by Amy Ruttan
Table of Contents
Arctic Burn
The Phoenix Agency
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Epilogue
About Amy Ruttan
Other Books by Amy
Text copyright ©2017 by the Author.
This work was made possible by a special license through the Kindle Worlds publishing program and has not necessarily been reviewed by Desiree Holt. All characters, scenes, events, plots and related elements appearing in the original The Phoenix Agency remain the exclusive copyrighted and/or trademarked property of Desiree Holt, or their affiliates or licensors.
For more information on Kindle Worlds: http://www.amazon.com/kindleworlds
ARCTIC BURN
Phoenix Agency
By Amy Ruttan
[email protected]
www.amyruttan.com
Cover Design by Flirtation Designs
Editing: Anya Richards
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used factiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The Phoenix Agency
They served their country in every branch of the military – Army Delta Force, SEALs, Air Force, Marines. We are pilots, snipers, medics – whatever the job calls for. And now as private citizens they serve in other capacities, as private contractors training security for defense contractors, as black ops eradicating drug dealers, as trained operatives ferreting out traitors. With the women in their lives who each have a unique psychic ability, they are a force to be reckoned with. Risen from the ashes of war, they continue to fight for those in need. They are Phoenix.
DEDICATION
I would like to dedicate this book to Desiree Holt who created this fantastic world. Thank you for letting me share your world with you.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Arctic Burn
The Phoenix Agency
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Epilogue
About Amy Ruttan
Other Books by Amy
Chapter One
“Help me, Bryant. Please.”
Smoke hung in the air, thick as a blanket, making the midday August sunlight appear more like twilight.
Yet, even through the dense fog and hundreds of miles separating them, he swore he could still hear her voice.
Lexie’s voice. Just as clear as if she was standing next to him. When he closed his eyes he could still feel her touch, smell her perfume and taste her on his lips, even though it had been five years since he’d last seen her.
Bryant Quill squinted up at a the sun through his sunglasses, annoyed his cargo flight to Deline was going to be delayed. He hated when missions got delayed while in the Air Force and he hated it now, working for 62 Degrees North Bush Planes.
Mason LaCroix, his old Air Force buddy and one of the owners of the bush plane service, came out of the small office located on the shore of Great Slave Lake in Old Town Yellowknife. Bryant watched him saunter down the dock toward him.
Hopefully Mason had some good news about his mission, because he was tired of sitting around here when he could be working.
“Well?” Bryant asked, as Mason came closer.
“Wildfires are west of here. The smoke is thick over the city. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it this thick,” Mason said, and rolled his head, as if his neck hurt. “It’s like fog.”
“Wildfires you say?” Bryant shuddered and looked down at his arm, scarred from a wildfire that caught him unawares. A wildfire in the form of Lexie Nevue.
“Help me, Bryant. Please.”
He hadn’t believed in telekinetic powers, and certainly not pyrokinesis, until he met Lexie. When he brought her to a screaming orgasm, it also brought him a world of hurt.
The skin on his arm stung, recalling the flames that had fired out from Lexie’s hands as she gripped him.
He remembered the pain, the ecstasy and her screams changing from those of pleasure to horror when she realized what she had done.
Bryant had ended up in the hospital with nerve damage. They deemed him unfit to fly fighter jets and gave him an honorable discharge. The life he’d been carving out for himself was over. And, to make matters worse, Lexie had disappeared.
She left him, crushing his heart. He searched for her, but it was as if she vanished into thin air, like smoke.
Even five years later he could still hear her voice. It was faded, like a whisper, but now the voice was becoming more distinct.
Urgent.
It was distracting him.
“No fires near here, but the smoke is so thick all the planes headed north from Yellowknife are grounded,” Mason said, interrupting his thoughts. “Nothing for you to worry about though.”
Bryant nodded. He’d told Mason he’d been burned in a fire that ended his career. Which was why he was now in Canada and working at 62 Degrees North. And, also, Lexie was Canadian. She was from the north, so that was another reason he’d come here. He’d scour all of Canada’s Arctic to find her. He knew she was from north of the sixtieth parallel.
She’d told him how she lived near where the tree line ended, at the edge of the only year-round roads.
Even though Canada was a vast country, he knew she was somewhere up here.
And he planned to find her. He’d come here hoping to find her, but after five years he was losing that hope. Still, Mason didn’t need to know that was his real reason for being up north.
No one did.
“By the way, this letter came for you.” Mason held out the letter, which had no return address, and Bryant frowned when he looked at it. He wasn’t expecting any mail. He had no family, so no one would be writing to him.
“Love letter?” Mason teased.
Bryant snorted. “Doubtful.”
“Come on. A single guy up here, you could have your pick. You never go out.”
“Look who’s talking,” Bryant teased back. “I don’t see you out there looking for someone to warm your bed.”
“I have a business to run. My brothers don’t pull their weight. They’re dicks.”
Bryant snorted. “Sure.”
“Fine. Sorry. I won’t bug you about your sad, lonely bachelor existence then.”
He pocketed the letter, ignoring Mason’s dig. “So what do I do? How long do you think we’ll be grounded?”
“Couple of days at least. Just in time for your vacation. Guess you can start that camping trip early.” Mason clapped him on shoulder and walked away.
Bryant sighed. He hated leaving a job undone, but he was looking forward to the solitude of camping. He was searching Wood Buffalo National Park and surrounding areas for Lexie. It was a large place. He’d turned over Yellowknife and there was no sign of her. Now it was time to start in the southern part of the Northwest Territories.
In Fort Smith he owned his own float plane. He planned to fly into the interior of Wood Buffalo and just set up camp on some remote island. Then he’d start his search.
Plus, it would be good to get away.
He needed a quiet place to listen to her voice in his head and that vast wilderness was just the spot. Bryant pulled his worn baseball cap out of his back pocket and slapped it onto his head.
It was hard to walk away from the job, but he was looking forward to the peace and quiet.
To being able to focus on the real reason he came north.
“Bryant.”
Lexie’s whisper seemed to be carried on the gust of wind that blew smoky air off the lake.
He turned and looked back through the orange haze over Great Slave Lake. Yeah, he had to get out of here.
He looked down at his burned arm. The Air Force had offered him a desk job after he was grounded as a fighter pilot, but that wasn’t what he wanted.
Which was why he was here. Why he took the job with Mason and his brothers. Flying was all he had left until he found Lexie again.
Lexie was his life, and he’d find her one day.
He shook his head and walked to his nearby small apartment.
It didn’t take him long to pack his bags with what he needed and make some sandwiches to sustain him on the eight hour drive from Yellowknife to Fort Smith, south of Great Slave lake.
There weren’t any places to stop and eat, and few and far gas stations, so he’d learned to carry food with him and drive with a jerry can in the back of his truck.
It was a far cry from where he grew up in Houston, but he loved it here. It was rugged, quiet, and there weren’t many people about. He could see why Lexie loved the north.
Except the winters; he hated those.
Those sucked donkey balls.
Bryant locked up and tossed his gear into the back of his covered truck, his groceries into the back of the cab, then he was on his way out of Yellowknife. The only downside of travelling so late in August was that the sun would set and night driving through Wood Buffalo National Park wasn’t the smartest thing in the world, but he could manage. If he needed to pull over there were many small campgrounds where he could pull in and sleep.
He was just glad to get even farther away from civilization.
As he settled into the long drive over the rough section of Highway 3, which was littered with bumps where the permafrost had buckled the road, his mind emptied and it was nice. There were no voices. It was just the background noise of his satellite radio station and the odd buffalo that lumbered up beside the highway.
Pine and birch trees lined the highway. It was hypnotic, but the green leaves gave way to forests that were scorched from fires, which made him shudder. It made him think of how Lexie literally burned him during a moment of pure ecstasy.
Don’t think about it.
He gripped the wheel tight and rolled his shoulders, before turning the radio up just a bit louder. He tuned out the world until he was rolling into Fort Providence a couple hours later. He stopped at the gas station, which sat right next to the mighty Mackenzie River.
It was good to stretch his legs and, thankfully, the smoke was keeping the bugs at bay. He filled up his tank and wandered into the store to pay. He bought a coffee and decided to take a break to have a sandwich.
He parked his truck closer to the river and sat down on top of a picnic table, watching the fast flowing Mackenzie flow north toward to the Arctic.
It was mesmerizing.
“Bryant.”
Ever since she disappeared her voice had been there, haunting him. If he could just find her again and get some answers from her, or break the connection. That thought made him sad. He really didn’t want the connection broken.
He wanted her again.
Lexie, where are you?
Only now there was no answer and he sighed before taking a bite of his sandwich. He kept his gaze fixed on the abandoned ferry that used to carry cars across the Mackenzie, until the Deh Cho bridge was completed in 2012. Yellowknife used to be more isolated when she was at the mercy of the river.
The world was shrinking, even in untouched places like this. So how come Lexie was impossible to find?
He pulled out the letter, which was still in his back pocket.
Who would send me a letter?
He opened it.
Bryant,
You said if I ever needed a favor I could call on you. It’s been a long time and it took me a while to track you down. What’re you doing in the Northwest Territories? Letter mail was a safer way to contact you. There’s a terrorist group that is in the Northwest Territories. They’re searching for a powerful telekinetic woman by the name of Lexie Nevue. I know you have a history with her. The Lotus Circle has been trying to reach out to her for years to warn her, but she won’t respond.
She’s in danger. Let her know that. If she’s with you, I need you to bring her to the Phoenix Agency base in Maryland. Then we can put her into hiding in a remote location we have on the east coast.
If she’s not with you, find her.
It’s imperative that you find her before it’s too late.
Mike
Stunned, Bryant read it through one more time.
Then he folded the letter back up, after memorizing the cell number Mike had added after his signature. He knew that Mike and a few of his buddies had formed an agency, but he had no idea how big it was and what they did. No wonder it didn’t have a return address.
He had no idea what the Lotus Circle was, but they obviously knew something about Lexie’s powers. It sounded like they wanted to help Lexie, but she never wanted anyone to know about her powers, and she didn’t want help. Ever.
He didn’t even believe in any psychic abilities until he met her and saw it with his own eyes. He was shocked Mike D’Antoni was involved that kind of stuff. How long had he been north that he was so out of touch?
The hair on the back of his neck stood on end. He had to find Lexie.
If she was in danger he had to keep her safe, and he trusted Mike with his life.
As he was thinking this all over he was watching the water flowing north, but only it wasn’t. It was being redirected, flowing south instead.
What the hell?
He got up and walked to the edge of the river through the brush. It was if the water was being drawn backwards.
Bryant glanced toward the south, to the Deh Cho bridge. He could see a lone figure standing on the bridge and, though he was too far away to make out any features, he could see long flame-colored hair blowing out behind the person.
The wind picked up, and the picnic table behind him hovered a few inches off the ground, spilling his half-drunk coffee, and he knew exactly who was there, why the voice in his head was louder and clearer.
Bryant bolted to his truck and got into it, speeding out of the gas station toward the bridge. He parked his truck off the side of the road at the weigh station. He was glad no one else was around. If this was in a city, there could be a lot of witnesses. And he remembered how Lexie guarded her powers carefully.
She didn’t like people knowing about it.
He walked to the bridge, up the pedestrian walkway. His pulse thundered in his ears, as he saw that it was indeed Lexie standing on the bridge, her expression blank, her hair blowing out behind her.
Finally, after years of searching, there she was. So close. It took everything in him not to wrap her up in his arms, but he saw the flames flickering and moving like shifting sand over her skin. Her flames never burned her, just others, and before he could touch her he had to calm her down.
The bridge began to buckle and sway, the metal grinding was loud. It terrified him to think the bridge could give out under him.
He had to reach out to her before she was noticed and before she killed them both.
“Lexie!”
She turned her head and glanced at him, at first with barely any recognition. Her blue eyes were glowing, but then, as if the fog was lifted, her eyes widened.
The bridge stopped buckling, the river started flowing in a torrent, but back toward the north.
“Bryant?” she asked in confusion.
“Yeah, it’s me.”
She smiled, and then her eyes rolled back, as she collapsed into a heap.
Chapter Two
“Lexie!”
Her head was hurting and her hands were burning, but she didn’t want to open her eyes.
“Lexie!”
It was Bryant’s voice.
Oh God, maybe she was having that nightmare again.
She forced her eyes open and was confused about where she was, but, when her eyes adjusted to the light, she could see Bryant hovering over her.
“Bryant?” she asked, confused.
He nodded, relief washing over his face. “You scared the shit out of me.”
She sighed. “I scare the shit out of a lot of people.”
He smiled, that crooked smile that she loved. He looked so wonderfully familiar, only now he wasn’t clean shaven. He had a beard and his blond hair wasn’t shaved like when he was serving. It was longer on top, but still short on the sides.
Bryant had a very lumberjack type of vibe going on, one that suited him completely, but she would’ve never recognized him at a distance.
That’s lie.
There was no way she could ever forget Bryant Quill. She could never forget the first and only man she’d ever loved. The only person she’d let get close to her and the only person she’d burned.
Her mother always told her she’d do harm with her shameful, evil powers and she’d done just that when she’d been in Bryant’s arms. He’d brought her such pleasure, was the only one who could make her forget the painful sound distortion always playing like white noise in her head.
When she was with Bryant she only heard him.
There were no other sounds.
And how did she repay him? By bringing him pain during pleasure.
“I’m fine,” she whispered, and pushed herself away from him, afraid to touch him.
“Do you remember what you were just doing?” he asked.
She bit her lip. She remembered some of what had she’d been doing earlier. She’d been running away from the men with the guns who had been hunting her. After that, it got a bit blurry. The white noise was so loud, she remembered covering her ears in pain, and that was all she remembered.
