Taken by Fire (29 page)

2:46 and counting down.

“Now, Mel,” Dev breathed.

Mel rushed forward, lifted the glass, and stared at the white pad just beneath the countdown clock. “I need something sharp.”

2:38

Stryker unsnapped the sheath on his belt and palmed his Ka-Bar. Mel’s gaze met his as she held out her hand to him. “I’d do this if I could,” he said, and she offered him a shaky smile.

“I know.”

As gently as he could, he pricked Mel’s finger with the tip of the knife, held her hand steady, and squeezed the drop of blood onto the pad.

2:22

They all held their breath. Waited for the clock to stop.

2:15

“It’s not working,” Devlin stated the obvious. “Try another drop.”

Mel did. Several more—and it became obvious, with T minus two minutes until mass fucking destruction, that this wasn’t going to work.

1:59

“Once the timer hit three minutes, only Alek’s blood could have stopped it,” the scientist said, and Stryker wanted to fucking kill him.

“You couldn’t have said that before we fucking wasted time and Mel’s blood?”

The guy shrugged, and Ryan cursed. “We don’t have time to go back and get Alek’s body.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Stryker said. He studied the reinforced structure, the heavy beams and lead-lined walls and ceiling. It was a capsule built to withstand natural and man-made disasters. Polar shifts, meteor strikes, earthquakes.

But Stryker’s earthquakes weren’t your average dirt-shakers.

He stared at the ceiling and the floor and he closed his eyes. Fisted his hands. Felt the familiar energy race through him with a hard tingle that went from pleasant to burning in seconds.

This would be a big one—and it was going to hurt. Would drain him badly.

There was no choice.

He vaguely heard Devlin tell the others to get the hell out. It would be a race against time, because Stryker needed to stay inside the building until the cracks began to show.

And no one was moving.

“All for one.” Mel remained there, her body trembling as the earth did under their feet.

Stryker opened his eyes. “Run,” he growled, and when everyone, including Mel, hesitated, he shouted, “Run! Now!”

This time, they took off, though Mel lagged behind, matching his slower pace, unwilling to leave him. He took up the rear, still utilizing his powers to bring down the building hard enough to smash that fucking machine.

“Go … go!” Stryker yelled as they zigzagged between the steel girders that began to crumple, and ducked to avoid falling machinery.

Once they reached the hangar, things got critical as the structure aboveground began to collapse, the light fixtures becoming bombs. One of the giant mountings slammed into Ryan’s shoulder, knocking him flat, and only Dev and Gabe’s help got him to
his feet before a steel beam punched down hard enough to sink a couple of feet into the concrete where Ryan’s head had been.

The hangar doors ahead were open, but a crack split the earth in front of them and was racing toward Stryker and the others as they sprinted for the exit.

“Stryker …” Mel squeezed his hand, trying to dodge the fissure, but he realized doing so would get them crushed. He tugged her toward the gaping crack, and at the last minute, he swung her over his shoulder and leaped.

The bright sun greeted them as they came down outside the hangar doors and ran like hell for the Jeep. As Dev, Ryan, and Gabe scrambled inside, Stryker spun around with Mel at his side and drilled every last ounce of his power into the earth beneath the facility. Pain streaked through him—at this level, the sexual side effects were negated by the agony of wielding so much energy. It was as if shards of glass were flowing through his veins.

At some point, he hit his knees, and Mel was right beside him, holding him as the ground shook and his body heaved.

When it was over, there was nothing but a giant crater in the land. His watch beeped, and though he scarcely had the energy to look at it, he did, and smiled. Because time was up. The machine, which should have just sent out a death ray, was scrap metal.

“We did it.” Dev was standing on Stryker’s other side, looking out over the acres of sunken ground. “The machine is dead and Itor is all but destroyed. We couldn’t have done it without you.” He smiled at Mel. “Without either of you.”

“We’re all a bunch of goddamned heroes,” Stryker muttered, and then he actually felt like a hero when Mel cupped his chin, brought his face around, and kissed him like he was her world.

“Let’s go,” she said. “Let’s put the past where it belongs and go home.”

Yeah, ACRO had always been home to him, and now he couldn’t wait to share it.

Dev had been nice enough to let Mel and Stryker take a brief detour to Rome so Mel could gather what few possessions she had—mainly, her course books and her mother’s topaz ring.

TAG agents had taken down the Rome Itor office and were now scouring the apartment building that had housed agents and served as their command central, so Stryker and Mel had as long as they needed to go through her apartment, but they’d make it quick. Mel had given herself a shot a mere hour before they landed in Rome, and already Phoebe was fighting to get out, even though her time in control at ACRO should have reset the length of effectiveness for each injection. They needed to grab Mel’s belongings and get her back on the plane, restrained and knocked out, and they had no time to waste.

Now she and Stryker stood in the hallway of the apartment she’d considered home for five years, and when he asked what he should grab, she just shrugged. “Everything is Phoebe’s. The clothes, the decorations, the furniture …” She shook her head.
“You’ve given me more in a matter of days than I’ve ever had. I just want the books and the ring.”

She started down the hall, but detoured into the bathroom to raid the meds box for anything that might be useful to ACRO. Stryker’s cellphone rang, and he ducked into the bedroom to talk.

As she tugged open the cupboard, a sharp stab of pain shot through her brain. Phoebe. Son of a—

Clutching her head, Mel staggered toward the door. “Stryker,” she gasped. Or tried to gasp. Nothing came out of her mouth.

And then there was nothing at all.

Phoebe blinked. Blinked again. She was in her bathroom in Rome. How the hell had they gotten here? She heard a voice … Stryker. Cocking her head, she listened. He seemed to be talking to someone on the phone. Someone named Wyatt. They were laughing, talking about …

Holy shit. Phoebe stumbled backward, slapping her hand over her mouth to cover the sound of her cry. Itor … fragmented. Headquarters and three satellite offices were destroyed. Itor agents were either fleeing the other offices or surrendering to ACRO. And her father,
oh, God
, her father …

The pain went through Phoebe like a bullet. It ricocheted off her bones and tore through organs and turned her heart into an aching, bleeding laceration. Her father was dead. The only person who had ever connected with her personally and emotionally had been killed.

By her own brother. And with Melanie’s help.

Icy hot hatred burned her soul to ash. She was going to crush Dev. He would die for what he’d done. But before she could do that, she had to make Stryker and Melanie pay for their roles in Alek’s death and Itor’s ruin.

Wheeling around, she took the drug box from the open cupboard
and grabbed two vials … Nullox to kill Stryker’s earthquake ability and a sedative that worked instantly but lasted only a couple of minutes. She didn’t care whether or not the two should be mixed; if Stryker died, it would be almost as fun as what she planned as an alternative.

It took her all of thirty seconds to fill a syringe, and then she crossed the hall to the bedroom, where Stryker was still chatting with his buddy about how Itor had been wiped off the face of the planet. Asshole.

He turned just as she raised the syringe. The smile on his face fell as the needle jammed into his throat, and though he struck out, his blow fizzled, the medicine taking instant effect. He made a satisfying thump on the floor when he hit.

Working quickly, she stripped him of his shirt, dragged his heavy ass onto the bed, dug out her toys from the nightstand drawer, and bound his ankles and wrists with metal hoops that locked into place on rails she’d had installed in the headboard and footboard. A button above the headboard railing popped out, and all she’d have to do would be to push it to release him at the right time.

Now she had him. If the Nullox worked the way it did on most people, she would have an hour to get what she wanted from Stryker. Not that she’d need an hour. She had to hurry, because even now, Mel was scratching at the seams of their skull, desperately wanting out. And though it galled to no end, Phoebe had to admit that Mel’s strength had increased tremendously, and Phoebe didn’t know how long she could hold her off.

He began to wake, so she hurried to the kitchen, made a phone call, and arranged a few things for dear Mel. Stryker’s angry shout spurred her, and she hurried back to the bathroom and once again pawed through her drug box, annoyed at how Mel had cleaned it out of the suppressant injections, but she let it go. For the last part of her plan, she wanted Melanie front and center.

Beneath the recreational drugs, she found a baggie of blue rapid-dissolve pills Itor had developed to help its male agents
achieve almost instant hard-on. So really, they could also be classified as recreational drugs …

She spilled two out of the baggie, snorted two lines of coke to make sure Mel was good and edgy when she took over, and stripped naked. Her bare feet didn’t make a sound as she sauntered into the bedroom, where Stryker was lying on the bed spread-eagled, wrists and ankles bound by the device she’d used so many times on so many men and women. His body was motionless, but his eyes seethed with hatred. Excellent.

“What’s the matter, Pookie?” she asked sweetly. “Still upset that you got bested by a girl?”

“You are no girl.” The deep, lethal rasp of his voice made her go instantly wet. “You’re a monster as evil as your dead father.”

Dead
. She inhaled deeply, summoning as much calm as she could muster. “You play that evil-doesn’t-fall-far-from-the-tree tune over and over, don’t you?” Before he could hurl some tiresome insult at her, she leaped onto the bed and straddled his broad chest.

Surprise flickered in his eyes as her nudity finally registered. “What are you doing?” he growled.

“What do you think I’m doing? I told you I’d have you, and I always keep my word.” She cupped one breast, flicking her thumb over the sensitive nipple. “You’ve sucked on these, haven’t you?” Slowly, she slid her hand down her stomach, was slightly disappointed when Stryker’s gaze didn’t follow. As she parted herself with her fingers, she moaned. Fucking him was going to be so good. “Have you had your mouth here? Have you eaten this cunt with your talented tongue? Did Melanie scream your name when she came?”

“I hate you.”

She laughed and circled her clit with her middle finger. “I’d make you lick me, but I don’t trust you not to bite.”

“You’re smarter than I thought.”

“Oh, you have no idea.” Lunging forward, she pinched his nose.

“What the—” He didn’t have a chance to complete his sentence. She jammed the two pills down his throat, palmed his chin, and forced his mouth shut.

His struggles nearly threw her, but she gripped him tight with her thighs and refused to let go of his head as he bucked and hacked, trying to get the pills up. “No use trying to keep from swallowing. They dissolve within seconds.”

He continued to fight for much longer than she expected. Impressive, really. By the time he started to settle down, he was panting through clenched teeth, and her thighs ached.

“Good boy,” she murmured, as she released his jaw and nose.

The tendons in Stryker’s neck strained, and his jaw was tight as he snarled at her. “What did you give me?”

Smiling, Phoebe slid down his muscular body to unzip his jeans and palm his soft cock. “Just a little insta-Viagra. I had a feeling you’d be less than thrilled to fuck me, so I’m helping you along.” It was already working, and she reveled in the sensation of his shaft swelling in her hand.

His eyes shot wide as the implication of what she’d just said sank in. “You
bitch
,” he hissed. “You might be able to make me hard, but you will never make me come.”

Oh, that would be the ultimate humiliation, wouldn’t it? He’d hate himself for the rest of his life if his body betrayed him, reached that ultimate pleasure with a woman he hated. She definitely wanted him to come, but even so … “I don’t need you to.” Gripping him in her fist, she guided him to her entrance. “
My
orgasm is all I need to get what I want.”

A slow, wicked smile split his face. “Know what I want?”

“What’s that, lover?”

He arched his back, pushing his cock so deep inside her she gasped. “I want to stop playing the awesome images of your father’s last living moments in my head. The way he screamed … cursed your name for abandoning him as he died … oh, yeah, that’ll make me come. Total turn-on.”