Parker
A Reed Security Romance
Giulia Lagomarsino
Copyright © 2020 by Giulia Lagomarsino
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Created with Vellum
I started developing Parker’s story and GoodKnight back in January. Unfortunately, current events have seemed to line up just a little too perfectly with this story. I hope you enjoy this book and watch for the second part to this story in GoodKnight.
Contents
1. Senator Burke
2. Knight
3. Blake
4. Parker
5. Blake
6. Parker
7. Blake
8. Parker
9. Blake
10. Ice
11. Blake
12. Parker
13. Blake
14. Parker
15. Blake
16. Parker
17. Blake
18. Parker
19. Blake
20. Parker
21. Blake
22. Parker
23. Senator Cortez
24. Blake
25. Cap
26. Parker
27. Blake
28. Parker
29. Todd
30. Blake
31. Agent Dennick
32. Cap
33. Parker
34. Blake
35. Senator Cortez
36. Knight
37. Kate
Also by Giulia Lagomarsino
Preview of GoodKnight
Knight
Cast of Characters
Cast of Reed Security
Sebastian “Cap” Reed- owner
Maggie “Freckles” Reed
Caitlin Reed
Clara Reed
Gunner Reed
Tucker Reed
Lily Reed
Carter Reed
Julia Reed
Team 1:
Derek “Irish” Cortell- team leader and part owner
Claire Cortell
Janie Cortell
Hunter “Pappy” Papacosta
Lucy Papacosta
Rylee Papacosta
Colt Papacosta
Rocco Turner
Brooke
Evelyn Rose Turner
Team 2:
Sam “Cazzo” Galmacci- team leader and part owner
Vanessa Galmacci
Sofia Galmacci
Leo Galmacci
Max Galmacci
Mark “Sinner” Sinn
Cara Sinn
Violet Sinn
Asher Sinn
Blake “Burg” Reasenburg
Emma Reasenburg
Ryker Reasenburg
Beatrix (Bea)
Team 3:
John “Ice” Peters- team leader and part owner
Lindsey Peters
Zoe Peters
Cade Peters
Willow Peters
Julian “Jules” Siegrist
Ivy Siegrist
John Christopher Hudson Siegrist
Katie Siegrist
Chris “Jack” McKay
Alison (Ali) McKay
Axel McKay
Elizabeth (Lizzie) McKay
Team 4:
Chance “Sniper” Hendrix
Morgan James (Shyla)
Payton James
Jackson Lewis
Raegan Cartwright
Annie Lewis
Parents: Susan and Robert Cartwright
Gabe Moore
Isabella (Isa) Moore
Vittoria
Lorenzo (Enzo)
Grayson Moore
Team 5:
Alec Wesley
Florrie Younge
Reid
Craig Devereux
Reese Pearson
Grant Devereux
Training:
Hudson Knight- formerly known as Garrick Knight
Kate Knight
Raven Knight
Griffin Knight
Cade Knight
Lola “Brave” Pruitt
Ryan Jackson
James Jackson (Cassandra Jackson- mother)
Piper Jackson
Ryder Jackson
Paige Jackson
Team 6:
Storm Hart
Jessica Finley
Daniel “Coop” Cooper
Becky Harding
Kayla Cooper (daughter)
Tony “Tacos” Russo
Molly Erickson
Marcello Russo
IT Department:
Robert “Rob” Markum
Chapter One
Senator Burke
“Tell Monica to push my eight a.m. back to eight-thirty tomorrow,” I said to my personal assistant over the phone. I climbed the stairs to the private club I belonged to and nodded to the doorman.
“Yes, sir. I’ll take care of that immediately. I also need to talk to you about-”
“Not now. I’m stepping into a meeting.”
“I don’t have that in your schedule,” Timothy said in confusion.
“It’s a private meeting. No interruptions the rest of the night. If something comes up, handle it yourself.”
“Yes, sir.”
I turned off my phone and walked through the lounge to the back of the club where my meeting would be held. We had a lot to discuss tonight, and only a short amount of time to get through it all. The security that had been hired when we started this project was already here. They were to sweep the room for listening devices and cameras, along with sticking around and providing security during the meeting. We couldn’t take any chances right now. We were too deep into this and there was no pulling out now.
The head of the biotech firm SynGen was already here. It had taken a lot of money to get her on our side. Helen Taylor was a tough negotiator, but I could tell when I first met her that she could be bought. I had to bring on more senators so that I could afford the funding. Essentially buying her help was not a cheap way to go, but it was our only option. We needed a lab that was privately owned and would be willing to work around certain guidelines that were set forth by the government, the same government that I was working to protect.
The rest of the senators filed in over the next few minutes. A security guard came in and took all our phones and checked each of us for any kind of recording devices. The only thing that was allowed was already pre-approved by security. That was a single laptop. We all had to log into it when the meeting started. Only then could we all be held accountable. It was my insurance policy to make sure that no one got cold feet and decided to turn on us.
“Let’s get started,” I said, drawing everyone’s attention. “I’ll have Ms. Taylor fill us in on how the project is coming along. Then we have some details to discuss.”
Helen nodded to me and stood in front of the rest of us. There were six of us in total. “Thank you, Richard. The project is on target. The trials are going well, and I think we’ll have a viable product in the next month. The researchers assure me that they are working hard on all aspects, but we are running into some complications with the second half of the project. It…may delay things, but there’s nothing that can be done about that. We’re moving as fast as we can, but if we don’t have everything we need in place, the first half of the project won’t be feasible.”
“You’re telling us this now?” Senator Nicholas Samuelson asked. “You know how much money we’ve put into this pro
ject, and now you’re telling us we might have to scrap it?”
“I promise you that the researchers are working as hard as they can-”
“Make them work harder,” Senator Nathan Brunswick cut in. “Our asses are all on the line here. We’ve already put things in motion. We can’t afford any slowdowns. This plan needs to be put in place in two months.”
Helen pursed her lips, but nodded and took her seat.
“Nathan, what do you have for us?”
Senator Brunswick was our inside guy on the committee for the Department of Homeland Security. He was able to get our security for us and ensure that our plans were shared with only the people that we knew were loyal to the cause.
“I’ve been digging into the man that broke into Senator Blakely’s house. As you all know, we believe the initial information that Senator Samuelson brought to him was being kept there in his safe. Senator Blakely had a camera hidden in his study. It wasn’t hooked up to his security system, so no one saw it when the feds tore apart his house after the murder. It’s taken me months, but I’ve finally put a name with the face of the man that broke in and killed the senator that night.”
“Good riddance,” Senator Cheryl Allen muttered. “We’re better off with Blakely not around. He would have destroyed us.”
“We have bigger problems than Blakely at the moment. The man caught on camera was Hudson McGuire, former military who disappeared off the face of the earth after he escaped from his transport to Leavenworth.”
“For those of us that don’t know who that is, please explain,” Senator Alex Cortez asked.
Cortez was a new kid and a pain in the ass, but he was ambitious, had some money, and he was eager to make his stamp on the world. In other words, at the moment, he had no morals.
“McGuire was sent to Leavenworth after he was convicted of killing some of his superiors when they were profiting from deaths overseas. He was a loose cannon that was supposed to be jailed. After he escaped, most people assumed he had gone to a non-extradition country. We kept a watch out for him, but he vanished. However, he popped up on our radar years later when he died, or so we thought. There was a fire in an old hotel building. Two bodies were found inside. One matched a man named Jensen, who had served with McGuire overseas. The other was only identifiable by dental records, which belonged to Hudson McGuire.”
“So, what makes you think this was him?” I asked Senator Brunswick.
He let out a sigh and clicked on something on the laptop. He turned it to face us. “This is Garrick Knight, a known assassin that spent several years doling out his own form of justice and reaping the rewards. He, coincidentally, died about the same time as McGuire. The problem is Garrick Knight and Hudson McGuire have the exact same face. So, when I ran facial recognition and not one, but two dead men popped up in the system, I was more than a little curious. I did some digging and found out that a third man that goes by the name of Hudson Knight is currently working with Reed Security outside of Pittsburgh. Somebody went to a lot of trouble to get him the proper identification and make sure that he wouldn’t be linked to either of his former selves. But they couldn’t completely wipe him from the record. In today’s digital age, nothing ever truly goes away.”
The fact that he said that had us all pausing to consider the implications. Would someone be looking into us one day? No, I had to believe that if we played this right, no one would ever know what we had done. Besides, nothing was really recorded anywhere. We were being very careful not to leave any trace behind of what we were doing.
“How does this affect us?” I asked.
Senator Brunswick heaved out a sigh. “This man has records that implicate Senator Cortez. As of right now, it’s in no way a solid lead toward anything. There are bank records that look fishy, but nothing that would lead directly to us. There were also lab tests,” he said, glancing over at Senator Samuelson.
He had been the one that thought it would be a good idea to bring Senator Blakely in on all this. But the senator wasn’t interested in getting his hands dirty on this one. He just stole the lab results and locked them away. No one had thought of killing Blakely to get that information back. We all assumed he would be a thorn in our side that we would just have to deal with. Now, it appeared we were in deep shit.
“That doesn’t mean he’ll figure anything out,” Senator Allen pointed out.
“You don’t understand,” Brunswick said angrily. “This guy isn’t just some random citizen that we can intimidate. He’s a former assassin. He’ll kill off anyone that he sees as a threat. If he even sees you coming down the street, he’ll gut you like a pig and send you back as a message.”
“So we kill him first,” Senator Cortez said. “We kill him and we chop off the head of the snake.”
“He has proof of what we’re doing,” I reminded him. “Even if we kill him, we don’t know who he’s talked to or showed that paperwork. We need those documents and we need to bring him in to interrogate him.”
“He’s got security all around him. He rarely leaves the Reed Security property, and even when he does, you won’t get the drop on him. He’s way too good.”
“Then what the fuck did we hire security for?” Samuelson barked. “Send them onto the property at night and kidnap him.”
Brunswick chuckled and pulled up another screen on the computer to show us. “This is the Reed Security property. They have sensors around the entire property, which happens to be several miles in all directions. They were involved in a war with the cartels a few years back and have since barricaded themselves in so they’re ready for any attack. All employees live on the property so they’re ready at a moment’s notice. They have mounted machine guns and drones that continually scan the property and look for threats. They have the firepower of a small country on that property. There is no slipping in and kidnapping him.”
“What about the family?” Senator Allen asked.
My head snapped to face her and I slowly shook my head. “No, we aren’t going after his family. Are you trying to start a war before we even launch? You heard the man, he’s surrounded by security. He’s a former assassin. Do you want him coming after you in your sleep?”
“If we take his family, we expose his weakness. He’ll be so devastated over the loss that he’ll do anything to get them back.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Brunswick said. “If you go after his family, I can guarantee that he will come after you and take out not only you, but everyone you love. This will not end in us getting what we need.”
“I agree.”
“I say we put it to a vote,” Senator Allen said.
“No,” I said firmly. “We don’t do anything to draw more attention to ourselves unless necessary. We don’t know that he’s even put anything together based on the information he has. If something comes of it, we can make that decision then, but we will not risk everything now when we have no information on what he knows.”
“And what if he goes to someone?” Helen asked.
“A former assassin? A man that is doing his best to lay low? You think he’s going to ruin all that, get sent to prison all to talk with someone in power that might rat us out? Based on what?” I asked. “He has nothing right now. Let’s not poke the hornet’s nest.”
“We know where he is,” Brunswick said with a nod. “I think our best course of action right now is to wait and watch. We know he’s at Reed Security. If we find an in, we take it, but unless we find out that he knows something, we move on with the project as planned.”
“Alright,” I said, standing up, “now that we have that cleared up, let’s move on with the meeting.”
I saw the fear in the others’ eyes, so it was best to push this aside like it didn’t matter. We would continue to monitor the situation, but I couldn’t have them dwelling on it. Fear made people do stupid things, and I couldn’t afford for any of them to be stupid right now.
Chapter Two
Knight
The last l
ight had shut off over an hour ago. I knew that OPS was monitoring the house. They had been out here for months after Reid came to live here with his aunt and uncle. Now they were just monitoring from their home base in California. I turned the volume up on my earpiece, allowing me to hear inside the OPS tech room. I had hacked into their system so I could control what they saw. They didn’t have any microphones in the house, but I still needed to be sure that my plan kept anyone from knowing I was here. It had been difficult enough to get out here without anyone knowing.
After I was sure that no one was awake in the house, I turned off the security system for the Fullers’ house and crept in the side door after picking the lock. I had to make it up to the second floor, walking right past the aunt and uncle’s bedroom, but I wasn’t worried about it. I had done this many times before. The stairs were the hardest part, since this was an old house and the stairs were bound to creak.
I took them one at a time, slowly climbing and avoiding any weak spots in the joists. His door was the last on the right. I was just about there when I heard someone in my ear from OPS.
“Something’s going on at the Fuller house. Are you seeing this?”
Parker: A Reed Security Romance Page 1