“<
Kyle grinned wickedly. “<
Alexei put a hand over Kyle’s face and shoved him away, swearing loudly as he walked out the door. Kyle shook his head, a smile on his face as he reset the security system before heading into the kitchen. Jamie came back out a couple minutes later.
“I put your duffel bag in my room. There’s some space in the closet and drawers for your things now,” Jamie said.
Kyle looked up from where he was setting the dirty dishes in the dishwasher. “You sure that’s a good idea if we’re trying to keep a low profile?”
“Put your name on whatever off-base apartment Alexei gets and leave some of your clothes there, but you should have some here as well.” Jamie paused, his expression softening. “I want you to treat my home as yours.”
Kyle closed the dishwasher, heart pounding in his chest at that little revelation. “Okay.”
He’d unpack later. For now, Kyle joined Jamie on the couch, practically sprawling on top of him as they got comfortable and settled in to watch a movie.
“You pick,” Jamie said. “Just don’t pick a Russian one. I have three of you on my team now since you’re practically an honorary one, and that’s all the drama I need in my life.”
Kyle buried his laughter in Jamie’s chest before bringing up the on-demand movie listing.
Jamie woke up with a faint crick in his neck that faded in seconds once he straightened his head. Blinking rapidly to clear his vision, he softly ordered the computer to turn off the flatscreen. The latest movie in the queue cut off.
“I was watching that.”
Jamie glanced down at where Kyle was sprawled over him on the couch, eyes closed, one hand half-curled under his chin. Jamie slowly rubbed his hand up and down Kyle’s back, chuckling softly. “Bullshit. You fell asleep before I did.”
“Lies.”
“We both know that’s not true.”
Kyle moved his head a little, rubbing his nose against Jamie’s shirt. “More lies.”
“You know I’d never lie to you except in extreme command situations,” Jamie said after a moment. “Even then, I wouldn’t like it.”
Kyle propped his chin on Jamie’s chest, looking at him with sleepy green eyes. “I know that. I spent hours the other day reading Alpha Team’s mission history. I wanted to know what we were coming into.”
“And? One mission isn’t enough to set your opinion.”
“I’ve worked with a slew of different agencies and branches of the military outside Strike Force over the years. One mission is definitely enough for me to know you’re a commander I’d follow anywhere, no questions asked. I don’t say that about a lot of people.”
Jamie smoothed back some of Kyle’s messy hair, gently massaging his scalp. “That’s a lot of trust to give me without more actionable evidence.”
“Then tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
Kyle shifted against him, leaning up to press a careful kiss to Jamie’s mouth. “Whatever you want. I’m here. I want to know.”
Jamie stared at him in silence for a bit, just taking Kyle in, the lazy sprawl and the desire to remain. He let his fingers dip down to rest against the right side of Kyle’s throat, remembering the wound cleaved in a bullet’s wake that had coated his fingers in blood.
Jamie didn’t want to let Kyle go. The visceral realization was startling in its intensity. Jamie couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this way about someone, if he ever had. Kyle understood what it meant to be a fighter in an active warzone. He understood the risks in the field and the risks at home when a person was supposed to be safe but your brain said otherwise. Kyle knew what it was like to lose people in the line of duty. More than that, he understood the unique agony of becoming a metahuman when so very few had survived that nightmare.
Kyle fit with him—on the field, in bed, in his life—so easily, so quickly, that Jamie was momentarily at a loss. Rare was the day he found someone who wanted him for the bare bones of who he was and not the chest candy decorating his dress uniform, or the social, political and monetary ties that came with his last name.
“Let me tell you about the first time I met Katie,” Jamie said, a smile curling his mouth as he pulled up that memory.
They talked for what seemed like hours in between lazy kisses and lazier groping, the afternoon sunlight shading into twilight. Neither bothered to turn on the lights, letting the neon glow of the city fill the condo’s open space around them. Kyle’s mouth grew swollen and kiss-bitten in between words; Jamie’s wasn’t much better. The slow grind they had going replaced conversation after a while, until the only sound was the scrape of clothes against their hardened dicks and the panting groans that came from a particularly exquisite drag of their hips.
Jamie had his hands tucked under Kyle’s shirt, the fabric rucked up around his wrists as he dragged his fingers over the hard muscles of Kyle’s body to grip his ass. Jamie kept Kyle pressed against him as he planted his foot on the floor and rolled his hips upward. The pressure caused sparks to erupt across his eyes, mouth dropping open in a silent groan.
Kyle dipped his tongue past Jamie’s lips, the openmouthed kiss messy as he jerked against Jamie, fingers digging into Jamie’s chest. “Fuck, I haven’t done this since I was kid.”
Jamie chuckled, grinding up harder, chasing the heat building between them. “Yeah. Neither have I.”
Coming in his pants was as messy as Jamie remembered. The way Kyle shuddered above him before going limp was gorgeous, the sticky warmth of their shared climax dampening the front of their jeans. For a moment, the only sound in Jamie’s ears was their ragged breathing before Kyle let out a soft laugh and buried his face against the curve of Jamie’s neck.
“That was ridiculous,” Kyle snickered.
“Ridiculously fun,” Jamie countered.
Kyle pressed a kiss against the pulse point in Jamie’s throat, the touch gentle. “You gonna cook for me again?”
Jamie closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around Kyle, keeping him there. “I’ll do whatever you want.”
Kyle sighed, lifting his head enough so he could kiss Jamie on the mouth, slow and sweet, his steady gaze never leaving Jamie’s. “I trust you.”
Jamie nodded, tightening his grip on the man above him. “I know.”
He’d known since the first night at the hotel, when Kyle had let him release all his tension in Kyle’s body and had only asked for more. What began as a one-night stand Jamie thought he’d never get again was turning into something he was more than willing to never give up.
Jamie leaned up a fraction of an inch to kiss Kyle back. “I trust you, too.”
There were other words curling over his tongue, drifting through his mind, hiding in the spaces of the syllables he’d just spoken. The way Kyle tightened his grip told Jamie he’d heard it all, everything said and unsaid. They’d get there eventually—to the point where they could give voice to what was growing between them—it just might take a while.
Jamie was more than willing to wait if it meant Kyle would stay.
Monday began with Jamie catching up on paperwork at the MDF, working his way through an updated team assessment report that Katie had started and needed him to finish and sign off on. Jamie hated admin work with a passion, but it was part of his job. He just kept getting interrupted while trying to do it.
He looked up as his office door opened for the fourth time that morning. Madison came inside with a smile and a wave. She plopped herself down on the chair in front of Jamie’s desk, the door sliding shut behind her. “Privacy blackout mode still on?”
Jamie sighed at the wide grin on her face. “It’s been on all morning. You’re not the first one to drop by.”
“Hey, it’s not every day we see you with someone you don’t have to lie about your
job or your life with. Kyle seems like a nice enough guy. We’ll only harass him a little because he’s a sniper and I kind of like living.”
“Good luck with that,” Jamie said.
She flashed him a thumbs up. “Don’t worry. We got your back.”
“I know. Thank you.”
Madison’s expression turned a little serious. “I’m glad you’re happy. We all are. You know that, right? It’s been a shitty couple of years. We’ve all been worried about you, and you deserve someone nice.”
Jamie knew his team had an unholy fixation on his personal life—they knew who his family was when many did not for security purposes, and knew the baggage that came along with his last name—and only wanted to see him happy.
“Thanks, but you don’t need to worry. Kyle and I won’t let it affect the team,” Jamie said.
“Good. Because I got five hundred dollars riding on you guys sticking it out for at least six months. Don’t let me down, boss.”
“You bet on us?”
“We’re Marines,” Madison reminded him dryly. “What the fuck else would we do? Of course we bet on you.”
Jamie shook his head, giving her a mock-disappointed look. “Only six months?”
“You have a tendency to sabotage yourself. Don’t worry. I won’t let it happen. Vested interest in winning the pot and all that.”
“What’s everyone else’s bets?”
“Not telling. Besides, if you make it to a year, I win double, so make it work, Jamie.”
Madison made a snapping motion with her hand and mimicked the sound of a whip cracking through the air, which made Jamie laugh. She was the youngest on the team at twenty-seven and he’d always been rather fond of her cheerfulness even in the face of hell.
The soft crackle of the speakers embedded in the walls cut through the small office, announcing an interruption by Ceres.
“Captain Callahan, the director requires your team’s presence on Level 36,” the AI informed them.
“Understood, Ceres. Inform the director we’re on our way,” Jamie said, getting to his feet.
Madison had already stood up, preceding him out of the office to wait for him in the hall. The time was 1050 and he’d been hoping for an early lunch with Kyle, but that was unlikely to happen now.
They took the elevator up to the designated command level, working their way through the hallways to the usual conference room they used for mission briefings. Inside, they found both the director and deputy director, along with several analysts, waiting for them. Jamie didn’t know their names on sight since the MDF employed so many, but he nodded at them in greeting after acknowledging Nazari and Stirling first.
It was a matter of minutes before Alpha Team was assembled in the conference room, including their two newest members. The room felt a little crowded, but the lack of space was easily ignored in favor of the problem at hand.
“Analysts finished decrypting the solid state drive Ovechkina took from the Ukrainian base,” Nazari began. “Rough initial reports on the data show the Libération Nationale Français was performing human experiments with Splice, using metahuman DNA as a control group.”
“Are you serious?” Trevor spit out, sitting up straighter in his seat. The rest of the Alpha Team looked just as homicidal at that news, none of them needing to imagine the horror of Splice since they’d all lived through it.
“The information we retrieved is incomplete, but it’s enough to extrapolate the big picture. It seems they were trying to figure out the genetic traits that could produce a metahuman.”
Stirling flicked her fingers against the opaque table top, flinging a multitude of emails and reports into the holoscreens. The images hovered in the air in front of each taken seat. “The data was being stored on a server hub based in France. We’re giving Interpol access to the evidence we obtained in order to help them legally get control of those servers. That’s not the main problem.
“Stored data traffic revealed the people at the base were sharing information with groups scattered across the world. We got location hits in territories held by cartels in South America, mafia groups in Italy, and bratva-controlled territories in Russia and the contested region. No surprise on that last one considering the location of the base you broke free of. The most worrisome issue is that these are four distinct terror groups who have no history of working together. If anything, they’re more likely to wage war over territory and black market profit than build partnerships.”
“What’s their goal?” Jamie asked, cutting right to the problem.
Nazari’s grim expression was enough to let everyone know they weren’t going to like it. “Agent Quinn will give you the initial rundown.”
A young man who barely looked old enough to vote, much less drink, stepped forward. Dressed more casually than his peers, dark hair an untamed mess, he cleared his throat, keeping his eyes on the tablet in his hands. “We hacked the data trails to one of the Mexican cartel’s server hubs since getting those through legal avenues is pretty much impossible, and we can’t wait on the French. It seems the groups have been collectively performing these experiments for several years now, we assume in an attempt to create their own metahumans. We don’t know their success rates.”
“How do we stop this? I doubt going through legal channels will be worth it,” Katie said.
“No authorities,” Alexei agreed. “Cartels like bratva. Government-backed. Need bribes to get anything from them.”
The analyst nodded, sending data from his tablet to the holoscreens on the table. New information opened up at each station. “Only way to really hurt them is their bottom line. If they’re trying to create metahumans, then the only thing that could hurt them would be a way to stop the process. The best way to do that would be to find a vaccine for Splice.”
“No one’s been able to do that though,” Trevor said.
“True, but research into finding one has been going on for decades,” Nazari replied. “Three laboratories with dedicated funding toward formulating a vaccine are being targeted by the collective terrorist groups. Two are in Europe. The one we think is in imminent danger of an attack is the CDC here in Atlanta. We can confirm classified research is being done there showing a promising attempt at creating a vaccine for Splice.”
Jamie shared a look with Katie, but no one said anything. A vaccine would be a groundbreaking medical miracle that would keep everyone safe from a Splice attack. But while many companies had touted their research, results were something else. No one had yet to announce the creation of a viable vaccine.
“Chatter spiked on the dark web after you blew the base. Since we only ever see those spikes before an attack, we’re deploying you to Atlanta to remove the lead scientists and their data to ensure their continued existence and bring them here.”
“Do you really think anyone at these laboratories is on the path to finding a vaccine?” Madison asked in a curious voice.
“Whether they have or not isn’t the problem. Terrorist groups think the scientists are close, and that’s apparently enough incentive for them to target the laboratories. Metahumans are exceptional weapons in any terrorist group’s arsenal, as we all know from experience. If they’re trying to create more metahumans, then a vaccine would hit them hard.” Nazari tapped out a request in a command window and the data switched to an aerial view of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention located in an outer ring of the Atlanta megacity. “Chatter indicates the Federación Cartel will be the most likely aggressor. As the successor to the Sinaloa Cartel, they’re geographically closest to initiate the attack.”
The discussion about a possible cure was shelved in lieu of getting briefed on the immediate plan of attack. Alpha Team leaned forward in their seats to prepare for their latest mission as the director gave them a rundown on what it would entail.
12
When In Doubt, Empty The Magazine
“ETA five minutes, Apollo,” Annabelle said over comms from the flight deck.
> “Understood. I want you to remain with the jet for our exfil plan, shields up,” Jamie replied.
“Copy that.”
The rest of Alpha Team grabbed their weapons from the mag-locker and snapped them securely to their tactical body armor. Jamie carried his reissued biolocked AKR-75 assault rifle at an angle across his chest, right hand curved over the grip, finger stretched over the trigger guard. The AKR-75 was the standard issued weapon for MDF agents, but they all had different preferences from their time spent in the Corps and in Strike Force. The variance in weaponry was a plus in Jamie’s mind.
He reached up and gripped the anchoring line strung across the Hermes combat jet’s roof, not bothering with a lifeline from his belt. Katie came to stand beside him, feet braced against the hard descent Annabelle was navigating through. The low pulse of artificial gravity built into the jet was similar to the kind built into the International Union Space Station orbiting between the Earth and the Moon and the long-range space ships that flew routes between space mining companies and their operations in the asteroid belt, the scientific outposts on Mars, and Earth. It meant even when Annabelle pulled a sharp bank between skyscrapers in a megacity, they remained upright, feet planted firmly on the decking, and didn’t fall.
“Base analysts confirm we’ll most likely meet resistance on the way in or out,” Katie said, eyes glued to the rugged comms control screen on her forearm and the data streaming there. “Any new thoughts on the infil plan?”
Jamie’s habit of having a backup plan for his backup plan had saved theirs asses many times over the years. “Did the Telepathy Warrant come through?”
“Not yet.”
Jamie slanted a look at her, ignoring the way his eyes struggled to make out the features of her face. The blurriness caused by nanotech strips they used to keep their identities secret was easy enough for them to ignore after so many years in the field.
In the Wreckage: (M/M Sci-Fi Military Romance) (Metahuman Files Book 1) Page 19