The Storm That Is Sterling (2 page)

“Either you meet the required SAT score for the University of Texas,” she reminded him, “or you’ll be passing your ball to whoever is open somewhere else.”

He shoved the paper away and scrubbed his hand through his hair. “This is bull. I don’t want some fancy NASA-sponsored scholarship like you got, so I don’t see why I have to be some geeky bookworm like you either.”

She stiffened at the familiar jab, wondering why she let it bother her, why every once in a while she wished she was the cheerleader or prom queen. It wasn’t like she wanted to be some brainless blonde beauty. Her mother was a teacher, both pretty and smart. Darn it, Becca liked having her mother’s dark brown hair and brains, and she was proud of the NASA scholarship. Her parents were proud of her, and that’s what counted.

Resolved to ignore his remark, she pushed the paper back toward him. “Let’s try again.”

“I’m done,” he said. “I’m going to talk to Coach. He has to get me out of the SAT.”

“Get you out of the SAT?” she asked. “You can’t be serious.”

He pushed to his feet. “As a touchdown.” And with that smart remark, he headed toward the door.

Becca tossed down her pencil and sighed. Please let the summer end. She couldn’t get to Houston and her new school soon enough.

The chair in front of her moved, and a Snickers bar slid in front of her. “You look like you need this urgently.” Sterling sat down across from her, his teal green eyes a bright contrast to his spiky blond hair. She decided right then that her summer goal was to run her fingers through that hair just one time before she left for Houston. And kiss him. She really wanted to kiss him.

“It’s a wiser and safer man who brings a Burns woman chocolate when she’s upset. Or so says the Burns men. They swear it’s a better survival technique than anything they learned in basic training.” Both her father and brother were career military, same as her grandfather had been. She reached for the candy bar. “Thank you, Sterling.”

He grabbed the worksheet Bobby had abandoned and started working an algebra problem with such ease that she assumed he was just doodling. They chatted while she waited for her next tutoring session, and she decided he was the best part of her summer wait for college. He took care of his grandmother by doing computer programming work. She thought that made him amazingly sweet.

When it was nearly time for her next student, he abandoned the worksheet and studied her. “I should go.”

“Okay.” Dang it, she really didn’t want him to go.

He didn’t go. He sat there, staring at her, the air thick with something—she didn’t know what—but it made her stomach flutter.

“You want to catch a movie or something Friday night?”

She smiled instantly, knowing she should play coy—after all, Sterling was older and more experienced—but not sure she would know how if she tried. Dating wasn’t exactly something she’d excelled at.

“Yeah,” she said. “I’d like to go to a movie.”

His lips lifted. “With me, right?”

She laughed. “Yeah, with you.”

Once they’d arranged to meet at the library at seven the next evening, Sterling headed back to the computers. She glanced down at the math he’d done and smiled all over again. He’d gotten all the questions right. Good looking
and
smart. She might just fall in love with her hot cowboy.

***

With a smile on his lips, Sterling whipped his battered, black Ford F-150 into the driveway of the equally damaged trailer he called home and killed the engine.

He leaned back in the seat and pulled the wad of cash from his pocket. Ten thousand dollars and a date with Becca tomorrow night. He was going to kiss her, see what honey and sunshine tasted like, because that’s what she reminded him of. Ah yeah. Life was good.

“Yeehaw,” he whispered, staring at the cash again. How many nineteen-year-olds had that kind of dough? He was liking this new job. Hack a computer, get cash. He snorted. “And they say that government databases can’t be hacked. This low-life trailer trash proved them wrong.” That’s what the kids at school had called him after his grandmom had gotten arrested for public intoxication. Trailer trash. Misfit. “Screw you,” he mumbled to the voices of the past. “Screw you all.”

Once Sterling had counted the money, down to the ten thousandth dollar, he grabbed a hundred for his date with Becca and stuffed the wad of cash back in his pocket. Then he snatched the bundle of flowers on the seat. He left the Snickers bar for himself and then decided better. Candy had worked with Becca, after all. And he’d need all the sweetness he could muster to convince Grandmom to head to that fancy alcohol-rehab center he’d arranged for her to enter up in Temple, Texas. It was even close by, only twenty miles away, which he hoped would help convince her to go. She’d curse and probably hit him. She was good at that, but it didn’t hurt anymore. Hadn’t for years.

He knew she couldn’t help herself. He’d read enough about alcoholism to know she was sick. Yet she’d raised him despite that. Heck, he was to blame, he supposed. He was why his mother had died—the trigger that had set Grandmom off.

He climbed out of the truck and whistled down the path to the front door. The whistle faded the instant he entered the trailer. Grandmom sat on the couch, wrapped in the same crinkly blue dress that she’d gone to bed wearing, a big bottle of vodka in her hand. Two men dressed in suits sat next to her.

“Look what these men brought me,” she said, grinning, holding up her prize.

“We know how you like to take care of your grandmother,” one of the men said, his buzz cut flat against his skull.

“Kind of like your father took care of his family,” the other man stated, a clone of the first one. They had to be army or government.
Fuck
me!

“The resemblance between the two of you is amazing,” the first man said, picking up a picture of Sterling’s father. He was standing in front of a helicopter, his blond hair longer than it should have been because he wasn’t normal army. He’d been Special Forces, working undercover all over the map. And it had gotten him killed when Sterling was barely out of diapers. The man set the picture back down on the coffee table.

Grandmom grabbed the picture, mumbling to herself. “They’re the spitting image of each other.” Her gaze lifted, her voice with it. “But Sterling ain’t got no clue who his daddy was. Man was never here. Neither was his mama.” She took a drink. “They died. Didn’t they, Ster… ling?”

The captain focused on Sterling. “We think you’re a lot like him. For instance, you both showed an interest in official government business.”

Sterling’s gut twisted in a knot. He was busted. Big-time freaking busted and going to jail. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He wasn’t admitting shit. He wouldn’t go down without a fight. He had Grandmom to take care of.

“You know,” the second man said, “there’s a lot that can be forgiven if you serve your country. Enlistment is favorable in certain circumstances.”

The first man took the picture from Grandmom. “I’m Captain Sherman, son.” He gave a sideways nod to the second man. “This is Captain Jenson. We served with your father.”

Thank the Lord above. They weren’t Feds. “What do you want from me?”

The captain answered, “Your father was part of a Special Forces unit where certain ‘skills,’ say—computer expertise, can be useful.” He wrapped his arm around Grandmom’s shoulders. “In exchange for service in this unit, your family will be well taken care of. It’s time you enlisted, son. Be all you can be, like your father.”

Grandmom gulped from the bottle, and suddenly Sterling realized he was still holding the flowers—those damn flowers that weren’t going to erase his problems any more than the wad of cash sitting in his pocket.

“And if I say no?” he asked.

“I don’t remember asking,” the first man said.

“I’m not a soldier,” Sterling said. He was just a kid in a trailer park who knew how to hack a computer.

“You are your father’s son,” the man said. “Mark my words, boy. You will be a soldier when I’m through with you.”

Sterling looked at his grandmother, watched as she gulped from the bottle, her teal green eyes that matched his own the only familiar thing left in her. He saw the hint of contempt that lurked in their depths—the blame for his mother’s death. The booze could never quite kill that. Sterling realized right then and there that the best thing he could do for her was to leave and give her a chance to heal. To get as far away from her as he could and stay there.

His gaze shifted to the man to his grandmother’s right, and Sterling fixed him in an accessing stare. “She’ll be taken care of?”

“You have my word.”

“Mister,” he said. “I don’t know you from anywhere. I’ll expect that in writing.”

A hint of respect flickered in the man’s expression. “As well you should.”

“Don’t suppose you’d wait until after tomorrow night to sign me up and ship me off?” They gave him deadpan looks in reply. “No. I didn’t think so.” His date with Becca was officially canceled.

Fourteen Years Later

Sterling slipped into the shadowy recesses of a dark Las Vegas alley, hot on the trail of what was one of the ever elusive, nearly impossible to locate ICE dealers pedaling the newest variety of “sin” in the city. But then, Sterling supposed that when you were selling top-secret, Area 51 military technology laced with alien DNA, you tended to be more careful than the average scumbag drug dealer. ICE was a dirty little number created by the leader of the Zodius movement, rebels formed from a group of GTECH Super Soldiers created under the government’s Zodius Project. Their sorry SOB of a leader, Adam Rain, planned to force the city into dependency and grow his “perfect race,” the evolution of humanity.

“Not on my watch,” Sterling murmured. He, like all the Renegade GTECHs led by Adam’s brother Caleb, lived to blow the Zodius movement to hell, starting with the ICE warehouse.

The dealer stopped in front of his buyer—an Ice Junkie, or “Clanner,” as they were being called on the streets. Two burly dudes flanked the dealer like bodyguards.

This was the break Sterling had been waiting for.

“Where’s the money, Charles?” the dealer demanded.

“I won’t have it until tomorrow,” Charles replied, hugging himself, his teeth chattering. “But I’ll get you the money. I just need a hit. I’m begging you, David. Please. Give me a hit.” He wheezed, a loud wet noise that sounded like death barely warmed over. Considering withdrawal from ICE had already produced six dead Clanners in only a month, all with their organs shriveled up like prunes, Sterling was pretty darn sure the dude really did need that hit.

The dealer didn’t seem to care. “No money. No ICE.”

“Tomorrow,” Charles promised, his voice quavering. “Tomorrow I get paid. I’ll pay you double. Please, man. Please. I need… that hit.”

“Is this what you want?” the dealer taunted, producing a small vial of ICE from his pocket. The clear liquid contents slid down the user’s throat with a sub-zero effect and delivered a temporary boost of superhuman power and speed. ICE, the Renegades’ scientific team knew for certain, was a synthetic version of the original GTECH serum but with unidentifiable components. And identifying those components had proven critical to developing a method of safe withdrawal.

“Yes, please David!” Charles shouted desperately. “Please! I have to have a hit.” David pocketed the ICE vial, and Charles grabbed for his arm. David flung him across the alley with the kind of ease that said he was feeling the super strength of his own ICE addiction.

Sterling cursed, hitting the mike by his ear and speaking to his team. “Hot ICE on the move and so am I.”

“Wait on backup,” Caleb ordered.

“No time.”

“Sterl—”

Sterling clicked off the mike in the middle of the angry reply and did the one thing he knew the Clanners couldn’t. He grabbed a strand of wind and faded into it. In a blink, he reappeared at the outside corner of the alley and then stepped in front of the dealer, blocking his exit.

“Howdy there, fellas.” He ignored the bodyguards. “I’ll be taking that vial of ICE you’ve got there in your pocket. Then you can mosey on along and take the rest of your lifetime on vacation. You know, do whatever retired drug dealers do. Play the casino tables. Watch
SpongeBob
for all I care. Just get the
hell
off my streets.”

David cackled a laugh. “Your streets? These streets belong to Adam Rain, as you will soon find out.” He gave Sterling’s black fatigues a once-over and spoke to the man on his right. “Looks like we got us some army wannabe who’s been ICE-ing too much. Thinks he’s superhuman or some shit like that. Thinks he can push us around.”

“See,” Sterling drawled. “That’s where you’re mistaken. I already attended the army party and left. I’m what you call an independent contractor. We Renegades write our own rules. The good, bendable kind that let me kick your ass all over the curb and then do it again just for fun.”

David made a less than successful attempt at a hand signal, and the three men instantly rushed at Sterling. Bring. It. On. Sterling could have wind-walked away, but what fun would that be? Standing his ground, he kicked one of his attackers in the chest and landed a fist on the other’s jaw. The two bodyguards—or whatever the juiced-up bastards were—came back at Sterling before he could make a move toward Charles and David, neither of the guards fazed by his attacks when they should have been.