Through the Static Read online

  The only way to save him is to let him into her mind…and her heart.

  When cybernetics researcher Aurelia Locke is attacked, she instantly recognizes her assailants as a Three—a mercenary unit made up of a trio of soldiers whose minds have been cybernetically linked, their pasts erased, their wills subsumed.

  By the skin of her wits, she escapes to an abandoned house, where she hacks its security system in her desperation to find refuge.

  Jinx is already on high alert when his Three notices something isn’t right with their safe house. But he never expected to find a woman wounded and bleeding out in his own bed, or that his visceral reaction to her would begin to awaken his lost past from a years-long haze of violence.

  In a mad gamble to escape, Aurelia frees Jinx from his Three by severing his neural connection to them and tying his mind to hers. The power of their link shocks them both, manifesting not only in shared thoughts, but in an intensely passionate physical connection.

  But dangerous forces pursue them, intent on reclaiming Jinx and silencing Aurelia’s knowledge. Her only chance of saving him is to risk everything—her research, her heart, and her life.

  Warning: Contains manipulation of a person’s memory without his consent and brief episodes of mind control, as well as a smart girl on the run, a high-tech soul-bond, and telepathy-enhanced sex.

  Through the Static

  Jeanette Grey

  Dedication

  To all the RWA chapters out there inspiring writers like me to tell the stories of their hearts. With extra special thanks to Jenna Patrick and Brighton Walsh for all their help and insights.

  Chapter One

  They came out of nowhere. And yet, as the door of the transport burst open, Aurelia Locke’s first thought was, I should have known. The dodgy driver and the dark night and the rain. The meeting in the middle of nowhere. That corner they’d gone around, leading into…

  The champagne flute shattered in her hand, sharp pulses of glass embedding themselves into her palm as every neuron in her body fired off, her synapses overloading as a hot pressure seared the side of her neck. Twelve thousand volts. At least.

  Backup systems. Engage backup systems.

  Rigid with the force of the electricity, Aurelia thanked God that Isabel had made her install those aftermarket neurodampeners. Her body had gone rigid, but on the most base level, it was still her own.

  Wait for it… Wait for it…

  The neural onslaught ended as suddenly as it had begun. Against the pounding of her heart, Aurelia forced her body to go limp. She relaxed every muscle. Every one except those in her hand.

  A second later, her back hit cold pavement in an impact hard enough to shake her bones. Rain spit across her face, and in the distance, thunder crashed. She chanced one quick peek up through barely cracked eyelids.

  The man standing over her was huge. A hundred kilos, minimum, and all of it muscle. His clothes were black, as were his tattoos. Aurelia focused in on the inked-in constellation of stars on the side of his neck, one point of it aiming straight toward the blue LED barely visible behind his ear.

  A Three, then. She should have known.

  With his attention diverted, half his great bulk reaching forward into the mangled doorway of the transport, Aurelia opened her eyes all the way. His skin looked unarmored, but looks could be deceiving. She cast one quick glance around his frame and into the transport. Stan didn’t have the same defenses she did, and if they’d hit him with the same force…

  Oh God, there was blood. So much blood.

  She closed her eyes and sucked in a deep breath. When she peeked up again, her attacker was twisted forward as if listening to someone in the front seat. And there it was. Her opportunity.

  Operating on pure adrenaline and anger and pain, Aurelia shoved the jagged stem of her shattered glass straight up into the sliver of exposed skin between his pants and his shirt. He howled and curled in on himself as she twisted her wrist to push the glass in deeper.

  Hand soaked with his blood and her own, she didn’t wait to see how bad she’d hurt him. Into the darkness and the rain she fled, heading instinctively toward the tree line. But even the thick of the woods wouldn’t provide much cover. For anyone who could see it, her digital signature would be flashing like a beacon. She needed shelter. Preferably one with a Faraday cage. Or better yet, one with a real security system she could hack herself into. Like she had any chance of finding that out here. How many credits had she and Isabel and Stan sunk into the state-of-the-art security at their lab?

  A stabbing pang of guilt shot through her. Stan. She slowed for just a second to glance behind her. And immediately wished she hadn’t.

  Blood. Stan’s broken body on the ground. Three tattooed constellations on three terrifying men.

  Two of them on her tail.

  Whispering a silent apology to the research partner she’d spent the last five years working side by side with, she looked straight ahead and ran for all she was worth. As she entered the woods, tree roots and branches grabbed at her, but still she pressed on, all her senses bent on staying upright, pumping muscles until her legs burned and her lungs ached. The crashing sounds of heavy feet on leaves behind her were all the motivation she needed. And then there was a whistle and a bang and a bright burst of pain across her shoulder.

  She faltered as she reached for her arm and held it tight across her chest. The sticky-hot seep of blood bloomed through the fabric of her shirt, and her vision narrowed to a pinpoint as the world swam. Her heartbeat hammered with the ragged rhythm of her breath, the slowing of her own steps.

  But then there were other footfalls, closer and closer. Something brushed her back—a tree branch or a grasping hand, she didn’t know. With a fresh burst of adrenaline, she pushed past the shock of pain and shook her head. Blinked. When she opened her eyes again, the path before her was crystal clear.

  Aurelia didn’t hesitate. Biting back the scream of pain as she let go of her shoulder, she grasped her locket between her forefinger and her thumb. Gave it a quick kiss and activated her shield before squeezing down.

  The EMP blast was silent and invisible but potentially deadly, especially for the members of a Three. Two loud thuds behind her said she’d leveled them, and for the first time since before she’d hit the tree line, she risked a backwards glance. Sure enough, the two men were both laid out, twitching on the forest floor.

  She didn’t have time to celebrate, though. Officially out of tricks, she ran like the devil himself was behind her. A hysterical laugh escaped her throat. If and when those guys picked themselves up, she’d probably wish it were only Satan at her heels.

  Her whole body trembled with a racking shudder as images flashed across her vision of what they’d already done. What they would still do when they caught her. A team of professionals like that wouldn’t have let her escape so easily if they hadn’t been instructed to take her alive. What they must still have in store for her…

  So they wouldn’t catch up with her. She wouldn’t let them.

  With renewed resolve, she pressed on, ignoring the wet and cold, the darkness and the throbbing ache in her shoulder, the crackling of synapses along her spine. A voice in the back of her mind reminded her she wouldn’t be able to ignore them forever, though. She needed someplace safe to rest. And maybe a trip to the emergency room. And she needed them soon.

  Just then, a low, orange glow appeared between the trees, and Aurelia’s chest expanded with relief. Schooling her hope, she slowed, advancing quietly. Within a dozen meters, the forest gave way to a clearing, and there at the edge of it, at the end of a well-worn, muddy trail, sto
od a little concrete house.

  Or…a barracks?

  Every warning light in her brain lit up at once, caution and Isabel’s voice in her head all telling her to run the other way. But there was nowhere else to go except deeper into unfamiliar territory. She paused and leaned against a tree at the edge of the clearing and peered through the darkness.

  There were no signs of life, no lights on inside and no vehicle in sight. There was just the one sodium lamp above the door. And the brightly lit panel beside it.

  Aurelia’s heart hammered. It was too much to hope.

  Throwing caution to the wind, she stole across the clearing, the entire time waiting for someone to burst through the door and start shooting at her. But the door remained closed, and within seconds she was standing in front of the panel.

  The security system was one she knew well enough, and even if it hadn’t been, she would’ve been able to make do. A minute or two of tapping at the controls and she finally let out a sigh of relief. All of the system’s users were checked out. The house was empty.

  A few more keystrokes and she’d reset the system, enhanced the signal obfuscation and run a relay around the transmitter. Then with a deep breath, she pressed a series of buttons to open the door.

  She gave the house one quick sweep, just enough to ascertain that she’d been right. It was empty. And for the moment, it was hers.

  She didn’t have time to notice anything else about the place. Safe from the wind and rain and the threat of dangerous men in hot pursuit, she let herself slump back against the wall. All the adrenaline seeped out of her system, leaving her shaking and weak, low on blood and still reeling from the electrical weapon they’d first laid her out with when they’d yanked her from the car.

  Flashes from the attack assaulted her again, the horror of it only now really sinking in. She closed her eyes against the scent of blood and a fresh burst of pain shooting from her shoulder.

  When she opened her eyes again, it was to find herself in a Spartan bedroom. She only took the time to drag herself to the mattress on the floor in the corner. Giving in to the shock, she collapsed down onto it.

  Seconds later, the darkness pulled her under.

  The woman didn’t come to Jinx often. The knowledge was cold comfort, though, especially when she shouldn’t have appeared to him at all.

  Just an echo in the static of his matrix. A ghost against the darkness—one he was sure he should recognize. A ghost with his eyes.

  And she always looked so sad.

  “Hey, Jinx,” Curse barked from the front seat of the transport. “Look alive.” For good measure, he sent a jolt through Jinx’s nervous system, a little silent rebuke. As the leader of their Three, he could do that sort of thing. These days, their other partner, Charm, could do it sometimes too. Yet another sign of how everything was breaking down around them.

  “I’m here, I’m here.”

  “Well, act like it then.”

  Jinx grumbled, but he did his part, monitoring the grid and peering out the window of the speeding car, gazing out into a wet, dark night. But everywhere he looked, all he saw was her.

  All his memories from before the Link were supposed to have been erased, and sure enough, for the most part, his past was an abyss, as black and murky as this night. But recently, there had been stirrings, faint images and twitches in the gathering storm of electrical snow.

  The first time she’d appeared had been a second after he’d pulled the trigger to plant a slug in the back of a target’s head. Those sad, brown eyes had shocked him, and unprepared as he had been, he’d slipped up, let his partners see a glimpse of the vision. They’d almost taken him out that night, looking for the defect in his matrix. Since then, he’d been more careful. And it was easier now. He knew when to expect her; she appeared whenever he’d done something that should have set his blood to boil, his guilt churning. If he’d still been human.

  Whoever she was, once upon a time, he knew she’d loved him.

  If she could see him now, she would be so, so disappointed in him.

  Charm turned sideways in her seat to peer out through the back window. “Anybody following us?”

  Jinx did one last sweep and shook his head. “No. We’re clear.”

  Charm smiled and faced forward again. A faint hint of static buzzed in Jinx’s brain as she brushed her hand across the side of Curse’s. Instinctively, Jinx turned away.

  It burned, the way they used the glitches in the system to hide what they were doing from him. As if he wouldn’t know. The Three all lived, breathed, ate, slept and thought together. But only the two of them fucked together. Fucked the tension and the violence from their skins, while Jinx remained apart, tied to them in every way but this. Alone, untouched. And vibrating for contact.

  He reached out and laid his arm over the boxes of equipment and files stacked up on the seat beside him, tensing his hand into a fist. Tightening and releasing. Tightening and releasing. Desperate for distraction, he spoke up. “How long does Spellcaster expect us to hold on to this stuff for him, anyway?”

  The answer appeared in his mind at the same time Curse spoke. “Until he tells us to bring it to him.”

  “Right.”

  They passed the rest of the drive in silence, with only the mental flickers from their link keeping them aware of each other. Curse took a circuitous route out of the city, and even once he reached open country, he doubled back a half-dozen times. Like he didn’t trust Jinx’s assessment that they weren’t being tailed.

  Finally, the open roads gave way to smaller, more familiar ones as Curse steered them back toward home base. Similarly, the open channels of the link gave way to the softer static that betrayed the others’ hidden communication. They couldn’t hide the tenor of their shared thoughts, though, and Jinx’s body rippled with its irrepressible response. He knew what he would hear all night—what secreted passions would seep their way into his dreamless sleep, leaving him hard and more frustrated than before.

  Every night like this pushed him closer to an edge, a precipice he didn’t know the way back from. One that, by all rights, he shouldn’t have ever been placed upon. But there he was regardless, staring over the edge.

  The image of the woman flickered and crackled. Not for the first time, he hoped whatever had forced him to sell himself away from her and into this nightmare had been worth it. Not that it mattered. He’d never have a chance to find out. With one more low hiss, deep inside the hidden layers of his circuitry, she faded away. And he didn’t know whether to be relieved or sad when she was gone.

  As they turned onto the long, dirt road into the woods, Jinx reached out and touched the grid of their security system with his mind, paging idly through the last few hours’ logs. On the surface, everything appeared to be as it should. But that was only on the surface. An alarm bell in the back of Jinx’s mind went off. The other two should have noticed it—should have tensed and turned to look at him.

  He dove deeper, seeking out the minutiae, but at every access point he was rebuffed. It was ridiculous, to not be able to get into his own security system. Unless it was no longer his own.

  “Stop,” he choked out.

  Charm turned in her seat. “What?”

  “Stop. Stop the car.” Jinx was already reaching for his gun, all his defenses on high alert. He threw open the car door while the transport was still moving, slammed his feet down so they hit dirt the instant the vehicle screeched to a halt.

  The soft static disappeared as the others awoke to the threat and refocused. Without speaking, Jinx pushed the findings of his scan over their link, and within seconds, Curse threw the transport into reverse, backed it into the woods and turned the engines off, hiding it behind a screen of wet leaves. By silent signal, Curse and Charm joined Jinx on the path, weapons ready. A vision of their intended angle of approach appeared in Jinx’s mind, and he gave an
affirmative nod.

  Curse took point while Jinx and Charm fell into place at his flanks. The Three crept forward as a single, almost perfectly cohesive unit—but even the tiniest deviations gave Jinx pause. A year ago they would have been perfect, every step and thought in unison. But the crackles in the static were coming more often now. They’d have to report it to Spellcaster the next time they checked in to bring him the bounty from their raid. Jinx shivered. There was no telling how he’d react this time.

  A low lick of current sizzled down Jinx’s spine, and his eyes jerked up involuntarily to meet Curse’s. There was a rebuke there, a reminder to stay on-point, but there was also agreement. Jinx wasn’t alone in recognizing how things were breaking down.

  One mind. One mission.

  It was the mantra of the Three, but it didn’t resonate the way it used to. Not for Jinx.

  Pushing the uneasiness away, Jinx followed them through the woods to the closest point of access to the base. At his partners’ mental signal, he peeled off and darted to the secondary control panel located under the rear entrance, and with the others covering him, he plugged in.

  Whoever had spliced into the security had been good, their manipulations almost invisible to all but the most trained eye. Jinx saw through the layers of interference quickly though, tracing each one through the system to its source.

  Sweat dripped from his brow as he overrode the falsified instructions. “Breach occurred at twenty-one hundred.”

  “Shit.” Curse lifted his weapon higher.

  Someone had been inside their base’s system for two hours.

  Charm sent a wave of calm over them both. “Damage?”

  “Minimal. Only…” That couldn’t be right. Jinx checked again, his heart pounding. Disconnecting from the panel, he cast a wary eye at the door. “Only there’s a heat signature from inside.”

  A singular shudder passed through their link. If they’d been compromised, there would be no second chance. On top of the emerging defects in their circuitry that they refused to acknowledge aloud, a security breach of this magnitude would be all the reason Spellcaster needed to pull the plug.