by Amy Gamet
He wasn’t supposed to be in here again, wasn’t supposed to be starting a new mission after his decision to leave.
This was the epicenter of HERO Force, where missions were planned, security coordinated, and hostages tracked across continents. From quiet research to pops of gunfire echoing through headsets, everything the team did went through this space, and now it would serve as the nerve center for the mission to find the brancium and protect Buckeye’s sister.
Summer fucking Daniels.
The meeting had gotten completely out of control, his reaction to being in the same room with her far more explosive than he’d been prepared to deal with. He hadn’t expected her to be quite so pretty, and he sure as hell hadn’t expected her to realize who he was.
She resembled her brother in a twisted sort of way, but the big brown deer-in-the-headlights eyes that had earned Buckeye his nickname were mesmerizing on his sister, her perfectly proportioned frame the feminine version of Buckeye’s wiry physique. Even the lips that had been comically curved on her brother were lush and full and downright kissable when centered on her perfect little heart-shaped face.
Watch it.
His dick twitched in his pants and he cursed. Yes, he’d found her attractive, all right, and that was before she’d lit up like a goddamned Christmas tree and smiled at him. His old pen pal. It seemed like a lifetime ago they’d corresponded, Buckeye’s little sister who’d glommed onto him and wouldn’t let go.
He shook his head. Truth was he’d encouraged her, enjoying the attention at a difficult time in his life, but soon he was laughing at her bad chemistry puns and eager to read the next installment of Stupid Chemistry Students and the Women Who Teach Them, her stories from the Chem 101 class she ran as a teaching assistant.
She was a total nerd and funny as shit. Who would have thought she could also model for the Rocket Scientists Illustrated Swimsuit Edition? An image of her on a sandy beach in a bikini popped into his mind, a pencil between her lush lips and a thick textbook open on the ground.
Fuck.
He’d seen the cautioning look in Mac’s eyes, warning him to back away. But from the moment she realized who he was, it was like a boulder rolling downhill, picking up speed, the final outcome inevitable. Luke would be the one to protect her, to keep her by his side through this ordeal.
Because that’s smart.
He shook his head.
He was drawn to her because of their history and what happened, and he wondered if he should have talked to that shrink after all, because if that was the case, he was nothing short of crazy. Summer could never find out what he did, ever. Yet she might as well be tied to his side, for how much time they’d be spending together.
Sloan stood up from a console, facing Luke. “Is it true Buckeye’s sister’s a knockout?”
The question shouldn’t have bothered him. His back shouldn’t have straightened, his stare shouldn’t have hardened to a fine, sharp point. But they did. “She’s good-looking.”
Sloan crossed his arms and widened his stance. “Good-looking like not hideously ugly, or good-looking like, ‘Man, I never realized Buckeye was hot?’”
Luke could only imagine Sloan’s reaction to Summer. The other man was known for his effect on the opposite sex, but he liked to use women and throw them out like empty cheeseburger containers. Luke’s protection detail started right now. “She’s off-limits.”
Sloan held up his hands. “Okay then.” He gestured to a large monitor. “We used Steven Galbraith’s ID from Daniels Aerospace to run a facial recognition scan. His real name is Steven Walsh. Father was committed to a mental institution when Steven was thirteen and the kid was placed in a series of foster homes. He aged out of the system and joined the army, earning himself a dishonorable discharge a year and a half later for assaulting a female officer.” He turned to a computer, striking a few keys.
Luke jerked his head back. “How the hell does a guy like that fake his way through an aerospace engineering job?”
“This is where it gets interesting. He wasn’t faking. After he was discharged from the army, he petitioned the courts and got guardianship of his father, then took him out of the mental institution and brought him home to live. The dad’s an aerospace engineer. Probably encouraged him to go back to school.”
“So between Summer and her father, and this guy and his father, we’ve got four rocket scientists in two families.”
“Right.”
“You don’t see that every day.” He shrugged. “Cops, firemen, sure. But not rocket scientists.”
“Trace’s staked out in the parking lot of AGL Aerospace looking for our man.”
“Can we find out if AGL is working on anything comparable to Alloy 531 that would require brancium for testing?”
“No way. These companies are very secretive about the products they have in development.”
“That doesn’t give us a lot to go on.”
Sloan’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “You’re welcome.”
Luke had a hard time telling when this guy was trying to be funny or just being a dick. The men of HERO Force New York had yet to settle into a cohesive group, their jagged edges still protruding from the bunch like glass shards in a bundle of wheat, and he wouldn’t miss this place when it was time to go.
When will that be, exactly?
He’d come into work today expecting to give his notice, and he wouldn’t have been surprised if Mac had told him to go home. Now, just a few hours later, he was committed to staying for another mission, and not just any mission, but guarding Buckeye’s sister. The one mission he had no business being a part of.
Life was fucked up like that, pulling you into a situation you’d do anything to avoid, handcuffing you to the one person you needed to get away from, like smashing your head into a wall over and over again until you learned some cosmic lesson you shouldn’t have forgotten in the first place.
He headed for Moto’s desk. They went back to BUD/s training together, the very beginning of their journey to become SEALs. They’d been placed on different teams and lost touch until they’d both been recruited by Mac, but Moto was one of the few men at HERO Force Luke actually liked.
He peered at the other man’s screen. Blueprints. “What’s this?”
“Plans for AGL from the county clerk’s office in Boston. I’m importing them into CAD so we can take a virtual tour.”
“You can do that?”
“The plans are set up for it. The architects must have had it on their machines, which they submitted into the public record, maybe by mistake. I just have to import the files from the county server. Only take a few minutes.”
Luke watched as screen after screen of information popped up, Moto’s fingers flying like a concert pianist’s up and down the keys. As promised, a 3D image of a reception area came on screen.
“Sweet,” said Luke.
“Now we can go anywhere you want.” Moto maneuvered the point of view through a doorway and into a long corridor.
“How big is the building?”
“Let’s see.” Moto checked the paperwork. “Twenty-eight thousand square feet.”
“Jesus Christ. How are we going to find this thing?”
Mac walked past them. “My office, Wiseman.”
Luke sighed but followed, entering the austere room with white walls and dark wood furniture and closing the door behind them. He knew exactly what was coming before Mac said a goddamn word.
“What the hell are you doing?” asked Mac. “Do you really want to be alone with that woman? She’s bound to have questions about her brother’s death.”
Luke sat in a metal chair with a vinyl seat. “That doesn’t mean I have to answer them.”
“You could, you know. It’s your story to tell. Your prerogative if you want her to know.”
“Hell no.”
“Then let me send one of the other guys instead.”
Luke’s jaw muscle twitched. “She asked for me.”
&nbs
p; “But are you comfortable with her? This is on you, man. One hundred percent your call. But I saw the way she looked at you in there, and if you’re determined to keep secrets, you’re in for one hell of a challenge.”
Mac was too observant for his own damn good. “Maybe they shouldn’t be secrets anymore.”
“That’s between you and God.”
“Or else it’s between you, me, and Buckeye.”
They never spoke of this. Never talked about what happened, or what should happen now. It was understood. A shared history that could eat them alive if it were allowed out of the past and into the light of day.
The window suddenly blew open, its metal frame slamming into the wall behind it. A gust of icy air pushed into the room. It had been happening all week, papers blowing everywhere, the wild weather wreaking havoc on the hundred-and-thirty-year-old office building. Mac let loose a string of curses and slammed it shut.
He sighed heavily, sitting back down. “Maybe each of us has to make our peace with it.”
Peace. Luke laughed without humor. It had never occurred to him there could be any such thing. “Have you?”
“No. But if you go with that woman, it will be a fight with yourself to keep it hidden. The truth wants to rise to the surface like a breath you’ve been holding underwater.”
He would never tell Summer the truth, no matter how much his lungs burned. “I can handle it.”
Mac nodded. “Remember you said that. I’m going to throw it back in your face when this goes badly.”
6
Steven Walsh sat in the living room of his father’s house, the drapes drawn tightly over the midday sun, garbage and dirty dishes covering the coffee table. He pressed rewind, pausing when he got to the indoor view of the explosion, light extending outward from the package like he was staring into the sun. It was the money shot, the reason he’d spent two grand on a high definition wireless camera he knew would be destroyed by the flames.
It had been worth it.
He’d had six cameras in all, from the body cam when he placed the package to the dashboard cam at the end, and he’d painstakingly edited them from start to finish. The manic phase he was in required very little sleep, a bonus for bombers with big plans to fulfill, and this recording was only the half of it.
Summer Daniels appeared on-screen, talking to Jacques de Marquis in the distance, the oscillating friction accelerator spinning behind them like a work of art. The edge of a steel tank showed down the left side of the view, his hiding place for the opening scene of his masterpiece. It hadn’t been hard to get into the building, though he’d come prepared for a fight. By the time he crouched behind that tank, he’d had a boner the size of Texas from anticipating the explosion and the destruction of those he hated most.
He leaned back on the couch as he watched, unzipping his pants and pulling them low on his hips, pulling his underwear down and fisting his hand on his cock. The oscillator whipped around at eight times normal speed, the recording sped up while he made it to his vehicle some distance away. An image of him climbing into his van appeared inset in the bottom corner of the screen, and he tugged on his erection with a rhythmic motion that felt too good to last.
He watched as the recorded version of himself held the detonator to the camera, then pushed the button down. His hand worked faster now, flying back and forth and sliding his foreskin over the sensitive head. The package on the floor exploded into a fireball in real time, one of the limbs on the oscillator flying off as light took over the screen. Then the package was whole again, the incident beginning once more in slow motion. He cried out in orgasm as the package burst open, the chemical reaction igniting its contents and the testing site in flames, long ropes of ejaculate spewing onto his jeans.
“Marlene! Get the hell in here.” His father’s voice bellowed from down the hall.
Steven cursed and wiped up his mess as best he could with a fast-food napkin, dropping it onto a plate as he stood and buttoned his jeans. Marlene Walsh had been dead for most of Steven’s life, but to John Walsh she was very much alive. He lived in the past, as if the 1960s had simply continued to be, his mental illness requiring his son play along. He jogged into the next room, this one decorated in gold crushed velvet and sage green damask, though it was no cleaner than the first and smelled faintly of shit. “Mom’s not here. What do you need?”
“Shut the fuck up and get me my wife.”
“Are you thirsty?”
“I’ve got to take a piss. Who the hell are you?”
He wasn’t like this when they took him away. He could still function, hold down a conversation most of the time. Yet he heard voices and was convinced the government had killed his wife, a theory he spent obscene amounts of time trying to prove in his laboratory and, later, in his room at the mental hospital.
Steven’s social worker had taken him to visit every month, no matter that he didn’t want to go, and it became apparent over the years that Steven shared his father’s science ability and understood his darkness. He’d fought against it at first, refusing to accept his diagnosis and aligning himself with the heroes of the outside world. When the US Army challenged him to be all he could be, he led the charge with gusto and left John Walsh behind.
He flourished in basic training and took his first assignment in Iraq, but they put a woman in charge of him, a bitch with little tits and a wide ass that had no business being in the army at all. She nagged him, constantly picking at his faults in front of the other men. That’s when he first heard the voices telling him to kill her. To his credit, he’d only knocked her front teeth out with the butt of an M4.
The court-martial determined Steven lacked mental responsibility, but what he really lacked was remorse. The only thing he regretted was not hitting her hard enough to drive those teeth through her sinuses and into her dumb bitch brain.
He moved behind his father’s wheelchair and disengaged the brake, the older man twisting to swipe at him, nails raking Steven’s skin. “Leave me alone! I want my wife.”
“I’m Steven. I’ll help you.”
His father was agitated, pulling at the strap that held him down. “I’ll fucking kill ya! I’ll take your dick and I’ll wrap it around your neck, you little pecker-head.”
Walsh grabbed his father’s arm, twisting it backwards until he yelped and leaning in close to his ear. “She’s dead. I can help you piss or you can wet yourself and sit in it. Frankly, I don’t care either way, old man.”
A confused, scared look settled over his father’s features. “I gotta take a leak.”
“Fine. Right this way.” He pushed the wheelchair to the bathroom. “Anything I can do to help.”
7
Summer stepped into her hotel room, letting the door close solidly behind her. She leaned on the wall and eased out of her shoes, her breath hissing between her teeth. Her father was settled in a room across the hall, a SEAL named Chop in the adjoining room next door to him, while Luke was in the room connected to hers.
It had been decided her father would stay here for the duration, while she and Luke would continue on to Boston and AGL Aerospace with the others in the morning to search for the brancium. Not that she had any idea how they were going to find it.
Truth be told, she was having some second thoughts about this trip in its entirety. Perhaps it would be better to let the police handle the investigation than to go gangbusters into there and look for it themselves. But she knew in her heart of hearts they’d never find it if she went through the proper channels, and she wasn’t prepared to give up on the family business just because she was scared.
And exhausted.
She needed sleep. The only rest she’d gotten was at the hospital, and it hadn’t been nearly enough. Yet she was wound up, her mind spinning in circles, and she doubted she’d be able to settle down any time soon. She could really go for a glass or two of wine, but hell, anything alcoholic at this point would do. She picked up the phone to call room service, just as Luke knoc
ked on the adjoining room door.
She hung up. They’d driven here with Chop and her father and hadn’t had a chance to talk alone. But while a part of her desperately wanted that, another piece was far less excited to reconnect. He wasn’t just an old friend. He’d been with her brother in Afghanistan and he abandoned her afterward. He could have been the last face Edward had seen in his life, or carried out his body.
Stop it.
But she couldn’t stop, all the men of HERO Force tied in tightly with the biggest tragedy of her life, Luke in particular. He had details she didn’t. All the navy told them was that Edward was killed in an explosion while defending an outpost—not enough information for her inquisitive mind. But she’d had to process it based on that information alone, wrap up its awkward shape and tape the paper shut, and his reentrance into her life was tearing that package open again.
Sweet Edward.
They’d called him Buckeye, the moniker serving to dramatize how little she understood this fraternity of men. The SEALs were a mystery to her, the appeal they exerted on her brother like some scent she couldn’t smell. And while they might not be active military anymore, they still had that je ne sais quoi that forever branded them brothers, and it served as a painful reminder of the actual brother she had lost.
Her bare feet made no noise on the carpet as she crossed to the door and opened it. “Hey. I was just going to order some wine. Would you like some?”
“I was just going to call down for dinner. I’ll get it for you. Are you hungry?”
She made a face, and he clucked his tongue. “You should eat.”
“You’re right. Fine. Thanks.”
“I’ll let you know when it gets here."