Sterling Read online

  Becca’s brows dipped. “Somebody really wants your attention.”

  Sterling pushed back his chair and stood up, walking casually toward the bed, when he was feeling anything but relaxed. He found the bag Kelly had sent him, removing the sedative. He’d planned to warn Becca before he gave her the drug, but there wasn’t time. The Renegades couldn’t protect her if she laid them flat on their asses.

  Before Sterling could turn around, the bag was in the air, as were the pillows on the bed. Sterling cursed. Becca’s emotions. She sensed danger, maybe even sensed he was up to something. Sterling turned to find Becca standing a foot away.

  “What’s going on?” Her body was stiff with tension, her voice quavered with anxiety.

  He reached for her, pulling her close. “Easy, sweetheart,” he cooed softly, burying his fingers in the silky strands of her hair, his lips by her ear. She tried to pull back from him, but he held her easily. “I’m sorry, Becca,” he whispered. “There’s no way around this.” He injected her arm.

  She yelped and then went limp against him. So much for trust, he thought grimly. Sterling lifted her into his arms and headed for the door.

  Chapter 15

  Seconds ticked by like hours as Sterling held Becca’s limp body against his, waiting for the second coded call from Caleb with emergency extraction instructions, knowing he was once again about to carry Becca into who knew what hell.

  Those seconds gave him time to think, and damn if an unfathomable emotion didn’t surface—fear. WTF? Why was he thinking in the first place? Thinking got you in trouble. And fear was simply not an option. A good soldier saved lives and stayed emotionally detached. He acted. He did not think. He did not allow fear to come into play.

  But he wasn’t emotionally detached—not where Becca was concerned. These damnable, repeated circumstances kept thrusting her unconscious body into his arms, completely reliant on him to keep her safe. And though he wouldn’t trust her with anyone else—hell no, not by a long shot—one of the two prior occasions hadn’t turned out so hot. In fact, it had turned out pretty damn crappy. Not this time.

  Sterling’s cell rang. It was already in his hand, and he quickly answered.

  “Car,” Caleb said. “Front door. Now!”

  Sterling didn’t ask questions, and thank the good Lord above he didn’t do any of that damn thinking from seconds before. He charged toward the door, and kicked it open. Wood splintered against hinges as Sterling exited the room to find a nondescript black sedan—the same kind used as high-end taxis all over Vegas—sitting there, the back door flung open.

  He took a step forward, when bullets suddenly splattered the vehicle. With a curse, Sterling charged toward the car door. At the same moment, the wind lifted. Two Zodius soldiers boldly materialized on either side of him. Suddenly, Damion leaned out of the car, Glock in hand, and unloaded two rounds into the foreheads of the attackers.

  “Give her to me!” Damion yelled, reaching for Becca.

  “Hell no,” Sterling said and then reconsidered when a Z materialized on top of the damn car. Don’t think—just do, he told himself, and rode on instinct.

  Sterling handed off Becca and snagged Damion’s guns at the same time. Not a second too soon as bullets sprayed near his feet, one slicing along the side of his calf and way too close to Becca.

  No way that this was a kidnapping attempt. It rang more like an assassination mission. Sterling pointed his gun at the Z guy on top of the car, but Caleb appeared on the roof and did the dirty work for him.

  “Go!” Caleb yelled, as Michael and a squadron of Renegades appeared all around the car.

  Sterling didn’t have to be told twice. He was in the car in seconds flat, yanking the door shut behind him.

  “Drive!” he yelled, damn glad to see Casar Alegra, the best damn driver they had in the Renegades, before turning his attention back to Damion. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Damion had Becca sprawled out over the seat, running a handheld scanner that resembled a retail price checker over her body. He glanced up at Sterling. “What’s it look like I’m doing? I’m trying to find out how they found her.” The scanner buzzed over Becca’s right shoulder. “Bingo. Tracking implant.” He dropped the scanner and snatched a knife from his pants.

  Sterling grabbed Damion’s wrist, the eight-inch blade hovering in the air. “Don’t even think about it,” Sterling warned between clenched teeth. Damion, knife, and Becca did not go together.

  Abruptly, Becca jerked, her lashes fluttering. Oh shit! She was waking up. The sedative wasn’t working.

  “Stop the car!” Sterling yelled.

  “Are you nuts?” Damion asked. “We can’t stop or—”

  “Stop now!” Sterling ordered. “Put it in park.”

  Casar slammed on the brakes and shifted into park. Almost instantly, a Z soldier appeared at the front bumper. Casar looked at the Z and then over his shoulder at Sterling. “We’re stopping, why?”

  Becca started screaming. Marcus, Damion, and the Z in front of the car—all passed out.

  “That would be why we stopped,” Sterling mumbled, reaching for Becca. He had to get her out of here before the Zs sent in a human convoy to finish the job they’d started. Or, he thought grimly, just unloaded a couple machine guns into the car.

  ***

  The man with the knife fell on top of Becca. She screamed again and scrambled backward in the seat just as strong arms circled her, the familiar, oddly safe scent of Sterling insinuating into her nostrils, the feel of him close, his voice near her ear from behind as he whispered, “Easy, sweetheart.”

  He reached around her and shoved aside the man’s body, so that he leaned against the door away from her. Becca fought the sense of comfort that Sterling’s voice and touch offered, unsure if she could trust him, wanting desperately not to be alone in whatever was happening to her, but not to be tricked or taken advantage of. Every time Sterling was near she woke up in a strange place, and she didn’t remember how she’d gotten there.

  That thought sent Becca whirling around, her hand on his chest as she shoved him away. Confused. Uncertain. Stating the obvious and wanting a reaction. “I’m in a car, and I have no idea how I got here. There’s a man holding a giant knife that he intends to use on me. Explain that to me, Sterling.”

  “I’ll explain,” he said, as his cell phone rang. He snatched it from his belt and held up a finger to Becca as he snapped it to his ear and spoke.

  “The sedative wore off,” he said to his caller. “Everyone is down but me.” His gaze went to Becca. “In her arm. Yes. I’ll deal with it and contact you upon completion.”

  Becca was gaping at him when he hung up. “You sedated me?” she demanded. “You sedated me and then—” She stopped, thinking of his conversation, and urgently patted down her arms. A bad feeling twisted in her stomach. “What’s in my arm?” Panic started to form, and she repeated the question before he could answer. “What is in my arm?”

  His hands went to her shoulders. “A laser-inserted tracking device. That’s how the Zodius found you in that warehouse last night, and that’s how they found us in the motel. And yes, I sedated you when they attacked. The Renegades can’t protect you if they are lying flat on their backs like they are now. Adam has human followers. They’ll come for you, which means we have to move, and we have to move now.”

  He reached for the door. She grabbed his arm. “Out there? Where they can shoot at us?”

  “Not us,” he corrected. “Me. You stay where you are. Somebody has to drive us out of here before we start getting shot at.”

  He exited the car and she barely contained her need to pull him back, her fingers digging into her palms. She held her breath, waiting for gunfire, waiting for him to drop dead. Instead, in a flash, he was by the driver’s door, shoving aside the man behind the wheel. He’d wind-walked; he must have to have gotten there so fast.

  “Hold on,” he said, putting the car in drive and peeling out.

 
; With the acceleration, the man in the backseat tumbled on Becca, and she yelped.

  “What’s wrong?” Sterling demanded, eyeing her through the rearview mirror.

  Becca heaved the man off of her, thankful for the ICE-induced strength, only to have another wild turn flop the man’s body right back on top of her. “What’s wrong is, the guy who wanted to use that knife on me doesn’t like your driving any more than I do,” she said, trying to position the man so he wouldn’t fall on her again.

  She felt like she was living in an alternative universe. That her other self was still having her happy, 6:00 a.m. coffee and reading the paper, then going to work, and later eating her lunch on the same bench as always. She couldn’t have cancer. There was no way she could have been on that motel bed straddling Sterling, a virtual stranger, and all but having sex with him. Nor could she have spent days held in captivity by a madman who wanted to rule the world and who had turned her into a drug addict. None of this felt real.

  Becca snapped out of her fretful ponderings as Sterling turned into the parking garage of a major casino, driving several floors before parking on a busy level.

  Nervously, Becca glanced around the lot, feeling as if they had just cornered themselves with nowhere to go. And she would have said so, but Sterling was back on his phone.

  “Red Dragon Hotel,” he said. “Fourth level. I’m leaving the car with Damion and Casar inside.” He hung up and reached for his door. “Get down and stay here while I get us a car.”

  In what couldn’t have been more than two minutes later, she was sitting inside a Toyota with the engine running. “I never thought I’d see the day I’d be willing to steal a car,” she said.

  “Borrowing it,” he said, cutting her a sideways look as he accelerated. “Buckle up.”

  After the way he’d been driving, she didn’t argue. She was buckled in seconds. “Can’t they use that tracking device to follow us?” she asked, studying his profile and finding comfort in the ease at which he handled the wheel, the road. The danger.

  “Until we get it out of your arm,” he said. “Yes.”

  Becca assumed there would be a doctor waiting for her at their destination. She didn’t want to know more than that now. The stolen—correction—borrowed car, the running from the Zodius, the man beside her who made her want to trust him when she wasn’t sure what to make of him—that was all plenty.

  Or so she thought. They exited the hotel and took a couple sharp turns. Sterling pulled behind a closed nightclub and parked behind the Dumpster before turning to face her.

  “We have to get the tracking device out of your arm.”

  “Right,” she said. “I assumed it—”

  “Now, Becca.”

  She swallowed against the sudden dryness in her throat. “Now? As in right here, in the car? Behind this Dumpster?”

  He nodded, and she asked, “Is there a laser to remove it?”

  Grimly, his lips thinned, and he reached to his hip pocket and pulled out a slender blade folded inside a casing. “Not here. And there is nowhere safe I can take you until it’s out.”

  Becca’s heart thundered in her chest and vibrated in her ears. “Which arm?” she said, managing to keep a steady voice, trying not to think about how much this was going to hurt.

  “Your right,” he said.

  “Do it,” she said, turning to offer her shoulder. “Get it out of me.”

  She grabbed the door handle, her eyes prickling with tears she refused to shed. She’d made it through cancer and Zodius City. She’d make it through this. She’d barely finished the thought when a piercing pain shot through her shoulder, and she saw stars.

  ***

  Sterling had been a soldier long enough to know there was only one way to dish out pain. Hard and fast. He’d sliced his shirt for a bandage and sliced her shoulder before she ever knew what had happened. His stomach clenched at the sound of her whimpers as he worked. Within seconds he’d tossed the tiny device from her shoulder into the Dumpster and tied off her arm. The instant he was done, he pulled her close and held her.

  He buried his face in her hair. “I’m so sorry, Becca,” he whispered. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  “I… know,” she said, her voice hoarse, the pain she felt rasping through every syllable.

  He leaned back to look at her and stroked her hair. Her eyes were red, tears streaming down her face. He used his knuckles to wipe them away. Damn it, he was always hurting her. “Hang in there. We’ll get you some pain medicine pronto, sweetheart. Lie down, and I’ll get us where we’re going fast, so you get some relief.”

  She barely nodded, and he eased her down on the cushion. He wasted no time putting the car into gear. That tracking device put them in this location—exactly why they needed to be out of here and out of here now.

  Chapter 16

  Less than five minutes after removing the tracking device from Becca’s shoulder, Sterling pulled the vehicle he’d “borrowed” into the parking garage of the Renegades’ inner-city headquarters and hit the security remote he carried with him. Steel, high-tech, electronic doors opened to the basement level, where the Renegades leased nearly ten thousand square feet beneath the Neonopolis. An unlikely place for their operation, the nearly one-hundred-thousand-square-foot entertainment facility—complete with games, gambling, and a movie theater—offered concealment they were careful to maintain.

  With his wind-walking skills not as developed for long-distance travel as most GTECHs, Sterling stayed close to home base. “Neon,” as he called it, was his baby, and the two dozen men who reported there, under his command, his responsibility. Together, he and his men made it a point to know every move the Zs made within the city before they made it—to protect unknowing humans from their predators—Adam’s Z followers.

  Beside him, lying on the seat, her head near his legs, Becca moaned as if she were biting back a sob. Before he could stop himself, Sterling ran his hand over her hair. He wasn’t what most would call the warm, fuzzy type, but something about this woman made him want to comfort her.

  “We’re pulling into the facility now,” he said softly. “Hang in there.”

  “I’m okay,” she whispered, pushing herself upright to check her surroundings. And then as if trying to convince herself it was true, she repeated it louder. “I’m okay. My arm is getting better. I guess that’s a perk of the ICE. But my head is killing me.” She glanced over her shoulder as the silver doors slid shut. “I feel like I’m back in NASA.” She grimaced. “Or Zodius City.”

  “Other than technology,” Sterling assured, “there are very few similarities between us and Zodius.” He pulled the car into a parking spot by the elevator and snatched his cell phone from his belt. “I need to find out where Caleb wants us.”

  Her chin lifted with a hint of pride. “You mean where I’m to be confined? That is what’s going to happen, right?”

  Sterling heard the uncertainty in her voice, and remarkably he would have delved into more of that unfamiliar comfort stuff, if Caleb hadn’t answered the line. “Protected,” he said softly. “I’m protecting you, Becca.”

  “I see you on the security camera,” Caleb said into the phone without a hello.

  Feeling Becca’s stare, Sterling recognized this conversation might not be one best heard by her. “Hold on, Caleb,” he said and reached for the door, speaking to Becca. “Stay here a minute.”

  She gave him a short nod, her body tense, her expression apprehensive. He actually had to force himself to get out of the car and leave her feeling like crap—worried, unsure what came next. Not that he really knew either. This was all unfamiliar territory.

  The minute he’d shut the door, he asked, “Any word on Damion and Casar?”

  “They’re awake and fine,” he said. “No aftereffects from whatever Becca did to them other than their attitudes. They’re both pretty shaken up by how easily they could have been killed when they were out. This ability Becca has—it could destroy us—bring us to
our knees and allow Adam to control us or kill us.”

  “I know she seems dangerous,” Sterling conceded. “But she wants to stop Adam as much as we do.”

  “We don’t know what the long-term effects of ICE really are,” Caleb argued. “Look at what the GTECH serum has turned Adam into. What if the ICE users take on those violent tendencies? What if she does and turns on us?”

  He didn’t even want to go there. “All the studies show that the GTECHs are basically what we were before we were converted,” Sterling argued. “Those who were violent simply become more violent. If that’s true with ICE, then Becca isn’t going to become a weapon.”

  “What about when Adam threatens to kill innocent people unless she does what he wants her to do?”

  He had a point—one Sterling didn’t like. “When the Zs attacked us in the warehouse, they didn’t start shooting. They were trying to capture Becca. But not this time. This time they were trying to kill her.”

  Caleb clearly hesitated, then said, “Which I guess shouldn’t be a surprise. I know my brother. Adam knew once the tracking device in her arm was gone, he’d lose her. He wasn’t willing to risk her falling into our hands and being used against him. And like it or not, both her knowledge and her abilities are weapons.”

  “I know,” Sterling said, eyeing the car that was behind him. Becca had turned around and was staring at him. His eyes met hers. The uncertainty in hers twisted him in knots. “Adam tried to kill her. Once she knows that, it should ensure her loyalty.”

  “She has terminal cancer,” Caleb reminded him. “She needs ICE to survive. The only place to get ICE is Adam. She personifies what Adam is trying to create—a person forced into loyalty by the human will to survive. No matter how she fights it that need to survive will be there, driving her decisions and her actions.”

  Sterling inhaled those words like an acid burn and cut his gaze from Becca’s before he became any less objective than he already was. “Right. Her cancer. Now the ICE addiction Adam forced on her. It’s like one big poison. Damning in all kinds of ways.”