Savage Reborn (Team Savage Book 1)

by Michael Todd

  “Here’s my theory, okay?” Marie dropped on one of the seats and waited until she was sure she had the attention of all the women present before she continued. “Well, he doesn’t look like he belongs in a place like this, right? Where even the interns need to wear suits and ties? He looks tough, right, like those fake tough guys? But then I saw a scar on his arm when he took his jacket off, and my dad was in the Marines and he has a scar like that. Bullet scars. So he’s not simply some tough guy, he’s ex-military.”

  “Anderson is ex-military too,” Alexandra mentioned and still tried to catch the odd glimpse of the men out of the corner of her eye.

  “Right?” Marie agreed, “So ‘Savage,’” she said with air quotes, “is here doing business for people who just got into a position for a company with government contracts. So I’ve heard, anyway. I’m not actually supposed to know that, but I get memos and stuff. And again, it’s in the family, so I can put two and two together and get four, you know what I’m saying?”

  “Stay on topic,” Alexandra said.

  “Oh, right. Anyway. What I was thinking was that…well, he’s probably tied up in Delta force or something like that. He’s retired but he’s brought in by his friend, Anderson, and they’ll work together on this and be all covert with their operations around here. For the good of the company.”

  “I would let him run his covert operations all over me if you know what I’m saying,” Miranda, another secretary said with a soft giggle.

  One of the other secretaries, Gina, raised an eyebrow. “You know, I’ve been writing a kind of…novel of my own that he would work perfectly for. Nothing professional, of course. But I’ve struggled to come up with the male character for the book, and damned if he doesn’t fit that bill to a T. Or a B, in this case.”

  “Do tell?” Alexandra asked and moved closer without even thinking about it. Gina always said her writing wasn’t professional or anything like that, but from what she’d managed to share over their time together, Alexandra had realized that she was actually pretty damn good. She mostly wrote short stories and romantic stuff that Alexandra usually avoided, but it was still interesting enough to grab her attention. Most of the other secretaries poised themselves to hear more.

  “Well, the story was about a guy—the hard ex-military type with a dark past—being brought in out of the cold,” Gina said, knowing she had a captive audience. “He’s kind of gruff but with a heart of gold. You know the type. Anyway, he’s sent in to retrieve vital information from a company. Enter our female protagonist, Valerie, who has a dark secret in her past as well. She’s a secretary at this company, working to pay her way through med school, and she ends up with her hands on the drive that has the data our military man needs.”

  Alexandra let her mind churn over the idea, replacing Valerie with herself. She was the one who had the information without even knowing she had it, and Savage came to retrieve it.

  “Anyway, our guy finds out that she has it, but he also discovers that the people involved in the company she works for know she has it too, and are coming to kill her,” Gina continued. “He pauses. He knows that bringing her along for the ride would complicate his mission, but he can’t simply leave her behind. Not if her life is at risk. So he drags her along to enter into a world of spies, and backstabbing, and death, and she’s right there beside him.”

  Yes, she was. Alexandra didn’t have any translatable skills into that sort of situation, but she was a quick study. She could learn how to do it on the go, letting him protect her while protecting him right back. He would come to see her as less of a damsel in need of help and more like a partner, a friend, and maybe even…

  “I can totally see it,” the other woman continued. “He needs to protect her. At first, he thinks it’s only about the data, but he starts getting feelings. He’s not a fan of them, but he can’t help them. They have to go on the run. They end up alone in a hotel room, giving them a quiet moment together after they risked their lives and she struggles to cope. He sees it and relies on instinct. He’s not the kind of guy who usually comforts people, but he does. He strokes her cheek. She smiles, and there’s a connection. She leans in and they kiss…”

  Gina’s voice trailed off, but the silence she left behind was enough evidence to tell that she had incited the imagination of all the women present.

  Marie was the first to react. She shoved up from her seat and looked a little flushed as she straightened her dress. “Well… I think I need to get back to the front desk. Some—ahem—filing needs to get done over there.”

  “Right,” Gina said with a nod as the other secretaries pretended to get back to work.

  Their minds were all on something else entirely. Alexandra could only speak for herself, of course, but she felt like it was time to take that lunch break she’d put off today.

  “Hey, Gina?” she said as she stood and headed over to the door. “If you ever get around to writing something like that, I wouldn’t mind…you know, proof-reading it.”

  “Oh, yeah me too,” one of the other secretaries said with a smile.

  “I’ll let you girls know,” Gina replied and chuckled as Alexandra made her way out.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Savage narrowed his eyes and peered at the conference room across from the one where Anderson had situated himself. A group of women of all ages had gathered there, dressed in pantsuits and suit skirts, all with some variation of the office-approved haircut. The receptionist he’d thought was a little too loud had joined them too, he realized.

  “Who are they?” he asked as the other man initiated the connection with their team in the Zoo.

  “Them?” He looked up from his work. “Oh, they’re personal assistants for various members of the board. I’ve learned to ignore them the more time I’ve spent here.”

  “Shouldn’t they have their own offices?” The operative leaned back in his seat and released his gaze from the somewhat daunting gaggle of womanhood. “I would think so. They need somewhere permanent to work.”

  “They’re personal secretaries,” Anderson explained. “That means they travel around with their bosses, so there’s no need to maintain offices for them in our various locations. I don’t think so, anyway. I was dozing off when Courtney explained the process to me.”

  “I’ll be sure to forget you ever said that, boss,” he said with a grin. “Right up until I need something from you, and then it works damn well as blackmail material.”

  “Fuck you.” The other man grumbled under his breath but loudly enough for him to hear it and smirk cheekily in return.

  “So, what am I doing here?” He moved to sit in one of the padded and definitely more comfortable office chairs surrounding the conference table, then spun it a little before he stopped the swing. “Your message said it was urgent but didn’t really say why. I was in the middle of…”

  “Insert preppy sorority girl’s name here?” Anderson asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

  “I have some standards,” Savage grumbled. “But basically, yeah. So you’d better have a good reason for dragging me away from Candi with an I.”

  “Does my getting an official hit put out on me qualify as a good enough reason? Besides, the ones with an I at the end of their names are always the crazier ones.”

  “Yeah, I do attract the crazy kind of woman, I’ve found.” He propped his feet on the conference table and folded his arms across his chest. “An actual hit on you? Do people actually do that? I thought it was something they only did in movies. Like…open? To anyone with a gun and a death wish?”

  “It’s more complicated than that,” Anderson said and shrugged as if the explanation required too much effort. “But basically, yeah. If you’re rich enough and have the right connections out there, you can contact all kinds of people willing to kill for the right price.”

  “Did Anja have something to do with finding out?” Savage asked.

  “Well, we can ask her if this connection ever actually works.” The
ex-colonel tapped the piece of tech that was apparently the problem with sharp irritation.

  “You can tell him that hitting it won’t solve anything,” Anja said in Savage’s earpiece.

  “Anja says that you should keep hitting it. That’ll do the trick.”

  “What?” the Russian snapped indignantly.

  “Really?” Anderson looked like a kid whose parents had let him raid a candy store. Or an Apple store, depending on their preferences.

  Jeremiah was about to continue the charade when the link went online and opened a video channel between them and the Zoo team. At first, all they could see was a startlingly close-up shot of someone’s nostril.

  “I really didn’t need to see that today,” he groaned and covered his eyes. “I just had Chinese.”

  “Sal!” a voice hissed from the other side of the connection. “You’re standing too close to the camera.”

  “Oh, right, sorry,” A younger man stepped away hastily to give them a view of a darker room with computer equipment in the background. The kid didn’t look old enough to be in a place like that, but if the cut under the tank top he wore was any indication, he certainly had the build for it. He looked tanned, too, although Savage couldn’t tell whether it was genetic or courtesy of the sunlight in the Sahara.

  His gaze traveled over a few more people in the room. He recognized Dr. Monroe from their previous meetings, although she looked different with her blonde hair loose and wearing comfortable clothes instead of the suit he always saw her wear. A tall woman with short, dark hair and dog tags around her neck stood near a smaller, paler woman seated on an office chair.

  “Savage, let me introduce you to our Zoo-based team,” Anderson said with a smile. “You already know Dr. Courtney Monroe, of course. This is Madigan Kennedy”—he pointed at the dog-tag woman—“and that’s Salinger Jacobs. They and Dr. Monroe are the founding members of our little group here. They have a company in the Zoo called Heavy Metal.”

  Considering the suits they wore there, Savage could see the connection to the names. He nodded agreeably in response to each introduction.

  “Oh, don’t forget about me,” the smaller woman said with a voice that was very familiar to him by this point.

  “It’s nice to finally see the face behind the voice, Anja,” he said with a wide smile.

  She grinned and spun in her chair in the background.

  “Good to see you again, Mr. Savage,” Monroe said with a smile. “You’re looking well.”

  “Right back at you, Doc. So, what’s this I hear about a hit put out on my boy Anderson?” He paused when the former colonel cleared his throat loudly. “I’m sorry—my man Anderson.”

  “That’s not why I cleared my throat.”

  “Well, how the hell am I supposed to know what you identify as?” Savage twisted in his seat to look at the man. “I’m not a mind reader.”

  “Asshole.” Anderson chuckled and shook his head.

  “Anyway,” Monroe said before either man could resume the banter. “How about we get down to the problem at hand? Anja’s sources were able to track a payment made into an account in Anderson’s name.”

  “I assume these people aren’t paying into his 401(k), right?” He looked at his boss. “Do you get a 401(k)? Or do you guys get a share of the company situation.”

  “I like this guy,” Jacobs said with a chuckle and nudged the woman introduced as Kennedy.

  “No.” Anja cut into the conversation and pulled a couple of windows up on the screen. “They paid it into an international fund used by people looking for… Well, there isn’t a nice way to say it, I suppose. People willing to commit illegal acts for them. This way, the money can’t be traced in either direction and allows the payees to stay anonymous. The target name is usually the name put on the foundation segment—”

  “Can’t we skip to the relevant part, please?” Monroe asked and turning to face Anja.

  “No, wait, I think this is all very informative and relevant to the mission at hand,” Savage said. “Plus, I think we should all know more about how she has access to all this very illegal information. You should know, Anja, that Pegasus has a very strict no-felon hiring policy.”

  “Is that why they never officially hired you?” the hacker asked with a sassy grin at the camera.

  “I never did anything…overtly illegal. It’s simply that there’s a flurry of gang violence around these parts, and I happen to be involved in many of the situations. It’s not my fault, right?”

  Anderson smirked.

  “Technically, neither did I,” Anja said with a grin. “I was merely surfing the net and happened to stumble upon the various members of unknown origin engaging in various illicit practices and immediately reported them to the proper authorities.”

  “You’re my inspiration, Anja, I hope you know that.” He pretended to get choked up. “A true blue…Russian hero.”

  “Focus, people,” Monroe snapped. She sounded like she wasn’t at all amused by the bantering. “Thank you. Anja, if you could continue?”

  “Right. Anyway, the payment that was put into Anderson’s account is already in excess of half a million dollars. It’s effectively doubled over the past week or so. Considering the number of people who have applied for the work, it seems a lot of heat will come down on him over the next few weeks.”

  “How much is a lot?” Savage’s voice took on a more serious note.

  “Well, I can’t really say about the talent involved.” Anja turned back to her computer and tapped her keyboard quickly. “But there are many local cartels involved that delegate their work to hitters to keep them busy and make money when there isn’t anything for them to do in house. Honestly, I think we can calculate the numbers to be in the metric shit-ton region.”

  “Huh.” The operative scowled. “Do you guys want me to run interference on these people?”

  “No,” Monroe replied. “We have already identified the source of the hit—Charles Stafford. He’s a board member I butted heads with recently and appears to have been something of a Carlson loyalist. Anja will continue to track his movements and collect data we can use against him. In the meantime, the safe option—especially for Anderson—is for him to stay on the move with security with him, and to have another team with the family.”

  “Okay.” He narrowed his eyes as he considered the possibilities. “What kind of staying on the move did you guys have in mind?”

  “Thanks to a conversation we had with one of the facility leaders in the area, I was told about a couple of locations out in Nevada that work with Pegasus materials,” Anderson said.

  “But—and this is my best guess—we don’t have any facilities out in Nevada.”

  “Give the man a pot brownie,” his boss said with a chuckle. “I thought about sending our little team to investigate and try to get our stuff back if needed. But since I have to be on the move, and considering that Davis and Mixon have actually begun to establish a little chemistry with my family, I think they should probably stay to keep an eye on them and make that their full-time job.”

  “Oh, they’ll love you for that,” Savage said with a grin.

  “Wait, so the two of you will head out to investigate new facilities in Nevada?” Jacobs asked. He looked inordinately suspicious.

  “Yeah, how do we know you two won’t head out there to investigate the slot machines?” Kennedy asked, her lips pursed disapprovingly.

  “Everyone knows craps is my game,” Anderson said with a shrug.

  “I like blackjack, although you can’t really call it a game, or even gambling really,” Anja said. “It’s all about the cards. Get them all right and you’ll make money hand over fist.”

  “You know they throw card counters out, right?” Savage asked. “They don’t even break their knuckles anymore. Instead, they put them on a blacklist that keeps them out of any of the casinos in the state. I’ve heard they even share their lists with the casinos in Atlantic City.”

  “Sure, that�
��s an issue if you’re stupid enough to go in there yourself.” The hacker snorted derisively. “For me, I hire someone and supply ocular transmission lenses for them to wear, get them in, make them about ten thousand dollars, and pay out on half of it.”

  “Wait, how do you get them to pay your half if they’re the ones with the money?” Savage asked.

  “I actually had a problem with that a little while ago,” she confessed. “I reminded the guy that cheating at cards is actually a felony in Nevada and I had a whole lot of evidence of him doing it hanging around unused in my hard drive that I could turn in to the nearest member of the Nevada State Police.”

  “But it’s not illegal,” Savage replied. He remembered reading that somewhere. “If he was only card counting, he’d simply be banned.”

  “Well, he didn’t know that.” She laughed a little smugly. “I had all his school records and could see that he had never interacted with any kind of law in any capacity, so it was a calculated risk on my part. As it turns out, I’m great at math.”

  “Anyway,” Jacobs interjected. “Will you guys use this to hide out until the heat dies down, or will you actually investigate?”

  “Well, they’ll be there anyway,” Kennedy replied. “Two competent former special forces should be able to handle it. You only have one Marine on your team, though.”

  “Oh…shots fired.” Jacobs chuckled. “You got anything for that, Army?”

  Savage shrugged, not sure what wordplay he could offer. He felt comfortable taking jabs from Anja and even Anderson and giving them back too, but Monroe, Kennedy, and Jacobs were all a step above. In simple terms, he wasn’t sure what kind of jabs he was allowed to throw their way.

  “Well, I’m thankful I only have to carry one Marine around,” he replied by way of compromise.

  “Well played,” Jacobs said. “Honestly, I don’t get to make any of the jokes myself.”

  Savage narrowed his eyes and studied the other group quickly. From the way Kennedy chuckled and shook her head, he could tell there was at least some sort of mutual respect. Beyond that, though, something in the body language indicated something more intimate, which wasn’t as surprising as the way Monroe interacted with him. It wasn’t an in-your-face thing, more a light touch on the shoulder or a smile when he was talking that suggested…again, intimacy.