She stepped into the guest room and with a quick look to Foster, she shut the door.
“She’s different,” Hydec said.
“Different,” Foster said. “That’s one word for her.” He could think of several others and they all had to do with how sexy she was, how she made his blood rush around in his veins.
He stared at the guest room door for a moment before snapping out of his fantasies and walking to his own bedroom door. Looking at Rasha and Hydec, he said, “Thanks for what you’re doing for me.”
They both nodded solemnly as they took up posts on either side of his door.
“Foster?”
He stopped with his hand on the doorknob and squinted into the dark hallway.
“Show yourself,” Hydec said, his hand on his weapon as he flicked on the hall light.
Rasha was in a ready position as well, and Foster didn’t like seeing his normally peaceful friends look so fierce. Of course they all had that in them. They were bred to be soldiers after all. Their DNA had been specifically engineered to heighten their fight response.
Still… he didn’t like it.
“It’s just me.” Estoria stepped closer. “Do you have a minute, Foster?”
“Of course.” He touched Rasha’s shoulder to get her to lower her weapon. “There might be a need for a talk about who is the enemy and who isn’t.”
“I don’t think we should underestimate Warres,” Hydec said. “We have no idea what his plans may be.”
“I agree.” Rasha stowed her weapon, but her posture remained tensed and ready for action.
“So do I,” Foster said, “but no one on this property is the enemy. No one.”
He reached for Estoria’s hand and tugged her to the great room. Rasha and Hydec followed close behind and stood at the doorway. This guarding thing was going to get annoying.
Unless it was Darina guarding him. Personally. All the time. That he could live with. That he wanted to live with.
“How are you feeling?” he asked Estoria, pushing thoughts of Darina from his mind. Or trying to anyway.
“Just the usual tiredness and sore muscles.” She shrugged and slumped onto one of the leather couches, patting her stomach. “I can already feel things resetting themselves though.”
“This one was a girl, right?” Foster took a seat beside her.
“Yes. A little angel.” She buried her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking as she cried.
Foster collected Estoria into his arms as he had after every stillborn baby she delivered, twenty by his count. “Oh, Essie.” He smoothed her long blonde hair, still damp from the shower she must have taken before coming to the main house. “I wish I knew how to help you.”
She looked up at him. “I know you do, Foster. I know.” She wiped her eyes with her hands, sniffled, then squared her shoulders. “I want to apologize.”
“Apologize? For what?” He was the one who should be apologizing to her. All these years and he’d never been able to find a way to relieve her of her condition, of her bad genetic engineering.
“For the way I acted with your guests. I was less than welcoming.” She sniffed again and wiped away a few leftover tears. “I don’t know why I was like that.” She lifted watery blue eyes to him.
“I know why you were. I just paraded them in without checking with anyone. That was rude on my part.” He rubbed her hand between his.
“You don’t have to check with us, Foster. This is your place. You can do whatever you want here.”
Foster shook his head. “No. That’s where you’re wrong, Essie. This is our place. It belongs to all of us. We’ve made it what it is together. I couldn’t have accomplished all we have here on my own. It takes our combined skills to keep it functioning the way it does. We’re a… we’re a…”
“A family?” she finished, a hopeful arch to her eyebrows.
“Aren’t we?” He couldn’t think of another word to describe the relationships between everyone on the property. It seemed to fit. He wanted it to fit.
“I suppose we are.” Estoria pulled on her bottom lip as she thought. “And if we are a family, Darina and Zeke should gain membership. Zeke helped Setton harvest blueberries and the boy is a total sweetheart. He makes me wonder what any one of my sons would have grown up to be.” She rubbed her hand over her now flat stomach. “And Darina… she didn’t hesitate one second to help me when I was giving birth in the woods. She was very kind.”
“She’s amazing.” Foster couldn’t stop the words from spilling out.
Estoria’s hand clamped onto his forearm, her eyes wide. “You like her.”
“I enjoy her company, yes.”
Her lips twitched up at the corners. “Enjoy her company. Hmm. Okay.”
Foster poked her side, and she swatted his hand away.
“I think you more than enjoy her company, Foster. And that’s okay, you know? You’re allowed to think about yourself every once in a while.”
If only that were true.
****
Finally Mikale’s associates had brought him something useful. He turned on his flashlight. The teenage girl standing before him was tall and thin with long waves of chestnut hair. In the pre-Unplug world, she would have been that girl every boy was after, but in the world of today, she was another hooded sweatshirt trying to survive on the streets. Her face was pale, her blue eyes a bit bloodshot, and she shook visibly as Dugan held her by the arm.
“I’m not going to hurt you, child,” Mikale said, shining his flashlight on the floor at her feet. Her sneakers were torn and faded. “So far you’ve followed my instructions magnificently. Keep that up and this will all be over before you know it.”
A sob worked its way out of the girl’s throat, and Dugan had to catch her as her legs buckled beneath her.
Mikale made a shushing noise as he walked over to her. He slid a chair over. The seat was ripped and a putrid shade of green, but he hadn’t decorated the place. He wouldn’t be in that place if given the choice. It was cramped and hot and sported an odor he could barely tolerate.
But tolerate it he would. For the cause. To meet his objectives.
“Sit, sweetheart.” He motioned for Dugan to let her go, and the girl’s body poured itself onto the chair as he turned on a dim overhead light and shut off his flashlight.
She’d pulled the frayed sleeves of her sweatshirt down over her hands as they rested on her thighs. A large hole in her tight black pants revealed her right kneecap. Her skin looked smooth, and Mikale fought the urge to touch her. Clearly, she was already terrified, and all they’d done was hunt her down, pluck her from her domicile, and make her tell them what they wanted to know.
At first, the girl had been tight-lipped, refusing to give away any secrets whatsoever. A few threats on her person and her family took care of her reluctance to cooperate. She’d made the phone call they’d asked her to make, said what she was told to say, and now they waited.
“Wouldn’t you be more comfortable without that sweatshirt?” Mikale wiped his own brow. “It’s at least eighty-five degrees in here.” Though the sun had set hours ago, the temperature had not cooled.
The girl shook her head and hugged her biceps, retreating deeper into the sweatshirt.
A shame. Certainly a nice figure hid beneath the ratty garment. A peek would have passed the time and gotten Mikale’s thoughts off Officer Darina Lazitter. He felt as if he knew her intimately already after having gone through her tiny living space. She didn’t own many items, but what he’d found intrigued him.
A photo. A paper one. Three beautiful children with caramel skin all looking to be about the same age. The intel his associates had managed to dig up on the good officer stated she’d been the only girl in a set of triplets. The picture had to be of her and her brothers. All three of them were smiling, summer sunshine spilling behind them as they sat on a wooden dock, water rippling at their feet.
Books. The old-fashioned print ones with covers and pages. Titles like T
he Collected Works of Edgar Allen Poe and Seventy-five Ways to Immobilize Your Opponent sat on a dusty shelf above Darina’s bed. A bed that was especially tidy in a dingy apartment with its sheets and blankets tucked in strict military fashion.
Clothes. Mostly tank tops and cargo pants. One whiff of the garments and Mikale knew the woman herself would smell even better.
He couldn’t wait to meet her in person, though he still couldn’t shake the familiar feeling seeing her image created.
She had some making up to do for the trouble she’d caused Mikale by hiding Foster from him.
He didn’t like delays in his timetable, and he certainly didn’t love that he’d had to leave his cozy headquarters and trudge out to the city’s streets. His plague was doing its job out there—quite well actually—but he didn’t want to be amongst the corpses decomposing in the gutters. He’d inoculated himself and his associates of course, but he didn’t particularly want to see what his virus did to the human body. Mikale only wanted to bear witness to the repopulation that would happen after his disease wiped everyone out.
Darina would bear witness with him. She had a key role to play, though she didn’t know it yet.
She will know soon.
Mikale regarded the girl still shaking before him. He reached out a hand and pushed her hair out of her face.
She jerked back, knocking over the chair as she stood, and Dugan was instantly in motion. He grabbed her arm, but Mikale gestured for him to release her.
“How can I make you understand we do not wish to harm you?” He tried using his gentlest tone, but his low, raspy voice didn’t do gentle.
“Let me go. Leave my family alone.” The girl’s words cut in and out as she cried.
He hated to see her so upset. He did, but he’d had no other options. Foster had disappeared along with Darina. Emerge Tech was reeling from the fires his people had set inside its walls. His virus was spreading quicker than he’d imagined, and without Darina, he wouldn’t be ready for the business of repopulation.
He was on a schedule here and Foster was shitting on that schedule.
“I can’t leave you or your family alone, sweet girl. You are my only lead.”
“Lead?” She shook her head and squared her shoulders a bit. It was the boldest he’d seen her look since plucking her off the street and bringing her here. “I don’t understand. What do you want?” Her dark eyebrows lowered over beautiful blue eyes.
Why did he have to explain everything to everyone?
Wiping the sweat off his brow again, Mikale inhaled, prepared to spell it all out for her, but a rumbling overhead stopped him.
“He’s here,” Dugan said.
“Please don’t hurt him.” The girl let out a wail, but Dugan clamped his hand over her mouth.
“Be still now.” Mikale pulled his weapon out of its holster and turned off the overhead light. He had one shot at this, and he hadn’t waited all this time to have it screwed up.
The rumbling softened to a dull thudding followed by some metallic squeaks. After about five minutes, footsteps sounded outside the apartment door.
“Showtime.” Mikale grabbed the girl and pressed the nose of his gun into her ribs. “I said I wouldn’t hurt you, but you’ve got to cooperate. Understand?”
She nodded, her entire body nearly convulsing in his grip.
“Not a sound now. We want this to be a surprise,” Mikale whispered.
A tiny whimper slipped from the girl, and he tightened his grip on her.
More footsteps thumped outside the door. The knob jiggled. A moment later a large shadowed figure filled the doorway.
“Mareea?”
A thud filled the quiet, followed by a grunt and what Mikale hoped was a body sliding to the floor.
“Dugan?”
“Mission accomplished, sir.”
The dim overhead light came back on, and Mikale smiled victoriously at the man lying in a heap at Dugan’s feet.
Mareea broke free of Mikale’s hold and kneeled by the body, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Uncle Ghared!”
****
Darina listened to Zeke’s steady breathing in the twin bed beside the one she occupied. The kid had cracked her up when he’d emerged from the bathroom and did a complicated running flip onto his bed, landing belly down.
“We’d never have enough room at home for me to do that stunt,” he’d said, laughing and flopping over to his back. Propped up on one elbow, he smiled at her—a genuine smile, not one of the ones he often dug out for her.
She walked over to him and cupped his face. “You wouldn’t have such red cheeks either at home. Did you turn the water all the way to scorching?”
“When was the last time we had a shower with hot water, Mom? How about never?” He’d shaken free of her hold and had run a hand through his damp hair. His bangs were getting too long, hiding his genetically perfected face.
“This needs cutting.” She’d stepped closer and ruffled his hair until he squirmed out of reach.
“Mareea said she likes it longer.” Worry had crept into his dark eyes. “You think she’s okay?”
“She will be once Ghared gets to her.”
Zeke chewed on his bottom lip, and Darina wondered if he was going to finally admit aloud to being interested in Mareea. Instead, he grabbed the pillow on the bed and bopped her with it.
“You asking for trouble, kid?” She’d jerked her own pillow off the other bed and retaliated.
Five minutes later, they were both breathing heavily and giggling. She hadn’t had that much fun in ages.
Well, that much mother-son fun anyway. She recalled some different fun in Foster’s library earlier. Staring up at the ceiling now, the guest room shrouded in darkness, she imagined Foster was with her, his body hovering over hers, his lips doing things to stimulate her every nerve ending.
That man can kiss.
The last time she’d been kissed—really kissed—she’d been playing a game. A game to get a free prosthetic hand. One she couldn’t afford on her own. Her goals had been clear in her mind, but somewhere along the way, she’d let herself fall in love.
With a rich bastard.
Fisting the sheets beneath her now, she shook her head. How could she have been so foolish? Well, she’d paid the price. She’d learned her lesson. Rich bastards were not her type.
Kissing Foster, however, made rich bastards seem not so much like bastards. Words like forever and happy circulated in her mind when she thought of him. Even now, hours later, her lips still buzzed with the attention he’d given them. The rest of her body craved to know more of Dr. Foster Ashby.
That would be a mistake. Huge.
She angled her head back and looked at the wall behind the headboard of the bed. Foster was on the other side of that wall. Nothing but lumber, sheetrock, and plaster stood between her and him.
Maybe I should check on him.
She was, after all, in charge of keeping him safe. It wouldn’t seem out of the ordinary if she made a nighttime survey in the name of security.
Folding the pillow around her head, she released a muffled growl into it. Going to Foster right now would be absolutely idiotic. Their worlds were barely in the same solar system. The clean, fresh scent of the bed linens beneath her and the vibrant colors of the property she’d toured today let her know she did not belong in Foster’s life. She was used to musty, dark, and gray places. Places where broken asphalt crunched under her boots. Places where the odds were stacked against her.
Not this paradise.
But to have a taste of it? A taste to keep locked away in her soul to pull out on especially tough days in the city? She couldn’t deny she wanted that. She couldn’t deny she wanted Foster.
Looking over at Zeke and deeming that he was out cold, she sat up. She hadn’t bothered getting under the covers. It wasn’t as hot in Vermont as it was in the city, but something about settling in too deeply made her feel unable to react quickly if need be. She actually still had her
shoes on and her weapon at her hip, though she’d changed her tank top and pants for ones that someone had left in the bathroom. Though the clothes weren’t hers, they fit well, were comfortable, and clean. While she didn’t make a habit of being filthy, city life didn’t loan itself to regular laundry cycles or purchasing new clothes or showering with hot water. This was definitely as fresh as she’d felt in a long time.
A shame to waste all this freshness.
Foster hadn’t minded the scents of the city that had stuck to her earlier. They hadn’t stopped him from wanting her.
She stood, glanced once more at Zeke who hadn’t stirred, and tiptoed to the door. After opening it, she slipped into the dark hallway. A flashlight beam instantly lasered her, and she froze.
“Everything okay, Darina?” Rasha asked.
Guards. Right. She’d forgotten about them. “Everything’s fine. Just checking on you guys,” she lied.
“All clear out here,” Hydec reported. “Shift change in ten minutes.”
“Why don’t you two knock off early?” she asked. “I’ve got this covered for ten minutes.”
Rasha raised her eyebrows. “You should be getting some sleep.”
“I should be, but it isn’t happening.” Darina shrugged then tapped her weapon at her waist. “Go ahead. I’m armed and ready.”
“Something tells me you’re always armed and ready,” Hydec said.
“Better than being defenseless and unprepared.” A state she never found herself in. Never. Though Foster had made her feel both rather unexpectedly. “Now go on. Maybe you’ll succeed in getting some sleep.”
Rasha laughed. “Hydec will. Nothing interferes with his sleep.”
“And you’ve tried to interfere.” He hooked his arm around Rasha’s shoulders.
“Oh,” Darina said, “you two are… together?”
“The woods can get lonely,” Rasha said with a sly smile and a quick glance back at Foster’s door behind her. “A few of us here are paired up.” She poked Hydec’s ribs. “I was the only one who could tolerate this guy.”
“Not nice, Rasha.” Hydec waved a finger at her as if scolding a child.
Safe (The Shielded Series Book 1) Page 12
