Assignment: Code of Love [Hawt Men In and Out of Uniform 6] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)
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Hawt Men In and Out of Uniform 6
Assignment: Code of Love
Attacked, kidnapped, and held against her will, Clara Smith managed to survive a psychopath and his games. But the past is coming back to haunt her and the other women from those horribly dark days. There's only one man she could ever trust to look out for her, and when he’s assigned to watch over her she’s hoping they can get beyond the pain from their past.
Elliott Timmons will always protect Clara no matter what the cost to him. He did it ten years ago, and he’s about to do it again. With his best friend and teammate Craig Yoshi watching his back again, he’s going to do whatever it takes to protect Clara from the newest threat, and maybe heal the wounds still haunting them both.
While Craig doesn’t know the indescribably beautiful Clara as well as his friend, he senses an indomitable spirit he wants in his life. Now all they have to do is survive what comes next.
Genre: Contemporary, Ménage a Trois/Quatre
Length: 78,792 words
ASSIGNMENT: CODE OF LOVE
Hawt Men In and Out of Uniform 6
Honor James
MENAGE EVERLASTING
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Ménage Everlasting
ASSIGNMENT: CODE OF LOVE
Copyright © 2015 by Honor James
E-book ISBN: 978-1-63259-107-4
First E-book Publication: June 2015
Cover design by Harris Channing
All art and logo copyright © 2015 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
PUBLISHER
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
Letter to Readers
Dear Readers,
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DEDICATION
To all of my readers and fans, thank you for continuing to give me your support and read my books, you are all truly amazing.
To my family, thank you for putting up with me and my weird writing tangents.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Epilogue
About the Author
ASSIGNMENT:
CODE OF LOVE
Hawt Men In and Out of Uniform 6
HONOR JAMES
Copyright © 2015
Prologue
In conclusion, the River Project that has been proposed is one that is a pipe dream. No matter what the powers that be try to tell you, it will never come to fruition because of the environmental impact that they are so studiously trying to hide. So please, kind readers, when you see this article ensure that you know the truth. The facts. They can all be found if you simply type the link that is at the bottom of this article into your web browser and pull up the true ecological surveys, not the ones that the Mayor and his lackeys are trying to pass off. More to follow soon, as always, your watchful wizard.
Clara hit return and then sat back with a grin. “Damn that felt good,” she said and pushed her hair back from her face. The blue streaks were new for her. The brown hair that she typically had was shiny and straight, but the blue seemed to add more of her to the mix.
“Now then, time to go to the real job.” She grinned as she got out of her custom chair and walked to her closet. Pulling out a sedate business suit, she put it on and then pulled a brush through her hair, taking care to ensure that the blue was twined in with a braid to make it not quite as noticeable.
Once she had everything on and her hair once more respectable, she headed off to her humdrum and boring-as-sin life. She sighed. “Damn I hate this,” she muttered as she walked to her Prius and got into the traffic of a midmorning in Arlington, Virginia.
* * * *
Upon arrival at the magazine she worked for, she put on the air of stupid that she wore so effortlessly to blend into the walls, so to speak. As long as people didn’t know you had an IQ off the charts and could literally hot-wire anything with an electronic brain, they didn’t ask you to come and do stupid shit like fix their PCs that were never turned on, or change the toner in the printer. No, Clara had learned that one a very long time ago when a boy that she had the hots for practically all her life had just up and left in the middle of the night without a word. Yep, being smart didn’t get her laid. Being silly and acting like all the people around her, that and her working for a fashion magazine did. She was bad like that and knew it.
Once in her office she booted up her PC and then pulled out her tablet from her purse. When she turned in her chair, she kicked onto the private Wi-Fi she had hijacked and hacked into the records of the boy, no, man she had been obsessed with since she was three and a new kid on the block. She brief
ly touched the image on her tablet before she started to read about his latest project.
“You are doing well for yourself. I’m so damn proud of you,” she whispered to the boy that had captured her heart, and the man she knew she would never have. She was far, far beyond that girl she had been. No, now Clara had a bit of a strange taste when it came to relationships, and that was something she was certain that Elliott Timmons would never understand. After all, hadn’t she been kicked out of her family when she told them that she wanted two boyfriends? Yep, sometimes it was best to fly under the proverbial radar.
“If only Elliott, if only.” She closed her tablet and after turning it off shoved it into her purse to start her day writing letters to the advice column she had inherited from the late Ms. Wainwright. As she looked at the first letter she sighed. “Great, another love what-if.” She hated those. Mostly because at this point in her life she didn’t have a love interest. Heck, she no longer had a friends-with-benefits interest because they didn’t appeal to her and hadn’t for the last two years. Her and her battery operated boyfriend were rocking out with the battery fairy. Yep, sadly her life had resorted to that. All she needed now was the cat lady starter kit and she would be set. At twenty-eight.
She looked at the blinking cursor and wanted to curse. “Dammit, life wasn’t supposed to turn out like this,” she grumbled. Turning off her PC, she grabbed her purse and walked out. She looked to the receptionist and said, “I have a doctor’s visit I forgot about.” She was smooth when it came to the lies, far smoother than she ever believed she could be. “I won’t be back today. Please let Amy know?” Amy, her boss, was what most people called the devil. Although honestly the woman didn’t scare Clara. She realized that the woman was just sad from the recent loss of her brother in the Sudan. She got that. Sadly though, the woman was a fashion magazine owner and in the spotlight more often than she wanted to be and couldn’t grieve alone. Clara felt bad for Amy, but right now she had to focus on getting her head back on straight.
Somehow. She just didn’t know how. Dammit. No, she knew how. She needed to find another man that looked like Elliott and go on a date. Not sex, just a date. She refused to have sex with any man that looked like Elliott or was in the service because that was just far too close to her heart. Nope. She needed someone that was, hell, a surfer. Maybe that would do the trick. A surfer that looked like Elliott.
She grinned. “That’s the ticket. Living in Montana that would have been the last thing we did.” Surfing. Yep, that was what she needed. Now just to find one. All it would take would be to hack a few dating sites—that was child's play—and then boom, she would have a date that she could once more pretend was the man she wanted it to be.
“God I’m a serious putz.” She talked to herself, often. It was a habit that she had picked up when she was three and realized that no one understood the language she was speaking, so she instead talked to herself. It wasn’t like she didn’t speak English, but she spoke many different languages, and then when you added in binary code, yep she was a freak.
“Note to self, when I get home, find a date and find the nearest padded room.” And check up on the energy company that was trying to make big moves in her state and trying to force a river project that would not only completely destroy two forms of life that only grew in the small lake, but also several small plant species that called the area home as well. It was just another pet project that helped to keep her awake at night when the nightmares came back. Exposing wrongdoers on the Internet under an alias that no one would ever be able to track to her. Yep, life was good. On Fridays.
She grinned at her own inner joke as she went back to the Prius, unbuttoning the far too constricting jacket of her suit and then getting in and heading off. Food, then home. Maybe it was time to shop the Crazy-Cat-Lady Network for her starter pack. Stat.
Chapter One
A very large cup of coffee appeared at his elbow. Grunting out a thanks, Timmons glared at his computer screen. Why the hell did this shit only ever happen to him? Sometimes he really, really hated being the go-to guy for all things computer.
Knowing he wasn’t alone in the office, Timmons continued to ignore the other presence as he went about figuring out their little hacker problem from a new angle. Activating the program, he narrowed his eyes while it started its work. If he was lucky, and it was all down to luck now, the program would ferret out what he hadn’t been able to discover yet.
Finally he snatched up the cup, disposed of the lid, and took a long haul of the super-hot liquid inside. Turning his chair around, he eyed the three men lounging at various points in the office. He didn’t say anything, just cocked a brow and waited. He knew better than to ask a question with any of the guys he worked with. Most of them were damn good at interrogation methods, and would use anything he said against him.
Timmons knew computers, inside and out. Spoke a couple languages and geek really well. But he often got lost in problems, tuning the rest of the world out completely until one of his friends, and former teammates, smacked him back to reality. They really were more like family, brothers one and all to him than merely friends. They had all lived through hell in the sandpits of parts of the world not a one of them could discuss. Not that any one of them was overly inclined to anyway. But when you lived, breathed, and ate with the same guys day in and out, there was a bond. It was a necessary one when your very life was held in their hands.
“How’s the hunt going for your little computer friend?” Harker asked. Bryce Harker looked like a surfer, and could affect an easygoing attitude that belied the fact he’d already figured out sixteen ways to kill you.
“Not well,” he said. Like they couldn’t have figured that out given the number of hours he’d been in his office the last few weeks. Timmons had practically moved into the space. Unfortunately his office looked a little lived in. Shit, was that a dirty sock hanging from his plant? Shrugging it off, he settled into his chair to wait. He knew they’d continue to pepper him with the obvious questions, to which he’d give them less than satisfactory yet truthful answers. Then after a time of dancing around the issue they would finally say what they’d invaded his space to say. From the look on Yoshi’s face though, Timmons wasn’t sure he wanted to hear whatever it was they had to say to him.
Slater Markham shared a look with Harker. Markham was the team’s sniper. Cold as ice, deadly as they came, he wasn’t a man you ever wanted to cross. He was also the quiet type. For when he said something you listened, and you listened well. Because it could be the very last thing you heard depending on his mood.
“Michael doesn’t see it as a threat. You closed up the hole in the system, so he wants you on background for a potential new client,” Harker told him.
No, Michael wouldn’t see it as a threat because Timmons had downplayed it all. Michael Burnett had been his commanding officer when he’d been in the corps. He trusted the man explicitly, always would, but in one instance Timmons had gone with his gut fully and kept a lot from Michael.
If Timmons let Michael know too much about the invasion into their system the man might very well order the guys to hunt down the person at the other end. What would then happen to that person was anyone’s guess. If Michael decided to play it safe, and within the law, the person would end up behind bars for a very long time. Then again, if Michael was having a bad day the person responsible could well end up in some deep, dark hole never to be heard from again.
They did have those sorts of connections they could use, should they feel the need. Not where Timmons wanted the person in question. So he’d made it sound less serious than it had been, and had plugged the hole.
The biggest issue was, if it was who Timmons believed it to be, they were so damned fucked. If it was who he thought it was, there was likely nothing Timmons could do to stop her. Of course it was all still supposition. He didn’t have any proof yet. And if his program didn’t ferret it out like he hoped, he very well may never have the proof.
> Nodding to Harker, he finished off the coffee, and tossed the cup. Shit, he had to take out his garbage, too, he realized when the cup fell off the small mountain already residing in the trash can. “Give me the details and I’ll get started on it.”
“What aren’t you telling us?” Markham asked in a low tone.
Timmons kept his facial expression completely relaxed. Years and years of practice helped him to prevent the tic that would give him away. “About what?”
“The breach,” Markham specified. “There’s more to this than you’re telling us. So what is it?”
He shrugged. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Yoshi sent him a look. His best friend in the unit, and the guy that had always watched his back when he’d been otherwise occupied pulling information from the bad guys’ computers, knew he was hiding something. Thankfully Yoshi hadn’t yet asked directly. Timmons wasn’t sure he could lie to Craig like he was sort of doing with Markham and Harker.
Markham’s lips curled slightly into a knowing smirk. Fucking annoying man likely was reading something off him. Timmons didn’t know how the guy did it, and it wasn’t like Markham was one to share such information.
Harker frowned at each of them before tossing a USB key to Timmons. “Everything’s on there. We need the full workup on this one. Michael’s gut is telling him we may not want to take the gig, so if you find any flags at all he wants to know first.”