The General silenced her with what sounded like more kissing. And more. The sighs and moans tortured Brock far more than the needles in his veins. Wildly, he fought the restraints, fought to break free and stop those moans and sighs until a sharp pain pierced his brow, and he could fight no more. He was forced to lie there and listen to Jocelyn cry out in pleasure, forced to listen to the slap of skin against skin. It went on for long, torturous minutes until finally, silence fell in the room, and Brock imagined with graphic explicitness that they were lying there naked, wrapped around each other. In that moment, he knew he would kill Powell, hunt him down, and make him pay for everything he had done to him. He wrapped his mind around that vow until a loud siren sounded and then turned off.
“Who would be at my front door at this time of night?” Jocelyn said, a scurry of activity following her words, as if she were dressing.
Door? That wasn’t a doorbell, Brock thought remotely. Where the hell were they?
“I’ll check the monitor,” Powell said. “You get dressed.”
The sound of a keyboard being punched… followed by Powell’s low curse.
“What?” Jocelyn said. “What is it?” She gasped, and Brock imagined she was looking at that monitor. “Oh, my God. My son is here. Michael is here.”
***
The minute his mother opened the door, the scent of sex lanced Michael’s nostrils, replacing the storm now fading into the distance. While his keen sense of smell had proven useful in battle, today it turned his stomach. Because there was more than sex mixed with that smell. There was something familiar he couldn’t quite identify. Something that screamed of menace and lies, a promise that this meeting was going to prove everything he expected it to be—that she was every bit as malicious as his father had ever been. That she would do whatever it took to be on top, including aligning herself with Adam.
“Hello, Mother.”
Jocelyn Taylor stared back at her son with the same crystal blue eyes he’d once possessed himself, with the kind of welcome reflected in their depths that one might give a tiger in the wild—a façade of regal indifference meant to show no fear that masked an underlying desire to bolt. He had no doubt that he looked like an angry tiger, ragged from battle, battered by the rain. But he’d come here with a feeling of urgency, out of some sense of obligation to her as her son to confirm whether she was guilty or not, before exposing her to the Renegades. The minute she appeared at the door, he already knew his answer—she was guilty. She’d always been just as guilty as his father.
“And here I thought you’d forgotten I existed,” she replied shortly.
“I’m sure you hoped as much,” he said dryly. “We need to talk.”
She tilted her head, studying him for several long seconds. The years had been kind to her, despite the demands of leading Taylor Industries—a task she’d begged Michael to undertake. But then, she had plenty of money to ease the effects of age.
“Come in,” she said finally, stepping back into the foyer to allow him entry. He entered the house he’d once called home—expensive Italian marble beneath his feet, etched, plate-glass windows lining high ceilings—and wished like hell he didn’t have to be there.
“This way,” she said.
He followed her down the hallway to the kitchen, a room he’d loved as a child, a place where cookies and milk had awaited him after school and holiday meals had been festive. But age had dispelled fairy tale families, and he’d discovered that his mother had been playing house at the expense of right and wrong, ignoring the immoral business practices of her husband, practices that had permitted that fantasy life. Apparently, she’d decided she was willing to take over where her husband had left off.
In a defensive posture, she placed the eight-foot, navy-blue, kitchen island between them. Neither of them bothered with a barstool.
Michael wasted no time getting down to business. He slapped the bullet on the tile counter. The color drained from her face.
“I see you finally managed to make Green Hornets market-worthy,” he said.
“Where did you get that?” she hissed.
“Dug it out of my rib cage,” he said. “I see you’re up to Dad’s old tricks, selling weapons to whoever will buy them regardless of consequence.”
“That’s impossible,” she countered.
“I promise you it’s not,” he said. “And I have friends, good men fighting for their country, who are now fighting for their lives because of those bullets. I want names. Who you sold them to, when, and in what quantities.” He wanted to know how the hell Zodius had even known that Green Hornets existed before they’d approached his mother. But then, Adam was always one to cover all his bases. He’d become like the mob—someone in every operation that might serve his needs.
She laughed without humor, crossed her arms in front of her chest. “That list is short. The U.S. Army. Period. There is no other customer. So if you’re shooting each other up with them, that’s not my problem.”
“You’re lying.” She could barely look him in the eye, but then, it had been a long time since she could—maybe all the way back to after-school cookies. She wasn’t that woman anymore—the perfect housewife and mother—if she ever had been.
She glared at him. “Don’t you dare come in here and pretend honor while you judge me, because we both know you’ve plenty to be judged on yourself. And your day is coming, Michael.”
“I want names,” he demanded, his tone dogmatic, harsh by design. “Who did you sell the Green Hornets to?”
“I’m not giving you anything,” she declared. “You certainly haven’t given a damn thing to me.”
“If even one more of these bullets ends up in one of our soldiers,” he said, “I promise you, I will make destroying you and Taylor Industries my life mission.”
That pale, plastic surgery-created face reddened. “What’s so pathetic,” she said, “is that I believe you. I believe my son would try and destroy me.”
“Your son died years ago,” he assured her. He’d come here for answers and hoped to find the loving mother he’d grown up with, not the enemy she’d become. Jesus Christ, he was a fool. He’d expected Cassandra to give up on her father, and yet he still hadn’t managed to do so with his mother. “Now. Let’s move past the talk. Let’s go to your computer.” He wasn’t about to take her word on anything.
Her eyes went wide. “Why would I do that?”
“Because I want more than the names of who you sold those bullets to. I want every last one stocked in your warehouses.” Alarm slid across her face, and she looked like she might refuse, so he added softly, “We can do this the easy way, Mother, or the hard way.”
She glowered, her gaze skittering to the gun and two knives strapped to his hips before she swallowed hard. Without looking at him, she turned on her heels and marched down the hall, turning to the office on the right that had once been his father’s.
He was behind her solid mahogany desk at the same moment she was, standing over her shoulder. She wasn’t doing anything he didn’t supervise. In fact, he reached over her shoulder and punched the HP notebook to life.
“Already logged in,” he scoffed. “I’m ashamed, Mother. You should be more careful.” He pointed to the visitor’s chair across from him. “Sit.” Her lips pursed, but she did as he said.
He pulled his gun and set it on the desk, reminding her how easily he could use it, and started typing. A second password screen pulled up the instant he typed in Green Hornets.
“What’s the password?”
“Michael,” she said, giving him a “go to hell” glare.
He didn’t miss the inference that she’d made those bullets to kill him and those like him. She hated him almost as much as he hated her. He typed in the password.
The information he needed quickly appeared on the screen, including storage location and past shipments, which indicated sales to only one buyer—the U.S. Army, just as she had said. Or those were the only sales documented.
“You won’t get away with this,” she vowed.
“Just dial,” he bit out.
The instant she hung up the phone, he snatched his cell and contacted the Renegade team. Purposely, he set it on the desk next to the gun.
“We’ll wait together while they retrieve the bullets,” he told her. “That way you can help me clear up any trouble they might run into.”
He typed in Red Dart, but came up with nothing. Tried several variations. Considered questioning her, but decided that would only make her bury Red Dart deeper before Sterling could find it. He popped in a backup drive. If she had anything on her computer, he’d get it. And he wanted the specs to manufacture those bullets for themselves.
His nostrils flared with the scent of sex again, and he narrowed his gaze on his mother. It was Powell; he could smell him. “Get up,” he said, grabbing the gun. If Powell was here, Michael was going to find him.
Chapter 19
For thirty minutes, he’d torn the house apart looking for Powell—the man who’d taken Cassandra from him the day he’d decided to lock away the X2s. The man who might well give Adam the power to destroy the American dream of a free world if he gained control of the government as he planned. That man had been in his mother’s bed. And knowing that Powell had slept with his mother had sent Michael into a maddening rage. Michael didn’t doubt for a minute that he was meant to know.
“Where is he, Mother?” Michael demanded, standing in the middle of her bedroom that dripped of silk, satin, and sex—with Powell. Or maybe that was just her. She smelled like sex. Damn, his sense of smell. This was torture. Knowing she’d been with him.
She sat on the edge of the bed, a smug look on her face. “I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“I’m losing patience,” he ground out between his teeth.
A thin dark brow arched. “And here I thought you were a man of control, like your father.”
Michael moved his neck from side to side as he drew a slow, agitated breath. “Make no mistake, Mother,” he said, low, lethal. “I am like my father. And we both know what he would have done if someone crossed him, now don’t we?” His father would have found a way to make them pay. Just as Michael intended to do.
If Powell were still here—and every instinct he owned, including his enhanced sense of smell, said he was—he was going to find him. He’d end this now, once and for all. He’d torture him for the location of Red Dart if that’s what it took. Screw digging through the trenches for his secrets. If Michael didn’t drag it out of Powell, eventually Adam would.
His cell phone rang. Michael snapped it to his ear to hear Caleb speak. “We have the bullets. The men are on the outskirts of Sunrise City waiting for us.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Michael told him, not about to leave until he was certain Powell wasn’t here.
Silence. “I’m on the front porch when you’re ready.”
Shock rolled through Michael. Caleb was here. He’d known Michael would need him. That shook him in ways even his mother could not. It reminded him he was bigger than this anger. Bigger than the past. He ended the call and attached his phone back onto his belt.
He eyed his mother with contempt and walked out of the room. He didn’t stop until he stepped onto the front porch and shut the door. He and Caleb stood there side-by-side for several silent moments. “Everything okay?” Caleb asked, leaning on the banister.
Michael crossed his arms in front of him. “Powell is fucking my mother. Pretty sure he was here when I arrived, but I couldn’t find him. I’m thinking he’s underground. Otherwise, I would have found him.”
Caleb’s brow arched. “And you were going to do what if you did?”
“Beat the crap out of him, make him tell me where Red Dart is, and then kill him.” It wasn’t the answer Caleb, who believed Powell would die before he talked, would want to hear, but that didn’t stop Michael from being honest.
“Not exactly the plan we discussed,” Caleb said dryly. “At least with Powell alive, we know who has Red Dart. He’s the devil we know, as the old saying goes. Better than the snake in the grass we can’t see.”
Michael turned and eyed the house. Caleb seemed to read where his thoughts were going and said, “We’ll bring a team back and do a thorough search.” He pushed off the banister. “For now, let’s go unload your anger and some of those Green Hornets on the Zodius hanging out at our front door. We need to know our men are safe.”
Michael nodded. He was all about a little anger management in the form of killing a few Zodius soldiers right about now. It might be the only thing that would keep him from where he really wanted to be—in Cassandra’s bed. And if there was anything a visit to his mother was good for—it was to remind him of all the reasons he didn’t belong there. Yet, if there was ever a time he needed that little taste of heaven Cassandra was to him—it was now.
***
“I told you not to use those bullets until after Red Dart was in place!” Jocelyn shouted the minute she entered the lab where Powell waited impatiently. “He’s connected me to you! He’ll connect me to Red Dart if he hasn’t already!” She sucked in a shaky breath, no longer yelling, but still irritatingly shrill. “I told you Michael would know where they came from. We’ve had this technology for years. He was a stockholder. He saw the reports. My son is ten times more dangerous than his father ever was. He’ll help Adam take over the world. He will. And he’s going to come for Taylor Industries. He’ll take my research. I don’t know why he hasn’t already.”
Holy hell, she was crying. He’d wanted her to fear Michael, to see him as a threat, to use her guilt over the discovery that her dead husband had been a monster and she’d been blind to it, even helped him take innocent lives in the name of money. And it had been easy—she’d wanted a reason to feel she hadn’t wronged her son as well by thinking him a monster, by shunning him for most of his adult life. She’d wanted a reason to do something right. And his plan had worked. Maybe too well. A hysterical female was the last thing Powell needed right now. “Control yourself, Jocelyn, and act like—”
“A soldier?” she screamed. “I am not a soldier. I am the woman you promised—”
He grabbed her, shook her. “Get a grip on yourself, woman. I would not be foolish enough to use those bullets and show my hand before we are ready,” he said. “They were part of our plan. A double hit. Kill or control. Think about what you are accusing me of, Jocelyn, and you will see it’s insanity. Someone deceived us.”
“I thought you made sure that couldn’t happen,” she said and repeated frantically. “You said you had ways to make sure.”
Powell needed to think. He set her roughly away from him.
“General—”
“Shut up, Jocelyn,” he barked. Now, he remembered why he hated involving women in important matters. “I cannot think with your incessant chattering.” A look of shock registered on her face, and he turned away before he was forced to endure the tears sure to follow.
He had no time for this. He’d come too far, too close to the realization of Red Dart to falter now. His mind tracked through the possible ways this could have happened.
Powell turned to the bed where West rested. West was the only one who’d had contact with Zodius. The only one who had access to artillery logged in at the base. And the only man who knew what a certain “top-secret” unit contained.
“It was West,” he said, fury forming inside him. He snatched up a letter opener from the desk and walked through the open glass door framing West’s bed. He stopped by the bed and drove the letter opener into West’s leg. West gasped and tried to sit up, his eyes bugging out of his head.
“Oh my God!” Jocelyn screamed. “What are you doing?!” She grabbed Powell’s arm.
Powell stared down at her. “Control yourself before I have you controlled.”
> Shock filtered through her expression, and her grip loosened and fell. Powell turned away and yanked the blade from West’s leg whose face was contorted with pain. “You know what I love about a GTECH?” he asked. “All the pain and damage I can cause without killing you. I inflict injury. You heal. I cut some more.” He slammed the letter opener back into West’s leg. And left it there. “I know you gave Zodius the Green Hornets. Why?”
“I didn’t do it,” Brock gasped. “I wouldn’t do that.”
“Lies make me want to cause more pain.” He ripped the blade out of West’s leg.
“I didn’t do it! Please! No more! I hate Lucian. I want him on his knees begging for mercy. I would not help Lucian!”
Powell considered him a moment. He would believe him about as readily as he would stick his hand in a tank of piranhas. He shoved the blade back into Brock’s leg, reveling at his grunt. Pain would teach him to control himself. “You might think you’ve buried the records to hide what you did, but I will find proof. You’re lying, and I intend to make you pay for it.”
He turned to find Dr. Chin standing beside Jocelyn. “Don’t even consider stitching him up. And leave the blade in his leg. I want it to heal there. A little reminder about what will happen when he crosses me. Otherwise we continue as planned. We’ll use Red Dart to break him.”
He cast Jocelyn a cold stare. He despised weakness. She’d proven today she was best kept beneath him, not beside him. “You just make sure you’re ready with Red Dart when Chin says ‘go.’”
“What about Michael?” Her voice quavered slightly.
He arched a brow. “What about him?”
“He’ll come back.”
“And we’ll be ready,” he assured her. “In fact, we will welcome the visit. If Michael comes to us, we don’t have to hunt him down. I hope he brings others with him. He will be tagged with Red Dart, then broken and controlled, like all the GTECHs. They will become our protectors, not our captors. It seems only appropriate that Michael be the first to fall, considering the hell he made both our lives.” His lips twitched. “His fall will give us another reason to celebrate.” His attention shifted to Chin. “Call me when we’re ready to begin.” He glanced at his watch, calculating the time needed to test Red Dart and prepare before the next nightfall. He didn’t dare delay longer. “You have ten hours.”
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