“If I was wearing bikini bottoms, I hope and pray someone would kill me long before my butt was hiked in the air and in some man’s face.”
She laughed, her expression shifting to quick surprise, as if she couldn’t believe she was sharing such a moment with him. “I’m trying to imagine you, the big, macho Renegade—in bikini bottoms.” Her eyes actually twinkled as she added, “Maybe a pink pair with flowers.”
“I’m going to take the big, macho Renegade comment as a compliment, but then again, with you, I’m not sure it is. And for the record, I’m not the pink flower type. I’m the American Flag type.” And then, because he had the undeniable urge to hear that soft, sweet laugh of hers again, because laughter bred trust, he added, “Or Spider-Man. Nothing like a good pair of Spidey boxers.” She rewarded him with a soft musical laugh, and he wondered if she realized she was still holding onto him, because he did. Every damn inch of him was alive with that little piece of awareness.
“You wear Spider-Man underwear?” she asked.
“You got a problem with Spider-Man?”
“No,” she said, a smile lingering behind her laughter. “There’s nothing wrong with Spider-Man. You’re pretty funny. For a GTECH.”
“You’re pretty funny too,” he said. “For a GTECH.”
The smile on her lips faded into the crackle of spiking sexual energy arcing between them. She drew a ragged breath, and he knew then, she was aware of their nearness, of his hands on her hips.
She pressed out of his arms and took several steps to her right, out of his reach. “Where can I find that shower?” she asked.
With the discomfort of his bulging zipper, and a mass of frustration over her withdrawal, Damion ran his hands down his knees and stood, motioning for her to follow him. “This way.” He started walking, letting her follow, giving her his back and his trust in doing so, even though she wouldn’t give him hers. It was trust she didn’t deserve when she wouldn’t tell him her name… and swore she wanted to kill him.
In his head he heard Kid Rock shouting the lyrics of “American Warrior” from his tribute song to the soldiers, but he was thinking “American Fool” might suit him better. A fool for a woman.
Lara followed Damion toward the back of the facility, passing a tech center that would rival anything Serenity had and then some, on the way to what she assumed was a bathroom. His name repeated in her mind, and she stopped walking, flustered that she’d thought of him as “Damion.” Don’t give a GTECH a name. He doesn’t deserve a name—a warning that had her gaze lingering, not where it should be, on the rows of monitors on the wall that might hold clues to escape, but on the man—the way his T-shirt stretched across impressively broad shoulders, and how his jeans hugged a hard, firm backside. She shook her head, a mistake she paid for when stars exploded in front of her eyes and set her to swaying.
A gentle hand settled on her arm. “You okay?”
She blinked to find Damion—dang it, the GTECH—standing in front of her again, towering over her and oozing a dominant masculine presence, lethal and sensual. He was too close, too big and bad and hot. Unbidden, an image of the two of them naked, entwined in bed, overcame her. She blinked it away and found herself looking into Damion’s light hazel eyes, softening at the genuine concern she read in them. She caught herself swaying again, but this time toward him.
Frustrated, she stilled the sway and balled her fists by her sides, telling herself this feeling, this connection she felt to this GTECH, was a spell, some of his GTECH voodoo. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m not going to pass out before you can grill me for information.”
“Good to know,” he said, his lips lifting slightly. “Maybe I’ll even find out what your name is before the night is out.” He motioned her forward with a wave of his hand. “Ladies first.”
She shook her head. “I’m no lady, remember? I’m a GTECH. You go first.”
“Together then,” he said, reaching for her hand and sending heat darting up her arm. “This way I keep you from falling.”
They were in motion before she could object, and he didn’t let her go until he set her down on a footstool in the center of a large dressing area, complete with a shower, vanity, and walk-in closet.
“You’ll find everything you could possibly need here,” he said. “Clothes that should fit, and whatever cosmetics you might want. Several of our high-ranking Renegades have Lifebonds who frequently travel with them, and they keep the place well stocked. Many of our medical and research team are female as well, so we want them to be comfortable if they should be here.”
“You have females involved in your operation?” she asked in surprised. “As in—not in sex camps?”
He leaned against the vanity. “I keep trying to tell you the Renegades are nothing like the Zodius. We’ve saved a large population of people and their families who were targeted by Adam for their skills or simply their bodies, and offered them safety and shelter.” He crossed his arms in front of a truly stellar chest, and she tried not to notice his powerful forearms, or the light brown hair dusting them. “Everyone in Sunrise City, humans and GTECHs alike, share a goal—to stop Adam before he’s unstoppable. And I know you find this hard to believe, but we try to make everyone’s lives in Sunrise City as normal as possible. We have a school for the kids. There’s no crime, no bills to pay, no need or want not provided for these individuals and families.”
Families they had kept together, rather than killed, as hers had been—it sounded too good to be true. Images of her past twisted her into knots, images of her own family being killed at the hands of GTECHs. She remembered her father’s new friend, who’d come to the house, and remembered arriving for a dinner just in time to watch him and a group of men slaughter her family. She’d gone into shock, but a moment before she would have been found, she’d hidden under the porch stairs, with bugs and mud, and who knew what else. That was where Powell had found her.
Powell’s warnings came back to her as well. The Renegades are worse than the Zodius. They pretend they are good, but they’ll smile and then shoot you in the back. These men had done just that to her father, to her family. Now this one was trying to do the same to her.
“I’ll leave the door cracked,” Damion said, moving toward the exit. “In case you need me or feel sick. But I won’t come in. You have my word.”
She actually believed him, which was a reason to disbelieve him. He could stab her in the back the minute she let her guard down.
He started to turn, and suddenly, she wanted him to know he couldn’t fool her, he couldn’t suck her in. “I’m Lara,” she said, giving him the name he sought. “And I was created to kill your kind. And I will kill you before this is over.”
He didn’t react, his expression unchanged, his big body still loose-muscled and comfortable. “Since you plan to kill me, seems only fair I get to know my assassin’s full name.”
She realized that she wanted him to know too, and she wanted him to know what the Renegades had taken from her, why she sought revenge. Why she would kill him. “Lara…” she said, intending to give him her last name, but her mind went blank.
He arched a brow at her hesitation. “Lara what?”
She didn’t know. She reached into her memories, but there was no name. Desperate, she tried to picture her past, her family, but there was simply more of that blankness.
“It doesn’t matter,” she lied, because it mattered more than he would ever know. “Lara is dead. My duty is all I have left.” And she feared that was truer than ever, because no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t picture her family, couldn’t see their faces.
He studied her a moment, his gaze hot and steady, probing and thoughtful. “Lara isn’t dead,” he said. “She’s lost. And I’m going to help you find her again.” He said nothing else, simply turned and left the room. He pulled the door shut, but for a small crack, leaving Lara to stare after him, lost in every way.
How long she star
ed after him she did not know, because at some point, she became aware of warm water running over her naked skin, of suds washing down the drain by her feet, of her own name on her tongue, as she whispered it over and over. She tried to answer the question the GTECH had asked her—Lara what? Mallery. Lara Mallery. But the instant the name came into her mind, it felt wrong. It felt empty and brought no recollection of the past.
Squeezing her eyes shut, she willed her mind to picture her family, to open herself to her memories. The GTECHs had taken her family. She would not let this new GTECH, Damion, take her memories. But the harder she strained to remember her past, the darker her mind became, until the name “Lara Martin” came to her. A sudden onslaught of conflicting, violent images flooded her mind. Of GTECHs killing her family, then of Sabrina dragging her up a set of stairs and ordering a man she didn’t know, someone named Skywalker, to be killed. But Skywalker was dead, and it hurt. God, it hurt so badly.
Lara hit the wall of the shower, the deaths of family, of Skywalker, replaying in her mind’s eye, over and over, and with them, the pain, the loss, sparking the hot flames of anger that the water had no chance of dousing. The need for vengeance, the familiar need for justice, roared to life—her only hope of sanity, her only reason to go on.
CHAPTER SIX
If anyone was working sexual voodoo on anyone, Damion would have sworn it was the woman in that bathroom, and on him. She’d just told him she was an assassin trained to kill GTECHs like himself, that she, in fact, intended to kill him, and all he’d wanted to do was strip her naked and take her right there on the bathroom floor. And the man in him could all too easily justify why he might act on his attraction to her. Some part of him rejected her as his enemy, and there was this uncomfortable ball of possessiveness growing inside him like nothing he’d ever felt for a woman, let alone one who wanted to kill him. Because, he told himself, assassin or not, when she’d declared that “Lara” was dead, he’d seen the vulnerability beneath the hard shell, seen the woman who was Lara, who he’d sensed existed even before he’d known she did. The woman who’d been hurt, who’d had something taken from her that she didn’t think she could ever get back. Something she blamed herself for. He recognized that feeling in her, because he had the unique perspective of having felt the same way when his brother had died. Lara existed because Adam had stolen something from Lara’s life.
For the time being though, he shoved aside such concerns and focused on the urgency of contacting his team, after too long without communication.
Damion sat down at the computer panel of the tech center and flipped a red switch on the wall. A satellite phone slid from beneath the tabletop, and he grabbed the receiver and dialed. At the same time, his mind hung on something Lara had said. I was created to kill your kind. He frowned. Why hadn’t she said to kill Renegades? Maybe because she hated all GTECHs, no matter who was pulling her puppet strings, or maybe because the puppet strings existed.
Chale answered his cell phone in one ring, and Damion moved on to the urgent matters at hand.
“Talk to me,” Damion ordered, bypassing “hello” himself this time. He and Chale were like brothers. They didn’t need small talk. “Tell me Lev is secure.”
“Where the fuck are you?” Chale shouted into the phone, proving the small talk assumption one hundred percent true. “I thought you were lying somewhere gutted, for God’s sake.”
“Yeah well, I love you too, man,” Damion replied dryly. “I’m fine. Now answer the question. Is Lev secure?”
“As secure as sitting ducks, waiting for nightfall to get the hell out of Dodge.”
“And the agents guarding him?” Damion asked. “Were they ‘in bed’ with Adam?”
Chale snorted. “Try in bed with the fantasy of early retirement—at least that goes for the agent-in-charge. He’s planning to resign the agency in a month and went ahead and mentally checked out early.” His tone turned muffled and scornful as it became clear he was talking to the agent. “Apparently agent-not-so-smart-and-thank-God-for-all-those-who-might-depend-on-him-that-he’s-resigning wasn’t thinking about actually living to see his resignation happen. His men should thank us for taking over, so they get to live as well.”
He didn’t ask if Chale was certain about the agent’s story. Chale had his fact-checking in order, or he wouldn’t speak. The man never assumed anything, which Damion liked about him.
“So what’s the bikini babe got to do with us taking Lev and clan into custody?”
“Adam’s put together a team of female assassins to do his dirty work now. GTECH female assassins.”
“No f-ing way,” Chale said. “Adam considers women baby-making machines, not to mention, inferiors. Are you sure?”
“One hundred percent,” Damion said, without explaining. “I got some up-close-and-personal demonstration of what they’re capable of.”
“I take it you have the bikini chick in custody and talking?”
“In custody, yes,” he confirmed. “But she’s injured and not doing a lot of talking beyond promising to kill me.”
Chale chuckled. “Now that sounds fun. Wish I was there. I do believe I’d enjoy interrogating a hot female assassin.”
“Just make sure, later tonight, you’re not the one getting interrogated by a hot female assassin,” he said. “Watch your ass when you leave. They will be.”
“You do the same,” Chale said. “Because I saw that bikini babe’s backside, and it’s a distraction if I ever saw one.”
He could say that again. And he did, one last time, after a discussion about their extraction plans.
Damion ended the call and dialed Caleb Rain, the Renegade’s leader, who was Adam Rain’s twin brother. “Adam sent a team after the Russian. We were forced to take him into custody. Chale’s moving him in your direction at nightfall.”
“Why Chale? And why are you in the shelter?” Caleb said, able to see his location from the Sunrise tech panels.
“I captured a Zodius soldier and went underground for interrogation. A female Zodius soldier. And yes, you heard me right. Adam’s converted a team of women to GTECHs. The one here with me claims she was created specifically to be a GTECH assassin.”
“Let’s take this on monitor,” was Caleb’s immediate response. “Michael’s here, and I need him involved in this conversation.”
Damion punched a button by the phone and set the receiver back on the base. One of the dozen monitors above the desk came to life, and the image of Caleb and Michael sitting side by side at the conference table of the Sunrise City war room filled the screen. The two were complete opposites, well beyond the obvious—Caleb’s short brown hair and Michael’s long black hair. Caleb was the honor-bound Superman of a graphic novel, while Michael was the dark persona of Batman, willing to do what Caleb would not in the name of justice. That was where Damion and Michael often found themselves at odds. Damion believed the Superman-style of justice was the foundation this country needed, now more than ever. Michael believed that foundation was a myth that had never existed.
Once Caleb briefed Michael on the situation, Michael’s head snapped to the monitor, his hard gaze finding Damion’s.
“Where’s the woman now?”
“In the shower washing a head wound,” Damion said. “And here’s the interesting part. I didn’t give her that injury. She attacked her commanding officer and kept her from killing Lev, but took a beating in the process.”
“Why would Adam kill the Russian when he needs him?” Caleb asked. “And why did this woman stop it from happening if that was her intention to start with?”
“I asked the same,” Damion confirmed. “She refused to answer, but I get the feeling Lara is all about killing GTECHs, but humans are another story.
“And one more important little detail that’s going to blow your minds—the commanding officer she attacked was Sabrina, the ICE dealer who’d double-crossed Adam and stolen from him. And before you ask—no, these women aren?
??t ICE junkies doped up on drugs that Sabrina stole before she disappeared. These women wind-walk, and Icers using the synthetic GTECH serum can’t wind-walk. We’re talking the real deal here. These women are GTECHs.”
“Wait,” Michael said, shaking his head. “You’re telling me that Sabrina is alive and in a command position for Adam?”
“It’s Sabrina, all right,” Damion said. “The one I have here is Lara, but no last name so far. It would help if Sterling could run a check on missing persons with that first name. I have my hands a little full right now.” Sterling was the Renegade’s top tech guy next to Damion, and his brother ran the family-owned Megatech Technology, one of the top tech companies in the world.
“I’ll get him right on it,” Caleb agreed. “And I’ll have him chase down Sabrina’s trail. Her involvement in this makes no sense to me. Adam would have killed a traitor. Hell, my brother’ll kill you for looking at him wrong.”
“Not a woman who could potentially Lifebond with one of his men, no matter what she’d done to him,” Michael disagreed. “Adam would have let the entire male population of Zodius have her. If she didn’t find a match, which we can safely assume, then she would have been handed over to Ava for experimental fertility procedures. Ava must have convinced Adam that injecting a female with the serum would make her fertile.”
“And when it didn’t work,” Caleb said, “Adam decided to put them to work killing Renegades.”
“It’s a good hypothesis,” Michael said. “Now we just need to prove it.”
“Doesn’t seem a good strategy for Adam,” Damion said dryly. “Not when the women are going to hate him for what he’s done to them.”
“Adam knows how to get loyalty,” Michael said. “He wouldn’t think twice about torturing these women’s families and friends, maybe even kill a few to prove he would kill the others.”
“Considering Lara has a boatload of raw hatred toward GTECHs,” Damion said, “I’d say there is a good chance that’s exactly what he did to her. She hates GTECHs, every last one of us. I get the idea she’s just happy she gets to kill some of us.”