Jackson

by Lagomarsino, Giulia

  “Hey, bossman, can I talk to you for a minute?” Becky looked around for anyone listening and at my nod continued. “I finished checking the scan of Rocco’s handprint. I did a scan with my computer program after I tweaked some of the limitations, which came back affirmative. But then I enlarged the image and the one we have on file and compared them. There are differences, but they’re so slight, the computer would have missed them.”

  “What kind of differences?”

  “It’s the curve of some of the lines of the handprint. They don’t line up.”

  “But anyone’s handprint would be slightly off depending on how they placed their hand on the scanner.”

  “Right, and I thought of that, so I used my own handprint and then used my handprint on a glove. I compared how the lines change depending on how I placed my hand on the scanner. Overall, my handprint was the same when I used my hand, but when I used the glove, the print came out just a little off. Lines were closer together or further apart. Just slightly, but when I compared it to the print that’s supposedly Rocco’s, the lines move in the same way.”

  “So, you’re saying that you’re one hundred percent sure that it’s not Rocco.”

  “I can’t say one hundred percent, but I would bet that he’s not the mole. There are just too many inconsistencies on the print, in my opinion.”

  “Alright, Becky. Thanks, and let’s keep this between us. I don’t want everyone panicking.”

  “Sure, bossman.”

  Well, at least that was one less thing I had to worry about now. I trusted Becky’s opinion and deep down, I never really thought that Rocco was the mole. But I had to be sure. I hated that I suspected him and so would everyone else, but the fact was, we did have a mole and until we figured out who that was, I was going to continue to be suspicious of anyone that had the means or motive to betray us.

  It wasn’t even an hour later when Knight showed up with Kate. I asked everyone to join me in the main room because it was the only place that all of us could fit. Getting the women in there was interesting and Derek had to carry Claire, while Knight carried Lucy because they were too drunk to walk.

  Everyone was staring at me, trying to figure out what I was up to. There was no easy way to do this. “I need the men to go outside and help Knight and Kate. They’re here with Ice, Gabe, and Hunter.”

  “You brought their bodies here?” Freckles shouted. “What’s wrong with you?”

  Before I could respond, Lucy chimed in, laughing and yanking on Lindsey. “It’s happening already. They’re going to bring them in and we’ll need to wave their spirits on.”

  Rocco shook his head and walked out with every other guy in the place, none of them missing out on the chance to say goodbye to a friend. When they walked back in, most of them looked pissed. Knight wheeled Ice in on a stretcher and Chris wheeled in Hunter. Isa and Lindsey ran over immediately.

  “Go to the light,” Lucy shouted. “It’s okay.”

  “Shoo! Go find peace,” Lindsey laughed, waving her arms toward the ceiling. A hand shot out and suddenly Lindsey wasn’t laughing any more. She looked down at Ice and let out a shrill scream, yanking at Ice’s arm to get his hand off her. “Why is the spirit alive? Oh my God, get it off me! Get it off me!”

  Lucy started shouting also when Hunter’s head popped up and then flopped back to the table with a groan. “You were supposed to come back as a spirit! You were supposed to go into a body and kiss me! This is not what happened in Ghost!”

  And to make everything that much more fucked up, Gabe walked in the door with a big smile on his face, thinking he was going to be greeted by his wife. Isa walked over to him and slapped him across the face. “You ruined my fantasy!”

  “Uh…” Gabe looked around the room, trying to find his bearings in this new environment. I pressed my thumb and forefinger into the bridge of my nose, sighing at the mess I now had to untangle.

  “What the fuck did you put in my drip?” Hunter asked.

  “It was a sedative,” Kate offered. “It was to keep the trip comfortable for you.”

  Ice was still gripping onto Lindsey’s arm and she was just staring at him like a deer in the headlights. Everyone was silent around the room until Knight scoffed. “What? Like you’ve never seen anyone come back from the dead before?”

  “Cap,” Chris said angrily, “You want to explain what the fuck is going on here?”

  “First, let’s get Hunter and Ice settled. They’re not completely out of the woods yet and they need their rest.”

  The guys nodded grudgingly and Kate directed everyone to what she needed and had others bring in medical supplies and help her set up the rooms. After about a half hour, the two of them were settled and everyone was back in the main room waiting on me to explain.

  “So, after Ice and Hunter came out of surgery, they were doing okay for what they had been through. We had everyone on watch, but someone slipped in posing as a doctor. He had all the credentials and was able to slip past everyone undetected.”

  “We already know all this,” Jules said irritably.

  “Right, so, they were injected with something to make them go into cardiac arrest. The doctors were actually able to get a rhythm again, but there were no guarantees with everything else they had been through. I have a friend at the hospital and asked him to help me make it appear that they died. I figured that none of us were safe if we stayed there, and I couldn’t just leave the three of them there unprotected. I needed everyone to think that they died, including all of you. If any one of us didn’t play it right, whoever those guys were would know that they had failed. I guess I figured that if it looked like we were three men down, we appeared weaker, and those guys would feel like they were tearing us apart.”

  “But you did tear us apart,” Cazzo said angrily. “You let Isa, Lindsey, and Lucy think that their husbands died. You let us believe that our teammates died.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us when we got here?” Derek asked. “It’s been a week.”

  “Kate and Knight flew with them to a small hospital about an hour from here. I paid a lot to have them kept anonymous and I flew in a cardiologist to look after them. When they were cleared by the cardiologist, I had them brought here. I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up until we knew for sure they would be alright.”

  “But what about Gabe,” Jackson snarled. “You let me think my whole fucking team was gone. I blamed myself for his death!”

  “Jackson, I know you’re mad, but I couldn’t bring one of them back without raising suspicions about Hunter and Ice. What if they didn’t make it? Was I supposed to get Isa and Lindsey’s hopes up when they were already grieving?”

  The whole room was silent, just staring at me. Even Freckles was looking at me with disappointment. But, I did what I had to do and I would do it again. It fucking sucked and I knew that they were going to be pissed at me for a long time, but with everything that was going on, I had to take control of the situation fast before we lost anyone else.

  Lucy raised her hand hesitantly in question. “Does this mean that none of the girls are going to kiss me?”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Jackson

  I didn’t know if I should be pissed or happy. They were alive and that was all that really mattered. And with time, I knew that I would see the logic in what Cap had done, but right now, all I could see was what he had taken from me. It was more than my friends, it was the feeling of self-worth. It was knowing that no matter what, I was doing the right thing and could always count on my gut instincts to guide me. Basically, he had taken away my trust in myself, and I didn’t know how to get past that now. There was too much doubt swirling around in my head.

  “Look, we have bigger things to worry about right now than why I lied to you about the three of them. We have two missing team members and no leads on where they are. Morgan is also missing and is most likely with The Broker. We don’t know exactly who attacked us yet, and it now appears that whoever was after
Raegan is also involved with The Broker or the man that’s in charge of the trafficking ring.”

  Cap looked over to Knight and everyone noticed. There was something more that we didn’t know yet.

  “I’m also concerned about one other thing. Storm is missing. He was last seen at our facility, but no one can pinpoint the last time he was seen. The camera feed doesn’t show enough to let us know if he was there.”

  “Cap, are you thinking Storm is an inside man?” Sinner asked.

  “No, I don’t think he’s the inside man.” Cap looked warily at us. “I think our inside man might be Craig.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” Alec growled. “I’ve been working with him for years. There’s no way he’s a traitor.”

  “Yeah, he was the one that had a bad feeling about the whole thing with Morgan,” I added.

  “Exactly,” Cap said. “He just happened to have a feeling that something was wrong and warned you to get to Chance’s house.”

  “To what end? We didn’t save Morgan. All that happened was the house burned down.”

  “And then Chance went after Agent Finley. It got several of you out of the way and there was a team there to take out Finley, and possibly you.”

  “Craig was with them,” I argued. “He would have risked getting killed also.”

  “Could have been a change of heart,” Knight cut in. “Maybe he was feeling guilty for getting involved and wanted to try and make things right.”

  “But none of that is evidence or even close to it. What makes you think that he’s the one involved?” Florrie asked.

  “Nobody has seen Craig since the attack at Reed Security. We have no idea if he made it out or if he’s missing-”

  “So, you automatically assume that he’s a traitor?” Alec snarled.

  “I’m keeping all possibilities open. Someone told those men how to get into our facility. They needed fingerprints, facial recognition, knowledge about our sensors, and the codes for the day,” Cap said calmly. “Now, I’ve talked with Knight about all the security measures. We’ve figured that if it was The Broker, he could have gotten prints from Chance’s house, but that doesn’t explain everything else. There were only a few hours between when Chance’s house was burned down and when we were attacked. Knight assures me that there is no way someone could have broken through all those security measures in that time frame. Which means that we have a mole. Craig is missing.”

  “So is Chance,” Florrie said, challenging Cap to correct her.

  “He is, but we saw him taken.”

  “And that couldn’t be staged?” Florrie shot back. “You faked Knight’s death-”

  “Florrie,” Cap said harshly. Not everyone in the room knew the details of who Knight was exactly.

  “What? Everyone knows that we all assumed he was dead. Now he’s back. It’s not like that’s new information. I’m just saying, resurrections seem to happen around this place.”

  Her glare didn’t go unnoticed by anyone, and the thing was, no one seemed to disagree with her. Silence hung thick in the air and I wasn’t sure what was going to happen from here. After a minute of tension, it was Chris that finally broke the silence.

  “You did what you had to do,” he said to Cap, “and while I might not like that I was kept out of the loop, I think what you did was right.”

  “Are you fucking crazy?” Alec spat. “He’s accusing one of our own of turning on us.”

  “It’s happened before,” Chris said wearily. “Look, I don’t like it any more than you do, but Cap has never done anything to make me lose faith in him, and you know damn well that he would put his life on the line for any one of us. I think we should listen to him and check out his theory about Craig. If anything, it might help us find him. We know someone gave us up.”

  “Yeah, and if it’s not him, do we start looking into each other?” Burg asked. “Or maybe we just look into the ones that weren’t hurt. Is this how it’s gonna be from here on out? We’re going to turn on each other?”

  “No, we need to look into who had the most to gain from attacking us,” Cazzo said, “and it wasn’t Craig. We should look into the connection while we look for him, but I think we’re looking in the wrong direction. We’re missing something here. If The Broker only works in information, what would he have to gain from attacking us? He already had Morgan. So, let’s set him aside for now. Whoever runs the trafficking ring, what would they gain from taking us out?”

  “Maybe that’s all they wanted, to take us out,” Sinner suggested. “They didn’t try and go for any information. They were there to kill us. Maybe The Broker is working with the head honcho. Let’s say the leader of this trafficking ring wanted us dead, it would most likely be because we were getting too close, we knew too much.”

  “And why take Chance?” Derek asked.

  “To keep Morgan in line,” I answered. “If The Broker wants Morgan to do as he says, he needs leverage. He wants to keep her from trying to escape. We already know that Morgan cares about Chance. She wouldn’t do anything to get him killed.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Cap asked. “Her daughter is missing.” I tried to follow his train of thought, but I was missing something.

  “If The Broker wants to keep Morgan in line, he would probably be able to find out where Payton is in just a matter of days. That would be enough to keep Morgan in line. So, why would The Broker have Chance taken by the trafficking ring?”

  “There’s got to be a different connection,” Cap said. “The Broker wouldn’t need two insurance policies and the leader of the trafficking ring wouldn’t want to hang on to witnesses. So, the new question is, why was Chance taken to begin with?”

  ✯✯✯✯✯

  Gabe was laying down in his room when I found him. His eyes were closed, but I could tell he wasn’t sleeping based on the way his fingers twitched beside his gun.

  “Don’t shoot,” I said as I walked into his room. He opened one eye and shrugged.

  “Not worth the bullet.”

  “Really? Is that how you see your best friend?”

  “You seriously believed that I was dead?” He scoffed, waving me off. “Come on, you should know that I’m not that easy to kill. That’s not the way I would go. Maybe in a hail of bullets or something cool like death by fire ants.”

  “Really? Wouldn’t that be painful?”

  “Do you know how many cases of death by fire ants there are per year? It’s like thirty and I think that’s from all species of ants. I would definitely go down in the history books.”

  “At least go for something really cool, like dying in a reenactment of a famous sword fight. Or maybe get eaten by a hippo.”

  “Where would I find a hippo?”

  I shrugged. “The zoo? People fall in those enclosures all the time. And if you think about it, it would probably be a quick death. You know, because hippos are so big.”

  “Yeah,” he nodded. “Not because one would eat me.”

  I walked over to the window and looked outside. It was so normal with him back here, but for a while, I had thought he was dead. And now we were talking, just like it was old times.

  “So, tell me, did you cry over me?”

  I scoffed, but a lump caught in my throat. I didn’t want to think about that night in the shower when I felt like I had lost everything.

  “How’s Isa?” he asked quietly.

  “You mean besides the fact that she got drunk with everyone today and is now passed out in the living room?”

  “She never drinks like that. At least, not to that point.”

  “Yeah, well, you were dead. She was…”

  “I hate that I did that to her.”

  “You can thank Cap. I’m pretty sure she gave him quite the beatdown over what happened. Cazzo told me that she said he had to choose.”

  He sat up at that, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. “Shit. She’s gonna ask me to leave Reed Security.”

  “Who knows, it cou
ld all be different now that you’re back from the dead.”

  “Do you think if I got her flowers it would help?”

  I turned and smirked at him. “Considering she was about to pick out flowers for your funeral, I would say no.”

  “Hmmm, this is one of those times Ice was talking about. I need something more, like diamonds.”

  “Maybe you could give her an actual wedding, you know, since technically Hunter and Lucy married you to them.”

  “Yeah, maybe that wasn’t the most romantic moment.”

  “It could have been worse, you could have proposed to her with lollipops.”

  He burst out laughing, holding his hand to his head as he grimaced. “You have to admit, Sinner definitely has a way with the ladies. Only Sinner could pull off a proposal like that.”

  “So, how’s the head?”

  “You know, I’ve had worse.”

  “That’s vague.”

  “How’s the leg?” he asked knowingly.

  “Feeling better every day.”

  “I’ll bet. Did you get in Raegan’s pants yet?” I grimaced. “Shit, don’t tell me it was that bad.”

  “No, it was fucking great, but I’m pretty sure I fucked that up.”

  “How do you fuck up fucking?”

  “Mud fucking.”

  “Do I want to know what mud fucking is?”

  “Imagine mud, sticks, leaves, basically the dirtiest fucking you can think of.”

  “Well, my idea of dirty fucking has nothing to do with the wilderness.”

  “Everyone has their thing,” I said with a shrug.

  “So, I take it she didn’t like mud fucking.”

  “Oh, no. She definitely enjoyed it,” I grinned. “It might have been slightly unfortunate that that was our first time.”

  He burst out laughing. “Was there at least dinner first?”

  “There wasn’t dinner before or for a very long time after. In fact, we didn’t even shower for almost a day.”