Mercenaries

by Anne Kane

  Brice blinked for a moment as his eyes adjusted to the light.

  Saralyn stood quietly in front of him. Would he recognize her? How much had she changed from that little waif with the big brown eyes that he’d hidden in the dumpster? Had he even thought of her during all these long years?

  “You!” The look of shock on his face was telling. He did remember her. “They told me you were captured and executed. All of you were. How on earth have you managed to avoid them all these years?”

  “Avoid who? And what do you mean all of us? How many were there?” She felt Jackson’s arms go around her and she leaned back gratefully against his comforting strength.

  The man sighed heavily, shaking his massive head. “You don’t remember the lab? Me? The other children? The experiments? Any of it?” Saralyn shook her head. “I will tell you, but you have to promise not to do anything dumb. It’s over, and nothing you can do would make a difference now. If they get their hands on you, you’re a goner.”

  “Difference to what?” Saralyn felt Jackson tense up behind her.

  “To anyone. It’s a long story. You might want to sit down.”

  Someone brought a chair forward, and Jackson sat down, pulling Saralyn into his lap. Some faint part of her smiled at the purely male gesture of possession. “So tell me. I’ve spent years trying to find you, but all I remember is that night. You shoving me into a dumpster and leading the troops away in the other direction.”

  Brice sighed. “Where to begin? What you remember is only the very end of the fiasco. There was this scientist who thought he could improve on people. He took his ideas to the government and they set him up in a lab. Now the only way to see if his ideas really worked was to experiment on people. So, they gathered up a bunch of homeless kids and took them to the lab. You were one of them. I was one of them. A lot of us didn’t survive the experiments. In you, he implanted cybernetic enhancements that were supposed to make you a super-spy. Me, I got DNA from wild animals spliced into my genes to make me stronger, a better fighter. He had a lot of kinky ideas, a real mad scientist, if you get my drift. Thing is though, that once the enhancements started to work, we weren’t eternally grateful to our tormentors. Some of us turned on them and others just refused to do what they were told. Add that to the fact that the costs were astronomical, it’s no wonder the government decided to pull the plug.”

  “The lost children. They were real.” Jackson tightened his grip on Saralyn as if he could take away her pain.

  “Oh yeah. We are real.” Brice shifted his weight. “Any chance you can loosen these restraints? I’m not going to do anything to you. Saralyn is like a sister to me, and you need to know the whole story if you’re going to keep her safe.” His voice hardened. “You are going to keep her safe, aren’t you?”

  “Oh yeah.” Jackson looked up at her. “Even from you if I have to, so shut up and get on with the story. So far I’m not buying that you’re the good guy in this.”

  Brice shrugged, relaxing a fraction. “When they decided to tank the project, they had to do something with the kids that were left. Boys like me, they put in the military where they could keep an eye on us. If we screwed up or turned out to be unstable they’d take care of us then. They had us under control. The girls though, were a different matter. They had various enhancements, and they were all young and had a tendency to think for themselves. When their hormones kicked in at puberty, their reactions to situations became wildly unpredictable. There was some concern that they might never be controllable so the government decided to terminate them all.”

  “They just decided to murder a bunch of helpless girls? Nice bunch of politicians we have.” The grim look on Kaeden’s face would have scared a lesser man.

  “They tried.” Brice corrected him. “A lot of those girls weren’t as helpless as their jailers thought. Up to that point we kids had all been kept together in small groups. We were like family to each other. We came up with a mass escape plan, and it worked for a lot of us. Some of the kids were caught before they managed to get one foot outside the lab, but a lot of us managed to escape. That’s the part you remember, Saralyn. We knew that if the boys were caught, they’d be disciplined but allowed to live, so we boys played along with the termination plan. We pretended we were okay with whatever they did to the girls so long as our necks weren’t on the chopping block. The enforcers understood self-interest a whole lot more thoroughly than they understood family dynamics, so they bought it.”

  “Makes sense in a twisted kind of way.” Jackson sounded dubious. “So, then what?”

  “Every month, the troop divisions rotate. We figured that would be the perfect time to make a break. The troops most familiar with the area and us would be leaving and the incoming guys wouldn’t have had time to familiarize themselves with the city or us. On day one of the next rotation, we waited until dusk and everyone made a break at the same time. The lab went into total chaos within minutes. We split into groups of two, one guy and one girl. If it looked like we were going to get caught, the female hid and the boy led the enforcers away from her under the pretext that he had been chasing her all along, trying to recapture her and she was just around the next corner.” A crooked grin lit up his face. “It worked for a dozen of us. Those troops never understood that someone might give themselves up to protect another person. They didn’t understand our allegiances, and we used that against them.”

  “So you did hide me and lead them off. That much is true, even if you aren’t my brother.” Saralyn stood and crossed the floor between them, shaking off Jackson’s restraining hand.

  “Yeah. I did. I just didn’t realize it had done any good until now. Some of the other guys heard from the girls they’d helped, but you just disappeared. I assumed you’d been terminated.”

  Saralyn paused in front of him and turned to the group. “Can we untie him? He’s not one of the bad guys.”

  Jackson frowned. “I’m not so sure. How do we know this isn’t just a line of bull to save his ass?”

  Brice frowned, looking thoughtful for a moment. When he spoke, though, he sounded surprised, as if the detail had just come back to him. “The dragonfly! We all have a dragonfly tattoo on our left ankle. The enforcers marked us with it when they brought us into the lab so they could be sure to tell us apart from normal children.” Brice extended his leg. “Go ahead and look. I’ll bet my life Saralyn has a matching one.

  Saralyn looked over at Jackson, and he gave a slight nod of his head. He knew about the tattoo, he’d asked her about it the first time they’d made love. At the time, she’d answered honestly that she thought her parents must have had her tattooed before she’d been orphaned. The tattoo had been on her leg as long as she could remember. Turning back to Brice, she lifted his pant leg and peeled back the thick, military-issue sock.

  There it was, an exact match for hers. A dragonfly tattoo.

  Jackson let out a long breath. “Looks like he might be telling the truth, and my lady here seems to agree with him so I say we untie him and get a little more comfortable. Kaeden?”

  The sergeant nodded. “Just so long as he remembers we still have a few tranquilizer darts left. Snake, you want to run over to that pub we passed a way back and get us some beer?”

  “I’m on it! Pete, come ride shotgun for me.” The two mercenaries jumped up and hustled out the door.

  Saralyn took a step toward Brice, but Jackson stopped her. “I’ll get this.”

  She knew he wasn’t entirely convinced that Brice’s concern for her was genuine, and she had to admit it felt good. Jackson cared about her for more than just a quick roll in the sack. She’d never let a man get close to her before, and she wasn’t quite sure how Jackson had worked his way into her affections so completely in such a short period of time. Still, it felt good.

  After Jackson loosened the bindings, Brice stood, rubbing the marks the restraints had left on his wrists. He made no move toward her, and Saralyn realized he knew Jackson would be upset if he did
. It surprised her. Enforcers weren’t known for their tact. Men! She wasn’t sure if Jackson was protecting her, or just didn’t want her that close to Brice now that he’d confirmed they weren’t siblings. Still, it was nice to have someone care.

  The door hinges squeaked loudly as Snake and Pete re-entered the room, carrying a couple of cases of beer they deposited on a dilapidated table.

  Saralyn gave them a grateful glance before hooking her arm through Jackson’s and approaching Brice. “You said some of the other guys had heard from the girls they helped escape. Are they still in touch?”

  Brice looked pointedly around the room. “Do you trust these guys? Really trust them, I mean? Because if any of this gets back to the enforcers, people could die. People I care about.”

  Jackson spoke up, his voice a low snarl. “You’re an enforcer, and we just let you loose. I think we’re taking a bit of a risk here too.”

  Saralyn snorted in exasperation. “Yes I trust them with my life. You saved it back then, and they saved me more recently. So if the pair of you could quit staring each other down like a pair of dogs after the same bone, I’d appreciate it.”

  Jackson tensed for a second, then relaxed, letting out a bark of laughter. “Well said. Brice, you want a beer?” He took the case from Snake and Pete and started tossing cans to the group.

  “Don’t mind if I do.” Brice popped the top and tipped the can back to guzzle the entire contents in one long slow gulp.

  Jackson rolled his eyes, and opened his own can. “Okay. You can chug a beer better than me. I’ll give you that one. So what about the other girls?”

  Brice let out a loud belch. “There’s half a dozen that I know of. The guys and I help them out from time to time. Because we’re in the ranks of the enforcers, we can help them fly under the radar, give them advance warning when they’re in danger. They’re pretty skittish, though, even with us. The official government line is that they were all terminated long ago, but we all know that’s a crock of shit. If the girls are ever caught it won’t be pretty. If it comes right down to it, we’ll do whatever it takes to protect them. Two of them are married to buddies of mine. They’re easy to protect. No one looks for fugitives right under their noses. The ones we worry about are the ones like Saralyn there who are running around in plain sight. It’s quite possible some might not even know what they are, just like her. One slip, one enforcer who sees the wrong thing at the wrong time, and they could get caught.” He scowled at Saralyn. “I didn’t even know you were alive. There could be scores of you out there that we aren’t even aware of.”

  She nodded. It was true. She’d managed to block everything before the escape from her mind. There could be others, maybe a few or maybe a lot. There was no way to know for sure. “We need to look for them.” Her brow furrowed. “We need to connect us all together so we can protect and hide each other. How do we start? I have no idea how to find them.” She looked from Brice to Jackson. “Can you help?”

  “It’ll be hard.” Brice spoke slowly, thoughtfully. “We need to be careful not to alert the authorities, but it can be done.” He accepted another can of beer from Snake and popped the tab. “Are you sure you want to do this? It’d be easier for you to hide on your own. These guys would help you.”

  “These guys will help her no matter what she decides.” Jackson sat down on an empty crate and drew her back down onto his lap. “She’s family now, and we look after our own.” He nuzzled her neck.

  Brice nodded, looking satisfied with that answer. “Then I have to tell you that my pal Greg and I are already all over this. We track down leads, and if we find one of the girls we let her know that she isn’t alone, that we are still here and still willing to help them whenever they need it. We have a meeting spot over on the outskirts of town where we meet once a month to share news and just generally hang out and catch up on each other’s lives. The next meet is scheduled for next week. If you want, you and your guy can come meet the other girls. Sorry, but the rest of the team will have to stay behind. If a full-blown team of mercenaries descends on them, the girls will scatter faster than wheat in a windstorm.”

  “We’ll think about it.” Jackson gave Saralyn’s shoulder a comforting squeeze. “I can see your point, but I’m not sure I’m comfortable going in without backup. I know I’m being paranoid, but it could be a trap.”

  Brice shrugged. “I know. It takes trust on both sides, and that’s pretty hard to muster.” A tiny bit of a smile curved the corner of his mouth. “Just an hour ago I was sitting here blindfolded so I can appreciate I’m not on your firm-fast-friend list quite yet. The offer is there though. And if you ever need to get a hold of me, just call and leave a message at the barracks. Tell them your name is Angel. That’s the code name all the lost ones use when they need to contact me.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate that.” Saralyn hopped off Jackson’s lap and crossed to Brice, giving him a big hug and placing a chaste kiss on his cheek. “And thank you for saving my life.”

  “Oh hell.” Jackson tossed his empty beer can into the far corner of the room, and sat up straighter. “We can go visit your sisters if you really want to. If Brice here wanted to betray us or hurt you he’s had plenty of chance already. I’ll just take lots of ammo with me.”

  Saralyn danced across the room to throw her arms around his neck. He really was an amazing guy. For the first time in her life she let herself wonder what the future might be like. A future with people she could trust, and a special guy that she could count on. A guy like Jackson.

  * * *

  “You’re really sure this Brice is the same guy you remember?” Jackson brushed a stray strand of hair off her face. He shifted his position on the bed so that they lay facing each other.

  “Yes. He’s a lot older, but I’m positive. And some of the things he said about the lab and the experiments, they stirred up memories I’d forgotten about. They are really bad, so maybe I just didn’t want to remember any of it except the part where he saved me.” She traced her finger down his naked chest, stopping at his belly button.

  After a short debrief session when they’d returned to the team’s base house, she and Jackson had retired to his room. It had been a long day. As exciting as it was to finally meet the man she remembered as a brother and discover the missing parts of her past, the revelations had left her exhausted.

  “I am going to sleep like a baby tonight.” Saralyn yawned and snuggled up against him.

  “Are you really tired?” Jackson slanted her a mischievous look.

  Saralyn cocked an eyebrow at him. “Somewhat. Why? Did you have something in mind?”

  He loved the way the sexy little witch played innocent when she couldn’t possible mistake his meaning. His cock was painfully erect and pressing against her belly. “I thought we could both use a little bit of exercise to help us unwind before we go to sleep.”

  “Really.” Saralyn feigned detached interest, and it was all he could do not to laugh out loud. Her eyes were full of a mischievous invitation. “You want to go jogging?”

  “I was thinking of something a little less public.” He lowered his head to nibble on the sensitive lobe of her ear. “Something like yoga, or swimming, or…” He used his tongue to trace a line down her jaw to the vulnerable hollow at the base of her throat.

  Saralyn let out a gasp as his tongue hit just the right spot. “I might be willing to consider… a private event.”

  “Capital!” He rolled over on his back, pulling her up on top of him so that she straddled him. “Have you ever ridden a horse?” He loved the way her eyes widened as his intentions sank in. She truly was a witch. A sexy, self-assured, dark-eyed witch who could turn his world upside down with a single glance.

  “There are not a lot of horses in the city. I’m afraid that’s one skill I’ve never mastered.” She circled his shaft with her fingers and gave it a long, slow pull. “But I’ve always wanted to learn.”

  Rising on her knees, she positioned his cock at the entran
ce to her sex and lowered herself slowly, inch by agonizingly erotic inch over the massive shaft. “Oh, that is so…” The sentence trailed off unfinished as she used one finger to trace the contours of his belly with a deliberate possessiveness that sent heat exploding through every nerve in his body.

  He bucked his hips slowly, encouraging her to ride him in a deliciously sexy manner that left him groaning softly. Passion flared in her lovely eyes and she leaned forward to clutch at his shoulders as she began to move up and down in time with his thrusts.

  “Oh God, Jackson. Jackson!”

  “I know, baby. I know what you need, what we both need.” He muttered the words softly, his voice raw with hunger.

  He could feel the walls of her channel begin to quiver at the beginning of her climax, and he grasped her hips, ramming himself deep up inside her again and again. A fierce need urged him on, faster and faster until the tumultuous climax overtook them both, leaving them shaken and gasping for breath.

  Saralyn collapsed on top of him, and he wrapped his arms around her, not sure if he was holding on to her for his sake or hers.

  Tomorrow they would start the dark journey to reclaim her past, but for now they had each other. They were together. It was enough.

  Riding Shotgun (Mercenaries 3)

  Anne Kane

  Kalie’s a genetic experiment who was never supposed to get out of the lab. If the government finds her, they will kill her without hesitation. She’s a crack shot, though, and she’s used to looking out for herself.

  Kalie’s affinity for all things mechanical helps her make a living on the underground street racing circuit, but it’s a dangerous game, and lately things haven’t been going so well.

  Shotgun falls hard from the first time he meets Kalie, and he’s determined to make her his own. When accidents keep plaguing her car, he gets suspicious. With the help of his mercenary buddies he’s determined to find the source of the problem and keep his woman safe.