Noah: Scifi Alien Invasion Romance (Hell Squad Book 6) Read online

  Roth lifted a brow. “Captain Dragon?”

  “Bladon.” Captain Laura Bladon ran the prison area and interrogation team with a damn iron fist. Every time he had the misfortune to step foot in there, she made his life hell. She lived and breathed her work—one of the few things he found admirable about her. She wanted to beat the aliens, no matter what the cost, and that was great—but damn, she needed to loosen up. “I reckon if she could breathe fire, she would.”

  Roth’s lips twitched. “It would match her hair.”

  That it would. An image of Laura’s vibrant red hair flashed in his eyes. She kept it tightly braided, but even when she was nagging him to get her comp system fixed, he wondered what it would look like left loose and falling around her shoulders.

  The alarm that had been shrilly blaring suddenly cut off. The silence was deafening.

  “Guess the drill’s over,” Noah said.

  “Yeah.” Roth glanced at his watch. “I need to go and debrief on the evac. Next time, can you play nice and at least make it look like you’re evacuating?”

  “Don’t hold your breath.”

  Roth shook his head. “Avery wants to have a few people over for dinner some time. Squad Nine, Hell Squad, you. I think she and Elle have it in their heads you’ve been working too hard and need to chill out.”

  Avery Stillman was a former Coalition Central Intelligence Agent. She’d been rescued from a tank in an alien lab and had helped Roth uncover some secrets about the aliens. And in the process, they’d fallen in love. They’d also recently discovered another secret human enclave, hidden underground not far from Blue Mountain Base. A viable, alternative place for them to go if they were attacked.

  And sweet Elle Milton was Noah’s friend. Noah liked her a lot, had even briefly considered dipping back into the relationship waters for her…but Elle had only ever had eyes for Marcus. Everyone in base was still shaking their heads over the former socialite and the scarred soldier—beauty and the beast.

  “Sounds good,” Noah said.

  But as Roth left, Noah stared at the man’s back. They fit, Roth and Avery. Elle and Marcus. They made each other happy and found their own little piece of heaven in the middle of hell. Noah’s hand tightened on the edge of his desk. Hell, before the alien invasion, he hadn’t believed in connections like that. But each couple had gotten lucky.

  Noah lifted the dice, turning them over in his hands. Luck was a capricious bitch, that was for sure. She blessed some and cursed others.

  His comp pinged again, and he saw another more insistent message from Captain Dragon. With a grin, he flicked his screen off. That was one thing he’d learned since the apocalypse—you had to enjoy the small pleasures, wherever you could find them.

  Chapter Two

  Laura Bladon was on a mission.

  She strode through the base tunnels toward the dining room, her long legs rapidly eating up the distance. She wasn’t on her way to eat—she didn’t have time for that. No, she was trying to track down an arrogant, wayward tech genius who refused to obey the smallest of requests.

  She lifted her chin, nodded at a few people who passed by. She had her team working to contain a new species of alien—a giant alien bug that looked somewhat like a dragonfly. Roth Masters, her friend from Squad Nine, had brought it in with his squad. Now her team was trying to contain the thing so the medical team could get samples to analyze. And while trying to do that, their comp system had failed…again.

  She sometimes wondered if Noah Kim sabotaged it on purpose just to make her life hell.

  She turned a corner into another tunnel, and watched a man, woman and small boy walk past. The boy was beaming up at his mother and father, and the father reached out to ruffle the boy’s dark hair. They passed her with a smile.

  Laura’s throat went tight.

  She’d had love like that. Before. She’d been part of a big, rambunctious family, the oldest sibling with a sister and two brothers. Then, two years before the invasion, she’d met Jake. Her lips twisted into a smile. Jake had been a soldier and many of the tough men on the base’s squads reminded her of him. He’d been a Coalition Navy SEAL, and she’d been Naval Intelligence. She’d tumbled head-over-boots fast for the sexy soldier who’d sauntered up to her at a bar near the base. After a whirlwind romance, he’d proposed and she’d said yes.

  In the midst of juggling their busy military careers and wedding plans, the Gizzida had launched their attack on Earth.

  Jake had been on a team sent to fight on the front lines that night. She’d watched them get blown to pieces by raptor ptero ships on live feed to the Intelligence Division at headquarters.

  She slowed and waited to feel the soul-wrenching grief and horror.

  Instead, she felt nothing.

  Her steps faltered. From that moment, after Jake had died and the shiny, happy future she’d imagined was hers had disappeared, she’d gone cold. As the aliens had destroyed the planet, the ice had grown a little thicker each day. As she’d lost friends and colleagues, and finally got word that all her family had died, too, she’d gone numb.

  She shook herself. She’d survived. She had work—important work—that was helping to fight the aliens.

  Laura straightened her uniform shirt. Unless she was alone in her quarters, she always wore her uniform. She stepped into the busy dining room.

  There was a low hubbub of conversation. The long tables were packed with people—soldiers, civilians, families, children. She scanned the room, her gaze settling on a table at the back where Hell Squad usually sat.

  She saw them there, smiling and talking. Marcus Steele sat with his arm across the back of the chair of a pretty brunette—Elle Milton. She was laughing so hard she was wiping tears from her eyes. Beside her, the lanky, handsome sniper, Shaw, was gesticulating wildly and telling some dramatic story. Beside him, the tough-looking Claudia Frost had her arms crossed over her chest, shaking her head, but even from across the room, Laura could tell the woman was trying not to laugh. Laura was an expert at reading body language. Part of her intelligence duties was interrogation. The small tells and moves people made could often tell her far more than the words they said. It was good at helping her weed out the truth from the lies.

  Across the table, Cruz Ramos—Hell Squad’s second-in-command sat with his partner, Santha. She was picking at her food, and Laura guessed the woman’s morning sickness had yet to pass. The squad’s scariest soldier, Gabe Jackson, sat demolishing what looked like a mountain of food. His partner, Emerson, was missing, because the doctor was with her medical team in the prison area, waiting to take alien samples. Lastly, Reed MacKinnon sat with his fiancée, Natalya, tucked close beside him. The alien-lab survivor was smiling, her face glowing.

  How did they do it? How did all of Hell Squad find happiness, things to laugh about, and find the courage to risk loving in the middle of chaos? She stared harder at Natalya. How did she do it? Laura couldn’t imagine finding happiness after being cut open by the aliens and having terrible things done to her. Yet, here was Natalya, with love stamped on every inch of her pretty face. Laura guessed Reed was good at keeping a woman happy. She eyed the man’s strong features and tough, muscled body. God, he reminded Laura of Jake. Reed had been a Navy SEAL, too.

  Again, Laura waited for the pain, but all she felt was a vast emptiness inside.

  Then her gaze fell on the man seated at the end of the table, watching the others with a tiny smile.

  Her heartbeat jumped. Noah Kim was nothing like the battle-hardened soldiers seated with him. He was taller, leaner, with straight black hair that brushed his shoulders. It gave him a rakish air, and combined with his hawkish face and black eyes that illustrated his South Korean heritage, he looked like a modern-day pirate.

  Well, he might look like one, but what he really happened to be was an arrogant, know-it-all who did exactly as he pleased. Oh, he worked hard and was a genius with electronics, she knew that, but his holier-than-thou attitude drove her insane. />
  At that moment, he turned his head and his dark gaze hit hers. She stiffened, and for a glorious second, her belly filled with a rush of heat.

  Laura’s hands curled into fists. Why? Why, out of everyone here at base, where she had friends she liked, and colleagues she respected, did this man seem to be the only one who broke through the deadness inside her?

  She clamped it down, even as a part of her cried at the loss of sensation. Parts of her were hungry to feel, while other parts of her were terrified by it. Especially because of the man who elicited the feelings.

  Laura stomped up to the table. “Hi, everyone.” She nodded at Marcus and his team.

  “Laura.” Marcus kicked out an empty chair. “Join us?”

  She shook her head. “Thanks for the offer, but I’ve got work.” Her gaze zeroed in on Noah.

  The man leaned back in his chair, looking so incredibly relaxed, she wanted to kick him.

  “Is your comp broken?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “So why haven’t you answered any of my urgent requests to fix the comp system in the prison area?”

  “Haven’t got to it yet.”

  His lazy response made her muscles tense. “I need it fixed, and I want it fixed now.”

  “Like I tell everyone, get in line, Captain. Everyone in this damn place needs me to fix something, or improve something. I only have two damned hands…and I’m entitled to eat.”

  She drew herself up, conscious of Hell Squad’s gazes watching them intently.

  “Well, we need it fixed now.” She lowered her voice. “I have Emerson and the medical team down there, needing to take samples from the alien bug Squad Nine brought in. And we can’t get the work done without the comp. Plus, with the comp down, the ventilation is playing up. That means we’re all a bit hot and bothered. I have prisoners I’d prefer don’t get hot and bothered.”

  Noah closed his eyes and muttered under his breath.

  Laura had always had good hearing. “Did you just call me a pain in the ass?”

  He ran his tongue over his teeth. “Hell yeah, Captain Dragon, I did.”

  Her eyes narrowed. She didn’t care that they had an audience. “I warned you last time you called me that name that if you did it again, I would knock your teeth out.”

  “Whoa.” Shaw laughed. “Noah, you have the lovely captain well and truly pissed.”

  Laura swiveled and skewered the sniper with her gaze.

  He held his palms up. “Don’t mind me.”

  She lifted her chin. “I expect to see you down in the prison area in twenty minutes, Kim.”

  She turned to leave.

  “Or what?” he asked in a silky voice.

  She looked back at him. “You don’t want to find out.”

  ***

  Laura was sitting at her desk, her top shirt buttons loosened, because it was stifling in her windowless office without the ventilation. An underground base provided excellent protection, but without any air circulating, it got damned uncomfortable.

  She heard the office door slam open and Noah Kim stood in her doorway. She glanced at her watch. Twenty-one minutes. She resisted pulling a face. She was certain he’d probably stood outside her door for a full sixty seconds just to vex her.

  She waved at the main comp console that all the prison area’s systems ran through. “All yours.”

  He made a noise—part growl, part harrumph—and walked over to the desk near the wall. He sank into the chair and started tapping on the screen. “I don’t know how the hell you keep breaking this.”

  Her spine went stiff. “If you fixed the damn thing properly, it wouldn’t keep malfunctioning.”

  He closed his eyes for a second and she got the impression he was counting. “Believe me, I dislike my visits down here as much as you. If I could get the damn thing working permanently, I would.”

  She felt a tiny little kick in her chest, then ignored him, and went back to scrawling notes in her notebook, since her comp wasn’t cooperating.

  He muttered as he worked. She eyed him every now and then, when he didn’t know she was looking. The man really was handsome, with his long, straight nose and the sharp blades of his cheekbones. Laura would never, ever admit it, but she really liked his long hair, too. Maybe because she was used to short-haired, military types. Since she’d seen him in the dining room, Noah had tied his hair back with a strip of something, enhancing that pirate look. She stared at the thick, black strands and wondered if they were as silky to touch as they looked. When he paused and snatched a pair of dark-rimmed glasses from his pocket and slipped them on, her stomach tightened. They suited him and were mouth-wateringly sexy.

  Clearing her throat, she went back to her notes. She was compiling the latest information they’d gotten from their raptor prisoner. His name was Gaz’da. He’d been here for months, and strangely, she sort of felt like she knew him. She never forgot he was a six-foot-five, dinosaur-like humanoid alien who could crush her with his claws. But after those initial months of belligerent silence, he had given them useful information.

  Although she didn’t always like thinking about the ways they’d had to extract it. She rubbed her forehead. In a war of survival, sometimes they had to cross boundaries they didn’t like. Laura knew she was doing her bit by leading the interrogation team and doing the dirty work no one really wanted to think about. She could shield the rest of the base’s residents from having to take those harsh steps.

  Her gaze went back to Noah. He was sliding under the desk now to muck around with the wiring. All she could see were long, jeans-clad legs.

  She swallowed and let herself look. Why? Why did this cranky genius spark something inside her when nothing and no one else had done it in the year and a half since the invasion? She’d had a type before—strong, military men. Physically fit men who used their brains and bodies in a fight. Jake had fit that type to a T.

  Not that Noah wasn’t in shape. She knew he spent time in the gym and sparred with Marcus on occasion. But he had the long, lean body of a runner or a swimmer, not a soldier. Would his stomach have a six pack? Would his arms feel strong around a woman?

  Jesus. She jerked her gaze away. Pointless ponderings. She was never going there. Never ever. Even if she could admit to a physical craving, in every other respect the man drove her crazy.

  Sudden shouts came from outside in the hall. Laura was moving in an instant, a frown on her face.

  “What’s going on?” Noah materialized beside her, following her out.

  “Not sure.” But her gut had gone hard. Whatever it was, it wouldn’t be good. She strode down the main tunnel, which was lined with cells. Each room had its own one-way mirror that let them look inside.

  She heard the commotion—shouts and screams—coming from the cell that held the alien bug.

  An inhuman screech echoed through the tunnel.

  “Fuck me,” Noah murmured.

  She jogged down the hall, snatched a long stunner prod from a rack on the wall, and glanced through the window. She took in the scene in one swift glance.

  She slapped her hand to the electronic door lock. It beeped and released.

  Inside was chaos.

  Medical team members in white lab coats lay flat on the floor, fear on their faces. Two of Laura’s team were on their feet, trying to subdue an enraged alien bug that was darting around the room, free of the chains they’d had it in.

  One of her team, Katrina, was lying face down on the floor, not moving. And Ben, her top interrogator, was bleeding from what looked like a bite on his arm.

  She charged in. When Doc Emerson saw her and started to rise, Laura shook her head. Thankfully, the doctor obeyed and pressed back to the floor.

  The bug—a giant dragonfly creature the size of a man—darted down and nipped at another of Laura’s team, a slim, Indian man. The alien caught Raj’s shirt in its sharp mandibles and pulled him off his feet.

  Enough. Laura strode closer, and fired up the prod. The
creature tried to fly away, but there really wasn’t space for it to go far.

  She jabbed with her prod, but the alien dodged. It dropped Raj.

  Laura jabbed again, but the bug retreated to the roof, its double set of gold-and-black wings flitting fast.

  Dammit. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted Noah racing in to drag Raj to the side of the room. Her jaw hardened. She’d have to have words with him about staying out of danger.

  She grabbed an overturned chair, and righted it.

  “Laura, watch out!” Noah’s voice.

  She turned…just in time to see the bug arrowing for her, mandibles snapping. She dropped and rolled. She got right back on her feet, then she ran. She pressed one boot to the chair and used it to leap high.

  She jammed the prod forward, like she was a knight with a lance, and rammed it into the creature’s large abdomen.

  The high voltage hit it, and it made that horrible screech again. Then it dropped to the floor with a loud slap. Its body was shaking.

  Laura landed beside it. “Ben, get the chains.”

  “It chewed through them, Captain. Like they were made of candy.”

  Dammit. She scanned her slightly battered team. She saw Emerson and her techs head over to Katrina’s still form and check her over.

  “Only thing I can think of is that we use the energy chains.”

  They only had one set of the energy restraints, but they used an electrical field to contain a prisoner. She looked at Noah. “I need that comp system fixed to use those chains.”

  His dark gaze was on her face, studying her intently. “On it.” He turned and disappeared.

  “Get the energy chains and get this thing tied up. Emerson, you still need more samples?”

  The doctor shook her head, her blonde hair brushing her chin. “I think we have enough. We’ll focus on checking out Katrina here, and then look at the others.”

  Laura nodded. “Thanks.” She stalked back to her office and saw Noah focused on the comp screen.

  “I’ve rigged a temporary fix. It’ll let you contain that bug right now, but I need to do more work to get the system repaired once and for all.”