by S. M. Butler
She sighed and leaned back in her chair, watching the crowds as they passed by, completely unaware of the crazy that was her life. She only had a short time before her pursuers would find her here. She had to get out of town. But she needed transportation, cash, and a whole lot of anonymity. It had been a full day since she’d escaped her father, and there was no sign of her disappearance in the papers. She didn’t expect that to continue, but so far, it was to her advantage that her father wanted to keep it quiet.
She could contact her birth father, now that she knew who it was. But did she really want to thrust herself into his world? There would be no coming back from that.
“Ma’am?” Abigail glanced up sharply as the waiter set down a steaming cup of coffee and an envelope. “The young man at the bar sends his compliments.”
She glanced toward the bar. The young man he talked about was probably a few years older than her, standing with ease at the bar, one foot on the bar running along the side of the wood panel, the other balancing his weight. He wore a loud blue shirt with birds over his broad shoulders, with a black t-shirt underneath. Black pants seemed an odd choice for summer weather, especially paired with the black work boots that were probably steel toe. His face was almost baby-faced, the scruffy beard aging him a few years. He winked and raised his coffee cup to her, taking a long pull from it.
She pushed the cup toward the waiter. “Tell him thank you, but I’m not in need of his company.”
“He said he is leaving, but wanted to return your car to you before he did,” the waiter replied. “Enjoy the coffee.”
Her car? Abigail frowned at the envelope. It was slightly bulky like someone had shoved a set of car keys inside it. She glanced at the coffee cup. She wasn’t going to drink that, no matter how bad she wanted coffee at that moment. It could be her father, trying this new thing to get her back. Or it could be one of his many enemies. She remembered first hand what her father’s enemies did to prisoners.
She opened the envelope carefully and lifted the key out. Okay. She had a key. It was a Nissan from the looks of the key fob. This was such a bad idea. She tapped her fingers against the wooden table.
Three choices. None of them good choices. Staying in Galveston meant eventually, her father would catch up to her. Contacting her birth father would open up a whole mess of problems. And taking this car could open up a whole lot of problems she didn’t know about yet. She didn’t even know who handed the keys to her.
She glanced back at the coffee bar, but the man was gone. If he was with her father, he’d have been more forthright, she decided. She sighed. She wasn’t prepared for this. These decisions. The hardest decision in her life before all of this happened was what color dress to wear. Now what she decided was the difference between life and death. Or maybe it was just death that awaited her. She wasn’t sure.
For the first time in her life, she was truly alone.
~*~*~
Abigail stared at the line of cars parked alongside the road. Everything told her this was a bad idea. Someone randomly sends her a coffee and a set of keys with no explanation, and she was out there looking for the car like an idiot.
She glanced around. It wouldn’t be long before her father tracked her down. He knew her well enough to know where she might run to. She had to do something he couldn’t expect. Like get into a stranger’s car and use it to drive out of town.
She raised the fob and pressed the top button. Something beeped, but she couldn’t see where it was. She walked down the sidewalk, looking for a Nissan until she found a silver one, its metallic paint sparkling in the sun. Swallowing, she pressed the unlock button, almost grateful when it clicked unlocked with a soft beep.
Abigail pressed her face against the window, tenting her fingers around her cheeks to peer inside the car. It was clean, only a single envelope sitting in the passenger seat.
“Well, let’s see if I die today,” she told herself as she walked around to the driver’s side and gingerly opened the door. The smell of new car scent wafted out of the car to her nostrils. She glanced around. No one seemed interested in what she was doing. She didn’t feel like she was being watched. But would she really know if she were?
Slowly, she slid her body into the driver’s seat and shut the door behind her. She waited. Nothing happened. Life still moved on outside the car. No one paid her any attention. She blew out the breath she hadn’t even realized she held.
The envelope to her right caught her eye. Slowly, she picked it up. It wasn’t stuck closed, just tucked neatly. It was roughly the size of a small catalog, and it wasn’t thick. She slid the tongue of the envelope out and pulled the single piece of paper out. Glancing in the envelope, her eyes widened at the small stack of hundreds inside. It wasn’t a lot, maybe a couple grand. Just enough to keep the envelope from looking too bulky.
The paper looked ordinary enough. It was the size of a regular sheet of printer paper, folded in half to fit into the envelope. Her breath shuddered as she unfolded it. On top, there was a map with brief directions typed neatly beneath it. A Post-It was stuck to the paper, a bright green square, the letters on it written with a fine tip Sharpie marker in an elegant scrawl.
Safety is in small numbers.
There was no way to tell where it came from. No name, no phone number or return address. This was idiotic of her. It could be some ploy of her father’s to get her back. She could be driving herself right into a trap. But why would he let her drive six hours away just to have to drag her back?
And what was her alternative?
She depressed the ignition button, the car whirling to life quietly. She glanced at the map. Jubilee, Texas. Six hours away, at least, from the look of the route.
Fuck it.
She glanced out the driver’s side window, looking for oncoming traffic, and slowly pulled out of the spot when she had an opening. Inside, her heart pounded, her blood grew cold with nerves, and her hands shook with fear. But nothing assaulted the car. Nothing popped up from the back seat to stop her. But most of all, the move soothed her prickled skin, soothed the rough beat of her heart. Everything told her she’d just made the right decision.
Chapter Five
“Damn it,” Chris swore as he banged his thumb on the controller.
“You lose,” sing-songed Scott Muldoon, his current opponent, in time with the annoying loser noise the game made.
Chris glared and tossed the controller down. “I’m done.” Humiliation over. It was impossible to win a video game against a computer genius. The man spent his entire life behind a computer. It wasn’t fair.
“Pussy,” Scott laughed.
“You spend too much time on that thing,” Chris said, pointing toward the rather large computer system with the dual monitors.
“Duh,” Scott replied, putting his hands behind his head and leaning back in his seat. “It’s my job.”
“You need a life,” Chris shot back.
He grinned. “Maybe, but it doesn’t mean you’re not still a loser, though.”
Chris rolled his eyes and stood. “I’ll be back.”
“Where are you going?” Beatrice Li asked as her long slender fingers wrapped around the handle of the knife she was sharpening. Scott might have been the brains behind all the tech they used, but Bea was more the hands-on type… Like if she put her hands on you, you were dead. The things she’d done with those knives… A shudder rolled down his back.
“I promised Mrs. Parker I’d change her tires for her this morning. Apparently, Axel ordered her some and she ambushed me outside the salon yesterday to ask for help.”
“You know she’s going to try to molest you, right?” Jordan Levi’s Irish lilt boomed into the room as he entered. He unbuttoned the blue shirt with the stupid birds and plopped on the couch where Chris had vacated. “Last time I was there, I barely escaped with my life.”
Jordan grinned as he picked up the controller Chris had dropped, his hazel eyes filled with mischief. Chris didn’t remembe
r ever seeing Jordan mad, or even upset in the last few months. He was by far the most emotionally well-adjusted member of the team. Or at least he played a really good one. He’d been a high-end art thief into some shady shit in the UK before his untimely death, but his file said he was from Dublin. But not one of his team was exactly what they were supposed to be.
Scott laughed. “You want a little punishment too, Levi? Let’s do this.”
“Don’t be dramatic, y’all,” Bea said without looking up. Her nimble fingers set the blade she had down. “Y’all make it sound like she’s an assassin.”
“Interesting ‘assassin’ is where your mind goes to,” Jordan said, playfully narrowing his eyes. She glared at him, then a swift whoosh of metal broke through the air, and the knife she had been sharpening slammed into the armchair of the couch next to Jordan’s arm. Jordan glanced at the knife then back to her, shaking his head. “So violent.”
Her almond eyes sparkled with amusement, a slight tilt of her mouth that had shadows of laughter. Her light caramel skin held no flaws and shimmered as she moved. She had no tattoos, unlike Chris’s half sleeve and the multiple others around his body he’d collected over the years. Each of his tattoos told a story from his former life. Bea insisted that tattoos made her too easy to track in her line of work, but Chris was pretty sure it was because she didn’t want stories of her former life told.
The thing was… her shimmering complexion and her soulful eyes set her apart far more than any tattoo ever could. If Chris had any interest in pursuing women at this point in his life, he might have made a move for her… except for the fact that she could cut him to shreds in about thirty seconds.
He’d wanted her for his team as soon as Nathan had shown him her file when they were putting the team together. Her criminal life made her an ideal candidate, but it was what wasn’t in her file that interested him. She’d killed a lot of bad guys, but there was never collateral damage. She was careful, meticulous, and wouldn’t harm innocents. They needed that.
Chris grabbed the keys to the truck as he headed for the door. “Behave yourselves, kids. I’ll call for backup if I need it.”
“Good luck, mate,” Jordan stood, put his hand over his heart, his face serious except for the twitch at the corner of his mouth. “I’ll take care of the headstone after you die. ‘Here lies Hardy. He took it like a man.’”
The three of them dissolved into laughter as Chris rolled his eyes and left. The underground hall stretched out into the darkness on the left, and on the right, ended ten feet away, stopped by double doors that opened into an elevator.
Chris knew more about each member of the team than they knew about each other, only because he’d had a year to study them before Nathan ever approached them for recruitment. Scott was dedicated, arrogant, and focused. Jordan was the jokester. Jack… well, he was Jack, content to be left to his own devices, which probably consisted of a lot of brooding and drinking. Bea was a loner, serious and reclusive. He wasn’t sure if it was because she was the only woman on their team, or because she was the newest recruit to their intelligence strike force. It took time to adjust to being a Reaper. Hell, Chris was still adjusting himself and he’d been the first.
He paused in front of the elevator and pressed his hand against the control panel. It was cool beneath his palm until it activated and buzzed as it scanned and authenticated his hand print. The double doors on the elevator slid open and he stepped inside. As soon as the doors shut, he spoke. “Sierra, garage level.”
Sierra was the artificial intelligence Nathan had created and integrated into every system and machine that the Reapers used. His boss, Nathan Hawk, was once one of the most influential billionaire software engineers in the world. But he’d retreated into the shadows after his family was brutally murdered over a decade ago.
“Of course, Agent Hardy.” The computer voice purred and the elevator whirled to life. About five seconds in, the elevator shook as it came to an abrupt stop.
“Sierra?” Chris felt for the gun he had tucked in his waistband at the small of his back. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled with alarm.
“Incoming communication for you, Agent Hardy.”
Chris pursed his lips. Nathan. The man always had a flair for dramatics. As soon as the chocolate-skinned man appeared on the small elevator screen, he blew out a breath.
“Good morning, Mr. Hardy. I trust you slept well?” The smirk on his face told Chris he knew already. Chris never really slept anymore. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the barrel of the gun that almost killed him, or his family dead with their throats cut. His sister was alive and safe, as well as his parents, but the longer he was with the Reapers, the more he saw what came out of the Earth’s gutter, the worse the dreams got.
“Since when do you care about my sleep, Nathan?”
“I’m hurt. My agents’ well-being is important to me.”
“Right, because if we can’t do our jobs…” Chris trailed off. He was far too annoyed to continue baiting Nathan.
“Yes, well, I have a mission for you.” Nathan’s dark eyes filled with seriousness, blocked by a light glare off his black-rimmed glasses.
“Of course you do. Why couldn’t you tell me about it in the meeting room?”
“And disrupt Mr. Muldoon obliterating you on that blasted game yet again?”
Of course, he knew about that. Nathan knew everything. “What’s the mission?”
“Abigail Lewis.”
Chris froze, his brow furrowing. Abigail Lewis wasn’t a name he’d thought about in a long while. Of course, he remembered her. He couldn’t ever forget her. The question was… what did Nathan want with her? “What about her?”
“She’s in the area. I want you to pick her up.”
“What? Why?”
“Suffice it to say she’s a person of interest to me. At least you not being dead will be of some use this time. Make contact with her two miles outside of town. She had a flat tire. Convince her to come back with you.”
“Nathan, you want to bring her here?”
“No, you’re not to reveal that you work for me at this time. Just bring her back to town and keep her there.” Nathan’s face vanished before he could ask any more questions.
Chris pressed his lips tightly together as the elevator whirled back to life.
Abigail Lewis.
He’d come to her rescue once, a few years ago. In another lifetime. He’d been on a mission with his old SEAL team to assassinate some South American warlord. He’d made it to the man’s bedroom, shot him, and found her locked in a metal dog crate beside the bed.
He shook his head. This didn’t make any sense. Nathan was constantly telling him he needed to shed his old life. He’d spent the last two years with Nathan, building up the Reapers and trying to forget that old Chris Hardy ever existed.
So why change that stance now? Maybe Nathan needed something from her, or maybe from her father. Daniel Lewis was one of the U.S. Senators from Texas, and he was up for reelection this year. But word on the political circuit was that Lewis was aiming higher than another Senate run.
As he stepped out into the garage, the elevator door slid shut and the exterior wall slid into place to mask the entrance to the underground facility. Nathan had bought the property it stood on nearly a decade before and created the mechanic shop as the cover. Now it employed his entire team, plus a local mechanic that wasn’t a Reaper.
Axel Martinez had spent eight years in Jubilee, Texas, running Nathan’s mechanic shop on his own. Chris had moved here two years ago, and it had only been the two of them for months until the team had been approached and the contracts signed. During that time, Chris and Axel had pretty much kept to themselves. Chris helped out in the shop when needed and Axel was content to not ask any questions. He wasn’t exactly sure if Axel knew what they did or not. He leaned towards not, seeing as Nathan had expressly forbidden looping Axel in. Nathan had plans for him but hadn’t yet made the move.
&nbs
p; One by one, his team had come in, and the garage now employed six people when it barely needed one to keep up with the Jubilee mechanic needs.
Chris packed up the company truck and hopped in. As the garage door rose, the sun burst into the garage. Even this early in the morning, the Texas sun was harsh and bright. Chris blinked as his eyes adjusted. He was used to the shadows. Reapers followed the dark stench of death, not the bright scent of life.
~*~*~
At nine in the morning, the sun was already blazing over Jubilee, the heat rising to smack Chris in the face. Sweat glistened off his arms and face, the only parts of him that were exposed, though he felt the slow trickle of sweat down his spine, even with the air conditioner running.
Working for Nathan Hawk meant weird hours sometimes, and that didn’t go unnoticed in the small town. Hell, it was those weird hours that fueled most of the rumors that ran through Jubilee about his crew.
He’d been up for hours before leaving for this job. Plenty of time for Nathan to have told him about meeting Abigail. But he’d waited until after he left the team, after he’d left to head to a job for his civilian cover.
“Ugh,” he growled out as he gripped the steering wheel tighter. He wasn’t supposed to contact his sister, or her fiancé, who happened to be his best friend. He couldn’t even call his mom or dad, but he was supposed to pick up some senator’s daughter he’d rescued half a lifetime ago.
The problem was, she wasn’t just some senator’s daughter. She was America’s Princess, or so the media had named her. He’d helped give her that name, by bringing her home to her family. She was also his very first mission as a SEAL, or so she became when he’d found her locked in a cage in a South American stronghold.
Nathan knew all that. He knew every last detail of every mission Chris had in the SEALs. Hell, he even knew Chris had promised Devyn he would make sure her husband came home, or that he and Murphy had snuck out of their prom to sit on a tailgate and drink by themselves.