Hunted by the Cyborg with Bonus Page 23

  Get those clones now! he messaged. Don’t care how, just do it.

  His gaze met Lamani’s. A triumphant smile spread across the terrorist’s handsome, urbane face. He knew Carter knew.

  And send backup. I’m going to need it.

  Chapter Thirty

  “We’ve waited a long time for this moment, haven’t we?” Lamani tapped his wrist comm, and the two aides barreled into the office. “Mr. Aymes and I will have a conversation, but he will not be leaving. Secure the office and floor with additional guards.”

  Now he recognized the significance of their broad foreheads, deep-set eyes, bad dispositions—they were Odgidian. The Lamis-Odg guards hurried out.

  Carter focused on the terrorist mastermind he’d hunted for a decade. No one would ever guess he wasn’t human. “Their surgery wasn’t as good as yours.”

  Lamani’s lip curled into an unBensonlike sneer. “My position demanded a far greater forfeit. When the last planet surrenders, I shall undergo a surgical reversal, but I will not completely regain what I have sacrificed.”

  His entire skull had been reshaped. Cybermed could rebuild his cranium, but the services would not be offered. Let him spend the rest of his life—whatever remained of it—looking like the humans he despised so much.

  The terrorist raised his arms. “Ickto omi Lamani, Hoorat ahno Okanta uya Yagnoni,” he said in the harsh, guttural Odgidian language. “I am Lamani, the prophet and incarnate of the Great One. Believe in me, follow me, and you will enter the Great Beyond. Doubt, and you will spend eternity beneath the sand with the iwani.”

  “The Great One is useful fiction, isn’t it?” Carter said. “Using superstition to coerce your people.” He didn’t buy for an instant Lamani shared his people’s belief in the Great Myth—or that he embodied their ideation. The lucid, intelligent, calculating gleam in his eyes revealed the truth. “You’ve cost your people everything. Lamis-Odg will not win this one,” he said. “The planets will not fall. Your world will be destroyed.”

  Lamani laughed. “That is your fiction.” He pushed back from the table. “So what gave me away? I assume you just figured out my identity, or you would have been here sooner.”

  One did not reveal the source of one’s information to a terrorist, and he didn’t want Lamani to doubt his control over Beth. She was safe, but the other clones still faced danger as long as the destruct sequence could be activated by a tap to Lamani’s wrist comm.

  Carter jerked his head at the artwork. “Your mural provided the answer. Even a bleeding-heart, naïve do-gooder like the secretary general wouldn’t place an image of a nonAOP member, a terrorist nation planet, as the artistic focal point of his office.” Like hiding in plain site as the very public Benson Vincere, the mural served as a bold testament to Lamani’s brash ego.

  The terrorist glanced at the wall then back at Carter. “You are perceptive. Your keen observation is part of what has made you such a worthy adversary. Thousands of people have passed through this office, and you are the only one to notice that detail.” He sighed. “Unfortunately, it means I’ll have to change the mural, not that it’s likely anyone else will notice—and even though it will cease to matter soon. However, a Terran idiom applies: Better safe than sorry.”

  Carter started to rise to his feet.

  “Ah—ah! Stay where you are.” Lamani patted the bulge on his hip.

  He sat back down.

  Brock pinged him. We’re on site. The team is getting into position. The lobby looks like a war zone.

  Wait till you see the secretary general’s floor. Watch for Lamis-Odg guards. They’ve undergone facial reconstruction. What’s the status of the clones?

  We got them all. They’re quarantined in an electronic transmission-proof chamber, but we weren’t able to round them up discreetly. Reports of abduction have been called in to local authorities. Public fallout will be significant. You okay?

  I’m chatting with Lamani. He’s armed.

  Noted. Hang tight. We’re on our way. T minus two.

  Carter adjusted his wrist comm. He had two minutes until the Cy-Ops team arrived.

  “You have someplace you need to be?” Lamani smirked. “You want to know what I believe?” He swept out his arm. “I believed this day would arrive, that you and I would meet for this chat. It was inevitable. You were always there, dogging my steps. With every failed invasion, every thwarted insurgency, you were there. In the background, out of sight, but you were there. I do not know what invisible army you command, but I don’t doubt you have one.”

  His face morphed into something ugly. “You captured my sons. You supported the rebellion seeking to usurp my authority, you killed my generals, you isolated my allies, you infiltrated my space stations, my outposts, my homeland.

  “It ends now. Goodbye, Carter Aymes.” Lamani grabbed the weapon on his hip and fired as Carter squeezed off a shot from the blaster concealed in the MiniComm on his wrist.

  The photon stream from Lamani’s weapon hit Carter in the chest, knocking him out of the chair. His blast threw the terrorist against the mural.

  The door burst open, and Kai Andros, March Fellows, and Brock Mann stormed in.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Head down, peering at her PerComm for the hundredth time, checking for news, Beth looked up to see a tall, broad-shouldered figure leading a team of cyborgs. She stopped dead. The communication device hit the floor. “Carter…Carter!” She ran.

  He caught her as she leaped. She fused her mouth to his, her tears salting their kiss. The rest of the team squeezed by, leaving them alone in the corridor. She clung to his solidness, needing tactile confirmation he was alive and well.

  He hugged her, cradling her head against his chest. Their hearts beat together in a perfect rhythm. He brushed his lips in her hair. “Brock told me what you did, how you insisted he contact me and provided evidence to prove Vincere was Lamani.” He gazed into her eyes. “I am so sorry I wasn’t here when you woke up. I wanted to be, but—”

  She pressed her finger to his lips. “You had to do what you had to do. I understand. I panicked because I needed to tell you about Benson. The programming wouldn’t let me before. I tried to tell you by spelling it out with my fingers, but you didn’t understand.”

  “Not at the time, no, but I realized it later, and it saved me. I knew then Vincere, aka Lamani, would try to kill me. I was able to stun him. Per standard operating procedure, I had on a photon-absorbing suit, which Dale Homme tweaked after you shot me at the Summit, so Lamani’s blast didn’t incapacitate me.”

  “He shot you?” she gasped. She checked for injury, running her hands over his chest and shoulders. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  She stilled her hands, and he quipped, “You don’t need to stop doing that.”

  She hugged him close, wrapping her arms tight around his waist.

  He continued. “Cy-Ops took out Lamani’s guards at AOP headquarters.”

  Beth shuddered. “I was scared to death. I couldn’t get Brock to believe me. The clothes I’d worn to the Summit had Benson’s DNA. On his ship, while he was threatening me, he got so close, he spit on me. Dr. Swain extracted his genetic material from the dried speck.” If the situation hadn’t been so serious, she would have taken great satisfaction from the shock on Brock’s face when Swain reported the test results: Benson’s DNA on her clothing did not match what was in the database, but it did match Lamani’s.

  “Brock feels terrible. He intends to apologize.”

  “It’s you he should apologize to,” she said vehemently. If she hadn’t been able to prove her claim, Carter would have been killed. Brock should have given her the benefit of the doubt.

  He shook his head. “I don’t blame him. I can’t. Lamani was under my nose for over a decade, and I never caught on.”

  “Where is he now? What will happen to him?”

  “In Cy-Ops custody. He’ll be tried by a galactic
tribunal for crimes against sentient life, but until he’s convicted, we’ll keep him. That’s part of what took so long. They expected me to hand him over, and I had to convince galactic authorities keeping him in “Aym-Sec” custody was in their best interests. I don’t trust anyone else to hold him. He’d escape or one of his generals would break him out of prison.”

  He hugged her and then pressed another hot kiss to her mouth before shoving her gently aside and wrapping his arm around her shoulders. “Come on. Let’s go home. I want to hold you, but not here in the corridor.”

  “Don’t you have a debriefing?” she asked. She hated to let him out of her sight.

  “Many debriefings. There’s a lot that needs to be told, but they can wait until tomorrow. Brock is handling what needs to be done now.”

  “Then, let’s get out of here.” The sooner the better—before something claimed his attention. She needed to curl up beside him, wrap herself so tightly around him that there could be no space between them. To draw reassurance from his touch, his heartbeat, his breath in her ear.

  Once they were nestled in the PeeVee, she asked, “If galactic authorities don’t have an adequate facility to hold Lamani now, what will happen after he’s tried and convicted? Won’t he escape from their prison then?”

  The PeeVee crawled through the garage to the outside thoroughfare then merged with the traffic and zipped toward the penthouse.

  “Yeah, which is why Cy-Ops doesn’t intend to relinquish him ever. We haven’t informed galactic authorities yet. One bridge at a time. Besides, depending on which planetary members are selected to serve on the tribunal, he could be executed.

  “We still have our work cut out for us because his generals and his fanatical followers are alive and well, but having captured the leader will be a big asset in stamping out terrorism. With the Resistance working on the inside, Cy-Ops working from the outside, and the AOP’s cooperation—we can do it.”

  “Who will lead the AOP?”

  “The undersecretary general will serve until an emergency election can be held. The Summit will reconvene after the AOP installs a new secretary general. Given that Lamani has been captured, military action against Lamis-Odg probably won’t be on the agenda, but I suspect that there will be new stringent measures discussed and implemented.”

  He pulled her onto his lap, and she snuggled against him. “Here’s the part I couldn’t tell you before: Lamani founded Clo-Ventures to produce sleeper clones. Chips were implanted during gestation.”

  He tightened his arms around her. “Remember the flowers Vincere sent you? It came with a holostick.”

  “It was a get-well message,” she recalled.

  “It was a Trojan horse emitting a wireless signal that activated the program in the chip. At the Summit, Lamani sent another short burst from his wrist comm to your chip to get you to kidnap Mikala. He had placed more than 350 clones in strategic places in the galaxy, many within the AOP. Fortunately, we were able to take all the clones into custody before he could trigger their programming or kill them. After the chips are neutralized, we’ll release them. Again, thanks to you.”

  She shuddered to think of how many people could have died or been forced to do terrible things against their will.

  Wait a minute. Strategically placed? “Are you saying Lamani is responsible for my Aym-Sec job? That he sent me here?” She had chosen to apply for the position. Hadn’t she? Did she have any control over her life?

  Leaving the space station for Aym-Sec had been a pivotal moment, her first major decision, her first act of self-determination. It saddened her to consider it might not have been her choice after all.

  “No, no. That was all you,” he said quickly. “You thwarted his plan to place a clone with one of the wealthiest and most influential families in the galaxy.” He quirked his mouth in satisfaction. “He didn’t factor you and the O’Sheas wouldn’t get along, or that you would seek a life away from them.” Her ambition and drive had thrown a wrench in Lamani’s plot. She’d been her own person right from the start.

  “Georgetta had told me that Clo-Ventures had contacted them and convinced them to clone Liza.”

  “You’ve spoken to Georgetta?”

  “A few weeks ago,” she admitted. “We made our peace. I might go for a visit. I would like to get to know them under better circumstances.”

  The PeeVee glided onto the roof. Carter hustled her out of the vehicle and into the building in record time. The penthouse door had no sooner sealed than he pulled her into his embrace and planted a searing kiss on her lips. She clung to him, his brawn, his solidness offering a counterpoint to the tenuousness of life. Here and now was all anybody got, and she intended to make the most of it.

  He cupped her face and brushed his lips over her eyelids, her cheeks, and her nose before claiming her mouth in another deep kiss. His manhood hardened, and her body responded with an answering throb, desire coiling within her.

  She heard a whirring and cracked an eyelid to see the little house robo scurry into the room. When its electronic eyebeam fixed on her, it spun 360 degrees and fled. Beth grinned.

  “What’s so funny?” he murmured, but his mouth quirked in response.

  “Nothing. I’m just happy.”

  He sobered as he gazed into her eyes. “I could have lost you.”

  “I could have lost you.”

  They’d saved each other. She shuddered to contemplate what she might have done or revealed to Lamani before he terminated her life. She didn’t doubt he’d intended to kill her; the only reason he hadn’t killed her on the shuttle was because Cy-Ops had found them, and Benson Vincere couldn’t afford to be caught with her dead body. If she’d died, Carter might not have discovered Lamani’s secret identity until it was too late.

  She pressed her lips to his throat. “Maybe we should talk about that later…”

  “Good idea.” He waggled his eyebrow. “What else did you have in mind?”

  She grabbed his hand and tugged him toward the bedroom. “Let’s find out together.”

  “I like the sound of that,” he said.

  The bedroom lights came on when they entered then dimmed to a soft glow with a diffused spotlight highlighting the bed. “Did you do that?” she asked. She didn’t recall the house having those presets.

  “Guilty.” He grinned.

  “You and your cyborg brain.” She jabbed his chest with her finger.

  His eyes darkened with intensity. “Me and my cyborg brain love you.”

  “I love you, too. So much.”

  “Good. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.” He cupped her neck and tilted her head back for his kiss.

  He tasted of passion and comfort, love and security, belonging and desire—all the things she’d never dared to believe she could have.

  They broke apart and began to undress. She pulled her tunic over her head and flung it atop his shirt, already puddled on the floor with his trousers. “Cyborgs undress fast,” she commented.

  “They do when there’s somebody to undress for.” He shucked out of his undershorts with record speed.

  She sat on the bed’s edge to remove her bootlets. He knelt to give her a hand, slipping the shoes off her feet. With his thumbs, he massaged an instep. She held his gaze as she ran the top of the other foot along his erection. His cock jerked. She smiled.

  He slipped his fingers under the edge of her camisole with the build-in breast supports and pulled the garment up and off. His gaze caressed her, but he didn’t touch her as she’d expected, instead he hooked the band of her bottoms. “Lift,” he ordered. She raised her hips, and her underwear joined the heap of clothing.

  He tugged her to the edge of the mattress and wedged himself between her spread legs to hug her. They rocked together, sliding skin to skin. Her beaded nipples rubbed his chest. His erection pressed against her clit and mons. He kissed her long, deep, and slow before nibbling a trail to her throat.

 
Her neck arched so that her hair dusted the bed. She moaned.

  Ducking his head, he captured a taut nipple in his mouth. She felt as if her breasts, womb, pussy, and clit were interconnected, pleasure pulling from deep in her core.

  “Scoot back,” he whispered.

  She slid closer to the center, her head against the pillows. On all fours, Carter dove in for a kiss. She grabbed his cock, exploring his smooth, hot, hard flesh, her fingers not able to meet around his girth. He leaked a pearl of fluid, which she swirled over the head.

  He growled, a sound so sexy, her pussy responded with a surge of wetness.

  She caressed him everywhere, and he explored her body with a lover’s thoroughness. Her strokes elicited heavy groans; his caresses caused whimpers of delight. She took him in her mouth, wresting a hoarse curse; he pulled away and teased and taunted her intimately until she writhed and begged for completion.

  He rocked into her with such gentleness, she pounded on his shoulders and cursed him, needing more. When he buried himself, she forgave him, moaning with pleasure.

  He had undressed with lightning speed, but he fucked with slow, deliberate intensity, drawing out their mutual pleasure to be savored, treasured, remembered. He fucked like they had all the time in the galaxy, and maybe they did because every spiral of pleasure brought a glimpse of eternity.

  With every thrust, he erased the ugly shadows of the past, creating a bright new future together. The clone and the cyborg. A bioengineered duplicate human and the computer-modified man. In each other, they found acceptance, belonging, and love.

  The pinnacle of rapture hit as sudden and intense as a photon blast, a climax that rippled in her core before expanding in shock waves that seared every nerve, muscle, and cell. Overwhelmed, she surrendered to the ecstasy and clung to Carter’s neck.