“Drake,” he whispered. “Shut the fuck up! If they overhear…”
The rest of the team approached and he couldn’t finish warning me not to let the others know I didn’t want to follow these orders. He climbed into the bird and I had no choice but to follow him once again.
Cade lay seven feet to my right and we both peered through the scopes on our rifles into the small house below us. Phillips and Ramirez had positioned themselves on my left and we each waited for the third and fourth targets to return from the back of the house so we could take them out at the same time. I didn’t move but internally, I twitched and fidgeted nervously as I continued to stare at the woman I’d been sent to kill.
She stirred something in a pot on the stove of the kitchen then put the lid back on it. A second woman stood near a counter cleaning and sorting lentils. Phillips had his rifle fixed on her. As soon as the two men, whom I assumed were their husbands, returned, they would all be dead.
Below us, I could hear the screams and laughter of a group of boys who played soccer in the distance. I’d briefly wondered if any of those boys were the sons of these couples, but then I thought I would lose my fucking mind if I wondered about it any longer so I just replayed the message I’d received from The Genesis Project over and over to distract me from my own thoughts.
Original target spotted twenty-five miles west. Proceed as planned.
His coordinates had been sent to me as well and I pulled the map up in my mind and focused on it. Since no one else in the world – as far as we knew anyway – had the technology The Genesis Project used to communicate with a living thing, I’d not only become their ultimate soldier but their stealthiest cellphone.
It annoyed the hell out of me.
Look: there’s a difference between relaying important information that affected the goals of a particular operation or how we were supposed to achieve those goals and simply having to tell someone on the ground with me that they needed to report back to Admiral Borowitz as soon as we returned. One of these days, I fully expected to receive a message to return to base with lattes and donuts.
Movement in the front of the house signaled that all targets were in sight again. Four fingers squeezed four triggers and four bodies fell to the floor.
I was the first to rise so we could hurry from the rooftop to try to reach the man we’d been sent here for the in the first place.
As always, Cade was the only one who talked to me as we rode to the next location. Phillips and Ramirez watched us warily but I tried to ignore them.
Cade pulled his headgear off and wiped the sweat from his face, complaining, “Why does it always have to be so fucking hot here?”
“Because the entire country can be classified as a desert. It rarely rains here.”
“Drake,” Cade sighed, “that was rhetorical.”
Of course I’d known that, but I was bored. So I kept annoying him. “It’s summer yet it was raining in Adana. Statistically, we only had a seventeen percent chance of encountering rain on any given day. In fact, the amount of rainfall in that hour alone probably exceeded the monthly total of precipitation for the area.”
Cade blinked at me then sighed again. “There’s no way they programmed you with such useless information.”
“It’s not useless,” I countered. “I’m using it right now.”
Cade flipped me off before asking, “Wasn’t Constantinople in Turkey?”
“Technically, it was in the Byzantine Empire.”
I got flipped off again for that.
“I don’t even know what that is. And don’t even think about telling me because I don’t care.”
“Then why did you ask about Constantinople?”
Cade shrugged. “I couldn’t remember.”
I liked history so I wanted to tell him anyway, but I couldn’t now since he’d told me not to tell him. I shot a quick glance in Phillips’ direction since he was still scowling at me and tried to think of anything else to talk to Cade about but he saved me the trouble.
“Dude, knock it off,” Cade told Phillips.
“Knock what off?” Phillips asked.
“Being an asshole.”
Phillips snickered and shook his head at him. “It’s not like it has feelings or anything.”
Cade pointed at him and warned, “I told you to stop being an asshole.”
“You hate having this bastard around all the time, too,” Phillips retorted. I didn’t mean to react to his accusation, but it startled me – and yeah, it hurt.
Phillips and Ramirez both noticed and narrowed their eyes at me, but I wouldn’t look in their direction again. I wouldn’t look at Cade either.
“Drake, we’ll talk about this later,” Cade said. “And Phillips, I swear to God, you keep pulling shit like this, I’ll report you to Admiral Borowitz. Those guys at the Project have us all under their thumbs, even him. If they think you’re a liability with their investment…”
“I’ve never touched him,” Phillips interrupted. “I’m not risking my career over Frankenstein.”
Frankenstein? So that was the nickname they’d given me behind my back? Admittedly, it wasn’t that bad of a nickname and part of me wished they’d use it. I also suspected they’d never read Frankenstein and didn’t know the creature Viktor Frankenstein created had turned to murder because of his despair over his existence and his rejection by humans.
Yeah, I thought the nickname was far more fitting than they could have possibly realized.
Cade would have most likely continued their argument but I’d been keeping track of how long we’d been driving and we were only about five minutes away from our drop-off. I kicked his foot to get his attention and reminded him where we were supposed to go. The rest of our trip would have to be made on foot.
“I know what the goddamn coordinates are, Drake,” he spit out angrily.
Why the hell was he angry with me?
As we began the five-mile trek westward, I allowed myself to think about Saige for the first time since leaving Virginia. She didn’t even know I’d left the country, and we were supposed to go out again in a couple of days. If I didn’t get back in time, I had no idea what to tell her. I’d planned on asking Cade later, but he didn’t seem like he was in the mood for teaching me how to be normal right now.
It’s not like I worked in intelligence. I’d heard Cade bragging about being a SEAL to so many women, I’d just accepted that for some reason, this job brought with it a substantial increase in sexual prowess. I’d asked him once if the same thing were true for guys in the Special Forces and he’d looked at me like I’d finally said something incredibly stupid and just told me, “Of course not. Nobody’s impressed by some asshole making the Green Berets.”
That didn’t make any sense to me at all.
The missions themselves were classified but that wasn’t what prevented me from telling Saige more about my job. Unlike the others, I didn’t have a rank because I wasn’t really in the Navy. I’d never had to endure the two years of training or survive Hell Week. I’d never been deployed. There was no way the government was going to allow me to live that far away from the men who controlled me at the Project for more than a few weeks at a time. And that was my record: nineteen days.
I’d never been given a choice about any of it.
Ultimately, I didn’t want to see Saige’s eyes light up as so often happened to other women when Cade career-dropped because he was trying to sleep with her. It almost always worked, too. I wanted her to like me, even though the me she was getting to know was mostly a lie, wasn’t it?
Thinking about her made me miss her.
Even if I’d wanted to replay our entire date or fantasize about our next one, I wouldn’t have had the chance. That obnoxious, unsettling buzzing in my mind made me stop walking and close my eyes. Cade immediately noticed and I heard his boots on the dry ground beside me.
Abort mission. Suspect not linked to ISIL. Return to base.
I gasped and opened
my eyes because it was too late.
We’d already murdered four innocent people.
Chapter 6
“You’ve been even more quiet tonight than usual,” Saige told me.
I pushed a pile of steamed vegetables farther away from the chicken on my plate, but I hadn’t asked for ketchup again, and I didn’t really like grilled chicken without it. There was some orange colored sauce in a miniature ramekin beside it, but I didn’t trust the looks of that sauce.
“Sorry,” I mumbled. “Stressful week.”
I peeked across the table at her and found myself smiling even though we’d gone to a restaurant where the entire menu had nothing I wanted to eat without ketchup, and I’d been withdrawn and angry that someone had authorized our team to go ahead with an operation despite a lack of evidence to indicate they’d found the actual terrorist.
Cade had been so pissed off he’d forgotten that Phillips had accused him of hating my presence, maybe even my existence, just as much as they did. He still hadn’t mentioned it.
It didn’t help that Phillips tried to shrug the whole thing off and claimed those four people were probably ISIL supporters anyway, which was how they’d ended up on the wrong radar, so it’s not like it was any big loss. Cade threatened to kick his ass for that, which led to us all getting called in and reprimanded because teams aren’t supposed to be so divisive. And of course Phillips blamed me.
I’d at least discovered there was one good thing about being a modern-day Frankenstein owned and operated by the U.S. government: they pulled Phillips from our team for that shit. Unfortunately, they’d left one of his best friends behind, and I didn’t think my life was going to get any easier with Ramirez having a new reason to resent me now.
Saige returned my smile and pointed her fork toward my plate. “Want to get this to go? We can go back to my apartment and watch a movie. If you don’t make me sit through a war movie, I won’t make you sit through a romantic comedy.”
I snorted and dropped my fork on the plate. “I don’t like war movies. I’d actually prefer the romantic comedy.”
“Sold,” Saige said. She got our waitress’s attention and asked for two boxes.
I couldn’t help it. I had to ask her. “Are you going to get grossed out if I dump ketchup on this?”
She laughed and shook her head. “This is bordering on fetish but no.”
I wrinkled my nose and shook my head. “Fetish has a sexual connotation. Ketchup doesn’t turn me on.”
Yeah, I actually told her that.
Why was I such an idiot?
But Saige just arched an eyebrow at me and retorted, “You know I’m going to ask.”
I shook my head again. “Actually, I have no idea what you’re going to ask. Why do I say such stupid shit? The answer seems pretty obvious.”
“No, and I don’t think it’s stupid. It’s weird but I think you’re weird in an interesting way.”
“You think I’m interesting?” I interrupted.
Again. Why did I keep saying such stupid shit?
Saige laughed and pushed her plate away so she could lean closer to me. “Drake, I’ve asked you out twice now. Why the hell would I be here if I didn’t think you were interesting?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maybe you just like a challenge, and let’s face it. I’m challenging.”
“You’re too hard on yourself,” she argued. “Did you grow up with an overly critical father or something?”
I couldn’t even steal from Cade’s memories anymore. He didn’t talk about his family that often. “Not really,” I said. Apparently, this waitress had also vanished into another black hole. I nervously rubbed my hands on my jeans because I hated lying to her all the time, but what else could I do? “Single mom, actually. And she wasn’t overly critical, just busy and tired, as most single moms are.”
I didn’t even know if that were true, but I’d spent enough time thinking about parents and their kids and childhood, and I’d always thought raising any child must be difficult. Having to do it alone must be damn near impossible, yet so many women did it all the time.
Saige just nodded and offered me a small smile. “Mine too.”
The waitress reappeared with our boxes and check and I pulled cash from my wallet to pay. Saige watched me and I glanced up at her and suspected yet another lie was coming.
I was right.
“You paid with cash the other night, too. I think you’re the first person I’ve met in years who doesn’t use a credit card.”
I did, actually. I had two but never paid the bills for them. Those statements didn’t even go to my apartment, and I didn’t want anyone at The Genesis Project to know I was buying her dinner. They’d never told me I couldn’t date, but if Parker decided he didn’t want me to see Saige anymore for some reason, there wouldn’t be a damn thing I could do about it.
“Old habit, I guess,” I deflected. “Before I had a steady income, I used to pay for everything in cash so I couldn’t overspend.”
Parker didn’t even think I could lie, yet I seemed awfully good at it.
“And you keep trying to convince me you’re not smart,” Saige teased. “Next dinner’s on me, by the way.”
“Next?” I repeated. This date had hardly begun and she was already sure she wanted to see me again?
I didn’t even want to finish this date if it meant I had to keep listening to myself and all the ridiculous words that kept spilling from my mouth. But Saige just smiled at me again and shrugged. “Well, we’ll see if you keep your word about not forcing me to watch a movie that I don’t have the right chromosome pairing to enjoy.”
“What about sports? Is that grounds for calling off a potential third date?”
She nodded and reached across the table to put my food into the Styrofoam box for me since I still hadn’t touched it. Not only an idiot, but apparently, a helpless idiot.
“Considering you claimed to own a pair of UNC sweats, sports might actually derail the entire course of any potential relationship.”
“Then I’ll burn them,” I said seriously.
Saige glanced up at me and gave me that sly, sexy smile and the room suddenly seemed twenty degrees warmer. “I’ll buy you a better pair.”
“Let me guess. Blue and orange?” I asked.
Saige shrugged again but kept smiling, and I decided to become a Cavaliers fan.
I somehow managed not to say anything too ridiculous on the drive back to her apartment. I didn’t watch a lot of movies so I wasn’t even sure what I’d agreed to sit through, but as long as she was sitting by me, I didn’t care. While I’d picked her up for both dates, I’d never actually been inside her apartment, and as she set the bag from the restaurant on the table and disappeared into her kitchen to grab her ketchup bottle – without me even asking for it – I hurriedly tugged on the left sleeve of my shirt yet again.
This one didn’t have buttons and every time the elastic around the wrist crept up my forearm, I became convinced that goddamn mark was showing, glowing some kind of warning light that not only had I lied about my past but about what I am as well. I knew exactly where that mark was so some part of me understood I was just being paranoid, but it didn’t stop my heart from racing each time and it didn’t stop me from wanting to look down at my arm just to make sure.
After eating, Saige found a movie she thought we’d both like and sat beside me on her sofa. I have no idea what the movie was about because the only thing I could focus on was her and how close her body was to mine and whether or not her proximity was a good thing or a bad thing. She smelled like some heavenly combination of fresh citrus and vanilla and that was definitely a good thing.
And when she slipped her hand through mine halfway through the movie, that was a good thing, too. But if I thought it was difficult to concentrate before, it became impossible afterward.
So when the movie ended and she sat up straighter and asked me if I’d enjoyed it, I decided to be honest with her for once. �
�I’m not sure. I was too busy thinking about you.”
Saige gave me that same sexy smile from the restaurant, and her apartment suddenly felt like I was back in the desert. “And what were you thinking about?”
“Well, to start with, how much I wish I weren’t such an awkward asshole,” I joked.
Saige snickered and let go of my hand and I briefly wondered if my joke had crossed some line, but she reached up to my face and her fingers brushed lightly across my cheek. My body screamed with a painful aching because I’d never been so aroused in my life, not that I had many years of a life I could remember, but at the same time, my own lack of experience and self-consciousness kept me frozen in place.
When she leaned over and kissed me, I was too surprised to respond right away. Ever since I’d met her in my favorite hamburger joint, I’d read about how to be a good kisser, and hell, I’d even watched YouTube videos, but nothing could have prepared me for the soft texture of her lips or their gentle movement against mine or the heat of her breath against my face.
She must have interpreted my unresponsiveness as disinterest because she tried to pull away from me so I put my hand behind her neck and grinned sheepishly at her. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “Let me try again.”
She smiled back at me, and this time, when she kissed me, I forced my brain to wake the hell up and pull all of that data I’d stockpiled so I could finally use it. I’d learned over the past five years that there was a big difference between acquired knowledge and inherent knowledge. If it was inherent, something I’d been programmed to know by the Project, I could function as if I were a robot. But acquired knowledge forced me to concentrate and remain aware of my thoughts and actions, and at that particular moment, I’d never been so nervous about anything.
As Saige’s lips parted and her tongue teased mine, I seemed completely incapable of any kind of thought at all anymore. I somehow managed to remember I didn’t want her to pull away from me again and forced myself to follow her lead. I was so focused on trying not to screw anything up that she surprised me when her fingers slipped beneath the hemline of my shirt.
Genesis Rising (The Genesis Project Book 1) Page 5
