Sterling Read online

  Sterling inhaled a rough breath and let it out. “She wants proof we aren’t working for Adam before she helps us.” It bit hard that she didn’t trust him, even if he was forced to question her. He knew better, but it still didn’t sit well.

  Caleb nodded. “I’ll arrange documentation and a call to the White House.”

  “And we want proof she isn’t working for Adam as well,” Michael stated flatly.

  Cassandra elbowed him. “Stop, Michael. You’ve made it clear you don’t trust her.” She removed the canvas bag from her shoulder. “I brought Becca some clothes and girl stuff to carry her over until we get to her place. I felt like this would be faster.”

  Sterling accepted the bag. “Thanks, Cass.”

  “I’m happy to help,” she said. “I only wish it were safe for me to go into the room and talk to her. The poor thing has cancer, a forced ICE addiction, Adam chasing her, and now you guys to deal with. I can’t imagine what she must be going through.”

  Sterling shook his head, amazed that this caring woman, a psychologist who’d worked with soldiers and their families, a friend to everyone who knew her, was the daughter of the mastermind behind the GTECH “immunizations.” But indeed, her father was General Powell, now MIA and most likely up to some government plot to control the GTECHs. And she’d been brave enough to stand against him.

  Michael grimaced at his Lifebond, now GTECH through their connection. “I told you not to go getting sappy over this woman, Cassandra. I don’t want you to become attached and get hurt. For all we know, Adam has promised to cure her cancer by making her a full GTECH in exchange for her service to him.”

  “He’d never give the GTECH serum to a woman,” she scoffed. “He believes women are beneath men, meant to be converted only through Lifebonding.”

  “Adam often makes promises he does not intend to keep,” Michael reminded her. “Especially to women.” He cut a glare at Sterling. “I will continue to believe he has sent her here to infiltrate our operation and tear us down from the inside out until I have proof otherwise.” He glared at Sterling. “You’d be smart to do the same.”

  Sterling stared bullets at Michael, ready to launch himself at him, ready to throttle him once again for being right. Michael stared right back at him, welcoming a confrontation.

  Caleb looked between Michael and Sterling, and then arched a brow. “Something I should know?”

  “Nothing,” Sterling said and meant it. Michael, in all his asshole delivery of the facts, was still right. He wasn’t objective with Becca. Just thinking of the way she’d tasted on his lips, tightening his groin, and he knew it was more than that. He wanted her in a bad way, and fuck, fuck, fuck, he was emotionally involved with a woman who really could be the enemy. A soldier knew better than to be emotionally involved. No more. From now on, it would be all business.

  It was a resolution he set solidly inside himself, just as a text message buzzed his cell phone. Thankful for the distraction, he yanked his cell from his belt and glanced at the screen. It was Marcus. “It’s one of my street contacts,” he told Caleb as he motioned to the door. He’d reply to Marcus once he was inside. “I’ll be ready at 1400.”

  “We’ll have a car and driver at the front door,” Caleb said. “You and Becca take the backseat. Make sure she’s tranq’d, Sterling. For everyone’s safety.”

  Damn. “Copy that, boss,” Sterling said, heading toward the motel, a new attitude toward Becca firmly installed, or so he thought.

  The instant he walked into the room and shut the door, the scent of Becca permeated his nostrils, seeped into his soul, and he had to remind himself that touching her would paint a bull’s-eye on her for the Trackers. Becca was off limits.

  He set the food on the table, walked to the bathroom, and knocked. “I have clothes and some other items one of the Renegade’s Lifebond put together for you. They haven’t had time to get your things as I’d hoped.”

  The door cracked open, and Lord have mercy… when he saw that tiny, white splotch of towel through the crack, he knew it was all she had on. A wild, hot image of shoving open that door and ripping the towel away tore through his mind right before the cruelly vivid fantasy of bending her naked body over the cabinet and burying himself inside her.

  Off limits, he told himself, but he didn’t move, didn’t walk away. He stood right there, all but talking himself into pushing that door open and pulling every naked inch of her next to him.

  Chapter 14

  Sterling was still trying to convince himself not to go inside the bathroom and strip away Becca’s towel when she delicately cleared her throat.

  “Thank you,” she said hoarsely, as if she were as affected by the intimacy of the moment as he was. She backed behind the door and reached for the bag.

  Sterling handed it to her quickly and turned away, adjusting his cock where it rested painfully against his zipper in a long, hard throb of pain. Sexual tension prickled him like tiny needles poking his skin. With a grumble, Sterling yanked the damn torn picture off the leg of an overturned chair and set it against the wall, and then finished. Still he couldn’t get rid of the tension charging through his body; he dropped and did a hundred push-ups. Cock still throbbed. Shit. Damn thing was as stubborn as a woman. He did another hundred. His cell buzzed again, and Sterling cursed. He’d forgotten Marcus.

  Sterling jumped to his feet and claimed a chair behind the table and opened the text message to read: Where is my money?

  The blow-dryer sounded in the bathroom as Sterling sent a text message in return: Where is my ICE?

  Marcus: Don’t tell me you screwed up a sure thing?

  Sterling: Your idea of a sure thing is about as sure as getting lucky with a nun.

  A several-seconds pause, then: If I get you another shot don’t F it up.

  Sterling snorted: Talk is cheap.

  Marcus replied: My portion of this deal is not.

  Sterling would have typed more, but the door to the bathroom opened, and he all but swallowed his tongue. Becca stood there with her hair sleek and shiny, her lips glossed pink, her skin pale and fresh, looking like an angel come to save his tarnished, bedeviled soul. Of its own free will, his gaze traveled over the slim blue jeans she wore and flat, silver-strapped sandals that showcased delicate little feet. Then back up those long legs to her pale blue blouse that dipped deliciously at her neckline.

  Her hands smoothed the silky strands of her hair as she walked toward the table. “I can’t believe the clothes fit.”

  “We’ll get your things later,” he said. The earlier extraction had forced priorities to shift, but he didn’t tell her that.

  “I’m completely satisfied,” she said. “You have no idea how wonderful it felt to have clean clothes and a private shower that didn’t make me feel like I was the star of some porn flick.”

  Sterling’s gaze riveted to her face, a hard punch of anger vibrating through his gut. “I’m sorry about Tad opening the bathroom door like he did. I would never have let him go inside.”

  Pink flushed her cheeks, and she sat down at the table trying to be nonchalant about her comment, but the visible shiver that shook her delicate frame gave her away. “I hate talking about that man. He might have been forced to keep his hands off me, but Tad raped me with his mind so many times, it makes my skin crawl just thinking about it.”

  Blistering anger bubbled inside Sterling and mixed with an acidy dose of guilt over ever letting Becca near him in the first place.

  Becca inhaled. “Food smells so good.”

  He reached for the bag and offered her a burger and fries. “It’s probably cold by now.”

  “I don’t care,” she said popping a fry and sighing. “I feel like it’s been a lifetime since I had a good fry.” She unwrapped her burger and spread the fries on the paper. “I’m actually hungry too. It’s the first time in well… a really long time. Got any ketchup?”

  He snatched up the packets in the bag and piled them on the table before reaching insid
e the fridge. “I’ve got water and Dr. Pepper.”

  “No Coke?” she asked, mockingly appalled.

  “I have a pretty serious Dr. Pepper addiction,” he admitted, passing her the can. “Doc Kelly—she heads up our scientific team—she gives me hell about it. Says all the sugar is bad for the body.”

  She accepted the soda. “But you don’t care, I take it?” She gave him a smile, light and full of humor. The tension from her demand for proof he wasn’t working for Adam had faded, if only for a short while. It was the first time he’d seen her at ease, and he liked her this way. He also felt like a complete asshole, because he was about to tranquilize her and betray what little trust he’d earned.

  “If a GTECH can’t survive a few too many DPs,” he said, “he’s in real trouble when the Zodius start shooting. I think Kelly thinks it makes us feel human if she acts like were human.”

  She dabbed her mouth. “I guess there is the plus side. You can now justify your vices.” He leaned back on the chair and studied her, watching her slim, ivory neck as she swallowed. Delicate. Kissable. “Am I to believe you have no vices?”

  She smiled, and it was as if the sun had shined right there at that table. Sterling had seen a lot of female smiles—demure, seductive. He’d not seen a lot of sunshine smiles. “Still like my Snickers bars.”

  He grinned, reaching inside the fridge again, before dropping a package of peanut M&Ms on the table. She laughed. “Your version of my Snickers bar?”

  “You betcha, sweet plum,” he said, winking.

  She snorted. Feminine. Cute. “Sweet plum? That’s a new one.”

  “What can I say?” he queried. “You inspire my creativity.”

  She waved that off jokingly and picked up the candy. “You keep M&Ms in the fridge?”

  “A man has to do what a man has to do to protect his candy. This place is a dump. The air doesn’t work half the time, and they melt, which turns a bag of peanut M&Ms into a bag of messy peanuts, and that’s just not right.”

  She shook her head and laughed. Soft and musical. His cock jerked again. Damn. “Yet judging from the DP stock,” she said curiously, “you come here often.”

  He thrummed his fingers on the table. “Places like this have ears to the pavement you won’t find anywhere else.”

  “Not even the high-rise, high-security resorts?”

  “They each have their value,” he agreed, “but the resort crowd requires a lot of time and even more of the green stuff. And why give away the green if you don’t have to? Places like this one—you can get a guy to sell out his best friend and his wife for a cigarette.” He draped an arm over the back of the chair. “This is life in the fast lane. The down and dirty of the city.”

  “God. The fast lane. My brother used that exact term so many times.”

  “It’s a soldier’s mentality,” Sterling told her. “We like action. We like fast.”

  “My father wouldn’t have agreed. He’d have taken strategic over the fast lane any day. He was always trying to slow my brother down and make him think.”

  “Because you act fast doesn’t mean you aren’t thinking,” Sterling argued, defending himself through her brother. “It simply means you size up the situation and act before fear rears its ugly head, and you talk yourself out of it. Fear can get you killed.”

  A distant look touched her expression. “The last time my brother was home on leave, we went to the movies. On the way home, we witnessed a bad car wreck. A drunk driver swerved into the lane and hit another car head-on with his pickup truck.” Her gaze fixed on Sterling. “Kevin didn’t think about the danger. The car was on fire, and there was a kid inside, and he went after him as if there were no consequences. He pulled that kid out of the car and saved his life. I’ve never been so scared in my life, not even inside Zodius City. I was afraid he was going to burn to death. Afraid the car would explode. Afraid of losing my brother.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know you loved them both very much.”

  She nodded shortly. “It was amazing Kevin came out of it all unscathed. He was a hero. He saved those people’s lives.”

  “That’s what soldiers do, Becca,” he said. “We save lives.”

  “I know,” she said solemnly. “But that doesn’t make losing someone you love any easier. Being the wife or child of a soldier is far more terrifying than even Adam is. I don’t ever again want to feel what I felt when I lost my father and brother.”

  She was telling him they had no future, whether she realized it or not. He already knew. He couldn’t even make love to her without putting her in danger, marking her for the Trackers. He was bad for her in all kinds of ways. “Is that why you haven’t told your mother about your cancer?”

  “I didn’t want to scare her,” she said. “I thought I’d deal with it and make it go away.”

  “So you went through all that fear and treatment alone.” It wasn’t a question. It was more awe at such an unselfish and brave thing to do.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I just couldn’t bear to see her hurt again. I guess at some point I’m going to have to talk to her.”

  “Not if we can find an antidote or a way to keep you on ICE long-term.”

  “Don’t,” she said, shaking her head. “Don’t paint rainbows for me. I don’t need them. I don’t want them. I’m way beyond that now.” She gave him a look that said that part of the conversation was over and swiftly changed the subject. “Why are the eyes of the Zodius black, yet yours are their natural color?”

  Sterling froze with his drink tipped back, glad for the diversion to regain his composure before he set the can back down. “All GTECHs have black eyes, but they have the ability to camouflage them to their natural color with everyone but their Lifebond.” Except him, but he wasn’t about to say that.

  “So your eyes aren’t really teal anymore?”

  “No,” he said softly, too softly, and he knew it. “They’re black.”

  Her expression softened. “I always loved your eyes, you know.”

  “No,” he said. “I didn’t know.” But he was darn glad right then for the special nonprescription lenses Dr. Chin had made during his time at Area 51, even if Chin was a traitor. “I always loved your eyes too. I still do.”

  “Thank you.” Her cheeks flushed, and she picked up a fry. “So why do all the Zodius choose not to camouflage their eye color?”

  “The color is human,” he said. “And humans to the Zodius are weak and part of the past. GTECHs represent evolution.”

  Her expression paled. “I really want to get to a lab and start working so we can stop Adam.” She hesitated and shifted in her seat. “Where exactly are you taking me when we leave here?”

  “Our inner-city hub,” he said. “We’ll have a live webcam set up so you can work with our scientific team.”

  She shifted in her chair again, looking increasingly uncomfortable. “And my proof that you are who you say you are, along with everyone else I’m working with?”

  “Caleb’s arranging documentation and a call to the White House.”

  “White House?” she asked with an arched brow.

  “The Renegades have an alliance with the government, though half the time they still treat us as barely contained enemies. But we make it work, and so do they. No one wants Adam to get any more powerful than he already is.”

  She nodded, cutting her gaze from his, picking up a french fry and taking a tiny bite that seemed more about avoiding eye contact than hunger.

  “Becca,” he said gently, willing her to look at him. He knew she felt like she was alone, and being quarantined wasn’t going to help.

  Her lashes fluttered and lifted. “Yes?”

  He opened his mouth and shut it. How did he tell her everything was going to be okay when it wasn’t? Cassandra was right. Becca had the world on her shoulders. So he hedged. “Eat. It will make you feel better.”

  She stared at him, her eyes filled with trepidation that suddenly shifted to determination as she
straightened and said, “Putting an end to the nightmare named Adam will make me feel better, but I’ll settle for food now.”

  He grinned. “I like that plan.” He snatched a fry and then reached into the bag and pulled out the four burgers remaining inside.

  Becca laughed. “You do have that big GTECH appetite.” She picked up a fry. “It seems I’m getting one myself. I sure hope ICE burns calories since I’m missing my five-mile daily run. And if it does, I don’t want to think about how easily that could lure women into trying it. And I’m not joking.”

  “Thankfully Adam isn’t good at thinking from a female perspective.” He dumped fries on top of the bag. “Let’s hope we get it off the streets before anyone gets that creative idea for recruiting new users.”

  “You know,” Becca commented, “the only thing keeping Adam from mass distributing ICE is the body count. He wants people alive and worshipping him from what I can tell. But I think he’ll become impatient and risk the body count to get followers sooner than later. And the problem with that is we have no idea of the long-term effects ICE has on people. They could die. They could develop strange alien diseases. Go blind. Become cripples. The list of possibilities is daunting.”

  “Turn violent,” he said softly, thinking of the conversation by the van. “Yes. We’ve thought of the possibilities, and they aren’t good.”

  “Exactly,” she said, pausing with her burger near her mouth and then setting it down. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but we have to cut off the supply source.”

  We. At least she was talking like she’d decided to join the Renegades, and he hadn’t even gotten her that proof yet. “We’re trying,” he assured her. “I was hoping we’d figure out the ingredients in ICE to try and cut him off at the source before we left, but you don’t get two chances to get out of that place. We were lucky to get out at all.”

  “But I did find out,” she said. “I know how he’s making it. It’s—”

  Sterling’s cell rang at the same moment the room phone jangled to life. Adrenaline surged through Sterling’s body at the warning. It was a signal. They were being attacked.