“As far as I’m concerned, that’s good news,” Michael said. “If that’s how Adam is operating, that’s the best case scenario in my mind. It means we’re dealing with a few females they’ve experimented on because that’s all the serum Adam would dare risk, when he has so little.” His jaw clenched. “Now on to the worst case, which in my experience is usually the one that applies to Adam. What if one of Ava’s fertility experiments wielded a method of converting females to GTECHs without the original serum? Women become his army and the ticket to power that Adam is looking for. If that’s the case, then we’ll be outnumbered, and Adam will be a whole lot closer to creating a Zodius Nation that takes over this country.”
Caleb and Damion both took that in with a long silence, before Michael added, “I say bring the woman here to Sunrise City, and let Becca extract her memories.”
Damion ground his teeth at the callous suggestion. Becca was Sterling’s Lifebond. Through a combination of experimental cancer treatment and her conversion to GTECH, she had developed unique abilities, like reading minds when she touched someone. Damion wasn’t about to let that happen to Lara. Not now, not before she had a chance to talk on her own.
“Performing what amounts to a mental rape on Lara, when there’s a good chance she’s already been physically raped, makes us no better than Adam, and it isn’t going to get her to help us. We have to assume she has access to Zodius City, and if there is some kind of new serum, we need to get inside to destroy it. That means gaining her trust. Show her we aren’t like the Zodius.”
“Assuming she’s not already corrupted by Adam, and this is all a ploy to infiltrate our operation,” Michael said, cynical as usual. “Becca’s mental probe would let us know if she can be trusted.”
“Both valid points,” Caleb agreed. “Michael’s right, though. We can’t risk this being some sort of trap to get this woman inside Sunrise City. If we need Becca, we’ll have her go to Lara.” He homed in on Damion. “If you really feel Lara deserves a chance to come around on her own, we’ll give it to her. But make this journey to trust a quick one. If Adam has the serum to build an army of female GTECHs, innocent lives could depend on it.”
A female scream ripped through the conversation and was still clinging to the air as Damion ended the call on the move to the bathroom.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Damion forgot his promise to stay out of the bathroom unless invited, blasting through the doors and then freezing at what he found. The curtain to the shower stall hung open, and a shivering Lara sat naked in the corner, her legs pulled to her chest, just out of the reach of a stream of water.
Quickly he scanned the room, relieved to confirm that the impossible hadn’t somehow happened, and an intruder had gotten inside the facility. While there was no unexpected guest, and Lara was safe, it was also clear she was definitely not okay. He knew the signs of shock, having seen a few guys go off the deep end after missions turned bloody.
“Lara?” he softly called out, fighting the instinct to go to her, cautious so he didn’t scare her and worsen her condition.
She didn’t respond. There was no acknowledgment that he was present, not even a flicked gaze in his direction. Staring forward, she seemed to be seeing, but not seeing.
“Lara, sweetheart,” he said. “I’m going to get you a towel and get you out of there.”
She whispered softly, incoherently, and began to rock, but still she didn’t look at him.
Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. This had to be the healing sickness the GTECHs suffered as a product of chronic low vitamin C that got worse with time. He might have prevented it from occurring with an injection. At a minimum, he would have lessened her suffering. But there had been no known case of a GTECH who’d been converted less than a year and who’d experienced the healing illness, so he’d assumed… well, he shouldn’t have assumed anything.
Damion balled his fists by his sides and dared to step forward. He knew he had to ensure Lara was stable, that she wasn’t going to surprise him, yet again, and do something none of the other GTECHs had done, like dying from the healing illness.
He closed the distance between them and stopped just outside the tiled rim of the shower stall, willing her to look at him. “Lara?”
She sucked in a breath at his voice, in what seemed to be the first definitive indication that she knew he was there, and then, as if in reaction to his presence, her petite frame erupted in violent quakes to the point he thought she might have a seizure.
Damion snapped into action, knowing he needed to get her warm. Quickly he shut off the shower, but not before splatters of icy cold droplets hit his arms and face, telling him just how chilled to the bone she must be.
He snatched an oversized towel off the silver shelf against the wall, his gaze sweeping over Lara, her beautiful pale ivory skin glistening with water, her teeth chattering. But the violent quaking he’d feared might be a seizure was, thankfully, already lessening.
“Lara, honey,” Damion said, stepping back into the shower stall and squatting down in front of her, hesitating before he touched her. “I’m going to wrap this towel around you to get you warmed up.” Easing her from the wall far enough to get the oversized towel behind her, he was able to wrap it around her shoulders and knees.
“Cold,” she murmured. “So cold.”
He rubbed where the towel covered her arms, trying to create extra heat. “I know,” he said. “I’ll get you dried off and warm. Can you stand up?”
She blankly blinked up at him with eyes no longer green but GTECH black. “Everyone is dead,” she whispered.
A rare chill raced down his spine at the way she said those words. “Who is everyone? Who’s dead?”
“Skywalker… is dead.” She squeezed her eyes shut and stuck her hand through the towel to cover her face. “No. That’s not right.”
If she weren’t GTECH, immune to drugs, he’d swear she was detoxing. “Does your head hurt, Lara?”
She grabbed his shirt, desperateness in her tone, on her face. “I can’t remember who Skywalker is. I need to… remember Skywalker. I know he’s important. I need—”
“You don’t have to remember right now,” he assured her, cupping her cheek with his hand and wondering why the idea of Skywalker being the man in her life bothered him so much. “All you need to do right now is get out of this shower.” He started to pick her up.
Her tight grip shackled his wrist, compelling him to look at her, only to find her eyes so black he could barely see any white, her expression simmering with barely contained anger. “My family is dead.”
Damion stilled with the icy clarity of her words. He’d been right. Adam had her family. “I’m sorry,” he said, but he’d barely issued the two simple words before he knew they were a mistake.
Instantly, the black glaze in Lara’s eyes crystallized into hate. “The Renegades killed my family. You killed my family.”
“Whoa,” Damion said, his hands going to her arms. “I promise you, Lara. I… We didn’t kill your family. We—”
The word was lost in the blast of her fast movement. With all her GTECH strength, she shoved him away, and he hit the floor with a hard thud. On some distant level, he registered that such strength was impossible during a bout of the healing illness. No, this was not the healing illness at all. Whatever was going on with Lara was not that.
She came down on top of him, naked, wet, and ready to kill. She was wild, angry, driven by the pain of loss, her emotion swelling inside the small room.
She shoved to a sitting position, straddling him, naked and fiercely beautiful, her high, full breasts thrusting forward—a scene that might have been erotic, would have been erotic, if she wasn’t, once again, trying to bust his chops.
Damion shackled her wrists and pulled her back down, her perky little nipples pressed to his chest. “Jeezus, woman, what is it with you and violence?”
She jerked against him, trying to sit up, but he held her fir
mly, the tug-of-war ending with them so close, he could almost feel her lips touch his. Instant electricity crackled in the air, their breath mingling. “Let me up,” she hissed softly.
“Not until you promise you won’t attack me again.”
“I will not be captive to a Renegade one second longer. You killed—”
“I didn’t,” he said, emotion welling inside him, memories of his mother and older brother screaming the same accusation at him in a hospital waiting room. “I didn’t kill your family, and neither did any of the Renegades. But I know how losing someone you love feels. I know how much you need someone to blame.”
God, he remembered his mother losing it, throwing fists at him until finally his brother had pulled her off of him, only to have his brother begin beating on Damion himself. He’d taken it all because he’d created their pain, because he deserved their anger, and because he wished he was the one with a sheet over his head.
“And you know what…” he said, sitting up with her, but leaving her on top, straddling him, the V of her body pressed to the thick pulse of his cock. He wanted her, wanted to slide his pants down and slip inside her, let her ride away her frustration. But she hated him, and she’d hate him even more if he let that happen.
So he offered her another kind of release, one he understood, one his family had needed, and he’d given them as well. “I’m good at taking the blame. If you really need to hit me, Lara, hit me.” He released her hands and settled his on the floor behind him. “If that’ll give you some sense of justice, then so be it. Hell—if killing me would give you some sort of peace, I’d give you my gun.”
All the anger slid from her face, replaced by stunned disbelief that lasted—maybe fifteen seconds—before anger flared hotter than ever. “Damn you!” she said, flattening her hands on his chest and leaning into him. “Stop messing with my head. Stop manipulating me and playing with my emotions. I should hit you. I should take you up on that gun and kill you.”
“Gun’s in my right pant leg,” he said, going out on a ledge, and he wasn’t sure why. He needed to trust this woman—already did on some gut level that defied all reason. Or maybe she just opened an old wound attached to a death wish. “Either take it and shoot me, or stop threatening to do it, so we can move on to more productive things. Like putting clothes on you before you drive me out of my flipping mind.”
She all but growled at him, her fingers curling in his shirt. “Damn you, GTECH—”
“Damion,” he ground out, his hand sliding into her hair, tension rippling through his body. He was angry now too, angry and hard, and more sexually frustrated than he’d been in his entire life. “If you’re going to curse me, hit me, threaten to kill me, while sitting naked on top of me and teasing me mercilessly, then I deserve to have you use my name.”
“Fine,” she whispered. “Damn you, Damion.” And then, somehow, someway, without any coherent decision to do so, and with what felt like a physical demand, a life or death necessity, he was crazy-hot kissing her, his free hand melding to her back, pressing her close. Or maybe she was the one who’d kissed him. That possessive feeling he’d experienced with her a minute before expanded inside him again, a sensation like nothing he’d ever known, screaming mine. This woman was somehow a part of him. There was nothing but her, but them. All he knew was the rightness of this. They were wild, hot, and headed toward a firestorm of trouble he had to stop right now. But damn if she wasn’t the sweetest thing he’d ever tasted, addictive and spicy sweet, and impossible to resist. Impossible.
Chale didn’t dislike dogs. In fact, he liked dogs. But dogs, like kids and some adults, needed to be taught manners. The one presently growling and tugging at his pant leg, clearly hadn’t been. For the entire hour since he’d talked to Damion, the wiener dog had barked, snapped, growled, and generally acted like a kid going through a bad case of the terrible twos, down to the “me-me-me or else I’ll throw a tantrum” stage.
From where he leaned on the hotel nightstand, one leg crossed over the other, Chale stared down at the dog and waited for Lev to emerge from the bathroom in the doorman uniform he’d managed to scrounge. No surprise Agent Wonderful had been desperate for some pool time. Like the CIA agents who’d done a piss poor job of guarding Lev, the dog soon would be departing.
The Zodius would expect them to make a run at departure come nightfall. Chale wanted them to get what they expected, minus Lev and his family. Thankfully, Lev was more than agreeable to a plush, safe life under Renegade protection, as long as he knew his wife and kids were safe. Which Chale had agreed to—he’d expect nothing less from anyone who gave a damn about his family. Exactly why Lev’s wife had already departed the room in a maid’s uniform, the kids hidden in a laundry hamper. They were now being escorted by two Renegades, en route to Sunrise City.
“Houston!” Chale yelled toward the tiny kitchen area of the hotel suite—Houston being the nickname for Tommy Richards, their team’s weapons expert, a name chosen not only because he was from Houston, Texas, but for reasons no one knew except Chale—that it was Damion’s dead younger brother’s name—Damion refused to call him “Tommy.”
Fortunately, Houston loved dogs as much as he did gadgets. “The hotdog demands your attention.”
Houston sauntered into the room, held up a bag of sliced hotdogs, of all things, and grinned. “Someone say hotdog?” He whistled. “Here, pup.”
Chale would have rolled his eyes, but the dog, thankfully, was already darting toward Houston. Unfortunately, Houston teased the animal, and it started jumping, and Lord help Chale, barking. Chale grimaced and ran his hands down his jeans. “The idea is to make it stop barking.”
Houston tossed a handful of hotdog pieces to the floor, and the dog instantly began to scarf them down in blessed silence. “Ask and you shall receive,” Houston said, giving a big white smile that only made his long blond hair and pretty-boy face all the more… well, pretty. Houston was “pretty” in a cowboy, manly way that Chale had initially assumed meant wimp. Then in a confrontation with a Zodius, he’d seen Houston transform into something he could only liken to a pissed off alligator, and he’d forgotten that idea. Houston was a beast.
“He gets sick when he eats table food,” Lev said from the bathroom door, now dressed in black slacks and a red button-down jacket about one size too big.
The dog started barking again, begging for more hotdogs. Chale motioned for Houston to give the dog what it wanted, and then tossed Lev a wig and bellman hat.
“We’ll warn the kennel when they get here,” he told Lev. “Put that on. When you exit the room, I’ll have a man in the hallway to your right pretending to struggle with a key to his room. You go to the left and out the door. The minute you step outside, one of my men will join you and give you the code word…” He eyed the dog, and said, “Hotdog. That will let you know you are safe. He’ll put you in a car and let you talk to your wife and kids. You’ll connect with them a few miles up the road.” He hit the mike on his ear and gave his team the code word, then pushed off the dresser. “Ready?”
“When will ‘Molly’ rejoin our family?” Lev asked in surprisingly perfect English, referring to the dog. “The kids are dealing with enough without losing her. We brought her with us.”
“In a couple of days,” Chale said. “We’ll get her back to you. Right now, your safety comes first.”
A knock sounded on the door—one, two, three knocks—a code. He and Houston exchanged a look, and Houston went to the door. He returned with Jesse Daniels, one of their own, dressed in the same uniform as Lev, down to the wig and hat.
“I came in,” Jesse said, tossing the wig onto the bed, running his hand through his dark, rumpled hair and eyeing Lev. “Now you go out.”
A few minutes later, Lev was on the move, headed toward several of Chale’s team members, while Chale, Houston, Jesse, and the dog were left in the hotel room.
A knock sounded on the door, and there was no code. Just a knock. Al
l three men exchanged a silent look and reached for their weapons. Even the dog went eerily quiet, as if it sensed what the men knew. Trouble wasn’t waiting for sunset.
And while the Renegades enjoyed a good fight, avoidance was the plan when innocent human lives were at risk, as was the case now with every human in the building. Chale pointed to the ceiling, and Houston quickly hopped up on the dresser and moved a panel to a crawl space they’d discovered that led to the kitchen—an exit strategy, but one that required a drop from the ceiling smack into a burning stove.
“Housekeeping!” came a female voice.
“No thanks!” Chale called, not believing this was housekeeping for a minute. Jesse lifted Houston into the ceiling, and Houston offered Jesse a hand to pull him up.
“Go!” Chale whispered to Jesse, and seeing his hesitation, added, “That’s an order, soldier! I don’t need a damn babysitter, but you will when I’m finished with you if you don’t do as I say.” Jesse hesitated again, but reluctantly disappeared.
The door of the room burst open, but caught on a chain. “I said, no!” Chale yelled toward the door and fitted the panel back into the ceiling. He jumped to the ground, rushing to the door to slam it shut. “I don’t need service.”
That was when not one, but three bullets silently slammed through the wood and entered his midsection. Chale grunted and bent at the waist, all too aware he’d been hit by the lethal Green Hornets, a top secret, Area 51 technology, and the only bullet that could penetrate the GTECH armor. The door opened again, and a pair of steel cutters appeared.
Somehow, Chale hobbled down the hall, into the bedroom and out of sight, behind a wall dividing the room from the entryway. Flattening against it, he fell to the floor and drew his weapon. Molly whimpered and hid under the bed.