Pappy went off to make a few phone calls and I took Kate upstairs to have my way with her. I wasn’t sure how much time we would have left before shit hit the fan and I wanted to spend every second I could with her.
✯✯✯✯✯
“Derek, thanks for coming,” Pappy said as Derek walked into the safe house. Lola and Rob were behind him bringing in the rest of the gear.
“When the boss man tells you to do something, you do it. Even if it involves helping this asshole,” Derek said, flipping his thumb in my direction.
I narrowed my eyes at him, hating that I had to rely on these people. I didn’t have a choice though. This was for Kate. If it was just me, I would have dealt with it on my own, not caring if I came out on top in the end. But now I had a chance at a real life with Kate and I was going to do anything to hold onto it.
“You do your job and I’ll do mine and we’ll be fine,” I snarled.
“Let’s get one thing straight. I’m only here because of Kate. If Cap had ordered me here to help your sorry ass, I would have told him to fuck off.”
“At least we’re clear on that.”
“Geez, you could cut the testosterone in here with a knife,” Lola said as she set some bags down.
“I’d say that’s what we have you for, but you probably have bigger balls than most of the men on the team,” Pappy grinned.
“I can also shoot better than most of you, but I try not to rub that in.”
Rob walked in with what looked like enough computer equipment for a small army. Pappy directed him to a room to set up in and Derek and Lola followed. For the first time in my life, I felt very out of place. These men worked together and actually liked each other. When I had worked with them a few months back, I didn’t give a shit if they liked me or not because I wasn’t sticking around when the job was done. Now though, I was relying on them to help me and was hoping to join their team when things were cleared up. I didn’t have the slightest clue how that was going to happen. It was clear that none of them liked me and it wouldn’t be easy for me to assimilate into their working environment. I was used to doing things my own way, but if I was to work with them on this job and in the future, I was going to have to learn to not only get along with them, but trust that they would work with me.
“Alright, Knight, how about you fill everyone in,” Pappy said. I had a feeling he felt the tension in the air the same as I did and was trying to give me the chance to prove that I wasn’t just a killer.
“I’ve been watching Jensen’s place the last few nights. If he suspects anything, he’s not showing it. He goes out during the day and he’s back every night by seven o’clock. He has one man that follows him around, but he doesn’t seem to be a real threat at this point. Probably more of a personal assistant than anything. His house has the typical security system that any one of us could crack. I’ve been monitoring his landlines, but so far, he’s been smart and hasn’t been making any calls to anyone from his house. That’s where you come in, Rob.”
“You need me to access his cell phone?”
“Yeah. He’s going to have some issues with his security system tomorrow. We’ll scramble his cell service so he has to make the call from his landline and then we’ll intercept the call. You’ll be going in to make repairs and while you’re there, you’ll need to lift his phone and clone it. You’ll also be placing cameras around his house so we have eyes inside.” I picked up some small cameras and showed them around the table. “These connect wirelessly to his system. Once we access his security system, we’ll be able to see everything inside. As of tomorrow, we’ll be in control of his security system.”
“What about outside?” Lola asked.
“Tomorrow night, we’ll be going around the perimeter and placing cameras that will also connect to the security system. Once they’re all in place, we’ll be leaving a present at his gate.”
“And what would this present be?” Derek asked.
“The body of his commanding officer, Marks.”
Derek, Lola, and Rob looked completely shocked. They weren’t filled in all the way as to what had gone down the past few days.
“You killed another officer?” Derek said in shock. “Where does it fucking stop, Knight?”
“He was in on it with Jensen. I just didn’t know it at the time. I took him and made him talk. Now we know that Jensen is alive and he’s behind all this.”
That answer didn’t seem to appease Derek, but I didn’t give a shit. This was Kate’s life we were talking about and I would kill as many people as necessary to ensure her safety.
“We all know our jobs. Let’s get ready for tomorrow,” Hunter said, looking around the table at the serious faces. They nodded and everyone got up and went to work.
✯✯✯✯✯
“Cameras are in place and are connecting to the wi-fi now,” Lola said over the mic.
“I’m starting to get feed on my end. I should have eyes on the whole property in just a few minutes,” Rob said. He was in the van down the street, making sure that everything was up and running the way we needed. He had gone in earlier today under the illusion that something was wrong with the security system and he had patched us in. He’d also cloned his cell and we’d been monitoring it. We’d been able to watch Jensen for most of the day and so far, he hadn’t made any calls on his cell that were related to us.
“Alright, let’s string up Marks and I’ll make the call.”
I watched as Pappy and Derek hauled Marks out of the second van and strung him up on the wrought iron fence. When Pappy gave me the signal, I dialed Jensen’s number and waited for him to pick up.
“This is Jensen.”
“I left a present for you on your fence.”
“Who is this?”
“I would think you would know. You’ve been following me for years now.”
“McGuire. What the hell do you want?”
“You want me, you come after me. I’ll be waiting, but you leave everyone else out of it. This is between you and me.”
“You stole years of my life from me. Do you know how much physical therapy I had to go through? I lost my job and the military took my pension. Now I’m going to take anything that’s important to you, including that pretty doctor of yours.”
“Stay away from her,” I growled into the phone.
“When I take her, I’m going to take my time with her. There won’t be an unmarred surface on her sweet, little body. You won’t even recognize her when I send her back to you,” he laughed into the phone.
“If you thought what you went through last time was painful, just wait until I get my hands on you. I’m gonna gut you and splay your insides all over and leave you to rot.”
“Then come get me,” he taunted as he hung up the phone. Pappy placed a hand on my shoulder to calm me as the anger burned under the surface.
“You let him get to you,” Pappy said. I wasn’t sure when he had gotten there. I was so caught up in my rage that I hadn’t even noticed that Derek and Lola were there also. “You have to get that shit under control or you can’t protect her.”
“I don’t like this,” Derek said. “Something’s off with this guy. This is all too easy. He’s been planning this for years, but we just walked onto his property and were able to hack into his security system? This screams disaster.”
“I agree,” Lola said, “I think we need to watch and wait. He wants you to go after him right now while you’re mad, so I say we go back to the safe house and wait it out.”
I nodded in agreement. “I think that’s best. If I go after him now, I’m gonna fuck everything up.”
“Then let’s get back and see how this all plays out.” Pappy nodded to Rob, who took off, driving us all back to the other van where Derek and Lola jumped out to drive it back to the safe house.
✯✯✯✯✯
“He’s scrambling,” Derek muttered as we watched the footage from Jensen’s house. “This doesn’t make sense at all. Why would a man tha
t’s been planning his revenge for years be this unprepared? He had to realize that you would go after him.”
“I wish I knew. Jensen was always the planner in the group, but it’s been years since I dealt with him. He looks almost manic in the video,” I pointed at the screen where Jensen was briskly walking around and barking orders at people. According to what we were hearing, they were totally unprepared for us getting our hands on Marks.
“He’s acting like he wasn’t prepared for you to strike back,” Lola said, chewing on a beef stick. “Are you sure this guy hasn’t lost a few screws over the years?”
“I’m not sure. I didn’t even know he was alive. I have no idea what he was dealing with in therapy. Those records were all hidden.”
“Let’s take shifts getting some shut eye,” Hunter said. “We need to stay prepared in case this is all a trick. Who knows what the hell this guy is thinking. I’ll take the first shift with Lola and Derek. We’ll wake you and Rob in three hours and I’ll take a second shift before I sleep.”
“I can take a shift for one of you,” I said. “There’s no way I can sleep right now anyway. There’s something gnawing at the back of my mind and I need to figure it out.”
Derek shook his head at me. “You need to go to Kate. She’s probably wondering why we’re back and haven’t told her what the hell is going on.”
I couldn’t argue with that, so I nodded my thanks and headed up to see her. As Derek thought, Kate was sitting up in the chair in the corner of the room and staring out into the dark night. When I opened the door, she turned to me with a smile.
“How’d it go?”
“Good. Too good.” I sighed and sat down on the edge of the bed. Kate walked over and sat next to me, linking her hand with mine. “Something’s not right with this and everyone feels it. We just have to watch and see how this all plays out.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“Help me escape for a while.”
She stood and pulled her shirt over her head and I swallowed hard at the sight of her beautiful body.
I woke in the middle of the night to something, but I didn’t know what. It was a feeling I got whenever I felt like I was being hunted. I sat up and looked around the dark room, but I didn’t see anything out of place. Glancing next to me, I saw Kate lying naked on her belly. The sheet was pulled down and draped around her waist, exposing the gentle curves of her body.
The feeling of being targeted came back and my eyes wandered around the room again. I stood and looked out the window, not sure what I was looking for, but when I saw a light in the distance, I was brought back to a night years ago where I was sitting around a campfire in the desert with my brothers-in-arms and Jensen.
“She actually sent me a Dear John letter. Can you believe that shit? I just proposed to her the last time I was on leave and I bought her a huge fucking diamond. Now she’s back with her old boyfriend and I’m out thousands of dollars,” Johnson said in disgust.
“Good riddance,” I said, throwing more wood on the fire. “Be happy you got out now before it cost you more than just the price of the ring. Just think, you could have ended up in divorce court and she could have taken you for more.”
Jensen, our superior who always wanted to act like one of the guys, chimed in. “Take them both out now. You can’t let that shit stand.”
“Take them out? She broke up with me, not killed someone.”
“She stole from you. In life, you’re either the winner or the loser. Losers walk away with their heads hung low. Winners take what they want.”
“And what would you suggest that I do?” Johnson asked.
“If it was me, I’d make them think I was totally oblivious to what they had done to me. I’d let them think that they’d won. Then, when they least expect it, I’d strike back hard. Take them for everything they have and teach them a lesson. It’s no fun to just win. You have to totally decimate them.”
Johnson laughed nervously. “That’s kind of fucked up, Jensen.”
Make them think they’d won. Strike back hard. Shit. That’s what Jensen was doing. It was all a fucking trick. He was making us think that we had the upper hand, but he was pretending all along.
“Kate. Wake up.” I shook her shoulder and picked up my discarded shirt on the floor, flinging it to her when she sat up rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “Put that on quick. We have to get out of here.”
I found my pants and pulled them on when I heard a whizzing noise and the glass shattered at the window. Time stopped when I saw the grenade land in the corner, my head swiveled to Kate in slow motion and I leapt over to Kate, tackling her off the bed and covering her body with mine in the corner just as the night exploded around us. Small bits of shrapnel bit into my back, but I shook it off, standing quickly and pulling Kate up with me. She had managed to get my shirt on before the grenade came at us, so I pulled her behind me, toward the giant hole in the wall. Picking her up, I carried her through the wreckage and into the hallway through the hole in the wall.
My heart was hammering hard in my chest as I tried to figure out how the hell to get out of this and keep us safe. Once we were clear of the wreckage, I set Kate down, grabbed her hand, and ran toward the staircase at the end of the hall. Another explosion rocked the building in the room we just passed and the wall exploded outward, sending bits of drywall and the door sailing toward us. I pulled us harder down the hall, but the staircase was at the other end of the building.
“Faster, Kate,” I yelled. “We have to make it to the stairwell!”
We flew down the hall as one room after another exploded behind us. I was hunched over as I ran, trying to shield my face from the blasts and kept Kate tucked into me as best I could. A particularly close explosion sent us flying into the wall and I wrapped my arms around her, trying to protect her from any shrapnel. She hit the wall hard and slumped to the ground.
“Kate!” I yelled at her, trying to rouse her, but she was out. Blood dripped from her head and a sharp gash cut across the side of her forehead. I tore at the bottom of her shirt and pressed the fabric to her wound, hoping to staunch the blood flow. I quickly looked around and saw more explosions happening further down the hall. Not able to wait for her to wake up, I hauled her up into my arms and took off down the hall, racing for the stairwell. I had to hope that they didn’t know exactly where we were and were just taking shots all over the building. I had to get us out of here before the whole building suffered too much damage and collapsed.
“Garrick,” Kate mumbled. I stopped running and set her down so she could get her bearings. “What happened?”
“You hit the wall. Look at me.” She did and I checked her eyes as best I could in the light, not seeing any signs of concussion.
“I think I’m okay. Let’s get out of here.”
“Are you okay to walk?”
She nodded and winced a little, but got to her feet and linked her hand with mine. “I’m okay. Let’s go.”
“We’re going to have to run. Tell me if you can’t keep up.” She nodded again and I took off down the hall at a slower pace so she could keep up. We finally got to the stairwell and I pulled her down the stairs, rounding each corner so fast that I almost fell once or twice. One more flight and we would be on the same floor as the rest of the crew. Turning the corner, my eyes widened as I saw the staircase had been blown out. I couldn’t stop. I was going too fast. My feet slid out from under me and my hand shot out just in time to catch the railing. Kate screamed as she went over the edge and I gripped her hand as tight as I could, straining between holding onto the railing and keeping hold of her hand.
She screamed and wiggled as she tried to keep a grip on my hand. I could feel her slipping as she struggled to hold on.
“Kate. I need you to calm down and reach up with your other hand,” I shouted. “You have to grab onto my arm and hold on tight.”
“Okay.” Her voice shook as she tried to calm herself. A few seconds later, I felt her swinging sli
ghtly, trying to get her other arm up to grip onto mine. My arm twisted and strained and I felt my hand slipping from the railing.
“Kate, move faster. I’m losing my grip.”
My arm shook as my muscles pulled tighter. A few more minutes and we would both be at the bottom of whatever laid below us. Kate had a grip with both hands on my arm, but I was losing my grip too fast.
“Kate, I need you to wrap your body around mine and hold onto my neck. I need my other arm to help pull us up. You gotta do it fast or I’m going to drop us.”
I felt her arms wrap around my waist and then her legs. My body was sweating and I could feel her slipping. “Wrap your arms around my neck, honey.” Her breathing was harsh and I could tell she was trying to hold onto her sanity. I wrapped my free arm around her waist to hold her tight as she tried to climb up my body. “You’re doing great, Kate. Just focus on moving up to my neck.”
When her arms were tight around my neck, she looked up into my eyes and I looked back for a moment, hoping this wasn’t the last time I saw her beautiful face. I strained my other arm up over my head and floundered for a minute as I tried to find a way to contort my body to grab onto the railing. Finally getting a grip, I used my upper body strength to pull us up until Kate could climb up to the stairs.
“Okay, Kate, I need you to grab onto the railing and pull yourself up.”
“No, I could end up making you lose your grip,” she said in a panic.
“Kate, I can’t hold on too much longer, honey. I need you to do this for me. Grab onto the railing and pull yourself up. Don’t worry about me. Just get yourself back up on the stairs.”
She grabbed the railing and started pulling herself up, dragging her body against mine. When she made it to the top, her hand latched onto my wrist, the other holding onto the railing further up. I didn’t know if it was enough to catch me if I slipped, but I couldn’t wait any more. My body was tired and I could feel myself slipping more and more each second. I swung my leg up until it rested on the stair and then hauled myself up the rest of the way, scrambling to pull Kate and myself back up to the landing. Lying on my back on the landing, I stared up at the stairs above us, breathing hard as my body shook from the adrenaline.
Knight: A Reed Security Romance (Reed Security Series Book 4) Page 18