by Sydney Croft
Fuck.
Stryker covered his eyes with a palm even as he squeezed them shut, but it would never erase the picture in his mind. He knew Akbar’s screams would remain a constant echo in his ears for a long time to come as well.
That Phoebe bitch was crazy. Maybe even certifiable. And talk about running hot and cold—one of his hands had third-degree burns and he was pretty sure he’d suffered frostbite to his chest. If he hadn’t seen the change take place directly in front of him, he’d never have believed it. When ice woman emerged, he’d noted both confusion and resignation in her eyes—and she hadn’t been faking either emotion.
Not that he gave two shits. He would still kill her with his bare hands if given the chance.
You still have to complete the mission.
Akbar would never want him to let his guard down now, or to risk other lives.
“Gabe, you stay close to Annika,” he called. Gabe nodded and Stryker ignored Annika’s glare—the woman was working with a concussion, burns and a possible loss of her gift. Whatever was going on there, she needed cover, and the kid was doing a damned good job of providing that.
The battle raged all around him, and Stryker prepared to unleash his power and put a new chasm between his group and Itor.
Two men stumbled from the debris of a fallen tent, the younger one, Logan, helping Richard walk toward him. One hulking excedo with a body that looked made of steel rushed Logan, who, without hesitation, leaped at him. As Stryker watched, ready to step in, Logan wrestled the excedo to the ground, before breaking his neck.
That type of takedown didn’t happen easily; there was no way Logan didn’t have some kind of special ability. He wouldn’t have survived a fight with an excedo otherwise … no, he most likely never would’ve walked again, unless he was an excedo himself.
Sela, her upper arm bleeding, raced to Logan and Richard, and together they approached Stryker.
Anger and grief was a hell of a potent combination, and he closed his eyes and concentrated with the fierceness necessary, so as not to take out the entire jungle with his powers.
First, he imagined the break starting about twenty feet deep. Within seconds, the sound of rumbling earth moved through his body like a shot of adrenaline that made him want to scream. It was part pain, part fear, all rolled together with a surge of power he was never completely comfortable using, even when it was to save lives.
The ground began to buck under everyone’s feet. The Itor assholes retreated, and GWC personnel scrambled away—only Stryker stayed still as the ground broke open ten feet in front of him, wide enough that the I-Agents who weren’t fast enough tumbled into the fault, and to their deaths.
All conversation behind him had come to a halt. Causing an earthquake—even a small one—had the tendency to be a real showstopper.
Now he turned to Logan, because the real show was about to begin.
“What the hell is this guy?” Logan demanded of Sela as he pointed to Stryker.
“I work with Sela,” Stryker told him. “Who the hell are you?”
Sela answered, her palm over the gash in her shoulder. “Logan’s GWC. But consider him special like us. He’ll be a help taking out Itor.”
Who could still have agents close by, planning another attack. Sticking around longer was not a smart idea.
“How do you know this guy?” Logan asked Sela, and Stryker frowned, hated being talked about like he wasn’t in the room. Jungle. Whatever.
“I’ve got a way out of here,” he interrupted. “I’ll take you and your father, the women and that caged guy. Send the rest of your men out of here. I’m assuming you’ve got a plane at the airport.”
Logan nodded. “Yeah, we do. But who the fuck are you? You aren’t taking anyone, especially the women.”
Sela gripped Logan’s biceps urgently, even as the sound of incoming vehicles reached his ears, and fuck, that was all they needed. Either more Itor or the damned guerrillas were coming.
“Logan, Stryker is with me,” Sela said. “With my company, ACRO, which I’ll tell you all about later. For now, you need to trust him. You need to come with us. You still have something Itor wants—you can’t take Chance back to GWC headquarters, because they’ll follow you, and you aren’t equipped to deal with them.”
“I’m not going anywhere until I find Phoebe,” Logan snarled. “She knows where my sister is.” He shot Stryker a you’re-dead glare. “If Caroline dies because you did something to Phoebe—”
Stryker aimed his pistol at Logan’s chest, and the earth began to shake from the force of his anger. It didn’t help that he’d caught sight of Akbar’s body again. “Doing things your way got you into this fucking mess. We’re doing things my way now.”
CHAPTER
Twenty-three
Even over the continued rumblings of the earth and the Stryker asshole trying to take charge of the situation, Logan heard his name screamed out from somewhere in the jungle.
Caroline. “That’s my sister,” he said, more to himself than to anyone else, and within seconds he was drawing his Sig and taking off in the direction the scream had come from, careful to jump over the heavy grooves left in the earth, apparently from the asshole’s temper tantrum. Granted, it had saved all their asses, but still, Logan didn’t like the guy.
He heard the heavy footsteps behind him but he wasn’t stopping for anything.
“If that bitch Phoebe is back, she’s mine,” Asshole barked.
Logan ignored him, barreled into the tangled brush, not caring about getting scraped and bruised to hell. He only had rescue on his mind.
He stopped short when he saw Caroline in the merciless grip of an Itor agent.
If he hadn’t recognized her long blond hair and the watch she always wore, he might not have believed it was her.
Her eyes were swollen, as was her bottom lip … her cheeks bruised. Logan felt the rage well up inside of him.
“Don’t come any closer,” the Itor agent warned; he had the barrel of his gun pointed at Caroline’s head.
“Your men are dead—there’s no way out for you,” Logan told him. “Let her go.”
The Itor agent laughed, loudly and inappropriately. And then he began to mutter in a language Logan had never heard before.
Suddenly, next him, Stryker went deadly silent, as did Caroline in front of him. She simply stared into space, her body stock-still.
What the hell? He hadn’t seen the guy give Caroline anything, and the I-Agent certainly hadn’t gotten to Stryker. Something told Logan to pretend he was as affected as they were, and so he stood still, looked straight ahead and waited.
“Stupid ACRO agents. No match for my hypnosis,” the Itor agent muttered. “They make it too easy.”
Mind control. Hypnosis. And because of his bioware, Logan wasn’t affected, but he continued to pretend, stood with the stiffness and the stare, until the agent began to drag Caroline away.
Logan waited until they were almost out of sight, and then he charged the agent, who never saw him coming.
Within seconds, Logan had broken the man’s neck and caught Caroline as she fell from the dead man’s embrace. Stryker shouted from behind him, the hypnotic spell broken.
“We’re here. We’re okay,” Logan called as Stryker crashed through the snarled vegetation.
“Fuck. Fucking hypnosis.” Stryker rubbed the back of his neck and then shook his head. “How’s your sister?”
Caroline was whimpering, eyes still slightly glazed. “Not great.”
“It takes non-specials longer to recover,” Stryker assured him, moving to rifle through the dead man’s pockets while Logan spoke to Caroline.
“Caroline, it’s me—it’s Logan—you’re safe now,” he told her. Stroked her cheek until her eyes lost the glazed look.
“Caroline, did you see anyone else around here?” Stryker asked, his voice gruff.
She shook her head vigorously. “The woman—the one who kidnapped me—she untied me and told me to run, a
nd then that guy grabbed me,” Caroline sobbed.
Logan hugged her tight against him. “I’m so sorry, sis. If I’d had any idea you would’ve been in danger …”
He trailed off as she sagged against him, exhaustion and trauma sapping her strength. Gently, he picked her up and brought her to the clearing, Stryker right behind them.
Sela had already organized the men—his men—and they were loading up the GWC vehicles with the camp’s equipment. She kept pressure on her arm wound and didn’t even glance at Logan as she spoke with Stryker in a clipped, professional voice that reminded him he didn’t know her at all.
“There’s a helo waiting ten miles out in a clearing,” she said. “It’ll take us to a jet, which will take us to ACRO.”
Logan shook his head, confused, pissed and so fucking betrayed by the woman who’d sworn up and down that she was nothing but a damned scientist. “I’m not going anywhere until one of you explains how the hell ACRO will help me deal with Itor.”
“Logan, it’s okay,” Marlena started, but Sela stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.
“ACRO is sending in more personnel to finish breaking down the GWC camp,” she said, as Chance eased into a Hummer next to them. “Your men will be taken care of and allowed to return to GWC by this evening. But ACRO is the only place we’ll be safe for now. Please trust me—I can explain everything.”
“You can explain on the helo,” Stryker said, as he opened the vehicle doors. “Let’s roll.”
THE TEN-MILE RIDE THROUGH THE JUNGLE WAS CRAMPED, mostly silent and slow going. Logan sat with his sister and father in the middle row of seats, spending most of the hour trying to comfort Caroline, who had apparently gone through hell. Itor had kept her mostly blindfolded, and they’d interrogated her, brutally, about things for which she’d had no information. Whether she’d talked or not, they’d beaten her. Or, more accurately, Phoebe had beaten her. And burned her. Refused to feed her.
The poor girl would need time to recover, but with Logan helping her, Caroline had a head start.
Stryker, in the front passenger seat, had made Chance drive, probably giving him something to do in order to keep his mind off turning into a beast, and it left him free to handle any issues that might pop up with Logan. It was pretty clear that Stryker didn’t trust anyone in the car besides Sela, Gabe, Annika and Marlena—but then, the non-ACRO people didn’t trust him either.
Even Sela was a little wary of him, especially now, when he looked about two seconds from going into a rage that would reach all the way to the earth’s core. Damn, she’d known he was some sort of elementalist with powers over the land, but she hadn’t seen him in action. She’d been terrified … which had come on the heels of being horrified at what had been done to Akbar.
She’d barely known the man, but the sight of him dying the way he had would stick with her for life.
From the haunted look in Gabe and Annika’s eyes as they sat next to each other in the backseat, she knew they’d be having nightmares for a while too. Sela had definitely never known Annika to be so quiet, or to look so tired.
When they arrived in the clearing, the chopper pilot started up the bird—ACRO’s long-range transport, specially outfitted to seat a dozen agents in comfort, or twice that in less comfort, plus carry a ton of gear. They piled in, and once the dead chupa was secured in the back, along with the medical equipment and files they’d brought along, everyone settled in. Logan eased Caroline into a seat next to their father, gave her a bottle of water, and then moved to the very back near the bathroom, signaling for Sela to follow.
Stryker started to protest, but she cut him off with a glare. She was grateful for his help—okay, he’d saved their asses—but when it came right down to it, this was her mission. And if she wanted to slink into the shadows in the back of the helo with Logan and ignore takeoff buckle-up procedures, she would.
Annika and Gabe had chosen seats next to each other again, and Annika sat quietly, fingers wrapped tightly around a can of 7UP.
Sela paused in front of her. “Is everything all right?” Sela asked, though she had no idea why, and she was shocked when, instead of a biting response, Annika merely nodded and looked down at her soda. Even more shocking was that when Gabe touched Annika’s hand reassuringly, she didn’t flip out.
Weird.
After playing stewardess one last time and making sure Marlena was okay—sitting near Chance to keep him calm while Stryker started a sedative IV drip—Sela reached Logan. He pointed to the bench seat that lined the bulkhead, and nodded at her shoulder, which had been grazed by a bullet. She’d barely felt it, but now that he’d pointed it out, it began to throb.
“Where’s the med kit?”
“Right behind you.” She sank down, grateful to be off her legs, which had gone rubbery with exhaustion, an adrenaline crash and the knowledge that she was going to have to come clean with Logan now.
While she removed her BDU shirt, he fetched the first-aid kit from its secured box and took a seat next to her. “Doesn’t look too bad.”
“It’s not.” Stung like hell, though.
Gently, he rolled her T-shirt sleeve up, and dug gauze and antiseptic solution out of the bag. “I need to clean it. Won’t feel good.”
“I’ve had worse.”
His gaze snapped up to hers. “Are you talking about the asshole who beat the shit out of you? Or does this have something to do with these people you work with?”
Sela’s mouth went dry, and she suddenly wished she’d grabbed a bottle of water before she’d come back here. “I guess we should talk about ACRO.”
“I guess we should.” He held a gauze pad below her wound to catch the antiseptic as he irrigated the groove the bullet had made in her flesh. “I’d like to hear about what this company is and how you know about it.”
She clenched her teeth against the bite of the liquid. “I’m an operative with the Agency for Covert Rare Operatives. ACRO.”
“And that is?”
“It’s like the CIA. Except it’s staffed by the X-Men.” When he nodded, she frowned. “You don’t seem very surprised.”
“After what I’ve seen—a man who turned into a chupacabra, another who can make earthquakes, Itor people who can throw fireballs—I’m willing to believe you.” He cut her a hard look. “About this, at least.”
“I couldn’t tell you about ACRO, Logan. We thought you were in Itor’s pocket. I came to find out what kind of weapon you were making for them.”
“So the cryptozoologist thing really was bullshit.” His voice was too level, too calm, and Sela began to sweat despite the air-conditioning, which otherwise made the inside of the helo feel like a giant refrigerator.
“No. That’s what I do for ACRO. I’m an expert in the field of unknown species. And,” she added, wincing, “that really fucking hurts.”
“Sorry.” He gentled his touch as he used tweezers to dig bits of her shirt out of the wound. “So what is Itor? Really.”
“What did you think they were?”
He shrugged. “A private paramilitary agency that sold their services to the highest bidder.”
That’s right, GWC would have vetted Itor for legitimacy—probably. And yeah, Itor was known to the world as nothing more than a private security agency. The reality was far more sinister, but GWC would have had no way of knowing that.
“They’re an agency much like ACRO, except they play for Team Evil. They work differently than we do, they’re set up differently than we are and they have absolutely no ethics. They’re all about the profit and power.” Though in recent years, they’d stepped up their game, and speculation within ACRO was that Itor was building to something big. Something very big.
A warm trickle of blood ran down her arm. Logan pressed a pad to her wound and applied pressure. “You doing okay?”
“Yeah.”
“A little sting …” He rinsed her cut with saline solution, and yep, it stung. “Was the man who was, ah, killed … one of yours?
”
Though many had died during the battle, only one had died so horrifyingly, and she knew exactly to whom Logan was referring. “Yes,” she rasped, her throat as raw with emotion as it was from breathing the smoke that had come off Akbar’s burning body.
“I’m sorry.” He sighed. “So how much of what you told me about your background is true?”
“All of it.”
“What about Marlena?”
“What about her?”
The helicopter banked hard to the right, and Logan braced her by throwing a strong arm across her shoulders. When the bird straightened out, he pulled back, his movement brisk and impersonal, as though he’d been keeping a sack of flour from falling off a shelf. “Is she really your assistant?”
“No,” she admitted. “Can you bandage my shoulder now? We should be approaching the airstrip.”
“So what does she do at ACRO?” he asked, not falling for her distraction. Though he did dig a bandage out of the kit.
“Logan, we need to get ready to land—”
“What does she do?” His voice was sharp now, cracking even over the loud thump of the rotors.
Sela grabbed the bandage from him and shoved to her feet. “I’ll finish this myself.”
Trembling with nerves, annoyance and about a million other emotions she couldn’t name, she yanked open the bathroom door and slipped inside.
But when she went to slam it shut, Logan’s arm blocked it. Then, with icy deliberation, he filled the tiny space with his body, his presence … and the force of his anger.
“There is nowhere to go, Sela.” Logan’s expression was dark, his voice low and dangerous, but as he crowded her in the small space, his body hardened with more than anger.
Instantly, her traitorous body ignited with a slow simmer of heat at her core. Angry sex was not a good idea right now. Hell, sex in any form was not a good idea—not with Logan. He already had a lot of control over her heart, and sex would only bind her to him even more tightly.
And then, when he learned the complete truth about her, he’d cut those tethers and leave her broken.