“Carrie is waiting at home for her next ride,” he said as she settled into the seat, and then softened his voice as he added, “or ours,” remembering all too clearly a night they’d made love in that car. That had been a feat, considering it was small, and he was big, but a pleasurable feat. From the pink flush on Cassandra’s pale cheeks, he knew she remembered that night as well. “She’s missed you.”
Her lips parted, full, tempting, and the only thing stopping him from kissing her was the need to get her to safety. “Then why isn’t she here?”
“We’re headed toward some hard desert terrain. Carrie doesn’t like hard desert terrain. I can’t exactly wind-walk amongst the general population, so believe me I’d take her speed and agility any day over Frank here.” He patted the truck’s dash.
She snorted, delicately. Cute. Damn, he loved everything about this woman.
“Frank?” she laughed and shook her head. “You and your nicknames.”
Good. Laughter. Keep her mind off danger. “I’ve been eyeing a white vintage Mustang. I need another Carrie.”
He started to shut the door, contemplating the many ways to change her mind, when the wind whispered a warning. His gaze snapped upward and did a quick scan.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” Cassandra’s hand touched his chest, warm, insistent.
“Someone is watching us.” He reached across her and popped the glove box open, displaying a Browning 9 mm pistol. “Lock the doors, and lie on the floorboard.”
Cassandra grabbed his arm. “Let’s just leave,” she said. “Drive away. I don’t want you to get hurt again.”
His gut clenched with her concern. No one but Cassandra had ever worried about him. He grabbed her. Kissed her fast and hard. “I’ll be fine,” he said and shut the door on her before she could stop him, already following the wind’s direction.
Abruptly, he turned to the blue Toyota 4Runner across and to the right. Someone was hiding behind that vehicle. He wind-walked behind it and found the crouching male behind the front bumper.
Michael grabbed the man by the neck and found his ineffective attempts at escape confirmation that he was human. The buzz-cut and stoic demeanor spelled out military despite his street clothing. If he worked for Adam and was here to kill Cassandra, he was dead. If he was here to spy for Powell, well… he was dead. Allowing Powell to know Cassandra was with him wasn’t an option. That would shut her out of her father’s trust and destroy her chances of getting to Red Dart. Probably the Renegades’ chances too, as Powell would increase his security measures.
But before he killed the man, he needed to know for certain if Powell was suspicious of his own daughter.
Michael jacked the guy against the wall, holding all two-hundred-plus pounds of him dangling above the pavement. “What the flip is your problem!” the man demanded, indignant, unruffled when he should have been.
Michael dug his fingers into the man’s flesh, giving him an idea of the amount of pain he could inflict. “Who are you working for, soldier, and why are you here?”
“Let me go,” the man grunted. “I’m not working for anyone!”
“Right. You just like crawling around behind cars.”
“I was checking my tires!”
“Don’t fuck with me,” Michael growled. “Who the hell are you working for?”
“You’re flipping insane, man. I have no idea what you are talking about.”
Michael ground his teeth, spoke tightly. “Did whoever sent you tell you who I am?” he asked, well aware of his reputation. “Did they tell you how capable I am of killing you without blinking an eye?”
“I told you, man,” the soldier said, “I was checking my tires.”
The wind gusted with warning, and Michael yanked the man to the ground and behind a car, bullets splattering all around them. But not soon enough. The man went limp, a bullet between his eyes.
Fuck! More bullets. Cassandra. Michael left the man behind, ordering the wind to surround his truck, create a windshield, a buffer that he was capable of holding no more than sixty seconds.
He wind-walked to the driver’s side of the vehicle and held his position, listened for a message in the wind. The shooters were dead. That was the extent of what he understood. Often he didn’t understand at all, but that was improving.
Michael popped the door handle and climbed into the truck, quickly turning on the engine. “Stay down until I tell you otherwise.”
“I thought they wanted to make it look like an accident?” she asked from the floorboard. “Shooting at me in the middle of a public place is not an accident.”
“Did any gunfire hit the truck?” he asked, keeping his eyes on the road as he scanned for attackers.
“I don’t think so,” she said, and then with more certainty. “No. Now that you mention it, I don’t think any bullets hit the truck at all.”
“You can get off the floor now, sweetheart, but stay low in your seat,” he said. “I think the shooters were after me, not you. That means this was your father.”
She eased into the seat, lying with her head on the door below the window, feet on the seat. “Please tell me, no,” she said. “If he knows I’m with you, Michael, that hard drive will be it for me. I won’t get anything else out of him.”
Michael wasn’t sure what more she could do anyway with Adam trying to kill her, but he didn’t say that. “It’s doubtful your father is going to find out I was with you,” he said, which was good, if not for the very real threat of a Zodius attack. “Someone killed the shooters.”
“I don’t understand,” she said. “Was it Zodius?”
He nodded. “It had to be.”
“Why would they keep either of us alive? And why aren’t they attacking now?”
Michael’s jaw set, and he reached for his phone to call Caleb. They were going to need backup to make it to Sunrise City. “Adam doesn’t want me dead, or we wouldn’t be driving away. He wants me alive. So he can torture me. And for whatever reason, the Zodius didn’t feel they were ready to stand against me back there.”
But they’d be back, sooner than later, and Michael had to be sure Cassandra was out of the line of fire when it happened.
***
Perched on a rooftop across from Cassandra’s condo, Brock’s attempt to kill Michael had failed. He’d killed a soldier, which had left him no choice but to kill the other three. If he couldn’t kill Michael before he left with Cassandra, no one could live to tell Powell she was with him.
His one last shot at Michael had been a prime one. Michael had opened the truck door, preparing to get in. Brock had prepared to take the shot, when suddenly his weapon had been yanked from his hands.
Brock had whirled around to face his attacker—Lucian. “What the fuck?”
“You will not kill Michael,” Lucian said. “Adam wants him alive. You saved him from his attackers, yet you try to shoot him yourself.”
“I didn’t want anyone else getting the credit,” he lied, and quickly drew the attention elsewhere. “I thought we wanted him dead. If you’re trying to capture Michael, you’re failing, just as you did at killing Cassandra Powell.”
Lucian glared. “Michael and Cassandra are about to take a nice long drive on a deserted section of Highway 95. They won’t last the night.” He raised Brock’s weapon and pointed it between his eyes. “And you won’t last the week if you don’t get me Red Dart.” He disappeared into the wind, taking the weapon with him.
Brock punched at the air and took off running. He had to get to the base. He needed to convince Powell to inject him now because if Lucian had his way, Cassandra wouldn’t be returning home. Powell had charged him with her protection, but she’d be dead by morning.
Brock climbed into his truck and slammed the door just about the time his cell rang. He eyed the screen. Powell. His gut clenched. He was sitting in front of Cassandra’s apartment—four of Powell’s men were dead, and his daughter had just left with Michael. That kind of timing screamed of a fly s
tuck in shit.
He answered. “Yes sir, General.”
“Under the Speedway Bridge at I-15 at 2300,” he said. “You’ll be transported to our facility from there.” The line went dead.
Brock sat there in stunned disbelief. A meeting under a bridge in the middle of the night. This damn sure wasn’t standard protocol, but then neither was anything to do with Red Dart. Powell was secretive about his lab.
Brock didn’t consider himself a wuss, but he was shaking clear through to his bones. He was excited. He was scared. He was aroused just thinking of the power that would soon flow through his veins. This could be the day his life changed forever.
Chapter 15
Only a few minutes after being sprawled out on the floorboard of the truck certain she was going to die, Cassandra watched in surprise as Michael pulled off Las Vegas Boulevard and into the parking garage of the Neonopolis Entertainment Center. He cut a hard right to the lower level of the twenty-thousand-square-foot facility.
“Please tell me why we are in a shopping mall?”
“Neonopolis is more than a shopping mall,” he said. “It’s a full entertainment center with movies and games. It’s also a great cover for our inner-city operation in the basement. Crowds discourage wind-walking and battles. Even Adam doesn’t want to be known to the public. Not yet. Not until he’s ready to take over.”
She shivered with that comment. “Don’t say that as if it’s going to happen. Like it’s just a matter of time.”
He stopped the truck in front of a steel wall, and then punched a code into his cell phone. The doors opened with rocket speed. He put the truck back in gear. “I’d kill him before I let that happen.”
She frowned, realizing the question in the back of her mind that had been niggling with demand. “Why didn’t you kill him while you were in Zodius City?”
He pulled into a parking spot next to Carrie, and her chest squeezed with memories.
“Oh I wanted to,” Michael assured her, putting the truck in park and killing the engine. “You have no idea how I salivated to kill that man. Would have done it the day of the Area 51 takeover, but the bastard had enough explosives strapped on his person and planted all over the facility to kill everyone in the place if his heart stopped beating. Caleb and I both figured I’d kill him the minute he unhooked himself, but Adam is thorough. He has chemical weapons set to go off in several major U.S. cities upon his death. I’ve never been able to find out who holds the remote. That’s why he remains untouchable.”
This was almost too much to comprehend. “He’s frightening. All of this is frightening.” A realization came over her, and her gaze snapped to Michael’s. “That’s why you stayed inside Zodius so long? Trying to find out how to kill him without civilian casualties?”
“Yes,” he said softly. “And not just causalities, Cassandra. Mass causalities. Hundreds of thousands of people. I never planned to be gone two years. I was supposed to be in and out—I was going to kill Adam, and the Renegades would attack his followers. It would be over. But nothing is simple with Adam.” He shoved open the door. “We need to move. We aren’t far enough underground to keep the Trackers from finding you, and the high concentration of people above ground will only mildly dilute your psychic energy enough to slow them down, not stop them.”
Cassandra swallowed hard at that announcement and popped open her door. She was being hunted. Would this hell ever end? She stepped to the back of the truck as Sterling exited the elevators a few feet away and approached in a casual saunter, his long, blond hair tied at his neck, weapons strapped to his shoulder, one to his jean-clad hip.
Cassandra listened as Michael replayed what went down at her condo. “Holy fuck,” Sterling said, running a hand over his face and then casting Cassandra a teal-green apologetic look created by contacts. Unlike the other GTECHs, Sterling could not mask his eye color from humans. No one knew why.
“Sorry Cass,” he offered quickly.
She snorted. “I’m just glad to be alive to hear you curse, Sterling.” She’d known Sterling since Area 51 and always liked him. “Besides, I’m fairly immune to soldier talk. All I care about right now is getting that hard drive data decoded.”
“I’ve never met a government code I couldn’t crack,” he said with a cocky wink. “Michael might be better at scorching someone with a single dark look, but I’m the man with the computer skills.”
Cassandra laughed. She’d forgotten the way Sterling teased Michael and the way Michael scowled in return. She’d missed it. And the little hint of light in Michael’s eyes told her—he had too. She realized then that those two years inside Zodius must have been hell for him, and she wondered what kind of inner strength it had taken to survive that. For the first time, she felt something more than anger at him for what he’d done. She felt pride.
“I should have it open by the time you two head for the trams,” Sterling assured her. “Which better be all of fifteen minutes or the Trackers will be all over us.”
“Trams?” Cassandra asked, casting Michael a questioning look and trying not to think about the Trackers.
“We’ll travel through a series of hotels by way of the connecting trains,” Michael explained. “Then we’ll walk through each hotel. It should confuse the Tracker’s senses long enough to get a good start on the highway. A team of Renegades will travel ahead and behind us from there.”
She bit her bottom lip, her throat suddenly dry. “Because eventually the Trackers are going to catch up to us,” she said, and it wasn’t a question. Neither Michael nor Sterling denied that statement. They didn’t have to. They all knew—the Zodius were coming for both her and Michael.
A few minutes later, Cassandra stood munching on a PowerBar and drinking orange juice in a room full of computer monitors and electronic gadgets. Michael had put down six bars and some sort of liquid supplement drink and was popping the top on a second. Sterling sat at the computer panel, keying like crazy, all kinds of green and white code popping up on the screen.
“How do you feel?” Michael asked softly, studying her.
She nodded. “Better,” she said. “Just tired. Wishing I was like you guys right about now and needed only a couple hours of sleep here or there.” She really wished for the past right now—to be back at Area 51 before any of this happened, curled to Michael’s side after eating a great meal and watching a movie.
He stared at her a moment, as if he too might be thinking of the past, and then cut Sterling a look. “We’re on borrowed time here, man. What do you have?”
“Hold your breath and count to sixty,” Sterling said. “I need one more minute.”
Michael cursed and grabbed the newspaper under Sterling’s arm. Sterling cut him a look. “There are similar stories in four states.”
“What is it?” Cassandra asked. “What’s going on?”
Michael tossed the paper down. “More missing women,” he said. “Most of whom are probably already dead.”
Bile rose in her throat, and she set her PowerBar on the counter behind her. “Dead? I thought they were just experimenting?” Just experimenting. God. That sounded horrible.
“Ava has a new fertility treatment she’s developed from her pregnancy hormones,” he said. “Problem is—the women only have a 50 percent chance of surviving the process.”
“She’s pregnant?”
“Giving birth to the devil’s spawn,” Sterling said, over his shoulder, still keying.
“That was the unavoidable situation that kept Caleb from calling you the night we gave you that phone,” Michael explained. “We rescued fifty of the hundred women there. I had to blow my cover to get them out.”
“What about the other fifty?” Cassandra asked.
“So brainwashed they stayed,” Michael said. “At least half of them are probably dead now.” He scrubbed his jaw. “All we did was cause more women to be kidnapped.”
“That’s not true,” Cassandra said. “You saved fifty women, and it will take time for them
to replace those women. No matter what, fewer women will die.”
“Not unless we stop Adam,” he countered.
Sterling turned around, running his hands down his legs. “I’m working with law enforcement to spread certain abduction profiles around the country. Bulletins are going out with public warnings.” He shifted subjects. “Okay. The backup data. To start, Powell has two hundred troops headed to Dreamland in a few days.”
“That’s right,” Cassandra said. “All training to fight Zodius.”
“I don’t like it,” Sterling said. “Not with the threat Red Dart represents to the Renegades.”
“Agreed,” Michael said. “I say Dreamland needs to have a little mishap that keeps those soldiers from reporting.”
Cassandra shook her head, pushing off the counter she’d been leaning on. “If anything happens to Dreamland, my father will be suspicious.”
Sterling grimaced. “I’ll see if I can hack West’s email,” he said. “I should be able to redirect their orders. Have them sent somewhere else. Make it look like a computer hiccup. That will buy us a few days to find Red Dart.”
Cassandra let out a breath. “That should work.”
“What else?” Michael asked. “Because we have to roll.”
“Powell has Green Hornets,” Sterling said. “I’m assuming Brock gave them to Zodius since we know he’s in bed with Lucian.”
“Maybe,” Michael said. “Or maybe it simply means my mother is as big a bitch as my father was a bastard. Selling to our government and the enemy at the same time.”
“What?” Cassandra and Sterling said in unison.
“Those bullets are made by Taylor Industries,” he said grimly.
“Your family business?” Cassandra asked, cringing in memory of the day she’d looked up Michael’s file and realized his family connection, acting on her concern that her father was using that connection for personal gain.
“That’s right,” he said with a short nod.
Sterling arched a brow. “You’re freaking kidding me.”
“I wish I was,” Michael said. “It’s technology that was back-burnered years ago. The bullets imploded inside the weapons and injured the user. Obviously, they found a way around that. And Mommy Dearest doesn’t think twice about selling to a terrorist if the money is good. If my mother is involved with the Green Hornets, a weapon being used against GTECHs, it seems highly probable that she is involved with Red Dart, another weapon designed to be used against GTECHs. One to kill and one to control. Powell is being thorough this time. I’m going to need you to find a way into their database, Sterling.”