Master No

by Lexi Blake

  Faith had to shake her head. Ever since the moment she’d introduced her sister to the gang in the kitchen, Hope hadn’t been able to take her eyes off Theo. “I’m completely shocked. You totally have a thing for Theo. You know he’s taken, right?”

  “By that ridiculous tomboy? I have no idea what he sees in her.” Hope shook her chicly cut hair.

  “Well, they’re happy together so you need to back off.” She’d been shocked at how aggressive Hope had been. She’d sat by Theo, asking him about his former Navy SEAL days and practically preening like a schoolgirl with a crush. She hadn’t actually eaten anything, simply drank three cups of plain black coffee, smiling whenever Theo would refill her mug.

  “He’s former Special Forces,” Hope said with a sparkle in her eye.

  “Yes, I know. I hired him.” It was so odd to see her super-serious sister with a full-on crush.

  “But you don’t really know what it means.” Hope’s eyes narrowed as she seemed to be thinking something through. “I’ve been working a lot with soldiers lately.”

  “I thought you were working with orthopedics. Are you developing new prosthetics?” God, that would mean her sister was doing some good in the world. Her sister had been the single most gifted surgeon she’d ever seen. Top of her class at Johns Hopkins, she was board certified in two fields, but Faith didn’t know of a surgery her sister couldn’t master almost immediately. What did she do with her gift? Was she at a teaching hospital? Was she innovating? Nope. She’d left surgery behind. She worked on whatever paid the most money, and that tended to be things to aid in weight loss, lose wrinkles, or help the overstressed cope. Not that those were bad things, but the world needed better prosthetics, too.

  “Something like that. It’s pretty complex. Let’s say I’m developing an overall program to aid soldiers in doing what they need to do. Someone like Theo is the perfect candidate. Healthy. Well adjusted. Strong family background with lots of support. He’s exactly the kind of man we like to work with.”

  “Well, except he hasn’t lost a limb, thank god.” Theo seemed to have come out of his Navy days intact. Of course one never knew what was bubbling under the surface, but Theo seemed to have it all.

  Hope shook her head as though clearing it and turned back to Faith. “Of course. And that really is a good thing. So who is this Ten person and what kind of name is that?”

  Oddly, she didn’t want to go into it with Hope. The story behind his name was so intimate, she didn’t feel like sharing it with anyone. She had to wonder how many people knew Ten’s real history. It was easier to brush it off. “It’s a nickname. I don’t think he likes Timothy too much. He’s ex-military, too. You know they all call each other by their call signs and stuff.”

  “How well do you know this man?” Hope asked, her mouth curling down.

  Ah, the judgment was back in full force. She might pay Theo to strip off his shirt to distract Hope long enough that she could get away. “I know a lot about him. I’ve spent the better part of a month getting to know him.”

  “I don’t like it one bit. I want to put a PI on him. You can’t take him out to Daddy’s place without a full security check.”

  “I know that.” She was supposed to submit the names of her traveling companions so her father could run them through various places and ensure himself that they weren’t serial killers or even worse, Democrats. “I’ll send him the names in a week or so. They’ve all agreed to jump through Dad’s hoops. I told them it’s worth it since Dad’s bartenders don’t go easy on the good stuff. So stop worrying. Besides, the club does its own background checks.”

  “Yeah, we’ll have to agree to disagree on how much we should trust some kink club to protect you. I don’t like that man.”

  “Ten? What don’t you like about him?”

  “He’s cold. Far too cold for you.”

  “He’s not cold at all. He’s quite charming.” It was why she couldn’t understand how the other subs had taken to calling him Master No. He had a ready grin and a quick wit. He looked far more like a cowboy than the ex-soldier he was. Master T was surprisingly sweet. Even after that jerk had tried to kill her, he’d held her and allowed her to feel safe. There was nothing cold about him.

  “Oh, he’s charming, but it’s all an act. That one’s cold. He’s got you fooled, sis. There’s a snake under that sexy smile. I would love to look into his background. I bet he was more than a mere foot soldier. As a matter of fact, I would bet that one has some intelligence work in his background.”

  “Don’t all Special Forces?”

  She shook her head. “Not really. They’re muscle. Intelligent, well-trained muscle, but they don’t actively form missions. They carry them out. Your guy, he sent men in. He made rough calls.”

  “How would you know that?”

  Hope shrugged. “I don’t for sure, but I’ve been working on this project for five years now. I’ve gotten to know military men of all kinds, and he doesn’t have the same demeanor. In fact, I wouldn’t have said he was ex-military at all if you hadn’t told me. There’s something about the way a military man stands, holds themselves…I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. But your Ten doesn’t have it and that makes me interested in him.”

  Hope’s Smarty Pants was showing through. She’d done this all their lives. She always knew more than Faith. It was best to brush it all off. “Well, you’ll get the chance to delve into his background soon enough. I think Dad’s security team will have the reports in the next few weeks. He won’t send the plane out until he’s satisfied. Score one for controlling fathers.”

  “And that’s a bad thing? You can’t blame him after what happened to mom.”

  They sat for a moment, their shared loss between them. Faith’s mother had been killed in a mugging. While their father had been on the road campaign stumping, Alice McDonald had chosen to stay behind with her sick daughter. The way she’d been told, Faith had taken a fever and her father had a very important speech to give the next day. He’d left Alice with the girls in a hotel in New York, not wanting to put Faith on a campaign bus. Alice had gone to get a prescription filled and was murdered by a man who took her purse and left her to die in an alley.

  When she thought about it, it made sense her father was a bit overprotective. He’d lost his wife and then nearly lost her when she’d been taken in Ghana.

  “My friends are all right. They’ll pass any tests Dad puts them through.”

  Hope sighed. “Good. Now tell me how the vaccination program is going. I heard you had some trouble. I promised my company good press from this. What’s happening?”

  “Ebola was happening, sis. Sorry a little hemorrhagic fever outbreak messed with your PR plans.” It actually felt better to get back to their semi-caustic relationship. Anything was better than the web of grief that came down on them when they talked about their mother.

  “Well, you would think those poor people would appreciate our efforts.”

  “I’m sure they would if they felt like they could actually make it to the clinic.” It had been the hardest thing to deal with all year. Even harder than dealing with the outbreak was knowing a whole group of children was being exposed to illnesses they didn’t have to because their parents were terrified of coming to the clinic. She’d even tried to go door to door, but many wouldn’t open their doors for fear of infection.

  They’d lost five babies she knew of to preventable illnesses. And two of those babies had actually had vaccines, which made her worry.

  “How much do you know about black market vaccines?” Faith wasn’t sure she wanted to have this conversation with her sister, but she needed a few answers.

  “I know it’s a growth industry since big pharma stopped producing them. Especially flu vaccines. We’re down to what? Two producers? Which is why you’re lucky my company is one of them and you should give us good press. We went into the red to help you out last season. If you can’t give marketing a boost by telling the world how kind we are, they m
ight not send you another.”

  She nearly growled. “I’ll do whatever you need me to, though this year’s batch will likely go almost unused. Even the ones I did end up using were oddly ineffectual. I lost several kids and three elderly patients to influenza and they’d been vaccinated.”

  Hope shrugged. “You know it doesn’t catch them all and the vaccine isn’t one hundred percent.”

  “I had them typed after death. The vaccine covered the flu strain these patients died of. I know it’s still not a hundred percent, but it shouldn’t be this bad. I can see one or two patients, but I need to know what went wrong. I have my suspicions.”

  “Which are?”

  She looked over to ensure no one was listening. She didn’t want her time with her friends taken up with yet another case to investigate. If Erin heard word that Faith was anxious, she would go and talk to Theo, who would talk to Ten, and they would take over. They would take care of her, but she could handle this one all on her own. “I think the shipment was derailed at some point and I got fakes.”

  Hope went still. “You think someone stole our shipment and sold them on the black market in Africa?”

  “I think someone stole them and sold them here in the States. There was a shortage last winter. They could make infinitely more money selling them here. I think they were likely switched before they ever made it out of Kronberg facilities.”

  “You think we have someone working on the inside?”

  “Well, I think the criminals do.”

  Hope rolled her eyes. “Funny. I can’t imagine it. We have about a million security protocols. And how are you going to prove it? You probably ran through that shipment in a month.”

  Hope never did listen carefully. She’d probably been thinking about getting into Theo’s fatigues. “Hello, Ebola. People stayed away from the hospital. I have half the shipment left. I’m waiting on the test results. I sent a couple of vials to a testing facility I know. They’re slow though. I should have an answer in a few days.”

  A look of pure disgust crossed Hope’s face. “I can’t believe they would do this. I swear to god I’m going to take someone’s balls off over this.”

  “I’ll hand you the scalpel.” Because hey, she’d taken the Hippocratic Oath, too, but Hope had never taken oaths very seriously. If Hope wanted to bust some balls, Faith would give her the big old thumbs-up.

  “Are they shipping the results back to Africa? I want to know what you find out as soon as possible. If someone’s fucking with vaccines, who knows what else they’re capable of screwing with. We would have to check and recheck everything that has gone out in the last year.” Hope had turned a nice shade of white. “God, our stock could plummet.”

  And people could die, but Faith knew where to focus. “Let’s stay calm. We don’t know anything yet and I doubt they’re stealing drugs meant for the States. It’s too easy to detect. It was really only the Ebola outbreak that made it possible to even check. I would have gone through those vaccines in no time at all if the clinic hadn’t become ground zero. They would have been gone long before we started losing patients, and I wouldn’t have been able to prove anything. I want to know what’s in there. I don’t think it’s simply a placebo because a few people had some odd side effects.”

  “Like what?” Hope asked. “You have to tell me because we could be looking at lawsuits.”

  “From Liberia? I doubt it. But I will tell you because you need to know. I didn’t put it together until later but a couple of my patients had memory issues.”

  “How could you tell if it was babies and the elderly? One has no memory and the other is kind of known for forgetting stuff.”

  Ah, but flu vaccines went to everyone. “I gave out those vaccines to almost two hundred people. Twenty-five of them showed back up complaining of weird memory loss. Like they were dreaming and couldn’t tell what was dream or reality for a few days.”

  “Odd. Did anyone present with fever?”

  Faith shook her head. “Not enough to be statistically important. These were healthy people with the same complaint. Some of them thought it was years later and they’d only slept for a night. But they insisted it had been longer.”

  “That doesn’t make a lick of sense. They must have had some form of dementia. Were any of them Ebola patients?”

  “Two ended up dying, but that was later. And the effect was temporary.” She could still remember one man. His eyes had been haunted. He’d claimed to have lived years in a single night.

  “Sounds like a psych problem to me. What about the other doc? Don’t you have another one with you?”

  “Yes,” Faith replied. “Nate Harrison. He’s a GP out of California. I’ve done a couple of tours with him. Nice guy. He gave out another two hundred vaccines, but he didn’t have the same problems with his patients that I did.”

  “So are you still known as the pushover doc?”

  It was something that other doctors had called her all through her residency. She’d been the doc to come to if you wanted someone to listen to your problems and give you attention. She wasn’t going to apologize for giving a shit. “They weren’t asking for attention. And not a one of them asked for meds. I don’t think this is a psych issue and I’m going to get to the bottom of it.”

  Hope finally sat back, shaking her head. “Well, let me know what you find out. I need to let the PR people get ahead of this. Can you give me that much?”

  Her sister had been good to her. Despite her desperate need to enrich her own bank account, Hope had tried to help out with Faith’s clinic in the only real way she knew how. “Yes. I’ll let you know what the lab says. I’ll even keep my mouth quiet if it turns out I’m wrong and it’s a placebo. But I’ll expect at least twice as many doses next year and Kronberg has to find the criminals.”

  Hope sighed. “You drive a hard bargain, sister.”

  She so rarely did. She usually just busted her ass to try to make things work. “I do try.”

  A loud laugh came from the other room. Masculine. Sexy. It sounded a bit like Theo. She wondered how it would sound if Master T made it. He chuckled from time to time, but never let loose a full-throated laugh.

  Hope looked toward the door, the sound catching her as well. “So you’re bringing Theo with you when you come out to the islands for your birthday?”

  “Yes, but I’m serious about you keeping your hands to yourself. Erin won’t take it kindly if you’re pawing her boyfriend.”

  Hope’s eyes turned thoughtful. “I don’t paw anyone. I’m quite polite. And if I decide I want that soldier, I’ll take him.”

  “Really? You’re not exactly the most charming woman in the world. I’ve never seen you try to seduce anyone.”

  “Seduce?” Hope huffed. “That’s a silly word. And I can be very persuasive when I want to be.”

  The door to her room opened and Ten was standing there. “Darlin’, we’ve got someplace to be this evening and I need to prep for that. Theo’s going to bring you along and we’ll talk when you get there, all right?”

  He needed to leave, but he wasn’t going to take her away from her sister.

  “Should I pack?”

  His eyes heated. He hadn’t liked being interrupted earlier. “Yes. You should pack. Take care. I want you safe and happy when I see you tonight.”

  When he would take her to Sanctum and no one and nothing would interrupt them.

  There was one thing she needed to know. She stood up and walked to him. They hadn’t had a chance to talk, but this wasn’t a question she wanted to ask in the open. She walked straight into his arms, loving the way they went around her, the strength of the man holding her. She went on her toes and whispered in his ear. “Should I stay inside?”

  His hands found her hair, masking his voice. “The attacker was a man known to have a beef with your father. He was a lone crazy, so I’m certain it won’t happen again, but don’t you leave here without Erin or Theo. I want you safe. Do you understand?”

&nb
sp; He would blister her backside if she walked out of here alone. He wanted her to himself. The thought made her heart pound. It made her pussy soft and ready for him. He was willing to protect her, to take care of her. It did something for her.

  She nodded and brushed her lips against his. “I promise, Master.”

  His lips quirked up. “And I promise you’re going to have a good time tonight.”

  He kissed her again, winked, and then walked away. Faith couldn’t help but watch that man’s super-fine muscled ass. It really was a thing of beauty.

  There was nothing cold about that man. Her sister was wrong. Ten Graham was exactly what he seemed to be—a lovely man with dominant, protective instincts.

  And she was rapidly falling for him.

  “So why don’t you tell me more about Theo,” her sister said, patting the seat beside her.

  Faith groaned. “I’ll tell you all about Erin, who’s going to kick your ass if you keep flirting with her man.”

  At least she wasn’t the only one losing her head over a boy.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “It looks good, doesn’t it?” Theo asked as he joined Ten. There was a stupid happy-puppy grin on the younger man’s face that told Ten he’d probably gotten lucky at some point this afternoon.

  “It’s certainly more high tech than it was before. Tag invested a lot of money in this place. Makes a man wonder where he got it.” Ten looked out over the playroom floor. Tag really should thank him for the whole Ace incident. Ace had been a sleeper planted by a man working with the senator. He’d blown up Tag’s first club and damn near killed a bunch of the team, but Ten had to admit the new Sanctum was a work of art.

  And so was Faith McDonald. He’d caught a glimpse of her walking into the women’s locker room with Erin at her side. Her dark hair had been in a ponytail, but he’d given her strict instructions that it was to be left down this evening.

  Tonight she was utterly under his control. He made the decisions. He chose what they would do and how they would do it, and she would comply.