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  He tested his stamina, glad to find he could bring her pleasure three times before he took his own. They collapsed together, tangled in a mess of arms and legs. Sleep claimed them both and he roused only to make love to her again, this time from behind. He slid into her, spooning her luscious body with his, loving the feel of her delicate skin next to his rougher body.

  Soon that wasn’t enough. He lifted her by the hips, positioning her to his satisfaction on all fours. He slid within her again, thrusting in increasingly hard strokes from behind while she whimpered little sounds of need. Reaching around with one hand, he stroked the tiny nub that brought her such pleasure, knowing he needed her with him this time. He couldn’t hold out. He wanted to come fast and hard, and he wanted her with him.

  She cried out his name when she climaxed, taking him with her. The strong sheath of her inner muscles contracted on his cock, coaxing him into a pulsing release that made his head spin and his breath come in ragged gasps. She was amazing.

  He collapsed with her after cleaning up the protective sheath he’d worn, and they slept again in a sated stupor. Only the persistent ringing of Matt’s cell phone roused him later in the day. He rolled over in the rumpled bed to find his phone tucked in the pocket of his scattered clothes. He checked the number and got out of bed, moving to the bathroom to take the call so he wouldn’t disturb Eileen, who was still fast asleep.

  “Sykes,” he answered.

  “Sir, we have a few police reports filtering through our search matrix. Seems like more than a few civilians are being reported as missing today.” Sam Archer was on the other end of the line. Matt recognized both his voice and the number that had come up on his screen.

  The news was not good. Not good at all.

  “How many?”

  “My latest count is fifteen civilians.”

  Damn. “Male or female?”

  “That’s the odd thing, sir. They’re mostly female. And young. Most in their twenties and single. They’re being reported by friends and family that expected them to be somewhere they aren’t. The common factor is that they went out for drinks with friends last night. Now they’re missing and the friends are missing, too.”

  “They’re snatching girls out of bars now?”

  “Sounds like it. You have to admit, they’d be easy pickings for the right people.”

  The thought made Matt wince. It was bad enough when zombies attacked hardened soldiers—or even young soldiers who at least had some training in how to defend themselves. The thought of the creatures attacking young women out for a night on the town was difficult to comprehend.

  “What else?” Matt knew there had to be more for Sam to have woken him.

  “There’s activity on the base perimeter in three locations.”

  “What kind of activity?”

  “Tripped sensors in two remote areas. From the speed, size, and heat signature, we’re assuming animals—probably deer—walked into our coverage area.”

  “But we’re not taking any chances,” Matt reminded him. “Have you sent anyone out yet?”

  “Just about to, sir.”

  “Good. Send ’em,” he confirmed the standing order. “And the third location? What was the activity there?”

  “Cut fence in an area we’d already wired.”

  The team was slowly stringing wire that carried a low-voltage current around the perimeter of the base but the work was proceeding slowly. The base perimeter was enormous and densely wooded in areas.

  “When?” Matt asked.

  “About seven minutes ago.”

  “Make that location the priority.”

  “Already done, sir, but we’re stretched pretty thin.” Sam had done the right thing in waking Matt. This was a delicate situation, and Matt had to be the one to make the tough decisions about troop placement.

  “We have time before sunset. Is the cut fence accessible by road?” Matt knew the areas they’d been able to wire quickly were the most accessible. It was the rougher areas deep in the woods the soldiers were having a hard time covering.

  “Yes, sir. It’s about ten meters from the east side access road near gate fourteen.”

  “All right then,” Matt thought about the layout of that area. The cut wire should be out in the open if he remembered correctly. “Send out two members of the cleanup team in an armored vehicle. Give them a long lens and feed their video signal to tac ops.” He used the abbreviated name for the tactical operations area they’d set up inside their new headquarters. “Instruct the men not to leave the vehicle. I want them to see if they can identify the break in the line and feed us video. We’ll determine how to proceed depending on what they can show us.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  Matt ended the call and went back out into the bedroom. Eileen was stretching, starting to come awake.

  “What time is it?” she asked in a voice raspy with sleep.

  “Time to get up.” He swatted Eileen’s luscious bare ass, wishing he had time for more. She was sweet. The most delicious lover he’d ever had, and he was quickly becoming addicted to her.

  He thought maybe she felt the same. Every once in a while he’d catch her looking at him with such a strange expression on her face…

  There was no time to puzzle over it now. They had work to do.

  “Where’s the fire?” She sat up in bed looking adorably rumpled. He watched her head for the attached bathroom, determined not to let her distract him. At least not too much.

  The door closed and he heard the shower turn on. Only a few minutes later, it shut off again and she came out. He’d dressed and checked his messages and e-mail in the time it took her to shower.

  “John called from Tennessee. Things should be wrapping up down there soon. That’s the good news. The bad news is, we have activity in the woods and missing persons reports to sort out. I expect there’s going to be some action tonight. Our quiet time is over. We’re due in the conference room for a planning meeting before the night shift starts. As I said before, we need to bring the fight to the enemy, not wait for them to come to us.”

  “Sounds dangerous.” She looked worried.

  “Dangerous for our enemies, Eileen.”

  “I’m glad you’re so confident.” She reached for her clothes.

  “It’s the only way to succeed.” That was a truism he’d learned in his years in the Special Forces.

  She only shook her head as she began to get dressed and he watched with great pleasure. She was beautifully built beneath her conservative attire.

  “Stop staring.” She laughed. “You’re making me nervous.”

  “You’re beautiful, Eileen. Surely you know that.” Her pretty blush made him realize she wasn’t aware of her own allure. He’d fix that. He’d make her believe. Too bad they didn’t have time now or he’d show her again how attractive he found her.

  “I thought you said we were in a hurry.” He realized he’d been staring and shook himself.

  “You’re right.” He gave her a smacking kiss before opening the door and ushering her out. They walked down the hall and made their way through the old building toward the conference room.

  There was food laid out there for the team. He’d ordered a cold buffet kept ready at all hours. Sandwiches, snacks and an assortment of healthy drinks including a coffee urn that was kept fresh throughout the day and night.

  Eileen sat beside Matt again. He didn’t particularly care what the others thought about their relationship. Simon and Mari were engaged, as were Sarah and Xavier. It didn’t impede their ability to do their jobs and everyone knew it. No sense trying to hide the fact that he had something going on with Eileen. These guys were too observant—it would be almost impossible to keep them in the dark on something like this.

  He called the meeting to order and began handing out assignments for the evening. The cleanup crew was on the day shift, so they’d be going off shift shortly. He’d built in some overlap to the schedule deliberately. He went over the reports from t
he day shift and reviewed new developments. They reviewed the video the two-man team in the armored vehicle had sent. It turned out to be nothing. The wire had been cut by a construction crew that was doing routine maintenance on the gate. The animal readings were just that. A herd of deer had been spotted near one of the tripped sensor locations, and it was likely the same story on the other one, though nothing had been seen by the men sent to check the area.

  Mariana was back from her short trip to Knoxville. For the moment, Matt was keeping the news that John had successfully been made immune to himself. Only Mariana, Simon, Eileen, and Donna knew besides himself. Not exactly a secret, but not common knowledge, either.

  The most important thing on the agenda for this get-together was the action plan for that night. Matt wanted detailed input from the combat team, since they’d be heavily involved. They spent the majority of the meeting working out ideas with the fighting personnel. The final plan they arrived at was relatively simple. They would use the tracking device they’d taken out of Eileen to lure the bad guys and their zombie friends into an ambush.

  “Won’t Rodriguez realize we’ve discovered the tracker?” one of the men asked.

  “Not necessarily. Not if we take them all out.”

  “Okay, so we neutralize the zombies. That’s a given. But what if they have a spotter? I mean, there’s got to be someone herding them to us. They don’t think for themselves, that I’ve seen,” Simon pointed out.

  “Exactly,” Matt agreed. “And before now, we’ve never had the opportunity to pick the battleground. If we do this right, we control the circumstances. We can set up the ambush to handle not only the creatures, but we can put a team in place to spot the spotter. A spotter of our own, if you will.”

  The men didn’t waste time after that, planning a strategy that would net them a big win—if they could pull it off.

  Chapter Twelve

  Eileen was nervous, but Matt’s steady presence calmed her somewhat.

  “Just act naturally. We’re going to eat a nice dinner inside and then after the sun goes down, the guys will get you to safety while the rest of us deal with the attack we hope will come.”

  “Only someone as crazy as you would want to be attacked by zombies.” She tried to make light of the situation, but they both knew it scared the heck out of her.

  “The location is perfect. This satellite dining facility is small and near the woods. There won’t be many people here at this hour, and if we time it right, we can keep the action in the wooded area.”

  “What if your timing is off?”

  “Then we’ll go with Plan B.” He shrugged nonchalantly but she knew he wasn’t as cavalier about that option as he seemed.

  “What’s Plan B?”

  “We lock down the mess hall and keep everyone inside. There aren’t many windows, so they won’t see much. Then we take care of the problem outside.”

  “This whole thing sounds risky to me.” She was uneasy with the whole setup.

  “I won’t lie. It is risky. I don’t want more civilian casualties and I certainly don’t want anyone seeing the zombies as we engage them, but on such short notice this is the best place we could come up with that was believable. Rodriguez has to know that I’m keeping you close now that so many attempts have been made to get you. It makes sense that I would bring you to this remote mess hall rather than someplace farther from our new headquarters. If he’s as connected to the news on base as I think, he’ll already know all about our move to the new building.”

  She looked around the mess hall. The building was of older vintage, like the rest of this outlying area of the enormous base. It served a smaller contingent of older, less populated buildings. At this hour, there were few personnel inside. Most went home for dinner or to one of the larger, more modern facilities elsewhere.

  Eileen supposed Matt was right. He was, after all, the commander of this very special team. Even now, he had the tracking chip in a sealed plastic vial of saline in his pocket. When they left the mess hall, Eileen was supposed to peel off from Matt under cover of night and head for safety with Sam Archer acting as escort until she was safely back inside the new headquarters building. Then Sam would rejoin the combat team who would probably already be engaging the enemy in the woods behind the mess hall.

  At least that was the plan.

  She hoped it worked. Frankly, she didn’t have the greatest confidence. Not that she doubted Matt and his men. Her real concerns were about the bad guys and whether they would behave as rationally as Matt’s plan envisioned. For all she knew, the zombies would attack the mess hall directly and not wait for her outside.

  As the meal drew to a close, she found herself growing more nervous. She had a part to play in this little drama and had to get it right. Any minute now, they’d get up from the table and the plan would be set in motion.

  Matt’s hand landed over hers as she reached for her water. Damn, he had good hands. Strong and manly with calluses from what had to be years of weapons training.

  “Calm down. You’re shaking like a leaf.”

  Damn. She didn’t realize she’d been that obvious.

  “Sorry.” She made a conscious effort to calm herself. “I’m worried. I just can’t help thinking something’s going to go wrong.”

  “Let us worry about that. All you have to do is your part. We’ve got the rest covered.”

  Just in case, she’d brought a vial of her experimental serum. If anyone who wasn’t already immune got bitten or scratched, she might be able to help them survive—if their body chemistry reacted well to the serum. That was a big if.

  She’d improved on the serum a bit already, but there was still a ways to go to get it so that it would work on everyone, regardless of their particular chemistry. Still, it was worth a try. The contagion brought almost certain death. The serum had at least a slim chance of saving someone who’d been exposed.

  “I hope it all goes as expected. I’m just worried it won’t. These guys haven’t really played by our rules to this point, and I fear they won’t do it this time, either.”

  “My guys are all experienced improvisers. If the plan goes south, we’ll compensate. Don’t worry. We’ve got every base covered.” Matt stood, picking up both trays. “It’s time to get this show on the road.”

  She followed him to the door, aware when he pulled the tactical radio earpiece from his pocket. He placed it in his ear so fast she almost missed it. He was connected to the team outside, able to hear their reports.

  “Everything’s good to go,” he told her. “I want you to walk with me to the switch point. We’ll meet up with Sam at the end of the walkway, and you go with him as quickly as possible. Got it?”

  She nodded. “Be safe, Matt.” She wanted to say so much more, but the words stuck in her throat.

  She wanted him to know she loved him, but fear kept her silent. Fear of rejection. Fear he wouldn’t feel the same. She was afraid of so much. The plan seemed to be full of holes. She was worried about him and his men. Even immunity to the contagion wouldn’t save them from being ripped limb from limb or eaten alive if they got surrounded by the creatures.

  Eileen tamped down her fear and put on a brave face.

  “Ready?” Matt asked, his hand on the door handle.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be.” She sent him a grim smile. Impulsively, she placed one hand on his arm. “Promise me you’ll be careful.”

  He covered her hand with his and squeezed lightly.

  “I will if you will. When Sam meets us I want you to go with him without delay. I want you safely away before the battle begins. I need to know you’re safe.”

  She nodded. “I promise.”

  “Then I do, too.” The corner of his lips rose in the barest hint of a smile.

  The slight gesture warmed her heart beyond all expectation. Matt pushed open the door and they headed out together.

  They left the mess hall together, but if all went as planned, Matt would be ditching her at the en
d of the path nestled between the old brick building and the tree line. Sam would take his place and escort her to safety. The ambush was set a little farther on, in a more secluded area that the team had all agreed would be the most likely attack point.

  The woods were denser, the lighting less intrusive, and the area was sparsely inhabited. The zombies would have a clear shot at whoever they caught in that area. The reverse was also true. The combat team had plenty of cover to set their trap. Now all they had to do was spring it.

  Only a short way down the path, a man stepped out of the trees directly to their left, catching their attention. Half his face was missing. Torn away by the zombie who had killed him.

  “Ah, hell,” Matt cursed low, opening the channel between himself and the rest of the combat team. “They jumped the gun. It’s going down on the walkway. Get over here. Move now.”

  Matt pushed her behind him, simultaneously digging out the dart pistol he’d concealed under his jacket. It was already loaded and an expert flick of his finger dismissed the safety. He took aim and began firing without hesitation. Four darts in succession hit various parts of the zombie’s body, spreading the dose for maximum effect.

  Eileen looked around, gasping when she saw another bloodstained body with a half-eaten face clear the tree line about ten feet from where she was standing.

  “Matt, there’s another one!” She pointed to her right, where the creature advanced. She backed away, but there wasn’t much space. The path was bordered on one side by a short hedge with a strip of grass behind it that led right up to the foundation of the building. On the other side was more grass that led up to a small copse of trees that ran the length of the building.