Too Lethal to Love (Project VIPER #2)
Chapter 1
F irst Lieutenant Kane Darren launched himself and the DEA agent in his arms toward the hovering helicopter. Bullets pinged off the bird’s tail in rapid succession. One hit his stronger-than-steel bionic leg as the whir of the blades drowned out his curse. He didn’t feel pain, but the agent whose cover had been blown was barely breathing, thanks to the Diablo drug cartel.
Kane handed the unconscious woman to his teammate and climbed in. He flipped his middle finger at the machine-gun-toting herd of mercenaries barreling through the tree line. Adrenaline roared in his ears as he thought the command to blow them sky-high.
Fire!
His lips twitched into a feral grin as an electromagnetic current pulsed like a live wire from the chip implanted at the base of his neck down his spine. The deadly tide flowed to his bionic leg, weaponized with technology courtesy of Project VIPER. Less than a heartbeat later, a V-Strike streamed from the center of his kneecap. The deadly, invisible laser traveled through his pants without leaving a trace and struck the ground with the force of a lightning bolt.
The impact shook the Mexican jungle. Flames erupted in the tall grass. A wave of heat penetrated his thick helmet and the high-tech gear protecting every inch of his body. His skin nearly melted from his bones, but he snarled with satisfaction as the explosion sucked a dozen of the bastards back into the bowels of the Yucatan Peninsula.
The helicopter pitched to the right as it rose from a clearing barely big enough for the bird to have landed in. He grounded himself with the enhanced strength in his steel leg as he and his brothers-in-arms picked off the unending force of mercenaries dodging the flaming trees.
Fire! Fire! Fire!
V-Strikes shot from the center of his quad and the juncture of his shin and ankle. His targets fell to the charred jungle floor, but fuck, cartel goons with machine guns kept coming like a plague of locusts. VIPER’s mission was to extract the agent and her valuable intel, not eliminate the devil’s right-hand men in one day. But if a bullet hit the helicopter’s fuel tank, they’d all be burned to hell.
He was a super soldier for God’s sake. A lucky shot wouldn’t be the cause of his demise, but the heat might.
Even though his head throbbed like he’d snorted half the opioids in the compound they’d infiltrated, he poured gallons of wrath into his command to fire. The intensity of his V-Strikes was controlled by his thoughts. Dialing it back from killing to incapacitating might get the job done, but these savages who manufactured deadly drugs and beat women didn’t deserve mercy, even if it was almost Christmas.
His teammates showed no mercy either as V-Strikes pulsed from their super limbs. Their combined force sucked the last of the Diablo army back into the underworld like the devil had called them home .
Kane yanked off his helmet and whipped his head to Dr. Hudson Langley, VIPER’s trauma surgeon. “Is she alive?”
Hudson shined a penlight into Agent Jenna McKinney’s bloodshot stare. “Barely.”
“We’re clear,” Linc shouted from the cockpit as he flew them away from the burning jungle.
Kane scrambled the few feet to Jenna, his super leg jittering beneath him, and sank to his knees above her head. Her sweat-soaked body shook as they rapidly ascended into the air.
“Fuck,” he muttered as he grabbed a silver emergency blanket and tucked it around her quaking body. There hadn’t been time to fully assess the extent of her injuries when they’d found her tied to a chair in a dilapidated barn a few feet from the main building . Rage sped up his breathing as the helicopter’s dim light revealed how she’d been tortured.
Bruises, some greenish blue with age and some fresh and angry, showed through the bloody sweat dripping down her cheeks. Her lower lip bled from a jagged cut. Even her nose, which had a spray of freckles across it in the photo he’d seen during this morning’s briefing, had been busted. The freckles were nowhere to be seen under the bruising and blood. God knew what other damage hid beneath her crimson-stained T-shirt and filthy jeans.
His teammate Chris crouched beside her and gently opened her eyelids. With care, he peeled contact lenses from her corneas and dropped them into a case as Hudson readied a syringe.
Kane cradled her head in his lap and brushed blood-soaked hair away from a knot on her forehead. His other teammate, Nic, dropped to his side next to her. He traced the edges of a days-old bruise on her bicep with his black, steel fingers. “ Dios mio .”
My God was right .
Kane glanced at the fire-tinged smoke choking the early afternoon sky. Before he’d lost his leg to an IED in the Middle East, he’d witnessed plenty of gruesome sights with Marine Corps Force Reconnaissance. This level of brutality had him wishing for thirty seconds with the deviants holed up in the Diablo cartel’s stronghold. He’d only need a second to obliterate them with a V-Strike. The first twenty-nine he’d use to unleash the strength in his super leg on their unholy asses.
His gaze fixed on a cut in Jenna’s lower lip. “How is she alive after what they did to her?”
“Because she’s higher than this helicopter.” Hudson glanced at her track-mark-riddled forearms as he jabbed a syringe into her chest.
Her eyes shot open.
“Hey.” Kane braced her head with his hands.
She lashed her fingers around his wrists and stared up at him. The glassy defeat in her gaze almost made him vomit. “Stay with us, Jenna. You’re safe.”
“Please.” Sounds as ragged as her tormented flesh grated from her throat. “Tell Greg no…no regrets.”
Kane held his breath as everything, from Jenna’s swollen lips to her shuddering body, stilled. He didn’t need Hudson to confirm she’d said her last words. And he didn’t need to reread her file to know Greg was the husband she’d never go home to.
“Fuck.” Hudson sat back on his haunches.
Chris sighed as he patted the pocket holding the valuable intel Jenna had uncovered.
Nic made the sign of the cross with his steel hand. “Thank you for your service.”
Kane echoed his words as he stroked Jenna’s swollen cheek. Tears stung his eyes, which felt as bloodshot as her lifeless gaze. Yeah, they’d retrieved the intel they’d come for, but in a few hours, someone would knock on Jenna’s door. Only one glance at the person’s stiff posture and somber expression would be needed for Jenna’s husband to know his wife was never coming home again.
A memory of two men in uniform, another doorstep, crept into Kane’s mind. Futile wishes that they’d gotten to Jenna earlier mixed with his past. He swallowed the bitter concoction along with his waning adrenaline. It erupted in his gut like one of the explosions he’d caused in the jungle. Jenna’s last words whispered through his mind as he closed her eyes and covered her face with the emergency blanket.
No regrets.
Would her husband think that when he learned about her brutal demise? Fuck, no. She’d been scheduled to be permanently extracted tomorrow, alive and well, and in time for the holidays, with critical information that could help save millions of lives. Now, her husband’s Christmas gifts would be a bottomless box of jagged pain, soul-slashing torment, and the regret Jenna thought he shouldn’t have.
But he would have regrets. Kane knew firsthand that grief was the gift that never stopped giving. Closing his eyes, he sent up a silent prayer for Jenna’s soul and for her husband who was about to have his world blown to smithereens. He glanced at his teammates as he fought to wrangle his spiraling thoughts, but the super strength VIPER had engineered him with only applied to his leg, not his psyche.
Would Chris’s fiancé, Scarlett, think “no regrets” if the love of her life died on a mission? The genius who cybernetically engineered their brains with their prosthetics may have a mind like a machine, but she was still a woman in love. And what about Hudson? His role as medical support didn’t totally shield him from gun-toting mercenaries and other hostiles. And unlike Kane and his VIPER teammates, he didn’t have a weaponized limb to shoot lasers from. Kane doubted Hudson’s pregnant wife would find comfort in “no regrets” if her husband came home in a coffin.
So far, Kane and his VIPER brothers had returned from their handful of missions in one piece. Even though their super soldier capabilities increased their chances of survival a hundredfold, death could still find them.
And grief would overtake the ones they left behind.
He held on to Jenna’s body as he succumbed to his memories that raced faster than the helicopter. Unlike Chris and Hudson, he didn’t have a wife, a fiancé, or even a girlfriend to mourn him if he died protecting his country. He only had Gran and his sister, and now his VIPER family. He didn’t intend to add any more to the list of loved ones who would grieve if he didn’t come home.
Serve first. Love Later.
He’d been born to serve. Duty to his country was woven into his DNA just as tightly as his love for his family’s land in West Virginia. At thirty-two, he still had plenty of military miles in him. Those miles would lead him to situations where the chances were high of winding up dead, like his buddies who hadn’t survived the IEDs that took his leg. Or Jenna, who risked her life to save others.
He’d learned long ago that relationships and the military didn’t mix, especially for someone who pledged to fight the worst of the worst. Loving a woman—even the one he couldn’t get off his mind—would have to wait until he parted ways with Uncle Sam and the dangerous existence he’d committed to.
A few hours later, Kane followed his brothers out of the conference area and into the hall at VIPER headquarters. He didn’t break his stride toward the locker room as he looked at the comms unit strapped to his wrist. “That was the shortest debrief ever.”
Nic checked the unit embedded in his steel arm. “Thank God, because Scarlett will have our balls if we don’t get Chris to his engagement party on time.”
Chris chuckled. “And Beth will have your ass.”
Beth.
An image of Scarlett’s best friend danced in Kane’s vision. Everything about her shimmered, from her long, dark-brown curls to the colorful, sparkly clothes she wrapped around her sweet curves. Even the tight smiles she sporadically offered him beamed with an inherent, vivacious spark he itched to ignite. The man in him ached to learn why that spark didn’t awaken into a flame. His training demanded he know why she never sat with her back to the door and why she hid a gun in her giant tote bag. The super soldier he’d become needed to eradicate whatever gave her nightmares.
Nic nudged him in the arm. “Beth put me in charge of beer and making sure the happy couple gets to the party on time. What did she put you in charge of?”
“Nothing.” The petite research scientist whose head barely reached his chin had made it clear she didn’t welcome his attention. At least not the kind she knew about. He may not be able to get her out of his mind, but he’d damn well protect her from whatever she feared.