Signal Boost, page 1
Signal Boost
By Alyssa Cole
When technology stopped working, the world as they knew it ended.
In a secluded cabin, John and his loved ones have survived. He should feel grateful. But his family is in his face 24/7, he has to watch his best friend, Arden, and brother, Gabriel, flaunt their love, and as a techie in a Luddite world he’s pretty much useless. The cabin is brimming with people, but he feels utterly alone.
Until he catches Mr. Tall, Blond and Gorgeous raiding their garden. Mykhail is an astrophysics student, he makes John’s gaydar ping like crazy and he thinks he knows what caused the devastation. He’s on a journey to his university to find answers, and John invites himself along. Partly to get out of the house, and partly because he can’t let Mykhail go without acting on the mutual attraction that’s so obvious even John’s mom is playing matchmaker.
The closer they get to campus, the more Mykhail lets down his walls. But with answers come secrets both devastating and deadly, and before they can save the world, they’ll have to save themselves.
Read Arden and Gabriel’s story in Radio Silence, available now!
68,585 words
Dear Reader,
I’d rather be reading. How many times do you say that during your day? I know I say it probably a dozen times through my day. I love to read, and I’d pretty much always rather be reading, so I’m always stockpiling books to ensure I never run out for the times when I can read. I’m thrilled Carina Press is able to give you month after month of books to add to your TBR pile, and May is no exception!
In Lynda Aicher’s erotic contemporary romance Back in Play, fun, flirty and sexy-as-hell Rachel Fielding is the perfect distraction Scott Walters needs when the Glaciers refused to renew his contract. But he hadn’t counted on falling for her or purging his deepest secrets to her, either. Can their fledgling relationship survive the trials he has ahead?
Edie Harris’s first romantic suspense, Blamed, was a reader favorite and she’s back with book two, Ripped: A Blood Money Novel, in which a sexy, hot-blooded spy coerces an ice-cold attorney to partner with him to wreak vengeance on the villain who threatens them both.
Joely Sue Burkhart is burning up the pages and testing our boundaries with her latest erotic romance, One Cut Deeper. Her needs are dark. His are dangerous. For Charlie and Ranay, pain is their shared pleasure...until Charlie disappears, and the hunger Ranay loved in him may be even darker than she suspected.
Alyssa Cole rocked our world with her first postapocalyptic romance, Radio Silence, and she’s back with sexy male/male romance Signal Boost, set in the same technologically devastated world. Months have passed since electricity, and society, stopped working; John is wondering if a life without internet is worth living when he stumbles across a hot astrophysicist who might change his life—and the world.
Also in the male/male category and taking us to whole new worlds is Lonely Shore, book two in the stunning science-fiction romance series from Jenn Burke and Kelly Jensen. Zander and Felix are trying to make their relationship work, but two things stand in the way: a criminal cartel out for blood and the rapid deterioration of Zander’s mental health. It’s a game of duck and cover as they search for answers, and when they find one, the cost might be too high.
2014 RITA® Award-nominated author Kat Latham’s Taming the Legend rounds out our romance offerings in May. In this passionate story of lovers reunited, legendary rugby player Ash Trenton fights to help Camila Morales—his first and only love—save her indebted sports camp...while also fighting to keep from losing his heart to her all over again.
For mystery fans who like their mystery with a side of fun, you have to check out Ricardo Sanchez. You first met Floyd, the PI living his life as Elvis would have wanted, in Elvis Sightings. Now he’s back in Bigfoot Blues, and his newest case leads him to man-eating mountain lions, chupacabras and plain-old murderers.
Coming in June 2015: Lisa Marie Rice delivers another awesome alpha hero, Julie Moffett’s Lexi Carmichael returns with further adventures and Julie Rowe launches a new romantic suspense military series.
Here’s wishing you a wonderful month of books you love, remember and recommend.
Happy reading!
Angela James
Editorial Director, Carina Press
Acknowledgments
I would like to once again thank my fantastic editor, Rhonda Helms, who has yet to thrash me for my devotion to the Oxford comma.
A huge diakuju to Sofia Tate for taking me on a Ukrainian tour of New York City and teaching me that there’s a right way and a wrong way to do borscht. You are the best!
I’d also like to thank Sandra Kitt for being a wonderful writer and human and for introducing me to Brian Abbott, Assistant Director of the Hayden Planetarium. Brian, thanks for taking time to share your vast knowledge with me. You helped shape the story in a way that a textbook never could.
Love to Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson for making knowledge about the cosmos accessible and inspiring legions of stargazers.
Thanks to theoretical physicist Michio Kaku, for his inspiring explanation of string theory.
As always, I want to thank my wonderful critique group, Katana, Derek and Krista, who kept me sane as I wrote this book. In addition, my friends Lena, Julia, Mala and Maya and the RWA-NYC.
And now, each night I count the stars. And each night I get the same number. And when they will not come to be counted, I count the holes they leave.
— Amiri Baraka
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Epilogue
About the Author
Copyright
Chapter One
The sun usually rises at about 6:20 a.m. on a late May morning in upstate New York. Daybreak wasn’t even a pink tendril on the horizon when the baby started its nightly howling. I would have been annoyed if I hadn’t already been awake.
If this was before electricity, and modern society, had stopped working, I would’ve dealt with my insomnia by scrolling through my smartphone, checking out dudes I would never have the nerve to contact on the latest gay hookup app. Or I would have turned on my gaming system, eager to explore vast worlds and be the hero of at least one story, even if it wasn’t real. Now when I couldn’t sleep I simply stared into darkness, waiting for something, anything, to break the monotony.
A crying baby would suffice.
The perpetrator of our nighttime wake-up calls, nicknamed Stump for his short little appendages and because his mother hadn’t given him a name, quieted for a moment but then released a wail that rivaled the best of the Motown divas.
I couldn’t blame him—honestly, I’d be screaming too if it wouldn’t totally freak out everyone else in the house, which was packed tighter than a Gameland the day a new Jack Carjacker video game dropped. The guest list at Chez Seong now included my wonderful but meddling parents; my older brother, Gabriel, and my best friend, Arden, who spent most of their time projecting sexual tension at each other; and my teenage sister, Maggie, who was constantly redefining the meaning of mood swing. There were also Darlene and Stump, the woman and baby we’d taken in after she and her husband had held my parents captive. Yes, we were one big post-apocalyptically happy family, trapped in a house in the middle of nowhere as we tried not to think of our dwindling supplies and the fact that society had not returned to normal, as we’d hoped. That was enough to make anyone holler, but instead I had to keep my fear and anger bottled up inside, like a grown-up.
Maggie stirred in her bed across the room from me, but her mutant-teenager ability to sleep through anything meant Stump’s cries wouldn’t awaken her. Her mass of long, dark hair was pulled into a messy bun atop her head, revealing a face that was a strange mixture of child and woman. What kind of life would Maggie have if things didn’t change soon? One of isolation, where she was married off to the neighbor boy for a dowry of expired candy bars?
I sighed and threw off my blankets, running a hand through my tangled hair. It was getting too long, resting on my shoulders now, and I’d have to ask Arden to give me another trim. I kind of wished she was still bunking with me, mostly so I could hear the string of expletives she was inevitably muttering as the baby cried out, but she’d moved into Gabriel’s room down the hall, now referred to in hushed tones as the Shag Zone. The only thing keeping her from strangling Darlene for her poor parenting skills was the fact that she was blissfully besotted with my older brother—and that she’d already killed the woman’s husband. I mean, that was awkward enough, as far as living arrangements went.
Still, I heard the door of the Shag Zone open and Arden’s sleepy steps as she approached the room now inhabited by Darlene and the baby. She didn’t bother knocking anymore, since retrieving the baby and comforting him had become a nightly routine.
I slid out of bed and emerged into the hallway just as Arden was walking by. “Boo!” I whispered near her ear as I jumped from my room into the darkened hallway.
Arden kept walking toward the stairs, not even breaking pace. ”John, you need to come to terms with the fact that you will never make me flinch,” she said as we walked down the stairs, searching for the least creaky spots. “Don’t take it personally. Besides, after changing this kid’s diapers, nothing can scare me.”
Having had my eyebrows singed off by the smell emanating from one of Stump’s more memorable incidents, I understood what she meant.
“Dammit, baby, why do you have to wake us up?” she asked a burbling Stump as she settled them into the comfy love seat in the living room. ”Don’t you know how miserable it is for us to deal with you every night?”
Miserable? Our nightly hangout sessions were the one thing I looked forward to. It was the only time I really felt like I could be myself, whatever that meant. Not someone’s son or brother, but just a friend. While everyone else slept, we made each other laugh, plotting who we would eat first when the food ran out or choreographing elaborate dances to songs sung a cappella. Sometimes, we’d make each other cry, like when she pulled out her tattered road map and we planned various routes to Northern California, where her parents lived—if they were still alive. Arden was the only one who really understood me, and even she considered the time we spent together miserable. Great.
I lit a tea candle, stuck one of Stump’s premade bottles into the pan of water warming in the fireplace and snuggled next to Arden; this had become a nightly ritual too. She rested her head on my shoulder, moving slightly as she rocked the baby in her arms. Maybe she felt how stiff I was against her, or maybe she was just thinking the same thing I was, which wasn’t rare, but her next words made me realize how ridiculous I was being.
“You know I hate being woken up and dealing with all this baby shit, but I really do enjoy this. Just you and me hanging out, like old times, except I’m holding a baby instead of a bag of corn chips,” she said. “Thank you for always being here for me.”
“I thought Gabriel was here to meet all your Seong-related needs these days,” I quipped, still feeling tetchy even though I knew I was reading more into her words than she’d meant.
“Gabriel fulfills certain needs, but you’re the Seong with first dibs on my heart and you know it,” she said. I glanced at her, only to find her worried gaze fixed on me. I’d seen that look a lot lately. “Did you manage to get any sleep before this guy started screaming?”
“Nope,” I said, grabbing Stump’s warm, tiny foot when he pointed his leg toward me. I could have lied so she wouldn’t worry, but she knew me well enough to catch me. “I think seeing you wiping someone else’s ass of your own volition has traumatized me too much. I’ll never sleep again. That and the whole downfall of society, of course.”
Arden sighed with mock impatience. “John, it’s only been a few months since all the electricity stopped working and we had to flee our home and join your family in the middle of bumblefuck. I mean, could you be any less patient? I think we should wait at least a year before expecting government intervention or an explanation of what the fuck happened.”
I twisted one of her long plaits around my fingers and tugged, and she smiled deviously.
“You know, I only recently discovered how much I like that,” she said. From the look in her eyes, I could tell she was thinking something about my brother that I didn’t want to know about ever.
I released her braid and dramatically wiped my hand off on my pajama bottom. “Unlike some people, I haven’t had an unending supply of peen to distract me from pondering my mortality. Thus, no sleep,” I said. I meant it to be a joke, but as the words left my mouth I realized they were a bit too close to the mark. “And to think I used to complain about my lack of dating options back in Rochester. I’d even consider that creepy Asian studies major who kept wanting to show me his samurai sword collection at this point.”
She shifted and looked up at me. I’d always thought her beautiful with her large eyes and luminous brown skin, but since she and Gabriel had gotten together, she’d been glowing. That said a lot, given the fact that we were in the middle of a full-blown dystopian drama. I’d never thought my brother could make a woman look like that, or that Arden would let anyone close enough to even try. I was ecstatic for them, and miserably jealous too.
“John...”
The pity in her eyes was what did it. If she had joked back or smacked me upside the head, I could have pretended things would be okay soon. But the look in her eyes so clearly screamed, “You are alone and I feel sorry for you,” that I couldn’t stand it. I jumped out of my seat so fast she nearly toppled over sideways into the space I’d occupied. Stump, who’d been settling down, wailed again as he was jostled.
“I’m going to go check on the garden,” I blurted out.
“Right now? Why don’t you wait until morning?”
“It is light out. There’s a full moon,” I said. “Besides, something has been getting into the beets, and I need to assert my authority over the animal kingdom.”
She stood and shushed Stump, patting his back as she began pacing. I handed her the warmed bottle to make up for my awkward departure. She smiled as she took it from me, waiting until Stump latched on and there was only the sound of his suckling to continue talking. “Okay, Farmer McGregor. Go show those cute little bunnies what for.”
“Rabbits can be vicious, Arden,” I said. “And what about raccoons? People think they’re cute, but those wee opposable thumbs make them a formidable foe.”
Not waiting for her to roll her eyes, I walked to the door and quietly removed the crossbar and turned several locks before creaking it open. Silvery moonlight illuminated the cornstalks swaying in the cool predawn breeze, the cucumber and tomato vines that had wrapped themselves securely around wooden stakes before bearing fruit, and the heads of cabbage that sprouted in even rows beneath them. Under my mother’s careful tutelage, Arden had discovered yet another hidden talent: plant whisperer. Arden always told me I was good at everything, but my mint plants had withered and died, despite their supposed hardiness, and my potatoes had never taken. I wasn’t much for omens, but it was hard not to take things personally when every patch of garden except mine grew in abundance.
I looked up at the brilliant night sky. Auroras had blazed for weeks in the aftermath of whatever caused the blackout, but they’d all but faded away now. The universe was unfurled above me like...like nothing. There was nothing to compare it to, no pithy metaphor that could describe that swath of blinking, twinkling, all-encompassing starlight. The Milky Way seared across the sky, unimaginable numbers of stars and planets reflecting their light toward me. Without light pollution dimming their brilliance, the stars dominated the night. They seemed to press closer, wrapping around the Earth like some delegation of curious observers who were also eager to know the fate of this forsaken planet.
I was so lost in my reverie I almost didn’t hear the rustling. Something was approaching and it wasn’t a bunny; the quiet deliberation in the movement assured me it was a human.
A bolt of fear straightened my back and made my hands clammy. I’d made a dumb move—leaving the house without a weapon. I couldn’t open the door to slip back inside without the intruder seeing light seep through the front door. My family was in there, and Arden and Stump were much too close. What if Arden decided to come see if I was okay right now? My adrenaline surged at the thought.
Just then, I saw a shadow pass between me and the garden. A very large shadow. As it bent away from me, some primitive part of my brain realized that the shadow has its back to me and this would be a good time to make my move. I hesitated, but inside the house I heard Arden say, “John?” and the creak of her footsteps walking toward the door.
No.
I took off at a run, lunging at the shadow with a yell and catching it around the waist as I tackled him to the ground. Yes, this was definitely a him struggling beneath me. A him who was much taller, lanky even, but well muscled and strong. I tried to pin him down, but he flipped me onto my stomach, pulled my arm behind my back and threw his weight on top of me.
