Torrent (Cosmic Forces Book 1) (3 page)

T
orrent looked
at his arm and found dripping blood from the wreck. He must have pulled the laceration open. He couldn’t risk going downstairs and having her look out the window; then she’d see him leave her building and go into the one across the street. All he needed after that was to have them form their own little vigilante group to find out who was asking about Guillermo. No, he’d stay in this building until dark. Then he’d go to the rooftop where he could hopefully remain out of sight for a while.

He made his way to the roof of the package’s building, avoiding the concrete, drywall, and bricks that littered the stairwell. The elevators clearly no longer worked. They were sealed off to keep anyone from plunging to their deaths.

He hadn’t said anything to the attractive brunette, but he’d seen a handprint the size of a child’s on the black glass makeshift coffee table in the middle of the room, behind her.

Not conclusive, he told himself, justifying not pressing her for more information.

He needed to get back there to see if there was a child. It had nothing to do with the dark-haired beauty. Nothing at all.

No, definitely nothing to do with the woman with flashing dark eyes and a set of curves that didn’t quit.

T
orrent lay
low on the rooftop of her building, watching the street below. Citizens were quick to go from one building to another. As he’d traversed the city to arrive at this spot, he’d noticed that there were areas which had better apartments, less damage and even areas where children could play. The citizens in those neighborhoods didn’t have a furtive look to them. They made their way from building to building without looking over their shoulders after every couple of steps. Who in their right mind would want to live in this area?

Loud hoots caught his attention. He surveyed the street, focusing his supervision, sending orders to the interface to listen in. There were almost a dozen of them. All male, all under the age of twenty-eight, if he had to make a guess. A couple of them were barely out of their teens.

Not Leaguers. They weren’t in the traditional League soldier uniforms of black and gray. These young men were wearing denim pants and red T-shirts.

Citizens cleared the streets as soon as they saw the young men approaching, hustling into the nearest building.

The men swaggered down the middle of the street, unafraid, unworried. Several of them brandished weapons. Small arms, a couple of switchblades; one had a machete, and another a LokShok.

Torrent pulled back a bit to be sure they couldn’t see him. Several of the older ones were picking on the two younger ones, pulling the pistols on them, aiming them. One of the switchblade wielders approached a slim, black-haired young one who couldn’t have been over twenty. He laid the knife against the other’s cheek, then swiped it downward.

Blood appeared in the seam of the cut, then eased its way down his face.

The young man didn’t move or flinch. Was this some sort of rite of passage?

Torrent knew he was looking at privateers. He’d had no idea that they were so young and flagrant when he’d heard about them. He’d envisioned savvier, more seasoned criminals, not a group of thugs.

Shaking his head at their foolhardy behavior, he moved back to the low wall on the rooftop, dropped to a sit, and leaned against the hard concrete. The building provided shade from the relentlessly beating sun while he waited for dark so he could venture to his hiding spot and come up with a plan.

He was curious to see if the dark-haired woman who was plaguing his thoughts would be out again this evening, shuffling children to who knew where.

A
n hour later
, Alyssa was still plagued by the stranger and the blood splatters on the floor by the front door. Gillie had fallen asleep, thumb in his mouth, after a lot of protest. She had another thirty minutes to kill before Belinda, Sonya, and Jesse were bussed back in. She paced back and forth in the apartment, restless and eager to go. There was no way she’d leave Gillie alone.

Where the hell was Omar? This was his day off. Why didn’t he ever lend a hand when he was off? She was going to talk to Jesse about it. Maybe he could convince Omar. She’d never had any luck; Omar was always belligerent when Alyssa asked him to pitch in. It was almost as if he had a personal issue with her.

She took out some papers to grade. That would kill the time. She was lucky it wasn’t essay questions. She’d have been in trouble; there was no way she could’ve concentrated on it.

Finally, just after she’d graded the final true and false question on the last test, she heard the key in the door. She shoved the papers back in the folder.

“How was work?” she said as she hugged Belinda and Sonya.

Jesse came in behind them, and she gave him a peck on the cheek. “I’ll be right back,” she said, and slipped out the door, ignoring their questions. It wasn’t like she never slipped out to run errands.

Okay, maybe she didn’t much. But she wasn’t a prisoner. She had a right to slip out once in a while too.

She glanced at the watch on her wrist. She had a little bit of time before sunset, power outage, and the curfew.

Alyssa followed the blood splatters up to the rooftop, where she found the stranger sleeping. She crept up on him, one little step at a time, careful not to jar any of the rubble. He was alone; clearly he had no friends with him. He looked so innocent, his face not wearing the hardened expression from earlier. She couldn’t stop herself from surveying his body. Even in repose, his muscles were defined and seemed at-the-ready. She’d thought he wasn’t a Leaguer, but she couldn’t get past the idea that he was a soldier.

Why had he been asking about Gillie?
I won’t lose Gillie
.

Alyssa picked up two bricks, held together by mortar. The double brick was heavy.

One strike, and he wouldn’t be a threat and Gillie would be safe.

He moaned, grabbed his side.

Alyssa flinched, leaned back. He was muttering something. She leaned back in again.

“If I…” he began, then uttered a few more unintelligible phrases.

She drew even closer. His lips were so full, especially the bottom lip. His jaw was chiseled, with a smidge of blond stubble.

What was he saying? Did it have anything to do with Gillie? She looked at the potential murder weapon in her hands.

She couldn’t kill him, not without…

She blocked the painful memories out. She could kill if she had to. She’d proven that.

Alyssa put the brick down.

Faster than a rattlesnake could strike, her wrist was tightly banded by hard fingers, rendering her hand useless. She bit back a cry.

“
W
hat are
you planning to do with that?”

Torrent recognized the dark-haired woman. She was the one from the apartment. As if he could forget a woman with fire in the depths of eyes the color of a moonless night.

He locked eyes with her, holding her gaze captive much the same way his hand held hers captive. He explored those depths, looking into her soul. Torrent found pain and darkness in her eyes, and he blinked to break the connection before it sucked him in any further. He recognized he should not be thinking this way. Something in the crash must have created a short. He ran a quick diagnostic over that part of him, but it indicated that nothing was amiss. Maybe he needed more time to regenerate.

“Let go of me,” she snapped. “You bastard. I only followed you up here to check on you. You’re bleeding.” She struggled to free her wrist.

“What do you care?” He frowned at her, uncertain of her motives, especially when she had such venom for him in her tone and was holding that brick.

“I don’t.” She gave a final yank, grunted and twisted her hand.

Torrent loosened his grip and the spitfire yanked so hard and twisted at the same time that she landed on his chest.

Her face was less than a couple of inches away from his own. Her full lips were slightly parted; her breath was warm and sweet, with a hint of cinnamon.

Apple pie came to his mind, though he couldn’t fathom why. He wanted to kiss her, more than he’d wanted anything as long as he could remember. He wanted to feel her lips, to taste her essence, to claim her mouth with his, to plunge his tongue in and take hers captive. He wanted to hold her to him as much as he’d wanted anything that he could think of.

She bit her lip, perfect little white squares sinking into pink plushness. A part of him felt a twinge, jerked to a state of awareness that lusted for her, needed her, wanted her.

This was a complication he didn’t need.

A
lyssa couldn’t move
. She held her breath, unable to tear her eyes away from the stranger’s crystal-blue intensity. He probed the very core of her, as if he could see her secrets, as if he knew her weaknesses. She placed her hands on a chest made of pure muscle and felt it flex beneath her fingertips. She stifled a gasp and shoved off.

Maybe she should have killed him.

No, then she’d never have a chance to find out why he was looking for Gillie.

She looked at his lips, then moved to his jawline, strong and chiseled, the short blond beard hair catching sunlight and glinting on his face. His nostrils flared and it reminded Alyssa of a stallion she’d seen once, in a picture, long ago. The stallion had been so primal, so majestic. There was something about this man. He exuded the same confidence the horse had.

She glanced at his lips again. She hadn’t been this close to a man in years. Since before Melissa—

She wasn’t going to think about that. And this man—he was not that kind of man for her. He wasn’t any kind of man for her. He was a danger to Gillie.

“Why did you ask about that person, earlier?” Her chest heaved with exertion and her battle to regain self-control. “Who is he to you?”

He sat up. “Who are you?”

Blue eyes with a cold fire stole her breath away, made her body react in ways that pissed her off. She clenched her hands into fists, pressed them into her thighs. She’d be damned if she was going to answer that question.

“I asked you first.”

He frowned, looked at the arm that was seeping blood, then reached into a green pack and took out a first aid kit.

Who was he? Who traveled with a first aid kit?

He worked on his arm as if she wasn’t there. The wound looked like a cut, not a bullet’s track. Had he been attacked with a knife?

“What happened to you?”

He didn’t even look up. He was ignoring her. She fought the urge to kick at his boots. Work boots. Steel toe, if she wasn’t mistaken. He probably wouldn’t feel her kick. In fact, it would probably break her toe in her lightweight, loose-soled shoes.

Her foot itched with the urge to kick him. She shoved her toe into the concrete to quell the desire.

Screw him if he wasn’t going to answer. She had to go.

T
orrent watched the hotheaded
, dark-haired beauty storm off. Her hips swayed invitingly, and his eyes stayed on her ass far longer than they should have. She’d waited, not very patiently, for him to answer. When he’d avoided her gaze and declined to engage in conversation with her, he knew she was getting agitated from the way her foot tapped, then dug into the concrete.

Less than thirty minutes later the sun was beginning its fall. He slipped out of his spot and through the hallways of the semi-abandoned building that the beauty and the package lived in. Luckily, he didn’t encounter a single soul.

He didn’t want to have to explain himself to anyone, and he was sure a stranger would get second looks and would be remembered. By the time he made it down to the ground level and had crossed the street to the building where he’d set up to watch from when the road was dark, the power was out, the sun was gone. Light from the low-hanging moon didn’t make it over the high-rises, leaving the streets nearly pitch dark.

Just before he entered the building where he’d set up his watching post, he heard the shuffling of many feet.

Using his night vision, he made out the figures in the dark. He saw the little dark-haired spitfire leading them. A set of teens again. He couldn’t tell if it was the same ones from the other night or a different group, but they were definitely being led by the woman who lived in the building. The woman with the full lips, luscious hips, and flashing eyes.

Torrent followed the curvy brunette as she made her way from one building to another, collecting a child at this one, two at the next one, then one more, then two again, making her way down the block, staying close to the buildings’ walls and out of the street. She was in dark clothing, as were the teenagers. She had a black backpack slung over one shoulder. The kids all had backpacks or satchels.

Torrent felt a sense of pride at how organized they were and how she kept them all quiet. They moved with precision as if their very lives depended on their every step. Thinking of the privateers with their damned weapons and attitude, and of the Leaguers with their searchlights, Torrent realized that their lives did depend on it.

He counted twenty kids as they made their way throughout the city blocks and buildings. He knew the searchlight was coming their way, but it wasn’t like he could warn them. The searchlight came from overhead. Torrent listened to the whine of the engine. It was a Siblatan A-91, a helicopter that was retired after the war. Evidently ‘retired’ didn’t mean that the Leaguers wouldn’t use it to keep the Texans from being out after dark.

Sure enough, on schedule the light shone on the block, traveling up and down the street. The woman dropped into a recessed staircase, and twenty kids shuffled in after her with unprecedented speed.

He found he was holding his breath until the light had passed over the kids. And the woman. Especially her.

They started back on their trip, single file, going forward, with Torrent on their tail.

She stopped suddenly in front of a building that was more demolished than not, and held her hand up for the others to halt. After pushing a board out of the way to reveal a dark hole, she waited for all of them to enter. When they had, she pulled the board over the opening.

He approached quietly, ears attentive to any noise that would signify danger—to him or them. Nothing. Crossing the street, he headed directly for the board she’d moved. He listened for anyone who might be nearby, then slowly pushed it aside. Peeking in the vertical opening, he could barely see the last kid as he made his way down a dark hallway littered with boards, bricks, and crumbled concrete.

Pushing the board silently, he entered the hole, then closed it behind him completely, not leaving the hole she had. That gap concerned him.

Further down, the teens were traveling single file down the narrow passageway. They were going into another room. And there was light in that room. Power?

No. The light flickered. Candles, it would seem. Or torches. The amount of light indicated candles, not torches.

Torrent followed them all the way in, then stayed behind a column, in a corner, completely hidden, invisible to her, the kids, and anyone who might be approaching.

“Take out your notebooks,” she said. “Let’s start with algebra.”

Well, hell. She was teaching. They were having a secret school. The Texans had decided they weren’t going to pass on an education and were sending their children to secret schools. And the curvy brunette with the soft voice lined with steel was their teacher.

The League of States had declared that teaching school would be punished by death. Did she have any idea what she was risking?

Of course she did; she’d snuck over here and had all of those set up precautions because she knew exactly what she was doing.

Torrent found the seed of admiration he’d felt for her sprouting. He’d never met a woman like her.

And now? Now it didn’t matter. CRBE’s contract prevented Cosmic Forces team members from having relationships. That’s what the Delta Lambda Forty Eight was for: to give the Cosmic Forces what they needed without having to become involved with relationships, marriages, children, complications.

T
orrent watched
the woman teaching the teenagers all the things he remembered learning in high school. Was she trained to be a teacher? Or had circumstance forced her to do this, the need to bring tokens in to support herself and her family? What kind of family did she have? Brothers? Sisters?

Husband? There’d been no wedding band on her hand, so he was sure that wasn’t the case. And though he didn’t want to admit to it, he was relieved; happy, even. Then a thought he didn’t like occurred to him. What about a boyfriend? Did she have one of those? The thought of that saddened him. Even though he knew he could never have anything with her, the idea of her being with another man… that didn’t sit well with him.

Swiping her hair behind her ear impatiently, the raven-haired beauty looked at her watch. “Time flies. Whoever said that was right. We’re late. Pack up. Time to go. We’ll need to hustle.”

The students shoved papers and books into bags and backpacks without a murmur of protest. They worked quickly and efficiently, lining up, ready to go back into the darkness, having risked their very lives and their teacher’s life as well by coming out to learn.

Torrent hustled out of his hiding place and the building with as much speed as he could while remaining silent. He stood behind a column, waiting for them to appear from the same hole they’d gone in.

Moments later, after leaving the same way they’d come in, she pulled the board in front of the entrance and followed the same path throughout the buildings and blocks, returning teens to anxiously awaiting parents.

Torrent heard the clink of tokens exchanging hands as the students were returned, accompanied by murmurs of appreciation.

His mind wandered as he followed them, wondering why they’d risk so much to have an education in a place where it wouldn’t matter. There were no jobs which required an education here. The only jobs were the ones provided by the League of States. Menial jobs in factories, performing tasks to produce goods that would end up in the more developed states and purchased by those who had positions that could afford these goods.

Alyssa. He’d heard her name when the students addressed her. He sounded her name silently, in the recesses of his mind, enjoying the way it sounded in his mind’s ear.

Six children remaining. Torrent looked at the clock in his internal interface, noting that she was cutting it close. The buses would be rolling in soon to collect the citizens who would be swarming in the streets, ready to begin another day of work, another day of earning meager tokens to pay for necessities.

Torrent tapped his fingers on his thighs.
Hurry up. Move it. Move it.
He hoped they’d make it on time.

Until he heard a shuffle of movement to the right, not far from Alyssa and the teens, his mind hadn’t dwelled on the fact that this had been a relatively privateer-less night. And that seemed unusual.

The shuffling sound reminded him that the privateers existed and sent an alarm sounding through his body. He couldn’t very well warn Alyssa and the students. He hoped they’d make it safely.

Glancing around, he noted where the sound had come from and identified three privateers. In the darkness, he saw their weapons clearly. Machetes, a pistol with a silencer on it, and a LokShok, a weapon designed to deliver high doses of electricity that would render the recipient unable to move.

These boys were heavily armed for a simple stroll through the neighborhoods. Too much weaponry for mere harassment of citizens who had broken curfew. The alarm grew louder in his head. He didn’t like this at all.

Alyssa delivered two more students and received her tokens. The privateers were following, that was clear. They stopped when she stopped. They paused just far enough away to stay out of her sight and hearing.

Alyssa was down to three teen girls and one boy. Torrent guessed that they were all around sixteen or seventeen years old. He doubted they’d be much good in a fight, even if they had weapons. But throw in the privateers’ arms, and now Torrent was very concerned.

The last four’s building was a good distance away. The privateers had fallen back. Torrent wasn’t the kind of optimist who would believe that they’d decided to move on. No, not their type. They were scavengers and preyed on the weak. Torrent didn’t believe for a second that they would have left easy prey behind.

He dropped back a few paces more and monitored Alyssa’s progress along the torn-up sidewalks and crumbled concrete. He didn’t have long to wait.

Moments later, on a street that had uninhabited buildings, evident from the boarded-up doors, the final block before the building the teenagers all lived in, the privateers made their appearance again. This time they weren’t interested in hiding. Their motive was clear.

Terror.

Jumping in front of the five, one of the privateers aimed the LokShok at the teen boy. Two bursts, the sound of air sizzling, and the boy crumpled to the ground, rendered unconscious.

One of the girls opened her mouth to scream.

“Don’t.” Another privateer raised the pistol. “Or she dies.” He aimed the weapon at Alyssa.

The girl shook her head frantically. The other teen girl trembled and quivered.

Alyssa was poised, looking like a rattlesnake ready to strike. She was powerless, and Torrent hoped she realized that and didn’t try anything foolish.

The third privateer must have read her body language just as Torrent had because he raised the machete. “No, Teach. Don’t think about it.” His voice wasn’t much above a whisper.

“What do you want?” Alyssa hissed, dropping to her knees to check on the fallen boy. She felt for his pulse, and must have found him still alive, for she ran her hand over his face, pushing his hair back. “Josh,” she whispered to the boy. “Wake up.”

“Don’t bother,” the privateer with the pistol said. He was clearly the leader. “He won’t wake up for a while.” He snickered. “These LokShoks are the latest and greatest that the Leaguers have come up with. And we have them.”

Hidden from view by the bullet-ridden column, Torrent assessed the best means to approach the situation. He’d have to move fast. The LokShok needed five minutes to recharge, half the time of its predecessor. He wasn’t sure if the Leaguers had told the privateers that.

Alyssa rose from her kneeling position next to the boy and planted her hands on her hips. “What do you want with us? We wouldn’t get you much for ransom. We’re poor citizens. There are families who can give you much more money than we could.”

“Ransom?” The head privateer scoffed. “Who said anything about ransom?”

Torrent took the opportunity to move forward while Alyssa’s questions and their answers kept all of them occupied.

“Then why?” Alyssa’s voice was loud and indignant.

“Keep it down. It’s not like anyone’s going to come to your aid. Look around you. This street is still uninhabited. It hasn’t been rezoned for habitation yet.”

“Someone would hear me scream,” Alyssa announced.

“Dead people don’t scream.” The pistol moved from being aimed at her chest to her head.

Torrent groaned inwardly. She was more brave than smart at times. He couldn’t waste any more time.