Smoke & Fire - Adult Paranormal Romance Series, Book #1

by Michele Wesley

  The senator’s monster -sized house was only about thirty minutes away from the brothers’ current location in McLean.

  Beaming on the inside, Mycale hid how excited he was to be working with Sori. As he worked diligently on planning, he couldn’t help letting his thoughts linger on his partner’s beauty. He caught himself staring sometimes when he should have been focusing and learning. Of all the assignments he’d completed and participated in, he had never had to break into anything. This would be his first legal breaking and entering and extraction case.

  Sori didn’t beat around the bush. A few nights later, she and Mycale were parked in a well-hidden patch of woods about half a mile away from the Rochester mansion. Although they had intercepted intel that said the family would not be home, the mansion was lit up like Times Square on New Year’s Eve. The team spied obvious movement outside and inside the home.

  Sure they would postpone, Mycale asked, “What do we do now? Check back tomorrow? Do we create some kind of diversion to get them away from the house?”

  Sori lived for the excitement of her job. A mischievous grin creased her face. “I am still going in. We won’t need a diversion as long as I stay quiet and invisible.” She had been in the shadows of humanity for most of her adult life; quiet and invisible were just as much a part of her life as hunting and killing.

  Mycale had heard stories about some of the incredible assignments she’d pulled off, so if she said this assignment was still doable, he believed her. The plan was for her to go in wearing a small portable camera so that he could be an extra set of eyes and study her work.

  Before exiting the vehicle, she paused and glanced back at him. “You can come in with me if you’re up for it.”

  “Seriously?” He was a bit thrown off.

  “Yeah, why not? It’s just a few guards, some high-tech security, and a safe to crack.”

  His smile reminded her of a little kid who was about to get what they wanted for Christmas.

  Mycale shrugged his shoulders. “Hell yeah!”

  She couldn’t suppress her laughter. “Now that’s what I am talking about!”

  The last three guys she worked with had turned down her invitations to do something dangerous, crazy, and unplanned, so she really liked Mycale right now. Most people would label her crazy, but a part of their job as agents was expecting and adapting to the unexpected. She was more likely to embrace the unknown while others ran the other way.

  The massive Rochester mansion was nearly half a mile away from the nearest house and guarded like a maximum-security prison. At least ten armed guards guarded the property at strategically placed guard posts. Reconnaissance and research had the team knowing exactly where everyone should be. Upon them approaching the property, things seemed in order.

  The team wore loose-fitting hooded black jumpsuits that made them look like ninjas. The hood of the suits had built-in night vision goggles and enough pockets to make Inspector Gadget envious. Their arrival would only be detected if they accidently tripped a security measure that they had failed to find during their recon mission.

  The team had studied the security setup in great detail, which allowed them to disable and breeze through the motion detectors that completely surrounded the property’s perimeter. It had taken Sori less than ten seconds to disable the motion detector at a point they had picked out the day before. She pulled Mycale down closer to the device so that he could see exactly what she was doing. Working through night vision was like a surgeon trying to perform surgery with the sun blurring his vision; it took a little extra finesse.

  A few minutes later, after some climbing equipment, fancy footwork, and the disabling of the feed to the security system, the team entered through a second-floor window. They had walked by preoccupied guards who didn’t notice them in their all-black ninja getups.

  Mycale was blown away by the fact that he could hardly see Sori, and he was right beside her. The jumpsuits were made of some new material that captured the darkness and reflected it back like a mirror. They blended perfectly with the night, seemingly invisible to the guards. As long as they were quiet, they could go totally undetected. Mycale felt a rush comparable to skydiving and couldn’t believe he had been so quickly made an active participant in this assignment.

  They entered the house in an area near the safe room and quickly removed their hoods, disabling their night vision. Lights and night vision just didn’t work well together.

  The blueprints had been spot-on because the safe room was within sight. Their only problem; the armed guard standing in front of the room’s entrance and the well-lit path that lead to him. Hugging the walls like two dedicated tree huggers, they located the light switches to dim their path.

  The doused lights caught the attention of the guard, drawing him directly into their trap and away from where they needed to be. The team used eye and hand signals to communicate, Sori instructed Mycale to take out the guard. Mycale used a nonlethal choke-hold to disable the man. The man’s body jerked and shook, trying to fight the urge to go to sleep.

  Someone was coming up the stairs. And just as quickly as she, Mycale, still holding the man upright, disappeared silently into the darkness like a moving shadow. It was Mrs. Rochester.

  She was humming down the hall with a towel wrapped around her head. “Hank, why did you turn off the lights?” Without warning, Mrs. Rochester flipped on one of the lights, which illuminated and gave up Sori’s position. Mrs. Rochester passed so close to her position, Sori felt the breeze on her face. The lady of the house hadn’t waited for Hank to answer her question, nor had she checked to see where he was. Oblivious to what was happening all around her, the lady of the house disappeared into a nearby room and closed the door.

  Mycale laid the sleeping guard down and out of the traffic area. Sori reached into one of her pockets and quickly injected the man with something that Mycale figured would keep him sedated.

  The small, closet-sized safe room was built to be impenetrable. It was also supposedly made up of reinforced bulletproof metal. Why the room was on the second floor of the house and not on the first was a question Sori would have loved to have answered. The only way to get into the room was by fingerprint, retinal scan, and a seven-digit security code. Sori had all three, thanks to her brothers’ fancy legwork.

  Mycale watched as Sori punched in the code, then she placed what appeared to be a finger over the fingerprint scanner. She then pulled out what he knew to be a fake eyeball and placed it over the retinal scanner.

  Drake and Damon were geniuses. They had figured a way to replicate the data from the retinal and fingerprint scan and had imprinted them onto prosthetic parts. Sori had no idea how her brothers had gotten the code, but she was thankful.

  So far, it had taken the team less than ten minutes to disarm the motion detector, rig the houses’ cameras on a loop that showed a cleared path, rewire the alarm feed to the security system, subdue the guard they hadn’t expected, divert the laser sensors protecting the safe room, and gain access into the room.

  Once they gained entrance into the safe room, the task was to get into a smaller safe. No one had been able to figure out what type of safe was hidden within the safe room, so the team would have to think fast on their feet, improvise, and figure it out on the fly.

  Pulling out the tools she would need to get into the safe, Sori began the task. The team’s only exposed parts were their eyes and hands. They used those parts to convey whatever needed to be said between them. Mycale found it strange yet exciting that he understood most of what Sori conveyed with only her eyes. He had never practiced this with anyone, and it made him wonder briefly if they had a special connection.

  Something told her he would catch on either way, but Sori worked a bit slower than usual to ensure Mycale got the lesson. She could tell he was amazed at her skill level from the hint of excitement in his eyes. She pulled equipment from every pa
rt of her body and got into the safe in less than seven minutes.

  Mycale stored Sori’s every move in his mind. He watched as she quickly rummaged through the safe, found and confirmed the documents they needed. She replaced everything as it had been and closed and secured the safe.

  Since hers was filled with tools, she handed Mycale the documents to store in his jumpsuit.

  As they exited the safe room, Sori quickly pulled on Mycale’s shoulder, stopping him immediately. The laser to the entrance of the safe room had reactivated itself, and he had almost walked through it. She sprayed the area with some type of chemical that illuminated the lasers’ path and held it there for them to see. She motioned for Mycale to disable the sensor.

  He showed surprise. How did she even know that he knew what to do? He had only just seen her deactivate it once. She pointed to various spots of her jumpsuit that contained the tools he would need and stood waiting for him to get to work.

  Her hard experienced eyes studied his every movement. Mycale reached into Sori’s jumpsuit hesitantly, hoping she didn’t noticed how much she affected him. Each time he reached into her jumpsuit to replace or extract something, he stared into her eyes, feeling as if he needed to ask permission to touch her.

  Sori observed Mycale closely as he worked. She tested him, and as she had told him before, she paid attention even when people didn’t think so. She had seen him recall things from memory like he had a microchip in his brain. As Top agents, they had to be able to train their minds in unique ways so that they could remember most of what they saw and learned. Due to the secret status of their work, they rarely wrote anything down to prevent the risk leaving a trail for criminals.

  Mycale completed the last few steps, and the lasers disappeared. She felt like a proud teacher and rewarded him with a smize—a smile through her eyes. She smiled at him with her eyes since the rest of her body was completely covered. She knew that if anyone could pick up a smize, it would be him. They exited the room, secured the door, put everything back as it should be, and prepared to make their exit from the house. Mycale even took a few seconds to put the guard back in front of the safe room.

  The two quietly went back the way they had come, ensuring they righted all the cameras and security equipment. They made it back to the room where they entered the house and exited the window, where she left him the task of reconnecting the window to the alarm feed. Again, she wanted to see just how good a memory he had, and he passed her test without a hiccup. They climbed back down the wall, retrieved and secured their climbing equipment, ran past the same two guards, reactivated the motion detector, and back over the fence they went.

  She knew her brothers were trying to keep her busy to keep her mind off the TC case, and she appreciated them more than they knew. She and Mycale had pulled off the assignment about seventy-two hours ahead of schedule. All they had to do now was get the paperwork back to the person who requested it.

  Back at the SUV now, Sori told Mycale, “Good work!”

  Mycale wanted Sori’s approval and acceptance more than anything, and for her to give him praise for a good job made him feel proud of himself.

  She took a quick look at the documents then handed them back to Mycale. “Can you do a quick read over this and see what this is all about?” The documents were in some kind of code, nothing that made sense to her.

  When Sori found a gift, she knew not to waste it. She wanted Mycale to read the documents because, by law, they couldn’t copy it in any way. What she was certain of was that if she asked Mycale what he had read days or even weeks from now, he would probably be able to recall most, if not all of the document word for word.

  Sori made a quick call, and before Mycale could ask who she was talking to, she hung up and spun the vehicle in the opposite direction. She said, “We have to take that document to Twenty-five.”

  Mycale knew who Twenty-five was, and the knowledge set his pulse to a quick beat. Twenty-five was the code name the president had earned in the military for his marksmanship ability. Most people though his codename was just a number, but it really stood for 20/5 as in having the same vision as an eagle. The President had spent eight years in the military as a sniper, and it was said that he had never missed a target.

  Mycale stared through the shadows of night at Sori. If they were indeed en route to meet the president, she, as well as her brothers, were linked directly with Top. He had heard about Top agents. They were rumored to be the deadliest in the nation, never more than fifty at a time in the entire country, and hired directly by the president. In the spy world, many rumors were never confirmed or denied, a way to keep you wondering what was real or fake.

  The fact that he was associated with Top-linked agents blew his mind. He hadn’t realized he was staring off into space until she waved her hand in front of his face.

  He asked, “Did you really just say we are bringing the documents to Twenty-five?”

  She glanced over at him. “Yes. You got a problem with that?”

  Sarcastically, he said, “No, he’s only the president, the most powerful man on the planet. This is a first for me.”

  Giving him a strange look, she asked, “You work with my brothers and you haven’t met him yet? I may have to ask those brothers of mine to let you out of that cave more often.”

  Sori was surprised by Mycale’s reaction. He seemed to have had no idea that he was no longer just a regular agent. She could see it a mile away even if Mycale couldn’t; her brothers were grooming him for Top.

  CHAPTER 11

  Commander in Chief

  About twenty minutes later, the team pulled into the Mercy Memorial Hospital parking lot. This was the last place Mycale expected to go. They followed signs until they found the hospital’s helipad area. To his surprise, a helicopter sat waiting for them like a taxi. They climbed aboard the helicopter, strapped themselves in, and were headed for the unknown.

  All Mycale could do was stare over at Sori in awe. He felt like a groupie following a rock star around. They ended up at a small air base about thirty air-time minutes away.

  Mycale had no idea what state they were in anymore. He expected to see secret service and escorts greet them, but they exited the helicopter just as they had gotten on. Sori led him toward a bunch of buildings that resembled old abandoned bunkers.

  They navigated their way through a maze of hallways and secured entrance points, and Sori had the access codes for them all. Mycale noticed her familiarity with the facility as she had no trouble getting around the site and the guards’ faces registered recognition of her. The team reached an area with a door resembling a bank vault, secured by two armed guards. Sori gave each man a nod and some type of hand signal. Without question, they punched in a code simultaneously and opened the door.

  The team walked in to the president sitting behind a desk with secret service agents standing on each side of the room. Beckoning them in further, the president smiled upon their entrance. They both stopped just inside the door, stood at attention, and saluted. The president returned their salute, walked around the desk, and gave Sori a hug. Mycale stood frozen as he observed.

  Daaaaaaaamn! He fought to keep his eyes from growing wide.

  She returned a gracious hug and introduced Mycale. “Mr. President, this is Agent Mycale Phillips. Agent Phillips, this is President Thompson.”

  They shook hands, but the president kept Mycale’s hand as he spoke, “Nice to finally meet you, Mycale. The brothers have told me a lot of good things about you, and I appreciate you helping to secure the documents.”

  Mycale was so shocked that the president knew who he was that he stood speechless.

  He pulled himself out of his haze long enough to take the documents out and hand them over to the president. Mycale watched the president secure the documents in the last place he expected; the left breast pocket of his suit jacket.

  The president loo
ked at Mycale then back at Sori before saying, “Son, if you’re hanging around with this one, you must be very good at your job. This one can find her way out of the Gaza Strip blindfolded in a shit storm during a war.”

  The team, both standing at attention couldn’t hold in their laughter.

  “Relax! Have a seat,” The president told them.

  Mycale was both surprised and impressed that the most powerful man on the planet had a sense of humor.

  The president looked between them. “I want the two of you to attend my upcoming ball. They tell me the dates and times, and I show up.” The president turned to Sori. “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you’re off.”

  He pointed between the two of them. “Mycale, I want you to escort this lovely young lady. She doesn’t give herself many chances to get out and party, so I am counting on you to get her there. I’ll make sure the brothers get your invites.”

  “Yes sir, consider it done,” Was all Mycale could manage. The president laughed, but Mycale’s thoughts were running wild. Did the president just set me up on a date? He didn’t have the nerve to look in Sori’s direction.

  The president spoke briefly about his concerns on the TC case, a subject that had become near and dear to Sori’s heart. He said, “It seems they are building an agency for criminals. Slogan: Only Qualified Killers May Join.” The president joked, but the thought sparked something in Sori. They traded a few more sentences, shook hands once more, saluted, and headed back to the helicopter.

  Less than an hour later, Drake and Damon greeted the team at the front door. Damon quickly asked, “I thought you two were going to recon the place, not break into it. When we got the call that the package had been delivered, my first question was: by whom?”

  Glancing up at her brothers, Sori said, “What can I say? I am restless. I am not good at sitting around, waiting”

  At the same time the brothers yelled, “WE KNOW THAT!”