“So, he’s just distracting us. Still…” Wylie asked.
“Yes. He wants us out there looking where we won’t find him so we aren’t in here to see him sneak in.” Liam was nearly giddy with the idea that Wells tried to get in and couldn’t. “I can follow him out of the system even if he isn’t in there anymore.”
“You set one of those traps, didn’t you?” Luke shook his head at his brother’s enthusiasm. Tech talk to him was like dirty words to others.
“Bingo! It’s like a footprint or a…”
“Fingerprint…” Luke laughed.
“You’ve been paying attention, brother. We may teach you to set the clock on your microwave yet,” Liam praised. “He won’t see me coming. Let’s make him uncomfortable, screw with his shit.”
“You’ll be able to find him?” Declan asked.
“Not necessarily. Best case scenario, I find him. Worst case, I fuck with him enough to piss him off, and he makes a stupid move. In the meantime, you guys need to keep clearing whatever locations I find. The one you don’t check is the one he’ll be in,” Liam explained.
“He hasn’t been hitting any of us. It’s been too quiet,” Dace pointed out. “But the city outages – power, cell towers, cable – it has to be him.”
“What’s the end game here? Why would he do that?” Wylie was impatient and beginning to pace.”
“He’s flexing his muscles, showing me what he can do. Why do assholes usually do that?”
Liam chuckled. “He is trying to intimidate us. He wants me to think he’s a big deal, but it’s just a distraction. If he was a big deal, he’d be able to get into my system and let himself take what he wanted.”
“Let me guess – you’re better than he is.” Luke rolled his eyes.
“Of course, I am. My dick is bigger too. I mean if this guy wants to turn this into a pissing match, I’ll beat him there too.” Liam was on fire, the thrill of the chase and new excitement, poured into this case, gave him a hard-on. This is what he loved, what he was good at, what he was made for.
The guys laughed at Liam’s confidence, not because it was funny but because it was true. Liam was an animal, probably the brother that should be feared the most.
Ronan laughed. “Way to be humble, man.”
“We’re at war, boys, and I’m the nuke. He wants us to think he’s untouchable, that he’s in control,” Liam said. “But for every grenade he tosses, I’ll toss three. I’ll build a wall around the city infrastructure if I have to. Battle after battle, I’ll win. This is my city, my family, and my girl.”
“Booya!” Liam shouted in their ears. “I just delivered a payload and fucked up his day. Be ready for return fire, guys.”
“His girl?” Luke questioned.
“Booya?” Wylie asked. “Is that even a thing?”
Luke looked to Wylie and shook his head. “His girl? Did you miss that?”
“Nah.” Wylie smiled. “Saw that one coming.”
Liam had been in the lair scouring intel, looking for leads and blocking anything he came across that could get in the way. Every opportunity he had, he tossed another cyber grenade at his opponent. He was determined to flush him out and win, even if the current attacks were on the city and nobody at Watermark.
It had already been a long day, and it was only early afternoon. Liam pulled away from his computer, ready for a break while he let all of his fancy programming magic work for a while. The software was adapting and learning from that which came its way and was able to regenerate itself, becoming stronger to combat all that it detected – it was almost human. Frightening to some, fascinating to Liam.
Reagan was having a birthday party at Watermark the next day, and he had promised Felicity he would help her prepare. Wells had already interrupted their lives enough, and they were all finally getting to a good place, together. Liam wasn’t letting his daughter’s birthday pass without a celebration. Watermark was the safest building in town, and their rooftop provided the perfect location.
Wells was still laying low. It had been quiet. He was likely trying to recover from all of Liam’s direct cyber hits. Liam imagined that Wells was spending all of his time protecting his location because every hit from Liam brought them that much closer to finding him.
Liam was finally finding himself, deciding who he was supposed to be as a father, a brother, a friend, a lover. This jackass didn’t get to take any more than he already had, from any of them, especially his daughter.
As Liam was about to walk out the door, Felicity entered, running right into him. In quick motion, Liam grabbed her by her arms and pinned her against the wall, trapping her between his arms, holding her there. He laid his body against hers and kissed her hard, leaving her breathless.
“I was just thinking of you,” he said.
In a breathy tone, she asked, “Good thoughts or dirty thoughts?”
“Both,” he admitted with a waggling brow, his hand creeping up her shirt to fondle her breast.
Her head tilted back and her back arched, heat pooling between her legs. She rubbed herself against him, appreciating his arousal and his hot mouth down her neck.
“Rea…” she panted. “Reagan will be staying…the night…Declan…Lydia…Jax missed her.”
He had her nearly speechless, and that pleased him. Liam smiled and said, “I owe Jax a trip to the ice-cream shop.”
Liam gave up on her breast, slipping his hand under the waistband of her shorts where he found her bare.
“No panties,” he said. “You do that for me?” When he felt how hot and wet she was for him, he asked, “Is this for me too?”
With every stroke of her sex, she moaned, speechless. She nodded her head rapidly before she buried her face in his brawny shoulder, trying to silence her pleasure. She started grinding back, riding his hand until she came apart around his fingers.
“I owe him two scoops now,” Liam teased.
When she caught her breath and was able to stand on her own, she got to the point of her visit. “I was thinking we could have a date.”
When he frowned, for obvious reasons – they weren’t making any unnecessary trips gallivanting around the city until it was safe to do so – she shook her head. “No, like a pizza, beer, and movies on the couch date.”
He dipped his head down, taking her mouth again. “One condition – you stay over.”
“I love sleepovers.” She smiled.
With a final kiss, she turned to leave but not before they gained an audience of O’Reilly men clearing their throats. Still flushed from the mind-blowing orgasm Liam had given to her, she thought to toss a distraction and smacked Liam’s ass as she left the room.
“I’ll grab Reagan off the bus and get her packed for tonight,” she said over her shoulder before disappearing down the long hall to the elevator.
“So, that’s a thing?” Declan asked.
“It’s always been a thing,” Luke answered for his brother. “Boy genius here was just too stupid to see it.”
“I wasn’t…stupid,” Liam defended. “I just didn’t know how.”
“Awww, I could’ve showed you how, buddy.” Dace taunted, patting Liam on the shoulder. “I didn’t realize a guy could forget how to use his…”
“Not…that.” Liam cut him off, not finding his poke of fun the least bit funny. “I didn’t know how to move on. Okay? I didn’t…know.”
Wylie walked over to Liam and wrapped his arms around his brother. Wylie, the biggest and most sensitive O’Reilly of all, completely engulfed him, his sentiment sincere. “Welcome back, brother. We’ve missed you.”
“Can we not do this?” Liam squirmed from his oversized brother’s embrace. “It’s fucking weird.”
“Says the guy who forgot how to use his…” Dace was cut off by a sounding alarm.
The screens on the wall automatically populated with various information as Liam’s system went to work, identifying the threat it was alarming.
“Shit,” Liam said, tapping away
at his keyboard, trying to gather the information that was lagging. “Security breach.”
“Building or tech?” Declan fired back, the brothers already grabbing weapons from the cage.
“Mother F…” Liam said. “Both.”
Suddenly, the alarms stopped, and Liam pulled his hands away from his keyboard, “I-I didn’t do that.”
“Lobby,” Dace called out as the dormant screen finally came to life. “What the hell? How’d he get in?”
The security footage revealed a man standing in the middle of Watermark’s lobby, wearing a black hooded sweatshirt – holding a knife.
“City! Get City off the elevator!” Liam shouted. “I’m trying to stop it here. There’s a lag.”
Wylie ran down the long hall and hit the emergency button on the elevator, but it kept running – the emergency button failed.
“It’s not stopping,” he yelled back to the lair.
“Almost…got…it.” Liam said, his fingers flying over the keys, determined to win this round.
All at once, the power in the building went offline, security lights from a backup generator kicking on. They watched security gates come down around the doors and windows in the lobby so no one could get in, or out.
“Elevator’s dead. She’s stuck on the third floor,” Wylie said, re-entering the room.
“Is this him or you?” Luke asked, waving his hands around indicating the lack of power in the building.
“Me. I just locked down Watermark. Whole city block is down,” Liam said. “Protocol – better safe than sorry.”
“Who’s in our lobby, and how’d the bastard get in?” Declan asked.
“Wells – gotta be,” Liam offered. “The system already found how he got in and shut him out. System is secure.”
“Who’s in our fucking lobby,” Declan asked again.
“His hood’s up. Can’t get a clear shot of his face. Only thing I’m pulling up is shots of Dunham from before. Shit.” Liam paused, comparing the pics to the man in the lobby. “Black hoodie…in all the pics.”
“He just walked in our fucking door? He has some big balls.” Dace laughed. “Race you down the stairs.”
18
The man in the black hoodie hadn’t moved when the brothers finally made it through the stairwell door to the lobby. They crept along the wall, rounded the corner in stealth-like movements. It was like any other tactical maneuver they’d engaged in. Only this time, it was at their front door, literally.
With weapons all around him, the cocking action made the man jump. “Bomb….” he cried. “Please…he said there’s a bomb.”
The brothers looked at each other, then Declan spoke, “Who. Who said there’s a bomb? Where?”
“I-I don’t know.” The man’s voice cracked, and he began to cry. “Some guy. At least I think it was a guy. I couldn’t tell.”
The man began to shake, sobbing uncontrollably, when the front of his pants quickly soaked all the way down the front of him.
“Did you just piss yourself?” Dace said in disgust.
“There’s a bomb in my pocket, a psycho threatening to kill my family, and really big fucking men with big ass guns on me. Yeah, I might have just pissed myself,” the man slobbered.
“Who did this?” Liam yelled, patience running thin. “Why? Fucking tell me, or that bomb is the least of your worries.”
“I don’t know. I told you everything. I don’t know who.” The man’s sobs made him nearly inaudible. “I-I just got this phone up the street at the cell shop. When I left, I was just a block away when it rang. I didn’t answer because it was a blocked number, but it called right back. I thought maybe it was the store or cell service, but it was some…guy…he sounded like a robot. His voice was disguised, or something.”
“Get to the part where you end up with a knife in my building?” Liam yelled, directing his aim back at the man.
The brothers each looked at him then each other, Liam’s tone and demeanor were out of character. He felt backed into a corner, his anger justified, but they wouldn’t let him do anything he would later regret. That was their job.
“I got this, man,” Luke said, protecting his twin brother as he often did. “Talk, or the person on that phone will no longer be your biggest problem.”
“The guy, or woman – whatever – knew who I was. It had my address and everything. They said I had a choice. Make $10k today or die after he makes me watch him kill…my family.”
“Shit.” Liam said, the rest of the guys shaking their heads in disbelief. Wells had taken things to a whole new level.
“I hung up, thought it was a scam or a prank. When the phone rang again, the voice started yelling at me and said my mom’s address, my g-girl’s name, and my daughter! It knew my daughter’s name. He said all I had to do to save them was walk in here with a sweatshirt on and the knife. He said nothing would happen to me, and when I was done, the money would be in my account. When I said what sweatshirt, a guy in a black hoodie and sunglasses bumped into me and socked me in the gut with this sweatshirt folded up. The knife was inside.”
“And the bomb?” Luke questioned.
“Said it was in the phone I just bought – that he could blow my head off while I was on it. Said to keep it in my pocket because he was going to blow off some important…limbs if I didn’t do what he said. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t have a choice. He said he was outside my house and would get to my family before I could.”
“Pat him down,” Luke said to Wylie.
Wylie looked at Luke and then the guy before he leaned over and whispered, “The guy’s covered in piss.”
“And?” Luke questioned.
Appalled that his brother charged him with the task when he was the bomb expert, Wylie refused. “You fucking do it.”
“Christ, Wylie…grow up,” Luke chided.
First taking the knife from the guy’s hand and handing it over to one of his brothers, Luke proceeded to pat the man down, finding only his cellphone on him in the front pocket of his jeans. He slowly removed it and carried it to a nearby table before gently setting it down.
“He’s clear,” Luke said. “Put your hands down, kid.”
When the man let his arms fall to his side in relief, he wiped his face on the back of his sleeve.
Disgusted by the piss and nasty sleeve, Wylie said, “Don’t. Don’t sit on…anything.”
All attention went to Luke as he pulled out a small tool kit from his cargo pants pocket and put on static free gloves before he went to work dismantling the phone.
“Are you sure you want to do that in here?” Liam questioned.
“It’s fine,” Luke replied, never taking his eye off the task at hand. “If there’s anything in here, it’s a low impact micro. A really small amount of micro, and it’d barely take my pinky off if detonated. This thing would serve as a better detonator than bomb casing. Besides, the signal off this phone alone would have already detonated it.”
“No,” the kid said, surprised by Luke’s explanation. “No, it said it could kill me.”
“He was fucking with you,” Luke replied, still focused on the pieces of cell phone he was taking apart, little by little.
“He knows his shit. He wouldn’t do that here if he thought it was going to do any damage or hurt anyone,” Liam added.
Luke pulled a plastic bag from another pocket and filled it with the pieces of phone laid out before him. “It’s all yours, Liam. Nothing here for me. Maybe you can find something, but I doubt it was any more than just a call.”
“Wait, you’re keeping it?” the man’s attitude changed when his life was no longer on the line. “But it’s mine. I just got it.”
“Kid, it doesn’t work,” Luke said, tossing the bag to Liam.
“Because you broke it.” Adrenaline was talking. If he was thinking right, the man would have remembered that half a dozen men with guns on him was a bigger threat than the damn phone.
Luke stepped up to the man, fast and a
ngry. “It stopped working the minute you watered it down with a gallon of piss, all right?”
Liam stepped in front of Luke, now covering his ass, trying to defuse the situation. “Look, go home. I’ll see that you get another phone by the end of the day, delivered to your place. My brother here will walk you home.”
“First,” Liam continued, handing over his own phone to the man, “I need you to check your account, see if the money was deposited.”
The man reluctantly took the phone and confirmed that the deposit had been made. “Should I take this to the police? Have you already called them? I-I can’t keep this…”
“No cops,” Liam interrupted. “Keep it. You earned it. You left yourself wide open though, so I’ll do you a solid and clean up your security, so he can’t get through to you or mess with your accounts. I’ll send you a message with details when it’s done.”
“You said increase my security. How will you reach me?”
“I said he won’t be able to reach you – not me,” Liam assured, keeping his eye on the computer screen in the lobby as he typed away. “Sorry this happened to you. Keep it to yourself though. It’s the only way we can ensure your safety.”
The security gates lifted, and the elevator began to move again while the power flickered and came back on. Liam winked at the man like they had a secret before he went to the elevator and hit the button, calling it to the lobby. Dace tossed Liam an odd look and followed the kid out of the building.
“Ensure his safety?” Declan laughed.
Liam shrugged. “He’s scared shitless. Playing off of it. We don’t want him talking, at least, for now.”
“What do you make of it? Why would he pull a stunt like that? Get someone in here and do nothing?” Wylie asked.
“Better question – how the hell did he get in?” Luke was the protector, more so than the rest of his brothers, and the idea that anyone was that close to his family, in their homes, made him see red.
Brother's Keeper V: Wylie (the complete series BOX SET): NEW RELEASE + Series Box SET included! Page 46