Tempting the Fire

by Sydney Croft

  Quickly, she tore back the tent’s flap, but drew up short as she entered. Logan was sitting on the cot. He jerked in surprise, his head whipping up to stare at her. In his hand he held a syringe, the needle poised to enter his shoulder.

  “What?” he snapped. “Never seen a diabetic before?”

  “I just … ah, I wanted my backpack.” She snagged it and ducked out of the tent, heart pounding.

  Because whatever Logan was doing in there had nothing to do with insulin.

  The substance in the horse-sized syringe was black.

  LOGAN DIDN’T GO AFTER SELA. THERE WAS NOWHERE FOR HER to run to anyway, and she was smart enough not to take off into the jungle at night on her own. Besides that, Dax had been waiting outside the tent the whole time, told to not let Sela out of his sight.

  He stood and massaged the injection site—he didn’t feel pain there but the liquid tended to bubble the skin. He felt the thick, viscous substance seep into the biomechanics in his legs, his right arm, half his brain.

  And then the sting began; it always stung the parts of his body that were still human. He closed his eyes and tried to ignore it—and forget the look on Sela’s face at the same time.

  She knew damned well this wasn’t insulin and now he had a third problem, one as big as the two chupacabras.

  Sela might be a cryptozoologist, but for all he knew, she could be a spy for the government or a rival research or weapons company. She could even work for Itor, sent here to find out if he’d had success capturing the Unclass 8, which was apparently a chupacabra.

  GWC hadn’t known what it was—they knew they had something special, but they hadn’t known it had a name. And now it was running around the fucking jungle infecting innocent people.

  At times like this, he was very glad his father wasn’t close enough for Logan to fucking strangle him. Because this was bad. Really fucking horrible.

  Three years ago, under his father’s orders, GWC captured the chupacabra while on an Amazonian search for undiscovered species. A few weeks ago, when it got loose, Logan’s father informed him just how much money GWC would lose if they didn’t recapture the beast. Apparently, his father had a contract with Itor Corp, a freelance paramilitary agency.

  Logan had his own suspicions about what Itor wanted to do with the Unclass 8—after meeting it face-to-face, he was even more wary. And even though his father and Itor wanted the creature captured and brought back alive, after what happened to Chance, Logan had other plans.

  He dialed his father, who answered on the first ring.

  “Logan! Did you recapture the Unclass 8 yet?”

  He bit back a sharp reply. “No. And the SEAL survivor? Apparently, he was infected by its bite, and now he’s turning into that fucking creature.”

  When his father spoke again, he sounded shaken. “Let me call Itor and see what they want to do.”

  “I don’t really care what they want,” Logan said evenly. “I want to kill it. And we need to find a cure for the man who’s been infected. We fucking owe him that.”

  “Don’t be hasty. Let me make some calls. In the meantime, find that creature before it does any more harm.”

  Logan didn’t agree to anything, hung the phone up and took a breath. He didn’t like thinking about the experiments that had already been performed on the chupacabra, and why. Didn’t like thinking about himself as an experiment either, but that’s what he was. One giant mishmash of scientific parts that needed a daily injection simply to keep it alive.

  None of his men knew what he was and why he was really here—neither would Sela, if he could help it.

  It would help if you could keep out of her pants, dumbshit.

  He’d have to do some fast talking about what she’d seen. He’d tell her it was a special kind of insulin, GWC’s pet project since he was diagnosed as a child. He’d tell her he was their living, breathing, willing experiment.

  He almost choked at the “willing” part, remembered waking up and trying to rip the bioware out of his body, forcing the scientists and surgeons to sedate him until he’d healed more fully.

  He told himself to cut the shit and continue with his plan—there was too much at stake, too many lives potentially lost to this Unclass 8 for him to sit around feeling sorry for himself.

  As he paced the tent, he formulated his next moves. Marlena would stay here, under guard. He’d invite Sela along on the trek to hunt the Unclass 8, where he could keep an eye on her and capture the chupacabra, perhaps with her help and knowledge of the creature. Two birds with one stone.

  Now he only had to wait until dawn to burn off the nervous energy that coursed through his body. He could think of a few ways to do so, but all of them involved Sela, and for now he’d stay out of her pants and let her sleep.

  Thanks to the bioware, he didn’t need much sleep at all, was more machine than man, but still the desire he’d felt coming in Sela’s hand earlier was so fucking real he’d almost cried.

  There had been nothing mechanical about it.

  CHAPTER

  Six

  Chance was awake, but no one knew that. The drugs they’d given him had lasted for maybe half an hour before he’d begun to come to, and he’d remained silent. Thinking. Listening to their plans. Feeling their fear.

  Trying to figure out what the hell had happened to him.

  He wanted to ask the doctor questions, but he didn’t want to risk being tranqed again. And so, when one of the docs leaned over him, closing his eyes while he listened to the steady beat of Chance’s chest with his stethoscope, Chance stealthily stole a set of keys out of the man’s pocket.

  It was habit born from a need for survival, and it made him feel better that his mind was still functioning in that mode. He could—and would—escape from this place, get out of the jungle and figure shit out.

  And when the doctor left, he planned on doing exactly that. But just then, his senses stirred—his body tensed as he smelled her … Marlena. When he turned, there was no one in the tent with him, but he was sure she was close. And even though he was more than slightly freaked by his newfound ability to track with his nose, he breathed in deeply and wondered if she was coming here, to him.

  She shouldn’t, but he wanted her to.

  He wanted to get up. To go find her. He needed to find her—he knew that for sure, although he wasn’t clear on the whys of it.

  But he was … achy. Tired. For the first time in his recovery, he felt like he was falling backward, health-wise.

  His body felt like it did when he’d been a teenager with growing pains—and images of Marlena in his arms interspersed with others of the monster flashed in front of his eyes as if he was watching a slide show gone out of control.

  He was vaguely aware that he muttered her name, over and over.

  Marlena.

  Somehow, he was sure she was the only one who could possibly save him now.

  SELA FINISHED UP IN THE BATHROOM, A TYPICAL FIELDWORK outhouse constructed of green plastic, complete with a small hand-washing station. She cleaned up with the baby wipes she’d brought, and then checked her backpack to make sure the important item was still safe and hidden. As expected, Logan’s men had gone through her backpack and taken her satellite phone, but hidden in the base of the bag, beneath a flap of canvas, was a credit card-thin disposable texting device ACRO had developed. Good. The little item was how she’d contact Dev to let him know when to send in the troops. She definitely didn’t want to have to use the backup method—the Triad.

  She was connected with ACRO via the Triad, a constant connection to three psychics who took turns monitoring her. They didn’t spy, they simply kept apprised of her location and her health, unless she made an active attempt to contact them.

  But it was a rather unreliable way to communicate—an agent connected to a Triad could only transmit visuals. No actual speaking, as verbal messages could get garbled or misinterpreted. In addition, the process required no distractions and such intense concentratio
n that it often resulted in a splitting headache.

  That idiot Dax pounded on the side of the outhouse. “You drown?”

  “Eat me,” she snapped, and threw open the door.

  “You promise?” He winked. “Because if Logan didn’t satisfy you, I’d be glad to help out.”

  She shook her head and stalked toward Logan’s tent. She whipped the flap open just as he was taking a seat at his makeshift desk. “You need better help.”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “You’re awfully demanding for a prisoner.”

  “An illegal prisoner.”

  His casual shrug told her how he felt about that. Her situation was about as important to him as that of an insect that had been stuck to a fly strip.

  Behind her, a man entered carrying a sleeping bag. He tossed it to the floor and ducked out.

  Logan leaned back in his chair and kicked his feet onto the desk. “You up for a chupacabra hunt tomorrow?”

  She clapped her hands together. “Oh, really? The big boys are going to let the little girl play?”

  “You,” he said in a husky, low voice that made her insides quiver, “are no little girl.” His eyes slid down her body and back up, until he locked gazes with her. “You’re all woman, as I think we’ve established.” She didn’t have time for a snappy comeback, because he shifted gears with the speed and efficiency of a race car driver. “We could use your expertise during our hunt. What do you say?”

  “A please would be nice.”

  A smirk turned up one corner of his sexy mouth. “Please.”

  “Fine. You want my help, you tell me the truth about your diabetes. And while you’re at it, I’d like the truth about why you’re here. I don’t buy for a second that you’re just out here researching plants.”

  Logan folded his hands across his abs, drawing her gaze and making her remember how he’d looked when he’d stepped out of the shower, water running in rivulets down his muscular chest to his belly, where his six-pack rippled with every step. She tore her eyes away with a disgusted huff.

  “My company does research plants. That’s the truth,” he said, and she knew he wasn’t lying. GWC did have a botany division to study the way plants could be made into weapons, but this particular trip was not a mission to gather daisies.

  “And?”

  “And we ran into trouble when we found Chance. This creature is obviously dangerous, and we’re going to have to capture or kill it before it hurts anyone else.”

  “Ah. So you’re a bunch of humanitarians.”

  He snorted. “Hardly.” He looked up at the roof of the tent for a moment and then dropped his gaze back to her. “Look, you’ll probably notice a logo on some of our equipment. I work for a company called Global Weapons Corporation. Ever heard of it?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well, the name says it all. We develop weapons.”

  “For who?”

  “For whoever contracts us.”

  “So you could be selling weapons to terrorists, then.”

  He shrugged. “What one person calls terrorism, another calls legitimate offense or defense. It’s all in the eye of the beholder.”

  “You’re vile. You might as well be selling anthrax to Al-Qaeda.”

  She thought she saw a flash of disgust, maybe anger, in his eyes, before he settled down again, and it struck her that maybe he was trying to bait her. Maybe he didn’t believe this crap he was spewing. Then again, he ran GWC. Of course he believed it.

  “Come on,” he drawled. “Even evil corporations like mine have to draw the line somewhere.”

  “So kidnapping is okay, but anthrax isn’t.”

  “It’s all a judgment call.” He gestured to a box she hadn’t noticed beneath his cot. “Hungry? It’s full of MREs. Or you can go to the mess tent. You’ll still get MREs, but there are also a few packaged snacks there, plus hot coffee.”

  She threw down her backpack, a little harder than necessary. This guy was just so … frustrating. And hot. And sexy. But mostly irritating as hell. She dug through the box until she found a decent menu—cheese tortellini.

  “That’s my favorite,” he said, as she took a seat across from him at the table. “Of course, the best of crap is still crap.”

  A laugh burst from her before she could stop it. “That’s true.” She ripped open the plastic pouch and pulled out the biggest box inside. “Now, why don’t you tell me all about your superspecial insulin.”

  “That’s really none of your business.”

  She poured water from the pitcher on the table into the chemical heater and stuffed it into the box next to the tortellini pouch. “I suppose not, but if you don’t tell me, I’m going to assume that you’re some kind of drug addict. Or worse.”

  “Worse?”

  “That maybe you’re some kind of beast that has to dose every day to keep from turning.” She was kidding, but the brief flare of his eyes told her she’d hit on something.

  “You realize that sounds crazy.”

  She was too hungry to wait for her tortellini to heat up any more. Besides, in this heat, it didn’t need extra time anyway. She pulled the pouch out of the box and ripped it open. “You have a man in your camp who can turn into a chupacabra,” she pointed out, using a plastic spoon to gesture in the direction of the medical tent.

  “Touché.” He watched her wolf down the tortellini for a moment. “The substance is an experimental insulin. Developed by my company for a unique diabetic condition I developed as a child.”

  She cocked her head and studied him, unsure what to believe. She didn’t know anything about diabetes, and she didn’t know enough about experimental medicine to call bullshit on his explanation. He could very well be telling the truth.

  “Do you have to watch what you eat?”

  He shook his head. “That’s the beauty of the whole thing. I take the shot once a day and I can eat whatever I want. The company has been working on a way to make it work for more common types of diabetes.”

  “Of course, only the wealthy would benefit from this drug, right? No doubt you’d make a fortune off it.” His gaze skipped away. “What’s the matter?” she taunted. “Prick your conscience?”

  When he looked at her again, flames danced in his eyes. “Is that so hard to believe? Maybe, just maybe, I don’t like everything that happens inside my company.”

  A little disoriented by his words, because in her opinion, ethics and big companies often didn’t mix, she studied him. “No company is perfect. There are problems with payroll, employees, policies. You can’t like everything, right?”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about, and you know it. And,” he said, one dark eyebrow cocking up, “playing dense doesn’t suit you.”

  Oh, she disliked this man—intensely—but she couldn’t deny that he surprised her, and that beneath the corporate slime-coat, there was a hint of humanity in him, and that didn’t sit well with her at all. She liked evil scumbags to be … well, evil, with no redeeming qualities. It was so much easier to take them down that way.

  “Then why do you work there?” she asked, genuinely curious.

  “So I can make sure that some things happen that I do like.” He poured a cup of Scotch, held the mouth of the bottle over a second cup, but she shook her head. “You can’t tell me you agree with everything your colleagues do.”

  “That’s different. I don’t own a company.”

  “I can’t police everyone, and I do have others to answer to.” Logan took a swig of his drink. “So you’ve picked my brain. How about you tell me the truth about you. The bug-collecting thing was just dumb.”

  She had the incredibly childish urge to call him dumb right back. “I work for a small cryptozoological agency in Wisconsin. We’re self-funded, so we can’t afford many foreign expeditions.” This was all easy, because it had been true before she went to ACRO. “And it isn’t like the United States isn’t crawling with cryptids to study. There’s Bigfoot, the Wallowa Lake Monster, the Jersey Devil—”
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  “Okay, okay, I got it.” He’d cut her off, but there was amusement in his voice, as though he were humoring an excited child. And she supposed that was what she sounded like. She might be a skeptic, but she loved the field she worked in.

  “Well, anyway, there had been new and urgent reports of sightings in this area. So Marlena and I got permission from Marc, the head of our group, to use up the last of our funding, and we came.” She shrugged. “I suppose we should have been more prepared. You know, for people who might kidnap us.”

  “Guess you won’t do that again, huh?” He knocked back the rest of his Scotch. “So how many people are in your group?”

  “Eight. We’re pretty small.”

  “Are there a lot of you? In the United States?”

  “Cryptozoologists? A few. It’s not exactly a respected—or, some would say, legitimate—branch of science, so working in the field is mostly a labor of love.”

  “Not much money in it, then?”

  She laughed. “None. Like I said, labor of love.”

  He appeared to consider that for a minute. “Tell you what. You help me catch this creature, and my company will compensate you.”

  “How much?”

  “Say … a hundred thousand?”

  She nearly choked. “Are you serious?”

  “Why not? It’s the least I can do for taking you prisoner.” He grinned, that devastating one that made her want to jump over the table to get to him. “Besides, if you get paid, you won’t do something stupid like try to run away. You’ll be working with me. Not against me. And I won’t have to hold you against your will.”

  He was a crafty one. And he would have been right, had she been who she said she was. Still, she’d take the money if she could get it. And she’d hand it right over to the very crypto foundation she’d been talking about. They’d be more than thrilled to get the money. Of course, the trick would be getting it—and the chupa—without tipping the ACRO hat. That’s the way Dev wanted it—in and out without anyone ever knowing ACRO had been part of it.