Code of Honor (Special Ops Book 7) (2 page)

“I’m in gaming.”

“Gaming?”

“I design games. You know, what I help design and create is right up there with Called to Duty. We’re hoping to surpass them this year.”

“Would somebody kill for that.”

She gave a rhetorical laugh. “It’s just gaming. Nobody is that crazy in the gaming world. Besides, killing me won’t solve anything. I just help get all the coding and some of the graphics together; it’s not like there isn’t a team of people working on the project.” She opened her apartment door and they all stepped inside. She flicked the light switch on the wall so she could see what she was doing. She knew her home without needing the light but after being disoriented with that attack she didn’t trust her mental process to get her from point A to point B without tripping over her own feet in the dark.

“So these games are military inspired?”

She sighed. “I just used that game as a reference so you would know what kind of gaming I was talking about. We’re not making computer games. But no, it’s not military it’s actually science fiction. I do meet with some military men sometimes to get a feel for how the characters who are military in our game would really handle a hypothetical situation, but it’s not a military based game per se. But you know I gather research so sometimes I meet with political figures to figure out how they handle certain things. I met with Senator Trent Malloy just a few months ago. Nice guy.”

“Trent Malloy—from the Florida senate seat?”

“yeah, is there another Senator Malloy I don’t know about?”

“He was murdered?”

“No way! When?”

“Two weeks ago,” he nearly growled at her.

“Two weeks…my goodness. I hadn’t heard.” Of course she also didn’t watch the news like ever and the people she worked with were too busy working to sit around and chit chat about anything outside of gaming. She liked the environment actually because it wasn’t depressing in the least.

“It was all over the news.”

“I don’t watch the news.”

H shook his head as if that was a bad thing and she shook hers in return. “That’s too bad though. We had several lunches and dinners together. I was almost afraid I’d end up in the paper and people would think I was his mistress or something, but most of the lunches were in his office and when we had the dinner meetings I always had my notepad and a pen and my tape recorder. I think people probably thought I was a reporter or something.” She laughed, but they didn’t. “What?”

“There’s the problem. Somebody probably thinks he told you about the Mantaza project.”

“What’s that?”

“Something worth killing for,” Blue Eyes said. “Did he give you anything at these meetings?”

“Just basic conversation. I have it all on tape and in my notes.”

“Get those and make sure you bring everything with you.”

“Why?”

“Just in case something he said on that tape is the reason you’re soon to die.”

“Hey!”

“That man isn’t the kind of man to abandon a contract kill. Either you have something, or you know something, that whoever hired the hit on you is willing to kill for.”

“But I don’t have anything. We haven’t even seen each other in a few months. I mean he called a few weeks ago—” The sharp growl halted her words. “He just called to see how the game was coming. I’m still helping with fact checking and designing. I multi task.”

“What’s this game about?”

“Well we’re not supposed to tell anybody about it yet. It is such a cool idea. The guy who came up with the storyline was awesome. He told me if I had questions to talk with the senator so I thought it would never happen but I called, I dropped a name and Malloy gave me undivided attention for two hours a day for a few weeks.”

Blue Eyes growled again.

“I don’t speak animal, stop growling.” She huffed. She still wanted her shower yet she was standing here talking with the man with no patience. “It’s about the aliens still only they’ve taken over human form and they are planning poison the earth’s water supplies, both natural and the filtrated systems along with the ocean. As you know the senator is…was…very into the filtration of water.”

“We know,” he looked at her sternly. “I need to speak with the man who came up with this gaming idea.”

“Why?”

“Because it sounds a hell of a lot like the Mantanza project.”

“Your project includes aliens?”

He growled again looking angrier than before. Was she safer with the guy who wanted to kill her? “No,” he nearly barked. “Take me to him.”

“Well…”

“Today!”

“Okay, but I don’t think he’ll talk to you.”

“I’ll make him talk.”

“Now this I have to see. Let me shower and grab my stuff and we can go.” She took the quickest shower she could and still get cleaned. She used a combination of homemade lotion and a soft scented essential oil, pulled on a fitted pair of black slacks that hugged her delicious looking butt—her best asset and she sat on it most of the day—before pulling a pink v-neck cut fitted sweater over her head, pulling her hair back in her standard nape of neck ponytail and dawning her four-inch heeled black boots. Then she realized she wasn’t in the mood for dress pants today so she pulled them off and pulled out her dark blue skinny jeans instead. “There,” she shrugged her shoulder. “Much better,” she checked out her own behind in the mirror and decided the slightly above knee high stiletto boots would be better so she got those from the box in the closet instead.

When she came out both men looked at her as if she were an interruption to their day. “Let’s go.”

They carefully escorted her out to their unobtrusive beat up Camry and she gave them directions to where they could find the creator of the latest game she was helping work on.

“Right there,” she pointed after their walk from the car led them right to where Rick Saunders was. Blue Eyes looked at her with a near lethal glare. “Well you demanded I bring you to him. You said you could get him to talk. So if you can make a dead man talk have at it.” She pointed to the tombstone.

“Why didn’t you say he was dead?”

“You kept growling and glaring at me. It felt safer just not to argue with you. He died two weeks ago in a car accident. His breaks went out and he slammed into a gas truck on his way home from one of our discussion sessions. Fortunately the gas truck didn’t explode, but the way his car went under it…well, there was most definitely not an open casket funeral. He was so young—twenty-two just last month.” She shook her head.

“We need to go; now.” He pulled on her already sore arm again but this time he wasn’t letting go. This time he was dragging her alongside him. What had gotten into this guy? And why was he taking it out on her?

Chapter Two

“I don’t think you understand exactly how serious this is.”

Abby watched the woman they called Autumn Kitsap, their director, nearly glaring at her. Why did she care if she went into their program? The woman didn’t even know her. Oh right, because if, and that was a big if, they could find something of value on those tapes they would need her to testify that she recorded them, when, where, with whom and all that other stuff. Plus Autumn had said maybe she had some other information that didn’t get on the audio recordings so Abby figured that meant they would want her to paint a picture for whatever audience was going to be sitting in judgment.

Right now none of this made sense to her. She worked with video game design. She did fact checking, part world building, part character design…okay, she did a lot more than most people with her mediocre, non important title, would do, but still it was all about game building. How in the world did game building get her to marked for death status? Maybe the bigger question was what could possibly be this big that they would hire some special reconnaissance Marine, oh no that would be former Marine, to kill her? Either which way she sliced it she was soon to be dead.

Maybe her lack of connection to their calmed sense of doom was her defense system kicking in. It’s kind of like when her flight to the gaming conference in Hawaii went down hard on the landing. The wheal broke off the plane, the wing took a “load off” as Bruce had said, and one of the engines caught fire. Instead of screaming like a banshee as the other passengers were doing she actually calmly exited the plane on the lovely slide ramp that was not as fun to go down as it looked in all those movies she had seen it used in. Oh yeah, she hadn’t forgotten her purse either. She was the only person calmly exiting with her purse and workbag in her arms.

Her father had raised her to always be calm. “Chaos does not bring victory,” he had always said. Of course he was talking about that in the context of her fighting skills but it applied to life in general in their house. Chaos and freaking out was not going to save her now. In fact, she wasn’t sure they could save her either.

“What about the team working on this game; are they safe?”

“I can’t say for sure. The only person in our radar is you.”

“How can you say that?” How could they not be concerned about everybody else? She worked on the gaming design for this one but she wasn’t the sole builder. Other people could be in danger, maybe even marked for death like she seemed to be. They needed to protect more than just her.

“They’re not in direct contact with two people who were murdered, probably due to something they know; you are. Our priority is you. Now,” she pushed back from her desk. “I’m going to put in a call to the best man for your protection detail. I’ve sent a team over to your apartment to pack and bring things here.”

“What!? I don’t want strangers going through my stuff.” She halted her impending protest when Autumn held up her hand like a mother trying to shut up her child. They had to be the same age, or at least close to it anyway, yet this woman controlled the situation like she was born to do it. Working as the lead of a team full of men, at least that’s all she had seen since arriving, probably meant the woman had to demand respect and obedience. She doubted any of these guys second guessed her, not just out of fear, but out of something else—out of some sense of family. Abby honored that. While gaming wasn’t a life or death business—usually anyway—she could say the team she worked with did act like a family. They were close, they had each other’s back when need be, and they would always show respect towards one another even if the situation hit the debate mode.

“They’re gathering the things you won’t be able to go back to get. If you need something else speak now or forever hold your peace.”

“Like a friggin’ wedding,” she mumbled. “I could pack better if you would just let me go back to my home to get it. The drive won’t take forever you know? I could go back, pack, and you can then induct me into your forced witness protection program.” Sure would have been nice if Blue Eyes had taken her back in the first place. But no, he just hit the road and kept on driving with her protesting the trip with each Welcome to…sign that they passed.

“Not going to happen. You’re on lockdown until you’re not.”

Abby felt her anger spiking. She was going to be their prisoner until whoever was in charge of this fiasco figured out what was going on. If the history of their government was any indicator she would say that would be the rest of her life—short as that life might be now.

“My laptop would be nice.”

“Not going to happen. Next?”

“If I’m going to be on lockdown I need to work or I’m walking out of here right now.”

“Really,” she smirked more of a non question than anything. Abby turned around and saw two men standing in both corners of the closed door room. Both men had guns fastened to their hip.

“Bloody hell,” she turned her attention back to Autumn with swift haste. “What kind of group is this? You can’t just kidnap people—that’s a federal offense you know.”

Autumn gave a soft laugh. “I’m sure our federal government will get around to reading the rules they created one day and actually instituting them correctly. However, until they do that, you’re ours and you’re on lockdown. Going willingly will be more comfortable for you, Abby.”

She understood the words spoken and unspoken. She didn’t have a choice in the matter because she was being abducted and held prisoner whether she liked it or not. “My notebooks and my sketching pads then?”

“Okay. Anything else?”

“The drawing pencils and a nice supply of pens and the color pencils too. I could use those too.”

“Okay. I’ll put in a call. Stay comfortable.” She walked away, uttering something to both men in the room that Abby couldn’t understand because it wasn’t English, but she could understand it involved something about keeping her locked in this room by the way both men looked at her as if they were ready to do anything it took to anchor her behind to the chair.

Perhaps what got Abby’s attention most about this reclusive place that inspired fear was that a little woman was commanding all these big, gun laced, men. Something about that told her Autumn Kitsap was a lot more lethal than she looked. Something about that made her admire the little woman with a nearly visible bump in her stomach indicating a baby was growing in there.

Abby situated her back against the back of the chair and let her shoulders drop alerting the ready to knock her down if she got up men that she was going quietly, willingly—well as willingly as she could given the circumstances.

It was just a game—a simple space alien war game that overgrown men who really should have been working or having sex with a good looking woman played on end until their thumbs were ready to fall off. A game was not something that should have put her life in danger, and it most definitely shouldn’t have landed her in some tough as nails, tighter than a military training camp, office where she wasn’t given a choice in this witness protection thing. She wasn’t a witness for cryin’ out loud. She was just a friggin’ worker bee who did a fabulous-o job and earned a fairly decent pay grade. Okay, so she had mad design ideas and could make any game a best seller, but she hadn’t done anything to incur the wrath of the devil incarnate.

When the far too serious woman came back into the room she had a feeling she wasn’t going to like her words. Gee, she wondered what gave that away. Maybe because she hadn’t liked any of them so far.

“You’ll be picked up tomorrow and you’ll go right into protective custody.”

“Excuse me, but where are you all putting me?”

“You’ll find out when you get there. Your protector is skilled and he can keep you safe. I just got off the phone with him. He marches to his own drum.”

“Grand,” she said with a sarcastic and snarky reply.

“And he will do whatever it takes to keep you anchored in this program.”

The harsh tone in her voice told Abby this woman was not going to take any refusal. She tossed her hands up. This was insane, but it didn’t look like she had much of a choice so she might as well get comfortable and try to go along step by step. Maybe they would get the guy and she could go home soon. Yeah, think positive is all she kept chanting in her mind while the other corner of her brain kept telling her only an idiot would ignore the obvious—she wasn’t going home anytime soon, and if these people after her had their way she just might not ever get there.

Rhys played the conversation over in his mind. He tried to figure out just where he went wrong in the conversation with Autumn. The phone had rang and had he known what was coming his way the smart man that he was would have ignored the incoming call. But no, he was quick to answer and almost as quick to get sucked into a job that wasn’t his own.

Rhys was so not feeling this shift. He was intelligence only and now they wanted him to put some woman in his house under his protection? What the hell was wrong with Autumn? Pregnancy, that was the only answer because he was sure it was working dysfunctional chaos on her mental computing capabilities. If she was already like this at only three months God help them all when the hormones really started raging and waging war on her sanity.

No he did not want to be the man watching over this woman in need of protection. Technically he wasn’t a Marshal. “Can’t you get somebody else?” He growled.

“No. Nobody else can handle the man who is after her.”

“Put a bullet in him and you’re done.” He brushed his hand over his red short cropped hair. Full on retirement did not retire the Marine in him. He still kept the cut of his hair to military standards but sometimes he had to grow it out or add a little extra for his cover if his cover required hair more swiftly than what letting it grow could handle.

Very few people knew what he looked like now and the only people who truly did were long dead. His mother and father had always called him the master of disguise and trickery. Of course his father thought he was going to go join a three ring circus or something like it. Never had he expected his little boy to grow up to be an elite military man. He knew had he lived to see him retire from the military that he wouldn’t have expected to see his boy become a CIA man turned man on a mission of his own. His life had been against what anybody thought would come for him, and that was part of his skill. People didn’t know him and they never would. That mastery had allowed him to become the best at what he did. His skill, wisdom and higher IQ had just sealed the deal for him. But this, watching over a woman and playing protector was not his job.

“Won’t work, they tried.”

“Get better shooters.” He growled. This was not what he wanted. “I was Special Ops Intelligence and while I know how to fight and kill I’m out of that war. I’d like to stay out and focus on my own mission now.”

“And what if I were to tell you she collides with your mission? Look, I know you have a vengeance against select agents in the CIA, but I need you on this, Rhys. Nobody else can keep her safe.”

“Autumn,” he growled. “Don’t use my past for leverage.”

“I’m not. The guy who’s after her is MARSOC. You know the Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command.”

“I know what MARSOC is. I was in it long enough to know that.” He growled. “Find somebody else.”

“He’s a triple treat, Rhys. Simper Fi means nothing to him.”

“I don’t care.” He had met many of Marines who had gone rouge and didn’t believe in the Always Faithful line unless they were being faithful to themselves and their wallets. This wasn’t his fight. But something told him Autumn was going to keep pushing until he made it his fight. Well she would be sadly mistaken. He was not going to pull out bottle of noir dye, taint his hair, put in the blue contacts to mask his emerald eyes, nor was he going to dust off the makeup bottles he would use to convert his natural look into something unnatural to him.

His mother was a beautiful Irish woman while his father was a Colombian import to America. Two first generation immigrants who found each other on that fateful day of swear in. Their citizenship brought them together completely. Their joining brought him to life. He had his mother’s emerald eyes, but he had a hint more of his father’s coloring—a hint of darkness to mix with the pale Irish of his mother. He tanned like a world class beach bum, so he had been told, but that color was more his than sun kissed induced. Golden gorgeous red, the girls in school used to call him. they got in his nerves so much he wanted to run as far away from all of them as he could—sadly for him, school was mandatory and running was not an option.

He would have gotten a different reaction had he looked more like his father than his mother in some features. Thank gods in heaven for that because his father looked like a girl. Well maybe girl was too hard of a blow for a soft looking man, but he did. His features didn’t look tough man-like. He was short, yes, thin for a man, and his facial features were soft like the features of a woman. While his mother was the opposite. She was tall, broad shoulders, stocky hips, thick muscles even though she didn’t lift a bit of weights other than growing up working on a farm in Ireland where she was the only child and the family needed her to work like a boy since a boy is all they wanted in the first place. She was six feet even and her nose was stark and sharp on her face. His nose had taken the longer slender look from her. his cheekbones had taken the tough as nails look from her. his height had surpassed hers by two inches, but the hair and they eyes had come from her too. Well, maybe not the hair although even though she swore nobody in her perfectly Irish family had red hair, and she didn’t either, he couldn’t imagine getting this shade of red from his father who had dark eyes, dark hair, and features that screamed his Columbian heritage. His mother and father were like night and day but they were strong together and in love with each other. Most women wouldn’t have looked twice at his father, and most men would have run from his mother. Yet somehow they found beauty in each other’s outer and inner appearance. They found it and they shared it proudly. The Jessops were an enigma of a couple. He had shaken his head at the last name. Why his father had changed his name when he came to America had been a bit of a mystery to him until lately. That mystery was unraveling and his anger was intensifying.