Parker: A Reed Security Romance

by Giulia Lagomarsino

  “Part of what?”

  She didn’t say anything. She looked away, shaking her head angrily.

  “I already know. Now I want to hear you say it. I want to hear you tell me the real reason you sold me out. Tell me, Kiera. Tell me all about how you fucked up and your little boyfriend covered for you, for all of you.”

  “He was a terrorist,” she snapped. “He was garbage and we were going to take him home to sit in a fucking cell. You didn’t see what he did to those women in that town. He fucking deserved what he got.”

  “But not from you,” I said accusingly. “Our job isn’t to go kill anyone we feel like. We could have gotten intel from him, but you decided that you knew better how to deal with him. The whole fucking team did, and then you had to cover it up, right?”

  “Barrow made a deal with all of us that day. He knew what we did. He walked in on it and knew there was no way that we could cover up what really happened on our own. So, he did what was necessary so that no one would ever know that we beat the fucking terrorist to death.” She shook her head and her voice lowered. “But he made a deal with all of us that day. Whenever he needed something, we had to be there for him. He said we were all in this together and the only way that we could all be sure that no one would say anything was if we all had something to lose. He agreed to put his ass on the line for the team that day.”

  “No, he used you. He helped you because he had power over you.”

  She sighed, shrugging slightly. “It didn’t matter. Barrow pretended like he and I had something after that. He made me think that he really wanted me, that we had something special. We were together for two years before we were caught. And something changed. His true colors came out. He didn’t care about me. He used me because I was convenient to him. I should have known when we returned from deployments. He never wanted to see me. He always made an excuse.”

  I wished that I could say I felt bad for her. It sounded like Colonel Barrow had used her in the worst ways, but then again, I couldn’t be sure if she was telling the truth or not. She seemed so sincere, but then I thought she had been sincere on the stand when she was testifying against me. I couldn’t afford to buy any of her bullshit.

  The sound of helicopter blades in the distance had me rushing to the window. It wasn’t far off, and if they were headed for me, I didn’t have much time.

  “You lied on the stand,” I accused. “I could have been sent to Leavenworth for the rest of my life. How could you do that to me?”

  “It was Barrow’s idea,” she snapped. “I had to do what he said. He made sure that no one on the team would defend you. He gave me a choice, pin the rape on you or he would turn the whole team in. I had no choice.”

  “You had every choice. You chose yourself over the truth. You almost ripped everything from me!”

  I didn’t hear anything but the crunch of gravel. I ran to the window and saw three vehicles pulling to a stop in the driveway. Men stepped out, guns raised at the guard in front of the house. They were here for me. They had found me and now I was going to jail.

  The door burst open and men surrounded me. Guns were pointed at me from every direction. I had no way out of this. I wouldn’t see Blake again, and I had no way to contact her to let her know I wouldn’t be meeting her.

  “Get down on the ground! Move! Hands on your head.”

  I slowly lowered to my knees, raising my hands and placing them on my head. One of them came behind me and jerked my hands down one at a time and locked them in cuffs behind my back.

  “Are you Kiera Elliot?” one of them asked.

  “Yes.”

  A man stepped forward, this one in a suit and tie. He was pompous and arrogant looking, a typical suit who thought he was above the law. “Parker, you have no idea how glad I am to see you. You know, you did a good job with your little escape attempt. We almost didn’t see you.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Agent Dennick, but you can call me your worst nightmare.”

  He nodded to one of the men and the next thing I knew, I was flat on my back and wheezing from the massive hit to my chest. Dennick walked over to me, standing above me and smirked.

  “It was very nice of you to lead us right to the woman that you were convicted of raping. I have to say, when we spotted her in the house and realized who she was, it was like my dream come true. You just handed us a very sweet conviction, tied up with a pretty little bow.”

  “What conviction?”

  “Oh, you didn’t know? Kiera is listed as a missing person.”

  My stomach dropped out. I told Knight he couldn’t just kidnap her. Now I was going to pay the price. I knew there was a chance I would get caught coming here, but I hadn’t really thought about the fact that someone might accuse me of kidnapping. I was too focused on getting a confession out of her. I thought they were only coming for be because of the breaking and entering at the lab.

  “Ms. Elliot, is this the man that kidnapped you?”

  I looked at Kiera, narrowing my eyes at her. She wouldn’t screw me over a second time. She couldn’t. “Do the right thing, Kiera.”

  She didn’t even look at me. She started fucking crying and nodded her head. “Yes,” she gasped. “Yes, it was him. It was awful.”

  My heart was pounding out of my chest in anger. Dennick looked down at me and grinned. “See? A nice, pretty little bow.” He bent down and got in my face. “You’re going to jail for the rest of your life. Kidnapping is a felony and since you were already tried for her rape, I’m sure no jury will find any reason to believe that you’re innocent. You’re going away for a long time.”

  “I wasn’t convicted of raping her,” I argued.

  “No, but there was enough evidence to discharge you dishonorably. That holds more weight in court than just her testimony. I own you now, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll do as I say.”

  He stood and walked away as I was yanked up off the ground. “You can’t do this! I didn’t fucking kidnap her!”

  But it didn’t matter. He was a fed and I was going down hard.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Blake

  I had been waiting for hours for someone to come see me. It was the typical FBI procedure of holding a suspect in an uncomfortable room until they thought you would break. But I knew how this worked all too well, and I wasn’t even close to breaking.

  The door flew open and Agent Dennick walked in, grinning at me like the cat that ate the canary. “Blake, I’m so sorry to meet again under these conditions.”

  “Go fuck yourself,” I spat.

  “Now, is that any way to talk to the only man that can get you out of the trouble you’re in?”

  “You’re not here to help me, Dennick. The only person you care about is yourself.”

  “Now, that’s just not true. I want to help you, but you have to give me something. You stole something from a lab, and I want it back.”

  I leaned back in my seat, my hands still cuffed to the table. “I don’t have it, and even if I did, there’s no way I would give it to a crooked agent like you.”

  His face mottled in rage and he slammed his fist down on the table. “Listen, you little bitch, you’re going down hard. You stole information from the FBI. You went on the run and broke into a lab with that meathead you hang around with. There is no way you’re getting out of here. If you work with me, I can make life easier on you, but if you don’t, I have no problem using other tactics to make you talk.”

  “You can’t,” I shot back. “I’m not a terrorist.”

  He smirked at me, the evil grin spreading wide across his face. “Aren’t you?” he said quietly. “That’s funny, because the newest intel on you is that you stole confidential information from the FBI in an attempt to sell it to a terrorist organization.”

  My whole body shook in anger. He was reaching well beyond what he could, which meant that he had someone really high up helping him. Once you were labeled a terrorist, your rights were stripp
ed from you, and there was nothing you could do to help yourself. He was trying to push me. He wanted me to give up Parker and anyone else that was helping us, but that would never happen. It didn’t matter what they threatened me with. There was no way I would do anything to help these assholes. Even if I did, there would be nothing in it for me.

  I leaned forward, anger burning through me. “Do whatever you have to. I’m not giving you anything. You’re going down, and it’s going to happen soon. You just don’t realize it yet.”

  He shoved back from the table and stalked to the door. He flung it open and yelled at the agent outside. “Get her in chains and ready for transport.”

  “Sir?”

  “She was helping a terrorist, so now we’re going to treat her like the scum she is. Don’t look at her like an agent, because no agent would ever betray her country like she has.”

  I knew it was going to happen, but there was nothing that could prepare me for hearing the words come out of his mouth. My stomach dropped out as I was cuffed and marched out of the room and down the hall to an exit. A van was waiting for me outside. A van that would take me to someplace I would be locked away and forgotten, if I was lucky. If I wasn’t lucky, I would be interrogated as a terrorist. The door slid open and I was shoved inside, then cuffed to a rail. The door slammed closed and the van went dark. This was it. This was the end.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Senator Cortez

  I dialed a number that I hadn’t planned on using. I knew this guy would do whatever was needed, but the price would be high. But I couldn’t allow this to go on any longer. We needed to kick this into high gear and get what we needed. Everyone else was playing it safe, but I didn’t get where I was by taking the easy road. Sometimes you had to get your hands a little dirty to achieve your goals.

  “Who is this?” the man answered.

  “It’s Cortez. Remember that job we were talking about?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I need it now.”

  “What do you want me to do with the package?”

  “Move it to a secure location. I may need some follow up with you.”

  “How long are we talking?”

  “As long as it takes to get what I need.”

  “Give me one hour. I’ll call you when we’re secure.”

  I hung up, satisfied that we were finally going to make some progress. Everyone else was wrong. They weren’t handling this the way we needed to, but now that I set things in motion, the rest of the project would go off without a hitch.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Knight

  We had just spent the last two hours making sure that everything in Reed Security was in tip top shape. We had maybe a day before the feds came back with a search warrant. The faster we figured this out, the better prepared we would be for what came next.

  Becky and Rob were working in Cazzo’s security room that he had set up in his house. Becky had transferred all the files there and that would be our base of operations for the time being. If the feds got a warrant to search the houses, which was less likely, we would have to find a new place to set up. The most likely spot would be my house in Colorado. I knew that it was secure and the feds would have no reason to search there. Hell, they didn’t even know about it. I had made sure that it not only wasn’t linked to me, but anybody at Reed Security. However, I wasn’t ready to make that trip back out there yet. The last time we had been there, it had been for a year, and that was a year too long.

  “What do you have, Becky?”

  “Well, a lot of this jargon took me a long time to sort through, but I think I have a general understanding of what they were working on in that lab.”

  “What is it?” Cap asked.

  Sinner, Cazzo, and Burg were there, mostly because it was Cazzo’s house and he wouldn’t leave his team out of what was happening. And then I had brought Hunter in from the beginning, so his team was there also. Plus, Derek was a founding member of Reed Security. It felt like too many of us were involved. If this thing went south, the fewer people that knew about it, the better they would be. I had created this mess when I started digging, and I didn’t want everyone caught up in it.

  “Well, it appears to be a virus,” she said hesitantly.

  “They were studying it?” I asked. “Is this a virus that’s currently circulating?”

  “It can’t be,” Cap said. “Remember, she said that this virus wasn’t registered with the CDC.”

  “And I’m not finding any records that any kind of virus like this is currently circulating anywhere in the world,” Becky said. “It’s only in this lab as far as I can tell.”

  “So, they created it.”

  “That’s what it looks like.”

  It felt like Becky was holding back. Usually, she just flew off the handle, rambling through all the information she had found. Now she was dead silent.

  “Becky, what aren’t you telling us?”

  She bit her lip, fidgeting as she stared down at her computer. “Look, I’m not sure on this. I mean, I could have it wrong-”

  “You’re never wrong,” Cap pointed out.

  “Yeah, but this is…I mean, I really hope I’m wrong.”

  “Just spit it out,” I said frustratedly. “We don’t have time to beat around the bush.”

  “Okay,” she took a deep breath. “Remember that I told you that I found a list of people in the system? They were attached to the lab, but not to any trials. They’re random people, people that no one would miss. I mean, no one is looking for these people. Some are listed as missing, but I looked into the records and after just a day of investigating, the police department pretty much wrote them off as people that disappeared for absolutely no reason. I dug through the files and all I could find were a bunch of excuses, like they were drug addicts or they had a history of disappearing.”

  “Becky, you already told us this part.”

  “I know, right, but…it appears the virus was being tested on these people.”

  I thought back to our earlier conversation about this. That didn’t add up. It couldn’t. “But all those tests showed that the people died. So, they were testing a virus to test its mortality rate?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, and it’s bad. I mean, it’s not like this is just a simple virus. This infects people with a combination that’s similar to having the Hantavirus, Ebola, SARS, small pox, influenza, and rabies all wrapped into one. It’s like someone decided to take the world’s worst viruses and combine them all in one. Only, if I’m reading the journals right, when they created this disease, it created something far beyond anything they could have imagined. It morphed into something even deadlier then what those do. The trials show a ninety-nine percent mortality rate. This was created to kill and it kills fast.”

  “How fast?” I asked.

  “In patients that already have compromised immune systems, they start to show symptoms within two hours. They’re usually dead within three days. The patients that were healthy didn’t succumb to the virus for a week.”

  “How does it spread?” Hunter asked.

  Becky’s eyes slipped closed. “It’s airborne.”

  A silence filled the room as we all processed what she said. It was impossible. Why would anyone create a virus like that? The mortality rate alone suggested that this was being created as a weapon.

  “Do we have any idea from the notes how long this thing will last?” Hunter asked.

  “Wouldn’t it just keep killing people off as it was spread?” Sinner asked.

  “Viruses like influenza usually slow down during warmer months.”

  “This doesn’t sound like influenza,” Burg pointed out.

  “In the lab, they infected twenty percent of the patients with the actual virus. Then they put another twenty percent of them in the same room with them. Within hours, all of the patients were infected, showing varying degrees of symptoms. Then they put another batch of patients in another room. The rooms had connecting air vents, a
nd even though they were separated, the particles were in the air, so within a day, those patients were infected also.”

  “So, it took longer for them to be infected-” Cap started.

  “But the point is, this is like a super virus. It spreads quickly and can last in the air for long periods of time. Imagine if you released this in a skyscraper full of offices. Within a few days, every single person would be infected.”

  “What kind of symptoms are we looking at?” Hunter asked.

  “Early symptoms include blisters on the skin. Eventually, those blisters pop and start bleeding. Labored breathing, bleeding from every orifice, diarrhea, vomiting, loss of cognitive functions…inevitably, this virus eats you from the inside out. Patients were described as being unrecognizable by the time the virus had killed the host.”

  “And the patients that survived?” I asked.

  “Permanent scarring, blindness, brain damage, scarring on the lungs…basically, you’d wish you had died.”

  “This is bad,” Sinner said quietly.

  “No shit, it’s bad,” Cazzo snapped. “Who the fuck would create a virus like this? Even if you created it as a weapon, you’d still kill off almost all the people on the planet.”

  “Unless you were planning on sending them to a gas chamber like the Nazis used,” Derek pointed out.

  “No,” I shook my head. “For someone to create a virus like this, they wanted to watch people suffer. They wanted to spread fear.”

  “But if you create something like this, you have to have a vaccination or a cure,” Hunter said. “You can’t create something like this and not have anyway to protect yourself.”

  “It does appear that they are working on something, but so far, the tests are not promising.”

  “What would the senator get out of funding a project like this? What committees does he sit on?” Cap asked.

  “He sits on the Appropriations Committee,” Becky answered.