“No.” Striker strode forward, unconsciously positioning himself between Friday and the man who had the dubious honor of being his best friend. “We have a deal. I promised my help. We need her.”
“We can get someone else. Genetic scientists are a dime a dozen. We can get one who doesn’t have the entire Enforcement organization on her ass.”
“It’s not that easy. You know how hard it would be to get one we could trust.”
Mace barked out a mirthless laugh. “Trust? Are you listening to anything I’m telling you? She’s in league with a terrorist organization. She sells secrets. She spies. She’s the last person on the planet we can trust.”
Friday pushed out from behind him, trying to get to Mace. He put an arm around her waist and pulled her to his side, uncertain why he felt the need to protect their client from his teammate, but unable to stop himself from doing it anyway. Mace watched the move with narrowed eyes.
“I’m standing right here,” she snapped. “She is perfectly capable of talking for herself. And she has a name. My name is Friday.” She struggled, clearly wanting to face-off against Mace—a man who was more than a foot taller than her and had at least four times her bulk.
“Okay, Friday,” Mace growled. “You want to tell us how we can trust you? How you’re not going to put our whole team at risk? How you wouldn’t sell our secrets to the highest bidder? Or spy for Freedom, if you thought anything you found out about us would help the cause? Tell me, Friday, tell me exactly why we should trust you. Why we should help you.” He didn’t wait for an answer before looking back up at Striker, his dark eyes flashing with anger. “Cut her loose. This is a mistake. We can’t take the risk.”
“I don’t sell secrets.” Friday’s outrage made her voice rise.
“You spied for Freedom. You’re one huge walking, talking trust-issue, waiting to bite us on the ass.”
She opened her mouth to object, and he squeezed her waist to silence her.
“This is my call.” He kept his voice even, free of any emotion, wanting them both to know he was deadly serious. “You heard the deal I made with her. We have her for a year. No questions asked. We have complete control of her for a year.”
He felt a shudder rush through Friday and could only imagine the twisted things going through her overactive mind. She paled as she looked up at Mace, making him want to reassure her again that she wouldn’t be touched against her will. Not by anyone. Not ever. Not if he had his way.
“What happens at the end of the year, genius?” Mace wasn’t cowed by either of them. “What’s to keep her from spilling everything she finds out once the year is up?”
“I won’t.” Friday’s confident answer might have meant a little more if she’d known exactly what her promise meant.
Striker ignored her assurance. It was easier than trying to ignore the heat of her body as it pressed against his. Even as he focused on Mace, he was still aware of her curves beneath her ugly jumpsuit. Her softness pressing against his hardness. He shook his head to clear it, aware that his increasingly intense reaction to her wasn’t in character for him. Sure, he found her attractive, but the need to keep her close and protect her was growing by the minute.
“Yeah,” Mace mocked her. “You’ll keep our secrets. There’s no way you’ll run to Freedom with them the first chance you get.”
“I won’t do that. I wouldn’t.” She looked up at Striker. “You have to believe me. I will never speak about what happens during our year together. You have my word.”
Mace snorted.
“We don’t have time to deal with this right now,” Striker said to his second-in-command.
“Will you listen to yourself?” The big guy threw up his hands in disgust. “You’re risking all of us on an unknown future. On a woman who is a proven security risk.”
Striker held his friend’s eyes as everything within him stilled. They needed Friday. He was beginning to think he needed her. His reaction to her was visceral. All of his instincts, his changed instincts, were telling him to keep her close. He broke the stare-off to look down at the woman in his grasp. She was pale, but stoic. A woman used to making the best of some crummy life situations.
“After you take the antidote,” he said. “Will your implants automatically reconnect to the grid?”
“No.” She glanced at Mace. “They can be removed and analyzed, but they won’t reconnect. The only way to get any information off them would be manually.”
He could see her big brain working overtime, trying to find a solution to their trust dilemma that would reassure them.
“Are you willing to sever your ties to Freedom in order to come with us?”
Mace scoffed at the question. “Like she couldn’t contact them again in the future.”
Friday’s face paled further. Her huge eyes became more vivid as she watched them. He knew she was struggling with a decision. He also knew when she’d reached it. Her shoulders slumped slightly, but her chin remained high. There was resolve in her eyes.
“I will sever my ties.” She licked dry lips. “I’ll also agree to be implanted with a monitoring chip once the Interferan-X is out of my system.”
Striker’s hold tightened around her waist. His gaze flicked to his friend, noting the shock and reluctant admiration in Mace’s eyes, before turning his attention back to the brave woman in his hold.
“You know what that means, chère?” He deliberately pitched his voice soft, soothing.
She swallowed hard and nodded once. “It means you will know everything I do and everyone I contact. It means you can control my communications. For the rest of my life.” She looked away from him.
He heard the words she didn’t say. It meant she would never truly be free. The hold CommTECH had over her would be replaced with his hold. Part of him wanted to shout his objection, to throw her over his shoulder and take her somewhere private where he could reassure her using his hands and mouth. The urge, the need, to keep her safe and give her the freedom she desperately wanted, rose in him like a wave. One that almost drowned him. Instead of doing any of those things, he looked at the man he trusted most in the world. “That good enough for you?”
“Yeah.” Mace sounded a little stunned and a lot impressed. He considered Friday the same way he did those puzzles he obsessed over.
Striker understood. There was a whole lot about their client that got under a man’s skin and made him think.
An alarm blared from Mace’s wrist unit. His mouth thinned as he checked it. “Enforcement breached the perimeter beacons I set up. We need to get out of here. Now.”
They were out of time. He cursed, grabbed Friday’s arm, and started to run for the broken front door.
“Wait.” She shook free and rushed back across the room. Hurriedly, she dug into her pocket and came out with a credit chip, which she left on the counter.
When she turned back and saw them staring at her, she blushed. “We broke their door, ate their food, and drank their water. I don’t have enough to cover what we took, but it will help.” She kept her eyes low and snapped the words as though she was ashamed of what she’d done.
Something cracked around his heart. “Make sure it’s covered,” he said to his second.
Mace nodded as he frowned at Friday, who’d just added something else for him to puzzle over. “You take the bike. Sandi will be here any minute. I’ll hold down the fort until then.”
With a nod of thanks, Striker climbed onto the hoverbike. “Get on,” he ordered Friday, who stood staring at the machine.
“Do you have something against passenger pods?” she grumbled as she climbed onto the seat behind him.
Hoverbikes weren’t designed to take two on the seat, and it was a tight squeeze. He could feel her plastered flat against his back, her breasts pressed into his muscles.
“Be safe,” he said to his friend.
The big man nodded as Striker started the bike and headed southwest to the border wall, aware they had bare minutes of a h
ead start. There was no time to waste; he had to get Friday past the wall and into the Red Zone before they were both killed.
Or worse, captured.
Chapter Eight
They were heading into the desert. Munroe city lay behind them, and the border wall was a tall, gently glowing barrier on their left. Even at a distance, the wall seemed to loom over everything around it. A reminder that they were all caged in. Prisoners in the Northern Territory.
Sure, the wall had been built to protect the territory citizens from wandering into the Red Zone. At least, that was the theory when it had been put up a hundred years earlier after an experimental weapon had killed everything within the zone and rendered the area a no-man’s-land. History class had taught Friday that the red mist the weapon dispensed should have dispersed over a year or two. The scientists had been wrong. Instead of dispersing, it had grown thicker, heavier, and more condensed. It was unmoved by wind, unaffected by rain, and deadly to any human who touched it. She’d seen satellite images of the Red Zone. It looked like a long, red gash on the planet’s surface, a festering wound that wouldn’t heal.
And she would have to go through it to get to the antidote she needed.
That was, if they could get past the wall.
“Shouldn’t you enable the reflector shield on this thing?” Once again, she was communicating through the helmets they were wearing.
“Don’t have one.” Striker’s voice sounded far more intimate in the confines of her helmet.
“You don’t have one?” A reflector shield would obscure the vehicle and keep it from being visually identified. It worked by blurring the air around it and making it hard to see the machine. She would have thought it an essential item for a man who liked to stay under the radar.
“Don’t have anything unnecessary, chère,” he drawled. “Extra weight will slow us down, and we need speed to outrun Enforcement.”
“But wouldn’t a reflector shield mean we could hide from them?” Didn’t he realize that if they hid, they wouldn’t need to outrun them? Had she made a mistake in trusting Striker and his team? It was quite possible he wasn’t as smart as her contact had told her.
His chuckle unnerved her, making her body tingle in places she didn’t want to be aware of at that moment. Possibly ever. Her powers of denial were already stretched to the limit with pretending she didn’t notice there was a man wedged between her legs, pressing hard against her. She felt overstimulated—mentally and physically—and really didn’t need anything more to cope with.
“I know what I’m doing. If we needed a reflector shield, we’d have one. We don’t need it.”
“Why aren’t we heading for the wall? We need to get over it.”
“You say that like I wasn’t able to think of it by myself.”
She thought it wise not to answer that. “Everybody says the best places to get over the wall are in the crowded areas of the cities.” Although, not that many people had tried to get over the wall, and those who did tended to get swallowed by the mist, never to be seen again. It seemed the general wisdom on the best places to get over the wall stemmed more from speculation than reality.
“Everybody don’t know shit,” Striker said.
A horrible thought occurred to her. What if she was totally wrong? What if this man couldn’t get her where she needed to be? “You do know how to get over the wall, don’t you?”
“No faith,” he drawled.
Having no choice but to hold on and hope for the best, Friday tried to focus on the landscape rather than her fears. The desert wasn’t what she’d expected it to be.
“I thought it would be barren,” she whispered, more to herself than anyone else.
She felt his abdomen flex beneath her hands and regretted that she’d spoken aloud.
“You never seen the desert, chère?”
She shook her head before remembering he couldn’t see her. “I’d never been out of Houston until I came to Munroe to find you.”
That made his muscles clench and relax again.
“Someday I’ll take you to the Painted Desert and let you see how unbarren the landscape can be.”
She felt something melt within her at his declaration. And then she remembered that her chances of seeing anything in the future were slim to none. “Unbarren? I don’t think that’s a word.”
His chuckle warmed her, and she fought the urge to rest her cheek against his back. The bike swerved, turning down a rough dirt road toward the wall, and her stomach clenched at the sight. It was much higher than she’d imagined it would be.
“How are we going to get past it?”
“Probably better if I don’t tell you.”
She opened her mouth to demand an answer but froze when she caught sight of a sign at the side of the road. He was taking her into Scorpion Canyon. Was he out of his mind?
“No!” She dug her fingers into his hard stomach. “You can’t be serious.”
“It’s the only part of the whole damn territory that isn’t walled.”
“There’s a reason for that. People die in the canyon. Everyone who goes into it dies. Everyone. They couldn’t build a wall there because the work crew kept getting killed.”
A hundred years had passed since the first attempt to block the canyon, and still the gap in the wall hadn’t been closed. All the Territory authorities had done to deter people from trying to get through it was to make sure that no vehicle could enter the canyon. You only got so far before spikes and lasers immobilized your ride. If you were going to risk your life with the scorpions, you had to do it on foot.
Striker angled the bike down the trail into the canyon, completely untroubled by her protests. Unlike the Grand Canyon, this one wasn’t large. But what it lacked in size, it made up for in mystery. The place was an anomaly for researchers to study because, when the weapon containing the red mist had detonated, scorpions had flooded the canyon. No one knew why. All they knew was that the creatures had been affected by the mist somehow and had multiplied, becoming even deadlier with each successive generation. The canyon was now home to millions of aggressive scorpions. It was their territory, and to enter meant death.
“Let me off this bike!” Friday thumped at Striker’s shoulders. “I won’t let you kill us both. Let me off. I’ll find another way.”
The bike skidded to a halt, kicking up dust behind them. The blue glow from the wall couldn’t penetrate the depths of the canyon. There was only the flickering light of the stars above and the narrow beam from the bike’s headlight to break up the black void that engulfed them.
As soon as the engine cut, she jumped off the bike, spun on her heel, and started back up the trail they’d come in on. She didn’t get far before a strong arm wrapped around her waist and tugged her back into a solid body.
“I know what I’m doing. This is the way in and out of the Red Zone. You think I haven’t done this before?” Clearly, he was running out of patience. Which was fine with her, because she’d about reached her limit, too.
She pushed at his arm and gained enough space to turn in his hold. She glared up at him. “Have you done this before? Because you don’t tell me anything. You just expect me to follow blindly.”
“That’s what you’re paying me for. You’re paying me to lead you out of the Territory.”
“I’m paying you to keep me alive. That’s why I need to get to Bolivia. Yet here you are, taking me into what is basically a death pit.”
He had the audacity to smile at her. “You’re forgetting one thing, bébé. I’m way more dangerous than any itty-bitty scorpion.”
Of all the ludicrous things to say… “Are you way more dangerous than millions of itty-bitty scorpions?”
“Hell, yeah.” He chuckled at the thought.
He was obviously insane. She’d trusted her life—what she had left of it—to a madman.
“Let me go!”
“No. Behave. We’re on a deadline and I don’t have time to deal with your freak-outs.”
Freak-outs? “Let me—” His large hand covered her mouth.
“Quiet! Enforcement.” The words were hissed against her ear.
She froze instantly, her eyes going to the canyon rim. There were lights. Lots of red Enforcement lights. Striker reached out and, with a flick of a switch, disabled the light on his bike. They were suddenly shrouded in darkness, halfway down the canyon.
“We need to go,” he said against her ear. “Trust me. If you can’t believe that I wouldn’t let you die, at least believe that I wouldn’t let me die.”
He had a point. She nodded, and he released her mouth.
“No noise,” he hissed.
She nodded again, and he gently cupped her cheek.
“I promise you, I will keep you safe.”
Her face tingled under his touch, and for one endless second, the world faded to the man in front of her. He wasn’t like anyone she’d ever known, and much to her own shock, she wanted to trust him.
“Desperation,” she whispered her reasoning aloud.
His lips twitched. “Probably.” He stepped away from her, grabbed her hand, and turned toward the canyon depths. “Come on.” He tugged her forward, down the narrow, rocky path that led to the bottom of the ravine.
And to the scorpions.
Voices echoed through the night. Floodlights came on above them, casting sharp shadows on the canyon walls. They hurried downward as the sheer rock face rose up either side of them. Water trickled, and she thought there might be a stream at the bottom. Could scorpions swim? Were they going to walk through the water to safety?
She clutched Striker’s hand when he dragged her past an official warning sign. Even if there hadn’t been a huge skull-and-crossbones on it, or the word Danger hadn’t been written in large red letters, the photos would have sent her running. Two boards detailed what a scorpion sting would do to a person, showing photos of corpses that had been stung multiple times. It was horrific.
Red Zone Page 5
