by Michael Todd
Was he…no. He couldn’t be. Well, the world was more progressive these days, and people were far less judgmental about the intricacies of modern relationships.
He was not one of those people. The truth was, he judged all he liked, especially since he was in a position to do so as much as he wanted since he made the same mistakes. He couldn’t comment, but he could judge all he liked.
“I do get to make fun of geologists, sociologists, and art majors,” Jacobs said, and Savage realized that the kid was still talking. “But I can’t really get into the inside jokes for the armed forces guys. I leave that to Madigan here.”
He punched her in the shoulder, and she smirked as she nudged him in return. The operative frowned but again, refrained from comment.
“Well, I think that settles the business on this end,” Monroe said. She seemed to have similar thoughts to Savage. “Do you think you can handle spreading the work with your team, Savage?”
He nodded in response. “I joke, but like Anderson here said, they do seem to have developed a working relationship with his family. I think they can protect them while Anderson and I check out the slot machines and make sure they’re all working.”
“You joke, but I don’t want to cite all the laws that prohibit that kind of behavior, Savage.” The woman only vaguely sounded like she was joking.
“Understood, ma’am.” He nodded briskly and pushed up from his seat. “We’ll make sure the fraud is covered up as neatly as possible and give you all the plausible deniability that you need.”
He grinned and she rolled her eyes as Anja killed the connection. Anderson looked at him with a trace of respect in his gaze.
“Even I don’t feel safe taunting her like that,” the ex-colonel said with a chuckle as he gathered the papers he had on the table. “You do know she was able to put a full team of assassins in the ground on her own, right?”
“On her own turf, sure.” Savage cackled. “Give a five-year-old time to prepare and they’ll Home Alone that shit like there’s no tomorrow. What do you think a full-on veteran of the Zoo can do?”
“So you’re saying she doesn’t intimidate you?” Anderson asked. He frowned into the other room, where the secretaries remained and seemed to be working. It was still business hours, so it wasn’t actually surprising, but he really wished they might go and take a late lunch and give them the floor to themselves.
“I’m not saying I wouldn’t watch my back around her,” Jeremiah said as he followed him out into the common hallway. “And I’d definitely put serious planning into trying to get a hit on her. But it’s my job to make sure to know how to kill anyone I’m around. That’s how my mind works.”
“How would you kill me?” his boss asked. “Out of pure curiosity, of course.”
The operative looked pensive for a second. “Hypothetically? I’d probably try something from a distance if I were running the operation and had something like, say, Mixon on hand to take care of it. If it were only me and I had to work with anything I could get my hands on, I’d probably choose piano wire and wait for you in the back of your car. Somewhere nice and quiet, where I’d be able to bug out before anyone noticed what happened.”
“Respect.” Anderson smirked. “You don’t think you have a chance against me toe to toe?”
“I wouldn’t risk it if I didn’t have to,” Savage replied. “But that’s simply prudent. The idea isn’t to prove yourself. It’s to get in and out alive. You know this.”
“Yeah, but it’s been a while,” he admitted.
“Don’t worry.” They approached the reception desk and he noted that the girl behind it stared at him with more intensity than he was comfortable with.
“Hi, Marie.” Anderson greeted her with a smile. “Could you email me some requisition forms? I need to run some supervision out of state.”
“Will do, Mr. Anderson,” she said and ducked quickly to retrieve a sheaf of papers from under the desk. “Will you work with Mr. Savage?”
The operative tilted his head and regarded her with a speculative look while he wondered if he’d ever introduced himself to her. His memory said he hadn’t, but he might have forgotten it if he’d done so in the early days when everything had still seemed so new and unsettling. Anderson had also introduced him to a couple of people, he recalled vaguely, so perhaps she’d been one of them.
“He’ll help me with some security supervision, yes. Thanks for reminding me, since I’ll need to fill some paperwork out for him too. Do you feel like helping me, Savage?”
He shook his head and chuckled. “Hell no. The reason why I insist that I remain your external contractor is precisely so I don’t need to fill forms out like that. So, is this a road trip we’re planning? Should I stock up on energy drinks and beef jerky?”
“Please.” Anderson smirked. “You contract for a Fortune Five-hundred company, Savage. Around here, we like to travel in style.”
“Well, I appreciate the heads up, Richie Rich. Message me about where to meet you.”
“Will do.” His boss had already begun to sift through the documents he’d been given.
Savage nodded and tipped an imaginary hat at the young receptionist, who still stared at him in an oddly unnerving way. “I’ll see you later…Marie, right?”
“That’s right, Mr. Savage,” she said. A flush touched her pale skin. “You have a nice day now.”
“Will do.” He turned and wandered over to the elevator. People were weird around there. Corporate America was such an odd place to live in. Give him the social dynamics of an army barracks any day.
Chapter Sixteen
“So, all that talk about having a nice little bit of work,” Sam said as night settled slowly over their little warehouse. “That whole conversation about getting paid and getting some action in—that was all crap?”
“Well, we are getting paid, technically,” Terry said. His gaze lingered on Savage who put their new weapons and armor out on the table before he packed them neatly and efficiently. “So not fully crap.”
“Whose side are you on again?” She slid down from her seat on the table as Savage shooed her away to lay a blanket on the surface on which to spread the weapons for cleaning before storage.
“I’m on my own side.” Mixon sipped his cold coffee and scowled as he looked at the revolver the other man was taking apart. Well, it looked like a revolver, but it had been established in their testing that it was not. He still had a few reservations about these new weapons. “I’m on the side that’s getting paid for work he believes in—which in this case, is protecting a family that’s been put in the crosshairs by bastards looking to protect their profits by killing my fellow soldiers in the Zoo.”
“Well, yeesh, damn son, if you want to bring logic into it,” Sam groaned and rolled her eyes dramatically. “But you did promise us more excitement in this job than what we’ve had. I don’t know about Gary Poppins over there, but I’d really like to shoot someone in the damned face. Call it a deep, dark need.”
“Don’t worry.” Savage looked up from taking his new toy apart. “Stick around long enough and I assure you that you’ll see a lot of men with guns. You read the data that Anja sent you, yeah?”
Sam nodded. Terry didn’t respond.
“A lot of money is going into killing Anderson,” he continued. “It won’t be long before the people coming after him decide they might have an easier target in his family. I’ll keep Anderson moving and safe as well as I can, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be danger coming your way. Stay sharp and stay on top of the family. If anybody dies, I’ll hold you two personally responsible.”
“Wait, are you not giving us the green light to kill the assholes who show up to hurt them?” Terry asked, looking up from whetting his combat knife. “Because that would suck some serious balls.”
Savage looked up from his work. “Wait, no. What? What did I say?”
“That if anyone died, we’d be held personally responsible,” Sam replied. She grinned
at his real consternation.
“Ah…no, what I meant was if any member of the family died, or if Dr. Monroe were to die if she returns from the Zoo, then you’d be in the deepest of crappers.” Thankful that he’d resolved that, he nodded and returned to his work. “Feel free to waste any idiots who try to keep you from achieving that goal, but at least try to make it look clean. The last guys were found with a bunch of knife wounds, but it was left clean and neat. We need to keep the cops off our trail for as long as possible.”
“Right,” Sam said. “What last time was this? Did I miss something while on babysitting duty?”
“That was me,” Terry replied and raised his hand. “It was when I saw intercepted the team outside the restaurant, so no, you haven’t missed out. But wait, are you saying I didn’t do well there?”
“Oh, no, nothing like that. You did a great job. A little too great, in fact.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” Mixon tested the blade and resumed sharpening it.
“What, are your feelings hurt?” she asked.
“That’s not the point.” Savage sighed as he finished the cleaning and put the weapon back together again. “My point was, it was left clean and elegant, so all kinds of kudos to your skills. I’m not saying you should change anything up. All I’m doing is letting you know that local law enforcement has tracked our movements, and while it’s been attributed to gang violence, if it continues, we should prepare for some federal involvement in the situation.”
Terry grinned at Sam, who tried to cover her laughter. “I wondered how long you would keep trying to make sure you didn’t hurt my feelings. You’re a very nice person, Savage.”
“A very nice person that’s holding a very new and expensive piece of weaponry he’s dying to try out on live targets.” He clicked the last pieces of the pistol together and flicked the safety on. “It’s best to keep that in mind, eh?”
“I’ll keep that in mind, boss,” Terry replied.
“Wait, so if I get to kill the guys who try to kill Ivy or Damon, do I get a speech on how I’m doing a great job but I need to be subtler about it?” She leaned in closer. “Is it like your go-to speech, or do you come up with them as you go along?”
“You know, I’ll have a very nice one I’ll say at your graves,” Savage retorted with a nod and took a moment to inspect one of the shotguns. “Very nice. I have individual poems for both of you. I think I might actually cry too. I’ll be the one who killed you both, but it’ll still be a sad moment.”
Sam chuckled and flipped her hair back over her shoulder. “Aw, that’s sweet.”
“It’s okay,” Terry replied with a shrug. “I like poetry. Nothing too brainy, of course, or too dark. You start talking about quoting and ravens, and I’ll climb out of my grave to smack you over the head. And then…I don’t know, start the zombie apocalypse, I guess.”
“Don’t even joke about that,” Savage replied and completed his packing. “We have alien goop making an alien jungle with alien animals sprouting up in the middle of the Sahara fucking desert. How far away from reality do you think the zombie apocalypse really is?”
“Language,” Terry protested in a half-hearted way before he nodded. “Fair enough.”
“Right, so.” He focused on the two members of his team as he zipped his burlap bag. “We need to decide on mission distribution between you two. You’ll cover the Anderson family, but there will probably be some missions that the two of you will need to run on the side.”
“Oh, I can take care of those,” Sam said with a smile. “Terry can take care of the family, and I’ll be on call for any of these absolute emergencies that might come up.”
“What?” Mixon flashed her an indignant look. “How come I’m the one stuck taking care of the family?”
“Because Terry’s a girl’s name,” she said after a quick pause.
“Wow, scraping the barrel for the world’s weakest argument.” Savage chuckled.
“Well, Terry ain’t a girl,” he snapped with a grin.
“And he responds with the world’s weakest comeback.” He chuckled at the sniper’s disgruntled expression and folded his arms across his chest. “Well, I can see I’ll leave Ivy and Damon in the absolute best of hands and will in no way reconsider my decision to bring you two on for this job. I trust you can handle the assignments to make sure each of you earns your money individually and fairly, got it?”
“Well, yeah, if this fucking asshole decides to cooperate,” Sam grumbled.
“Language,” Terry snapped in a warning tone. All Sam had to respond with was to wave the ring she wore on her middle finger. It seemed to be studded with a piece of lapis lazuli, making it almost opaque, yet it still gleamed in the weak light that filled their small, functional section of the warehouse.
“Right.” Savage grinned and hauled his bag over his shoulder. “Anderson said he and the family will stay in for the night, so the two of you can take the time off and decide what you want to do with your lives. Come tomorrow morning, though, it’ll be full-time security on the both of them, got it?”
“We’ll get it done, boss,” Terry replied. “You boys have a nice trip down to Vegas. Put some money on black thirteen for me while you’re down there, will ya?”
“The guy who can’t even stand cursing likes gambling?”
“A man can have his vices, right?”
“Oh, and Savage, you don’t give the stripper the hundred-dollar bill until after she’s finished the blow job, okay?” Sam reminded him.
“Interesting that you think I need to pay for a blow job,” he cracked back. “Very interesting.”
She had no response to that, and he chuckled on his way back to the Taurus he’d bought second or third hand from a local who wanted cash and was willing to make a quick name transfer on the vehicle’s papers. He heaved the bag into the trunk.
While he hadn’t worked with Terry and Sam long, he felt like he could trust them to do what had to be done without too much trouble. They knew what they were doing, and despite the seemingly light-hearted jokes, they would be able to focus on their work. Besides, except for Terry’s annoyance with foul language and Sam’s propensity to use it, they had begun to work well together. It was good to see them mesh as a team.
He slid into the driver’s seat, started the engine, and pressed down on the gas pedal. His night off stretched ahead with no particular purpose. It wasn’t like he was the kind of guy to make plans and he needed to scale back on the drinking. He might simply watch a movie, order takeout, relax, and have an early night.
Or he would go to the bar near his apartment. It all depended on the mood he was in when he got home. Considering that the city would be in gridlock thanks to the rush hour, he had a feeling he would need a drink.
The message came at around midnight and forced Savage to bring his night of drinking to an early end. Anderson had messaged him on where to meet him and bring the materials they would need for this extended mission. The location was a small, private airstrip just outside the city, with a plane that left at nine in the morning.
The operative generally only needed around five to six hours of sleep to feel rested the next day. A few cups of coffee would be needed for the duration, but he would be able to survive and even thrive on a day like that.
He was up early the next morning and spent about an hour in physical conditioning—cardio, stretching, and yoga that he would never admit to anyone he was adept at, and a quick visit to a nearby gym for a round or two with a punching bag. That done, he hurried home, took a shower, and headed down to where he’d parked his car. The apartment building wasn’t high-end but it had its own parking lot for residents, which allowed him to keep his cheap new car parked in a location where it wasn’t likely to be robbed or searched. Having someone discover the virtual armory he had stashed in the trunk would be the definition of a bad break.
The traffic around the city had begun to clog when he drove out, but he managed to slip through befor
e things got too rough. Only one or two slow-moving sections slowed him a little, but he was soon out of the city and drove smoothly and carefully into the open areas where private airfields liked to set their operations up.
When he turned through the entrance, no physical guards were present. The only security was a rapid facial scan, likely sent to someone in the tower for analysis. He felt a moment of annoyance as the machine finished the scan and didn’t immediately raise the heavy steel barrier, which made him wonder if Anderson had shared his face with the security system. After a few seconds of impatience, the barrier raised and the screen over the scanner directed him to hanger twenty-one with a little map to guide him.
“Appreciated,” Savage growled under his breath as he rolled into the field. Sam would love this place, he mused. She had a whole slew of aggressive driving training under her belt, which made her the only one on their team actually qualified to drive a car through a gunfight. From what he’d watched of the training she’d undergone, most of the drivers liked the open spaces left in abandoned airstrips.
He pulled up to the hangar where a small, private jet was being helped out from under a tarp. It seemed an odd thing to do, but perhaps the need for secrecy extended to the owners of the aircraft. He wondered if his boss had specifically requested the plane for that particular reason.
Anderson was already waiting for him. “You’re late,” were the former colonel’s first words as he pulled his sunglasses off. The man looked like he hadn’t gotten much sleep. The curse of having a young child, Savage assumed.
“Two minutes late,” he replied easily and checked his watch to make sure, even though he already knew what the digital read would tell him. “And that’s only because they had some technical difficulties with the machine that was supposed to let me in. You look like shit, by the way.”