The Omega Team_Biochemical Reaction

by Amy Ruttan

  She had proof that Bio-Tek was selling biochemical warfare, and although she hadn’t managed to smoke out the mole she had something better.

  She had proof on the USB stick that they had, indeed created Chem Agent 1157, and that they had the antidote as well. Bio-Tek was a traitorous company and American soldiers were dying because of their greed. The escape route, the gun, were all part of her covert operation. And she knew that someone from the Omega team, also hired by the Navy on the suggestion of another covert agent deep in the Bio-Tek infiltration operation, was watching her.

  The doomsday code was from Bio-Tek, but she had no idea that it would destroy the building. Obviously, Bio-Tek didn’t care who died to protect its secrets.

  “You’re right. I have a vehicle,” Jack said. “Come on, we lost the cover of night. Scouts will come soon. They’ll be looking for your remains.”

  She nodded and followed him through the brush, ignoring the pain of her protesting body. All that mattered was she get on the secure server and send the info to her commanding officers. The secure server would be at the safe house.

  Hopefully Jack knew the way, but it would be hard to get to the nearest naval base from where they were, and Lisa knew the airports would be watched, so there was no way for her to get back to San Diego at this moment.

  Oh God.

  She shook away the fear that was coursing through her as she kept close to Jack. She knew what she’d signed on for.

  It was all for Dane.

  Dane did stuff like this, and this was to stop Chem Agent 1157 from destroying any more lives. Even Jack had been affected by it.

  She could see the visible scars, but they were minimal. His voice had changed, but not that much. She knew there were deeper scars there. He wouldn’t see her after it happened, his whole platoon had been wiped out and he left the Navy, disappearing for a decade. It pissed her off he’d dismissed her.

  How the Omega Team had managed to find him when she couldn’t, and recruit him, was something she’d have to ask him if she made it out of this thing alive.

  Lisa lost track of time as they climbed up the mountain. Her body was running on adrenaline and she didn’t know how far they hiked.

  Jack held up his arm and she stopped. They crouched in the underbrush, listening. The only sounds were of the forest. And, after an agonizing minute, Jack stood and then approached the hidden car, checking underneath for a bomb.

  “All clear. Let’s get you out of here.” He uncovered his SUV and opened the door. She climbed in, over the driver’s seat and to the passenger side. Jack followed and turned the ignition. “Do you know where I’m to take you?”

  She nodded and then punched in the GPS coordinates. Jack followed the directions, down off the mountain and to the north, out of the cover of the boreal forest. Lisa checked and the USB drive was still there; that’s when she let out a sigh of relief.

  “You’re probably tired. Rest,” Jack said.

  Only she didn’t want to rest. There were a million things she wanted to know. Mostly, where had he been hiding for the last ten years? Why was he hiding? And she wanted to know more about how her brother died.

  She’d been denied that when Jack refused to see her.

  “What do you mean he’s gone?” she asked.

  “Crane took his honorable discharge and left, Lieutenant,” the petty officer in the human resources office said. “Not that he had much choice.”

  “Where has he gone? Did he leave a forwarding address?” Lisa asked, dismayed.

  “No, he didn’t. I’m sorry.”

  Lisa went to his last known address, but his apartment was vacant. Everything he owned was gone except his dog tags, which she still wore around her neck with her own and her brother’s.

  It was a reminder to never give up. To never leave anyone behind, like Jack had done.

  When exhaustion and pain overtook her, she realized there would be time for her questions. They’d be hidden away in the safe house together for days until she could get extracted by her commander.

  The close proximity to Jack and the heat they shared so long ago didn’t scare her, not one bit. Because when she saw him again, when she realized it was him, she knew her feelings for him were still as strong as ever.

  Even with the superficial scarring, he was still as sexy as ever. And she could still remember the first time they’d been together. The things he made her feel, that no man had ever made her feel.

  When he first found out she was Dane’s little sister, he tried to push her away but she persisted. That week they’d spent together had been the best she’d ever had, before or since. Their relationship was no strings, their service to their country came first, but still she’d never been able to shake Jack from her soul.

  The memory of him was burned into her flesh.

  And if he wanted her as much as she still wanted him, she wouldn’t say no to him.

  Her fear was that he wouldn’t tell her anything. That he was just as stubborn and obstinate as when they first met. And she was afraid of what he’d do to her heart again, because when her brother died she’d turned to him for comfort, for answers, and got nothing.

  That had hurt her.

  It broke her heart when he disappeared.

  So, she had lots of questions and she wasn’t going to let him go until she got the answers she needed. No matter how painful it was.

  Chapter Two

  Jack watched to make sure no one was trailing them, but so far so good. The lonely stretch of highway headed northeast to a remote safe house tucked into the forest. It would be far better than his cabin outside of Nome, which stood with its back to the sea, facing the tundra. Although, in his home he could see who was coming and going.

  He liked being by the edge of the sea. He liked the wide open space.

  It was easy to hide in plain sight.

  Still, he followed the coordinates Lisa had put into the GPS.

  For one brief moment he glanced at her. She had her head resting against the passenger door, and was sleeping in the early morning light. She looked peaceful. Watching her sleep was one of the things he’d liked to do in the mornings, when she was all tangled in the sheets, her honey-gold hair fanned across the pillows, those full, pink lips bruised from his kisses.

  Fuck.

  He wanted her. Just like that and he was turned on.

  This is what he’d been afraid of when he took on the assignment; that he wouldn’t be able to control himself around her. When it came to Lisa Morgan all bets were off. All his careful control, all his willpower and years of training were gone in a puff of smoke.

  Get a grip on yourself.

  Why did it have to be Lisa? Why did she have to meddle into something as dangerous as finding the antigen? Didn’t she know how dangerous this whole situation would be?

  Maybe she did.

  And that thought angered him. He promised Dane he’d look out for her. How could he keep her safe if she was participating in dangerous situations like this? Why couldn’t she have just stayed in Annapolis and become a Naval surgeon like was expected of her? Why did she have to study microbiology and immunology? Why did she have to become involved in biochemical warfare?

  She was foolish, putting herself in harm’s way.

  Oh and I’m so innocent? Maybe if I’d stayed she wouldn’t have put herself in harm’s way. It’s all my fault. I couldn’t deal with the pain of what happened and left her. I left it all behind.

  The GPS pinged and he turned down an isolated gravel road that was swallowed up by the forest. Back up into the mountains. They were sandwiched somewhere between Nome and Fairbanks.

  At the change from tarmac to pressed gravel Lisa awoke.

  “Are we there yet?”

  “Soon,” he responded gruffly.

  She straightened in her seat. “Good. The sooner I can get this information off the better.”

  “Are you going to let me in on the plan?”

  “It’s classified,” she sa
id quickly, not looking at him.

  “I just saved your life. The least you can do is fill me in.”

  “It’s classified,” she hissed again. Her blue eyes narrowed, glinting with that dangerous twinkle he knew all too well. Even after ten years he knew when he was pushing her too hard. When her stubbornness would win over everything else.

  How many times had they butted heads over something and ended up in bed together? Countless. He was just as stubborn as she was.

  “We’re on the same side, Lisa. You can tell me. You can trust me.”

  She snorted. “Sure.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’re a stranger.”

  “Hardly,” he said.

  “Oh? You’ve been missing in action for ten years. You didn’t even come to the funeral service when Dane was buried with the rest of your platoon.”

  It was an emotional gut punch. A stinging verbal slap. He’d been there at Arlington when his platoon had been interred. She just didn’t know it.

  And he wasn’t going to get into that painful discussion at this moment. He wasn’t going to think about the men he thought of as brothers being buried. Of how he was left. Alone.

  “Look, my job is to protect you from terrorists and I’ve been given limited information from the Omega Team. Only what they were told. What terrorist organization is after you?”

  Her lips were pressed together in a firm line, and he was about to demand it from her, but then she sighed in resignation.

  “I think it’s Bio-Tek, not terrorists.”

  “What?” he asked, in shock.

  “I’m doing a covert operation to smoke them out. Bio-Tek has been under investigation as the creators of Chem Agent 1157. My orders were to infiltrate the inner workings, find the makeup of the agent and then create the antigen if there wasn’t one; but there was. Bio-Tek hired me to create a new biochemical weapon. I didn’t, obviously.”

  “I can’t believe Grey would be working for Bio-Tek. He would know if they were under investigation. Although, he said someone higher up in the chain of command had hired the Omega Team.”

  “He’s not working for Bio-Tek. There are other agents deep in the heart of this operation. They are the ones who hired the Omega team to protect me while I looked for the information and either created or found the antigen. We had to keep the Omega team in the dark a bit so they wouldn’t blow our cover.”

  Jack nodded and then cursed. “Dammit, Lisa, you knew you were putting your life in danger.”

  “And is that so different from what you do?”

  “It’s different,” he snapped.

  She snorted. “Is it?”

  “I promised Dane I would protect you. Always.”

  Lisa’s expression softened at the mention of her brother, but only for a moment. “I have no family, Jack. The only family I ever had was killed when a bomb containing Chem Agent 1157 exploded during a covert operation ten years ago. I have no one. Nothing. It was my duty to find a way to stop this biochemical warfare. Even if the price I paid was my life.”

  He understood that well.

  Before he joined with Dane and the others in his platoon, he had no one. No family. He’d gone through the foster system. Going from group home to group home until he was old enough to enlist. Just like his late father had, which is why he’d been orphaned when his father died during his tour of duty.

  Which is why he enlisted. He wanted to fight for his country. Die for his country, like his father did.

  Only he survived, broken and half the man he’d been.

  Jack stopped in front of a gate. “What’s the code?”

  “I’ll punch it in.” She made to open the door, but he reached out and stopped her.

  “You’ll do no such thing. No one can see you going into this house. You’ll stay in the confines of the tinted windows. Now, the code, if you please.”

  “Alpha, Omega, seven, five, seven, Alpha.”

  Jack didn’t thank her, or say anything else, as he got out of the SUV and punched in the code at the gate. Inside Lisa was fuming.

  She didn’t want to talk about Dane or his funeral, but when Jack attacked her by throwing Dane in her face, she reacted.

  All the pain and anger she felt when he wasn’t there at Arlington the day her brother was laid to rest with honors had been festering away inside, and just burst out of her. She had to get better control of her emotions or she’d do something foolish, make a mistake, which could put the mission in jeopardy.

  The gate slid open and Jack got back in. He didn’t say anything to her as he drove the SUV through the gate, which closed once they had passed through. And the moment it closed it would electrify and there was an alarm that would be triggered by anyone intruding. There was another twisty drive, which took them deep into the forest to what looked like a cave but was actually a garage that Jack drove the SUV into.

  The moment the engine turned off, the lights inside flickered on and the door, which looked like a rock wall, slid shut.

  They were deep in a cement bunker.

  In a safe house with a safe connection through which she could dispatch the information on the USB to her commander in San Diego and wait for further instructions.

  She got out of the SUV and punched in the code to open another door, which led them into the house part of the bunker. Jack followed her, still not saying anything, but the tension between them was so thick you could cut it with a knife.

  She was still angry at him. And the pain she thought she’d dealt with was bubbling to the surface. Her hurt, her anger and her loneliness over his absence ran deeper than she thought.

  “What now?” he asked, crossing his arms and standing away from her.

  “I upload the information.” She reached into her bra to pull out the USB stick and she could see his gaze drift to her breasts, but she wasn’t worried about him taking the information. He was on her side and she knew that look.

  That look of hunger, the fire of passion igniting in him. She knew that’s what it was, because she was fighting the flames too.

  It had been so long since she’d been with a man. Only once since Jack disappeared had she had a brief relationship, but it didn’t create the heat or the chemistry that Jack stirred in her. Being celibate was a hell of a lot easier than the dating scene.

  Especially when she still only wanted him.

  Lisa sat down at the computer and inputted all the codes to access the secure line. There was a self-destruct in the computer if the bunker was infiltrated, a trigger system to wipe the hard drive if the wrong code was entered, and the USB stick could be easily disposed of.

  She plugged in the USB drive and, in a flash, the information loaded onto the server and was sent to her commander. She got the confirmation that it had made it.

  Now she needed to destroy the USB and wait for instructions. Lisa pulled it from the computer and then put it into the incinerator. Only the incinerator would take some time to fire up, so the USB sat there, waiting to be destroyed, but at least it was there now. It would be safely disposed of.

  “Now what?” Jack asked impatiently.

  “We wait for orders.”

  He frowned. “Here?”

  “This is a secure bunker.”

  “I would feel better if it were underground and not built into the side of a mountain.”

  “There are tunnels to escape through and a vehicle at the other end.”

  Jack nodded and relaxed his stance. “That’s good.”

  “I’m going to have a shower and maybe get something to eat.” She had to put distance between her and Jack before she did something she’d regret. Although her body thought it was a great idea to get reacquainted with Jack. Her heart, on the other hand, didn’t think it was too hot.

  “I’ll watch the security cameras.” Then he turned around in the small room, which only had a computer, a table, kitchenette and a bed in the corner. “Where can I watch the security cameras?”

&nb
sp; “The television there.” She pointed and then bit her lip, trying to keep back the request to conserve water and have him shower with her. She gripped the dog tags she wore to remind her that he left. He left her alone. He broke her heart.

  How many years had she been left wondering what happened to him? How many years did she watch the obituaries for his name to appear? How many times did she check coroner websites to check on John Does? Too many years.

  And all this time he was in Alaska and working for the Omega team.

  I can’t have him. He doesn’t want me. If he wanted me he wouldn’t have left.

  Jack glanced at her. “Was there something else you needed?”

  Yes. You. “No, I’m good. I’ll see you in a bit.”

  And she cursed herself inwardly for her weakness, for wanting him still after all this time, and she knew that a long, cold shower was in order.

  She may have survived the attack at the lab, but she knew she had a long battle ahead of her.

  Chapter Three

  The cold shower did nothing to cool her blood. All she could think about was Jack and the fact he was in the other room. She dried herself off and tended to her minor scrapes before pulling on her clothes, except her bra, which had been torn and was stained, and tying back her damp hair.

  She was hoping further instructions and a detailed plan about how they were going to be rescued was forthcoming. The last thing she wanted was to be stuck in this bunker with Jack for a week. There were certainly enough provisions, but a week with Jack in a confined space? That would certainly test her willpower.

  If he’s stuck, then can I get some answers about Dane and why he left.

  When she went into the other room she saw the incinerator was ready and she punched in the code, watching the USB render into ashes. When it was gone she turned to see Jack had fallen asleep watching the security camera, which showed nothing but the forest on the mountainside that hid them. Not even a lone bear to tantalize interest.

  No wonder he’d fallen asleep.

  She approached him slowly, to drink in the sight of him. He was so peaceful when he was asleep. There was a touch of grey in his wavy brown hair, but it just made him that much sexier. His face was slightly weathered from his work, a few creases in his strong jaw line, but the dimple in his chin had not been marred by Chemical Agent 1157.