HeatedMatch (2 page)

* * * * *

“Adam!”

Adam paused in his pursuit to listen to Chase’s yell coming
through his earpiece. He was far enough away from the hotel that the reception
crackled. “What?”

“Get your ass back here now.”

It was hard to tell over the static, but easygoing Chase
sounded panicked.

“Negative. I’m still in pursuit of the suspect with the
gun.” The idiot had jumped over the balcony and disappeared. It had been the
darndest thing. He’d sat on the railing, swung his legs over and leapt the
nearly twenty feet to the ground. Adam assessed the height and the limping
quarry then ran for the stairs. His enhanced speed would make it cake to catch
a regular human, but in the seconds it had taken him to head down the stairs,
the dude had disappeared into the maze of downtown alleys. That was twice in
one night people had escaped him, first Chase’s half sister and now this.

“Forget him. You need to get back here. Now,” Chase said.

Adam froze and turned on his heel back to the hotel. “What
happened?”

“The kid…Christenson’s baby…he’s gone.”

* * * * *

“You fucked up, boys.”

Adam met Commander Shepard’s gaze eye to eye. He wanted to
stare at his feet like a teenager, but Shep was right. They’d messed up badly,
and now Christenson’s baby was going to pay for their mistake. The wrath they’d
faced from Ambassador Christenson and his wife was nothing compared to Shep’s
disappointment.

“Get in my office. Now.” After endless hours getting grilled
by the local police and the FBI, Adam and Chase had finally made it back to
their home base in suburban Maryland.

He shuffled into the commander’s office where he parked his
ass in a folding chair and nodded to his father, William Blacker, who sat next
to Shep’s formidable desk. The room reeked of cigar smoke, reminding Adam it
was Thursday poker night for the old soldiers, where they relived the glorious
Cold War days and jonesed about better days to come post 9-11.

Shep stalked to his desk and sank into his chair, demonstrating
the ease of movement natural to their kind, even in their older years. “What
happened? Christenson pulled us in because we’re bred to be the best. Please
tell me why I spent the last hour apologizing to an irate ambassador and his
sobbing wife? Not to mention,” Shep’s voice lowered dangerously, “the damn FBI
laughing their asses off at us. They’ve been looking for an excuse for years to
integrate the Program under their domain. Let’s not hand them the opportunity
on a goddamn silver platter.”

Chase shrugged and raised his eyebrows in Adam’s direction.
Adam knew what he had to do, but it didn’t mean he liked it. “I screwed up,” he
said, hating the unfamiliar taste of a confession.

Shep and his father swiveled to face him directly. “Oh?”
William Blacker asked. His tone was all hard-ass, but his eyes betrayed his
concern that his son screwed up in a very public way.

“There was a woman there…she…I was distracted. I left the
room with someone I thought was the greater threat but I judged wrong and exposed
the baby to the kidnapper. I…” He stopped. There were no words to make it
right.

“We got played. Pure and simple,” Chase said. “They threw
out a red herring and we jumped on it.”

Shep’s eyes narrowed. “A woman distracted you? What did she
do, shoot fireworks from her pussy?”

“Just about,” Adam muttered.

His father leaned forward, elbows on his thighs. “Could the
woman have been in on it? Maybe she was meant to distract you. God knows we’ve
all been too distracted by women lately.” He didn’t say it, but Adam knew he
referred to the exposé in the media the previous week. For more than fifty
years the Program operated in total secrecy outside the Washington Beltway. One
email from a disgruntled spouse had changed it all.

Chase sat up straight. “No. Not this woman.” Then he clamped
his mouth shut, not wanting to reveal the woman in question was his sister.

Adam shot him a quick apologetic glance, but knew he had to
reveal all if they were to get to the bottom of the kidnapping and find
Christenson’s kid. “It was Loren Stanton, Chase’s half sister.”

Dead quiet settled into the room as each man pondered the
implications. Finally Shep gathered his wits. “You say she distracted you.
How?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know…the closer I got to her, it was
like we were alone in the room. I wanted to grab her and…” He did not want to
tell Chase he’d wanted to fuck his sister against the wall of the ballroom
without regard to the audience. In fact, just the memory of her smile and scent
had him shifting in his seat to accommodate the sudden swelling of his cock.
“But she left the room before I did. There’s no way she could’ve returned and
taken the kid.”

Shep and his father exchanged a long, meaningful glance.
What the hell was that about?

“Okay, we’ll get back to Ms. Stanton later,” Shep said. “For
now, tell us everything you remember about the party leading up to the
kidnapping. Officially, we are off the case. As the FBI put it, ‘the hired
muscle is no longer necessary and the brains are taking over the operation.’
But I’m not convinced this was an ordinary kidnapping. We’ll need to work
delicately, not step on toes.”

Hired muscle, his ass. As genetically enhanced government
soldiers, they had perfect recall and higher than average IQs. Adam and Chase
spent the next hour retelling the night’s events and analyzing them from every
angle. When at last Shep felt they’d had enough, he ended the session, warning
them to expect more tomorrow.

“You may go,” he said to Chase, but asked Adam to stay a few
more minutes.

Chase stood, stretched and announced, “I’m heading for the
pool.” He looked at Adam. “See you there in a few?”

Adam also stretched his arms above his head, flexing his
stiff muscles then lowered them. “I’ll meet you there.” He watched with vague
amusement as Shep scribbled onto a spiral notebook. No amount of ribbing would
get Shep to change to a tablet or laptop. He suffered through email as a
necessity, but that was the extent. Maybe it was his way of reminding himself
of his humanity.

“Tell us more about Loren Stanton,” Shep finally said when
the door had closed behind Chase. “Did you talk to her?”

“I spoke to her briefly. She left before I exited the
ballroom.”

“She’s a reporter, correct?” the senior Blacker asked.

He nodded. “Yes, for
The Post
,” Adam said.

“We’re going to need to get every detail about her. Where
she lives, shops, and what she knows about her father. We know next to nothing
about Robert’s daughter,” William said.

“It’s possible she knew we were on assignment there tonight
and was sent to follow up on last week’s news story,” added Shep. “I’m sick of
making the news. If she so much as breathes the air near Beltsville, we shut
her down.”

Adam thought their reaction was a bit overboard. Loren had
seemed annoyed at having to cover an over-the-top first birthday party. More
than likely she had no idea her father had been on the team of genetically
enhanced soldiers who’d made the front cover of every newspaper last week. If a
miniscule part of him wanted her to find the compound, find
him
, he
pushed that emotion to the deepest recesses of his mind.

The senior Blacker jumped in. “We don’t want a repeat of
last week’s top YouTube video.” Ever since Ryan’s wife went to the press to
divulge the Program’s secrets, civilians had scrambled to catch glimpses of
Program Soldiers.

Since the article, they’d had to scale back operations
because it was damn near impossible to operate with people camping outside
their compound, hoping to get a glimpse of one of the enhanced soldiers. Or
worse, crowds of females hoping to be genetically compatible and get selected
as a breeding partner.

“That’s right,” grumbled Shep. “I’ve never seen anything
like this. Third time this month we’ve been caught on camera. People with their
damn cell phone cameras and Face Space pages. What happened to good old Walt
Cronkite for news? Why does any idiot with a keyboard and internet connection
think he’s a credentialed journalist?”

Adam didn’t bother answering. Shep was old school and no
explanation would change it. At the same time, a tiny part of him felt Loren
deserved to know more about her family. She had a father who’d served his
country faithfully and died for that patriotism and a brother who still served.
But, nope. Never going to happen. No way Loren would ever discover the truth
about her father unless Adam took out a front-page ad in a newspaper and gave
the whos, whats and wheres. He kept his opinion to himself and got up to leave.
His generation of the Program held their own Thursday night rituals, and he was
late. He took a step toward the door but stopped at the sound of his dad’s
voice.

“Hang on, Adam. We have one other thing to discuss.”

He turned around and retook his seat. “What’s up?”

A silent conversation relayed across the desk between his
dad and commander. He folded his arms across his chest, leaned back in his
chair and waited, sure it would be a request to monitor some minor operation or
training class. But surprise hit at Commander Shepard’s first words.

“Adam, America changed after the terrorist attacks on our
turf. Attitudes toward security changed. Shake-ups in the CIA, FBI, the
creation of the department of Homeland Security, you name it.”

He bit his tongue in an effort not to tell Shep to shit or
get off the pot. But he was dying to know where this was headed. His no-nonsense
commander never minced words. Seeing him dance around a topic like a ballerina
was unusual.

“As you mentioned, we have new challenges to face. Now that
the world knows about us, it’s expected other groups will try to imitate our
science and create their own genetically enhanced soldiers. We need to stay
faster, better and smarter than the rest.”

He nodded. Shep still wasn’t telling him anything new.

Shep continued. “Ever since we were exposed, I’ve been
flooded with applications and blood work from females offering themselves as
breed partners. It’s foolish not to take advantage. We need more volunteers
from the current ranks.”

Adam replied, “What are you getting at?” His head, which had
already been hammering a discordant beat, upped the tempo.

William Blacker stared intently at Adam’s face, willing him
to understand. “None of your cohorts signed up for the breeding program yet.
The youngest child on campus is three years old. We need babies.”

Adam flew back out of his seat, banging into the doorknob.
No.
Oh hell no.
“You’ve got to be kidding me. Is that really on the table? I
thought required breeding disappeared in the eighties along with mullet
haircuts. It’s a whole new millennium. We have the technology to abandon the
breeding program. Can’t we do test-tube babies or something? ’Cause, I’m not
participating.” He turned with a plea for his father. “Sir, you know why I’ve
never signed up to be matched. Has Doctor Wise given her approval?”

“Doctor Wise feels there is a one in four chance of your
child having a deformity. It’s an acceptable risk to her.”

“Because it’s not her fetus who’d be terminated.” At the
uncomfortable silence, Adam clenched his fists. “That’s it, isn’t it? She’s
happy to abort my children in the name of medical science. Fuck that. Go for
test tubes, ’cause I won’t be part of it.”

Adam, you know why we can’t do test-tube babies,” Shep
reminded him. “Doctor Rovinsky’s child-rearing theories are still applicable.”

“Oh, yeah, the good old Doctor Rovinsky. Well, fuck him and
fuck his ass-backwards methodology. He’s been dead for nearly twenty years,”
Adam said.

“We honor our founder.” Shep came as close to shouting as
Adam had ever heard. As far as he knew, only a select, lucky few had seen Shep
lose his temper, and they now mopped floors in Qatar.

“Adam, if we did use your DNA in a test tube, would you
really be able to ignore the fact that there would be a child on campus who’s
technically your son?” his father asked. “You’re a good man. You couldn’t just
ignore the child.”

“Watch me,” Adam muttered, but his protest was mild. He knew
himself enough to know any child remotely related to him would fall under his
direct protection.

“Plus, you’re going to want and love your DNA match, like I
wanted your mother,” his father added.

Wait, what? His father was claiming to have loved his
mother? Now that was shocking. In the fifteen years he’d lived with his dad,
he’d barely mentioned his mom. Granted, they weren’t about the father-son
bonding thing. They had more of a business relationship, but he still would’ve
expected his father to protect him on this issue, especially given the family
history. All Adam remembered was his mom running away with him and his baby
brother. He’d been three at the time. If there’d ever been love between his
parents it had died a quick death when his mom had given birth to a disabled
child who didn’t meet Program standards.

Adam’s dad rose to his feet as did Commander Shepard. “We
need you, son.”

“The
country
needs you,” echoed Shepard. “Finding the
perfect genetic match for you ensures the next generation of elite soldiers.
You’re already thirty. Who will take over for you when you’re too old to do
your job? I, myself, retired comfortably knowing my sons and friends’ sons were
there to take the field.” He stared at Adam intently. “Don’t give me an answer
now. Think about what we’re asking, and let us start some blood work, testing
and searching. But as the leader of your group, if you get on board, the rest
of your cohort will follow.”

Silence followed. Adam didn’t trust himself to speak. His
fists clenched with the urge to tear a chunk out of the wall. “With all due
respect to the country, sir, I won’t do it. I can’t let history repeat itself.
Ask Gavin. Ask Chase. But don’t ask me. Find some other stud horse.” He turned
and slammed the door. Adam walked in silence down the hall. If he’d had running
shoes on, he’d have taken off for a good, long run around the compound. Adam
came to an abrupt halt and pounded a fist against the wall.
How could they
ask this of me? Of all people? Did they forget what happened to my family?