by Cara Bristol
Hunted by the Cyborg
By Cara Bristol
Billionaire Carter Aymes, director of Cyber Operations, a covert cyborg force, devotes his wealth and time to saving lives, rescuing hostages and other victims from desperate situations. His ultimate mission is to hunt down and eliminate Lamani, the alien terrorist mastermind, before he conquers the galaxy.
When Carter hires Beth O’Shea, a vulnerable yet courageous woman with connections to his past, their attraction is immediate and strong, but he knows getting involved with her is a bad idea. He’s her boss, and he has way too many classified projects to risk letting someone get close.
Rejected by the progenitors who cloned her, Beth is determined to live a normal human life, beginning by getting an ordinary job with a security firm. But, from the start, she questions the extraordinary secrecy surrounding the organization. She can’t help but wonder about the tall, muscled, larger-than-life director who gave her a chance when she desperately needed one. Could he ever be romantically interested in a woman like her, in a clone?
When Beth is attacked, they both realize how short and tenuous life is, and their mutual attraction becomes too powerful to resist.
As their relationship heats up, so does the urgency to capture Lamani before he can unleash a stealth weapon at a critical planetary Summit meeting. With time running out, Carter discovers that stopping Lamani may require sacrificing Beth’s life.
Will Carter be able to rescue her, or will his new love be the one person he can’t save?
Hunted by the Cyborg (Cy-Ops Sci-fi Romance 6)
Copyright © January 2018 by Cara Bristol
All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this e-book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from the author. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
eISBN: 978-0-9968390-9-9
Editor: Kate Richards
Copy Editor: Nanette Sipe
Proofreader: Celeste Jones
Cover Artist: Sweet ’N Spicy Designs
Formatting by Wizards in Publishing
Published in the United States of America
Cara Bristol
http://carabristol.com
This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Epilogue
Did you miss a Cy-Ops Sci-fi Romance?
Titles by Cara Bristol
About the Author
Cyborg Attraction ~ Bonus Story
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter One
Damn his cyborg vision.
He scrubbed his eyes, wishing he could unsee the human and alien nakedness on parade.
Spaceport Authority required commercial passengers to don SA-issued travel suits on commercial flights. Most people saw white unitards. But, to security scanners, the special polymer fabric was invisible, allowing contraband or weapons to be detected and neutralized. To a cyborg with enhanced vision…also invisible. He’d gotten an eyeful of things no man should be forced to witness.
He averted his gaze to have it rivet on a tall brunette striding among the crowd. Now, there was a sight for sore eyes. He could view only her back as she marched ahead of him, but the shifting upside-down heart of her derriere kick-started his libido.
Nice ass.
Sexy legs, too. Long, shapely. Her skin was as smooth as milk-infused coffee. Waves of chestnut hair curled about her shoulders. The hair, that ass, and legs, her creamy skin reminded him of—
“Excuse me! Excuse me! I have to catch my shuttle.” A male passenger shoved his way through the crowd. As the woman moved to let him pass, Carter caught a glimpse of her profile.
I’ll be go-to-hell! “Liza?” He darted forward. “Liza!”
She halted and turned, but her blank expression showed no recognition. “I’m sorry. Do I know you?”
“Carter,” he identified himself. “Carter Aymes.” Physically, he had changed since they’d parted company, but not so much as to be unrecognizable. She looked the same. Still beautiful. He kept his gaze trained on her face.
She shook her head. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re not Liza O’Shea?” She was one hell of a doppelganger. Cybernetic facial recognition software kicked in and analyzed the width, height, and distance between her half-moon-shaped eyes, the radius of her eyebrow arch, the diameter of her nostrils, and a dozen other markers, and produced one name: Liza O’Shea. “You didn’t attend Terran Technical Institute?”
She bit her full lower lip, and he remembered their first kiss like it had happened yesterday.
“You must know my sister. I-I’m Beth O’Shea,” she said.
Sister? Not according to his software—or his human memory. He and Liza had dated hot and heavy for two years. Although he’d never met her family, he’d heard plenty about her parents and their hyper-doting, but controlling ways as well as occasional references to aunts, uncles, and cousins. No siblings. Not a one. He remembered her telling him she was an only child.
“M-my…twin,” Beth said.
A natural genetic double would explain the facial recognition analysis. Still…he shook his head. “I guess I forgot Liza had a sister.” He hadn’t forgotten. Why would Liza pretend to be an only child? Or maybe he was talking to Liza. Could the sister story be the pretense? He hadn’t been happy when she’d left him, but they hadn’t parted on bad terms. If she’d encountered an Obliviscatorian, she could be suffering from amnesia; however, it wouldn’t have implanted a false memory.
Usually, the answer turned out to be the obvious one. Probably Liza had had a twin but never mentioned her. Except…
People glared as they were forced to swerve around them. Carter motioned with his head, and, after a brief hesitation, Beth followed him out of the throng.
Let it go. Say sorry for the mistake, give Liza my regards, and go back to Cy-Ops HQ.
Except, dammit, gut instinct refused to let go of the puzzle, and not because he’d mistaken a stranger for the ex-girlfriend he hadn’t seen in fifteen ye
ars.
“Liza and I…” Beth twisted the strap of her SA-issued travel bag. “We didn’t always get along. Sometimes, we didn’t speak for a while.”
A shame, but not uncommon. Siblings didn’t necessarily like each other. One didn’t choose family; you got what you got. Nor did children always see eye to eye with parents, even if they were among the galaxy’s wealthy elite and owned a terraformed satellite the size of a small city. Liza’s disagreements with her “parental units,” as she’d jokingly referred to them, hadn’t prevented her from taking a hiatus from the university and breaking up with him to go on a star safari with them. That his annoyance outweighed the hurt signaled parting was for the best, anyway, and he had fond memories.
He smiled. “How is Liza?”
“She’s…dead.”
“What! When?”
“A little over fourteen years ago.”
Shock rocketed through him, but he calculated the timing. “On the safari?”
Beth nodded.
“I’m so sorry for your loss.” His heart constricted with regret for a young life lost. All this time, he’d assumed she’d decided not to return to school. What could have happened? Shuttle crash? Contagion? Alien attack? Safari guides were diligent about keeping travelers away from dangerous life forms, but sometimes tourists circumvented the rules. While Liza could act impulsively, she wasn’t stupid. Accessing his wireless, he searched the vital records database for Elizabeth Ann O’Shea.
Record not found.
Odd. There should be a death certificate. He tasked his cyborg brain to drill deeper. “What happened?” he asked Beth.
She glanced around. “I don’t feel comfortable talking about it with—here, I mean.”
“I understand,” he said. She didn’t feel comfortable talking to him. If Liza hadn’t bothered to tell him about her sister, she probably hadn’t told Beth about him. Beth only had his word he was who he said he was, but if Liza had been killed in a shuttle accident or contracted an alien disease, wouldn’t her sister say so?
Let it go.
He didn’t have time to indulge his curiosity. Abductions and terrorism were on the upswing, Lamis-Odg had gained control over more sectors, and a pivotal Association of Planets Summit would occur in a little over two months. Cyber Operations and Aym-Sec, the private security firm which served as a cover for Cy-Ops, raced to beat the clock.
Ping! No record found. His cyberbrain had finished scanning the major databases and come up with zip. “Why is there no death record for your sister?”
Beth’s eyes narrowed. “Who says there’s not?”
Let it go.
He shook his head. “Never mind. I apologize for bothering you. Again, I’m very sorry for your loss.”
* * * *
That was Carter Aymes! The head of Aym-Sec.
Not a man to mess with. He looked like he could bench-press a PeeVee. Beth kicked herself a dozen times, and called herself twice as many names. Stupid! Idiot! Could I have botched this any worse?
When she showed up at his office tomorrow, he would wonder why she hadn’t revealed she’d known of him or that she had an interview at his firm. Would the omission make him wary of hiring her? Flustered by his questions about Liza, she hadn’t responded as she should have.
My interview is with Brock Mann. Obviously, Aymes isn’t involved in every hire, or he would have known who I am. Maybe I won’t run into him tomorrow.
Except, the way her luck was going…
She’d figured by going planetside she ran the risk of encountering an acquaintance of Liza’s but hadn’t expected it to happen so soon—at the spaceport before she even got to Terra! Or that the person would own the company she counted on to hire her. Aymes appeared to be mid-thirties, so maybe he’d been a student the same time as Liza. Ex-boyfriend? He’d seemed more shocked by the news of her death than a casual acquaintance would be.
She dug her PerComm from her travel bag and swiped a finger over the screen to activate it. After tapping into Liza’s files from fifteen years ago, she groaned. Sure enough. Liza had dozens of still vids and holos of her and Aymes hugging, laughing, kissing. She squinted. He’d changed a lot in those years.
Attractive and well-built then, he’d matured into an imposing figure, his features chiseled and stern, his muscles bulging with strength and power. If she wasn’t mistaken, he’d gotten taller, too. She and Liza were the same height, but in the vids, Liza had topped his shoulder, whereas she’d had to tilt her head way back to talk. Gone, too, was the openness. The striking blue eyes of the man at the spaceport had acquired a permanent skeptical squint.
What didn’t change in a decade and half?
Except her recurrent pain. That hadn’t changed, other than to get worse. She massaged her temple in a circular motion. When the sharp edges wore off, she stowed her PerComm, and rejoined the throng streaming through the concourse.
A special charter would whisk her to City of Angels on Terra, where Aym-Sec would put her up in a hotel for the night. Tomorrow, she’d interview with Brock Mann. The start of a new life. Oh stars, I hope. She wiped clammy palms on her white flight suit. It would be a fresh start only if Aym-Sec hired her. If she didn’t get the job, she didn’t know what she’d do. She couldn’t return to the satellite. In fourteen and a half years, she’d never been anything but an unwanted liability to the O’Sheas. A mistake of epic proportions. After a few weeks of tenuous optimism, hope had withered into bitterness and blame, as if the scheme had been her idea.
Maybe, on Terra, I can make a home. I have to get the job. I have to...
Perhaps she would have been better served to have pretended to be Liza, except “her sister” hadn’t finished her final year at the Terran Technical Institute, and Beth needed better credentials. Forging a new identity was easier than changing an existing one. And, despite the O’Sheas’ original intention, they wouldn’t accept the pretense. Though she bore their beloved child’s name, Elizabeth Ann O’Shea, she wasn’t their daughter.
So “Beth” had struck out on her own.
The O’Sheas had hired someone to forge credentials enabling her to seek employment and fronted her enough credits to get by until she secured the job. Assistance hadn’t originated from the goodness of their hearts, but from a desire to get rid of their problem.
The rejection shouldn’t hurt anymore, but it still did.
Chapter Two
“Welcome back!” Brock Mann poked his head into Carter’s office. “How was R&R at the Darius 4 Pleasure Resort?”
Carter waved him in. “Great, but too short. I wish I was back there right now.”
“Problem?”
He grimaced. “I just got off a vid conference with Benson Vincere.”
Brock sank into the sensa-chair fronting the desk. “What’s he done now?”
Carter sighed and relaxed into his own chair, letting it massage his back and work out the kinks. It wasn’t as good as having a Darius 4 pleasure android minister to him, but it would be a long time before he could break free for another vacation. “It’s what the secretary general won’t do. He refuses to accept the security plan for the Summit. He says such ‘restrictive’ measures will offend member planets by implying they’re not trustworthy.”
“Even if they don’t participate in acts of terror themselves, if they have any ties to Lamis-Odg, they’re not trustworthy. Lamani can and will manipulate them. What did Vincere agree to?”
“Level three. I forced the issue by telling him I would contact every planetary leader and urge them to avoid the Summit for security reasons if he didn’t agree. I also said Mikala would contact them as well.” The newly reelected president of Terra United, Mikala Aaron—who happened to be Brock’s mother-in-law—recognized the importance of security, unlike the well-intentioned, naïve secretary general of the Association of Planets. The AOP’s idealism frequently conflicted with Cyber Operations’ mission to protect the galaxy.
&n
bsp; “Level three isn’t good enough,” Brock said.
“No, it’s not. Counting the ambassadors, nonvoting leaders and envoys, aides, and other support staff, two to three thousand people will attend the Summit. An assassin or a suicide bomber could easily blend with the crowd. Aym-Sec will bill the AOP for level three, but Cy-Ops will provide level five,” Carter said. “I’m putting you in charge of the background checks. Be discreet—don’t leave any tracers—but examine every vulnerability of every attendee. If they said hello to a stranger at a spaceport whose third cousin met a Malodonian who once visited Lamis-Odg, I want to know it.”
“I’ll assign Illumina to the project,” Brock said.
“Perfect.”
Nature had granted the Faria people special gifts. Some were empaths, a few were psychic, others had enhanced linguistic ability, some were mathematical savants. A computer sensate, Illumina could become one with virtual reality, giving her computer capabilities beyond those of a cyborg.
“She may have saved our butts yesterday,” Brock said.
“How so?”
“You know the open logistics position?”
“Yeah?”
“I had a strong prospect scheduled for an interview this morning,” Brock said. “I personally vetted her and did the prelim vid-con. Her credentials appeared impeccable.”
Carter leaned back in his chair. “I take it she didn’t pass?” Although the security firm’s purpose was to provide a cover for top secret Cyber Operations, on occasion Aym-Sec did deal with sensitive information, so its employees had to be carefully investigated. The logistics coordinator required extra care. Once he or she passed probation, the individual would serve both Aym-Sec and Cy-Ops.
Brock shook his head. “If all had gone well at the interview, I would have hired her. Thankfully, I had Illumina double-check the credentials. She discovered they were faked. Whoever forged them did a heck of a job, backdating her work and education so they appeared like an actual history. Illumina integrated into databases and discovered the codes had been altered. I never would have caught it. Beth O’Shea looked legit.”
