Unstoppable

by Long, Heather

  He stood and stalked back and forth across the room. Every step he took seemed a hammer driving a nail deeper into her heart. She had no idea why admitting it to him would cause her such pain, yet she was admitting she’d believed something only to discover it hurt him, too.

  She opened her mouth to say something more, but Drake held up a hand, the universal sign of asking for a moment. Understanding that he needed that time, she gave it to him. Yet, she couldn’t help replaying there earlier moments and contrasting them with the way he looked right now. When the silence dragged on and on, she couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Drake…”

  “Joss, please.” His politeness damn near undid her. “I need a moment. Up until right now, you hadn’t mentioned the bag and tag teams—not when we showed you the patients, not when I rescued you on the street, and not when we were talking about it. I get that I kidnapped you—”

  “Point of order,” she interrupted, ignoring his earlier request. “I already accepted your apology, and I understand what you did it.” Even though he glared at her while she spoke, Joss let it go. “And until the moment I mentioned the bag and tag team… I didn’t fully make the connection or how my interest in that team was so closely allied with what you were investigating.”

  “How the hell could you not know? You’re not a stupid woman.”

  Well, it was kind of a compliment, despite the way he delivered it.

  “I know I’m not a stupid woman, and when I spotted you following me that first night, I thought you might be one of those guys. I swear to you, the only thing I knew about these bag and tag teams comes from passing conversation with one of the other guys on the team because I was interested in joining. It sounded like someplace where my skills could be utilized since they were after people who had been bio enhanced, enemies of the state, who were here to cause trouble and create destruction.” The air practically rattled out of her, and she realized she was shaking as she spoke. Was she shaking in fear of what her world was becoming? Was she shaking because it terrified her how close she had come to actually hunting him? Maybe a bit of both. “Maybe you can see how what you do and what you are is what they’re looking for?”

  “I don’t have to see what they see. I know they are hunting us. They took two of my closest friends, my brothers, people I’ve served with. I know exactly what they’re looking for and why they’re looking for it.”

  Yeah, that didn’t make her feel any better either, but why should it? “Bag and tag teams run with four to eight members. Four men usually work together to identify and corral a target, while the other four lay in reserve, usually for ambush.” He needed to know everything she knew. Unfortunately, what she knew wasn’t much. “They’re all special ops, highly trained, and I think, or at least I believe, their training is enhanced by what they learned from the company.”

  Drake stopped pacing, and his attention laser focused on her. It was as though he could stare right into her soul, but she didn’t flinch or look away. She met his gaze and held it.

  “There are times when they go out with bigger bag and tag teams, as needed. Then you’re looking at anywhere from eight to sixteen operatives. I’ve only seen them do that once…at least, in person.”

  Drake didn’t twitch or move a muscle. “You were on duty when Michael and Rex were taken, weren’t you?”

  Based on what she knew, the timing sounded about right. She didn’t keep track of specific dates and times when she saw the bag and tag team, though. “I believe so, yes.”

  He flexed his hands, his knuckles seeming massive as the skin stretched across them. The action seemed to swell his presence, and she could almost feel the power rolling off him. “The bag and tag team went out. Did they come back while you were on shift?”

  As much as she didn’t want to answer with the truth, she nodded to the affirmative.

  The great man looked like he wanted to punch something and, for a moment, she almost wished he would let it out. As if hearing her thoughts, or maybe needing it more than she imagined, he turned and slammed his fist into the wall. The solid metal released a gong of noise that was damn near deafening. The dent his fist left in the metal made her flinch.

  Holy crap, how bio-enhanced is he? No sooner did the thought take root than she wanted to banish it. Bio-enhanced didn’t mean evil. Violent hands didn’t mean sleeper soldiers.

  Or did it?

  Dammit. She had to pick a side, and she thought she had. But it was like joining a major-league team without a rulebook or a playbook, then be expected to catch the ball on the fifty-yard line from a quarterback she didn’t even know was in the game. At least, that was what she thought it would be like, if she knew anything about sports based on what she’d heard the guys yelling about at her house on Sundays when her parents had guests over. Oh, man, her head was killing her.

  “When they came back, what did they do?” No emotion in his voice, and no anger. No curiosity. No inflection whatsoever.

  Joss closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She replayed that night’s patrol through her head. In a standard grid pattern, she’d walked the walls, and she’d encountered her counterpart on the three various rotating spots. It hadn’t been a particularly hot, cold, or even wet night. Beyond the bag and tag team leaving, it been a fairly standard day, standard evening shift pattern… Though she had been asked to work extra hours because they needed more guards on tap. Okay, Joss, there is a second clue. But for now, she let that go while adding it to the box of facts she needed to flay herself with later.

  “Joss?”

  She held up her hand, mimicking his earlier request. “One minute. I need to figure this out. I’m replaying in my head.”

  She had a dinner break around 1930 hours. When she got into the break room, she’d purchased some nasty burritos out of the vending machine. They tasted like ass, but the best kind of ass. The heavier the filling, and denser the beans and meat, the better they were for answering her hunger. They were also loaded with fat carbs and nutrients. Considering how much walking and marching she’d done in the prior twelve hours, it had been the perfect meal for her.

  It was while she was eating the burritos that the first crew came back in. She had just taken her second bite when… “Yes, I was there, only I was there when the team came back in because they’d met with someone. I think someone who knew the bio-enhanced and had set them up for meeting or something? I wasn’t clear on that detail. Maybe they mentioned a mole in the group? A mole they were to meet at a certain time and in a place where he’d arranged to isolate a guy for a grab. Their greater problem was that they were after a cell of five, and they wanted to pick them off…”

  Drake’s fist slammed into the wall again. The resulting sound rumbling through the building didn’t quite phase her as much the second time as it had the first.

  “That’s not helping my thought process, here. I’m trying to remember all the details.”

  “Now would be a good time for us to talk to Simon, except he can’t read you.” The cold fire in his words unnerved her.

  Well, that was news to her, and for a moment she just stared at him as she realized he’d told her earlier about his initial plan. “That’s why you said there were three things that went wrong.”

  A single nod was his response. “Simon couldn’t get in your head. He says it’s rare, but it does happen. Your thoughts are either too guarded or maybe you’re just not built that way. It doesn’t matter, he couldn’t read your mind then. Maybe if you allowed it, he could go in there and stimulate those thoughts. Discover whatever it was you saw or heard.”

  If he thought reaching out to Simon would help... “I’m game if he is.”

  To her amazement, Drake shook his head. “No way in hell.”

  No way in hell? Dammit, wasn’t this the guy who wanted her to remember every detail? Why wouldn’t he want her to let the telepath in? It made no damn sense. They possessed powers she could barely imagine, and yet they appeared to be on the side of the
angels. While her employers experimented on innocents. It made her one of the bad guys.

  Bad guys.

  Hating the very idea of it, she committed to a new vocabulary and job. “I thought you said he could go in and he could pull all the information forward. Wouldn’t that help your cause?”

  With a sigh, the big man came over to where she was sitting and dropped into the chair opposite her. For a moment, she could’ve sworn she saw the legs sort of warp then straighten, as though the force with which he hit it was so far more significant than the weight he presented when he sat.

  Not one for touchy-feely, she still reached across and to and grabbed his hand. The guy looked as though he really needed a hug. While they hadn’t made it from kidnapping to hugging, she couldn’t help but feel that, at the rate they were going, they would probably get there. For now, she settled for squeezing his hand and giving him a moment to compose himself.

  He stared her hand touching his, a perplexed frown wrinkling his brow, the puzzlement creeping into his gaze. “I don’t want him in your head, even if he could get into it.”

  Okay, that. Joss didn’t want him in her head either. Really crossed the line from kidnapping to—well, to something. She needed to let go of the kidnapping thing, although she wasn’t sure she was ever going to be able to. Maybe she just needed time to process… Oh, how she hated that word.

  “Right after I got back from my second deployment, I was kind of a mess.” She didn’t know why she told him, but the words came tumbling out. “Three times I thought about eating my gun. I don’t even know why. I’ve been in battle, I’d seen some of the worst of humanity. I might also have seen some of the best. I didn’t lose anyone particularly close to me, but I would say every death there was a death of a fellow serviceman. I saw more than my fair share of the bloody aftermaths when an IED went off. It didn’t matter. When I got back here—I don’t know if you can understand this—this world that I thought I knew. The city that I grew up in. These people that I had spent years hanging out with, partying with, and this being a part of their lives—it was like they were all strangers, and I was standing on some alien soil. I didn’t fit anymore. Somehow, the world had changed.”

  Though he said nothing, Drake’s thumb began to stroke against the back of her hand.

  “I thought if I shoved it down and said it didn’t matter and then I told myself it didn’t matter and I said I had to just suck it up because you know I was soldier and this is what I did. When the time came for me to muster out, I knew what I was supposed to do, and I knew exactly the order I was supposed to do it in. But at home, nothing made it better. Finally, I snapped and I punched my best friend. I didn’t mean to, but she said something stupid and asinine, so I hit her. I scared everybody else more than that I scared myself.”

  “I’m not minimizing your sharing,” Drake said, his puzzlement being replaced by something akin to wonder. “But quarrels happen between friends. We’ve been known to hit each other from time to time. Well, I don’t. If I hit them, well, I could really hurt someone. But the other guys hit each other sometimes.” For a moment, deep sadness appeared in his eyes, and she realized he was missing them. Missing his brothers who had been taken. A fresh well of determination settled in the pit of her stomach.

  “I get that. My friend, she wasn’t a fighter or even in the military. She was a girl I grew up with and, for one moment, I really wanted to kill her. For those split seconds, she wasn’t my best friend, she was an enemy, and I wanted to put her down hard. That wasn’t right, that can never be right.” Blowing out a breath, she tightened her hold on his hand, drawing a strength from him she didn’t particularly have a right to, but she needed it nonetheless. “So, I went to see a therapist. Worst twelve months of my life, but… It worked. I was struggling with depression and anxiety. She taught me that just forcing myself to be functional, then being infuriated with myself for it, wasn’t allowing me to process my experiences.”

  “What the hell does process the experience mean?”

  Joss had to laugh. He’d just asked the one question that had plagued her through all of her therapeutic sessions. “Damned if I know. I think she meant I needed time to sort it all out in my head and put it in the proper categories, or maybe I just needed time to get the hell over myself. I don’t know, all I know is that I got better. But that’s not helping you find your friends right now.”

  “I think you’ve been helping me quite a bit.” They shared a long look, neither one speaking. She realized that Drake was grasping her hand nearly as tightly as she held his.

  After prolonged moment, he said, “Tell me about what happened in the break room.”

  Closing her eyes once more, Joss began to replay the scene. “There was a mole. He met with the first team and told them he could draw out at least one, maybe two, of the bio-enhanced. He didn’t know where all of them were, but it was better to cut them one at a time to improve their odds of taking them in. The mole was worried he would blow his cover.” Somehow, the whole thing seemed almost surreal, but she could hear the team lead laughing about how concerned the mole was. Because what the mole didn’t know was once he’d expired his usefulness… “That’s it.” She snapped her fingers on her free hand.

  “What’s it?”

  “The mole! The mole had a partner. They were both enhanced, but their usefulness would expire the moment they brought in those targets, the moment they blew their covers.” Again, she trembled as excitement threaded through her. “That’s why think the first team came back. They needed a second team for backup, because once they took down the enhanced—I’m sorry, your friends—they planned to bring them back. But they had to have all their resources in place, and a third team would be needed on site when they brought them in.”

  She blew out a breath. “That’s when they noticed that I was standing there. One of the senior officers snapped at me that I shouldn’t be in the break room, and I needed to get my ass back on patrol. I didn’t think too much of it at the time, because I know how hopped up soldiers get in the middle of an op. It was also easier to just roll with it. I wished them luck then returned to my post. I was to be relieved an hour later, but my replacement was pulled to another assignment and they deployed me to the farthest end of the campus, on the opposite side of the Cavanaugh building.”

  Of course. She could have kicked herself.

  “That’s it. That’s it. The Cavanagh building is only used for research, and it’s above my pay grade, but the activity level of the Cavanagh building was through the roof, and they had every available operative on site.” She slammed her free hand on the table. “If they have your guys there at that facility, then they have to be in the Cavanagh building.” Triumph speared her. By God, she had known something useful.

  Then Drake kissed her.

  Chapter 11

  The feel of her lips beneath his utterly captivated Drake. He didn’t even know when he made the decision to seize her for the kiss. Only touching her became imperative. He had to taste her. Maybe her declaration of being on their side invited him. Maybe her forgiveness and acceptance of his apology welcomed him. Maybe the surge of excitement as she sought some elusive information to help them compelled him. Maybe the fact she was simply the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, as well as the strongest, had fascinated him from the beginning.

  All he knew, as he leaned across the table and laid his lips against hers, was that she tasted like sweet vanilla ice cream on a hot summer’s day. He could almost taste the heaps of chocolate syrup, whipped cream, and nuts… Not that she was a confection, but she was fantastic to him. Though Joss had released a gasp when he first planted his mouth on hers, she didn’t reject his touch. In fact, as his lips continued to massage hers, she cupped his face. When he would have withdrawn, her fingers tightened against him. The press of them a sweet pleasure on his skin, drawing him closer. Her tongue teased along the seam of his lips and all of his good intentions—or at least, what good intentions he’d manage
d to summon—fled.

  Opening his mouth, he accepted the invitation and their tongues stroked against each other. Shocks of electric sensation arced through him a thousand times more powerful than the Taser. He couldn’t get enough. Whether he moved the table or she climbed across it, suddenly she pressed against his chest. Shaping his hands to her hips, he focused on her decadence. She gave as good as she got.

  Her tongue traced a path against his, thrusting then retreating and beckoning his tongue to follow. It was the greatest game of hide and seek he’d ever played. His chest seemed tighter, and he couldn’t draw in enough breath, but he didn’t care. The staccato rhythm of his heart hammering against his ribs seemed a demand for freedom. With a lightness of touch, she caressed his cheeks as though she traced his tattoo—

  His tattoo.

  Sobering at the thought, he released her and pulled his head away.

  “No,” she breathed raggedly.

  Drake couldn’t shake the coldness suddenly invading his cells. Confusion laced with pleasure reflected in her eyes. Like him, she couldn’t seem to catch her breath.

  “What’s wrong?” Her voice had grown huskier, an almost throaty sound. The caress of it went straight to his balls, and he had to suppress a shudder as fresh shock danced along his spine.

  “I shouldn’t have done that,” was the first thing we came to mind. He wasn’t wrong, he simply shouldn’t have.

  “Shouldn’t have done what?” Was she playing obtuse on purpose? She stroked her tongue across her lower lip, and he couldn’t help but let his gaze be riveted to the action.

  Forcing his fingers to loosen, he pulled his hands away from her hips. Though he managed to let her go, she didn’t release him. As long as her hands held fast to his cheeks, he wouldn’t move an inch. “I shouldn’t have kissed you. My apologies.”

  “Apology not accepted.”

  Surprise filtered through his system, and he couldn’t help but give her a quizzical look. “Why not?”