The Impossible Alliance. Candace Irvin

the barrier. Solid rubber. Prosthetic. No doubt designed to flesh out the disguise.

      It would have to go.

      He grabbed the collar of her shirt and jerked his hands down and apart. Buttons flew off, smacking into pine needles, the tree trunk and his own jaw as the once-white fabric gave all the way to Morrow’s waist. An extremely convincing masculine chest lay beneath, meticulously crafted from broad shoulders and moderately muscled pectorals, right down to the sparse thatch of hair embedded within the shadowy, textured skin. A quick sweep of his fingers assured him it was definitely synthetic skin.

      Thank God.

      The disguise was so good that for a moment there, he’d wondered if he wasn’t losing ground more quickly than he feared. For all Hatch’s reassurances, where would he and Morrow be then?

      Jared crammed the insidious doubts back into their box and locked the lid as he ran his fingers up the right side of the prosthetic chest, locating the row of hooks that sealed the edges of the molded rubber together, as well as the second set hidden along the ridge of her shoulder. He popped both rows almost as quickly as he’d popped the buttons on that grimy men’s dress shirt, biting back an instinctive whistle as he cracked the false chest open and pushed the phony pecs to the side.

      Any doubt he had left vanished at the sight.

      What lay beneath was definitely all woman.

      Generously so. Right down to the stiff nipples crowning the twin ivory swells. Swells that had captured the intermittent starlight filtering through the pines of the Rebelian forest to gleam softly amid the shifting shadows. He ignored his body’s sudden, inappropriate reaction to the sight and leaned down to press the disk of his stethoscope into the upper curve of the woman’s left breast, blocking out the nocturnal symphony around them as he focused on the gradually strengthening heartbeat pulsing through his ears.

      Relieved, he withdrew the scope.

      He lifted the woman’s shoulders and slipped the stethoscope between the rear of the prosthetic and her equally bare back, timing the rise and fall of her lungs as he evaluated their capacity. Satisfied, he withdrew the scope and hooked it around his neck. But as he settled that mop of matted brown hair into the pillow of pine needles, his fingertips brushed across a row of tiny, tightly spaced bumps tracking up the woman’s scalp, mere millimeters inside the hairline, just behind her right ear.

      Stitches?

      Possibly the cause of that coma? Before he could lean down close enough to find out, the body beneath his shifted. Stiffened.

      “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

      He stiffened. Unfortunately he also dropped his gaze. Stared. And damned if he didn’t flush. He ripped his gaze from those taunting swells, hoping the darkness would conceal the damning tide rapidly spreading up his neck. The moment he met the dark-brown fury leveled on him, he knew it hadn’t. He eased his chest up from the woman’s exposed breasts. “I beg your pardon. I was…examining you.”

      “Really?”

      Given the circumstance, her dry sarcasm shouldn’t have stung. But it did.

      Why he even gave a damn what some nerdy, hermaphroditic geologist thought was beyond him. He’d saved the man’s hide, for Christ’s sake. Jared shifted to his haunches as that same geologist sat up and closed the prosthetic over those firm, telling breasts. Okay, he’d saved the woman’s hide. Didn’t that earn him at least one get-out-of-a-faux-pas free card?

      Evidently not.

      What it earned him was an unobstructed view of the woman’s entire torso as she scrambled to her knees, the false chest swinging wide as she swayed suddenly. He reached out to steady her, but the fury cutting through the coke-bottle lenses that had somehow survived their harrowing flight stopped him cold. He anchored his hands to the ends of the stethoscope at his neck and settled back onto his haunches, ignoring his burning hamstring as he noted the raw edges of the intravenous needle site on the back of the woman’s hand.

      She hadn’t been out of that coma for long. It was best not to push her. At least, not until she’d had a chance to regain her balance and her bearings.

      The agent in her kicked in sooner than he’d expected, because the moment her balance steadied, she pushed herself.

      He watched, ready to grab her if need be, as she peeled the filthy shirt off what turned out to be her own sinewy arms, not the prosthetic’s. She removed the rubber chest and dumped it onto the pine needles, those distinctly feminine curves gleaming amid the shadows as she retrieved the shirt once more. She slid the dingy sleeves up her arms, finally pausing as she hooked her fingers to the shirt’s edges—and the row of missing buttons.

      The woman’s muddy brows arched as she lifted her chin. “Been a while, has it, Soldier?”

      Damned if the fire didn’t return to his neck.

      He thought about apologizing, but he didn’t. There was no way in hell he was telling anyone just how long it had been, much less this woman. Still, her pointed brow succeeded in scoring its second point.

      Despite her wobbly balance, he could have turned away.

      Before he could answer, she knotted the trailing ends of the shirt around her waist, then brought her hands to her face, peeling off that sparse mustache, then those thick, muddy brows, leaving smoothly arched wisps behind. Dark blond, light brown, he couldn’t quite make out the color. There were too many shadows between them.

      Evidently there were still too many angles, as well.

      The hard edges of her jaw melted away next as she tucked her fingers inside her mouth and removed a set of temporary dental implants that had obviously been designed to alter the shape of her face. Her cheeks stood out pale and high in the dim light. Without the implants squaring her chin or the fake mustache drawing attention from her mouth, her lips were now full, almost lush.

      Jared unhooked one of the canteens from his web belt and set it on the ground between them, knowing she’d be needing it soon enough, just as he knew why she’d decided to pull a Victor/Victoria out in the middle of the Rebelian forest. DeBruzkya and his goons would be tracking two men. She was turning them into one man and one woman.

      Not bad.

      In fact, damned clever.

      That, combined with her increasing steadiness, told him she’d come out of that coma with the brilliant brain Hatch had raved about still intact. He reached into his rucksack and pulled out the pair of work boots. He’d learned years ago that more often than not, a package was imprisoned sans shoes to lower morale and prevent escape. Morrow was no exception. He dumped the boots at her feet and added a pair of black socks.

      “Thanks.”

      “No problem. I need to get a fix on our position. As soon as I get back, I’ll finish examining you. Then we need to talk.” He waited for her nod, then stood to retrieve the handheld global positioning unit from his jumpsuit as he headed for the clearing. Now that he was reasonably confident she’d survive the night, it was time to focus on other pressing concerns. Like where the hell they were. And how much ground they had left to cover before they arrived at their designated safe house.

      Jared fired up the GPS unit as he reached the clearing.

      Five kilometers.

      His breath eased out. The chopper had ferried them farther than he’d thought, but still not far enough. Morrow might be steady now, but her weakened state had already caused her to pass out once. With this much ground to cover, there was a good chance it would happen again before the night was over.

      The original plan had been to have the chopper cleave to the riverbed as long as possible. Three-quarters of the way up the river, the bird was supposed to have slowed just long enough to cut them loose. Then it would have resumed its breakneck speed, eventually veering west to head straight for the Rebelian-Gastonian border, DeBruzkya and his radar twidgets never knowing he and Morrow had been left behind.

      All