago.”
    â€œEthan told me he beat your butt.”
    â€œI guess that makes him a better liar than me.”
    â€œAnd a sore loser.” She smiled. “Hatch is expecting you.”
    â€œThanks.” Robert opened the door to find Samuel Hatch standing at the back of his office looking at a tiny, withered plant.
    He looked over his shoulder at Robert and scowled. “Damn strawberry plant is going to die on me,” he muttered.
    â€œThey need sunlight.”
    â€œSecurity had a cow when I suggested I get an office with a view.”
    Robert stepped closer and glanced at the plant, wondering why a man like Hatch was so concerned with a scraggly little plant no one cared about. “They like sandy soil,” he offered. “Or maybe some cow manure.”
    At Hatch’s questioning look, he added, “I worked in a nursery part-time during high school.”
    â€œI’ll see if procurement can get me a plant light and some cow poop, then.”
    Hatch left the plant and seated himself behind his desk. Robert guessed him to be about sixty years of age, though he could pass for forty-five. He was bald on top but kept the rest of his gray hair cropped short. He was of medium height and slightly rumpled in appearance. Part soldier, part