Last Strike (3 page)

“You don’t have any idea. A print out or blood workup couldn’t possibly give you any idea.”

Did he actually remember those tests and experiments? He couldn’t. Shouldn’t. Her stomach clenched. She lowered her gaze to the plastic covered floor. She deserved anything he dealt out. “The goal wasn’t about testing your pain limits,” she said, hoping he’d hear the truth. “Pain was a temporary side-effect. Our intention was creating a better soldier who would suffer
less
in combat. Soldiers who’d overcome, who’d be faster, stronger, and smarter leaders. The goal was to take results from the lab and save lives in the field.”

Once more he lowered his massive body to look her in the eye. “What do you think, Doc? Happy with the results?”

She wasn’t. Not at all. And Last Strike was considered a resounding success. For a moment, captivated by his relentless gaze, she had the crazy idea he might help her if he understood she wanted to blow the lid off the UI program. But he
remembered.
Remembering, he obviously hated her, with good reason. Maybe, if she could do something to right that wrong, he would help her, give her a head start to escape. She didn’t have anything to lose by asking and taking any positive action was far better than waiting for a notorious killer to finish his assignment. “I can help you,” she blurted out suddenly.

He made a sound that wasn’t laughter, though his lips tilted in a faint resemblance of his original smile. “I’ve heard those words from you before.”

She rolled her lips between her teeth and bit back the tidal wave of apologies and regrets. She had to get through to that honorable Marine she and the UI program had destroyed. His service record psych evaluations proved that he didn’t believe in following orders blindly, despite his stand-out success through his UI training. “Are you content as Messenger’s hired gun?”

He swore, coming at her in a blur as though he’d turned into a wild predator ready to rip out her throat. He could do it too, with hands or teeth. He’d been altered to strategize the right kill for any situation. “I ask the questions.”

She lowered her gaze to the plastic sheeting, too easily imagining her blood pooled around her defeated body. Wholly submissive, her nape was exposed for his lethal strike. “Thank you for saving me from Gerardi. I’d rather you killed me than him. At least with you I understand why,” she continued speaking to the floor. “It will never be sufficient, but I apologize for what the program did to you, Noah.”

Having meant every word, she was ready for him to take her life.

L
ast Strike had hardly registered
her gratitude when the name she’d spoken rattled through him. Not familiar, not exactly. Yet something about the way it sounded in her angel’s voice landed with the force of a sucker punch, stealing his breath. Had that name once been
his
or was she playing more games with him? “What did you call me?”

“
Noah
. Your real name is Noah D’Cruz.”

She kept her head bowed and it was all he could do to keep his hands at his sides when he wanted to snap her fragile neck.

It had to be a lie. A trick. In her place, he’d be bartering for time too. Anyone would be. He understood the tactic. He rested his palm against that narrow curve of flesh and bone, felt her suck in a sharp breath. Her fear made him sick. After so many kills he should be resistant to this persistent weakness.

He took his orders and accomplished them swiftly. Swift meant less time to think about factors beyond the efficient resolution of the target, less time to endure that pathetic fear. Striking accurately and rapidly assured his sanity, especially at the beginning when he wasn’t sure of his long-term role within the program.

She’d given him what he needed personally, though the honest explanation hardly satisfied him. She’d taken a nearly-dead Marine and brought him back to life. More, she’d brought him back to life with significant differences in the name of science.

“How many times did I die for your amusement?”

Her head came up, the fine muscles around her spine shifting and flexing under his sensitive hand. Messenger wanted the doctor dead and the leak plugged. He only needed to know who had received her intel. He had most of what he wanted, enough to be satisfied. Her usefulness at an end, his job was clear: kill her and get out. Still, he waited for her answer.

“You never died!” She twisted against her restraints, trying to look him in the eye.

He didn’t want to admire that. “You just said -”

“
Nearly
.” She stretched out the word. “You had so many injuries they gave me carte blanche, certain I couldn’t make things worse and skeptical of my confidence in the formulas.”

He had no memory of what had put him into her hands, only that when his eyes had opened, she’d been there. She’d appeared as pure comfort with warm, earnest eyes, golden hair, and the voice of an angel.

Who dealt out pain as well as Lucifer himself.

“Your formulas and tests weren’t the greatest experience of my life.”

“You remember the testing?” Her golden eyebrows arched high, and her lips parted on a gasp. “That - that shouldn’t have happened. Oh, my God.” Her eyes filled with tears. “You have to believe me, you were meant to forget all of that.”

Well, lucky him. She wasn’t doing anything the way he expected. She didn’t behave like a traitor, other than her lies about friends at the juice bar. He couldn’t find the first shred of an actual intel leak from the doc. It had to be something digital beyond his grasp. Her honesty troubled him.

Once he’d proven his body could take her formulas and adjust to the enhancements, he’d been trained to think with the precision of a computer, always analyzing and adjusting. Always protecting the program.

Nothing added up as he’d expected from finding her trapped in Gerardi’s car, to seeing his old data on her computer. His every assessment told him she’d been marked as a scapegoat. With a shake of his head, he reminded himself it didn’t matter. He had his orders and he’d leave nothing to chance this time.

“Why do they want me to kill you?” Damn it. He couldn’t believe he’d voiced the question.

One tear spilled over her lashes, down her cheek. “I - I swear I don’t know. But I understand why you’d want to. Personally.” She sank her teeth into her full lower lip. Defeat blanketed her, dragged her shoulders down. “I have no right to ask, but could you… would you make it quick? Please?”

Damned if he didn’t want to accommodate her.

“He’s not going to kill you.” It sounded as if the wall itself had spoken.

Last Strike whipped toward the voice. He saw nothing, but he knew. “
Chameleon
.” Here was the leak, Last Strike thought, not the doctor. The ‘invisible’ agent could do practically anything he pleased. “Get out!”

Chameleon sighed loudly and Last Strike locked onto the sound, though he couldn’t see so much as a ripple of movement. “There had to be a better code name.”

Last Strike jumped. The voice was at his shoulder now. He threw an elbow, only brushing against the invisible agent’s body.

“Testy, much? Oh, maybe that’s a bad choice of words.”

“You’re the leak,” Last Strike accused Chameleon as the doctor’s bindings split and she was hauled by the unseen force out of the chair, her arm slung over an invisible pair of shoulders.

“End Game, for all they juiced you with smarts, you’re pretty slow. The doc and I will be going now. Have a nice day.”

He ignored the taunting nickname, focused on the phantom bastard heading for the back door with his target. His prisoner. He pulled out his gun, guessing at where the man’s back would be. “Don’t move!”

The door opened and Last Strike winced, flinging up an arm against a bright spotlight flooding the room. “What the hell?”

“Whoops, bet that hurts,” Chameleon jeered. “Good luck in the next round, End Game.”

“That is not my name,” he roared. He covered his eyes with his dark glasses and surged after them despite the pain in his eyes.

“Hey, you’re right.” The doctor’s steps slowed, her arm shifting. “You haven’t been the Last Strike or much of an End Game lately. Losing your touch, ma-”

His words were cut off with a sharp puff and a fine spray of blood. Last Strike twisted sideways, making himself a smaller target. The invisible Chameleon pushed the doctor behind the marginal shelter of the door as more bullets sought targets inside the house with professional three-round bursts.

The doctor kicked the door shut and huddled under the window, staring at him as if she expected him to do something helpful.

“Why send so many people to kill one lousy doctor?” Last Strike demanded.

“I’m not lousy!”

“Can’t speak for the sniper out there,” Chameleon choked out between short, tight breaths. “I’m here to save her.”

That made zero sense, but he wasn’t going to let some wispy voice figure out this problem first and further erode Messenger’s faith in him. He thought he’d understood the game, right up until the point when he found too many players on the board behaving erratically.

Time to get back to basics. He moved for the doctor as the sniper, clearly working off infrared heat signatures, blew out the window barely missing his head. Under a cascade of shattering glass, he dragged the doctor back toward the safety of the kitchen.

“Wait! He needs my help.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Chameleon said. “I’ll cover you. If you promise to keep her alive.”

“I’m not making any promises to you.”

“What did I tell you, Doc? He’s an ungrateful -”

“Shut up. Both of you.”

She tugged his sunglasses off his face and looked right into his defective eyes. “I met Ben at the juice bar after yoga. He was going to get me out of UI.”

“Aww, Doc. Telling him that puts my name on the kill list too.”

“It was only a matter of time before they figured it out,” she said to Chameleon. Her small, strong hands fisted in the fabric of his shirt. Her eyes lit and she patted his chest, finding the wooden cross he wore tucked out of sight. It was his only connection to a past he couldn’t remember. “Get us out of here and I’ll tell you everything I know about your past. About this.”

“There’s an offer you can’t refuse,” Chameleon said.

“Shut up,” he and the doctor said in unison.

Last Strike appreciated the thin blood trail that allowed him to track the invisible man’s movements.

“Well who doesn’t want to know how we ended up as Messenger’s hand puppets? Just decide, man, before we’re outnumbered.”

“How many are out there?”

“Only one based on the angle of the shots fired. If he can see through walls I suppose it only takes one,” Chameleon added under his breath.

“Who else did you lead here?”

“As if.” The other agent scoffed. “They tracked one of you. No one can follow me.”

“It’s true,” the doctor confirmed. “Because of his gift, the tracking markers didn’t take. They thought his talent outweighed the risks.”

“Shows what they know, doesn’t it?” A dark sort of crazy hovered at the edge of Chameleon’s disembodied laughter.

Last Strike exchanged a look with the doctor, though he’d made his decision the instant she admitted to meeting with Chameleon.

He wanted to understand who was using him and how. She wanted to live, to escape the program she’d served for so long. What should have been a simple operation had become twisted, confusing. Being aware of
her
agenda, knowing what she was capable of, made her the closest thing he had to an ally in this particular moment.

“Stay close.”

“If you fight, I fight.”

She made the echo of his earlier advice sound like a promise to stand by him. It roused that itch between his shoulder blades. He was a loner. Handing her the laptop, he pulled out his gun and headed for the garage.

“If you don’t make it can I have your -”

The nonsense Chameleon was spouting was cut off by the crash of another window and the hiss of a canister. If there was a patron saint of assassins, it would only be tear gas. He didn’t plan on sticking around to find out.

He cleared the garage and opened the driver’s side door, ushering her into the vehicle. “Stay low,” he advised, on the off chance she didn’t simply escape through the opposite door.

She tucked herself under the dash, computer clutched to her chest.

He heard more gunfire from the back side of the house. Choosing not to telegraph his move, he didn’t put the garage door up, he just threw the car into reverse and gunned the engine. The aluminum door scraped off the tracks, crumpling around the rented sedan as he barreled out of her driveway.

The car bounced over the curb as he did a three-point turn and floored it, the engine laboring as he raced up the block, away from her house. They hadn’t quite turned the corner when an explosion sounded behind them.

“What was that?” She popped up from the shelter of the dash and looked back. “Is that my house?”

“Yes.” He glanced in the rearview mirror and shook his head. It was a Cleaner-class technique: blast everything beyond any possible use as evidence.

A low keening sound floated out of her. He didn’t have time for her breakdown, though he understood the abyss of loss she stared into. “Get in the seat,” he ordered. “Buckle up,” he added when she’d arranged herself.

“What about Ben?”

He bit back the first callous reply. He needed her to stick with him while he sorted out this twisted mess. “I’m sure he’s clear. The man’s a survivor.”

“True. You all are.”

He heard her regulated breathing, recognized the calming pattern from his days in training.

“Survivors,” she repeated after a few minutes of silence. “He’s almost insane too.”

“You’re the expert,” he said. It was as close as he could get to a compliment under the circumstances. Why weren’t they being followed?

“Have you changed your mind about me?”

“No.” He flexed his hands on the steering wheel, irritated that he’d given her hope. Those kinds of gaffes were why he preferred keeping his mouth shut.

“So, umm, you’re still going to kill me?”