Savage Reborn (Team Savage Book 1)

by Michael Todd

  Jeremiah paused as the doors opened and a hotel employee stepped out. He moved inside and waited for the doors to close before he pressed the button for the ground floor.

  “Being with an airheaded bimbo sucks hardest yet,” he continued, still talking to himself. “Oh, a pun. See, I’m punny too. Maybe we’re more compatible than I thought.”

  He wasn’t serious, of course. He doubted that he’d actually saved her number or that he would use it even if he had.

  “I need to up my game,” he said as the doors opened, stepped out onto the marble floor of the lobby, and moved purposefully toward the front desk. “I suck ass.”

  They weren’t compatible, but he wasn’t a monster. He would pay for the room and the raiding of the minibar that had happened the night before, but he wouldn’t allow his credit card to be charged after he’d checked out. He wasn’t an asshole, but he wasn’t stupid either.

  Chapter Two

  They had focused all their time on bringing Carlson to justice but had never really anticipated the corporate nightmare the man had left. Many shell companies that tied tenuously back to Pegasus now demanded recognition. A fair number of them managed the paperwork themselves as a way to ensure their absorption into the parent companies, but a couple of them proved far more difficult.

  Anderson decided these were the ones that been lovingly stroked into solvency by the ex-CEO and felt they should still have the special treatment.

  Considering the kind of pressure he assumed Savage had put the man under as well as the damning evidence in the file they’d handed over to the FBI, it was no surprise why the ex-CEO had decided not to fight his charges. There were hints that he might be used as a witness in some other open cases, but from what they could tell thus far, those wouldn’t affect Pegasus.

  Anja had confessed that she had directed Savage to the plane Carlson had planned to use to leave the country until the dust settled. The operative himself had been reticent on the subject, but it appeared he’d been convincing enough—no doubt in the way his name implied, but Anderson chose not to ask—and left him for the authorities to find. How the hacker could have believed that their muscle would show any kind of restraint was beyond him. People like him usually made the kind of decisions that would be difficult to live with for ordinary people. That he hadn’t gone all-out savage and simply eliminated the target was nothing short of astonishing.

  Still, whatever his reasons and his actions, he had ended the battle rather quickly and left Carlson alive on top of that. There was something immensely satisfying about knowing he would live to regret his activities. Scientists were no longer being murdered, and most of the resistance internally had backed down when they heard what had happened. He trusted Savage that none of it could ever be officially linked to Anderson and Monroe. It was doubtful they would survive the shitstorm that would follow if even a hint of their involvement came to light.

  But they’d hired the operative because he was a professional and was thorough that way. He had left no evidence and had obviously instilled enough fear into Carlson that he obdurately declared he’d been shot in the knee by an unknown assailant. Anja had supplied the ex-colonel with the medical transcripts of the reconstructive surgeries required. He couldn’t resist his smug satisfaction whenever he thought of what their enemy would have to endure. It seemed poetic, somehow.

  Anderson scrutinized the paperwork that had been put on his desk earlier in the day. Courtney had dispatched him all over the country to bring everyone into the fold, but one of the stubborn companies remained troublesome. And from the papers, he could see why.

  He wasn’t sure if it was because the people were loyal to the problem elements or if they were merely following orders, but materials were being stolen from one of the warehouses. It wasn’t overt and the inventory would have seemed satisfactory to anyone who didn’t look closer. The stolen stock was replaced with cheaper replicas, which ensured that the numbers tallied and so didn’t raise suspicion.

  Of course, he couldn’t necessarily say it had anything to do with Carlson. It could have been simple greed. People might have realized that those in upper management were in upheaval and decided to pad their pockets in the confusion. It was an entirely human-greed response to opportunity.

  Still, one could never be too cautious.

  He sent what he found to Anja and asked her in an email to try to investigate whether any of the people involved were living beyond their means or had squirreled a little extra away in their retirement funds. At this point, they had to cover all their bases. He would have called her to let her know what was coming and what he wanted from it, but he never knew when she would be available. Waking her up had proven to be a mistake in the past. She got little enough sleep as it was without his interruptions. It wasn’t like this was of vital importance or anything.

  Anderson leaned back, rubbed the scar tissue on his arm, and closed eyes in an effort to delay the headache creeping in. He wasn’t made for this corporate crap. At the same time, he no longer came anywhere close to what he had originally been shaped into. As much as fighting alongside Savage had made him feel alive again, honesty demanded that he accept that he didn’t have another round in him.

  He needed to come to terms with the fact that he wouldn’t be a soldier, so he might as well be a paper pusher. Unfortunately, it would have been so much easier to adapt to his new course in life if it wasn’t so fucking boring.

  His phone rang and prompted a groan. He rubbed his eyes again before he lifted it off his desk and pressed the button to accept the call.

  “You know, I wouldn’t have to call you like this if you would use the earpiece I sent you.” Anja’s familiar and welcome voice with her soft Russian lilt made her perfect grasp of the English language a little more exotic.

  “Forgive me for not wanting to have you in my head twenty-four hours every day,” Anderson responded with a chuckle.

  “Not all day. Only while you’re working. Then I wouldn’t have to wait for you to call or, God forbid, have to leave a message.”

  “It still won’t happen. I appreciate the effort, though.”

  “You’d damn well better,” she huffed. “So, what am I looking at here?”

  “Well, I emailed you the names and socials of the various people who work at one of Carlson’s shell companies.” He glanced through the data again. “I want to make sure these people aren’t merely selling the missing inventory on the black market or something.”

  “Why?” she asked and sounded incredulous.

  “Because we don’t want to chase after Carlson’s ghosts without making sure he’s the one who actually put all this in motion,” he explained. “It means the difference between us sending our lawyers in…”

  “Or sending Savage.” Anja completed the thought as his voice trailed off. “Understood. I think I can get you rough numbers by tomorrow.”

  “Don’t send them to me,” he said. “Send them to Courtney. She’s the one who will have the final say on what we do about it, either way. I need to have a chat with our hired gun to see if he’s ready to start cleaning shop. I had a couple of ideas I wanted to run by him.”

  “Where is he now?” the hacker asked. “It’s been a while since I’ve talked with old Jer. I miss his grumpy face.”

  “Well, he’s back in Philadelphia,” he said and slid his laptop into the briefcase he now carried everywhere Courtney sent him. “His work for us falls into a highly specific range, and when there’s a lull in the need for elimination or physical intimidation, we have to find some way to justify keeping him on the payroll. Running security sweeps, probing the building for possible breaches, and…well, training personnel.”

  “You’re really going to float them in like that?” she asked as he started moving out of the tiny office.

  “Float what in like what?” He locked the door behind him.

  “Probing? Breach? You can’t talk like that and think I won’t mock you for it.”

  “Oh,
grow up,” Anderson said and punctuated it with a laugh. “This is why I don’t want you in my head all the time. Call me when you have something.”

  “Will do, prude,” she replied.

  Every time.

  He hated how every time he heard the sound of a gunshot, he flinched. It wasn’t a new thing either. It was something that had started a long time ago. He’d thought he would get over it, but it seemed to have somehow burrowed into who he was. There would be no getting over it anytime soon and it would likely be a part of him for the rest of his life.

  Mistakes were made, yet he was the one who had to live with them. How was that fair?

  Anderson shook his head and moved deeper into the warehouse Savage had selected. He gritted his teeth and tried to keep the deeply rooted panic reaction from taking over. A slow breath eased the roiling sensation in his gut, and he pushed himself to approach the source of the noise.

  The building looked like it had been abandoned for a while. There were a lot of them around the old Philly docks after they’d moved most of the operations higher up the river once the silt buildup became too much to handle.

  Many of the structures were repurposed into a variety of different facilities. There wasn’t really much you could do with a massive building that had the sole purpose of storing large containers where they wouldn’t get rained on. It wasn’t like they could open offices there. As a result, most of them stood empty and had gradually rotted since the companies that owned them had no interest in pouring money into renovations. It was pointless when they wouldn’t find any buyers.

  The area constantly needed to be cleared of crackheads, which meant that gentrification was still a long way off. That made it the perfect location to train in urban combat.

  Anderson managed to circumvent most of the rubble and finally reached a section of the building that still looked to be in one piece. These warehouses always had a couple of offices so at least one corner would be in better shape than the rest. They’d built a small shooting range in this area.

  “Keep that right arm up,” he heard Savage say. The ex-colonel grinned because the operative sounded like one of the drill sergeants of old, shouting and cursing to make sure that everything he taught was remembered. He knew he would never be able to leave a boot unpolished because of his old sergeant and wasn’t sure if he was thankful or resentful.

  His abusive nature had imparted skills that had saved Anderson’s life on more than one occasion, but the man had to be in retirement by now. By the sounds of things, the operative had endured the same kind of relationship with some army sergeant. He was almost a full decade younger than his boss, though, so the man who had yelled him into shape was probably still in the business of preparing young men to not die in the heat of combat.

  Savage looked away from Ivy’s stance and took a step back. They both wore anti-flash glasses and earmuffs, which explained why they hadn’t heard him coming. It didn’t explain how the man seemed to know that he was there before he’d even come into view, however.

  “Anderson, nice to see you again,” he said with a smile.

  The ex-colonel returned the smile and extended his hand for a firm, crisp handshake. “How’s the training going?”

  Ivy shifted her attention from the pistol she had put on the table. From what he could tell, they had gone through the basics of how to take the weapon apart and put it back together again and now worked through the stances that fit her build best.

  It wasn’t only about the technicalities of owning a gun, of course. The purpose was to learn about the weapon that you would use and how to treat it and respect it. Anderson remembered that part of his drill instruction very well. Savage was a lot gentler about it, though. While he did want Ivy Anderson to get through all this alive and well, he apparently didn’t want her to see him in the way that every grunt saw their drill sergeant.

  “Hi, honey!” Ivy waved with a smile.

  “Hey, sugar.” His smile broadened when she walked up to him, draped her arms over his shoulders, and pulled him in for a kiss. The affection was momentarily interrupted when the big glasses got in the way. They laughed as she raised them and leaned in for a light peck on each other’s lips.

  “How’s the gun training going?” he asked them both. Savage indicated for Ivy to speak first.

  “Well, Savage is very patient with me, and he made sure I learned all the minutiae of gun handling before he let me shoot,” she said with a laugh. Anderson had been married to the woman long enough to realize her apparent frustration was a good thing. She wanted to improve, and she knew that her husband simply wasn’t the person to teach her. Getting along with the operative couldn’t be easy, but they didn’t seem to be at each other’s throats.

  Yet.

  Savage smiled. “She’s a quick study. We’ve worked through her stances. Isosceles for mid to long ranges and CAR for up close and personal. Using your body is the first step to using a gun.”

  Ivy rolled her eyes with a laugh and sauntered back toward the table. Her instructor’s gaze followed her for a moment before he returned his attention to Anderson.

  “She’s already familiar with guns and doesn’t have too many bad habits I need to break her of,” he said with a chuckle and deliberately kept his voice low so she didn’t hear him. “I have to say, when you hired me in that hospital, I didn’t think training would be a part of the regimen, but it’s a welcome break from all the running around I did back there.”

  “Are you aching to get back into the action then?” Anderson asked. He knew the signs well enough. He’d experienced them himself.

  “Like you wouldn’t believe.” The operative laughed. “Do you have something for me on the Pegasus front? Is Carlson acting up again? Threatening to turn people over to the feds?”

  “No, he’s still recovering from his latest surgery while in custody,” Anderson said. “Did you have to go that hard on him?”

  “Well, guys like him won’t exactly walk away if you give them a slap on the wrist and a warning,” Savage pointed out dryly. “If I’d let him off easy, he wouldn’t learn anything from his mistakes. He would skulk overseas, gather his resources, and prepare for another strike at us. He’d also know all the while that we would be as lenient if we caught him again. Now, though, he knows what to expect next time he tries to pull anything.”

  “Which only means that the next time he comes for us, he’ll look for a killing blow,” the older man pointed out as they moved away from where Ivy took her pistol apart again.

  “In that case, we have more time to prepare,” Savage said with a small smile.

  “Fair enough. Anyway, we might have something for you. “Carlson set up a number of shell corporations to run his money and supplies through rather than declare them to the company. They’re all being brought into the fold now, but there are a couple that are a little problematic. Predictably, they’re the ones that handled all the resource transportation in and out of the Zoo. It might be that they are still working for Carlson, or it could be that someone’s greed makes them think they can get away with a little company theft. Anja’s looking into it now.”

  “How is she?” the operative asked as he poured coffee from a thermos into a Styrofoam cup. “Do you want some?”

  “No, thanks,” Anderson replied quickly. “And…well, she’s fine. Jacobs and Kennedy keep her busy on location, which means that any time she has to spare for us is a blessing.”

  “And that would be awesome if I knew who Jacobs and Kennedy were.”

  “Right.” They’d kept him out of the loop when it came to their whole organization, but sometimes, things slipped. The man seemed to understand that plausible deniability was a factor and that the less he knew about the people he actually worked for, the better.

  His instincts in this business were annoyingly and terrifyingly on point. Admittedly, those same instincts were what had saved his life not too long ago, but Anderson still felt he was entitled to feeling a little off about him. />
  Savage didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he appeared to enjoy the way people looked at him—half-awed and half-horrified. An emotional barrier, his way to keep people at arm’s length, maybe? Who could tell? It was doubtful that any shrink in the world was qualified to deal with the hot mess of humanity that defined the operative.

  “Anyway, there was something I wanted to bring up with you before we started you on another operation,” Anderson said as his companion sipped his coffee. “While the mission ended in our favor, there were a lot of luck factors in there we’d like to avoid next time. Most of them involved you working alone instead of as part of a unit. You know, after Coleman—”

  “You want me to assemble a fireteam to have on standby if you guys need muscle.” Savage nodded and deftly avoided that particular conversational bombshell. “Understood. There’s one small problem, though. Most of the people I know who are the right fit for this kind of job are either dead or think I’m dead, which puts a hitch in this plan of yours. The proverbial fly in the ointment. Wrench in the works—”

  “I got it.” The ex-colonel laughed and wondered how long the man could have continued with the metaphors about how the plan to help him with a competent team was already dead in the water. “Fortunately for everyone involved, there are people—whose names you don’t want to know—who know the kind of recruits we have in mind. These would be people recently out of the Zoo or other similarly dangerous places with the skills you might require. We would need you to make sure that they have the right…temperament.”

  “I thought there weren’t any places similar to the Zoo when it came to danger,” the other man replied with a grin. “Have you guys been upselling that place to keep prices for the merchandise high?”

  “I wish. I could tell you the details, but then I’d have to kill you.”

  “You’d have to try, Colonel.” Savage smirked and looped a thumb in his belt in an arrogant pose. “And then I’d have to beat your ass into the ground to teach you otherwise and haul that ass to the nearest hospital. Neither of us has the time for that.”