Assassin's Promise, The Red Team Series, Book 5 (4 page)

They didn’t speak as they went down the stairs. Out of habit, Greer went first. His SUV was parked in the almost empty lot, near the building. “Want to go in my car? Or shall I follow you? The restaurant could be packed.” He looked at his watch. “It’s prime feeding time. We might not want to take two cars.”

“You can drive. If you don’t mind.”

He opened the passenger door for her. “I don’t.”

She was looking around the interior of his SUV when he got in on the driver’s side. “It’s lighter in here than I thought it would be with all the window tinting. It’s kind of gangsta.”

Greer grinned. “I’m a gangsta kinda guy, I guess.”

Her smile evaporated. “Are you?”

He looked at her as he backed up. “Yeah.”
 

“Are you into illegal things?”

Greer released a long breath. “I’ll tell you true, doc, when I find Sally, I’m gonna lay down some heads.”

“What if the people she’s with meant well?”

He shrugged. “Don’t matter. She’s underage, in an isolationist community. Whether she went there of her volition or was brought there by whomever she’s hooked up with, makes no difference. She isn’t old enough to make that decision. I told her I would help her. She should have come to me.”

He chanced a glance at the professor. He’d told Sally while she was in the hospital getting the drugs flushed from her system that he’d protect her. And he hadn’t. So yeah, he felt as if he’d let his own sister down.
 

And Christ, he couldn’t take on much more karmic debt than the load he was already carrying. He was going to find Sally and move her someplace safe.

Unbidden, the ghost eyes from his dream came to mind. Hell was waiting for him. For sure. But he wasn’t going anywhere until he found Sally.

* * *

At the restaurant, Remi fought to keep things together. Greer was one of the most exciting men she’d ever met. Intense, charming, sexy as hell. His ripped body probably had zero percent body fat, which made her self-conscious about her own curves. He smiled easily and joked frequently, but none of that hid the sharp edge of his intellect.
 

The only thing she knew for sure was that he wasn’t what he seemed—a thing she decided to confront him about after they gave their orders to the waiter.
 

“I checked you out.”

He smiled. “Oh?”

She’d called the Department of Homeland Security—not using the number on his card but the one on their website. She’d vetted him before deciding to share any of her data. “When I called DHS, I was rerouted to a Christian Villa—” she paused on the name, wondering if he knew who she meant.

“—Villalobo? Interesting guy.”

“He vouched for you.”

“Phew. That’s a relief. What did Loco Lobo say?”

“That you were on a case, but nothing else. So I Googled you,” she said, spinning the base of her wine glass as she watched his eyes.
 

His half-smile curled one corner of his mouth. “Yeah? Good. Glad you did your due diligence.”
 

“I didn’t find anything other than someone with your name lives in Fairfax, Virginia. You don’t participate in social media.”

“No, I don’t. Nor should you. Social media data streams feed into databases that store your info. It’s how governments monitor you.”

“Ah. You’re a conspiracy theorist.”

“They aren’t theories.” He took out his wallet and tossed his Virginia driver’s license down in front of her. “I am from Virginia.”

She looked at his ID. “You’re younger than me.”

Greer retrieved his license and stowed it. “Not by much.”

True. She was only three years older than him. How did he know that? she wondered. “I could have babysat you when we were kids.”

He laughed at that. She watched in fascination as his entire face lit up, from his generous smile of big white teeth to those whiskey eyes of his. No, not whiskey. Cinnamon.
 

“I was never young enough for a babysitter.” He tilted his head and looked at her. “By the time you were old enough to babysit, I would have been guarding you.”

That set her back. She tried so hard to be normal, to pretend her childhood was as mainstream as any other American kid. Truth was, she could have used a guard. He seemed to know more about her than she was comfortable with.

She took a sip of her Shiraz, pleased she’d been able to do so without her hand shaking. She changed the subject.
 

“So what do you do for a living when you’re not hunting for Sally?”

“I run a data management system for a company that provides security for its clients.”

She studied his eyes, then shook her head. “I can’t imagine a big guy like you behind a desk all day.”

He shrugged. “I’m not behind a desk—I’m in front of the whole world. Computers connect me to everything, everyone, everywhere.”

Their food arrived, his near-raw T-bone, her petite fillet. Baked potatoes. Specially seasoned broccoli.
 

He cut a bite, then consumed it and two more before he broke the silence that had followed their food. “I’ve told you about me. Your turn.”

She shrugged. “Not much to tell. My dad died when I was a kid. My mom raised me. I was home-schooled until high school. I got my undergraduate degree at Colorado State University, my masters at Stanford, and my Ph.D. from Princeton.”

“Mm-hmm.” He swallowed another bite. “Why sociology? What about that field called to you?”

She got this question a lot. It was easy to trot out her standard answer. “I’m curious about people. Why they do the things they do, live the way they live, make the choices they make.”

“Why?” He dug his fork into the shell of his potato. “Do you think you can fix us?”

“No.” All she really wanted was to fix herself. “Don’t you think documenting what is has value in and of itself?”

“Dunno. I wouldn’t be the one to assign that value.” He’d finished his meal, and now leaned back in his seat and looked at her. “I’d think there’s a risk of making judgments about those you study, being heavily influenced by your own value system, more so, perhaps, than by the facts you uncover.”

“True. I’m a human studying humans. I try to check my biases at the door when I take on a new project. Sometimes it’s hard to do. So you don’t judge others, then?”

“Oh, I do.” He smiled. “But in my world, things are often black and white, and those judgments are easy to make. Usually, they have to be made damned fast.”

Remi set her fork down. She’d only eaten half her fillet and the broccoli. She should have ordered a salad instead of the potato. She looked across the table to Greer. He didn’t sound much like the data analyst or programmer he claimed to be.

“Are you recently out of the military?” she asked, using the cover of her wine glass to camouflage her interest in his answer.

“Why do you ask?”

She lifted her shoulders. “Something about the way you carry yourself. I have a lot of former military in my classes.”

“I was Army.”

“I’m glad you’re here and not there.”

“A war’s a war.” He shrugged.

“What does that mean?”

“Searching for Sally’s a lot like hunting an enemy.”

“The people in the Friendship Community are peaceful.”

“You keep saying that, and yet their youth abandon the community in numbers big enough to show up in stats.”

The waiter came by with the bill. Greer dropped cash on the table. They left and made the short drive back to the university. Her Subaru Forester was now the only one left in the parking lot. He pulled in next to it. The parking lot lights had come on.
 

They both got out. She set her things in her car, then waited for him to come around. She realized she was oddly reluctant to see him go. Dinner was nice. She’d enjoyed their conversation.

“Where do they go, do you suppose?” he asked as they stood between their cars.

“Who?”

“The kids who leave the community. Where do they go? Maybe Sally’s one of the disappearing kids.”

“I haven’t been able to find any former residents, which is not uncommon. Some closed groups breed so much fear into their residents that none who leave openly admit to having been part of the community. They get new names, change their looks, blend into mainstream population.”

“And yet you say the Friends are peaceful.”
 

He stood near her. It felt…nice, being here with him. He asked smart questions.
 

“I don’t think you and I would define ‘peaceful’ in the same way,” he said.

“Cult membership is a complex situation. Often members of a cult don’t know they’re in one until they’re on the outside of it. And then they’re assailed with negative feelings of guilt, regret, embarrassment, and shame. All of those emotions hide in dark corners, segregating the cult survivors from the wider population. Sometimes, without the cult identity, they have no identity at all. They break.”

“Sounds like you’ve been there, done that.”

Her heart skipped a beat. “I’ve been studying cults a long time. I often help family members and psychologists deprogram former members.”

She slowly became aware of a distant sound. The university was near a busy road. Cars in the small college town, populated by broke students, were often poorly maintained with bad exhaust systems and loud mufflers. She didn’t really focus on it until it coalesced into the sound of a couple of loud motorcycles. Greer was on alert too.
 

“Get in your car, doc.”

She fumbled with her keys. The bikes were coming closer. It was so silly having this unfounded fear of bikers. Lots of the students here rode bikes. But the cops thought the graffiti had been left by some bikers. And the WKB had been making her life hell lately.
 

She had to warn Greer about them.

The bikes were rolling in a tight circle around their cars. Keeping them locked in place. She got a good look at the vests the bikers were wearing. The patches showed the WKB insignia.

“Greer! We have to get out of here. They’re from the WKB. They’re bad news. They’d as soon kill someone as look at them.”

He smiled at her. Smiled! “I’m kinda hard to kill.”

She touched his chest, forcing his attention to her while the bikers swirled around them. “You survived the war. You came home. You don’t want to die in this stupid parking lot here in Wyoming.”

“You’re right. I’ll be damned if this is my end.” He opened the passenger door of his SUV. “Get in. Lock the doors.”

She hurried to do as he asked. Her hands were shaking as she called 911.
 

Chapter Four

Greer activated his comm unit as he walked between the two vehicles. “Max, you read me? Got a situation here.”

Angel’s voice came over the line.
“Not Max. I got ops. Go, Greer.”

“Got a couple WKBers doing wheelies around our vehicles.”

“Roger that. I’ll alert the police.”

“Don’t need help. Just calling in an update. Tell Kit the professor had some interesting info. I’ll be stopping by on my way up the mountain to hand it over. I’m out.”

Greer stepped forward just as one of the bikers peeled in close. A quick punch separated him from his bike. Sparks flashed as the bike spun out across the pavement. The biker rolled twenty feet, then lay still.

The professor’s car alarm went off. Greer looked back in time to see the other biker lean into the back passenger door. The doc was already out of his SUV and was doing a tug-of-war with the other biker over her laptop case across the backseat of her car…and she wasn’t winning.

Greer jumped up on the hood of her car and ran over the top, leaping down on the opposite side to land on the biker’s leg, snapping it against the edge of the floorboard. The biker screamed and fell backward, out of the car empty-handed, holding his shin.
 

The cop sirens were coming close. Both of the gangbangers hobbled over to their bikes and managed to take off. One of the cop cars stopped beside Greer and the professor, and the other went after the bikers.

Greer looked over at the professor, who was clutching her belongings to her chest as if they were injured children. Her face was ghost white, her eyes huge. He leaned her against her car, afraid she’d drop without some support.
 

The lady cop came over to them, her hand on her service weapon. “Dr. Chase, you okay?”

“Yes,” she said, as if realizing the cop wanted a verbal answer, not just the vigorous head nodding she was doing.
 

“Who’s this?” the cop asked, looking at Greer.

“A friend. Greer Dawson. Thank God you were here,” she said, looking up at him.

“You want to tell me what happened?” the cop asked.

“Some bikers just came up and started to harass us.”

“They were—” Greer started, but the professor spoke over him.

“Just some random bikers,” she said as she white-knuckled her belongings.

“Looks like they were after—”

“Like they were looking for trouble.” Again she interrupted him. “I guess, since we were the only ones around, we caught their eye.”

He frowned down at her, wondering what she was doing. Without a doubt, the bikers had come for her laptop.

The cop looked from her to him, then nodded. She, too, had caught the professor’s redirect. “You should probably clear out. Call the office tomorrow—I may need a statement from you. You all right to drive?”

Doc nodded. The police officer got back in her vehicle, but waited for them to go. Greer looked down at the still panicked woman. “Let me drive you home.”

She shook her head. “No. I need my car.”

“Then let me follow you home. Just to make sure they aren’t waiting for you there.”

She breathed a relieved sigh. “You mind?”

“Not at all.” He grinned at her. “I’m always up for kickin’ some asses.”

The drive to her house was short. A few miles only. He checked in with Angel on the way. “Yo, Angel.”

“Go, G.”

“I thought the WKBers were there for me, but they were after the professor’s laptop.”

“Word from the cops is they gave them the slip.”