Resurrected Read online

  Copyright © 2012 Shunta Montgomery

  All Rights Reserved

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  Publisher’s Note:

  Resurrected is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, event or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Special Thanks

  Thank you, Barb, for catching the mistakes I missed. Your assist with editing has been wonderful.

  Thanks to all of my readers for showing your support for my work by buying and reading my books.

  Books by Capri Montgomery

  Pirate’s Treasure

  Warrior Rising

  Vendetta

  Shadow Hills: April Showers

  Love’s Last Hope

  Shadow Hills: M is for Murder

  Seducing the Bodyguard

  Shadow Hills: No Valentine

  Shadow Hills: Fallen Hero

  Fahrenheit

  Secrets and Lies

  Returning Sheba

  Saints and Sinners

  The McGregor Affair

  Dream Walker

  The Geneva Project

  The Admiral’s Daughter

  Dangerous Obsessions

  Watch Over Me

  And Many Others…

  Chapter One

  She felt her body going numb as the darkness surrounded her. The icy river waters had been her only escape, and now they were beckoning her to the death she had fled from. It had been said that a person’s entire life flashed before their eyes just before death would claim them. For Lisa McBride, a lifetime had been merely a few days. Since the moment she had awakened in the lab she knew her status. She had her memories, the shell of her body, but her life could no longer be the same. Still, she pulled her naked body from the cold water and ran fleetingly to the only place she knew she would be safe. She ran home.

  “Please help me?” Lisa stood, shaking from the cold, from her fear and from her exhaustion.

  “Who are you?” John surveyed her body. She knew he could recognize her. She had the body of his wife, the voice even, but she had died earlier that year.

  “John, it’s me. Lisa.”

  “No,” he started to close the door, but something made him stay there, made him listen to her.

  “They cloned me in the lab. Right after I...Lisa, died;" she tried to state her words correctly. "The doctors took her cells to experiment. No human clone program has ever been legalized and once they saw it worked, they had to destroy the evidence. If it gets out that Zyno Core was doing illegal human cloning they would be ruined. I,” she paused to take a breath, to gather her thoughts. “I didn’t want to die.”

  In her eyes, John could see the same fear he had seen in Lisa before she passed. The internal bleeding had been too much and the doctors couldn’t save her. She had whispered those same words to him, “I don’t want to die,” but he was helpless to save her then.

  “Mommy!”

  “Stop right there, this is not your mommy,” John pushed little Brent back from the naked creature before him.

  “It’s mommy. She’s alive.” He screamed trying to get to Lisa.

  “I’m not the mother you remember,” Lisa let her voice calm the young boy. “I…I shouldn’t have come here,” she turned to leave before she felt the warmth of his hand. The touch she had remembered so clearly had once again enveloped her.

  “Come in. You can’t run around Seattle like that.” He pulled her into the house. “Brent, go get a blanket for—”

  “Mommy,” Brent ran from the room excitedly. He had missed his mother so much over the months since her death. She…this woman in front of him…had no right to do this to him or to Brent.

  “I’m sorry. I just—”

  “What the hell were you thinking coming here?” John couldn’t focus. The doctors had stolen a piece of his wife, cloned her and now she was there again. He had lost her and he had made his peace with having to move on, even though his heart truly wasn’t ready. He knew he could turn this Lisa away and pretend it was just a dream, but Brent couldn’t. Hell, maybe he couldn’t either.

  “John, please? I wasn’t thinking I guess. I just, I wanted to go someplace safe, and this was the only place I knew to come. I should have thought of our so…of Brent. I just didn’t think he would be awake before I had a chance to explain to you.”

  John softened his stance. Hell he wasn’t angry with her. He was angry at the drunk driver who had taken his wife’s life yet walked away with her own. He was angry at the doctors for not saving her and he was angry as hell for being turned on by the site of her naked. It felt like a betrayal; it felt wrong.

  A knock came on the door, she froze. “My God, they’ve found me. I have to—” Brent ran back into the room with the soft blue blanket, far too small for Lisa, but just perfect for him. It was his favorite blanket. She had given it to him a week before she had died. John hadn’t been able to get him to part with that blanket. He had taken it to his class with him; he had insisted on taking it. When the teacher tried to take it away from him, he had thrown such a fit that everybody involved decided it would be best to just let him keep it with him. They folded it nicely and put it in his back pack for safe keeping and he refused to let it, or the backpack out of his sight.

  “Brent, listen to me. I need you to go in your room and pretend that she never showed up,” he shushed his son before Brent could protest. “The men at the door are bad, if they find her, they’ll take her away from us and we’ll never see her again. We have to pretend like she’s still dead.” He patted Brent’s head so softly.

  “Okay, Daddy.” Brent smiled up at the only woman he knew to be his mom.

  “You have to hide.” John motioned for her to follow him. “In the closet, where Brent usually hides,” he said warmly. He waited being sure they were safely tucked away, Brent in bed, where any seven year old should be at midnight, and Lisa in the hiding spot where she could be safe.

  “Sorry to bother you Mr. McBride, I’m Nevin Verderhoot from Sunnybrook Sanatorium. We just wanted to make sure one of our patients hasn’t come this way. You see she escaped from our mental institution…” John listened to the poorly mastered cover. Each word made him sick, angry and downright volatile, but he held back.

  “No, you’re the first visitor tonight. I was just up trying to get some work done. It’s the first night my son has been able to sleep through since my wife died.” He studied the men’s faces. He would remember them; he would remember in order to keep Lisa safe.

  “Well, as we stated, we are sorry to bother you. If this patient should show up, please call us.”

  “Of course,” he said as he took the card. “What should I be looking for? Fat, skinny, red hair, blond hair?”

  He hesitated, as if trying to think of the best way to say his words. How about that this woman looked just like his dead wife? No; he would guess they wouldn’t say that. “She’s a brunette,” he said. Lisa may have had brown hair, but she had shades of red in that brown hair too. He could still see the way the red came to the front when the sun was shining on her hair.

  “Okay, well, if anybody shows up I’ll give you a call.” He lifted the card in his hand as if to assure them that he would call, but he knew he wouldn’t. He locked the door behind them, thinking of how stupid they were for thinking he would ever turn in a woman who looked like his wife. He couldn
’t protect Lisa before, but he could do it now—if he could get past his shock long enough to hear her out.

  “Brilliant cover,” Donny Walker shook his head. “Verderhoot?”

  “There’s a doctor there with that name,” Larry Krause tried to defend his words. He shouldn’t have had to defend anything. He was the one in charge here.

  “What if this patient does show up and looks exactly like his dead wife,” the young, scrawny blond man said.

  “Look, Donny, what was I supposed to say? We cloned your dead wife and now she’s running around the streets of Seattle naked. We’ll hang around for a while if she shows, we’ll take care of it,” Mike pushed aside his coat to expose the nicely hidden nine millimeter safely nestled in his holster.

  “We can’t…”

  “Look, kid, this is far bigger than John McBride and some stupid kid. We get found out and we all go down for this. Not even the good doctor can get you off the hook on this one, so go with me on this, kid. We can’t let any of them live if they make contact with Project X121.” If anybody found out they had done the unthinkable, the illegal, they were all screwed. The doc had said they could make a lot of money selling the technology to the Russians, or the Chinese. Cloning was outright illegal across the board, but there were some factions in both governments who had shown an interest in the equipment and the science. They all had an idea of what they would want to do with that technology, replace politicians with replicas under their control was probably top priority, but the doctor didn’t care about the reason behind their support, he just cared about making Project X work. Lisa was the one hundred twenty-first female they attempted this on. They had tried over three hundred males beforehand, but nothing had ever worked. The doctor decided to switch focus and he found that cloning women, while complex, was far closer to producing legitimately viable subjects. Lisa was the first all out success, and now they had to terminate her. Larry shrugged; such was life. Everything had to die at some point.

  John walked into Brent’s room and pushed open his closet door. “They’re gone” he motioned for her to come out, but never offered her a hand up.

  “They won’t be for long,” she tried to cover herself as best as she could with the little blanket.

  “Mommy stays,” Brent ordered.

  “Go to sleep, we’ll talk in the morning son,” John gave him a look that signaled a severe tongue lashing was on the way if he didn’t comply.

  “Okay. Goodnight, Daddy. ‘Night, Mommy.” He closed his eyes and for a brief moment, smiled at the thought of his reunited family. He had his mommy back and he wasn’t ready to let her go again. John knew they had a problem, several actually, but right now he was most worried about his son. He couldn’t imagine what losing Lisa again would do to him.

  “How were they going to, you know?” He propped himself against the table, folding his arms against his muscular chest.

  “Kill me? Cyanide. Dr. Colino explained everything to me before. He sat on my little cot and told me about my…her death. He told me how I was created; I’m only three days old you know?” She smiled sheepishly. “Then he said I couldn’t stay alive because my memories were too clear, that I’d want to have my family back. I promised I would stay there if they just let me live, but I knew I would want to come back to you and to Brent. He knew too. He told me it couldn’t work because if anybody found out, they would lock him away and his work would be destroyed. He told me cyanide would only hurt briefly, but it would be so quick,” she stopped talking; unable to continue. She shivered and for the first time she must have realized she was still very much naked before him. She tried to conceal herself with the blanket once more.

  “I’m sorry,” he pushed past her and walked away before stopping to tell her to follow him. He took her into the bedroom with him. She was a mess. She needed a hot bath, warm clothes and a soft bed. He had all those things available for her.

  “Our bedroom…your bedroom.” She mentally reminded herself not to speak of the plural. He had helped her, but he had in no way decided that he would love her. The memories overwhelmed her. She remembered the nights of passion in their bed, on the chase, in the walk in closet. She pulled the blanket over her breasts, shielding her arousal.

  “Here,” he handed her the peach bathrobe from the closet. He still had her clothes. He hadn’t packed them away or disposed of them. Everything was the same, as if she had only been away for a short while.

  “Thank you,” she whispered as she slipped the heavy fleece robe onto her body. “I don’t mean to be a bother, but if you’ll just let me get a few hours of sleep I’ll leave quietly.” She was tired, cold, hungry and in pain, more so emotionally than physically. She had taken a few hits when they tried to subdue her, but she had managed to get away. She would probably be bruised come morning, but the physical discomfort paled in comparison to the way her heart was breaking seeing her husband and son again, knowing she couldn’t stay with them.

  “You’re not leaving,” he said harshly before softening his tone. “My little boy thinks you’re his mother come back from heaven and I’m not going to let you break his heart.” She could tell he wasn’t sure how they would manage things; that he didn’t know how they would keep her a secret, but he was trying to figure it out.

  “Brent needs you,” he said and it crushed her hopes that maybe he wanted her there too.

  “What about you, John?”

  John could see the look of hope in her eyes with that one question. He couldn’t come to grips with the emotions at war within him. “I’ll sleep on the couch,” he took one look at her, wrapped in the fluffy robe, her body was just as beautiful as it always had been. The entire time he had left her naked to see her, to view the woman that was so much like his wife, yet so far away from her. Her breasts were firm and her nipples pursed out at the site of their bed and it had aroused him so much that he knew he would have to slake his hunger with a solitary hand job. He wanted to ravish her, to throw her down onto the bed and come inside her until she shattered, until he shattered. He wanted her so bad he could feel every muscle in his body fighting the thoughts running through his mind, but he couldn’t give in. she looked like Lisa, smelled like Lisa, even sounded like her, but she wasn’t his Lisa. His Lisa was dead.

  “So what’s your shelf life?” Her shocked expression vibrated through his body. He had spoken so cruelly, trying to distance the growing passion within him. He had hurt her, and it felt like he had just hurt his Lisa and not a clone.

  “I could live another fifty or sixty years depending on circumstances. I’m only this old because this is the age my…her…cells were.” It felt strange talking about herself as if she were somebody else; he was sure of that because she kept trying to inhibit her speech to appease him.

  “I know this hurts you and I am sorry. Maybe it would have been easier if I had let Dr. Colino destroy me.” She turned away to hide the tears in her eyes.

  “Look at me,” but she hadn’t. “Look at me,” he turned her to face him. “You didn’t ask for life, but you sure as hell have a right to keep it.”

  “Oh John, I’m so scared,” tears fell from her eyes. Her voice was weak. He fought the urge to wrap his arms around her and comfort her. “I just didn’t think. If I had I wouldn’t have—”

  “Fought for your life,” he said.

  “No, I wouldn’t have come here.”

  “Promise me you won’t run away while I’m sleeping.”

  “Okay.” He knew her tone. It wasn’t a promise and he wasn’t prepared to lose her again.

  “Promise me. Promise me that you won’t make me explain to Brent why he’s lost,” he lifted her chin and their eyes met. “Why he’s lost his mother all over again; please don’t make me explain that?” The look in her eyes sealed his confidence.

  “I promise,” she said. She couldn’t hurt Brent. She would stay a thousand nights alone in his bed and die a thousand deaths, but she couldn’t hurt Brent and he knew that.

  “Ge
t some rest. I have to take Brent to school later. We’ll talk when I come back.”

  Chapter Two

  Lisa knew that while she had promised she wouldn’t leave while John was sleeping, her promise did not extend to his waking hours. She had already begun to process the words she would write to her son. Coming there had put them in danger, staying could kill them all. Why hadn’t she thought of that before? Why had her first fear laced instinct been to go to the only man she knew would help her? She should have just run fast and far and never come back to this house.

  Lisa waited for John and Brent to clear the driveway before starting to pack. She wouldn’t have long and she still had to write the letters. She took a whiff of John’s flannel shirt. “I hope you won’t miss this,” she tucked it away in her duffle bag. Lisa had just rounded the corner to Brent’s room when she heard the door shaking. “Oh my God,” she knew they had returned to search for her. She quickly pushed aside the hideaway door, crawled inside and returned the panel.