On Her Watch

Book 2: Don't Tell

by Rie Warren

Genres: Erotic & Steamy Romance; LGBT & Pride; Military Romance; Dystopian

Synopsis

The year is 2071 and all hell has broken loose. As the government tries to control the territories that were once the United States, an armed rebellion erupts . . . AWOL from her military post, Lieutenant Liz Grant will do anything for the rebels she now calls friends. Her latest mission: return to the Beta Corps army and obtain classified information that could turn the battle in the revolutionaries' favor. There's only one problem: Commander Linc Cutler. Strong, coldly handsome, and always in control, Linc is perplexed by the beautiful soldier brought in for questioning. He doesn't know if he believes her explanation for why she went missing. He only knows his intense sexual desire for her cannot be denied. Word count: 97,000.

Release date: June 3, 2014

Publisher: Forever Yours

Print pages: 400

Sample

Chapter One

“Liz Grant, are you the daughter of Robie Grant?”


I held the polished doorknob in my hand, straining to see the young trooper’s eyes hidden beneath the low brim of his cap. I nodded, my heartbeat knocking around inside my chest.


“Your father, First Class Medical Officer and Chief Geneticist Robie Grant, is dead.” He sped through the details of a gruesome killing at the hands of Nomads, speaking like an automaton, no emotion on his face, no inflection in his voice.


I stared at the badge on his chest until my vision swam and what was left of my heart sank to my knees, knees that buckled. The gleaming metal of his insignia winked when he turned toward the corridor. I stood in the open doorway, watching his retreat, tears spilling down my face.


“Lizbeth?” Mom called from behind me.


Bending in two, I retched, shoving an arm out to ward her off as her cautious footsteps came closer.


“Lizbeth?” She hurried forward, pulling my face around. “Lizbeth, what’s happened?”


Vomit stained the carpet, curdled under my tongue. I spoke the words I never thought we’d hear. “Dad’s gone.”


“Your father’s—” She was a tall woman with black hair, so elegant and refined she could sweet-talk any Company stuffed suit. Mom backed away from me, her hand shaking, her finger pointing. “Don’t you dare say that.”


“Mom?” I rose to my feet, and my stomach heaved again. “Mom!”


Stopping halfway down the hallway, she crumpled to the floor, wails breaking from her as she beat her head against the wall. “No, no, no, no. He said we’d be safe! He said he’d make sure. Rob told me not to worry.”


I crawled to her, sliding her head into my lap, my world falling apart with each of her fragmented cries. “Mommy?”


 

February, 2071, Chitamauga Commune


 

Jesus and Christ! A litany of swears sped past my lips as I jumped off the bed, hefting one of my Desert Eagles in a shaky grip. The sensation of all-seeing eyes watching my every move didn’t stop just because I was in the Freelanders’ Chitamauga Commune, somewhat safe from immediate danger. Scanning the moon-saturated surrounds of the caravan and coming up clear, I put the safety on, rubbing the barrel against my cheek. My thin top clung to me, and perspiration slid in icy trickles between my breasts, brought on by the habitual nightmare of my dad’s slaughter.

I was a hard-ass. The Revolution, the deaths I’d witnessed, and the kills I’d caused, not even the Company itself—with its aggressive worldwide lockdown on so-called aberrant sexual behaviors—could break me. The only thing that terrorized me each and every night was my dad’s murder. The blame had been placed on a Wilderness Nomad tribe—people we’d been brainwashed to believe were bloodthirsty savages. I didn’t buy that particular feed anymore either, not after I’d ended up in Chitamauga, where the people had proved themselves to be exactly what they purported: Freelanders, not vicious, ignorant Nomads.

I lay down on the bed, snuggling my pair of pistols under a pillow. They were the only nighttime comfort I had. I kept my hand on the butt of a gun instead of the sweet bottom of a petite blond spy who’d become my playful pastime and a fond friend far too quickly for my liking. The smile gathered from remembrances of Farrow was replaced by a grimace when I shut my eyes, thoughts of my father spinning back to me.

Sleep off the roster for a second night running, I tossed the pillow aside and lit one of the old-fashioned lanterns, its warm glow nothing like the cool halos powered by Territory electricity. I ripped several pages from some ledger Farrow had left behind and located a stilo-pen. After my dad’s death, I’d ransacked the condo searching for his personal digi-diary, coming up empty. This was one connection I still had with him. Distilling my thoughts and fears into mere words on a page I’d later destroy meant I didn’t have to truly face them. Some hard-ass I was, all right. I gave a dry laugh and set the pen to paper, scribbling quickly.

Heading up to Beta in a couple days. My mind hasn’t been on straight since finding out about the cover-up on Dad. Eleven years and it feels like yesterday I answered that knock on the door in Beta. I expected a mandatory quarantine order because of the spread of the Gay Plague or another CO soiree invite for my folks. Judging from the sharpness of the knock, I should’ve known it was neither. The young trooper outside carried himself with an air of authority that belied his age. The cap he wore shaded his eyes from view until he pushed it up, revealing scathing snapdragon-blue irises.


Looking down at the paper clenched in my hand, I saw the wet blotch of a tear making an even bigger mess of my words. That my father had been sent into the field should’ve been my first tip-off something wasn’t right with the bullshit palaver my mom and I had been force-fed. He was high ranking and a scientist, not a frontline medic. But I’d been only eighteen at the time, and watching my mom fall to pieces with the news hadn’t left me with a whole lot of thinking space.

The Company, the CO—the Cunts—remain oppressive to the core. Pumping us with a dawn-to-dusk spin for the good of mankind during day-long doses of pro-CO promos filtered in on our handheld, government issued Data-Paks for two generations running. The thing is, I used to believe in them. It was how I’d been raised, all I’d had left. Now I feel sick about all I’ve done to keep them in power. This regime with their so-simple manifesto: Maintain order, recoup the InterNations population, and execute anyone who stands in the way of their brainless Breeder politics.


Maintain order; that’s one thing I’m good at.


Too bad for the CO, a few million civilians teamed up with a massive wave of Freelanders from every InterNations Territory and the surrounding pockets of Wilderness to finally lay some beat-ass on their homophobic, hate-filled regime.


Too bad for them, but good for me, for us. I’d finally done the right thing, something I could be proud of, and I hoped my dad would’ve been, too. I’d dropped my first lieutenant rank and dropped out altogether from the Corps—the military branch of the CO. I’d skipped off their grid, joining up with the Revolution that had begun only seven months ago.

Blindly searching the bed where Farrow usually slept, I flattened my palm to nothing but a bunched-up pillow. She’d left two days ago, a spook for the Revolutionaries and the best babe around, care of her CO connections and the way she made me come, fingertips traipsing over my clit, her puckered lips slipping up and down my slit. My body pulsed with memories, far better memories than deaths dropped on my doorstep or bullet holes I’d plugged into possibly innocent tangos on both sides of the war. I should’ve been worried about Farrow, but she could take care of herself and so could I.

Shaking my head, I started writing again.

I’ve been taking care of myself since the minute that knock sounded on our door. Took care of myself in other ways, too, hardly lingering over a handful of infrequent lovers. All of them military men until Farrow. Hitting It and Heading Out: a little insider Corps motto, and we’re not just talking about sorties.


Being with those men had been about the need for release. With Farrow I’d been looking for a connection, reaching for something I’d lost along the way. My first affair with a woman and probably my last, since I’d figured I was incomplete in a way even she hadn’t satisfied. I’d never had the time or wherewithal to explore my femininity, my sexuality, and Farrow’s nightlong erotic escapades hadn’t filled that aching hole.

Jesus, if Cannon could see me now. I remember one afternoon in Alpha, the two of us sitting side by side on the pavement, tinkering with our motorcycles, spending silent hours on the endless maintenance he called “twat to tit.” He popped me on the shoulder. “Beats journaling, right?” Because we’d never be caught dead doing that. I came back with, “Maybe, but not as good as getting laid.” He turned so red, for a minute I thought he took my remark as a come-on. Nah, I was only digging for a little truth about the commander, even back then.


Ah, fuck this. Maybe I should blame my mental masturbation on him. Cannon’s infected me with his lovefest. It’s no joke he and Nate go at it like rabbits. I knew about his illegal activities long before he made a clean cut from the Corps, but I never let on until he gave me the send-off last September. Pulled from his duties as commander of the Elite Tactical Unit in Alpha, he was ordered to escort Nathaniel Rice, the Company head of technological acquisitions, to the Outpost. He didn’t deny my suggestions then, but he didn’t affirm them either.


I pressed the slim stilo against my temple as I had the barrel of my gun earlier. A grin tugged my lips. Cannon would murder me if he ever read this.

Nathaniel Rice, known to his lover as Blondie…I’m not even calling him Nate anymore, preferring “Cannon’s Fuck Bunny.” He’s proven himself a worthy asset in the Revolution and the mastermind behind it. Cannon’s love for Blondie makes sense. He never had any women around, just his boyfriend, the Fist. It doesn’t matter to me which way he swings his club. But I wish they’d left their caravan—called the Love Hovel by Cannon, me, and everyone else within hearing distance—in its honeymoon position on the edge of the Chitamauga meadow, because Blondie the Fuck Bunny is a screamer.


Eyeing the pages in my hand, I placed the stilo on a stand beside the bed. The potbellied woodstove in the corner burped out faint gusts of smoke as fire ate through wood, warming the one-room caravan. The small door whined when I opened it, ash blazing blue. I shoved in the papers, waiting for the edges to curl and combust. I burned the evidence of my late-night weakness. Leave no trail behind.

My head slightly clearer, I returned to bed. I checked my rounds, hilled a few quilts to buffer my body, and closed my eyes. This lying-low-and-hiding-out gig had gotten old. It wasn’t my style. I had some work to do, in the name of freedom…and for my father.

*  *  *

Leaving my caravan behind the next morning, I hastened through the snowy network of the wagoneer neighborhood. The caravan itself was another surprise I liked more than I cared to admit. Its brightly patterned fabrics put me in mind of the Alpha digs I’d filled with colorful, luxurious black-market finds—works of art, books that were banned. The feminine touches had been more than decorations to me. They’d been cherished treasures speaking to a side of myself I kept hidden from all others, except for that nosy son of a bitch Cannon.

Once freed of the forest, I crossed onto the commune’s main street. Snow crunched beneath my high-laced boots as I secured my Corps cap to my head. I passed the mess hall, the trade stands, and the schoolhouse. Inside every silver-wooded structure, fires blazed and men, women, children, and animals milled about, working off the winter’s cold in this thriving back-to-the-earth community.

The usual undaunted mutt hightailed it after me. His owner’s gray, bleak face and growly voice was the same as his dog’s when he snapped an order to the mongrel and a slightly less irate G’mornin’ to me.


Brought up a Corps brat, I preferred the war room—aka the meeting hall—to the women’s hour that took place every morning, noon, and night within the open-air kitchens. Stepping into the town hall proper, I was greeted by a round table filled by the usual group of down-home councilors, including Hills, Hatch, Darke, Eden, and Fuck Bunnies one and two.

Maps were splayed on the table, real paper things we could touch and handle. Before exploring the commune’s well-maintained archives, I’d never seen a nondigital representation of the Territories, thanks to the CO destroying our history and replacing it with neat and tidy readouts easily digested from our D-Ps. Around the table, Hills and Eden carried on a murmured conversation while Nate winked at me and Cannon perfected his fear-inducing glare from deep brown eyes. It was one day before I was to depart for Beta Territory and he wasn’t happy. Surprise.

Cannon’s finger struck the green landmass at the upper-right quadrant of the InterNations map of the former United States, an area just outside Beta. Beta used to be the home of someplace called Wall Street; now it was just another walled Territory like all the rest.

He didn’t even wait for me to take a seat before high-handing me. “Tell me what happened again.”

Fuck. I mutely went about making myself a cup of coffee from the fixings in the center of the table, ignoring the hulking giant across from me.

“I won’t stand for your insubordination, Grant.” Cannon addressed me with a growl in his voice.

Holy hell. Clearly someone woke up on the wrong side of the caravan this morning.

“I don’t think you have the brass to tell me what to do anymore, Caspar.” Smiling sweetly, I took him down a notch by refusing to address him as Commander, Cannon, or sir. I loved Caspar Cannon like a brother, but sometimes he needed to be slapped, and Nate was probably too soft on him to do it.


Leader of the commune’s well-organized militia, Darke matched Cannon’s size kilo for kilo and came in a couple years older at an even thirty. From down the table, he didn’t seem too fond of listening to us spar. “Now, I know you two don’t need to fuck it out—pardon me, Miss Eden.” He apologized to the fair-haired healer, Nate’s mom. “You need a fighter’s ring to square your pube hairs away; we can sort that out right quick. I’m sure Micah would be more than happy to call our people in from the fields for a little Corps entertainment this morning.”

I guessed he’d rather watch us duke it out.

“Jesus.” Cannon pressed his knuckles to his temples.

“Christ.” I sank into the last open chair.

We grinned at each other.

“I’m not shitting you, Liz,” Cannon said as his grin evaporated.

“I know. I get it. Have my back, I’ll have yours. I just didn’t think you’d be riding my ass the whole way, too.” Mug of hot coffee in hand, I took a sip before launching for the umpteenth time into an abbreviated version of what went down during my evacuee-escort detail from Alpha to Beta at the outbreak of the Revolution.

Shepherding a ragtag group of refugees north with winter approaching, we’d gotten close to the mountainous Catskills commune outside of Beta. We’d been halted on the road when our trucks were ambushed by their Freelanders. Bullets had tin-canned the transports. Pinning us down on all sides, they made sure our return fire was useless. Within minutes, we were overtaken. Held captive by the people I believed killed my dad, I’d lost my lid—shouting, biting, punching. Begging, pleading, asking for the truth. Eventually, I got my answers, and they weren’t what I’d expected. No one had heard of Robie Grant, and none had recalled a murder of that magnitude. He hadn’t been sent to the front. It was all a wash job.

I peered around the table. “Not a single one of them was lying. I’ve been lied to enough that I can smell it a kilometer away.”

Taking a long drink of coffee, I swallowed down the anger and sadness that had been my constant buddies for more than a decade. “They let us go. I thought it was damned foolhardy. But they were Freelanders. What are you gonna do, huh?”

Long ears peeping through clouds of white hair, Hills imparted a nugget of his wisdom. “We don’t believe in taking innocent lives.”

“Should’ve told them that before they opened fire in the first place. Besides, no one’s innocent in a war.” That included me.

Cannon’s voice echoed around the room. “You could’ve taken a bullet.”

“I’d take a rain of them to know the truth.”

“Liz.”

“Cannon.” I grasped his hand. I knew he thought I was headed on a reckless mission. “For once, don’t be a pigheaded shitheel.”

Nate took his hand from me, clasping Cannon’s white knuckles in a gentle hold. “What happened then, Lizbeth?”

Lizbeth was the name only my mother and father had called me before him…and Farrow. I sat back, letting a grin slide across my mouth. “Then your friend Farrow showed up, right about the time we were approaching Beta, when I was pretty damn sure I’d be put into action for your brother, Linc, and his Beta Corps. That was a close one. I thought I’d have to kill Revolutionaries and Nomads—Freelanders—whose vision I was starting to share.” I nodded to Cannon. “The rest is good as Old History, sir.”

Cannon was no longer officially my commander, not after blowing his cover sky-high about his sexuality, which was as good as a death sentence in the eyes of the CO. But old habits die hard.

Nate turned to Hatch, the resident inventor who monitored transmissions to the commune. “Any word from Farrow?”

“Not yet. It’s too early,” he replied.

Farrow was a family friend to Nate and his estranged brother, Linc, working all sides of this FUBAR situation with a feminine aplomb no one could pull off but her. She was to be my eyes and ears once I reached Beta. “My rendezvous is set up with her anyway.”

Cannon snorted.

“You got a problem over there?” I asked.

“Yeah, I’ve got a problem. In fact, I have issues with the whole stinking thing. For starters, I don’t see how a forty-five-kilo woman is gonna keep you walking the straight and narrow.”

I gave a snort of my own. “I’m surprised you’d know anything about being straight, lover boy.” Cannon blushed, making his hard and handsome visage appear sweet and boyish. I plowed on before he could stutter his way through his only vulnerability…Nate. “She’s not tasked with being my damn babysitter.”

Cannon’s face cooled with his tone. “Someone needs to keep a leash on you.”

My sidelong smirk slid to Darke. “The only one who’d know about the proper way to handle a leash is Darke. Let’s leave that to him and Leon.”

That was a direct hit, too. The brawny man’s crush on Leon was as obvious as the telltale russet flush under his smooth brown skin. I couldn’t even make another quip about their flirtation because his longing for the pretty-faced, twenty-year-old street hustler and his self-enforced denial was too painful to be comical. The man had lost his two life partners last autumn, casualties of this brutal war. I could only assume Darke had willfully decided not to put his heart on the line again, although it looked like he wasn’t being too successful with his emotional lockdown.

A few days before Farrow had left, Leon moseyed up to us, saying he was ready to sign on and join us in Beta. The sweet, sexy boy was getting his heart beat up and broken every day from Darke’s hot-and-cold emotions.

I figured that wouldn’t go down well between the overprotective pair of Darke and Cannon, both of whom had a vested interest in Leon, but I listened with mild amusement as he tried to con his way into our operation. Idling on the edges of our discussion, Darke appeared not to be listening, but his big shoulders had turned rigid as rock.

Farrow had smiled gently at Leon. “You’re gonna have to let me think about this now, Leon, but you might-could prove useful.” I had to agree. The kid was wily as hell as well as easy on the eyes. “Ah reckon you’d be good company for mah brother.”

That comment had sparked Darke into action. He’d pulled Leon away from us, parked him against one of the outbuildings, and proceeded to kiss him with such heat, his hands running along Leon’s lean waist to settle on his hips, it was a wonder the building didn’t go up in flames. We’d walked away when Leon arched into the embrace, his loud groan carrying across to us.

Now, as then, Darke mumbled a few excuses and strode out of the meeting hall. Tipping my chair back, I looked out the window and, sure enough, he’d snagged Leon by the hand and was leading him down the dirt road.

Hills tugged on one of his long earlobes and cleared his throat. “Let’s talk strategy.”

I didn’t know what the old goat knew about strategy, but I’d go with it. “We’re planning a three-prong, long-term attack.”

Nate pulled his chair forward. “Infiltration first.”

“I’ve got that covered. Then I need to dig out the missing intel on my father, convince Linc to give up everything he’s ever worked to attain, and take Beta down.” All without letting on that I knew Beta Commander Linc Cutler’s identical twin and his mother closely, or that I was on friendly terms with the Freelanders and was a Revolution sympathizer. In the civil war of the Rice/Cutler family, Linc had followed in his notorious father’s footsteps while Nate had finally freed himself from that man’s reins to return to his mother’s roots.

I couldn’t let any cracks show from the time I landed in Beta to the time I left, hopefully in a blaze of glory instead of with my carcass carried out in a body bag.

I decided to play it down even more when Cannon’s glower re-formed on his face. He didn’t need to know that I was feeling a few nerves, or that I hadn’t been sleeping, or that I was scared the truth would turn out to be uglier than the lies I’d been eating all these years.

I was a soldier, after all.

“Just a day in the life, Big Papa.” I played his familiar line about our messed-up situation back at him.

Fist pounding the table in front of him, Cannon got ready to let loose when Eden cut in. “I want Lincoln out of there.”

I joined Cannon in grumbling under my breath while I thought, No added pressure or anything.


Rubbing his mom’s hand for a moment, Nate swiveled to his man. He calmed the beast with a few quiet words and a quick brush of his lips, and Cannon’s shoulders relaxed from their punched-up place near his ears.

Brushing his finger along Nate’s jaw, Cannon whispered, “I know, baby.”

Their apparent affection for each other would’ve given me another round of the sweats, except, if any two people deserved to be together, in love, it was them. They’d been through hell and back a few more times than anyone warranted. Hounded on their trek from Alpha to the Outpost bunker, working through attraction, suspicion, sabotage, betrayal—you name it—just to end up with Cannon being arrested for wanton corruption of a Company officer. Not to mention finding out Nate was Alpha CEO Cutler’s son must’ve been a big kick to Cannon’s nuts.

But they’d come through it.

Aside from his blatant snit about my self-imposed assignment, I’d never seen Cannon so happy. A day in the life was never gonna be the same for him; nor should it be. He’d found contentment, joy. Hell, seeing Cannon like this made me wonder just how much pain he’d been in, hiding his sexuality all those years and fighting to maintain rigid laws that went against his very nature. It also made me wonder what I was missing out on. After my mom committed suicide, the Corps and Cannon had become my family by choice. I’d since given up on one and watched another move on while my past was littered with those hitting-it-hard hookups. I envied Cannon and Nate’s intimacy, craving companionship born of enduring emotion.

But thinking was for pussies, and I wasn’t one of those, even if I had one.

Cannon jerked his seat back from the table to loom over me. “It’s too risky.”

I stood up, too, forcing him back a step. “You’ve made your objections clear, sir.” I tacked on the sir just to placate his stubborn ass. No way in hell would I let Cannon risk his life fielding this operation. He had too much at stake. Unlike him, I didn’t have anyone waiting up for me at the end of the day, so it made perfect sense to go in alone.


“Fuck’s sake, Liz. You’re going in there with your balls hanging out.”

I looked down my body and back up his. “Good to know you think Linc will be more distracted by my hard-core gonads than by my feminine charms.” Charms I’d only just discovered.


Commander Linc Cutler was my starting point in Beta, my only link to the Corps. I hoped to get close enough to either him or his father, CEO Cunt Cutler, to hack into their high-clearance D-Ps, where I could search out info on my dad and the InterNations plans for the Revolution. Linc, well, his name is fitting, anyway. He just doesn’t know it yet.


Letting me pass before him out of the building with a wry twist of his lips, half fond smile and half simmering sneer, Cannon caught up to me in two strides. We walked down the single road cutting through Chitamauga Commune side by side, falling into an easy march. Just like old times.

It was cold as a bitch out here, and Cannon’s ears, nose, and cheeks quickly turned pink. The Freelanders were preparing for their midday meal in the mess hall, and we stepped to. It was a large, brightly lit wooden structure with long tables sided by benches, where all the families and newcomers, refugees and Revolutionary stragglers, ate together. Most mealtimes were so noisy with chatter and laughter it was hard to hear myself think, which was always a good thing.

Ambling on, Cannon asked, “Getting an early start in the morning?”

“Sure as the cock crows.” I winked at him.

He barked out a laugh before getting his serious face on again. “Blondie and I are flanking you, at least part of the way.”

I started to interrupt when he pulled me into his arms. Through his strong embrace I felt him shaking. A giant tower of power and strength, he’d always been my steadfast comrade. Now I was getting ready to go it solo.

“Caspar.”

“Keep that damn mouth shut and let me hug you for once.” His gruff voice ruffled the short tufts of my black hair.

Surprised by the suddenness of his emotion, I felt tears burning the back of my throat.

He leaned back and attempted a grin. “There. Now when Blondie and I have to turn you loose, no good-byes.”

“No good-byes, Caspar.” I kissed his cheek and spun away.

*  *  *

Still in the grip of winter, March’s icy wind ripped through my flak jacket, eating through any warmth the torn material had afforded me. I’d made it through Beta’s four-meter-high walls fortified by bayonet-sharp razor wire, sneaking in through the east gate. Farrow had promised it would be open. I owed her flowers or something when this was all over.

The northeastern gale howling in my ears, I’d hustled to Sector One without an. . .