Reid: Wild Mustang Security Firm

by Delta James

  “What’s on here?” Thom asked, sitting back in the chair where they’d put him. Not touching either of the two computers on the desk in front of him, he kept his hands on his thighs.

  “Financial information,” Fariq lied. “Why do you care? It doesn’t concern you. Just do as you’re told.”

  Thom blinked once, then laughed. He wasn’t amused, but neither was Fariq, and when the dark man rounded on him, closing the distance in two steps, Reid quickly stepped between them.

  “I’ve got this,” he quietly told Fariq.

  The other man glared from him to Thom and eventually back again.

  “I want that information.”

  “I’ll get it,” Reid said, and he honestly couldn’t tell anymore if he was promising or lying.

  Fariq left, but his men stayed.

  “Awfully high-strung, your boss,” Thom drawled.

  “Just get to work,” Reid ordered. “I’ll let you call your woman.” Lowering his voice, he bent low over Thom’s desk, making it more difficult for anyone still in the room apart from Thom to hear him as he said, “I’ll even let you pass your little code to ‘baby girl.’ I know you’re going to delay cracking it for as long as possible.” Thom’s brow quirked, his eyes narrowing in surprise and speculation. “I honestly don’t care how long it takes you; the longer, the better. Just make it look good enough to keep him off both our backs. Until morning, at least.” When Thom still only stared at him, gritting his jaw once, Reid capitulated, and even more softly than before, added, “Please.”

  “Dude,” the computer man said as if somewhat surprised that he had to point this out, “you’re going to kill me. Why the hell should I?”

  He didn’t have time for this. Hands braced on the table, he hung his head, feeling only the creeping exhaustion of the last two days and his need to find out what was happening with Aliya.

  “Someone very important is depending on you. You have no idea.”

  Thom stiffened, his face hardening. “Are you threatening my girl?”

  Shaking his head, Reid shoved off the desk. “Like I said, you have no idea.”

  The two men stared at one another, then shifting a disgruntled glance around the room, Thom gave in.

  “Fine. You’ll be damn lucky if I don’t wipe whatever I find.”

  “I can’t protect you or your girl if you do,” Reid said bluntly.

  That won another glare from Thom, one that pointedly said, ‘since when did you ever.’ He really had no idea, but in the end, he opened the laptop, plugged in the chip, and started working.

  Take your time.

  Reid waited only long enough to be sure Thom really was going to try, then he was down the hall with hurried strides, taking him back up through the fortress. He took the back steps, hurrying up to his room, where he first checked the balcony. Yup, still men out there. Two, stationed at the open doors.

  Shit.

  He retrieved the computer set up from under his bed, sitting on the floor as he searched through the minor mountain of correspondence that had come in and out of here in the last twenty-four hours, the phone calls, the emails. Who the hell submitted to Niantic that there should be a Pokestop in the middle of the damn fortress? There were three of them here now, for God’s sake, but nothing that mentioned Aliya by name.

  He checked the time. He’d been gone from Thom’s side for twenty minutes, and he knew he needed to get back. He also needed to prepare for Avery’s inevitable rescue attempt. That woman’s arrival was as certain as the minutes ticking away on the clock.

  He wished he had more time to plan. He hated the uncertainty of being this rushed. He needed a distraction—Thom Lyndon’s escape. He needed a vehicle—one of the many vehicles in the fortress garage would have to do. It wasn’t impossible to snag one of the keys from the mechanic’s shop. It was under lock and key, but once the Mustangs attacked, everyone with a gun would be running to secure the fortress and repel the attack. He’d get a key; he didn’t care to which car, so long as it ran. Then he’d need to get Aliya.

  That was his plan. The problem was, with the clock ticking down this fast, there was no time to spot the loose ends.

  He went to the kitchen on the pretense of bringing their captive food and drink. Under any other circumstance, Fariq would have approved. Normally, he prided himself on being a proper host. The way he was right now, Reid was more inclined to think he’d be annoyed. He brought the food, anyway, and was relieved to find Thom actually working on breaking the computer code on the microchip.

  Next, he needed to get word to Aliya and if nothing else, make sure she stayed put and away from the windows. That was harder done than imagined. There were men posted at the head of the stairs on that level, keeping anyone who had no business there from lingering, even him.

  “He’s asked not to be disturbed,” one said before he’d even reached the top of the stairs.

  Reid pointed up, where the roof of the next flight of stairs continued on. “I’m heading to my room.”

  He kept going, refusing to give himself permission to so much as glance down the hallway, where two more men were stationed outside Aliya’s door. When the attack happened, the men on the stairs would get their asses to the fighting. Those on the balcony and at her door would converge around her, guns ready. He’d have to be prepared for that. Taking the stairs as if he had all the time in the world and not so much as a single concern, Reid didn’t step off on the next floor, moving away from the railing and making sure his footsteps were loud and steady, he continued up only three steps more. He trod in place—stomp stomp stomp—slow and steady as many steps more as he knew there to be from here to his floor. He lessened the force of each step to lessen the volume of each echo until finally, he stopped.

  Still, he listened.

  “God, I’m hungry,” one of the men one flight below muttered.

  “Would you stop about your stomach for five minutes?” the other snapped. “You’re making me hungry.”

  Silent as a whisper, Reid backed down the extra three steps far enough to peek around the corner into the empty hall of the floor between Aliya’s and his own. Sticking to the carpet to muffle the sound of his shoes on stone, he walked down the hall as if he had every right to be there. He didn’t even know what was on this floor. The mercs rooms were on the lower floor, where the fighting would happen if they were infiltrated by land. There wasn’t a lot of furniture here, so perhaps they were empty.

  Stopping at the room directly over where he estimated Aliya’s was, he deftly picked the locked door and went inside, quickly shutting and locking it.

  That the room wasn’t being used for anything was obvious. A stack of stored furniture lined one wall, covered by protective sheets. A cloud of dust released when he cracked the heavy curtains give him enough light to work since touching the switch didn’t do anything. The floor was covered in a giant area rug, so it took a moment to move enough of the spare furniture to roll the carpet back, exposing the stone floor tiles beneath.

  The clock was ticking, and he could feel it every bit as keenly as he could feel the itch of wariness growing between his shoulder blades. He couldn’t afford to take too long. If Fariq found him away from his charge, he’d need a good reason, but right now, all he could think about was getting Aliya in his sight.

  Stone to stone, he crawled the floor, looking for the concealed spyhole he’d put in place when they’d acquired the property. He’d left hidden observation spots throughout the fortress to keep an eye on Fariq and Aliya. Granted, at the time, he’d wanted to know what Aliya was up to only in so far as it concerned Fariq. Now, he had another reason. Prying with his belt buckle around the edges of the stone until he found the one he needed, he ruined his longest knife lifting it, the stone giving way long before his determination did. Just like in his room, he made his way through the architecture of the floor, digging down until he reached the ceiling of the room below. Very much aware of how sound would carry, he used the tip of his knife
, very slowly and carefully burrowing a small hole in the ancient plaster. If there weren’t men in the room, they might not notice the few dribbles of white dust falling onto the carpet when he finally worked his way down through the last layer and spotted light.

  Belly to the floor, he got into the hole in an effort to see as far in every direction as he could. Small as the hole he’d made was, it was very limited, but he had no choice and could only hope they wouldn’t look up. Reaching into his pocket, he took out a small viewing device that could be rotated around to get a good look at the room. The only men he could see were those stationed on the open balcony. There were three, not two. One was seated on a chair inside the room where, Reid could only assume, Aliya was supposed to be the focus of his attention. She wasn’t. Right now, he was reading on his phone, and Aliya looked to be asleep on her stomach in bed. Dim as the lighting was down there, the faint lump of her stood out against the bedding, and the wave of her long, dark hair spread out across the white of her pillow. She was covered to the shoulders by only the thinnest sheet. Her hands, however, caught his attention. Stretched out as they were above her head and even the pillow, it took his eyes a moment to pierce the gloom enough to make out the ropes that bound her wrists to the headrail.

  His gut seized an instant before anger flash flooded through him on a wave so violent and overwhelming, he actually caught himself, heaving back from the floor, fully intending to charge his way down to her and… what, get shot? Good as he was, seven-to-one odds were not conducive to successfully rescuing anybody.

  He fucking tied her to the bed.

  Fariq had fucking tied his princess to the bed.

  Don’t think about it. He couldn’t afford to let rage blind him. He needed to get moving. At least he knew where she was now and knew she was okay. If he thought about it, it would keep her from doing something foolish. They were going to need to come to a meeting of the minds about her inability to keep herself safe. Of course, if she’d been able to do that, she would never have fallen prey to him. But she had, and it was now up to him to keep her safe for the rest of her life.

  Wait! Where had that thought come from? Maybe his time with Fariq hadn’t corrupted his soul as much as he feared. Reid knew another layer of difficulty had been added to getting her out, but he was determined not to let it become insurmountable.

  He would get her out.

  He checked the time, then quickly threw the room back together, leaving nothing out of place apart from footsteps in the dust to show he’d ever been here. Slipping back out of the room, he returned to check on Thom. That became his pattern for the next hour—check on how close the Mustang man was to exposing him as a spy and check something off his list of things to pilfer.

  He stole a set of keys from the mechanic’s office and made sure the vehicle was ready to go.

  He made an impromptu bug-out kit with as much of what they might need to escape as he could foresee, including a phone with a GPS tracker, so he could contact someone to come get them once they were free.

  From the computer set up in his room, he loaded another microchip with all the pertinent most up-to-date information he could glean from Fariq’s most recent activity. Activity-wise, it wasn’t much, but content-wise, the system in the fortress uploaded to all of Fariq’s communication and banking accounts. With a few keystrokes, Reid downloaded everything he could find. He hoped NATO used it to bring down this entire underground empire and everyone connected to it.

  On his way to the armory, he ran into Fariq’s body double. That unnerved him. The lookalike was never in close proximity unless Fariq was planning something he suspected might get him killed. That he hadn’t shared those plans with Reid showed the level of mistrust Fariq had of everyone around him.

  Lastly, he rearmed himself, including a five-shot tranq gun with rapid action darts. Rapid action was a bit of a misnomer. He could think of no way to storm Aliya’s room without all seven adversaries becoming alert at the same time. If he took out the two at the stairs, the two at her door would know and retreat into her room for cover. If the two at the stairs bolted like he hoped they would once Avery got her ass in gear—he checked the time again—he might be able to take out the two at the door, but then there would still be the three highly alert and armed men clustered inside. He wasn’t entirely sure they wouldn’t open fire on whoever was stupid enough to open her door next and wasn’t at all confident they’d be careful not to shoot Aliya in the process of defending her. If they were even there to defend her.

  Tied to the bed. Tied to the fucking bed. He should be the only one tying her to the bed and only when he had the time to truly wallow in the exquisite sensuality that was his Aliya—and she was his.

  He couldn’t think about that now. The last thing he needed was blood rushing to his cock, so it thought it was in charge.

  What the hell had he been thinking, getting involved with her? It complicated things in so many ways… none of which mattered as long as he could have Aliya, and he would have her in as many ways as possible. He would bind her to him in as many ways as he could—sexually, emotionally, and physically with a ring on her finger and a collar around her neck.

  It was four a.m.

  He went to the observation tower, where the security crew had every computer screen and monitor up, searching for any sign of vehicular approach. They were watching the sky, the ocean, and the single winding road that meandered up the grassy cliffside from the main road a good four miles away. Another monitored the soundwaves.

  “Nervous?” one asked him. “Can’t sleep?”

  “We kidnapped a member of the Wild fucking Mustangs. Yes,” he answered coolly. “I’m a bit nervous.”

  The other snort-laughed. “Something put him off his nut, that’s for sure.” He shook his head once. “Poor thing.”

  “Who?” That took him aback. “Fariq?” He almost laughed. Never in a million years would he ever have described the man as a poor anything.

  “Nah, the girl.” Shaking his head again, the man said, “Apparently, he found a spot of what he’s convinced himself was cum on her mattress. Guess he forgot, when it’s done right, girls come, too, even when playing with themselves. Went completely off his nut after you left. He’s done whipped the poor thing half to death.”

  Reid felt the blood drain from him. For the first time in memory, his knees wobbled and very nearly went out from under him. He caught the back of the nearest computer chair, steadying himself before anyone else noticed.

  “He what?”

  The man blinked at him. “Whipped her.”

  Reid stared at him, those two words echoing in his head for what felt like forever. He couldn’t make himself move, couldn’t seem even to make himself breathe. He was frozen, locked in a state of utter paralysis—the only thing he could see was Aliya lying tied to the bed, and the only thing he could hear were those soft whimpering moans he’d muffled behind his hand as he’d took her.

  Spilling his cum on her bed when he’d had to make his hasty retreat.

  Right before he’d gone after Thom, leaving her defenseless with a monster.

  He was going to kill him.

  “We have movement,” someone suddenly said, sending a sizzling jolt through Reid, breaking him from his paralysis. “Wait… maybe not.”

  “Where?” The man beside him leaned over to study the monitors.

  “I don’t know… I thought I saw something, though if I did, it was awfully low to the water.”

  “Congratulations,” his partner said drily. “You caught a dolphin on radar.”

  Reid knew better.

  “Keep me appraised,” he said, already heading out the door. He kept his pace slow and steady as he made his way to the nearest set of stairs.

  He wanted to go to her but went to Thom instead. He dismissed the guards at the door.

  “Get to the roof and get ready,” he ordered. “We’re about to come under attack.”

  It was a warning he shouldn’t have giv
en them, but it got them out of the way, clearing a path from here to the end of the hall, where another balcony provided his best chance of getting out of here without Avery’s risking herself in a hasty landing.

  He found Thom asleep on a cot, the blinking lights of the laptop running through whatever automated process he’d set while he slept. Clapping a hand over Thom’s mouth, woke him with a jolt, and Thom grabbed his wrist.

  “Your girl is about to come in guns-a-blazing to rescue you. If she found the note I left her, she’s going to want to get me out as well, but I’m expendable and need you to make sure she understands that.”

  Thom’s eyes narrowed above Christian’s silencing hand.

  “The only thing that matters right now is getting the information she now has into General Markoff’s hands. He’ll know what to do with it.”

  Wrenching Reid’s hand off his mouth, Thom shoved up to sit on the cot that had been provided for him.

  “Are you fucking kidding me? Who are you working for?”

  He ran through a useless list of agencies and abbreviations, none of which mattered right now.

  “NATO,” Reid told him, revealing himself as a spy for the first time to a man who had considered him to be nothing but an enemy. He tried to explain, but there wasn’t the time for it. Judging by the look on Thom’s face, he didn’t believe him, anyway.

  “How the hell does Avery know about any of this?” Thom snapped.

  “When I copped a feel on your girl,”—Reid grinned—“I planted a microdot with the coordinates to this place and all the data Markoff needs to hang Fariq from a crane in the nearest marketplace.”

  “Oh my God!” Shoving out of bed, Thom grabbed his shoes. “I don’t know who to spank first, her or you!”

  You ain’t big enough, my friend, was right on the tip of Reid’s tongue when the fortress shuddered and rocked to the distant explosion of the first missile hitting the old bailey walls.

  “I believe that would be your rescue, party of one,” Reid said, watching the dust crumbling down from the ceiling.

  “Oh,” Thom laughed, unamused. “I am definitely starting with you!”