by Bianca D’Arc
“Yeah, I’m looking forward to working with you, too, Mariana.”
“Gee, I’m sorry. I’ve kept you talking when you’re tuckered out from your trip. Tomorrow will be soon enough to start. I’m quartered with Simon in the same building you’re in. There’s a cafeteria two buildings down on the right. How about we meet you there tomorrow morning for breakfast and then we’ll head down to the lab together?”
“Sounds perfect.” Sandra scrambled for her pocket and the slip of paper Matt had given her. “I’m supposed to call this number Commander Sykes gave me to get a ride back to my building.”
“Oh, don’t worry. Simon’s down the hall having blood drawn. I make him give me a sample every week so I can note any changes that might occur. He’ll take you back.”
“Are you sure?”
“No problem.” She made a shooing gesture with one hand. “He can give you the lay of the land, too. This base is confusing until you get your bearings. He’ll be glad to help you out.”
Sandra was impressed by Simon Blackwell. She would have been scared of him had she not seen him in the company of Mariana. He was different with Mariana around. His steely gaze softened with obvious love and caring for his fiancée.
He was quite helpful showing her around the base. He left her with polite courtesy at the building Matt had taken her to earlier in the day. She could tell he was skeptical about her—or maybe that was just his usual demeanor. She’d seen a similar hardness in many of the soldiers she had treated at Quantico, though she hadn’t had much interaction with the Marines. Simon though, he took that toughness to a whole new level.
Of course, he was a retired Navy SEAL. Those Special Forces guys were rumored to be a cut above the regular soldier, and after meeting Simon and Matt, she was inclined to believe it. Sandra speculated on the various people she’d met today as she unpacked her belongings and settled into the rooms she’d been given. It was a small apartment, but clean and nice enough.
She’d had a hell of a day. First the drive, being run off the road and threatened by that slimeball, then her encounter with Matt Sykes and the men on his team. Yeah, all in all, it had been a banner day.
With any luck, tomorrow would be a lot simpler, not to mention calmer. She liked Mariana, as she’d expected. They’d worked together by phone for a little while now and seemed to have developed a good rapport. Sandra actually looked forward to working with her in the lab the next day, which was something new. She hadn’t liked any of her coworkers since joining the original quasi-military team all those months ago.
Finishing her unpacking, Sandra was too tired to go looking for the cafeteria. She had a few snacks left over from her drive that made a makeshift dinner. She consumed the half sandwich, bag of chips, and can of pop, then headed straight to bed. It was early, but she was completely worn out from the excitement of the day.
Sandra felt a hundred percent better the next morning. She met Mariana and Simon for breakfast, surprised to find some of the other members of the team already there. Apparently the men woke up at zero-dark-thirty to do what they called PT. She soon learned that acronym translated to physical training. Judging by the rippling muscles all around, every last one of these guys was a fitness nut.
But good Lord, what a view.
Never one to attract hunks like these, Sandra sat quietly next to Mariana, enjoying watching the men interact, kidding each other and comparing prior duty stations. It was a varied group that seemed to have a wealth of experience. Sandra was more than a little intimidated just listening to the men talk among themselves.
Mariana engaged her in medical conversation, but the men really dominated the table. Sandra didn’t mind. She was used to being the quiet one. The one people talked over or ignored. It was her lot in life.
Then Matt Sykes walked in and joined their table. The sheer wattage in the smile he turned on her was enough to make her toes curl. Suddenly everyone was looking in her direction as the commander made a beeline for the empty seat next to her.
“You’re looking well rested this morning, Dr. McCormick,” Matt said by way of greeting as he sat down and arranged his tray in front of him.
“Thanks. I conked out last night and slept for about ten hours straight.”
The table had grown quieter as everyone watched their new commander interact with the newest member of the team. Maybe it was just the novelty of her first meal with the group that garnered so much attention. She hoped that was the case, because then it would wear off as soon as they got used to her. She didn’t think she could stand this kind of scrutiny all the time.
“Glad to hear you’re settling in.” Matt smiled again, and she had to catch her breath. The man was potent. In fact, all the men at the table were handsome, but none affected her as strongly as Matt Sykes.
Not good. For all intents and purposes, he was her boss, even if he wasn’t a scientist. It wouldn’t do to have a crush on her boss. No, not good at all.
She had to nip this in the bud. Matt Sykes—gorgeous Greek god of a man as he was—was not for her. He was just too…too handsome, too male…too much of everything.
Conversation picked up as the men started to talk again, including their new commander. Sandra went back to her usual role of observer as attention shifted away from her. She liked the way the men deferred to Matt yet seemed to feel a sort of common bond with him. It was clear they respected him.
Matt was a Navy SEAL like Simon, though he was retired from field action now. He rode a desk these days, for whatever reason, but his experience showed in the way he handled himself around these men who were still active participants in Special Operations.
Like herself, he was a little older than the rest of the people at the table. If she had to guess, she’d say Matt was closer to forty while the others were closer to thirty. Heck, Matt might even be older than that, but his physical form was impeccable. He had the body of a twenty-year-old. Only the slight graying at his temples and the smile lines around his stunning eyes betrayed him.
Of course, she was no one to judge. She had a few wrinkles around her eyes herself these days. She didn’t think of herself as old by any stretch of the imagination, but she did have a few regrets. Getting her education and gaining prominence in her work had always been more important to her than dating or looking for a life partner.
Seeing Mariana and Simon interact made her realize what she’d let pass her by. She was simply unprepared to start learning the skills most girls mastered in their teens now. She was too old to learn how to attract a man. The depressing truth was that she was too old to attract any but the most desperate of men at this point. And she didn’t want desperate. She wouldn’t settle for just anyone. Especially not after meeting Matt and his men.
Matt would fuel her fantasies for a long time to come. She was honest enough with herself to admit it in the privacy of her own mind. He was devastatingly handsome and the most powerful, Alpha-type male she’d ever been around. Simply put, he turned her on. Just by breathing, he made her female parts come alive as they never had before for any other man.
Too bad he was totally unattainable. Too bad she had no idea what to do with him even if she could manage to somehow capture his interest. Dreams like that never came true. Better to keep him a fantasy for those lonely hours in the middle of the night when she longed for a lover in her lonely bed.
“You about ready?” Matt’s voice broke into her silent reverie.
She blinked, looking at him. “What?”
“Just asking if you were done. I have some electronics for you in my office. I didn’t realize you’d be here this early or I’d have brought them with me to breakfast.”
“Oh.” It took her a moment to register what he was saying. “Mariana and I were going to check out the lab.” Mentally, she kicked herself for the rather dull-witted reply.
“My office is on the way. If you don’t object to a slight delay, I’d feel better if you were outfitted properly before you got to work today. Ever
yone on the team has already been issued a sat phone and headset. I’d like for you to keep them with you while on duty so we can stay in contact without having to scramble for a phone in case there’s an emergency.”
“Sounds reasonable.” She looked at Mariana. “Do you mind a small detour?”
“Not at all.” Mariana smiled warmly as she waved away the issue. “It’s on the way. Won’t take but a minute.”
They bussed their trays and stepped into the early-morning sunshine. The rest of the men took their leave and went off in other directions while Matt, Sandra, and Mariana headed for his office.
Matt ducked inside, leaving the women to enjoy the fresh air. He returned a minute later with a phone and headset, which he handed to Sandra. He spent a few minutes explaining the basics of how the equipment worked. She asked a few questions, having never seen such technology before, but it wasn’t difficult to pick up. Within five minutes, she felt confident that she knew how to operate the electronics.
“Don’t forget the meeting this morning. You’ll have a couple of hours to check out your workspace in the lab, but don’t get too caught up,” Matt warned with a friendly smile. “I’ve called the entire team together so we can all meet each other and talk through our strategy and duty assignments.”
“I’m looking forward to it,” she responded politely.
In truth, Sandra didn’t really care about the meeting either way. She’d sit in the background and observe as usual. Strategy wasn’t her strong point, and she already knew what was expected of her work-wise. She was there to work on the tech end of things. That was her only area of expertise. She couldn’t fight the monsters. Not physically. No, she’d use her scientific expertise to try to annihilate them.
It was the soldiers who would do the actual physical work and employ the strategies he wanted to talk over at this meeting. But she would attend. It was expected of her and she always tried to live up to her employers’ expectations. She didn’t like confrontation, and she didn’t like to make waves. She’d attend. She just wouldn’t contribute much unless asked directly.
John Petit arrived at the meeting room feeling a little out of his element. It was good to be back on a military base, but after what he’d been told about his new assignment, it had a sort of Twilight Zone feel. He was still tempted to believe someone was playing a colossal joke on him. After all, zombies didn’t really exist, did they?
John was all too afraid this wasn’t a joke and some mad scientists really had crossed the line and created the living dead. It would be up to him and the rest of this makeshift team to put an end to it. He’d been given basic information on the other members of the team. Most were either Spec Ops warriors or scientific personnel.
But there was one new member of the team who truly troubled him. She was the whole reason he’d been asked to join the team, in fact, and he just couldn’t wrap his head around that whole scenario. Who would have thought his little sister would get mixed up with zombies after all, much less that her involvement would lead to his being taken from his post at the CIA to join the top secret zombie-hunting team?
He was sure stranger things had happened, but he didn’t know where or when.
“Johnny!” A petite fireball rocketed across the room and into his arms for a bone-crushing hug.
“Hey, sis.” John realized they were causing a bit of a scene, but he didn’t care.
He’d learned only recently that Sarah had been savaged by zombies and had turned into some kind of GI Jane, working with the Special Forces to hunt the creatures down. Frankly, he couldn’t believe it. He had felt so much better when he’d thought her work as a county cop involved nothing more dangerous than writing speeding tickets. Now, of course, he knew differently.
He hugged her close for a long moment. “Are you okay, punkin?” He eased away to meet her gaze.
“I’m great. I bet you didn’t expect to find me here.” He never could stay mad at his baby sister when she looked at him with those big puppy-dog eyes.
“You can say that again.”
“Punkin?” Another man’s voice broke into their reunion. John looked up to meet the gaze of a soldier standing a few feet behind his sister. The guy had a decidedly amused look on his face as Sarah drew out of John’s arms.
She turned and stubbed one pointed finger in the man’s chest, a huge grin on her face. “That goes no further, Xavier. I mean it.”
The army guy lifted both hands palms outward in a gesture of surrender, a wide smile on his face.
“I see your friend knows when it’s wise to retreat.” John stuck his hand out to the other man for a shake. “I’m John Petit.”
“Xavier Beauvoir.” The soldier returned the gesture.
“Xavier, this is my brother, Johnny,” Sarah added unnecessarily. She looked uncomfortable and that well-remembered expression immediately set alarms bells ringing internally. Something was up.
“I figured that out, Sarah,” the Green Beret answered a little too familiarly. John bristled. They looked just a little too comfortable together.
“John, I spoke to Dad earlier. He wants you to call home tonight if you can. I expect he’ll want your report on Xavier.” She touched the soldier’s arm and laughed up at the other man. He was definitely missing something here.
“Why’s that?” John included both of them in his challenge.
Sarah smiled at him in that disarming way she had perfected over the years. “Because he’s my fiancé. We’re getting married.”
That set John back on his heels. His baby sister engaged? To this…soldier? What was she thinking? Who was this guy?
“Isn’t this kind of sudden?” John didn’t know what else to say. He’d been blindsided.
“Jeez. You sound just like Dad. He said the exact same thing.” She made a tsking sound but soon relented. “Actually, you’re probably the only one in the family who’ll understand exactly what drew us together so quickly.”
Then it dawned on him where they were and what they were doing here. A top secret briefing about the zombie problem. Holy shit. His little sister had been roaming around the woods hunting zombies with her Green Beret friend—scratch that, fiancé—for the past couple of weeks. No wonder they’d grown so close. Combat situations often spawned deep and lasting friendships. You didn’t really get to know a person until you faced death with them.
Realization dawned. His little sister was nobody’s fool. If she felt so strongly about this guy, she had to have good reason. John stepped up and made an effort to give the guy the benefit of the doubt. They’d be working together now. John could observe firsthand how the big Green Beret treated his baby sis. If the army guy put a toe out of place, he’d have John to answer to.
“God, Sarah. I can’t even imagine what you’ve been through in the past weeks.” Her face paled and he knew it had to be even worse than he’d thought. His attention turned to the soldier at her side. “Thank you for taking care of my sister, Captain. I look forward to getting to know you better.”
“Me, too, John. I know it’s a shock, but it’s the right thing. She and I were meant to be together.”
John wasn’t much for sappy talk, but he respected the straightforward words from this special ops soldier. That and the look in his sister’s eyes led him to believe there was something to this relationship. Something real that had a shot at lasting a lifetime.
“I got a preliminary briefing when they brought me in on this. You both survived attacks, right? And now you’re immune?” Both Sarah and her fiancé nodded. “So you’ve been what—out there hunting zombies for the past couple of weeks?”
“That’s right,” Sarah answered. “Xavier sprung me from the hospital after I woke up, and we’ve been working on the problem ever since. We’ve had four…or was it five?”—she looked at Xavier for confirmation—“more encounters with the creatures since then. We’ve learned a lot about them and managed to track back to one of the scientists who was creating them. He’s dead now. Attacked
by a zombie in my backyard while he was trying to abduct me again.” Her face hardened in a way John had never seen. Then her words penetrated his spinning mind.
“Again? Shit, Sarah! You were abducted by some mad scientist? Twice?”
“Once. He only got me once. He tried for me once more, but a zombie took him out before he could get me to his car.”
John couldn’t believe he was having this conversation with his little sister. She was so calm about it and she could have been killed any number of times…or worse.
“Xavier rescued me the first time.” She patted the big man’s arm affectionately. “Second time, too, come to think of it.”
“Now chéri, you did your part to get yourself free. I was just backup.” The Green Beret looked decidedly miffed by it, too. John took that as a good sign.
He would’ve asked more questions to get to the bottom of the story, but just then the meeting was called to order and they took their seats around the conference table. A navy commander took the head of the table and began to speak.
John listened with half an ear, trying to process all the surprises he’d had in the last day or two. Zombies, black ops, his sister engaged, and now this top secret briefing. And he’d thought his regular job with the CIA was interesting. It had just morphed into something out of a horror movie. Or a comic book.
Chapter Three
Matt had noticed the Petits greeting each other. It had been hard to miss when Sarah launched herself at the man who shared her coloring, if not her height. John Petit was a much larger and more dangerous version of his younger sister. It was clear they were siblings from their angular features to their hair, but John was as big and honed as every man here, and he had a personnel file that consisted mostly of large blocks of black magic marker.
Almost everything recent had been redacted for national security reasons. Ostensibly he was a run-of-the-mill CIA operative. Of course, with the CIA there was seldom anything run-of-the-mill. In reality, Matt suspected John Petit’s missions were more on the dark side than the light. Black ops was his specialty if Matt didn’t miss his guess. Of course, he would never get confirmation of his suspicions. Not through official channels at least.