Safe (The Shielded Series Book 1)

by Christine DePetrillo

  “And why would you agree to go with me, Foster?”

  “Because I don’t want any fighting here.”

  Warres shook his head. “No. I think it’s something else.” His face came into view as he looked down at Darina. If she had the energy, she’d rearrange that face as she’d dreamed about doing for so long.

  Too long.

  Turning in a circle again, Warres surveyed Foster’s people. His eyes widened at Kivin, a beautiful woman with skin the color of freshly polished copper. His gaze shot to Oraslo, an eight-foot tall man who loomed above the others. Nevianne stood beside Oraslo with her yellow, snake-like eyes.

  “Oh, Foster…” He turned to face the main house. “You’ve been keeping secrets.” He laughed. “I wondered why you’d be in Vermont. Men like us could go anywhere in the world. We have the means and the connections.” He grinned, and Darina wanted to send her foot into his teeth… or his groin. Either one would work. Both would be best. “But you’re keeping a low profile here in the woods. You and your GECs. My, won’t the government love receiving this tip?”

  Hell no. These people had put their safety on the line to defend Foster. Their loyalty would not be rewarded with dismantlement.

  Because she was too weakened from the virus eating up her insides, Darina did the only thing she could think of to distract Warres.

  She raised her arm.

  The one with the prosthetic hand.

  Warres’s gaze went to the tattooed stars and his eyes bugged. “It… it can’t be.”

  “I never thanked you,” Darina whispered, “you fucking rich bastard.”

  ****

  That ring of tattooed stars rocketed Mikale to the past. To a young, beautiful woman with a hideous excuse for a prosthetic hand. He’d been in the city helping Emerge Tech restore technology where he could after the Anarch attack. After a particularly long shift, a bunch of ET employees stopped in some hovel for a drink. Personally, he’d been willing to wait to kick back until they all were safely behind Emerge Tech’s walls, but his friends assured him the drinks were better on the outside. He hadn’t cared all that much about drinking. Besides, Foster was waiting for him. They’d both agreed to put in a few extra hours working on adding nerve endings to the prosthetics they’d developed.

  It had been dark inside the establishment, but the place was full. As he sat with his comrades and swigged some concoction, a young beauty nursing a tall glass of beer caught his eye. She stared, her striking hazel gaze combing up and down the length of him. She had straight, jet-black hair that framed a simply exquisite face. He couldn’t have ignored her if he’d tried. She was magnetic.

  “I’m Mikale,” he said when he’d worked his way over to sit next to her.

  “Dee,” she said. “I could use another drink, Mikale.”

  He quickly bought her another one, and they did that getting-to-know-you flirting thing for a few hours. When he’d looked up, his colleagues were gone, but she wasn’t. She hadn’t budged.

  Fingering his shirt, Dee said, “I’ll bet a guy like you could show a girl a great time.”

  That was all the invitation he’d needed. He’d bundled her into his Podster, secretly jetted her to Emerge Tech, and they’d taken full advantage of each other’s bodies. Mikale had never enjoyed such physical pleasures. Dee was… gifted. She was willing to cater to his every desire—even the ones where things got a little rough. He’d loved the way she let him dominate.

  They’d had encounters several times a week for a few months—a few glorious months. She’d been his little secret. Foster never approved of the women he kept as company, and Mikale had stopped introducing them to him. He spent money on Dee. Loads of it, but she always reciprocated with physical escapades he’d only dreamed possible.

  One night, while she was stroking his arousal, she cursed her prosthetic hand, wishing she could more skillfully caress him. It didn’t take long for him to make the decision to get her a new hand. A fully functional hand that could properly jack him off.

  In celebration, the next time they’d been together, Dee had used that hand to make him come hard and repeatedly. He had doubts he was going to survive that night. Giving her that hand had been worth every penny.

  The next day, she’d asked to get a tattoo to hide the slight seam the prosthetic caused on her arm. Emerge Tech didn’t have any tattoo studios inside its walls, so he’d escorted her outside to the city where tattooing was really the only art form that had survived the Unplug. He’d stayed by her side as the stars were added to her flawless skin, getting aroused watching the ink mark her. In the last two stars on the inside of her wrist, she had the letters M and W added, one above the other so they connected and only the two of them would know what it meant.

  It’d been a sweet gesture, and he’d known Dee was falling for him. Falling hard. But he wasn’t a one woman kind of man. Never had been. He had many interests. No single woman—not even Dee—had all the skills he needed to be truly satisfied.

  A set of gorgeous twins with the longest legs in creation walked into the tattoo studio. He’d also been screwing them at the time. They instantly plastered themselves to him, and he showered them with the same dominant handling he showed all his women.

  Dee gaped at him, silent accusations screaming from her eyes. Hell, he’d never claimed to be exclusive to her. He’d considered it. She was amazing after all, but she wouldn’t be enough. He knew it. Why had she assumed she was the only woman in his life?

  She’d let the tattoo artist apply ointment to the ring of stars and bandage her arm.

  Then she’d taken off.

  She knew the city streets well, and he’d searched for her, but it was as if she’d never existed. He’d put her out of his mind and buried himself in plenty of hot, wet pussy to make her a distant memory.

  Until right now.

  Staring down at Darina and taking in those stars again, he let out a roar. “You’re Dee.”

  “In the flesh,” she whispered, “except for this.” She waved her prosthetic hand. “But you already know that.”

  “Where have you been?” Her hair was a different color and curly, her face more mature and far from pleased to be in his presence, but now that he looked at her, live and in person, how could he have not known she was Dee?

  “I’ve been right under your nose apparently.”

  He reached out to take her hand and pull her to her feet. “Well, plan on staying there.”

  ****

  Foster couldn’t hear what Darina and Mikale were saying, but from the looks of it, she’d shocked him good with some news. Mikale looked downright confused, and Foster took that opportunity.

  “Yolase, tell them to close in and take control of Warres,” he said.

  She closed her eyes and the team slinked closer. Before anyone could get their hands on Mikale, though, a pulsejet roared overhead. Two retractable arms lowered. One grabbed Mikale around the waist and the other gently scooped up Darina. The pulsejet flew toward the main house and deposited Darina on the deck.

  “What do you want me to do with this piece of shit?” came Ghared’s voice.

  Foster squinted up to the cockpit where the man stared down at him. “Leave him with us.”

  Hydec and Rasha stepped forward, ready to get their hands on Mikale who squirmed like caught bait in the fingers of the retractable arm.

  “The sky is full of my associates,” Mikale yelled.

  “For the moment.” Ghared turned to the pulsejet’s control panel and a few seconds later, Podsters were falling to the ground, shaking the earth. “Never underestimate the power of a tech geek. Child’s play for me to hack into the navigation systems of your fleet, Warres. Child’s play.”

  Looking to Foster, he said, “Save Darina. You don’t want to know what I’ll do to you if you don’t.” With that, he turned the pulsejet around to face Warres’s associates now pouring out of their downed crafts and fighting with GECs on the ground.

  While chaos ripped up t
he woods, Foster gathered Darina into his arms. Her body was burning up and her eyes were hazy. He had to work fast.

  “Rasha, Hydec, bring Mikale inside. We’ll question him after I’ve tended to Darina.”

  Nodding, the two GECs took control of Mikale and dragged him inside.

  “Foster…” Darina’s voice was hoarse as her eyes fluttered.

  “I have you.” He squeezed her to his chest as he bolted for his lab. “Yolase, assist me?”

  “You got it.” She followed him inside.

  “Zeke…” Darina gripped a handful of his shirt.

  “He’s going to be fine. You’ll see him soon.”

  “No, I don’t think I will.” Her eyes rolled up then shut, her body nearly motionless in his grip.

  Foster kicked open the door of his lab and set Darina down on his worktable. She immediately curled her legs into a fetal position, her hands over her stomach as if she were holding herself together.

  “The virus is already attacking her organs,” Foster said. “Take some blood, Yolase. That way I have a sample of the virus.”

  Yolase set to work and Foster was thankful for her calm presence. He was anything but calm. He was pretty sure he’d found the cure, but if he hadn’t—if the cure didn’t work—he was about to lose the best thing that had ever happened to him. Not only had Darina put her ass on the line to keep him safe, she’d also shown him what was possible between a man and a woman. She’d gotten him to dream about a future where he wasn’t alone. Where neither of them were.

  He wanted that future. Desperately. For the both of them. And Zeke. He wanted them all to be that family he craved so much.

  Foster set his emotions aside and thought like a scientist. He pulled out his tablet and with his notes, mixed what he sincerely hoped was the cure.

  Darina let out a howl from the table and her body convulsed. Yolase did her best to hold her down, but Darina was stronger.

  “Hurry, Foster. She’s in serious pain here.” Yolase climbed on the table and struggled to restrain Darina. “You’re going to be okay, Officer Lazitter. You’re going to be okay.”

  When Foster came over to the two women, Yolase’s eyes were closed, and Darina’s body had relaxed some.

  “Nice work, Yolase.”

  “What good is telepathy if you can’t use it to take away someone’s pain?”

  She eased off Darina and Foster drew the cure up into a syringe. Finding a prominent vein in her right arm, he pushed the needle in and released the cure. He set the empty syringe down and moved Darina’s sweat-soaked hair off her forehead.

  “Come on… come on…”

  Her breathing grew shallow, her chest barely rising and falling. Her eyes remained closed, and Foster reached back for a heart monitor. Hooking her up, he and Yolase both gasped when Darina’s heartbeat hardly registered on the small screen.

  She was nearly flat-lined.

  “No. Hell, no.” Foster opened a package of electripads and yanked off Darina’s tank top. Adhering the pads to her chest on either side of her heart, he activated them.

  Darina’s body arched up from the table as the current flowed through her, but her heart rate didn’t improve.

  He was losing her.

  Losing her to Mikale Warres and his virus.

  With a frustrated growl, he set the electripads off two more times. When a high-pitched whine sounded from the heart monitor, Foster climbed onto the table and straddled Darina’s limp body. Gathering her torso, he crushed her to his own chest and buried his face in her hair.

  “You can’t die. You cannot. Zeke needs you. Ghared needs you,” he said, his voice strained. “I fucking need you.”

  Her body was so hot in his grip, almost too hot to touch, but he didn’t release her. Couldn’t release her. Not now. Not ever.

  “Come on,” he said again. “Don’t leave us.” He bent down so his lips were right at her ear. “Don’t leave me.”

  He sat up and let her body rest back on the table. Her face was pale, her chest hardly moving at all. The heat was quickly leaving her.

  “Doesn’t the virus take longer to attack the body than this? I mean, she was only injected minutes ago.” Yolase’s voice startled him. He’d forgotten she was there.

  “Maybe he put a different strain in her.” He looked up at Yolase. “Where’s the blood you took from her?”

  She pointed to a vial on the worktable.

  Foster climbed off Darina and took the vial. Mumbling to himself, he put a sample of her blood on a slide and examined it under the microscope. “Dammit. It is different.”

  He tore open his lab door and shouted, “Bring him in here!”

  Moments later, Rasha and Hydec appeared with Mikale between them. Foster immediately grabbed Mikale by the neck and slammed him into the wall. Rasha and Hydec took a step back. They’d never seen him behave like this. But then again, he’d never had someone he was truly terrified to lose.

  “What did you put in her?” he demanded.

  A cocky smile slithered over Mikale’s lips. “Something a little special.”

  “Tell me what’s in it now.” Foster banged Mikale’s head against the wall and tightened his grip on his neck.

  Mikale made a choking sound as his face turned red. “Can’t… breathe…”

  Yolase put a hand on Foster’s shoulder. “You can’t get the information you need, Foster, if you kill him.”

  Right. Of course. But the temptation to rip this guy apart was hard to ignore. Foster had spent most of his life wanting to help people, but right now all he could think about was squeezing Mikale’s neck until it broke.

  Somehow he loosened his grip. “If Darina dies…”

  “What do you care if a whore like her dies?” Mikale asked, rubbing his neck.

  Foster hadn’t consciously decided to launch his fist into Mikale’s face, but after he’d done it, he was glad he had. Seeing blood pour from the other man’s nose and upper lip was surprisingly satisfying.

  “You’ve had enough experiences with whores, Mikale, to know Darina is far from one.” Foster had known that when Mikale wasn’t working with him on something for Emerge Tech or one of their own projects, he was with a woman he’d hired. He didn’t approve of it, but he’d turned to hologram programs to get off himself, so was he much different?

  He shook his head. He was much different. He hadn’t played with the emotions of real women. Holograms didn’t get attached. That was why Foster had always felt so empty after being with one.

  Being with Darina hadn’t left him feeling empty. Totally the opposite in fact. He’d never been so filled as when he’d made love with her.

  She absolutely couldn’t leave him now.

  “Tell me what you put in her, Mikale. Tell me and maybe I won’t let my friends here shoot you full of holes. They’d love to, you know.”

  “Was saying that just the other day,” Hydec said as Rasha nodded.

  “The whore means something to you.” Mikale looked over Foster’s shoulder to where Darina still lay motionless.

  “Stop calling her a whore.”

  “But she is one, Foster. She was my whore. She fucked me so good, and I bought her that hand.”

  Foster stumbled back. Mikale and Darina had been together?

  Rich bastard…

  The words echoed in Foster’s head. Mikale was the rich bastard. That news socked him in the face worse than a punch. Why hadn’t Darina told him it was Mikale?

  Why had she lied?

  “Mikale, we used to be best friends,” Foster said, trying his hardest to contain the burning rage boiling inside him. He’d never been this furious… or desperate. Conflicting emotions swirled like a tornado around him. He wanted Darina to live, yet he was shocked to find out she’d been with Mikale, that he was the rich bastard upon which she judged other rich, intelligent men. He wanted Mikale to die, yet the man had been his closest comrade for years before getting fired from Emerge Tech.

  “We were best friends, Fos
ter,” Mikale rasped, one of his hands massaging his windpipe. “Then you forgot about me when I needed you most.”

  “I didn’t forget about you. Emerge Tech made me choose between you and getting the globe up and running again. What would you have chosen?”

  “I would have listened to my heart instead of my unfeeling brain. I would have realized that joining me on the outside meant we could have continued our work together. That we could have saved the world on our own, free from Emerge Tech. We would have found a way, Foster. I know we would have. Together.”

  Mikale’s eyes were tear-filled now and Foster’s throat tightened as he realized Mikale was probably right. Mikale had managed to build himself back up on the outside alone. He’d lost his grip on reality with his virus and repopulation plans, but with Foster’s assistance and friendship, perhaps the two of them could have achieved their common goals without Emerge Tech.

  Running a hand through his hair, Foster said, “I made the choice I thought was right at the time. I can’t undo it. I wish I could. All we can do is move forward, but I need you to help me save Darina now.”

  “I’m not helping you do shit, Ashby.”

  Suddenly, Mikale cried out and put his hands to his skull. He gasped for breath and slumped against the wall. “Make it stop! Make it stop!”

  As Foster looked on in confusion, Yolase approached, her eyes closed. Her breathing was labored, but she kept moving closer to Mikale. Her body trembled, but it was Mikale who slid down the wall into a heap on the ground.

  “The cure is….” He rattled off a list of ingredients then passed out.

  Foster turned to Yolase, who Hydec had to grab and support. “What did you do?”

  “Bombarded his mind with unpleasant images from his own subconscious. Wasn’t sure I could do that, but there’s a first time for everything.” She shivered. “Don’t want to do that again.” She looked at Darina. “You have a cure to make so let’s get to it. Darina’s still alive, but barely.”

  Foster quickly mixed a new cure and tested it on Darina’s blood sample. With one drop, her blood was pure again. He got a fresh syringe and sucked up the cure.