Page 121 of The Sterling Acquisition
Orion tensed as Dante pressed a kiss to his lips, then let out a contented sigh that made Dante forget all about the pain in his body. He became laser-focused on the softness of Orion’s lips and the taste of his tongue, how he could feel Orion’s heartbeat against his stomach, and the scent of fresh slick in the air.
“We don’t have time for you to get horny again,” Orion said, squeezing his biceps as Dante kissed his jaw before moving down to his neck. “What happened to being a good operative?”
“Fuck it,” Dante said as he pressed a kiss to Orion’s neck. He smelled so fucking good it was hard to concentrate, and breathing in his scent was dulling the pain. He nuzzled into Orion’s neck, not even kissing anymore, just sort of dragging his nose and lips over his skin so he could practically taste the storm winds and marshmallows. It tasted like heaven.
“Are you…are you scenting me right now?”
Dante snapped from the bliss of Orion’s neck and straightened up, feeling a strange flush come to his cheeks. “No,” he said quickly.
A devilish grin cracked across Orion’s face as Dante released him. “You totally were. You were just scenting me.”
What the hell is wrong with me?He grabbed his shirt and quickly pulled it over his head. “I’ve never scented anyone a day in my life,” he said quickly. “Come on, we have a van to burn.”
Outside, their van sat waiting in the morning light, ready to become the centerpiece of their very own crime scene. Dante changed out of his last remaining corporate clothing—the suit pants that had somehow survived everything they’d been through—and into the civilian clothes Lilac had provided. The fabric was rough, practical, and utterly without the tailored precision he’d grown accustomed to. He looked like what he was: a man who’d abandoned everything he’d once been.
The van fire was surprisingly easy to arrange. A few rags soaked in fuel from the tank, some strategic placement near the engine block, and physics would handle the rest. They’d both left their soiled clothes in the van, and they had left more than enough DNA evidence in the storage area of the van for definitive identification. Corporate investigators would assume the worst and eventually classify them as casualties rather than fugitives.
As they prepared to light the makeshift fuse, Dante’s encrypted phone rang.
Amalie - Gensyn Operations
His hand moved toward it automatically, muscle memory from years of never missing a call from his handler. But then he caught sight of Orion adjusting his pack.
That was a face he could wake up to every day for the rest of his life, Dante realized. Even if that life now came with a significantly reduced life expectancy.
He threw the phone through the van’s open window.
“Light it,” he said, shouldering his pack.
The fire caught quickly, spreading from the engine compartment through the interior so quickly, confirming what he had suspected—the bread van had been a death trap waiting to happen. They watched for a moment, ensuring the blaze would be thorough enough to serve their purposes, then turned to begin their walk back to the collective.
“Wait,” Dante said, stopping just as they reached the tree line. He pulled the Project Tether data drives, sample vials, and research documents from his pack—everything he’d stolen from SVI, everything Gensyn expected him to deliver.
He stared at the materials in his hands. Morrison’s life’s work. The culmination of years of SVI research. The very thing he’d been sent to acquire, that would have cemented his position in Gensyn’s hierarchy for decades. His mission objective, the thing he was supposed to value above all else.
And the weapon that would have been used on Orion first.
With a decisive motion, he walked back to the burning van and threw it all into the flames. Data drives melted with a poisonous hiss, sample vials cracked and released sickly green vapor, and years of corporate research turned to ash and smoke. He felt no regret watching it burn, only a cold satisfaction. In that moment, the last remnant of Operative Ashford died with the technology he’d been sent to steal.
“Okay,” he said, rejoining Orion, “now we can go.”
“You just burned your golden ticket back into Gensyn’s good graces,” Orion observed, his expression unreadable. “Your career, your life’s work, your way home. All of it.”
“Not my work,” Dante corrected. “And not my home. Not anymore.”
Phase one complete. Phase two about to begin.
And for the first time since this entire operation started, Dante was beginning to think their three percent survival rate might be pessimistic.
Chapter forty-four
Grid Search
Dante
Twenty-twomiles.They’dmanagedtwenty-two miles before Dante’s legs reminded him that corporate fitness regimens focused on efficiency rather than endurance. The incision sites from this morning’s surgery throbbed with each step and his shoulder wound kept reopening despite Orion’s careful bandaging. The absence of his implants still created phantom sensations—neural pathways firing uselessly, seeking feedback from monitoring systems that were now nothing but ash.
The abandoned rest stop appeared through the twilight like a gift from whatever gods looked after fugitives and idiots—which, at this point, seemed to be the same demographic.
