Copyright © 2016 Rebecca Zanetti
Cover image © Richard Jones
Author photograph © Dylan Patrick
The right of Rebecca Zanetti to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Published by arrangement with Zebra Books,
an imprint of Kensington Publishing Corp.
First published in this Ebook edition in 2016
by HEADLINE ETERNAL
An imprint of HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library
eISBN 978 1 4722 3759 0
HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP
An Hachette UK Company
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
www.headlineeternal.com
www.headline.co.uk
www.hachette.co.uk
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
About the Author
Praise for Rebecca Zanetti
Also by Rebecca Zanetti
About the Book
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Find out more about Headline Eternal
About the Author
New York Times bestselling author Rebecca Zanetti has worked as an art curator, Senate aide, lawyer, college professor, and a hearing examiner – only to culminate it all in stories about Alpha males and the women who claim them. She writes dark paranormals, romantic suspense and sexy contemporary romances.
Growing up amid the glorious backdrops and winter wonderlands of the Pacific Northwest has given Rebecca fantastic scenery and adventures to weave into her stories. She resides in the wild north with her husband, children, and extended family who inspire her every day – or at the very least give her plenty of characters to write about.
Find Rebecca at www.rebeccazanetti.com,
on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/RebeccaZanetti.books
or on Twitter @RebeccaZanetti.
Just some of the reasons to fall for Rebecca Zanetti’s powerful romances:
‘Thrilling post-apocalyptic romance at its dark, sizzling best!’ Lara Adrian, New York Times bestselling author
‘Nothing is easy or black or white in Zanetti’s grim new reality, but hope is key, and I hope she writes faster!’ Larissa Ione, New York Times bestselling author
‘Zanetti pulls together a heady mix of sexy sizzle, emotional punch and high-stakes danger in this truly outstanding tale’ Romantic Times
‘Rebecca Zanetti had me from the moment I read the description . . . I could barely breath, let alone set down the book . . . you’ll want to add Rebecca Zanetti to your must-read list too!’ The Best Reviews
‘Plenty of action, lots of steamy romance and even a few moments of laughter and tears . . . I was on the edge of my seat until the very last chapter’ KT Book Reviews
By Rebecca Zanetti
The Scorpius Syndrome Series
Mercury Striking
Shadow Falling
Justice Ascending
About the Book
Before the Scorpius Syndrome tore through North America and nearly wiped out the population, Vivienne Kennedy was the FBI’s best profiler. The bacteria got her anyway. But she survived. She recovered. And when she woke up from a drug-nightmare of captivity, her skills as a hunter of men had gone from merely brilliant to full-on uncanny. Her mysterious rescuer wants her to put them to the test. But no matter how tempting he is, with his angel’s eyes and devil’s tongue, Vinnie knows she shouldn’t trust him.
For more thrilling passion played out against the dangerous race for survival, look for all the titles in The Scorpius Syndrome series: Mercury Striking, Shadow Falling and Justice Ascending.
This one is dedicated to Caitlin Blasdell, who’s been my agent from the very beginning of this exciting journey.
There aren’t enough words to describe how grateful I am to work with you, or how much I appreciate everything that you do for me.
Acknowledgments
I have many people to thank for help in getting this book to readers. I sincerely apologize to anyone I’ve forgotten.
Thank you to Big Tone for taking the kids to basketball and football while I wrote this book, for cooking interesting concoctions of noodles and, well, more noodles for dinner, and for being a better hero than I could ever create. Thanks to Gabe for the entertainment and love, and thank you to Karlina for the adventure and love;
Thank you to my talented agents, Caitlin Blasdell and Liza Dawson, who have been with me from the first book and who have supported, guided, and protected me in this wild industry;
Thank you to the Kensington gang: Alicia Condon, Alexandra Nicolajsen, Vida Engstrand, Michelle Forde, Jane Nutter, Justine Willis, Lauren Jernigan, Ross Plotkin, Stacia Seaman, Steven Zacharius, and Adam Zacharius;
A huge thanks to Jillian Stein and Minga Portillo for all the amazing work;
And thanks also to my constant support system: Gail and Jim English, Debbie and Travis Smith, Stephanie and Don West, Brandie and Mike Chapman, Jessica and Jonah Namson, and Kathy and Herb Zanetti.
Chapter One
In his own mind, a sociopath is the sanest person in the room.
—Dr. Vinnie Wellington, Sociopaths
The nightmare clawed through Vinnie, ripping and gnashing until she awoke, her mouth opened in a silent scream.
Thank God. Finally, she’d been quiet. They’d had to move her quarters three times already because her night terrors scared the hell out of normal people. Now she lived in the bottom far corner of a sparsely populated residence in Vanguard territory, which was seven square blocks of relative safety in a dark world.
She leaped from the bed, her bare feet slapping ripped linoleum. Her lungs compressed and tremors shook her legs. She couldn’t breathe. God, she couldn’t breathe.
Bending over, she planted a hand on her chest.
Air.
She needed air.
Launching into motion, she ran through the dilapidated tenement to the creaky sliding glass door
and yanked it open. Rain, cold and drizzly, cascaded inside on a burst of wind. Undaunted by the storm or the darkness outside, she pushed through weeds choking torn concrete and stumbled onto the abandoned road.
Sharp rocks and pieces of debris cut into her feet, but she paid no heed. Crossing the worn asphalt, she reached the chain-link fence protecting all seven blocks of Vanguard territory.
Her hands wrapped around the chain link near her face, and even in her panic, she remembered not to reach up to the barbed wire.
Thunder bellowed above as what was once the City of Angels gave itself over to the short but devastating rainy season. She held tight and lifted her head, allowing the rain to barrage her.
“You’re early tonight.” A voice, low and masculine, cut through the storm from the other side of the fence.
She blinked and stared into the darkness. The streets, abandoned to weeds, stretched in every direction across the empty, dark land. “Where are you?” she whispered.
He came into view, silent like any predator, stepping right up to the fence. “You’re getting wet, Doc.”
She wiped water from her eyes. “I didn’t scream this time.”
“I know.” Raze Shadow, one of the elite Vanguard lieutenants, had rescued her from hell a week ago while on a mission.
If he hadn’t heard her scream this time, was he just patrolling nearby? She shivered. “How is patrol going?”
His eyes, such a light blue as to be odd, lasered through the dark, touching on her toes and wandering up her bare legs and soaking white T-shirt to her damp face. Somehow, even in the cold and through the fence, the gaze heated her skin. “Go back inside, Vivienne.”
“No.” She couldn’t. She just couldn’t return to the nightmare and that dismal apartment. “I’m fine.” Except her left foot hurt. A lot. She lifted her leg and stretched her ankle, squinting to see through the darkness.
Raze tucked an AK-47 over a shoulder, his gaze dropping to her aching foot. His shoulders straightened. “Damn it. Stay there.” Long strides took him down the length of the fence until she couldn’t see him any longer.
The wind whistled a lonely tune over the barren land, and somewhere in the distance, a lion roared. Probably Marvin. She hadn’t seen the beast, but some of the other Vanguard residents had warned her about him. He’d escaped some zoo when the world had died from the Scorpius bacterium, and now he hunted survivors and other predators alike.
Cold blasted through her thin shirt and she trembled.
“Vivienne?” Raze gave her warning that he was near.
She turned, and he came into view on her side of the fence. “That was fast.”
“Humph.” He reached her in two strides. “It isn’t safe out here.”
“It isn’t safe anywhere,” she whispered.
His chest settled. “Inside.”
The cold pricked over her skin and she nodded, turning. The second her damaged heel touched asphalt, the injury stung. She sucked in air.
He planted a large hand on her shoulder. “You okay?”
She stiffened. He’d taken great pains not to touch her during her one week in Vanguard territory, always remaining distant but polite. “Yes.” She gritted her teeth and took another step, trying to balance on her toes.
He exhaled loudly. Shaking his head, he lifted her and pivoted toward the building. So easily.
Warmth and male surrounded her in the closest thing she’d had to protection in months. Her heart stuttered and her body softened into his strength. For the moment, safety surrounded her in the form of hard muscles. Yet Raze Shadow was nowhere near safe. “What’s your real first name?” she babbled, suddenly aware of her thin T-shirt and panties. She should’ve worn yoga pants to bed.
“Raze.” He kept his gaze straight ahead.
No. Raze was short for Razor, which was his nickname from the military because apparently he was a master with a blade. The man didn’t owe her his real name, so she refrained from asking again.
His strides were long, and even holding her, he made no sound. She held herself stiff, trying not to brush against his hard body. The second she softened, she’d try to burrow right inside him, and when he rejected her, as he surely would, she’d want to cry. There was no crying after the apocalypse. “Why are you babysitting me?” she asked.
“You need babysitting.” His voice was deep and dark with an inflection of power. The voice of a man in control of his environment. She’d heard the same tones from seasoned soldiers, retiring neurosurgeons, and hard-edged survivors. He carried her through the glass door and into the dingy apartment, which was such a far cry from her former condo in Boston that it wasn’t even funny. “Lantern?” he asked.
“Um, on the counter?”
He moved the short distance to the L-shaped area that had once served as a kitchen, somehow able to see in the dark. The fridge was gone, the sink didn’t work, and the oven now held extra socks. Once electricity had stopped flowing, kitchens for the most part had become useless.
Setting her on the chipped counter, he twisted on a halogen lantern and immediately crouched down, one broad hand wrapping around her ankle. “What the hell, woman?”
She winced. “I panicked.”
“No shit.” He opened the oven and drew out a pair of socks, having been the person who’d put them there in the first place when he’d helped her to move. Gently, much more gently than a man his size should be able to touch, he wiped grime and blood off her aching arch.
She tried to remain still, but tingles wandered right up her foot to her leg and then to her girly parts. Only Raze Shadow could remind her of her femininity while surrounded by such destruction.
“Seems okay—just scraped.” He looked up, all intent. “We’re out of antibiotics and you can’t injure yourself like this.”
A panic attack didn’t wait for reason. “All right.”
He slowly shook his head. “You need a roommate.”
Not a chance. Often she awoke screaming like a banshee and she couldn’t do that to another person. Even if she could find somebody willing to stay with her, which was doubtful. “Okay.”
“Stop agreeing with me.” His voice remained level, always in perfect control.
“Okay.”
He sat back, still on his haunches, a shield over his expression. As usual. “You’ve been here a week and nobody has pushed you, but this isn’t working.”
She swallowed and tried to sit back. Such complete focus from him launched butterflies—the crazy wild ones—through her abdomen. “I’ll be okay.”
“Stop saying okay.”
“O-all right.”
His eyebrows drew down. “If you talk about what haunts you, you’ll get rid of the nightmares.” He placed both hands over her cold knees, instantly warming her legs.
His touch sent electrical zaps through her skin and she tried to focus. “I don’t want to talk about it.” Hell, she didn’t even remember most of her time in captivity. The president of the United States, one of the most dangerous Rippers of all, had held her captive and drugged the hell out of her. “I don’t remember.”
“You remember.” Raze’s attention didn’t waver.
Yeah, but if she shared the agony of that time, she might reveal too much. “Listen. I was held captive and beaten a little bit, but that’s all. In fact, although it sucked, it wasn’t so bad until he used the drugs from the CIA to try to get me to cooperate.” As odd as it sounded, she’d been given food during her imprisonment, which was more than most people had these days.
Raze cocked his head, just so slightly, to the side. “I saw the vials. Those kinds of drugs rarely get the desired results, so for him to shoot you up like that was crazy.”
“He’s a Ripper, which by definition means he’s insane.” The Rippers were survivors of the Scorpius bacterium whose brains had somehow been altered by the disease so they now lacked empathy. They were still humans, still capable of feelings and thoughts. However, some became serial killers ranging from cr
azy wild to brilliantly deadly. “How do you know so much about those kinds of drugs?” she asked.
“Training in the military.” His sharply cut face didn’t give anything away. As usual.
Right. She didn’t want him probing into her life, so she should offer him the same courtesy, even though curiosity had always been her cross to bear. The rain droned outside, lending intimacy to the room. She cleared her throat. “Thank you for rescuing me last week, by the way.”
He shook his head. “I told you to stop thanking me.”
She couldn’t help it. The president had planned to kill her, or worse, and her time had definitely run out. She’d never forget the sight of Raze Shadow bursting through the door of her makeshift prison to rescue her, so big and strong . . . and gentle when he’d released the restraints. “I may never stop thanking you,” she mused.
Amusement darkened Raze’s eyes. “Any idea what President Bret Atherton wanted from you so badly?”
She hunched into herself, her gaze dropping to her knees. “No.” Silence ticked around the dismal apartment. She shivered.
“For an ex-FBI shrink, you’re a terrible liar.” Lazy contemplation leavened his tone.
She fought another shiver, this one from something other than fear. A tension, one she barely recognized as sexual, heated the air around her. Her gaze slammed up to his face.
He continued to scrutinize her, seeming perfectly comfortable in doing so. The atmosphere shifted with the sense of male intent.
Heat rushed through her, rising up and filling her face. “Stop staring at me.”
“Can’t help it. You’re something to look at.”
Look who was talking. Raze Shadow was six and a half feet of hard-muscled badassery with cut features and the most unique light blue eyes she’d ever seen. Add in the thick dark hair, the weird ability to move without making a sound, and an intensity only the most dangerous of people could ever hold? Yeah. She’d stare at him all day if he remained unaware of it. But Raze noticed everything. “Stop watching me.”