Duke: Alpha One Security: Book 3

by Jasinda Wilder

  I boggled at him for an entire half-minute. “Holy shit, was that a joke?”

  “I don’t know, was it?” His grin was subtle, but it was there. “That is the Boogie-man, ja? He eats the hearts of his victims?”

  I laughed at that. “Fuck me, Anselm, what kind of Boogie-Man stories did you grow up with?”

  His grin vanished abruptly. “I was sent to a private military school when I was fourteen, so, for me, the Boogie-Man was the kommandant. He was the most frightening and unpleasant man I have ever known, and I have been acquainted with professional torturers. Children who infracted the rules would go to his office and never return. Some of the children at the school whispered rumors that he ate the rule-breakers, and others said that he did things far less savory than mere cannibalism to them.”

  “Well that’s…fun,” Temple said. “Aren’t you just a ray of sunshine?”

  “I have never been accused of being jovial,” Anselm said, and went back to making sandwiches.

  “Yeah, I guess not,” Temple said.

  “I think you’re getting a little too much me-time, Anselm,” I said. “You’re going stir-crazy. This is the most I’ve heard you talk about yourself in the entire time we’ve known each other.”

  Anselm brought two paper plates with cold cut sandwiches and corn chips, carrying those in one hand and two cans of light beer in the other.

  “Harris does not believe in soda, it appears,” Anselm said. “So you drink beer.”

  I cracked open the beer and crammed half the sandwich into my mouth. “Soda is bullshit,” I said, around a mouthful of food. “Cancer juice. I never drink soda.”

  “Why not?” Temple asked, biting into her sandwich with a little more delicacy than I was displaying.

  I nodded. “Had this buddy in the Army, he was a mechanic, worked on the deuce-and-a-halfs. He’d clean parts with Coke. Like, he’d scrub dirt and rust and shit off the metal with Coca-Cola, and it’d be shinier than new. If it does that to fucking steel? Hell if I’ll drink that shit.”

  We all ate in silence then. Anselm finished his food first, somehow, and went about making more sandwiches, bringing me another and one for himself. When we were finished, he took our plates and disposed of them.

  “I must return to the nest. Your information is worrisome.” He indicated a large, blocky cell phone on the island counter. “A sat-phone, with Harris’s terminal number programmed into it. Call him, tell him you are alive and what you told me about Cain.”

  Temple stood up. “Is there a chance I could shower? Things have been…yucky.”

  Anselm nodded, his eyes going to the bloodstain on her skirt. “Of course. I think Layla has some clothing to possibly fit you, if you would like.”

  “That would fantastic.”

  Anselm went into Harris and Layla’s room, and emerged a minute later with a pair of black yoga pants, a T-shirt, a hoodie, and a pair of flip-flops.

  “I do not know if the sandals will fit, but they might be more appropriate under the circumstances than your current footwear,” he said.

  “Better than nothing,” Temple answered. “Thank you.”

  He nodded and then from a counter in the kitchen, he grabbed a military grade long-range two way radio with an earpiece and throat mic and handed the set to me. “Keep in contact and be alert. I’ll be watching, but at this point in the game, I think perhaps anything is possible.”

  “I might try to pop over to the HQ. I’ve got some spare gear over there.”

  Anselm shook his head. “Nein. You stay here. This is the safest place on the compound, and you have Frau Kennedy to worry about. You need BDUs, I assume, ja?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, and some extra hardware. All I’ve got is those scrounged pieces, my HK, and a couple of pistols.”

  “I will raid your quarters and bring you what I find.”

  “Great.”

  Anselm gestured at the sat phone. “Now call Harris. We have to be coordinated.”

  “Yes sir,” I said, mocking a salute.

  He shook his head on the way out the door, slinging his Barrett over his shoulder. “You are too irreverent for your own good.”

  “It’s like you know me,” I joked.

  When he was gone, I showed Temple the spare bathroom. “Take your shower while I make a call.”

  After the water was running, I sat down on a stool at the island, the Mossberg leaning against the side of the counter and the rifle on top of it, and dialled the single number programmed into the satellite phone.

  “Anselm, what’s going on?” came Harris’s voice.

  “It’s me, boss. Heard you guys were missing me.”

  “I’ve got Duke,” I heard Harris say, his voice muffled, speaking to someone on the other end. “Where the fuck have you been, jackass?”

  “Well, you see, I took up ballet. I was working on my pirouette and lost track of time.”

  His voice was razor sharp. “This isn’t the time for fucking jokes, Duke. Where—the fuck—have you been?”

  I let a sliver of my irritation show through in my voice. “I got snatched, dude. Like, cracked across the head, drugged, and stuck in a basement somewhere in Denver.”

  “You got out, obviously.”

  “Well, no shit. That’s not the point.”

  “What is the point, then?”

  “They snatched someone with me.”

  “Who?” Harris asked; I heard voices in the background—sounded like Puck, Thresh, and a female voice I wasn’t familiar with.

  “Temple Kennedy,” I answered.

  “Temple Kennedy? Why does that name ring a bell?”

  The female voice in the background spoke up. “Her mom is Jane Kennedy, and her dad is Craig Kennedy, like from Suicide Cult. She’s got her own reality show.”

  “Oh yeah, I think Layla watches that,” Harris said. “So…they kidnapped you and this Temple Kennedy chick?”

  “Sure did.”

  “And what were you doing with Temple Kennedy in the first place?”

  “Nothing…yet, at least. I was setting up to talk to her, and wham, next thing I know I’m bound hand and foot and I’m in a shitty basement, and this chick is bound and gagged beside me. Bunch of Cain’s Eastern Bloc gangster types came down talking shit, kicked me, and left again. Dumbasses tied me up with zipties—”

  Harris snorted. “Amateurs.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I said. I took ‘em out, and hightailed it out of there with Temple.”

  I filled him in on the rest of the events of the day, leading up to showing up at his compound, including what Anselm had said about the possibility of me having been implanted with a tracer.

  There was a long, tense silence on the other end. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Another pause. “This changes things.”

  “I think you might have underestimated your guy Cain.”

  “Yeah,” Harris agreed. “I mean, I never said he was stupid, just that he wasn’t a great tactician. He’s definitely not stupid. This doesn’t feel like Cain, though. That’s the problem. He doesn’t snatch, and he doesn’t go in for elaborate revenge plots. He goes in and kills you and your family and your friends and anyone you ever spoke to, and he does it brutally, bloodily, and publicly.”

  “So maybe he’s got a tactical advisor or something?” I suggested.

  “Possibly, but I don’t know. Something about this doesn’t feel right.”

  “Well, all I know is that I barely got us out the last time, and if Anselm is right and the pattern holds, they’re gonna show up here eventually. So…I guess I’m just saying sorry in advance for what might happen to your compound.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s all just stuff. Keep yourself and this Temple of yours alive until we can get there. Stuff can be replaced, you can’t.”

  “Awww, you’re makin’ me all mushy inside, boss,” I said. “Hey, is Thresh with you? I heard he had some fun. And who was that girl I heard talking? It didn’t sound like Layla.”

  “Yeah, Thre
sh is with me, and no that wasn’t Layla. That’s Thresh’s new girlfriend. Her name’s Lola.”

  I was stunned silent. “Thresh’s new who-the-what-now?”

  Harris laughed. “Yeah, that was my reaction, too. She’s cool, though.”

  “Huh. Weird.” I decided I couldn’t handle the idea of Thresh with a girlfriend, so I just wouldn’t think about it. “Where’s Layla, then?”

  “I sent her and Sasha down to stay with Roth and Kyrie while this whole thing is going on. After what Thresh went through, I wasn’t taking any chances. She’s probably not gonna talk to me for a month, but better that than Cain getting his hands on her. Roth’s place in the Caribbean is a fortress, and I hired a bunch of extra guys to keep an eye the place.”

  “She let you send her packing to safety?” I asked, incredulous.

  Layla wasn’t exactly known for her practicality when it came to being safe; she preferred to be in the thick of the action, wherever Harris was, no matter the risk, and got…pissy, let’s say…when Harris tried to put her somewhere out of the way.

  “It was a fight, but she went,” Harris said, and the tone of his voice told me how serious that fight must have been. “She hadn’t seen Kyrie in a while anyway, so I think that was what convinced her more than anything I said.”

  “So what’s the plan, boss?”

  “We’re in the air right now, headed your way. I’ve got Thresh and Puck with me, Lear is who knows where, and Anselm is there on the compound. I think you need to hang tight.”

  “Have you thought about bringing Lear in?” I asked. “He can do okay, but the guys I’ve been tangling with are no slouches, Harris. I barely got away, and that’s with a shitload of fucking luck and experience.” I laughed. “I called him awhile ago from a non-secure line, and he hung up on me. He’s a space cadet when he’s working. Not sure he’d even hear the bad guys coming, Boss.”

  “Don’t underestimate Lear,” Harris said. “He’s tougher than you think. But, yeah, I’ve been in contact with him, and he’s better off out there, wherever the fuck he is. What he lacks in combat experience, he makes up for in the ability to run and hide while still making himself useful. He’s digging for intel right now, so hopefully he’ll come back with something that’ll give us a plan of attack.”

  “Sounds good,” I said. “Can I talk to Thresh?”

  “Sure.” I heard muffled sounds on the line, and then Harris’s voice, distant. “Yo, Thresh. Your boyfriend’s on the phone for you.”

  Thresh came on, then. “You worried me, fucker.”

  “Did you cry?”

  “Nearly.”

  I toyed with the charging handle of the rifle on the counter. “Heard you got yourself a girlfriend.”

  “And I heard you like it in the ass, you twinkie.”

  “You wish.” I hesitated a beat. “But for real. I thought we didn’t believe in that shit.”

  “The right chick comes along…” Thresh trailed off for a moment. “I don’t know, man. I know it sounds like that sappy bullshit we’ve always made fun of, but dude, it’s real, and it’s no fucking joke. This shit just…changes you.”

  “I think I might be tracking that myself, brother.”

  “No shit?”

  “It’s confusing, man. Like, the things I think, the shit I find myself doing and saying when I’m around her…it’s been literally a matter of hours, and she’s…”

  “Under your skin, but not in an annoying way? Like suddenly everything seems to just revolve around her?” It was weird hearing Thresh talk like that. It was like…Ellen DeGeneres’s voice come out of Jerry Seinfeld’s mouth. Just…fucking weird. But goddamn if he wasn’t right.

  I groaned. “Exactly.”

  “Can I offer some advice? I’m going through the same thing, just a little further ahead than you are, it seems like.”

  “Let me have it, bro.”

  “Just go with it,” he said. “Don’t fight it. There’s no point. Once you stop resisting it and just sort of let the mushy romantic lovey-dovey bullshit suck you in…I don’t know. It’s not so bad.”

  “Who the fuck are you, and what have you done with my best friend?”

  “Shut up, cock-knocker,” Thresh said, with a laugh. “I know it’s weird. You think like it’d be emasculating or some shit, but…it’s not. I swear. The right girl, she’ll make you feel like more of a man, not less. I’ve been forced to realize something, brother: we don’t know shit.”

  “That’s second time I’ve been told that today,” I said. “And you just used ‘emasculating’ in a sentence—now I know you’ve been brainwashed.”

  “Shut up, ass-face. I can still pound your skull in.”

  “Yeah, again…you wish.”

  “I gotta go. Harris is giving me the wrap it up signal.”

  “This shit isn’t a joke, Thresh, and I’m not talking about girls anymore.”

  “I’m well aware. I’ve been busy myself.” Another pause. “Okay so I guess I really have to go. Harris wants the line free. Watch your six, brother.”

  “You too.”

  I hung up, left the phone on the counter, and brought the shotgun with me as I went to check on Temple. She’d been in the shower for quite a while at that point.

  The bathroom door was cracked, steam billowing out. I heard Temple’s voice, but she was…moaning. Low, quiet. Erotic.

  “Duke…” she whispered.

  Shit…she was thinking about me? Moaning like that…

  Ten to one she was fingering herself.

  I pushed the door open slowly and stepped in as quietly as I could.

  And yeah, there she was in all her naked glory. Sprawled out in the tub, water up to her neck, hand between her thighs moving fast and splashing water everywhere, back arched, head thrown back. Tits breasting the surface of the water, nipples hard, her whispering voice saying my name…

  I wondered if Harris and Layla kept any rubbers around? I backed out of the bathroom as quietly as I’d snuck in, trotted to Harris and Layla’s bedroom, muttering an apology for being nosy as I rifled through the bedside table drawers. Bingo. I found their stash: several vibrators of varying sizes and styles, a shitload of condoms, fur-lined handcuffs, a cock ring, anal beads…I pushed any possible mental images far, far, far away and tore off half a dozen condoms and stuffed them into my pockets, and then trotted back to the bathroom, hoping I hadn’t taken too long.

  Thank god, she was still going. Her hips were flexing, now, her left hand holding her pussy open, her right splashing in circles under the water. Her eyes were closed, tits bouncing and splashing, hair wet and sticking to her face and neck. Still gasping my name—“Duke! Oh god, Duke!”

  I shucked my clothes in record time, making sure the Mossberg was readily available, just in case.

  Tiptoeing closer to the tub, I ripped open a condom wrapper and left it on the sink for when I was ready.

  Then I reached for Temple…

  8: SO MUCH MORE

  A shower had sounded like the best idea on the planet, until I saw the oversized claw foot tub, and decided a scalding bath was an even better plan. So I ran the bath and sank into it, luxuriating in the piping hot water, my exhausted, stressed muscles soaking up the heat even though it stung the cut on my chest and the nick at my hairline. Neither were anything to worry about, but they still stung.

  The thing about a bath is that it leaves a lot of time to think—which, usually, is the point, right? Take half an hour or an hour to just soak and let my mind wander, sort through the events of the day and how I felt about them? But under these circumstances, I wasn’t so sure letting my mind wander was the best idea. There was a lot of nastiness I was actively working at suppressing: heads bashed in, faces shot away, sucking chest wounds, dead bodies. So many dead bodies. So much gunfire. This was all brand new to me; I’d never even seen a real gun up close or heard one shot, much less seen a dead body. I mean, I’d gone to my great-grandma’s funeral, but that’s different—she’d been
in a casket, at peace, already dead from natural causes. Watching someone get shot? Watching Duke smash a head in like a watermelon? How was I supposed to feel about it? How do you deal with that? I didn’t know how, so I was trying to just pretend it wasn’t real, that I was watching a Bruce Willis movie. It wasn’t real. I hadn’t really seen…how many was it?…a dozen men die? Nope. Fake. Fake blood. Fake bullets. Fake deaths. This wasn’t happening to me.

  Denial was working okay, for the most part. It let me continue operating on something like a normal level instead of collapsing into a quivering, sobbing pile of uselessness. Some instinct deep down kept telling me that I couldn’t afford to panic, yet. I couldn’t afford to give in to the nervous breakdown I felt building up inside me. I had to focus, had to keep my emotions in check…which meant pretending I was fine, pretending all this was fine, cool, great, normal. No problem here. It’s just me, Temple Kennedy, trapped in a Robert Ludlum novel. No big deal, happens all the time.

  Only, the longer I lay here in the tub, the more the reality of my situation started to seep through my carefully constructed game of pretend.

  I had to distract myself. I needed to relax and not think about the yucky stuff.

  Duke was the perfect distraction.

  I pictured him naked, which was a mental image hot enough to make my thighs clench together. But if I thought about his cock? His fingers? The things his tongue had done to me?

  God.

  I pictured him standing in front of me in the kitchen of that apartment of his, cock in his hand, fist sliding down his shaft…teasing me into begging him to fuck me. I’ve never begged for a damn thing in my life, but I had begged him. And I’d do it again, for a chance to feel that massive dick sliding into my pussy just once more. I could probably come all over him, reach the orgasm while he was inside me—shit, he’d probably make me come twice or even three times before we were done.

  But other thoughts bubbled up inside my head, unwelcome thoughts—his judgement of the way I lived my life, his accurate and brutal assessment of my sad sex life. It was sad, wasn’t it? There was no joy in it, no passion. I couldn’t remember most of the guys I’d fucked. They all ran together, blurred into a flickering montage of half-drunk fucking, the guy finishing before I did, getting out of the bed, dressing, and leaving while I watched, frustrated, from the bed. As soon as he was gone, I’d pull out my Lelo and finish myself off.