Working for GSI’s Internal Affairs Division meant he didn’t have to deal with the headache of following the rules. He only enforced them as he saw fit. That was why he loved carrying on with the IA routine, and that title meant he didn’t need to sit in his truck, contemplating where to tell his boss to shove it.
Kip glanced in the mirror, wiping orange spittle from the corners of his mouth, and then opened the truck door. He flicked the spit-covered spice stick like a cigarette butt and ignored the guard on the way in to GSI’s main headquarters.
Growling at people in the halls, he swung open the pompous doors, emblazoned with “Buck Baer.”
Buck’s secretary didn’t bat an eye when Kip announced himself. She must be used to the ballbusters who work for Buck. Very well-paid ballbusters. And considering that the rocks hanging from her ears weren’t knock offs, Buck’s secretary was making serious dough, too. Everyone’s on the take. Impressive.
“Mr. Baer will see you now,” she said from the desk, not taking her eyes of the monitor.
Yeah, I bet he will. Good thing Kip hasn’t wasted time resting his ass in some cushy chair. Buck’s place was too nice, had too much glitz. Kip would rather have hard-nosed furniture that’d been beat up and torn down. That would fit his demeanor. But not Buck. He liked the show. But if that’s what the prick wanted to do with his moolah, it wasn’t worth a second thought to Kip.
He elbowed through another set of solid-wood doors that were meant to impart how well GSI was doing in the private security industry. Other firms tried for high security and impenetrable walls. Buck wanted in-your-face success.
The jerk stood from behind his desk. He always looked angry, at least when Kip walked into the room.
“You stink like cinnamon.” Buck clapped his hands onto hips. “Thought I told you to cut that shit out.”
“Back off, Buck.” What he wouldn’t do to face off with him and see who could really take who. It would stop their supervisor-subordinate dance. One good ass whipping, and his boss would wise up.
“I sent you to evaluate the outpost for a simple reason—cover our tails. Now I have the goddamn Secretary of State and the goddamn Defense Intelligence Agency wanting answers.”
Kip shrugged and pulled out another cinnamon stick. “Sounds like a personal problem.”
“We made a deal, Pearson. You earned your money, and I earned mine.”
“Don’t worry so much. All ends are almost tied nice and pretty for ya.” This conversation was an annoyance. He didn’t see his boss as his superior. They were on par. Strength, check. Tenacity, check. Intelligence, nah. Kip would have to take that one. But all in all, Kip wasn’t subservient, even if the man signed his paychecks.
“That woman is alive!” Buck slammed his hands down on the desk, stout fingers stretched on the expensive-looking wood that was so damn showy.
“Not for long. You have any idea where I left her? In the hands of some very… eager beavers. She’s probably wishing she’d died in a car bomb.”
Buck pointed at the television. Its muted screen showed his former partner’s face. That made things slightly more complicated. “So they know she’s alive. Big deal.”
“Damn government contracts. I’ll never accept a stipulation for an outside observer. Hell, I’ll never let you find a fall girl again.” Buck rubbed his temples. “They want us to go get her.”
Kip used air quotes. “So ‘go get her.’”
“You’re a piece of work.” Buck leaned back into his executive desk chair and cursed. “If this was clean, her death wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow. I told you, find a throwaway observer to bring with you. Suspended ATF agent? Few family or friends? She sounded easy, perfect. But now it’s messy.”
“Price of greed, my friend. I can’t help how shit went down. I certainly didn’t foresee The Titan Group thrown in the mix. Imagine my surprise when they arrived to save my ass. I’d sooner expect you.”
“I don’t go into the field anymore.” Buck crossed his arms.
Kip laughed. No shit. Buck was a face guy these days. He’d packaged up all his brutality so that he could shake hands in DC and secure jobs. Glad-handing son of a bitch. “I know. That was a joke, man. Seriously, though. What do you want from me?”
“No complications. That’s what I ordered. That’s what I expect.”
“No complications? Christ, you and your boys caused enough problems that IA had to get involved. No one would’ve noticed a few missing millions.”
“Pearson—”
“Greed always trumps good ol’ common sense. You had to go for multi-million. And selling the guns? Not the smartest move, ol’ Buckaroo.” Kip twirled the cinnamon stick in his finger. Its burnt-orange stain was already set deep on his knuckles.
“You took the money, too.” Ignoring the name-calling, his boss levied the charge like it should scare him. “If I go down, you go down.”
“Shaking in my Levi’s.” Kip couldn’t help but urge the bastard on. He’d walked in wanting a fight. But no matter what he wanted, Buck wouldn’t step up to a ring-side showdown.
“I will pummel your face. Don’t care if I am wearing a tailored suit.”
Yeah, right. “Unless you’re down for blows, Buck, let’s finish this up. I was a dirty cop before you hired me. No shame here.” And there wasn’t. He’d been on the take for years, and he had a nice life to show for it. Big house. Kickin’ truck. Cell phone full of pros who would roll out of his bed with a smile. “You offered me this job with a solid explanation of my future duties and compensation. I’ve been covering up your good-time ways and cashing my paychecks. It’s all good.”
Buck smoothed the front of his suit, and his irritation was as clear as the cost of the Rolex on his wrist. “How do you propose we fix this?”
“Well, shit, man. I’m not one of your special operations leaders—”
“Stop pushing me, Pearson. I know what the fuck my ground team will do. Your report. Your fuckin’ paperwork.” He sucked in a long breath that didn’t help with his red face. “I want your official report ready in an hour. I want a clean bill of health for my outpost job. I want a report so pretty that the fucking president of this damn country will call me and extend his regrets that anyone dared to think GSI’s on the take.”
“But we are.” Kip was having too much fun at the risk of giving his boss a coronary.
“Goddamn it, Pearson!” Buck raised his fist and snarled, but then paused for a breath, steadying himself.
Too damn bad. “Look, Buck, you can’t fire me. I’m in a great position. And the sooner you realize that, the better it is for both of us. I’ll write a report you can send to your government friends. Hell, I’ll testify before Congress. But it’ll have some dirt smudges and a red flag or two. Nothing that’ll lead to anything. You can’t turn in a report that’s pristine and shiny. Shit, man, you’d think this was your first time at the rodeo.”
Buck’s head bobbed. “Watch yourself, Pearson.”
He laughed. “Yeah, I’ll do that. And if I were you, I’d watch Titan. Rumor has it, our fall girl, she’s part of the tight clutches Jared Westin calls his family.” Kip probably should’ve dug a little deeper into Lilly Chase. But when a fine piece of ass like Sugar made herself available, he offered her the gig, only feeling the slightest bit bad that he would have to kill her.
Buck’s forehead veins protruded. The old bastard was probably a respectable bad ass back in the day. Back when he started GSI. Anyway, he was just an inch away from giving out blow jobs to bureaucrats to keep his money flowing.
The desk phone rang. After staring at it, he finally answered, without dismissing Kip. “Buck Baer.”
Buck’s face returned to its normal color as he breathed through his nose, his nostrils flaring. “Blow the side off that mountain. I want a crater where an outpost used to be. And I want Lilly Chase dead.”
CHAPTER THREE
Dawn cracked over the mountain. It was beautiful, despite the crosshatched cage imp
eding her view. The frozen air had chilled Sugar all night long as she’d huddled against the dirt floor. Her aches and pains were accentuated by lack of sleep and her concern for her safety.
She sat up, rubbing her hands over her arms for warmth. Movement caught her eye. The small hands that had thrown her pieces of stale bread the day before reappeared, as if waiting for her to wake. They waved hello.
“Hello?” Sugar whispered.
An inch at a time, a navy scarf pushed into Sugar’s cell. Caked with mud, the thing was crusty and rough as Sugar pulled it through and wrapped it around her shoulders. An added layer of warmth soothed her shivers.
Then she saw the hands again—really saw them. In daylight and without explosions, those hands were more than small. They were… the size of a child’s.
Please… no.
She crawled to the cage barrier and pushed her face against it, hoping to see a man or a teen, and not a poor kid caught in hell. But she saw nothing other than the rocky landscape and wind-billowed tents. No kid. No adults.
Sugar rocked back on her knees and wrapped her scarfed-covered arms around her shins, balling up to preserve body heat. A tiny head poked in front of her cell and then drew back.
It was a child. A little girl. Sugar’s heart broke. Tears would’ve flooded her eyes had she not been dehydrated. No, no. Why does hell have to house babies?
Crawling back to the edge of her enclosure, she put her fingers through the holes and whispered again. “Hi, out there.”
The curious head popped forward, staying near the edge of Sugar’s makeshift cell. The girl had big brown eyes—the most inquisitive Sugar had ever seen—knotted hair, and dirt-streaked cheeks. The image wrenched her heart.
Sugar wiggled her fingers through the barricade again. The little girl did the same, putting a finger onto the crosshatch and imitating her.
“Hi,” Sugar whispered again, smiling. She pointed to the lock. “Can you open that?”
The little girl shook her head, but curled her finger again.
What language would she speak? Dari? Pashtu? Sugar knew a few basic words, but nothing that would translate well to an… eight-, nine-, ten-year-old. How old was she?
The finger disappeared. Maybe Sugar shouldn’t have asked about the lock. Any minute, she would have to deal with the fuckers keeping her caged. Any minute—
The little girl was back, bearing a gift. A piece of bread squeezed through a hole. Sugar pushed her finger through the hole in acknowledgement. “Thank you.”
The bread wasn’t much, but did the job. Leaning against her enclosure, her fingers still snaked toward freedom, Sugar finished the scrap in two bites and ignored the taste of dirt. A soft touch met her finger, and she looked out of her cage. The little girl sat on the other side and had locked a finger around hers.
Sugar whispered hello again, scared that they would both get into trouble.
“English,” the little girl whispered back, nodding.
“English,” Sugar repeated, unsure if it was a question or an affirmation. “You know English?”
She nodded, and a little smile spread across her face. Their locked fingers stayed in place, while the girl played in the dirt with her other hand.
“My name is Sugar.”
“Sugar,” the little girl repeated, not looking away from a tiny dirt pile on the ground. “You are bad?”
Bad? Had the little girl ever seen a woman like Sugar behind makeshift bars? If she was out here, she’d seen too much, like the shootout during the night. Sugar tightened her finger around the girl’s, trying to sound trustworthy. “No. Not bad. Good.”
“Good.” Big brown eyes reached into her heart and squeezed.
“Yes, good.” She nodded, reassuringly. “What is your name?”
“Asal.”
“That’s pretty.”
The little girl smiled, showing all her teeth. Sugar heard something move in the background, and Asal scampered away. She was all alone again. For a few minutes, Sugar hadn’t been stranded in a rudimentary cell, freezing her ass off on the side of a mountain. She was making a young friend, who she had a feeling hated this damn place, too.
***
No better way to fix a fuck up than with a little cash and coercion. Wasn’t that the American way of doing business? Sure was in Buck’s book. And his book was nothing but corrupt commandments and legendary loopholes.
This plan was worth the eye roll from his secretary when he’d sent her running off for the impossible—a simple phone number that would dry up his worries.
Buck leaned back in his chair, cradling his phone against his ear. He had a small window of time to pull this off. Jared Westin was as predictable as he was loyal. If Lilly Chase had a connection to the Titan Group, that devoted jerkoff would run all the way back to Afghanistan to find her. Some people couldn’t help being the good guy.
“Yeah, hello?” a clipped voice answered.
His secretary had been successful, worth every Benjamin he threw at her and all that jewelry he gifted on the regular. “This is Buck Baer, and I have a proposition for you.”
“Excuse me?”
That reaction was to be expected. Let’s try again. “This is Buck Baer.”
“Are you looking for—”
“No. I’m not. I want to talk to you.” Time for business. He cracked his neck. “Let’s table your surprise for when I really toss something buzzworthy your way.”
“What do you want, Baer?”
“An open mind, for starters.” He waited and was rewarded with silence. Bingo. “Don’t breathe a word of this, don’t fiddle with recording gadgets, or link up to whatever toys you boys have at Titan until you know the stakes.”
“And the stakes are?”
“The stakes are simple. Your worst nightmare. The daughters you think no one knows about and the sweet wife you’ve hidden from your mercenary life are with me. You might keep a secret life from Titan, trying to keep your pretties safe and sound, but nothing gets by GSI.”
“Bullshit.”
“I have your wife’s phone, and I see you’re calling her right now. Cute.”
The voice growled, “You will die if you hurt them.”
Buck shrugged. “I don’t want to hurt them. Really. But here’s what I do want. Lilly Chase.”
“You kidnapped my family because of Sugar?”
“I’m not even asking you to hand her over. I only want intelligence. I suspect Titan will be on the ground before GSI plans to mobilize. If you want to see your family again, all I need is the where and when after you have hands on Lilly Chase. Then—presto—you’ll get your family back. Unharmed. And I’ll even throw in a couple hundred grand for your worries.”
Ensuring Buck’s victory before nearing the finish line, the voice again growled, “I’m going to find you, slit your—”
“You might, but your family will die. So it’s a lose-lose for everyone. Don’t bother bringing Titan in on this one. I know how great your cocksucker boss thinks he is, but do you believe he’s better than me? Would you stake your family’s life on it?”
“Why do you want Sugar?”
“I took you for a smarter man.” Did the world not see she was the one thing that could crumple his empire? Women talked more than they should. She would certainly come back to the States and tell the world what he was actually doing in Afghanistan. Buck shook his head. He was betting that she wouldn’t mention what a great entrepreneur he was. No, her focus would probably lie in the terrorists he was aiding in exchange for cash. “It’s better not to ask questions.”
“Jared will come after you. Me. Both—”
“Titan’s days are numbered.” Buck gestured nonchalantly. “Jared and I have a not-so-friendly game of Annihilation running. Stems back from our Ranger days. This is more personal than you realize.”
“Probably not.” The man’s voice was harsh and knowing.
The man’s comeback was unexpected, but men under duress rarely behaved as they sho
uld. “So, do we have an agreement?”
“You take my family, return them at your leisure, then I let you live another night?”
Feisty son of a bitch. Too bad this guy works for Titan. Buck sighed, uninterested in explaining himself, but needing to shore this up. Time was ticking. “No one will take me out. Not you. Not Jared Westin. Not a rogue ATF agent who should’ve minded her own business and died in the Middle East. You’ll always know in the back of your mind that I took them once, and I could do it again.”
Silence. Silence was golden. It meant: “Yes, sir. I’ll do it, sir. You’ve got me by the balls, sir.”
Just the way Buck liked his friends and enemies. “We’ll be in contact. And until then, know everyone is safe. Temporarily.”
***
Jared didn’t care about inciting fallout in the Middle East or pissing off people in power. It wasn’t his concern. Loyalty ran like blood through his veins. Sugar was a part of his network, which roughly translated to being part of his team. The Titan net had been cast over her, and he would do just about whatever it took to get her and shake some sense into her. Afghanistan? Shit…
The knock on his door made him wish for good news. But he wasn’t counting on it.
“Get in here,” he yelled.
The door opened, and Parker walked in with a folder in one hand and a tablet in the other. The look on his face wasn’t promising.
“Speak.”
Parker slid the tablet onto Jared’s desk. “Details on the hostage we pulled out.”
Jared grabbed the electronic device. He tapped on the screen, and it lit up. Kip Pearson. The file gave Pearson’s generic stats like height, weight, and profession. “He works for GSI?”
Global Security International was Titan’s rival. Wish we’d known that shit when we flew Kip home. Wish the asshole had shouted, “Hey, buddy, you’ve left my partner on the side of a Taliban-infested mountain.” What the fuck was that all about?
“Yup. As their version of internal affairs.”
“Damn it.” He bunched his forehead. “IA left a partner behind? That’s a stretch. What was their objective?”
The Titan Series: Military Romance Boxed Set Page 54