Chapter Nineteen
Brock
I pull my truck under the bridge I’ve been directed to by Lawrence and kill the lights. Darkness is suffocating, silence complete, but for the rush of tires over the concrete highway above. Seconds morph into minutes, and my edginess is palpable.
The whistle of the wind comes soft and low, and I flip open the center compartment and remove a Smith and Wesson. It might be hard to kill a GTECH, but I know how to make a shot count.
Abruptly, the wind gushes around the vehicle. A roar of thunder follows, providing some comfort that this is Mother Nature rather than a Windwalker. I relax marginally, but do so with the comfort of that steel weapon against my palm.
From a distance, headlights flicker and turn down the street, high beams that cut through the fog. A white van pulls to a slow halt a few feet from my truck, lights illuminating the droplets of rain as they nosedive to the pavement.
I sit there, and so does the driver in the other vehicle. A silent standoff of sorts until I accept that I am being forced to exit first. I shove open the door, but with my weapon in hand.
Rain pelts steadily now, and my shirt clings to my skin, but I ignore the ice of the droplets. Still, no one exits the van, and between the black of the night and the tint of the front window, I’m clueless as to whom I’m dealing with.
I round the hood to the panel door and knock. It slides open, and to my shock, big blue eyes framed with long, sleek, raven hair greet me. The woman is striking—beauty in its purest form—and the smile she offers me is sweet enough to charm a battalion of soldiers. What the hell is she thinking, meeting a man under a bridge alone?
“Come in, Lieutenant Colonel,” she welcomes, “before you wash away.” Her voice is smooth as expensive whiskey, a throaty sensuality rasping from its depths.
But as my gaze shifts to the medical bed and monitors behind her, unease ticks to life. “Who are you?”
“The person who is going to hand you the world, Brock. If you want it. But you can call me Jocelyn.”
She’s for me , I think. She was sent to me to change my life. Slowly, this realization has me lowering my weapon, and she backs away from the entrance to offer me room to join her.
I don’t need a second invitation.
I climb inside the van and pull the door shut behind me.
I rotate to find her perched on a stool beside the bed, the scent of her, sweet and female, insinuating into my nostrils. “Lie on the bed and roll up your sleeve,” she orders, apparently unconcerned about the water I’m dripping all over the place.
It's less than a stride for me to sit on the mattress, and she rolls backward to allow me space to lie down. I pull my shirt over my head and toss the soggy mess. Her lips hint at a smile, as if she approves of my action.
I lay down.
Jocelyn scoots back to my side and wraps a rubber tube around my upper arm. Holy crap , I think. This is happening; it’s really happening. I’m about to become GTECH. As if confirming this conclusion, Jocelyn withdraws medication from a vial into a syringe, and my damn cock is standing at attention. I’m aroused. By her. By that needle about to create a new me.
Watching her now, she’s older than I first thought—maybe in her fifties, but could pass for forties. But it doesn’t turn me off. No, nothing about this woman turns me off. She is fucking amazing.
“General Lawrence told me you are aware of the risks, but I’d like to hear that from you,” she says. “Because there is no turning back. Everything about this program is experimental.”
“No risk, no reward,” I say, lost in my obsession with this woman and the power she represents.
She offers me a tiny smile that I feel in the twitch of my cock. “My philosophy, exactly.” She holds the syringe up and taps it. “Ready?”
“I was born ready.”
“I’ll bet you were.” She taps the syringe once more. “But we’ll talk about the side effects a little later.”
Something about her words hit me wrong. Wasn’t that normally discussed beforehand? But it was too late for questions. She leans forward and injects me, ice stabbing at my veins. Darkness follows.