I flinched, knowing that Cal got shot because of me. No matter how much I told myself that if it hadn’t been me, it would have been Sebastian they were aiming for, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was responsible for his death.
“Those guys were trained and now Cal is dead and Cazzo can’t walk. A bullet doesn’t care how trained you are and you can’t outrun it.”
“Look, it’s not like I try to get myself in situations that are dangerous.”
“Then why do you always sneak off? You never tell anyone where you’re going. You’re just here one minute and gone the next.”
“Because when those guys are with me, they treat me like I’m fragile, like I can’t take care of myself. It’s not that I don’t understand the risks; I do. That’s why I do it. I like to chase down stories and I like the danger. I don’t have a death wish or anything. It’s just the way I am. Why is that not okay for me, but it is for them?”
“Well, first of all, every single one of those men love you like a sister and would sooner take a bullet for you than see you hit by one. Second, boss man loves you very much. He looks angry when you take off on your own, but I see the worry in his eyes. I know what that feels like, to know that the person you love has left and you don’t know if they’ll return in a body bag or walk through the door and give you a kiss. It’s a terrible way to live.”
Becky had never opened up to me that way. I examined her face a little closer and saw there was pain there, but she hid it well.
“Who was he?”
“It doesn’t matter. The point is, I get where Sebastian’s coming from. It’s hard to know that someone you love is so careless with his life or hers,” she looked at me.
“But he does it every day!”
“Yes, but he has a team and they take every precaution and sometimes it still doesn’t go their way. You run out like you can do it all on your own. He would go with you in a second if you would just let him.”
I took another shot of Jack and let the burn coarse down to my belly. “It doesn’t matter anymore. He told me if I walked away, not to come back.”
“You can’t really believe he meant that.”
I looked up into her wide, blue eyes. “I know he did.”
CHAPTER TWO
Sebastian
I WATCHED HER walk away, knowing that I couldn’t stop her and I couldn’t keep chasing after her. We had been in this constant push-pull relationship for two years now and nothing I did made a difference. At one point, I had wanted to ask her to marry me, but every time I thought, “this is the day”, something came up or she ran off and did something crazy.
Over the past six months, her restlessness had grown and I found her out of the office running down leads more times than in the office doing her job with Becky. To make matters worse, she seemed to love to rub it in my face that she and Sinner had some kind of special relationship. I had made peace with the fact that they didn’t have romantic feelings for each other, but she seemed to think it was funny that I was a jealous bastard.
I walked back to my house and stalled on the porch, looking over at the swing that we used to sit on in the morning as we drank our coffee. Anger fueled through me and I walked over, kicking as hard as I could, just stepping back as it swung toward me. I yelled as I grabbed it and flung it as hard as I could to the side, repeating that several times until I ripped it from the roof where it hung. As it crashed to the ground, I stood there staring at it, chest heaving as I let the anger leach from my body. There was nothing more I could do at this point to make her want to stay with me. She would always have a need to chase down a story and I would always have a need to protect her. As long as we couldn’t work past our differences, we could never be happy.
I grabbed my keys out of the bowl inside the door and quickly locked up. I had plenty of work to distract me and that’s exactly what I needed right now. If I stayed home, all I would think about was how I couldn’t fix this thing with Maggie.
When I got to work, I headed right for the office, bypassing the stares I got from several of the team members that were still there for the night. I didn’t usually come back to the office after I left for the day, but everyone here knew that I was off chasing Maggie again because I had called to have Becky assist me with the cameras at the building in New York. They also knew that we’d had trouble because I’d had to call for a clean up crew.
I stormed into my office and got to work on all the emails that I had missed since I’d been out of the office for a few days. I had just gone through the first set of emails when Derek “Irish” Cortell walked into my office.
“How’d New York go?”
“About as well as can be expected when you’re dealing with Freckles.” I sighed and clicked out of my emails, leaning back in my seat and staring at the ceiling.
“I heard you had a clean up crew called.”
I huffed out a laugh and looked at him with humorless eyes. “When she steps in shit, it affects everyone. Sinner was there and he shouldn’t have been.”
“Did he get hurt?” Derek asked as he took a seat.
“No, but he’s only been out of the hospital for about a week. He performed well, but he never should have been put in the position he was. It could have ended badly.” I sighed and ran a hand over my face. “Something’s got to change. What the fuck is going on here? Cazzo got shot, Sinner was tortured, and Maggie’s running off on her own. We need to tighten the reins around here or we’re not going to have a business to run anymore.” I leaned forward and rested my elbows on my knees. “Nothing’s been the same since Cal turned on us. It’s just one shit storm after another.”
“What do you want to do, Cap?”
“We don’t have a whole lot on the docket this month. Let’s train as much as we can. I want Becky and Rob running as many drills as possible with the teams.”
“They already run the operations. What kind of drills do you want to run?”
“I want to drill until the teams are relying on Becky and Rob the way they’re supposed to. We’ve been relying on instinct too much and we need to make sure the teams are using the resources we have to their full use. We need the teams to be functioning as a whole. I want us running as one well oiled machine. We should also get at least one more computer specialist in here, but I would prefer two. With four teams, we should have one person here available at all times to work with each team. I don’t want anyone ever waiting on intel.”
“Are you sure you want to grow that much? Teams four and five have been running smaller jobs and working as back up. They haven’t been training for larger ops.”
“Then it’s about time they start training. The way our guys are dropping like flies, we need them up to speed now on how we do things on a large scale. Besides, they’ve been here for two years. They’re all highly qualified. There’s no need to keep them on the sidelines anymore.”
He stood and headed for the door. “I’ll start putting together a training schedule and start planning some in house ops.”
“Sounds good. Actually, go see Cazzo and get him to start planning the ops. He’s bored as fuck at his house and he needs the distraction.”
“Will do.”
“Anything the guys need over at Cazzo’s?”
Team three, John’s team was over at Cazzo’s on protection detail for Vanessa Adams indefinitely. Cazzo’s team had been assigned to her when she came to town a few months ago, but when Cazzo got shot protecting her, Victor Adams sent in his own bodyguards to pick her up. Sinner had brought her back here when he was working at OPS and was assigned to find her. We knew something had been off when she had been under our protection, but then Sinner had been taken and tortured by someone that was looking for her. Now, she was back under our protection, only her father didn’t know it.
Cazzo had a large property with a guest house where the team stayed. Vanessa stayed in the house with Cazzo and unless he was in town, no one else entered the house. It was the way Cazzo wanted it. He
liked his privacy and I had no doubt that it had a little to do with the woman he wanted that was staying with him.
Derek snorted. “Are you kidding me? Even if they were running low, Cazzo’s got an arsenal in his shed. They’d be covered through an apocalypse.”
“How’s Vanessa doing?”
“As far as I can tell, she’s doing okay. I think she’s enjoying the solitude.”
“How’s she doing with Cazzo?”
He grinned at me and shook his head. “Let’s just say there’s a lot of built up tension in the house.”
Irish walked out of my office, leaving me staring out into the dark sky. I couldn’t worry about Maggie anymore. It was time I got my house in order.
My phone rang, bringing me out of my thoughts and back to the work at hand.
“Sebastian Reed,” I answered.
“Reed, this is Cash.”
“Tell me you’ve got good news.”
“Sorry, man. We worked over that fucker until he was a bloody heap. He doesn’t know shit. He was just the hired gun.”
Cash had taken Sinner’s torturer captive and was trying to get to the bottom of who was after Vanessa Adams. So far, we were shit out of luck.
“I’ve got Becky working every angle she can. Hopefully, she’ll have something soon. We need to nail this fucker to the floor.”
“I hear ya. How’s Sinner doing?”
“Mentally? I’m not so sure. Physically, he’ll be fine.”
“He went back for a woman. Maybe she can sort him out.”
“I hope so too. Keep me posted. I’ll let you know if we find out anything.”
I hung up and threw my phone to my desk. Another lead dead and gone. Fuck, it was like there was no end to this clusterfuck.
✯✯✯✯✯
“For the next month, we’ll be training hard every day from dawn until dusk. Every single person here will be training including our computer specialists. This place needs to be more efficient and we need to be one hundred percent confident that all our team members are safe at all times. Teams four and five need to be working at the same level that the first three teams are. Until Cazzo and Sinner get back, Burg will be working with Teams four and five to make sure they’re where they’re supposed to be.” I looked at Burg, “Consider yourself their trainer for the month. It’ll be your ass if they aren’t up to snuff.”
Burg nodded and then turned to teams four and five with an evil grin. He could be charming and a softy, but under all that, he was one hard ass machine.
“The only jobs we’ll be taking on are high profile or high paying jobs. The team that shows the highest level of readiness will take whatever job comes up.” I was interrupted when the door to the conference room squeaked open and Freckles peered in. “Maggie, please join us. We’re in the middle of a meeting that started ten minutes ago.”
“I didn’t know a meeting was scheduled,” she threw back. I didn’t bother to look at her.
“All employees were sent a text and email this morning. You should be checking in first thing in the morning.”
I knew from Becky that she’d had a hard night, but the time for cutting her slack was over. There would be no more letting her do things her way or allowing her to run off in the middle of the day. It was a bad example for the other employees if I continued to let her get away with that shit.
She sat down in her chair with a huff and glared at me. “Becky and Rob, I’m interviewing for a couple more tech specialists. They’ll be working with you, but also with our equipment so that you two can concentrate on ops. I’ll expect the two of you to get them up to our standards by the end of the month.”
Becky and Rob nodded and did a fist bump thing that made me smile. I turned to Maggie with a stern face. “Maggie, you’ll be working with the teams on gathering intel for them during this training month. You are to stay on point for them. We need to be more efficient in making sure they get information in a timely manner. If you need to go out of the building to research something, a team member will be sent with you. No exceptions.”
She glared at me, but thankfully didn’t say anything else.
“When you leave here in a few minutes, Derek will give you all your training operations for the week. See your team leader and start planning out your missions. Make sure you coordinate with Becky and Rob. I’ll be watching and assessing how all of you are doing. Cazzo will be in after PT and he’ll be helping me. There will be no more mistakes made around here. We will run like a well oiled machine. There will be no going off on your own or doing things half cocked. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, Cap,” was shouted from all over the room, but I saw Maggie glaring at me. “Dismissed.”
Everyone got up and went about their way, meeting with their team leaders and getting organized. Maggie stayed behind, waiting for the room to clear.
“Was that really necessary?”
“Was what necessary?”
“When I walked in. Everyone knew what you were doing, treating me like the trash that walked in off the street.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I wasn’t treating you like trash, I was treating you like an employee. Something I should have been doing from the start. Instead, I’ve treated you like my girlfriend and let you get away with shit that I would never let any other team member get away with. When you took off to New York, you put not only yourself at risk, but also Sinner and myself. Nothing was prepared. We went into that building blind and you’re lucky we all came out alive. It’s just another example of how you run off and do whatever you want without thinking of the consequences.”
“I didn’t ask you to come after me and I did that on my own time. It had nothing to do with Reed Security.”
“I’ll keep that in mind for the future, but from now on, when you’re here, you do things my way or you’ll find yourself out of a job.”
“Maybe this isn’t the right job for me then.”
“Why? Is it really so hard for you to work with the team and let them help you? We all rely on each other for help. We’re all more than capable of doing half these jobs on our own, but we do it as a team to watch each other’s backs and make sure no one gets fucked over. The simplest job can go wrong in a flash. Remember when you came back two years ago? That job was a simple protection detail until the package was dropped off. There wasn’t supposed to be any danger, but the client didn’t give the whole story and I was lucky as hell that Sinner was around that day. I would have been fucked otherwise. That’s all you have to do is rely on us to help. We protect each other. If you can’t do that, then this is the wrong job for you.”
She didn’t say anything, just walked out of the office. I wasn’t sure what to do at this point. I didn’t want her to go. I loved Maggie more than life itself. I would die for her in a heartbeat, but there were only so many times I could deal with her running away from me. She thought that I was holding back because I wasn’t willing to build a life with her, but the truth was, I was holding back because she wouldn’t give herself entirely to me. Sure, she’d moved here, but it was like she always had one foot out the door.
I had almost expected this to happen. When someone gave up so much of themselves to be with someone else, it was inevitable that something would go wrong. I went to my office and sat down, checking my emails one final time before going to observe the teams. Cazzo came rolling in a few minutes later, looking thoroughly worn out.
“How was PT?”
“Kicked my ass.”
“Are you sure you want to be here?”
“Where else would I be?”
I shrugged. “At home with your houseguest?”
“She thinks she can heal me or some shit.”
“Why don’t you let her? Women can have interesting ways of healing.”
“I’m not sure I’m into her ways. She wants to light candles and give massages and shit. I don’t need my house smelling like flowers.”
“You’re so fucking stupid, Cazzo. Candles
give the setting. Massages usually involve oil and can lead to rubbing of other things. Who gives a shit if your house smells like flowers if she rubs one out for you?”
He quirked an eyebrow and gave me a funny look. “I hadn’t thought that was what she meant. Everything she does seems so innocent.”
“And it’ll stay that way if you keep pushing her away.”
He shook his head and rolled toward the door. “I like her, but I can’t stay cooped up in the house with her all day. I’m going out of my fucking mind.”
“Hey.” He stopped and turned back to me. “You haven’t said how PT’s been going other than it’s kicking your ass. What are they saying?”
He hung his head a little. “It’s..it’s not what I expected. I thought I’d be walking by now.”
“It hasn’t been that long. You have to give yourself time.”
“I don’t have time!” he shouted. “It’s already been over a fucking month and I’m dragging my toes on the ground. My legs are moving a little, but I’m mostly moving myself with my arms.”
“Maybe we need to try a different therapist if this one isn’t working.”
“And you think another one is going to do better?” He shook his head and laughed. “Face it. I’m fucked. This is my life now.”
“I guess you’re right. You are fucked.” I shook my head and took a seat at my desk, looking back at my computer.
“What the fuck, man?”
“Oh, I’m sorry? Did you expect me to say something else?”
“I don’t know. A pep talk? Tell me to get my head out of my ass? Something like that.”
“How’s this?” I stood and walked over to him. “Cazzo, you’re acting like a whiny bitch. Man the fuck up and go do your PT. If the therapist isn’t working, we change it. If you need a different treatment, we change it. If you need me to come there and yell at you through PT, you fucking say so and I’ll be there with you every goddamn step of the way, but you do not lay down like a little bitch and take it!” I yelled.
Cap_A Reed Security Romance Page 2