Special Forces: Operation Alpha: Protecting Sarina (Kindle Worlds Novella) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Epilogue

  Text copyright ©2016 by the Author.

  This work was made possible by a special license through the Kindle Worlds publishing program and has not necessarily been reviewed by Stoker Aces Production, LLC. All characters, scenes, events, plots and related elements appearing in the original Special Forces: Operation Alpha remain the exclusive copyrighted and/or trademarked property of Stoker Aces Production, LLC, or their affiliates or licensors.

  For more information on Kindle Worlds: http://www.amazon.com/kindleworlds

  Protecting Sarina

  Brenda Rothert

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Also by Brenda Rothert

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Sarina

  Early morning sunlight has just started creeping into my bedroom, and I’m wide awake. On a Saturday morning.

  I used to love sleeping in on weekends, but lately, it’s impossible. The rising sun seems to signal my brain that it’s time to get up and spend another day missing my old life.

  A couple months ago, I would’ve snuggled up against my boyfriend Chad and gone back to sleep at this hour on a Saturday. But he’s keeping another woman’s bed warm now. Emily is “fun and adventurous”, Chad told me when he dumped me, pouring salt on the wound by reminding me I’m boring and predictable.

  It’s true—I am. Predictable, anyway. Maybe boring, too. I’m one of the very few twenty-seven-year-olds who don’t care about Snapchat, makeup or what’s trending. I’d only watch the Kardashians and the Real Housewives if they were in a Hunger Games-style death match.

  Sitting up in bed, I reach for my glasses on the nightstand and slide them on. With a soft sigh, I get up and walk to the bathroom of my small apartment. My orange cat, Tigger, looks up at me from inside the bathroom sink. He thinks that’s his spot for some reason. I shoo him out so I can use the sink.

  At least I have plans outside of work today, I think as I brush my teeth. Immediately, I realize I’m looking on the sunny side, as Uncle Owen always called it. Tears burn my eyes as I remember times he managed to smile and see the upside in the worst of situations.

  When I told him that my hundredth experiment in a row at his research lab had failed, he’d smiled and said, “You have to figure out what doesn’t work first sometimes, Sarina. And you’re doing a fantastic job with that.”

  When I was fourteen, I tried to teach myself how to do laundry after moving in with Uncle Owen when my parents died. I’d thrown all my uncle’s white socks and dress shirts into the washing machine with a red sweatshirt of mine.

  “I always figured I’d look good in pink,” Uncle Owen had said when he walked into the kitchen wearing one of his ruined shirts. “And I do.”

  Even after his diagnosis of terminal pancreatic cancer six months ago, he’d still had the glow of happiness I was so used to in his bright blue eyes.

  “Now you won’t ever have to mess with changing my diapers when I get old,” he’d cracked. “And I’ll never have to worry about getting senile and forgetting you. I have lots of good times to remember.”

  He’s been gone for five weeks now, and the hurt is still very fresh. I lived with Uncle Owen until I was eighteen, and then he moved me into a university a few hours from his Phoenix home.

  There had been no question what I’d study—chemistry was my passion. My uncle’s research lab had been my second home after I moved in with him, and I wanted to work alongside him there.

  His lab was mine now, as was his house and more money than I’d ever imagined Uncle Owen having. We’d always lived comfortably, but he’d been driving the same Volvo for thirteen years when he died. He’d taken the same lunch to the lab every day for all the years I’d known him—a tuna sandwich on wheat, crackers and an apple.

  I’d give every penny back, plus all of my own money, for just one more day with my uncle.

  Continuing his work at the lab makes me feel closer to him, as does volunteering at the animal shelter he helped build. That’s where I’m going this morning.

  After a quick shower, I dress in sweats and a T-shirt, dry my hair, and pull it back in a ponytail before heading off for the shelter.

  Another volunteer fed and watered all the animals already, so I leash a black lab named Pepper and take her for a walk on the wooded trail behind the shelter.

  When we get back from a long romp in the woods, the staffer in charge of the shelter for the weekend is hurriedly cleaning out stalls, not even noticing me when I walk by.

  “Hey, Eric,” I say as I open the gate to Pepper’s stall.

  “Hey, Sarina.” He sounds distracted.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Not really. Both volunteers who were coming in to work today cancelled on me. So I have no one to work the front desk and no help getting the stalls cleaned before we open.”

  “I can help.”

  His eyes are wide as he looks up at me. “Really?”

  “Sure, no problem.”

  “Thank you so much. Just getting all the stalls cleaned before we open would be a huge help.”

  “I’ve got all day, so whatever you need.”

  He sighs with relief, his shoulders dropping. “You’re an angel. Seriously, I’m so grateful.”

  We clean out all the stalls and I work the shelter’s front desk for the day, which is a fun change of pace for me. In the lab, I work alone, not talking to anyone unless I have to make a phone call. I enjoy seeing people come in to look at the pets, and the best part is seeing four dogs and two cats get adopted.

  Even though another volunteer comes in at four in the afternoon, the shelter is too busy for me to leave. It’s a little after six by the time I’m walking out the door.

  I consider not going to the lab. I go there every day, even on the weekends, and stopping to check on things inevitably leads to working. I’m pretty sure the place will still be standing on Monday if I don’t stop by this weekend.

  I’m drawn there, though. My work at the lab is more than just a job to me. It’s the most important thing in my life now that Uncle Owen is gone.

  I park my old Toyota behind the simple red brick building and unlock the steel back door. The familiar smell of lemon-scented antiseptic greets me when I walk in.

  Uncle Owen’s desk still looks like it did on his last day here. He didn’t know that day would be his final one, so papers are scattered on the desk surface, his reading glasses set casually on top of one pile.

  A sudden onset of pancreatitis made that day Uncle Owen’s last one at the lab. He’d already been deteriorat
ing quickly from the cancer, but that was the death knell. I can’t bring myself to touch anything on his desk, because seeing it this way still makes it feel like he could walk in at any moment.

  Behind his desk, an old bookcase is loaded down with my uncle’s collection of books. Some are hardbacks, others are paperbacks, but all are worn from use, with notes in his nearly illegible handwriting scrawled in the margins.

  My own desk is neat and clean, the only decoration on it a framed photo of me and my parents. It was taken the year before they died. I make a mental note to add a photo of Uncle Owen as I drop my purse on the desk and head for the double doors that lead to the actual lab work area.

  Since we experiment on mice, the smell of rodents is unavoidable. I’m so used to it at this point that I hardly even notice. I pass the wall of glass cages with mice inside as I head for the back corner, which is my main area.

  One smell that does still bother me is rotting rodent. When they die and aren’t taken care of quickly, they stink. I might as well clear out the dead mouse in my main area now, since I’m here.

  Putting on a pair of rubber gloves, I open the top of the cage and reach in. A movement in the cage makes me pull my hand back and jump.

  There’s a tiny white mouse in there that is most definitely alive. It can’t be.

  Did I forget to administer the formula yesterday?

  I whip a clipboard from the wall and frantically flip through the pages until I get to the last one.

  Friday, 2:15 pm, serum administered by SKR

  That’s my handwriting…and I only write notes like that after I’ve administered the formula.

  I didn’t forget. I distinctly remember injecting this mouse yesterday. And that means…

  I step back, pulling off the gloves. I’m so overwhelmed right now. The scientist in me knows I have to check and recheck. This could be a fluke. But after more than two thousand formulas administered to mice between Uncle Owen and me over the past three years, I can’t help being a little excited.

  Okay, a lot excited. No mouse has ever survived after being injected with one of our formulas and then subjected to multiple rounds of what equates to chemical warfare. I hit the mouse with the worst of all of them yesterday after administering the serum.

  Uncle Owen and I have been searching for a bioterrorism vaccine, and we may have just found one.

  May. I hear Uncle Owen’s voice in my head, cautioning me to keep my head. I need to record the mouse’s vitals and inject another one with the same serum.

  It might not be the breakthrough I’ve been working for. If I come in here tomorrow and find two live mice, though, I’m probably going to burst into off-key song.

  I work until 9:00 p.m., collecting all the data I need plus more. It takes that long for my heart rate to slow to a normal pace.

  There’s no more work to be done. All I can do now is wait, but I don’t want to leave the lab. I consider crashing on the couch in our break room, but I’m too hungry to go to sleep.

  I haven’t eaten all day, and it hits me all at once. For a few seconds, I wish I could call Chad to meet me for dinner. I could tell him my good news and not feel quite so anti-social for an hour or so.

  But who needs Chad? He’s a jerk who made me feel worthless. I can go out for a nice celebration dinner by myself.

  I mentally run through all the fancy restaurants in the city I could drive to. A potential breakthrough of this magnitude calls for a tablecloth and maybe even some champagne.

  I’m starving, though, and I end up at Mick’s, a tavern just a couple miles from the lab. It’s only a fifteen-minute wait for pizza and fried mushrooms.

  “How you doin’, Sarina?” Mick asks me after he drops my order off in the kitchen.

  I smile. “I’m good, how are you?”

  “Not bad. Sure do miss seeing Owen around town.”

  “I miss him, too.”

  “You ever get lonesome, you come on by,” he says, arching his bushy gray brows.

  I wave a hand dismissively. “Oh, me? Thanks, but I’m good. Yeah, I keep busy with friends…and all that stuff.”

  I hope my burning cheeks don’t give away my lie. I hate that even Mick knows I’m practically a recluse.

  He gives me a friendly nod and moves down the bar to take another order.

  “Sarina, huh? Beautiful name for a beautiful girl.”

  I turn to the barstool next to mine, where a dark-haired man with coffee-colored eyes is holding my gaze.

  “Woman,” I say, correcting him. “I’m twenty-seven.”

  A smile plays on his lips. “Woman. Of course.”

  I take a sip of my soda and stare straight ahead. My discomfort is reflected in the mirrored wall on the other side of the bar. Stiff posture, serious expression, hands in my lap. The guy next to me is giving me a once over, and the amused grin is still there.

  Maybe I’ll move down the bar. I don’t want this guy in my space when I’m eating. I’m about to get up and find a new barstool when my stomach growls loudly. It’s more roar than growl, actually.

  “You hungry?” the dark-haired man says.

  My face is on fire with embarrassment. “Well, I haven’t eaten all day,” I say tersely, not even turning to look at him.

  “I’m not judging.” A second passes and he says, “My name’s Ford, by the way.”

  “Nice to meet you,” I say automatically.

  “You, too. I wish we’d gotten off to a better start. It’s not every day I’m lucky enough to be sitting next to such a gorgeous woman when I stop for a beer.”

  There’s genuine contrition in his tone, and I look at him, unable to keep from smiling. His dark eyes are taking me in as mine do the same to him.

  He’s handsome, with dark facial hair, broad shoulders and a rogue-ish grin. Maybe I’ll end up having dinner company tonight after all.

  Chapter 2

  Ford

  I’ve got her. I was worried there for a minute, but now Sarina is giving me the smile of a woman firmly hooked onto my line.

  She’s more uptight than I normally like, but as soon as she walked into the bar and I saw her conservative outfit, ponytail and glasses, my dick throbbed in response.

  Hell yeah. Sexy librarian. Lady in the streets, freak in the sheets. That’s just what I need tonight.

  “So what do you do for a living?” I ask her.

  “I’m a research scientist.” She pushes up her brown-rimmed glasses. “You never would’ve guessed, huh?”

  Her sardonic tone tells me she’s aware of how shy and conservative she looks. I like that. I’m used to women practically grinding on me to get my attention.

  “Nothing wrong with being smart,” I say, shrugging. “I dig it.”

  Her cheeks turn slightly pink. “What about you? What do you do?”

  “I’m in between gigs. Kind of a drifter, I guess.”

  Her eyes widen a little. I can see the wheels turning. She’s realizing I’ll never be a long-term thing, but she’s still interested. This is where I find out if she’s turned on by the thought of being a bit dangerous.

  “And where are you drifting to next?” She arches her brows and smiles.

  A few seconds of silence pass, the air between us charged with thick, warm attraction.

  “Sorry, what?” I finally say. “I got distracted by your eyes there for a minute. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many different colors in one person’s eyes. There’s green and brown and gold—even a hint of yellow.”

  The bartender sets down her pizza and fried mushrooms, his gaze flicking back and forth between us. From their earlier conversation, I know he knows her and he’s wondering if she wants attention from me or not.

  “Everything look good, Sarina?” he asks her.

  “Yes, it looks great. Thanks, Mick.”

  He gives me another glance before walking away.

  “Have some of this,” Sarina says, sliding the pizza between us. “I can’t eat it all.”

  �
�I ate before you got here, but thanks.”

  She seems to be considering something before she calls the bartender back over.

  “Can we get two shots of…” she pauses and then looks at me. “What’s a good thing to drink a shot of?”

  Damn, she really is a wallflower. I almost feel bad that I’m showing her a side of me that’s not really even a side of me.

  Sweet, I definitely am not. But desperate to get some really good ass tonight, I am.

  “Lemon drops,” I tell the bartender, taking out my wallet.

  “No, I’ve got it,” Sarina says.

  I set a twenty on the bar and the bartender gives me a wary look before turning to go pour the shots.

  “Thanks,” Sarina says. “Something potentially exciting happened at work today and I thought we could drink to it.”

  “Potentially exciting?”

  “It’s too early to know for sure. But it’s promising.”

  “Promising is good.” I turn toward her. “So the way you do a lemon drop is to start by licking sugar off the back of your hand. Then you do a vodka shot and suck on a wedge of lemon.”

  She nods as she finishes a bite of pizza. “Got it. Lick. Shot. Suck.”

  The sound of those words from her prim and proper pink lips makes my cock stiffen with awareness. If I have my way, she’ll be licking and sucking and getting a shot from me later tonight.

  When the bartender sets down the shots with a small dish of sugar and a couple lemon wedges, Sarina meets my eyes.

  “Lick your hand first to make the sugar stick,” I tell her.

  She gets the sugar on her hand and we clink glasses. I prefer my vodka without sugar, so I just do the shot when she does.

  Her eyes are big with surprise as she sticks a lemon wedge in her mouth.

  “Wow,” she says as she takes it out. “That was…strong.”

  “Like it?”

  “I think so.”

  The shot loosens her up, and we talk and laugh over insignificant stuff as she finishes eating. She eats almost the entire pizza, which impresses me.