Last Strike (7 page)

Last Strike saw an opening and brought a heavy fist down hard on his replacement’s neck. The man fell with it and then rolled to his feet and moved toward the woman lingering at the back door.

She was still there?
His
target. Why didn’t she run? “Run!” he shouted. If she’d run he would catch her. And kiss her. No,
kill
her. “Run!” he shouted again, eager for the chase.

The replacement raised a gun at his target. His woman. Last Strike shoved at the other man’s side, bruising ribs and wrecking his aim. Getting up, he threw his body in front of his opponent. He caught the woman, his
target
, in his arms and covered her, rolling away from the bullets peppering his back and shoulders.

She was his. To kill. No. That was wrong. His crystalline thinking blurred, strategy lost in his confusion. Was there a right answer? His vision dimmed and he slipped away from the bright sunshine beating down on his face, burning his weak eyes. Was he finally dead? He thought that might be the best kind of miracle.

“Noah.”

He recognized the angel’s gentle voice. Warm and kind, she granted him a moment’s peace. Her silky golden hair brushed his cheek as his vision faded to black.

D
aria checked Noah’s pulse
, relieved it remained steady, if a little slower than the norm. “Thank you, Ben,” she murmured into the shadows.

Without her invisible ally, she’d likely be dead. Noah too. Messenger’s new assassin had been one startling revelation after another. Discovering Messenger still had some mysterious pull on Noah troubled her more than new enhancements. A mind-control element wasn’t her expertise and Noah’s file didn’t mention anything of the kind. When he’d chased her, his face a blank mask of determination, she’d been sure they’d lost everything. Until he’d curled himself around her, taking bullets meant for her. That’s when she knew they’d won.

She just wished she knew what the hell the prize was supposed to be. “Any word from the others?” She couldn’t walk away, couldn’t take him with her, until she knew they’d found evidence UI couldn’t burn, spin, or bury.

“Not yet,” Ben replied. “Any chance he’ll die, doc?”

Daria closed her eyes against the eagerness of that voice lurking in the shadows. “No, Ben.” She didn’t do shoddy work. Noah’s steady pulse, his resistance and response to the primal triggers in that fight proved it.

As reassurances went it was flimsy, but she’d hang on and call it a lifeline if Noah would just wake up. Please wake up, she pleaded silently with his unnaturally still form.

“Can’t blame a guy for hoping,” Ben said, closer now. “He’s been the enemy for a long while. And…” his voice trailed off.

“And what?” She didn’t need another mystery. She needed the hero hidden under the assassin’s hard shell to surface and let her know he was fine.

“And we had, y’know, a pretty sweet connection going before he showed up, like a wrecking ball.”

A pretty sweet connection
? The outrageous claim made her laugh. The only thing she had going with Ben was a sketchy ally against UI. They’d only exchanged the first layer of intel. Not enough to be effective, only enough to raise questions about several missing people. She sat back and covered her mouth. Still the sound leaked out, slipping through her defenses, much as the big man lying on the dingy hotel bed had done.

What was wrong with her that she loved the man hell-bent on killing her? Except he wasn’t out to kill her. Not anymore at least. He’d just done everything in his power to save her life, including sacrificing himself.

Her laughter died as she remembered being cocooned, unconditionally protected from every threat by his impervious body. So why didn’t he wake up already?

“Why didn’t you make all of us like Bulletproof?”

She jerked her chin toward the trashcan where gauze, gloves, and the remains of a suture kit mingled with the bullets she’d pulled out of Noah’s chest and back. “It doesn’t work that way.” The enhancements were often unpredictable.

Besides, she hadn’t ‘made’ any of them at all. Not after Noah. She’d made formulas to enhance the stronger genetic traits of the test volunteers and let others oversee the progress and results. It had been beautiful, positive research. At the start. She’d thought only of the positive potential until she’d discovered they weren’t volunteers at all.

“Then how can you be sure he won’t die?”

“Because I know him.” Noah D’Cruz had arrived in her lab bloody and battered, with wounds far worse than these. Once she’d stabilized him, she and her team started work immediately. Having read his Marine service record, she’d tried to spare him as much of the inevitable agony as possible. Not that he’d ever believe her.

If she hadn’t pushed his systems to the brink in those early days, he never would’ve survived the later trials she’d argued against. Her part in his pain and his unfortunately outstanding results still stung, regardless of what he said. He remembered things he shouldn’t have and rightly held her responsible for that suffering. She told herself it was enough that
she
knew there was still a flicker of integrity and compassion inside her.

As both his former and current selves, the man on that bed was too stubborn to let a dirty fight send him to the grave. She wished he’d remember that and
wake up
.

She moved away from his bedside before she did something rude and punched him.

“Thanks for your help,” she said, assuming Ben was still close enough to hear her.

“You’re welcome. I didn’t expect them to try and drug him.”

“They can’t afford to let him go.”

“Not any of us,” Ben agreed.

The words were delivered right at her ear and she jumped, instinctively moving away from the sound and ripple of air.

“End Game 2.0 is a new kind of vicious,” Ben mused.

As if she hadn’t seen that for herself.

“They showed up awful quick,” Ben said. “You think they tagged your big bad boyfriend with the nano-tracker upgrade? It has a longer range.”

Noah
. She barely kept herself from screaming the correction at the invisible agent. Double agent. Ben. Perfectly camouflaged or not, he deserved to be referred to by name as much as Noah did. “It’s possible.” If it was true, they needed to test it.

“Do you know what new enhancements Dr. Gerardi was working on?”

“With Gerardi each project is uglier than the last.”

She interpreted that as a yes, envisioning Ben’s casual shrug, though she hadn’t ever seen the man. “Do you
know
?” she pressed.

“In layman’s terms.” Ben made soft, derisive noise. “He’s been working on an anti-emotional component since they lost Bulletproof to his reporter target.”

“It’s not enough to train or trick the humanity out of good men?”

“I’m not a philosopher.” Ben sent the air rippling as he moved closer to Noah’s head. “Messenger hadn’t sent
him
anywhere near a lab until he sent him after you.”

The words offered no balm for her guilt complex. Not that she deserved any sort of forgiveness or compassion. The faces of the patients who didn’t make it marched along behind her closed eyelids, followed by the numerous men and women who’d survived.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, unable to keep the useless words tucked away.

“I’ve never been happier,” Ben chirped. “And this guy,” the mattress sagged under Ben’s weight, “he looks all fierce. Don’t let that fool you. Deep down under that gruff and deadly exterior is a man who loves his job.”

She shivered. Noah’s job was killing people. And he loved it because the program enhancements had capitalized on his inherent skill set and stripped away his humanity for the sole purpose of fulfilling UI’s shady goals. The program had turned Noah into a deadly weapon, a tool capable of strategic thought, loyal to Messenger’s commands.

She looked once more at the syringe Ben had recovered. Based on what she’d seen, it was easy to conclude it was a sedative to make it easier to bring Noah back into the program. It wasn’t smart to take anything from UI at face value. A lab analysis would be helpful, though there wasn’t time. She handed Ben the vials of blood she’d drawn after mending Noah.

“You need to go before he wakes up.”

“I can’t leave you alone. What if he’s back to his old self?”

She’d felt Noah’s arms around her, felt his heart hammering under his cheek while they’d rolled across Gerardi’s lawn. If he’d wanted to kill her he could’ve crushed her rather than cradling her as though she were some priceless treasure. “I’ll be fine.” She patted the bag Ben had brought her. “I have ketamine if he gets nasty.”

“Doc, if he gets nasty you won’t have time to blink, much less jab him with a needle.”

“Go on,” she insisted. “If he realizes you helped me draw blood he’ll consider it cause to kill us both.” The man hated needles that much.

Ben’s rather odd laughter raised the hair at the back of her neck. “He could try.”

The air rippled again and for just an instant, she thought she saw the outline of the man himself rather than the chameleon power he used to hide from the world. “Based on what I saw his mission’s changed, Doc.” The door opened. “Lock up behind me, I’ll do what I can to keep them off your tail.”

The door closed before she could utter a ‘thank you’. She hurried over to throw the deadbolt and slide the chain in place. The precaution felt inadequate against Messenger’s new assassin. After Ben’s warning maybe locking herself in with the original model was an exercise in stupidity.

Tucked into a motel near the airport, they were as safe as possible for now. If the UI tracker was in Noah’s blood, as she suspected, rather than an implanted beacon, Messenger and his new assassin would soon be following a few wild geese right into a trap, thanks to Ben.

She leaned back against the door and stared at Noah. He looked almost content, his face relaxed, all those muscles of his big body at ease. When he did come around, he’d probably be furious over the way she and Ben had handled things. Now that Amelia and John had everything she’d gathered through the years, Daria had been willing to die for the cause, trusting them to follow through with the exposure of UI.

Why had Noah been compelled to save her when he’d been assigned to kill her? Something had changed in that house when Messenger got close to him. She hadn’t seen anything in his file or on his body that indicated he could be controlled. It had to be conditioning, a facet of his training they kept off the books. But he’d fought it off, gone against the man he’d once considered his salvation.

His muscles tensed, his eyebrows knitting. A nightmare or reaction to the fight they’d just survived? Moving back to his side, she smoothed a cool cloth over his forehead until the scowl eased and he relaxed again.

“Come on, Noah. Wake up. Talk to me.”

When he didn’t obey, she opened her laptop and made better use of the time than wallowing in this sticky mire of fear and hope. She’d deciphered plenty of records. If there was anything in Noah’s case she’d overlooked, now was the time to find it.

For his future as well as her own.

N
oah dragged
himself out of the darkness into a gray, dim room. He sat up, regretting the quick movement as his head reeled and his ribs protested.

“You’re safe. Relax.”

The angel’s voice. “Daria?” He blinked away the cobwebs of sleep and pain and saw her sitting in the chair next to the bed. His... what? He stared at her, trying to remember the term that came next. His target? No. His woman? Yes, please.

Right. That was as likely as the devil serving ice cream in hell. He scrubbed a hand across his chest, catching a fresh line of stitches. “What’s this?”

“Do you remember the fight?”

It was coming back fast. “We were at Gerardi’s place. As a diversion.”

“Yes.” Her soft smile drew his gaze, held it.

He remembered bright sunlight stinging his eyes. Remembered the blood lust and facing off against a violent opponent. “Messenger replaced me.”

Her smile faded. “Yes.”

“They used me.” Scattered pieces of it were floating around, an unfinished puzzle in his head. “Tracked me. Bulletproof was right. Something in my enhancement is trackable.”

“I don’t believe it’s a device we can remove,” she said, her eyebrows puckered in thought.

There was more, something she wasn’t saying and his mind refused to examine. Fear reared up, clogging his throat. Fear for her. Fear for his life had stopped being an issue long ago. A man had to care about his life to fear for it.

“What did I do?” His mind wasn’t giving him the whole story. “Tell me,” he rasped. “I hurt you didn’t I?”

“No. We were ambushed by Messenger and his new cleaner.”

He pushed himself out of bed and walked on shaky legs to the narrow window. Moving the curtain, he confirmed they’d returned to the minimal protection of the airport. Why weren’t they tucked into Bulletproof’s safe house? Only one reason: they didn’t trust him anymore. “Messenger told me to finish you.” He was a threat to both sides, with no home, no hope.

“I assume so. You’ll notice that you didn’t.”

He dropped the curtain on the twilight outside. Messenger had a hold over him. Some power he’d either ignored or been oblivious to. He couldn’t take the chance that he’d complete his assignment. “You need to get far away from me.” He gave her his back. She needed to leave but he didn’t have to watch her go.

“It wasn’t mind control, Noah. Not a genetic adjustment,” she added.

That was no comfort. “Great,” he muttered. “I’m naturally weak. Easily influenced.” He supposed at this point it hardly mattered. His mistakes would get her killed eventually.

Her spurt of laughter grated like sandpaper against his skin. “At best it’s hypnosis theory. You resisted the order.” He heard her moving closer to him. “You’re the strongest man I know, mentally and physically.”

The words burned when her breath brushed his bare shoulder. “Not anymore.” He felt helpless as a kitten around her and no match for Messenger’s new pet.

“How did you get me out of there?”

“There were friends standing by.”

“Chameleon.”

“His name is Ben, he was invaluable. And
John
sent us someone I’d never met. They managed to get us out of harm’s way so I could treat your injuries.”

“You have to leave. I’ll turn myself in. It’s what he wants. The others will get you out.”

“Noah.” Her small palms smoothed across his shoulders, soothed all his rough, scorched edges. “I’m not giving you back to him.”

“It’s where I belong.” He resisted the urge to press closer, to shift those small hands to the places he ached for her touch. It would be obnoxious to turn around and strip off her clothes, just for the glorious warmth of skin on skin contact. That kind of move would only prove his selfish nature. He hadn’t been a monk all these years. As Last Strike, he’d hired women purely for the release. Those rare encounters had been functional, not personal. Despite his failings, he wanted a personal connection with Daria. Unfortunately that connection would eventually destroy her. “It’s true,” he grumbled. “I can’t protect you if Messenger can climb into my head any time.”

“Following his orders is conditioning,
not
genetic manipulation,” she assured him. “You didn’t obey blindly. You defended yourself when you were attacked.”