Running Scared (Mercenaries) (2 page)

Tomorrow, he’d gather the team and convince them to help her. Right now he needed to do some research of his own. When he’d first looked into the computer room, he could have sworn Saralyn was physically connected to the computer banks through the fingers she had splayed across the screen. Years ago, the government had conducted experiments on street orphans, turning the unfortunate waifs into human/computer hybrids who could do just that. The cybernetic beings had been incredibly talented, able to connect themselves to all types of electronic equipment with a mere touch. The government had been ecstatic at first, picturing a whole new step in man’s evolution.

Their elation had been short-lived. The newly created cyborgs had proved too volatile to control. They turned on their handlers, refusing to be controlled. Their self-reliant attitudes caused panic and pandemonium in the ranks of the enforcers who thrived on control. The project was terminated, along with all of the unfortunately enhanced orphans.

Although the government vehemently denied it, there were rumors that some of the children had escaped before the government goons could silence them permanently. The thought that the wraith-thin Asian girl they’d rescued from the arena holding pens could be one of the lost children both intrigued and terrified him.

* * *

Jackson took a cursory glance around the room. They were all here. His buddies. His teammates. All he had left that could be called his family. Now all he had to do was convince them to help the strange little Asian girl with the perpetual frown on her face find the brother she wasn’t sure she had. And if his suspicions proved correct, put themselves directly in the crosshairs of a government cleaner team who’d been hunting her for the last decade. Not a thought conducive to a peaceful day.

He glanced over at Saralyn. She sat on an overstuffed chair in the corner of the room where she could see everybody while managing to keep herself almost hidden from them. Yeah, she’d been running scared for a long time. Probably as long as she could remember. The two sisters, Wren and Dee, were close by, keeping an eye on their new friend. If any of the team upset her, they’d have to deal with those two, and it wouldn’t be pretty.

Trace lounged on a tall stool by the window. If you didn’t know him you’d think he was daydreaming, his gaze focused on something outside. In reality he was taking everything in without allowing his reactions to show. Some habits are hard to break, and he’d spent a lot of time stonewalling government agents.

Shotgun and Snake sat at opposite ends of the sofa, tossing a practice grenade back and forth while calling out good-natured insults to each other. They looked like a couple of simpleminded rednecks, but Jackson knew that when it counted, they would instantly become a lethal combination.

Kaeden, the team’s leader, leaned against the wall behind Dee, his arms crossed on his chest while his restless gaze kept track of the men. His team. Each of them had their own reason for becoming a mercenary, but to a man they were as loyal a bunch as one could want.

“There a reason for this get-together or did you just want to see our smiling faces?” Snake’s lazy drawl cut across the idle chatter.

Jackson acknowledged him with a nod. “I could live another day without seeing your ugly mug. I have a proposition for the team.”

A subtle shift in the men’s stance showed they were paying attention. Jackson glanced over at Saralyn, giving her a reassuring smile. She’d been reluctant to ask for help, and he didn’t blame her. Sometimes the team could be a bit intimidating to outsiders, and she’d been going it alone for a very long time.

“Our new little friend over there, Saralyn, needs our help. I’m going to let her lay it out for you, and I want you to pay real close attention because I’ve already decided to help her and I’d sure like to be able to count on all of you when I do.” He motioned Saralyn forward. “Come on up here and tell us what you need us to do.”

Jackson watched as Saralyn got to her feet in one graceful move. Her lithe body moved with a dancer’s grace as she glided to the front of the room and turned to face the team. His cock swelled beneath the confining material of his jeans, and he silently cursed his traitorous body. A dalliance with Saralyn would be a bad idea. He barely knew this girl, and what he did know suggested that she wasn’t entirely human. He’d watched her connect to a computer without the usual peripherals, and that could mean only one thing: cyborg. His instincts told him that she was telling the truth when she denied it, but that didn’t make sense. Either she truly had no idea of what she was, or she was the most consummate liar he’d ever met. He wasn’t sure which one he’d prefer.

Her eyes moved constantly, taking in every person, every movement in the room. Survival skills. They all had them, the little things that kept them alive. She was petite, and her Asian heritage gave her an exotic look that he found appealing.

“I am Saralyn, and as Jackson already told you, I would like your help.” She glanced over at him. “I’ve been on my own pretty much forever. I have no memory of my parents, but I do have one memory of a brother. He helped me escape, saved my life, but then he disappeared. I want to find him.”

He wanted to go and fold her in his arms and make all the hurt go away. He knew what it felt like to lose your whole family and he knew that he would move heaven and earth if he thought even one of his own family were still alive. He gave her a reassuring smile, nodding for her to go on.

“I’ve been working on this for a long time. I found a picture of him in a newsie feed a couple of years ago so I’m pretty sure he’s still alive. I’ve been hacking the government comps in the different provinces, moving on every time I hit a dead end. Jackson seems to think that your people can help me.”

“What’s he look like, this brother of yours? Do you have a picture? Does he have any identifying marks? Tats? Scars?” Trace leaned forward, his face animated.

“Down, boy. We haven’t agreed to take the case, yet.” A wry smile curved Kaeden’s lips. “Although I think our boy Jackson is going to be upset if we say no.”

“Yeah, he’s sweet on the little thing.” Snake snorted. “I never thought I’d see the day Jackson would let a girl get under his skin.”

Shotgun nodded, an exaggerated frown on his face. “Do you think she’s a witch? Or maybe using some of that Far East voodoo stuff on him?”

Snake pretended to consider it. “Nah. I think she might have smiled at him. Maybe batted those long lashes. Girls do things like that, and poof. A man’s senses desert him entirely.”

“Okay, guys, enough.” Jackson cuffed Snake lightly across the side of his head. “You need to hear the rest of this story. There’s a little more to it that you need to know.” He turned and nodded to Saralyn. She looked so calm and collected, standing in front of his team. He was proud of her and scared for her at the same time. She wanted to find her brother and that just might put her in the path of the men he suspected wanted her dead.

“I’m not sure why the men were chasing us. Jackson here has some kind of conspiracy theory going because he knows I have a few quirks that aren’t normal.” She threw him an irritated glance. “I doubt it. I don’t remember but I’m sure those enforcers were chasing us for something normal like theft. We were orphans and we needed to eat. Other than that, there’s not a lot to tell. I always seem to be running, but again, my lifestyle doesn’t endear me to our government. They like people they can track and control.”

Kaeden straightened up, a frown knitting his forehead. “What kind of quirks are we talking about?”

Saralyn glanced over at Jackson, fear clouding her beautiful eyes. He knew she didn’t want to tell the team about her abilities but it was crucial that they knew everything before they formulated a plan. That they’d agree to help her was a given. He nodded, giving her what he hoped was a reassuring smile.

Saralyn sighed. “I have an affinity for electronics. I can touch a computer and know what’s on the hard drive. My fingers let me connect somehow. Computers. Comm links. Security systems. If it’s electronic and it has any kind of motherboard or microchip in it, I can hack it just by touching it. I don’t know why, I just can.”

The lost children
.

The thought hung in the air as the tension in the room escalated to a whole new level, the jovial atmosphere vanishing in the blink of an eye.

Kaeden’s eyes narrowed. “You have no memory of your early childhood? Parents? Family? Just a boy helping you to hide from a squad of enforcers?”

She nodded. “Not all that uncommon back then. Or now, for that matter.” She sounded defensive.

“You must have heard the stories about the lost children. Did it ever occur to you that you might be one of those children?”

She stared at him as if he’d grown a second head. “Don’t be ridiculous. You know those stories have been exaggerated beyond belief. Lab rat kids with super abilities? Sure, I can hack all kinds of information, but there’s one tiny glitch that makes it so very not useful. You see, I can take the information out of the computers but then it’s stuck inside my head. Besides, you know if even a fraction of what they say is true the government would never let those kids out of their sight. They certainly wouldn’t have butchered them all.”

“Jackson.” Kaeden turned to face him. “Sounded to me like you know a thing or two that you might want to share with your buddies. What can our little princess here do that she shouldn’t be able to?”

Jackson shrugged. Saralyn may consider her abilities to be quirks but there was no way she came by them naturally. The
lost children
fable was the only plausible explanation. “She told you the truth. I saw her mine info out of Trace’s computer with a touch of her fingers. I believe she is one of the lost children, which brings up two very important questions.”

“Which are?” Kaeden cocked one eyebrow

“Who is the person she thinks is her brother, and where is he now?”

“Well.” A familiar grin creased Kaeden’s rugged face. “I guess we’re going to have to help her find the answers to those questions. Are you all in?”

Heads nodded around the room, and Jackson strode over to Saralyn, dropping his arm across her shoulders. “When this bunch decide to do something, it gets done. We’ll find that brother of yours ASAP.”

“Are you sure we shouldn’t be down there helping Trace?” Saralyn paced the width of the common room, feeling the tension in every muscle of her body. “What if he needs to know something and he can’t find me to ask?”

Jackson chuckled, reaching out with one arm to pull her up against him. “Trace doesn’t appreciate anyone distracting him while he’s working, and just having you there would qualify as a distraction. He’s actually very antisocial.”

Saralyn considered breaking free of the circle of his arms. She opened her mouth, tilting her head back to tell him to keep his hands to himself but the look in his eyes made the words melt away unspoken. Pure sensual heat blazed from their depths, igniting a matching flame deep inside her. Combine that look with the arousing male scent rising from his hard body, and she had to make a real effort not to melt against him like some pathetic doxy from the local bar pool.

She pushed ineffectually against the iron band of his arms. “I promise I won’t go upset your antisocial buddy, so you can let me go now.”

A spark of humor curved the corner of his sensual lips. “Relax. I’m not going to bite you. Unless you want me to, of course. It’s going to take Trace some time to get a line on your brother so we might as well kill the time exploring the spark between us.”

Sunlight flooded through the window behind her, highlighting the rugged line of his jaw and the muscular line of his shoulders. Damn! Now that she was so close to solving the mystery of her past, the last thing she needed was some muscle-bound mercenary distracting her from her goal.

She fixed him with a steely look. “While I appreciate you letting me ask your team for help in finding my brother, that does not give you any kind of rights to my body. So, if you don’t get your hands off me I’m going to have to hurt you.”

Jackson stared at her in disbelief for a long second before he snorted out a laugh. “You’re going to hurt me? That’s cute.”

Okay, that was the last straw. Drawing in a deep breath, she stomped down on his instep as hard as she could while giving him a sharp elbow to the diaphragm.

Unfortunately the whole thing would have gone better if he hadn’t moved his foot at the last second and turned his body slightly so that the lethal elbow she’d intended to knock the breath out of him barely managed to make contact with the edge of his ribs.

“Not nice.” His breath fanned across her cheek, warm and intimate. “You don’t really want to fight me and you know it.”

“I don’t?” She kept her voice low, not wanting to attract the attention of the rest of the team. “What makes you think you have any idea about what I want?”

“I can feel your heart beating against me, the rhythm increasing every time I touch you. Your eyes are sparkling with desire, and I’m willing to bet your pussy is getting wet in anticipation. I don’t have to be a rocket jockey to know that means you want to feel me buried deep inside you almost as much as I want to feel your hot sex closing tight around my cock.”

He wanted her! The mental image that his words conjured up left her feeling breathless and needy. This was insane. Sex was a tool that she used to get what she wanted. She never let herself get emotionally involved, and yet she found herself wondering what Jackson’s preferences were, and if she’d live up to his expectations.

Insanity
!

It was hormones. That’s all. She’d been celibate too long. She just needed to get laid and get him out of her system. Jackson was obviously willing. More than willing if that lump pressing into her belly was any indication. Reaching up, she wound her arms around his neck.

Jackson chucked softly. “Now that’s more like it.” Lowering his face, he skimmed a soft kiss across her parted lips. “How about we retire to my room? Much as I’d love to take you right here on the floor, I don’t want the rest of the team wandering in and disturbing us.”