Pros & Cons of Vengeance

by Wasp, A. E.

  “Easy for you to say,” Carson grumbled. “It’s not your money we’re spending.”

  “Not yours either,” Leo reminded him. “You’ll get reimbursed by Miranda when all of this is over.”

  I grabbed an orange slushy beverage and pulled up a chair. “So how’s it work? You just pay him through PayPal or something?”

  “No. He set up a ‘dark wallet’ type transaction,” Carson said. He and Leo exchanged looks.

  “Big deal,” Wesley mocked. “I could install that on my grandmother’s computer, and she still has an AOL email address.”

  “Your grandmother was probably hacking systems with a toy whistle and a landline thirty years ago,” Carson said.

  Wesley wagged a finger at him. “Allegedly. And she was never convicted. This is barely a step up from that.”

  “Still,” Cason said, “it makes it very hard to track.”

  “But not impossible,” Leo said.

  “What am I missing?” I asked. Computers were not my strong point.

  “Well, there’s no proof yet,” Wesley said, “but it seems like the senator is into more than just run-of-the-mill blackmail. You don’t need this level of encryption and trace hiding for that. Most people getting blackmailed are other criminals and aren’t going to run to the police.” He waved at their little group. “Case in point. Dark Wallet is the kind of thing used by the big boys.”

  “I fucking hate these people. They’re why I stay out of cybercrimes. Dark Wallet? Who names these things? Fourteen-year-old boys?” Leo scowled.

  “Maybe the same people who called a boat Boaty McBoatface,” Breck offered.

  “The real question,” Ridge reminded everyone, “is how are we going to take him down now that he thinks he’s got Carson bent over a table?” He shot Carson a smirk. “Literally and figuratively.”

  “Hilarious,” Breck said, rolling his eyes at his brother’s joke. “But seriously, what is the plan from here on?” He folded his hands on the table and stared at each of us expectantly.

  I sighed at Breck’s eager expression and frowned, almost as much as Ridge had when Breck and I had shown up at breakfast together. Finalizing the plan was the point of this meeting, after all. Once Carson-as-Ben had agreed to the senator’s second demand for cash, Harlan had invited Carson to a party this weekend at his home outside D.C. and had even instructed him to bring a rich, like-minded friend, because being a blackmail victim was so much more fun when your friends could play too. Logically, I knew Breck had to be part of the planning because he and Danny were the only two who had seen the inside of the senator’s home, but I didn’t have to like it.

  “The real question is,” Carson said, “Where and how do I file my receipt for reimbursement?”

  “You have more than one multi-million-dollar corporation, Grieves. Suck it up.” Miranda walked out the door from the living room, her high-heels clicking against the cement, and sat gracefully in a free chair. She reached for the nearest unclaimed frosty cocktail, and Josie watched as she took a sip.

  With a white blouse tucked into a dark blue pencil skirt and her hair pulled back into a tight bun, Miranda looked like the kind of lawyer who could steal your company out from right under you and you would thank her for it. I was glad she was on our side.

  “Very nice,” Miranda said, smiling at Josie. “Is that the Barbados rum?”

  Josie cackled. “You know it! I told Charlie it was a crying shame to leave it languishing in the cabinet.”

  Miranda raised one eyebrow. “He never listened to anyone, did he?” Her eyes softened as she looked at Josie.

  Josie gave her a soft smile in return. “No, he did not.” She lifted her cup. “To Charlie and his posthumous hospitality. May he be in some afterlife with a bar, a band, and beautiful men to watch.”

  “Is everyone here gay?” Danny blurted out, sounding almost exasperated.

  I’d been wondering that myself.

  “I am,” Leo said.

  “So’m I,” Josie chimed in, reaching forward to clink glasses with Leo.

  “Me, too.” I grabbed Breck by the waist. “Ask him.”

  Breck nodded. “It’s true. Well, at least he really likes—” I slapped my hand over his mouth before Ridge lost his mind.

  “I think I’m bi,” Danny said shyly. “But I’ve never really dated anybody.”

  “Me, too,” Wesley added quickly. “I mean, I know I am. Pan, really, I guess.”

  “What about you, Carson?” Leo asked curiously.

  “I’m whatever I need to be.” Carson’s posh accent was back in full force, and he gave what I imagined was supposed to be an enigmatic look over the edge of his glass.

  “Oh, please. All of Sarasota knows you like the D, Grieves,” I said. “You’re a loud one.”

  “You should talk,” Carson said.

  Ridge looked like he’d bitten into a lemon. “Can we change the subject?”

  Breck slid off me and into his own chair. Reaching over, I grabbed the arm and dragged him closer to me with an awful screech of metal on concrete. “Sorry.”

  “Excellent idea.” Miranda angled her chair so the shadow of the umbrella covered her a bit more. Not that it made much of a difference in a hundred and fifty percent humidity, but it would slow down getting a sunburn. “So gentlemen, do we have a plan?”

  Carson and I exchanged an amused glance. It was we, now that the planning was well underway?

  “Yeah, as much of one as we could come up with. And for whatever it’s worth,” Leo said.

  Miranda smiled, acknowledging the truth of the statement.

  No matter how much planning you did for even the smallest operation, the only thing we could count on was that something would go wrong. We’d done as much prep as we could while still being in Florida.

  We really needed to get inside the senator’s house and get a look at the security systems and the layout, but we hadn’t figured out a way to make that happen. Danny and Breck only remembered a few rooms, and that there was an entrance from the garage. Google gave us limited info, since the place was behind a huge gate and surrounded by trees that blocked the view from above. All we knew was that the house was big and situated on a river, possibly with a huge boat moored at the dock. Not particularly helpful.

  The lack of hackable security cameras frustrated Wesley. I knew because he hadn’t stopped ranting about it.

  “What kind of maniac doesn’t have networked cameras? My seventy-six-year-old aunt can see her front and back door cameras from her laptop.” He threw himself back in his chair in disgust. “This guy…there’s no feed. Nothing. I don’t get it. I need to be close enough to control his wi-fi and use it to hack into his devices, make them do some spying for me. I could watch him from the camera in his laptop, listen to his conversations through his smart TV… and if the man has one of those home-control devices that you talk to, we are set. Those things are freakishly sensitive. I’ll be able to hear everything.”

  “You can do that?” I asked. That just seemed wrong.

  “Yeah, I can do that.”

  “Legally?” Danny asked. Wesley gave him a look.

  I’d called the senator to see if he’d be interested in hiring me, but he’d proven elusive. So we were going in almost blind. Not anyone’s favorite situation.

  My phone rang, vibrating against the glass table top and startling us all. I picked it up. “It’s Harlan.”

  “Answer it,” Miranda said.

  Danny moved closer to Breck, and Breck reached for his hand. The kid looked pale, like Harlan could somehow sense him over the phone.

  “Gonzales,” I barked into the phone, putting it on speaker so the others could hear.

  “Mr. Gonzales, it's Senator John Harlan. We met at an event at my Florida home.”

  “I remember, Senator. I’ve left a few messages for you on the number you gave me.”

  “Yes, well, I’ve been busy. As a matter of fact, I don’t have much time right now.” Harlan sounded annoyed
. “I’m finding myself in a bit of predicament.”

  “How can I help?” I glanced at Wesley to see if he knew what was going on. He shrugged. Leo, however, looked smug even behind the douchey sunglasses he and every other FBI agent, special or not, wore everywhere.

  I could hear Harlan frowning. “It seems the head of my security team has been arrested, and I’ve received information that makes me believe the rest of them may have been taking bribes or otherwise been compromised.”

  “Really?” I asked as Leo grinned. He leaned back in his chair and finished off his alcoholic slushy. “Arrested for what?”

  “As far as I can tell, failure to appear for some traffic offenses? I’m not sure, but neither his lawyers nor mine have been able to spring him. There seems to be more going on than I can tell. It doesn’t matter. The reason I am calling is that I am having an important gathering at my home outside D.C. this weekend.”

  “Yes, sir. I had been planning on accompanying Mr. Waters as his close protection.” I was improvising. I hoped Carson would play along. Miranda nodded approvingly.

  “Had been?” There was a moment of silence.

  “We’ve had a parting of the ways.”

  “So you’re available?”

  “I am.”

  “Excellent.”

  After a bit of back and forth, we agreed that I would meet the senator tomorrow, which was the day before the party, to go over some basics and get a feel for what I would be doing.

  Everyone exhaled when I ended the call.

  “Well, that is a break!” Josie said. “I think that calls for another round of drinks.” She started to stand up.

  “Josie.” Miranda laid her hand over Josie’s. She shook her head slightly. I noticed she didn’t move her hand once Josie sat back down.

  “Yes,” Carson said. “That was extremely convenient. Leo, you didn’t seem surprised.”

  Leo exhaled. “I didn’t want to say anything in case it didn’t work out. I had a few friends pull some strings, fake some paperwork. They won’t be able to hold the guard longer than a day or two, but that’s all we need.”

  A small part of the worry lifted from me. I would have been at the house, no matter what, but now, as a direct employee of the senator, I would have free access to the house and to his security system.

  Truthfully, I didn’t give a fuck about the other people Harlan was blackmailing. I wanted vengeance for Breck, pure and simple.

  “How does this affect the plan?” Miranda asked. I thought I saw a drop of sweat on her forehead. The air was getting stuffier by the minute. The afternoon thunderstorms were coming early today. The quiet splash of the low surf sounded muffled.

  “It’s going to make life a whole lot easier,” I said. “We’ve got your basic get in, get the files, set a virus to destroy his hard drive and any copies on the cloud, and get out. Piece of cake.”

  Leo snorted.

  “Carson as Ben will be keeping Harlan occupied and doing some general intel gathering. Leo is there as his like-minded friend and newest recruit. Since he’s obviously a Fed, we’re going to stick close to the truth. He’s under investigation by the Bureau, there’s bad blood, yadda yadda,” I explained.

  None of us knew exactly what was going on with Leo, so I wasn’t sure how close that actually was to the truth. Wesley might, but if he did, he wasn’t saying. We had an unspoken agreement not to pry into each other’s lives any more than necessary. I was more than fine with that.

  “I’ll find out as much information as I can about the place tomorrow, and we can adapt,” I said.

  “We’re operating on the assumption that he keeps all his files together,” Ridge said. “There are just so many unknowns here. I’m not thrilled with it. We don’t even really know what we’re looking for.”

  Wesley nodded. “Hard as it is to imagine, Harlan might have files sitting on some computer with no Internet connection. He may have a hard drive sitting in a safe. We just don’t know. We have to get inside.”

  “And we will, especially now that I’m going to be running security for the party.” I reached over to touch Breck again. I couldn’t help it. If he was within touching distance, I was going to touch him as much as I could.

  Miranda picked up her glass, swirling the dregs of her drink.

  “Wes is going to monitor everything from nearby. Ridge will be Wesley’s main eyes inside.”

  “Oh?” Miranda’s lifted eyebrows showed that she wasn’t sure about that part of the plan. I hadn’t been either, at first. The fact that Ridge looked exactly like the guy Harlan was planning to kill would be a dead giveaway… if Ridge got caught.

  “It will be fine, Miranda,” Ridge promised. “I’m very good at hiding and blending in. And now Steele can find me a safe place to hide. I plan on getting in hours before the party. If all goes well, I should have the locations of safes, computers, and file cabinets before the party starts. The reason I’m here is because I’m very good at stealing things and not getting caught.”

  “And worse comes to worst,” Wesley added, “if he gets spotted, Harlan will probably think he’s Breck, since Harlan’s been strong-arming Breck’s pimp into forcing Breck to be there.”

  “So Breck is expected to be at this party?” Miranda asked.

  I couldn’t help it. I crossed my arms over my chest and scowled. Next to me, Breck sighed.

  Just thinking about that asshole hurting Breck and Danny made me want to change the plan to taking him out with one well-placed sniper bullet. I knew all the reasons why we couldn’t, but it still felt like it would be satisfying, and it would keep Breck well out of his way. Ignoring his squawk of protest, I hauled Breck out of his chair and back onto my lap.

  Maybe if I waited until after Harlan was politically and financially destroyed, I could kill him. Face to face would be so much more satisfying than a bullet in the back of the head. I was sure Breck and Danny would want to get a little payback. Danny seemed like a babe in the woods, a minnow in a shark tank, but I knew he wasn’t. You didn’t end up selling your ass in D.C. without some kind of tragic back story.

  “What’s the worst that can happen?” Breck asked. “You’ll be there, right? And Leo and Ridge and Carson? I’ll be safe. And I want to look in Harlan’s face when he realizes he’s just fucked himself. I want him to know I helped bring him down.”

  “And how will he realize that?” Miranda asked.

  “Wesley has a plan,” Danny said, sounding a little impressed.

  Wesley’s cheeks pinked. “It was Carson’s idea,” he admitted. “I just figured out how to do it.”

  Miranda turned to him.

  “Men like Harlan have to be humiliated in public. Their public image is the most important thing to them. Photograph, videos, audio recordings, they can all be faked. In order to crush him, there have to be witnesses and incontrovertible proof of his…indiscretions.”

  “You’re going to cause a scene.” Miranda was pleased.

  “We’re going to cause a scene.” Carson’s smile echoed hers.

  “And I am going to be there.” Breck’s voice was firm.

  “Me, too.” Danny sounded a little less sure of the wisdom of that decision. Smart kid.

  “He wants to kill you.” I’d gone over it a hundred times. I couldn’t think of any other reason the asshole would want them there. To have a pleasant chat? They’d promise not to tell and he’d let them go? I didn’t think so.

  “He won’t,” Breck said, scoffing. “We’ll be fine.”

  He was naïve if he thought young boys didn’t get killed by powerful men all the time in every corner of the world. Sometimes right in front of you. My fingers tightened around his arms. “No.”

  “No?” Breck lifted one eyebrow and peered up at me challengingly. “What do you mean no?”

  “No,” I repeated. “It’s not happening.” I looked around the table. “We need to think of another plan. One that doesn’t involve Breck and Danny.”

  “The senator
is expecting me to be there, remember? I told Emilio I’d be at the party. I want to be at the party.”

  “Well, the senator’s going to be fucking disappointed, then. And so are you.”

  Breck struggled to get off my lap. I tightened my grip around his waist. No fucking way was I letting him go. It wasn’t safe. Sweat started pouring down my forehead. How was it getting fucking hotter?

  “I need to be there,” Breck said, wrenching out of my arms.

  “No!” I lunged out of the chair. I knew I was overreacting. Part of me knew, at least. But another part of me, the part that was in charge, that part of my mind was somewhere else. Thousands of miles away on another mission with a boy who didn’t survive.

  Breck dodged out of my way.

  “This is personal for me, Steele! You don’t get to decide what I do! It’s not up to you!”

  I shook the gritty feeling of sand out of my eyes, and the smell of hot metal and blood was somehow in my nose. “It’s too dangerous. He wants the both of you dead.”

  “My whole life has been dangerous, and so has yours. I want this. I need it. I’m not a child.”

  But he was. He was just a child who didn’t deserve any of this. And I was going to get him out. I’d promised. I was fast, quicker than most people expected from someone my size. I lunged, grabbing him with both hands.

  “Steele!” someone yelled. Someone else grabbed my hand and tried to pry Breck away from me.

  “No! You can’t be there. You can’t. I won’t be able to do my job.”

  “Don’t you put that on me. I can take care of myself. I was doing it way before you came around. I managed for years. Me and Ridge.”

  I shook him, hard. “Yeah? Yeah? Where was he when you and Danny were almost killed? I’m not using you for bait. I’m not. I can’t. I can’t do it again, I can’t risk that again.”

  With that, the past crashed over me, washing away the present. I was back where I’d never wanted to be. So I did what I always did. I ran.

  12 Breck

  I stared at the spot where Steele had been long after he’d run away. Ridge, who’d been holding Steele back, stood staring, too, and I’m pretty sure the shock on his face was mirrored on mine.