Jacob
A TREX Rogues Story (Book 2)
Allie K. Adams
Contents
Jacob
Trex’s Mission Statement
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
The End
About the Author
Books By Allie K. Adams
Jacob
A TREX ROGUES Story (Book 2)
By
Allie K. Adams
USA Today bestselling author
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Copyright © 2018 by Allie K. Adams
All rights reserved
First E-book Publication: 2018
Published by Allie K. Adams
www.alliekadams.com
This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, information or storage retrieval, in whole or in part, without express written permission, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
Trex’s Mission Statement
Tactical Retrieval Experts (TREX) is a privately funded agency independent of law enforcement, military, or any governmental restrictions. Our focus is on tracking and retrieving anything or anyone. Simply put: we find things. Employing highly trained agents with unlimited resources and extensive experience in covert operations, we will find anything and with guaranteed confidentiality. No matter the circumstances. No matter the danger. Call on TREX—we find what’s been lost.
1
TREX Agent Jacob Burns sat on the hard bench, staring at the memorial card in his hands, numb, unable to process the words. Key points of life, they’d told him. Achievements. Things to best remember the deceased.
He didn’t want memories. He wanted Jonathan back.
Was this what his father had gone through after losing his wife? The emptiness. The disbelief. The thought of a future so dark, so alone, so absolutely paralyzing. Was this why his father had checked out? It was exactly what Jacob wanted to do.
He didn’t want to be here, sitting outside a room full of TREX suits, waiting to justify his actions on a routine mission gone horribly, horribly wrong. He didn’t want to be anywhere but in a dark corner, staring down the barrel of a gun as he drummed up the courage to make the world a better place by removing him from it.
“How are you holding up?” Deputy Director Spencer Allen rested his hand on his shoulder. He’d been Jacob’s CO for years. They were brothers, every man in TREX Team Two. They breathed together. Bled together. Grieved together.
Jacob closed his eyes, fighting back tears. Spec ops agents didn’t cry. They were strong, the best of the best. They protected the country from threats, kept its citizens out of harm’s way. They’d lay down their lives in the name of national security.
They didn’t cry over death. They didn’t allow an innocent to die. They didn’t actually cause an innocent’s death.
“They’re ready for you.” Allen squeezed his shoulder. “Don’t worry, Burns. I’ll be right there with you.”
He nodded and drew in a breath to pull himself together before standing. He tucked the card into the breast pocket of his shirt, keeping it close to his heart. Always. With another nod, he gave the go ahead.
Allen opened the door and motioned for Jacob to enter, but stopped him and whispered for Jacob’s ears only, “They’re going to ask why.”
“I know.”
“They’re going to want to know. You’re going to have to tell them.”
Jacob held his gaze and ignored the throb of unease pulsing through him. “I know.”
Allen nodded and following him into the room, closing the door behind them.
Men in dark suits lined a narrow table in the front of the room. He recognized a few of them. TREX Special Director Dan Weber, the head of the entire agency. On his right sat David Snyder, an agent who used to be one of them and now wore a matching suit like the rest. When did that happen?
Allen held the back of the single piece of furniture centered in front of the table. Jacob stared at the wooden chair. Hard. Cold. So unwelcoming. Much like this meeting. Once Jacob sat, Allen returned to the only vacant seat at the table, the one to the left of Weber.
This was his definition of right there beside him? Not by Jacob’s standards. By sitting on the other side of the table with the rest of the suits, Allen chose his side.
And it wasn’t Jacob’s.
Weber spoke first as he read from a piece of paper in his hands. “Jacob Burns, you’ve been brought in front of the board for acts of treason. This is your one and only opportunity to explain yourself before we deliver a verdict. What do you have to say?”
What did it matter? They’d already made up their mind or he wouldn’t be here, dressed in the only suit he owned, all nice and made up to look his best when the agency destroyed what was left of his world. He met each and every set of eyes as his answer.
To hell with them. To hell with TREX. He didn’t need this job. There was plenty of freelance work for someone with his unique skillset. Bounty hunter. Private dick. If he wanted to really get his hands dirty, professional hitter.
“Your silence isn’t helping you, agent.” Weber’s piercing glare burned into him. The man had the reputation for the ability to get a confession with nothing more than that look. Snyder was a little more hands-on in his technique but not any less effective. Jacob had participated in a few of their interrogations.
But never from the opposite side.
“Burns,” Allen urged. “Tell them what you told me.”
“What do you want me to say?” He finally spoke, his voice gravelly like he’d been gargling glass. His throat felt like it, too. That’s what happens when you wake yourself up screaming every night.
“How about sorry for giving up your unit’s position to take a kill shot you weren’t authorized to take?” Weber barked. “You are responsible for an innocent’s death.”
Jacob flinched and swallowed hard.
“Christ, Dan.” Allen glared. “That innocent was his…” He hesitated as he swung his gaze Jacob’s way, waiting.
It didn’t matter the relationship he’d had with the deceased. Jonathan was gone. Dead. Deceased. They’d never take that trip to Spain. Never have that ranch house in the countryside. Not even get the chance to talk about kids. So, no. Jacob’s relationship with Jonathan no longer mattered. It was—as with everything that meant a goddamn thing—now in the past tense.
“I don’t care what he was. I only care that he’s dead.” Weber regarded Allen. “His death is on Agent Burns’s hands.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Jacob labored his breathing to keep his cool. “You think I don’t go to sleep every night hearing his screams? Wake up in a pool of sweat and tears as my mind replays that last moment over and over and over?” His volume grew with his anger, sharpening his words as he inched dangerously close to losing control. “I know he died because of me. It’s my fault he’ll never have another birthday, never finish his
masters, never get married or have kids. So, yes. I know his death is on my hands.”
“Calm down, Burns.” Allen looked ready to jump over the table to calm Jacob down if he didn’t have enough control to do it himself.
That order always had the opposite reaction. It had the opposite on him now. He jumped to his feet. “Don’t tell me to calm down. I’m in front of the board to defend my actions when I was under orders to do what I did.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Agent Burns.” Weber’s cool, unyielding expression held no emotion, no hint that he felt anything. The man was brutally cold. “No one ordered you to take the shot. No one ordered you to neutralize the target. If that were the case, your SAC would be in front of the board and not you.”
“You wouldn’t put a Special Agent in Charge in the hot seat any more than you’d put yourself in my position.”
“That’s because an SAC wouldn’t be so stupid as to pull the trigger without a clear shot!” Weber banged his fist on the table. Snyder placed his hand on Weber’s shoulder, but the director shrugged it off and pulled in several breaths. “You risked your entire unit by going after the target alone. Granger was in surgery for hours as they dug the bullet out of his thigh. Had the gunman hit one foot higher, we’d be having an entirely different conversation over his grave.”
Jacob closed his eyes against the images of the grave he’d stood over less than one week ago. The casket wasn’t anything special, not nearly worthy of the contents. The plain headstone simply read Jonathan Carmichael, beloved man. He wished he could afford more. Jonathan deserved so much more.
The reality of how close the entire unit had come to calling that mission their last haunted him. He’d nearly gotten them all killed in his blind desperation to get to Jonathan before it was too late. He’d broken formation, revealing his position. He’d turned off his com link and hadn’t heard the SAC alert the team to the innocent none of them had seen. He’d taken the shot that went clean through the target’s heart and into the man hidden behind him. The man Jacob hadn’t seen standing there. The man now in the ground with nothing more than a plain headstone with room for only four words.
“Do you have anything else to say?” Weber’s question pulled Jacob’s focus.
He stared at the special director. If this really was his last day on TREX’s payroll, he wanted it to end with a bang. Anger and grief clouded his better judgment, allowing the rawness through. “Yeah. Pass judgment on me all you want. You weren’t there.”
“Walk me through the events that day. Put me there.”
“And get your suit dirty?”
Weber thinned his lips as he stared him down. “I’m going to disregard that last statement so you’re not also brought up on charges of insubordination.”
“Do you think I care about more bullshit charges? I just buried my boyfriend.” He let that sink in. Eyes rounded. Expressions fell. Allen nodded as the rest of the men lining the table let out a collective gasp. “And judging by the shocked looks on your faces, you had no idea who that innocent was or what he meant to me. So forgive me if I’m not exactly in the right frame of mind to give a shit about your threats even if I wanted to.” He thrust his fingers through his hair to keep it off his face.
“Did you know about this?” Weber asked Allen, who simply gave the director a single nod. “Jesus God, man. What the hell were you thinking keeping this from me? From your unit?”
“It doesn’t make him any less of an agent.”
“I wish that were true.” The director’s expression grew somber. “You know what this means.”
“No,” Allen protested. “No way.”
“Sorry, Spence.”
“Goddamn it, Dan. This guy just lost everything. Do not take this away, too.”
“We can’t lose sight of the fact he put his entire unit in danger when he gave up their position to take that shot. He put an innocent in the ground and a bureau up our ass sniffing for answers.”
“What about when you went after Peck? Or when I went after Salazar?”
“Or when I went after Surreal,” Snyder added, siding with Allen, shockingly enough. Those two rarely saw eye to eye, which made sense why the director had them as his right hands—they helped him to see all sides.
Except for now. Their reasoning joined them on opposite sides of the director.
Weber bounced his attention between his two seconds-in-command. “Are you both shitting me right now? Don’t you dare pull this on me. We’ve all been there, buried someone we loved. We know the consequences of our choices. We may not like it, but we have an obligation here. It’s our duty to set this right.”
They fell silent, exchanging awkward glances before facing forward. Allen furrowed his brow, hooding his eyes.
Snyder shook his head. “When did we become the men we used to hate?”
“When we grew up,” Weber replied gruffly before regarding Jacob. “Is there anything else you’d like to say before we deliver a verdict? Be very careful with what you say next. I may not be as forgiving this time.”
“Yeah.” Jacob pulled out his TREX ID along with Jonathan’s memorial card. He had a choice to make. One he had no control over, not anymore. The other, he did. Both tore him apart. He’d already said good-bye to his partner. Now he was about to do the same to his brothers-in-arms, the only other family he’d known since losing his when he was thirteen.
He tucked the card away and approached the line of men, tossing the ID on the table. It slid in front of Weber. “Keep your verdict. I quit.”
“Burns.” Allen stood.
“Save it, Spence.” He backed away, shaking his head. “I’m out.”
“It’s not that easy, agent.” Weber’s comment stopped him before he reached the door. Why continue with the title? He just quit. That no longer made him TREX Agent Jacob Burns. That just made him Jacob Burns, former spec ops agent of TREX Team Two. “Take a seat. We aren’t done.”
“Maybe you didn’t hear me. I’m done.”
Weber slowly rose to his feet, that piercing glare nailing Jacob to the spot. “I will decide when you’re done, Burns. Now, I will tell you one more time before I lose my patience. Take a seat.”
“I’m not—”
“Sit down!”
Jacob sat.
“TREX can’t protect you from the wrongful death charges if you leave the agency,” Allen explained after everyone settled back in their respective seats. “You walk out that door, you’ll be arrested for killing two men.”
“One of those men murdered eight people!”
“He was just the one who pulled the trigger, a mercenary hired by someone else to do the dirty work.” Weber kept his voice even as he explained, but that stillness in his hard expression made him look like he was ready to explode. “Which is why TREX tracked him down for the bureau before that number moved into the double-digits. The official record will be that Jonathan Carmichael was his ninth, and final, victim. Our target died avoiding capture.”
“What about whoever hired him to do it?”
“We’re looking into it.”
“Looking into it?” What little control he’d regained over his temper cracked. “Is that your way of saying you don’t know where he is? Who he is?”
“That’s our way of saying we’re looking into it,” Weber repeated with more force. “Don’t make this any harder than it has to be. If you aren’t part of the agency, you lose your immunity. You will be arrested, tried, and convicted of these crimes. Don’t let this be what you’re remembered for, the loose cannon whose actions put a good man in the ground. Trust me. I know from experience how hard it is to shake that reputation.”
Jesus. Why not dip the dagger in a nerve agent before stabbing him in the heart? “You can’t do this.”
“Not my rules, Agent Burns.”
“Not your rules? You’re the director of the entire agency. You make the rules.”
“It’s the agreement we have with the government agencies to oper
ate under the radar.”
“You’re forcing me to stay with an agency that wants to punish me for doing my job.” Jacob pushed the hair off his face, wishing he’d gotten a haircut before today. He’d been meaning to, but hadn’t found the energy to leave the house, let alone find a barbershop. This was his first time out since the funeral.
“I’m trying to protect you,” Weber countered. “This is not up for debate. Are you willing to stay with TREX and benefit from the immunity the agency offers? Or should I call the SBI myself?”
It was a bullshit deal. Jacob had no choice, not if he wanted to stay out of prison, which absolutely had to happen if he had any chance of going after those responsible for Jonathan’s death. TREX would never sanction what he was about to do. Learning the target was nothing more than a hired gun lit a fire deep in Jacob’s soul. The true killer, the one calling the shots, was still out there. He wouldn’t stop until he made the coward pay. And pay dearly. “Under what capacity?”
“You’ll voluntarily step down from your position in spec ops and tell no one what you told us today.”
Of course. He’d finally drummed up the courage to come out to his agency and they wanted to sweep it under the societal carpet. “Step down? And then what? You’ll ship me over to a sideline division?” He shifted his attention to Snyder, whose wife was one of the top sideline agents in TREX and also had a solid reputation for recruiting discarded frontline agents to her dark side.
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