by Michael Todd
Oh, right, he recalled blearily. That was why he hadn’t gone to his room for a nap. He hadn’t wanted to wake her up.
“What are you doing up?” Sal asked. She draped her arms over his shoulders and pulled him down for a kiss.
“I missed you, is all,” she said with a smile, her head tilted teasingly and perhaps even invitingly. “And the fact that I’ve already slept for six hours which, to be honest, is about the longest I’ve slept over the past year or so.”
“It doesn’t mean you can’t sleep in, right?” he asked and rubbed her back absently. “You could always take a day off and try to fit in some of that resting and relaxing people talk about. I hear it’s all the rage in California.”
“Oh, please. The people in Cali haven’t heard of relaxing for at least a decade.” Courtney laughed. “And I was resting and relaxing until Anja sent me an alert on my phone and woke me up. I checked what it was, and I couldn’t sleep after that.”
“I’m sure I could help you with that.” He grinned lasciviously before he leaned in and kissed the tip of her nose. “I seem to remember you being very tired after our morning calisthenics.”
“People have said I need to get more exercise in.” She grinned cheekily.
“Hey, Anja,” Sal shouted.
“Yeah, that’s what a girl likes, hearing her guy shouting another girl’s name,” Courtney grumbled.
“What?” the hacker yelled from the server room.
“Why are you sending Courtney messages? You know she’s supposed to be resting right now. She gets enough stress without you adding to it.”
“I didn’t send her anything.” Anja stepped cautiously out of the dark room with all the computers and looked like she hadn’t slept in days. “She has her phone set to receive automatic updates on the Pegasus situation.”
“It wasn’t really about Pegasus, per se,” Courtney said. “It only said that one of our board members added personal funds to a foundation he opened. A cool quarter million. It’s weird that it doesn’t seem like a lot of money anymore—that is weird, right?”
“Wait, what?” The Russian frowned as she stretched and swung to ease her back. “What foundation?”
“Something called the Ferros Deduction.”
“Oh…oh, crap,” Anja said softly. “Ferros Deduction is an online messaging board for…well, all kinds of crimes. I use it myself, but I always lay low and never buy, only sell. If he’s added money there, it means he’s put funds up for a contract. Which member of the board was that?”
“Charles Stafford.” Courtney checked her phone for the name again, her expression one of distaste. She hadn’t much liked the man or his attempt to challenge her, and maybe her aversion had been well-founded.
“Oh, right, I remember that name.” The hacker snatched the phone from the other woman’s hand and tapped the alert before she pressed a couple of buttons—digging deeper, Sal assumed. “Well, the foundation he put the money under is called James Anderson, so that can’t be good. I guess the positive side is that it’s not under your name too, although I’ll dig into that as well. What this means is that he put an open contract on Anderson. Well, technically, he put a lot more money into a contract on the colonel’s life, which means a much higher echelon of killer will be enlisted. I need to warn him.”
Sal narrowed his eyes. Anja talked like she no longer even realized they were there. He knew he did that sometimes too, but he’d never realized how annoying it was from the other side of the conversation.
Well, monologue, technically, but why split hairs?
“Drop him the info, plus everything else,” Courtney said with a smile. “And see if we need to hire a counter-hit to keep him safe.”
Anja had tossed the phone onto a counter and started to make another pot of coffee. She continued to talk to herself in a mixture of Russian and English, which Sal suddenly realized meant she wasn’t talking to herself but rather to someone over the headset she wore. How had he missed that?
Courtney burrowed closer to him and press a light kiss to his cheek.
“You have grown a little bloodthirsty,” he said with a grin and returned the kiss with far more demand on her lips.
“Come on,” she whined and dragged the last word out over three or four syllables. “I’ve read R and D papers for the past forty-eight hours, give or take a couple of hours of sleep here and there. I’m not bloodthirsty, I’m horny!”
“It’s weird how your brain associates research and development with sex. I like it.”
“Of course, you do. You might even consider what we do some very interesting research of our own, all things considered.”
“Right.” Sal nodded with mock seriousness. “Biological research is my forte, now that I think about it.”
“Well, I think I’m the one who will run tests.” She bit her bottom lip with evil speculation. “You’re merely a test subject. My very…proactive test subject.”
He chuckled. “Well, I’m always down for a little more physical testing. Let’s get to work.”
The two of them started walking back to his bedroom and Anja stopped her work to watch them.
“Like fucking rabbits,” she grumbled in Russian and shook her head. It wasn’t like they had anything more important to be concerned about or anything.
Well, they didn’t really. That was why they paid people like her and Savage to take care of the situation. Which meant they had done all they could and worrying about it would only stress Anja to the point of distracting her from her work.
Maybe it was best that they stuck to fucking like bunnies and left the work to the professionals.
The hacker grinned and filled a mug with coffee, horrid as it was, and shuffled back to the server room. She had work to do.
Chapter Twelve
Mistakes were made, many of them by herself. She’d simply wanted to be nice. The place had seemed like such a sausage fest since she’d joined the team, and with the only other woman looking like a fish out of water, she’d made the decision to try to make the woman feel more comfortable.
That had been the first of many mistakes. And like most errors in judgment, it had seemed like a good idea at the time. Teaching Ivy to hold a gun in a way that suited her body type better had been relaxing. Girl time was at a premium in her line of work, and time when she didn’t have to hide the fact that she could name every single bone in the human body while she broke them was even more at a premium.
It had been a kind of give and take, really. Ivy seemed like she had been starved for a social life—something that sometimes happened with people in her situation, when all the people whom she could interact with had very little in common with her. The conversation had deviated from talking about guns and turned to life stories and ended up with her heading out to coffee with Ivy while the two of them had gotten to know one another. Anderson had taken Damon back to the apartment to give his wife the freedom to actually do something a little normal for once.
After their coffee session, Sam had returned to the apartment she’d tried to settle into ever since she’d arrived in Philly. She’d enjoyed the excursion but believed that would be the end of it unless Ivy wanted another girl’s time out, which she would have been glad to acquiesce to.
The magnitude of the mistake hadn’t become apparent until Anderson called later that night as she’d prepared for bed. He’d told her that Ivy had taken a liking to her, much more than she’d liked the stoic Mixon. It seemed that while the man had all the makings of the perfect bodyguard, the fact that Ivy trusted her made her more suited to protecting the woman and her child.
She’d listened to the long explanation with unusual patience—and yes, that had been mistake number two. He’d detailed his concerns that the people who had targeted him weren’t averse to snatching or murdering his wife and child to accomplish their ends. She couldn’t fault either the logic or the emotion that precipitated mistake number three.
Sam had actually held her breath when he asked
her if she’d take over bodyguarding duties as he had to head off to inspect some of the research sites that had been moved to the city. Mixon, of course, would be his ever-present shadow once he was freed of his role on the home front. As part of the changes, the two newer team members had been briefed on who Courtney was and how she fitted into the bigger picture.
The visits were usually Monroe’s job, he explained, but with her stuck in the Zoo, he needed to take over and relay everything back to her. She wasn’t sure how he would accomplish that. Maybe with Anja’s help. She smiled when she recalled the other welcome feminine presence in the operation. Despite her being a disembodied voice, she somehow still checked the like box.
His request had been politely phrased and really made her feel all warm inside. She had honestly felt it was a worthy thing to do to be a bodyguard for Ivy and Damon.
The pleasurable fuzziness had dissipated quickly, though, when her alarm had gone off at the ungodly hour of seven in the morning. It didn’t matter that she had been used to getting up early in the military. Just because she was used to it didn’t mean she liked it.
Fuck those guys.
She’d rolled out of bed amidst a stream of all the curses she’d held in during her time around Mixon. The ongoing vent brought a sense of relaxation as drove to the apartment building where Ivy and Damon lived and walked them to her car.
Anderson had also asked her to look like a driver—something about keeping up pretenses. It seemed Mixon had trouble with the school drop-off since rich parents didn’t much care to have a strange man hanging around their children. A couple of calls to the cops had forced the team to rethink their strategy. Her mistakes had provided the perfect solution to this particular dilemma. She gritted her teeth at the double whammy. Not only was she babysitting this early in the morning, but she had to act like a chauffeur while doing so.
Well, a chauffeuse, technically.
Damon had talked non-stop during the whole drive, which made Sam’s headache worse than it already was. From the bleary-eyed look on Ivy’s face and the massive cup of coffee in her hand, she assumed her new friend felt similarly drained of energy.
The child didn’t seem to notice. He talked about a video game stream that he’d watched the night before with his father, going over the latest updates of recently released DLC for a looter shooter that now involved a man based in the Zoo. It apparently included beasts resembling those seen in footage released from the jungle. It was interesting, she had to admit. She had a couple of friends who had gone into that place with the troops at the British base on location as well as a few others who were retired, like her, and had been paid handsomely to head out into the most dangerous place on earth.
Not all of them had come back. Those who had didn’t like to talk about what they’d seen. They told her a little, mostly about the money to be made and how it wasn’t enough when you had to face lizards with acid saliva that could melt through steel bars and hardened titanium-weave armor suits.
No, she thought, and let her mind wander as she followed the map on the HUD of the windshield to the school. She considered herself a woman of the world, willing to take any job if the money was good enough. And from all that she’d seen and heard, there would have to be a lot of money involved if she was ever to set foot in there.
There was something about that place that simply wasn’t right. Especially in the way it affected usually rational people. They either loved it or hated it. Either way, the place stuck with them for the rest of their lives, and Sam wasn’t willing to make that kind of commitment to something.
She turned into the lane that led to the drop-off point for the kid and scowled at the long line of limos and armored cars. This was a private school, she realized, one Anderson would never have been able to afford on his government salary. Being the CEO of a controversial company and having a price on his head had at least brought one advantage. She only hoped it was worth it down the line.
It was little wonder, though, that the rich parents so obviously in evidence had recoiled at the idea of Mixon lurking around their little darlings. They obviously felt their wealth entitled them to dictate their own terms of comfort and safety. And Anderson and Savage had been right to be concerned. Rich parents meant connected parents and before you knew it, the alphabet soup would show up because someone’s dad played squash with a director and decided he wasn’t wouldn’t let Weave, Straina or Ellisandrex worry about a strange man.
Rich people were weird. Somehow, the down-to-earth Anderson family were automatically excluded from that sweeping judgment.
She eased in beside the school and leaned back in her seat while Damon gathered his belongings.
“Sam?” Ivy said and leaned forward. “I…uh, to keep up with appearances, would you mind opening the door for Damon? All the other chauffeurs are doing it, and we don’t want to stand out.”
“I’m a chauffeuse, technically.” She suppressed a growl of irritation as she undid her seatbelt and stepped outside.
And immediately realized she was underdressed.
It didn’t help to know that she was probably the most qualified of all these buffoons in slick uniforms and fancy hats. She wore the new hi-tech body armor Anderson had acquired for them, along with a sawed-off prototype shotgun that fired explosive pellets and one of the nifty ceramic knives.
Over that, she wore a trench coat, a black Metallica shirt, jeans, and combat boots. If standing out was bad, she easily rated God awful.
Not that she cared. She felt like she was doing people a favor anyway, and damned if she would dress up for the occasion. Let everyone dress down to her level. At least then, they’d be able to do something if anything happened that required them to take action. She’d tried running and fighting in a fancy suit before. It hadn’t been a pleasant experience.
She moved to the passenger side and opened the door as Damon bounded out.
“Thanks, Aunt Sammy,” he yelled as he sprinted at full tilt toward the school doors.
“You got it kiddo,” Sam said with a grin that she amazingly didn’t have to fake. While she didn’t like being called Sammy since it was a boy’s name, she could endure it when it came from freckles and a silly grin that was missing a couple of teeth.
Her gaze followed his retreating figure as she closed the door and leaned on the car. Didn’t kids hate school? This one seemed delirious with excitement and continued his headlong sprint until he vanished around a corner.
“Hey.” The voice broke into her thoughts and she turned as one of the local bodyguards-slash-chauffeurs wandered over to greet her. He was tall and handsome in that quarterback kind of way, which spelled not her type unless she was five tequila shots in.
“Cheers, mate,” she said and tried to remember the classes about body language she’d taken back in high school as an elective. She really wanted him to go away without having to tell him that.
“You’re new around here. I haven’t seen you at the morning drop-off before.” His chuckle sounded a little smooth and overly confident. “I’m Jason, nice to meet you. Are you British? You have a British accent. I actually have an aunt who lives in London.”
It had only been the one class, she recalled regretfully. And she’d napped through most of it.
“Sam,” she replied and despite her irritation, took his proffered hand and shook it. “I’m a Yorkshire gal myself.”
“Look, I don’t want to tell you how to do your job or anything, but the people around here expect a certain standard when it comes to those who drop their kids off.” Jason’s smile was polite but had a slightly supercilious edge. “Honestly, I dig the nineties rocker outfit as much as the next guy, but if parents see you hanging around their kids, they’ll throw a fit. Rich people do that, am I right?”
She really should have paid attention in that class. Was it something about…posture? Stand up straight and fold your arms to say you don’t want to be talked to? Something about putting up a metaphorical shield?
&
nbsp; “You look good, but I’m sure you can do better.” The idiot rambled on, unwittingly digging himself deeper and deeper into a hole he had no idea existed. “I bet you clean up great if you put some effort into it.”
Sam’s eyes refocused from her search to confirm that Damon had safely vanished into the school and turned to face the man. Her features were calm and collected as her trench coat swung open to reveal the body armor and, more importantly, the shotgun she had tucked under her arm.
“Look here, Jason,” she said and made every effort to keep her voice low. “I’ve tried to be nice and social-like to keep from antagonizing the locals, but you done pissed me right the fuck off. I’ve killed twelve...ish men in the past week or so, and don’t think I won’t mind turning you into lucky number thirteen-ish. Don’t ever tell me I clean up well.”
He took a hasty step back and she closed her jacket again.
“Now fuck off.” Damon was, of course, long since tucked inside the school so she had no reason to remain. She spun on her heel and barely gave the idiot another glance before she yanked the driver’s door open and slid inside.
“What happened?” Ivy asked as they eased back into the traffic.
“I was teaching the kids out there what being a real bodyguard is like,” she said with a grin and glanced at Ivy through the rearview mirror. “That and not to bother me when I’m supposed to do my job.”
“The guy out there looked like he was ready to soil himself,” the other woman pointed out with a chuckle.
“Then maybe he’s in the wrong line of work.” She shrugged, pleased to know she hadn’t missed anything important in those classes after all.
Courtney should have been there doing this. That was the mantra playing in Anderson’s head with every step he took into this new research and development facility Pegasus was opening. They were bringing many people into various different locations. Thanks to the shenanigans underway in Pegasus, most of their reestablishment operations needed to be overseen personally, and Courtney had told him not to trust any of the board members.