Drake (The Kings of Guardian Book 11)

by Kris Michaels

  "I'd be honored to learn the science behind the project, but you really should think of something shorter to call it."

  Jillian let a slow smile spread across her face before she chuckled, "What like Delbert or something?"

  "Delbert? Why Delbert?"

  Jillian laughed again. "Don't you remember Delbert Pike? He was that kid on campus that–"

  Drake's head snapped up when the memory popped into his head. "Oh shit, yeah! Dynamo Delbert! That kid was on something, I swear he never stopped moving."

  Jillian winked at him, and a blush spread across her face. "Perpetual energy."

  Drake smiled, the memory of the small man firmly etched into his mind. "A fitting name for a power supply. Have you published, patented, and copyrighted yet?"

  "No, I’m working on that now, but I did mention my work to several people who were interested in its applications."

  "I'll need a list of names."

  "Of course." Jillian rattled off the names and pulled up the email addresses for each from her phone. Drake typed them into his cell as she spoke. "I'm sorry, but I don't know cell phone numbers or physical addresses. All my consulting is done via video conference or over email."

  "That's fine." He returned his attention back to Cliff. "You believe her development of this technology has spurred recent events. Are you assuming professional jealousy or corporate espionage?”

  "Tell him the rest Jillian." Cliff lifted an eyebrow and stared at his daughter.

  She dropped her head and spoke to the desktop. "Obviously one or more of my colleagues have mentioned my project.” She lifted her liquid chocolate gaze to him. “I've been approached by numerous automobile manufacturers, and I've had an offer from three entities in the Middle East to outright purchase my research and prototype. One offer was for over five hundred million dollars."

  Drake leaned forward and rested his weight on his elbows as he thought. An invention such as hers would cause OPEC to blanch. "You refused." He shifted his eyes to his left, and she shrugged.

  "Jillian." Cliff's voice prompted a huge sigh from her.

  "Fine. I received three emails since I rejected the offers." She lifted her phone from the desk in front of her and swiped the screen. "I don't know who sent them, but they weren't very nice."

  Drake accepted the proffered device and read the first message in the thread. "Reconsider the offer." Non-threatening. Harassment at best. He moved the screen up and read the second. The time stamp was two weeks later. "Sell or else." Drake blinked at the message and shot a glance at Cliff. The man stared back at him. Jilly was doing her best to ignore both of them. Drake pushed the screen up and read the final email. "Accept or lose everything."

  "Well, this just moved from a series of unfortunate incidents into a reason to consider personal protection." Drake sat her phone in front of him. "Do you know which offer they were talking about?"

  Jillian shook her head and sighed. "I don't have a clue."

  Drake tapped his fingers on the counter as he thought. “Where is your invention?"

  "San Jose. In a bank safety deposit box. I got a little nervous after the third email, so I put the essential and proprietary mechanisms in a small Faraday case and rented a safety deposit box big enough to hold it. All my research and data are on external hard drives also enclosed inside the case."

  Drake smiled at that. Jill was a smart cookie with common sense. A Faraday case would protect the electronics and the hard drive against any static charge. Hell, it would also protect it against an electromagnetic pulse.

  "Okay. So, we can do this several ways. The first option, you can take this," he picked up her phone, "to the San Jose Police department." Jilly glanced at her father.

  Cliff cleared his throat. "What are the other options?"

  Drake drew a deep breath and released it slowly as he considered his words. "The threats could be international, which requires federal law enforcement involvement. The FBI or the CIA depending on the pissing contest and judicial limitations, or you could hire Guardian. We have federal authority and an overseas reach." He needed them to know they had options beyond what he could bring to the table. Although his hand was clearly the winner, he wouldn't make that decision for them.

  "Would you be overseeing the case?" Cliff crossed his arms and rocked back on his heels as he waited for an answer.

  "I don't work in the field any longer, but I can petition the boss and let him know this is personal." He figured Alpha and even Archangel would get it. He had several people who could hold the complex together while he was gone. One of the best things about Guardian was that no one person was a point of failure. There were always people being trained to fill your position. The mission must go on regardless of the personnel running it.

  "What exactly do you do now?" Jillian cocked her head sending her long blond hair off her shoulder. The curls bounced around her in a cascade of gold.

  Drake shrugged. "I run the training portion of a complex Guardian maintains.”

  "Have you ever worked something like this?" Jillian crossed her legs, and it was everything he could do not to drop his eyes to take them in.

  "Personal security? Yes and no." He shook his head. "Before I started working at the complex, I was on a highly specialized team that worked overseas. We were the means to ensure people and resources were protected. Normally those missions involved armed conflict. Suffice to say, the training I've received is far beyond the training required to perform personal security details. Whoever is tracking you has no idea what I am capable of doing." His tone became ice cold and deadly as he let his meaning flow through his words. “I am a Guardian.”

  Jillian glanced at her father for a second before she nodded. "Okay, then...I choose Guardian."

  Cliff let out a long breath and chuckled, "Thank God. I thought you were going to fight me on this."

  Jilly shook her head. "I’ll admit this has spooked me enough that I flew across the country to be with my dad under the pretense of a being guest lecturer. While I don't think any of the incidents that have happened here are actually related to the emails, they are enough to concern me. The emails may be intimidation tactics, and I really hope they are, but each time I read them..."

  Drake heard the emotion in her voice and noticed she blinked back moisture that gathered in her eyes. He got that. At a minimum, she'd been violated by an anonymous mind-fuck, and she was scared.

  He reached in his pocket and withdrew his phone. "Well then, let's begin." He hit the number two on his speed dial and put the phone on speaker.

  Chapter 3

  Jillian watched Drake as he folded his arms and leaned over his phone. The muscles in his biceps bulged, testing the tensile strength of the crisp cotton material that tried to confine them.

  "Operator Three-Seven-Four."

  "This is Alpha-Five. Send me to Alpha."

  "One moment, Alpha-Five," the professional voice responded.

  Jillian blinked, darted a glance at her father and then whipped her head back to Drake. "Is that like double-oh-seven?" She couldn't hold back the joke.

  Drake lifted his eyes to her and shook his head with a seriousness she didn’t expect and couldn't ignore. "No. That fictional character isn't as good as we are."

  Jillian swallowed hard at his no-nonsense words. "Okay. Noted."

  "What's up, D?" A male's voice came through the connection.

  "Skipper, you're on speaker. I'm up at MESE with friends. I think we have a situation and they'd like Guardian to help. Specifically, me."

  There was a pause before the man replied. "Standby." Drake leaned back in his chair and stared at the phone.

  "The line is secure." A woman’s voice spoke, and Jillian's eyes jolted from the phone to Drake.

  "Hey, Jewell."

  "Hey, yourself. What are you doing in the engineering department at MESE?"

  Jillian jumped. "How did they know—"

  Drake held up a hand. "I have a situation. I have Doctor Heathcliff O'R
ourke and his daughter, Jilly, here with me."

  Jilly? Jillian sent a glare Drake's direction. As if. The sound of a keyboard being manipulated at a tremendous speed filtered through the speaker before the woman came back onto the connection. "Ah, there we go. It's a pleasure to meet you Doctor O'Rourke and Doctor Law."

  Jillian jolted as if she'd been stung by a bee. Her attention swung from Drake to her father and then back to Drake.

  "Archangel online."

  "Dom Ops online."

  Two distinct male voices chimed in before a third spoke, "Okay, D. Fill us in."

  "Dr. Law has developed some cutting-edge technology that would, in my opinion, set the world’s oil-based economy on its ear. There have been multiple offers for her new tech, up to an offer of five hundred million dollars."

  She heard a whistle from one of the men.

  "I know, right?" said the woman who spoke earlier.

  Drake continued, "She declined and then received three emails. Jewell, can you..."

  "Got it. Doctor Law, which account did you receive those on? You have three that I see."

  "Umm...my account under Doctor dot law dot--"

  "Got it. Do I have permission to enter your accounts?"

  "Uh, yeah, sure. The password is—" Jillian listened to the keyboard in the background.

  "Don’t need it. Okay, I'm in. Let's see." The keystroke slowed, then a staccato flurry of sound followed by silence. "Yeah, this is interesting. The IP address is different each time. The email account that it came from was made the same day as the emails were sent, no further traffic on any of the accounts. It's a common tactic and impossible to track, especially since we don't have the same IP address. Not the same computer and I'd lay odds they junked the computer they sent it from after it was sent. That's what I'd do, but I'll add these addresses to Godzilla, and if he finds them, we'll know."

  "Godzilla?" Jillian snapped her eyes to Drake. What did a movie monster have to do with the threatening emails she'd received?

  "Oh, he's a computer program that has become a, I don't know, Centurion maybe. Not only does he defend our systems, but he also runs analytics and searches for me." The woman responded as if defining the system was a routine happening.

  "He?" Jillian mouthed the question towards Drake. He smiled and winked at her.

  "Okay, all of you have access to the three emails she received." The constant click of a keyboard working remained the only sound.

  "D, while the emails alone aren’t serious enough to mandate a PSO presence, everything else, to include the manner in which these emails were sent, is enough for us to justify taking the case. Jared, who do we have available?"

  "Sir, they want me to be involved." Drake stared directly at the phone not making eye contact with her.

  "Not procedurally sound."

  She couldn't tell which man spoke.

  Drake leaned forward. "I know. We need to travel to San Jose to retrieve her prototype and research data. I have the G6 here. We could be back at the complex by Monday evening. You can assign someone to run down any leads you find, but before you decide, you need to know there have been other incidents within the last week."

  She listened as Drake detailed the two incidents on campus and the break-in at her apartment.

  "I don't believe in coincidences." That came from the man with the raspy, gravelly voice. "D, take her to California. Get that tech and get her to the ranch. You see anything suspicious, you hold up, and you call in backup. Who do we have in northern California?"

  One of the men spoke, "Six PSO's on assignment. Two forensic accountants. No wait, they are in San Diego."

  Another man interrupted. "Delta Team is in San Francisco. I can tell them to move south."

  The woman chimed in, "Zane says he has one asset in Oregon."

  "Roger, copy all. Drake, do you have a Guardian SUV now?" That was the raspy-voiced man again.

  "Yes, sir," Drake responded immediately.

  "When will you leave for San Jose?" Drake looked at Jillian and Cliff when the question was posed by one of the many men talking.

  "I have my last lecture in," Jillian glanced up at the clock, "twenty minutes. I'm free any time after that."

  Drake glanced at the clock. "We'll leave tomorrow morning. I'll need the G6 fueled, and I'll file a flight plan, but I won't drop it until necessary. I can fly without a co-pilot, but that's against regulations. I'll leave that to your determination, either way, we'll be at the airport at nine tomorrow morning. Let me know if you're sending up a co-pilot. Tomorrow's Saturday, so after we land, we'll lay low until Monday morning, get the device and head back to the complex."

  "Sounds like a solid plan. Jacob, get with Kannon Starling and find out where our pilots are located. Drake, I take it you were flying back to the complex by yourself?"

  "Roger that." He'd be damned if he had a third person tag along when he brought Dixon to New York. Call him a fucking rebel.

  "Copy, I'm not sure I'm happy about it, but I get the rationale, and I'll admit I've done it myself. Where are you at with the data mining, Jewell?"

  "I'm working the electronic trails. I do not see anything from the offertory emails that would tie to any of the threatening emails that were sent. I'll have my team jump on the video chats and phone calls Dr. Law has had within the last three months. If there is a link to whoever has threatened her located in her past conversations, we'll find it. I’m also pulling any camera data we have from traffic cams around the locations where these emails originated. Long shot, but we’ve been lucky before."

  Raspy voice spoke again. "Jared pull your closest PSO for three days. Whoever else is on the case with them will have to pull double duty while they are gone. They can sleep when the primary sleeps. Get them up to San Jose. My Spidey sense is twitching on this one. I want back up in the area if Drake needs it."

  "Got it."

  "Let me know about the co-pilot situation," Drake added.

  "Will do. Archangel clear."

  "Alpha out."

  "Dom Ops out."

  "Well, looks like they all left the party, D. Do me a favor and don't take any stupid chances, or I'll send Jade to kick your ass." The woman’s voice floated clearly across the connection.

  Drake threw back his head and laughed. "She wouldn't kick my ass, she loves me."

  "If you think that will save you, you're as batshit crazy as she is. Toodles, D. Be good."

  Drake hit the side button on his phone and looked up at her. "Well, Silly Jilly, it looks like it’s you and me for the foreseeable future."

  "Awesome, and my name is Jillian." If she was going to be with him “for the foreseeable future” that nickname thing had to stop. She stood up and smoothed her skirt down around her hips before she brushed past him where he sat. She stopped behind him and whispered in his ear, "Silly Jilly was a nickname given to a teenage girl. Even then I hated it. It made me feel inadequate and was meant to mock me. In case you hadn't noticed, I'm all grown up." She squeezed his shoulders. The rock-solid muscle under her hands sent a small shiver across her skin. She stepped down and walked across the lecture hall floor to her father. Drake's eyes followed her. The heat they held was impossible to believe, and she wouldn't let her romantic imagination out to play. She wrapped her arms around her father’s waist and laid her head down on his shoulder. "Thank you." She whispered her gratitude because it was too precious to say aloud.

  "I'll always be here for you. Always." He gave her a squeeze before he spoke again. "Let him do his job. Let him keep you safe. I'm trusting him to take care of my baby girl."

  She leaned into his soft t-shirt. No matter how crazy the world got, she knew Cliff was a sane and rational port in any storm. Drake, on the other hand, he was a whirlwind. Her schoolgirl crush aside, the man had put his organization into action within ten minutes of hearing about the stupid emails. She'd tried to pretend they hadn’t bothered her, but they had. They made her look over her shoulder, made her jump at noises and fear be
ing alone when being alone used to be her solace. If nothing else, finding out who was trying to scare her would relieve the unneeded stress in her life. She'd let Drake do his job. Take her invention to his complex and just...relax. It had been a while since she'd had a vacation.

  The door opened, and Jillian pulled away from her father. Early birds were going to be filtering in. She glanced at Drake who'd leaned back in his chair and was scrolling through his phone. "Are you staying for my lecture?"

  He lifted his eyes from his phone to hers. The sky-blue orbs reflected his serious demeanor. "Until we figure out what is happening, I'm your shadow. You don't go anywhere without me."

  Jillian sucked her bottom lip into her mouth and worried it for a moment while she sorted through the ramifications of that comment. Fifteen-year-old Jilly would have been head over heels at the prospect of spending so much time in Drake's company. The Jillian of today, however, found room for caution. She glanced at him from under her lashes. He was well over six feet tall. His muscles couldn't be disguised with clothing. He had thick strawberry blonde hair and a smile that invited sinful thoughts. God, when he used that smile on her, it was like the sun upped the wattage and everything was brighter, clearer, and more vivid. The man was pure sex, wrapped up in cowboy clothes, and tied with a bow of a potential "hero riding in on a white horse to her rescue". A wave of heat bubbled through her. If only her younger self could have seen the man he'd become. Movie star handsome, wicked smart, and sweet suds and soda, he carried a badge.

  Oh! Jillian glanced over at him again. Did he have a gun? On him? It was illegal on campus, right? A shiver skated over her skin. Why was the thought of him with a badge and a gun so freaking hot? She needed to temper her attraction. The doors to the lecture hall opened, and a group of five or six students came in, laughing and joking as they found seats. Her father was sitting next to Drake in the front row. She winked at her dad and plugged in her laptop. The final two hours of her lecture and hour-long question and answer period that followed were on tap, and she welcomed the distraction.