Diligence (Determination Trilogy 2)

by Lesli Richardson

  Description

  He wants them.

  When I first met Kevin Markos, we were both drunk college students at Spring Break. It was a week I never expected, and a week I’d never forget.

  Especially since I took pictures.

  Unfortunately, life got in the way, careers got in the way…as did Kevin’s miles-deep closet. I thought the only way I’d ever see Kevin again was on a TV screen.

  But now?

  He’s desperate, broken, and broke.

  ShaeLynn Samuels is a unique woman with future plans I want to be a part of. And Kevin never left my heart or my thoughts.

  Now I have a chance to make both ShaeLynn’s biggest dream come true—and mine.

  Kevin’s coming along for the ride whether he wants to or not.

  * * * *

  Chapter One

  Now

  After spending over twenty-five years as a Secret Service agent, most of that in the Presidential Protective Division, it’s difficult for me not to think of people in terms of code names.

  Mine is Priest.

  Next to me walks a man. I rest my right hand on the back of his neck, possessively cupping it as we make our way toward the White House exit, where a detail is about to transport us to my townhouse here in DC. To anyone else, it looks like a friendly, familiar bro gesture, one man to another, the other who everyone knows has had one of the shittiest weeks of his or anyone’s life.

  In reality, this man is the love of my life, my boy, my slave, my possession, my property—the poetry my heart sings.

  He is mine.

  This man is Prophet.

  He’s also the chief of staff to the president of the United States.

  Whose code name happens to be Portia.

  AKA my wife, President ShaeLynn Samuels, the former three-term US Senator from the great state of Florida.

  * * * *

  Once we’re safely inside the back of The Beast, code name Stagecoach, the huge, armored SUV limo custom-built for transporting POTUS and fam, Prophet and I are effectively alone. We leave the White House grounds with a much smaller motorcade than Portia would normally warrant. Tonight we’re rolling silent with lights and the bare minimum detail they’ll let me travel with, trying to attract as little attention as possible.

  I put my boy on his knees in front of me and spread my legs. He leans in with an exhausted sigh and rests his head against my thigh so I can stroke his hair and gently rub my thumb in a small circle in the middle of his forehead, right above the bridge of his nose.

  I close my legs just enough he’s gently captured and I watch his eyes fall closed behind his glasses as peace settles within him.

  “Prophet,” AKA Kevin Markos, is a man who graced the TV sets of millions of conservative TV viewers for nearly twenty years, before he blew it.

  Which was great for me, because when he walked out of my life twenty years before the night of his on-air meltdown, he’d taken my heart with him and I’d never figured out how to get it back.

  He’s deep in the closet. This thing we have is a secret except from those who need to know—like Shae.

  It’s been a rough couple of weeks, not made any easier by my wife’s inability to get her fucking shit together over the past couple of days, and thereby putting even more stress on my boy.

  Then again, that’s partially my fault. I guess I trained her too damn well, her and Prophet, both. She relies on him far more than I ever dreamed she would, and has become to him what he is to me—heart and soul.

  I didn’t wait all these years to finally have him back in my arms again just to lose him to another woman.

  I mean, yeah, I sound judgmental and bitchy and more than a little like an asshole right now, sure. But here’s the thing—I’m tired, I’m stressed, I’m pissed off, and I’m more than a little bit scared.

  Because these two people have become my world, and did so without me realizing how she was going to just slide on in there. Now, I’m worried I’m going to lose it all.

  Correction, I’m not worried.

  I’m terrified.

  I’m a Secret Service agent. “Retired” is a descriptor and pension designation. When I turned in my badge and service sidearm, I was third in command for the PPD.

  They don’t give that position to just any half-assed idiot who manages a GED and a meth habit simultaneously. You kind of have to know what the hell you’re doing, and the job requires you keep proving yourself to remain in it. We have a pretty high washout rate. Lots of agents end up at the FBI, because it’s hard, relentless, grueling work.

  That means I can’t simply blink my eyes and forget everything I learned and trained for over the two and a half decades I was there.

  In January, my younger brother and sister-in-law died when they were run off the road in Pennsylvania during an ice storm. That’s been almost ten months ago.

  The other driver has not been caught.

  Kevin’s ex-wife, best friend, and my wife’s press secretary—who’s all the same woman, sorry, I know that’s confusing—was murdered blocks from her DC townhome last week.

  The shooter has not yet been caught, nor are there any substantial leads.

  There is no rational reason to assume these two events are connected, two distinctly different crimes almost ten months apart. With every available government agency possible working the two cases, no one has thought they’re connected other than by tragic coincidence.

  Except in my brain, there is something going on. This is kind of what I did for a living. One of my duties was threat assessment, which meant connecting the completely discrete and seeing how they fit together to form a larger picture.

  My gut is telling me there is a connection, and that connection is through us as the First Family. This is not random, even though I have no proof. Everyone from my protective detail to the Secret Service director listens to me and nods and humors me, because I have a rep as a hard-ass for safety protocols and quadruple checking every last detail. They think I’m overreacting.

  But let me tell you what—no protectee was killed or seriously injured on my watches—ever. I’m not talking stupid accidents like tripping, or falling off a bicycle.

  It enrages me that there are no arrests in either case.

  It terrifies me that the children could be in danger.

  Oh, yeah. Adding to my already incredible stress, there’s also the little matter of Portia is up for reelection the first Tuesday in November, just a couple of weeks away, and we are now the guardians to my twin nieces and little nephew.

  AKA Petal, Pixie, and Pyro.

  He’s got a thing for fireworks, and he picked the name himself after he saw it on the code name list and we explained what it meant, so shut up. He’s five.

  It was that, or he was going to pick “Pecan,” because he loves pecan pie, and I don’t feel like listening to five years of PPD agents arguing if it’s “PEE-can” or “puh-CAHN.”

  And, duh, there’s two kinds of people—those who pronounce it correctly, and those who pronounce it the first way.

  Losing Lauren has hurt all of us, but Prophet especially so. He’s the reason she was working here in the first place. He and Lauren worked at the same conservative cable news network when they met, and they were married for four years. It was an amicable divorce, and they remained close friends after.

  Fast forward to six years ago, when a long series of events that started with him and I meeting at Spring Break in Daytona twenty years prior and having a week together neither of us could forget, ended with him literally melting down on live TV.

  A week later, Portia and I stepped in, gave him a choice, and moved forward together, the three of us.

  It wasn’t that simple, of course. There were some lies told by her, some by me to him and to her, and a helluva lot of hard work on the campaign trail and behind closed doors.

  When Portia was elected POTUS two years later, the first hire Prophet made, on election night, was Lauren. He’d already told
her he was gay, and hinted there was a guy from years ago. Then he hinted I was the guy, and that what Portia and I have is a mutual kind of beard sitch.

  Which was a total fucking lie, because he’d long since stepped into Sir mode with Portia. He’s as in love with her as we are with him. And, yes, obviously, my wife and I definitely have a full relationship. She’s mine.

  But she’s also His.

  Prophet wasn’t even supposed to be here tonight, but Portia gets this thing sometimes where she can’t eat. I don’t mean she won’t eat—she can’t. She’ll puke it up. It’s a stress reaction. No matter what, no matter how I try, the sadist in me that she loves can never help her with that, and neither can Special Agent Bruunt, or the First Spouse, or even just plain Christopher Bruunt, her husband.

  Believe me, I’ve tried.

  Her Prophet, however, has the magic touch with His girl.

  I wasn’t going to tell hm she still wasn’t eating, because even she admits after a few days her stomach will straighten up and she’ll be fine. Kev was trying to take a few days for himself to regroup and get his feet under him so he could get back to work with the election looming. Instead of staying at the White House, he’d retreated to the townhouse we all shared before Shae was elected. I visited him the past two nights to give him some stress relief.

  But I’m guessing Leo, Shae’s body man, probably spilled the beans to Kev about her not eating. Kev unexpectedly showed up tonight to spend some time with her in her study and coax some food into her.

  And now I’m taking him back to the townhouse to give him some personal time.

  With me, he’s Kev, and he’s my boy, and I’m his safe space, his higher power. I can protect him from the world—or so I tell myself.

  I want nothing more than to love and nurture him. Sure, with spankings, but he likes that.

  With Shae, from me she needs the sadist, the primal man who won’t take no for an answer, who scares her in all the good ways and who can wrest control from her until she’s ready and able to take it back. A temporary mental break she can choose or not, depending on whether she needs it or not.

  As Prophet, he can bring Portia in line with a raised eyebrow, a silent gesture. She’s a fierce lawmaker and executive officer in her own right, but we all need downtime. The thinking part of her brain never shuts off in healthy ways without a little assistance.

  Prophet is that assistance. When the world sucks the life from her, Prophet breathes it back into her.

  Unfortunately, you can’t drink from an empty well.

  Tonight, that’s where I come in.

  * * * *

  You can learn more about the Determination Trilogy, and it’s related trilogy, the Governor Trilogy, on my website:

  https://tymberdalton.com/books/series-info/determination-trilogy/

  Free Preview: The Great Turning

  The following preview is chapter one of The Great Turning (The Great Turning, book 1) by Lesli Richardson.

  Description

  [science-fiction, post-apocalyptic, futuristic, dystopian, GLBTQ fiction]

  It’s almost one hundred years since The Great Turning, the catastrophic meteor strike that changed the world forever. Russell Owens is a recently discharged New North Americas Army sniper who only wants to return to his home just outside of Yellowstone to resume life with his gentle husband, Ted. Russell doesn’t want to re-up and hates that he had to kill for a living.

  Zola Wright is the most skilled assassin the NNAA has ever had. She was tricked into re-upping—once. When the burned-out Red is sent to find Russell to talk him into returning, what her commanding officer doesn’t realize is that she’s not coming back. Her conscription time is up, and she wants out. She’s also reluctantly falling for Russell.

  Now the sniper and the assassin are the ones being hunted, on the run from the army they just finished serving. Their former CO has secrets he’ll kill to keep. But Russell and Zola have more in common than their killing skills. And when Russell and Ted both fall for Zola, she knows their only option is to stand and fight together for the happiness and peace they yearn for—or die trying.

  Chapter One

  Russell Owens no more noticed the noontime heat of the mid-April sun beating down on him as he hiked than he’d noticed the stifling humidity in Houston after his first month stationed there.

  It just…was.

  Nothing to be done about it, except to keep moving.

  Moving.

  Always moving.

  He’d opted for an easterly trek instead of a more direct northern and westerly course, following the skeleton of what remained of Old Highway 10 toward the shipping yards of Baton Rouge.

  It could possibly take him weeks longer to reach his final destination, depending on the condition of the roads between there and home, but it would keep him well clear of the wastelands of the New Mexico and western Texas territories. He hoped he might be able to hop a boat to take him up the Mississippi, at least as far as New St. Louis, which would put him squarely in the heart of the Midwest Territory.

  From that point, it should be easy to join a caravan heading northwest toward Rapid City, or farther. If his luck held, maybe he could find a caravan going all the way to the Seattle Stronghold, which would take him even closer to home. He’d listened to the radio chatter during his five-year conscription at Houston. He’d kept up with scuttlebutt. He’d studied the weather patterns. He’d followed the ShiTr reports, as they called them—Shipping and Transportation.

  Late spring and summer meant caravans traversing the high passes and cutting weeks—sometimes months—off transport times.

  Someone would be able to help him get to Montana.

  Home.

  To Ted.

  With that thought firmly gripped in his mind, Russ kept moving.

  Moving.

  Always moving.

  Overhead, the sun slowly swung across the sky until it was beating on his back instead of directly against his battered floppy lid, one of the few things from his conscription period he didn’t mind holding on to. The beige canvas hats were practical, durable, and came in handy.

  He’d burned one of his uniform shirts the first night he’d camped out. Just pulled it off and set fire to it. In retrospect it was a foolish move, one which could give anyone who might be following him a clue to his route, but he didn’t care.

  It felt good to do it. Not like he needed it any longer.

  Despite unofficial requests by Colonel Craige and Major Hicks to reconsider opting out and to please speak with them one last time before filing, he hadn’t.

  They hadn’t issued orders to speak with either of them.

  So once Russ’ filed his opt-out, he’d been issued a civvie ID card, and his chip code had been updated, Russ had packed his ruck and bugged out of Houston before anyone knew he’d actually departed.

  Gone.

  Out.

  Free.

  And now, back to Ted.

  Maybe if they’d tagged him for a different role he would have reconsidered, if Ted had been for it. Go for corporate status, a lifer. Or even a wonk. If there were no available transfers to the Bozeman barracks, he could have easily afforded to pay Ted’s passage and been assigned digs on base and lived a boring, humdrum life as a fleet mech, or a clerk, while Ted made a decent living as a civvie sol-ec tech.

  Hell, Russ wouldn’t have minded being a cook.

  But no. That wasn’t possible. Not with what they wanted him to do.

  He’d despised every second of it. He hated being shipped out on midnight air runs to territories foreign and domestic to back-up other Red units or ground grunts doing enforcing, rooting out bands of thugs, or calming Fundie rebel skirmishes.

  And he wasn’t good enough at kissing ass—or willing to engage in dirty tricks—to step on the backs of his fellow Reds to get a promotion higher than the rank of captain. And in Craige’s command, you pretty much had to be like that to advance any farther up the food chain.


  Russ might have been the best sniper the New North Americas Army ever had, but each shot he took, each kill he made, it chipped away at a piece of his soul until he knew the only good thing left inside him was his love for Ted.

  That’s where the rest of him still lay.

  And that’s where he’d go, home to Ted, in Montana.

  Or he’d die trying.

  * * * *

  His second night on the road, Russ made a nest for himself in some thick, tall brush a few dozen yards off the old roadbed. He ate a protein bar for dinner instead of popping open one of the MREs he’d purchased on base before he left, or starting a fire and hunting something. He definitely didn’t need a fire. The gentle, warm breeze felt pleasantly mild, and a nearly full moon gave him plenty of light to see by. Not to mention staying dark in his position kept him safely hidden from anyone who might pass his location.

  Yes, he was once again a legally free citizen of the New North Americas, whatever that meant. He’d done his five years of mandatory conscription time, earned enough coin to help him and Ted expand their compound the way they’d always talked about, and he could theoretically live out the rest of his life in peace.

  If the nightmares would ever stop.

  Russ never slept well or deeply. Not anymore. Especially when out in the open.

  Add to the list that he was still far closer to Houston than he’d like to be.

  A few hours later he startled awake, his fingers closing around the grip of the 9mm he’d purchased for his own use as a sidearm during conscription.

  Listening, he waited, body tensed. He knew what had awakened him—all the normal sounds of crickets, birds, and other nocturnally active denizens had gone silent in his immediate vicinity.