Enemy Mine (The Base Branch Series Book 1)

T
he unauthorized reproduction
or distribution of this copyrighted work is a crime punishable by law. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded to or downloaded from file sharing sites, or distributed in any other way via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the publisher’s permission. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000 (http://www.fbi.gov/ipr/).

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious or have been used fictitiously, and are not to be construed as real in any way. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental.

P
ublished
by MM Publishing LLC

Edited by Lacey Thacker

Cover Design by Deranged Doctor Designs

E
nemy Mine

All Rights Are Reserved. Copyright 2014 by Megan Mitcham

First electronic publication: October 2014

First print publication: October 2014

Digital ISBN: 978-1-941899-00-7

Print ISBN: 978-1-941899-01-4

T
o Mom
for reading to me. To Dad for making me read. To Art & Kay for re-igniting my love of books.

S
loan stood
in the shadowed ink of night. Swirling wind whipped her ponytail. Thin strands tickled her cheek, but did not obstruct her view. The rest of her body mimicked the statue perched at the center of the penthouse balcony. Unlike the bare-breasted figure, Sloan wore black from the tips of her unruly mane to the soles of her combat boots. Beyond the sculpted stone balustrade and the steep drop of the building she’d scaled, the National Mall glittered like a diamond on America’s hand. The view from the luxurious Pennsylvania Avenue condo drew people from all across the globe. Yet, she paid it not a glance. Her eyes locked on the scene unfolding on the other side of the dwelling’s massive glass wall.

Complications one and two.

A woman, her curves crammed to overflowing in a sparkling white cocktail dress, tugged a man into the ultra-modern living room. Everything inside the premium abode glistened, from the glass chandelier to the alabaster granite beneath the woman’s five-inch stilettos. The man swaggered after her swaying hips. His narrow chest puffed with a fifty-fifty mix of ego and vanity. They stopped at the wet bar and the two nearly became one. His lopsided grin mingled with a sneer. He curled around her, his broad body molding to her lush backside. He blanketed one tweed-covered arm over her shoulder. The other crept its way up her buxom hip. As the gown fell to the floor, bare skin rewarded the man’s endeavor.

Agitation tickled the back of Sloan’s neck for a split second before she gridlocked the useless emotion. She hadn’t been given time to perform reconnaissance. Too bad. So, she’d been sent out alone with less than reliable intel. Just as well. The task remained the same. Retrieve all information from Madame Tracy Walters’ laptop. Sure, stealth was preferred. The empty dwelling she’d been promised would’ve made it much easier. Yet, as was often the case when negotiating covert ops, plans changed. Waiting for the occupant and her guest to leave wasn’t an option. Her commander had stressed this assignment dealt in time-sensitive material. Speed was priority.

If you can’t go in the front door due to heavy security, you find a back door. Or, in this case, a balcony. If you can’t go in the balcony, you find a window. Taking one step backward, Sloan peered down the structure's side wall. While the condominium's street front facade arched and bowed with an artful design easy for climbing, the side street exterior slid down to the asphalt below with only a hand full of pocketed windows. None in safe reach.

The sharp thwack of flesh meeting flesh brought her head around. In the dark recesses of her mind, in memory scarcely visited, Sloan stood, eyes wide, as a thickly-veined hand connected with a beautiful woman’s cheek. The woman’s pleading eyes, amber just like her own, watered, but shed no tears. Blinking the image away, she met reality. Madame Walters pinned her client to the bar with a pointed elbow. Black slacks and tighty-whities hung around his thighs, revealing a blindingly white butt. A hint of red marred one tensed ass cheek.

Sloan swallowed rage that had nothing at all to do with the couple on the other side of the glass, and resumed her search. After a quick climb to the roof, she used a skylight to drop into a white marble bathroom thick with the scent Eau de Whore. Her tuck and roll left only a whisper of sound, quickly covered by a series of throaty pants emanating from the living room. The bedroom she entered dwarfed her own and boasted the largest bed she’d ever seen. The monstrosity suffocated in silky white linens. Sloan got the feeling the madame surrounded herself with white to mute all the impurities in her life. But, psychologist she was not.

Across from the bed, flanking an ornate mantel, were two doors. The first, a closet smaller than the apartment sized one she’d seen in the bathroom, brought a shock of color to the scheme. Bright red coated every surface. Paraphernalia of Walter’s trade hung on the walls. Pulleys and eyebolts. Leather straps. Feathers. Floggers. Whips. Fake dicks of every odd shape, color, and size. Beads. Plugs.

My, what a thorough businesswoman.

Tracy Walters, previously Tara Walley, was a self-made woman. Coming from nothing, she’d quickly made a name for herself. Stripper, turned call-girl, turned entrepreneur. Tracy made her mark culling the most exotic and talented ladies in the land to service D.C.’s elite. But by going international and mixing it up in the world of high crime, she amassed a fortune. Now known not only for her bedroom abilities, but her ability to funnel drugs, women, and arms through several key continents, Madame Walters had earned the Base Branch’s notice and Sloan’s abhorrence.

Grunts and giggles moved closer, reverberating down the hallway through the open bedroom door. Without hesitation, Sloan returned the room to its innocent guise with a twist of the knobs. Two ground-eating strides brought her even with what she suspected was a home office, but the amorous pair rounding the frame prevented her from slipping through unnoticed.

So much for foreplay.

One side step enveloped Sloan in darkness behind the thick wood of the bedroom door. Ignoring every human instinct—fight, flight, blinking, breathing, scratching itches—she stilled. Only her heart stirred, as the two groped their way past her into the room. Walters unlatched the man’s nipple from her bite and turned away with a rough giggle. Her heart-shaped bottom brushed the man’s lap as she turned and swished to the goody closet. When she opened the door the light shown from the recesses, casting a spotlight on the bed.

Sloan took her first good look at the client.

Byron Graham, West Virginia’s pristine good-ole’-boy and two term senator, practically salivated as Tracy Walters disappeared into her little den of iniquity. She returned with a fist full of leather and a wicked smile. The man poised to make a promising run for President of the United States during the next election moaned as his wrists, then ankles, were cinched into black restraints.

Well there’s your foreplay. A little rougher than I’d imagined. But who am I to judge?

Sloan moved like a flower opening for the morning sun. Centimeter by precious centimeter, she eased her hand into the left pocket of her black tactical pants and retrieved a camera no larger than a flash drive.
Click. Click.

The device made no sound, but the pictures it took were concussive enough to rock the east coast. Sloan captured the likely future president strapped to the end of a bed in a standing X with a ball gag stretching the skin of his mouth, while a world-renowned madame and war profiteer knelt before his dangling package.

Who the hell needed Nationwide on their side, when they had insurance like this?

No one.

Sloan could wave hello, walk into the office, remove the damning evidence from Tracy Walters’ computer, and pirouette her way home with the pictures as leverage. Then again? If she tipped her hand, she could just as easily be taken out by a sniper’s bullet as soon as she left the building. The stakes were that high. In reality, when weren’t the stakes that high in her line of work? Dodging a sniper was definitely more trouble than waiting for these two to get distracted.

So, she waited and watched.

Voyeur much?

Sloan didn’t think so. She’d need some level of sexual interest in the display before her, and she didn’t have as much as one stiff nipple. She marked voyeur off her list of proclivities.

After twenty minutes of flogging, Sloan wondered whether or not Ryan, her male counterpart and friend, would have wood from this voyeuristic job. She ventured a positive guess. Not that it would have impeded his operation in any way. Hell, even a preacher would be shocked into watching. But the unfolding scene didn’t rouse or revolt her. Perhaps her coworkers’ jibes were accurate.

Ice. Annie Artica. Freeze.

When Graham was blindfolded and Walters was busy swallowing his cock, Sloan slipped into the adjoining room. City light bled into the space from a picture window. She easily discerned the glass desk which sat in front of a wall of shelves sprinkled with books, various ornaments, and artful nude sketches. Sloan locked both sets of doors and sat at the desk before opening the laptop and typing furiously for several minutes. As shrewd as Tracy was with a man’s penis, she was even more so with her password protection.

Triumphantly, Sloan set the flash drive to accept duplicates of everything the computer held. She waited. Beyond the door grunts, whimpers, and slaps continued. The innocuous files flew across the screen. Sloan prowled the room for a surveillance camera. Finding none, she returned to the desk in time to read the name on one of the soaring files.

Lucifer.

Her heart bucked.

W
aiting sucked more
cock than Tracy Walters. Usually, it didn’t faze her, but Sloan had more important things to capture than the errant piece of cereal she chased around her bowl. Too bad she couldn’t do a thing until given orders.

Suddenly, the glasses in the cabinet behind her head began to clink and rattle. The countertop vibrated in time with the
boom boom
of the thrumming bass creeping through the walls. Sloan cocked her head toward the microwave’s digital clock. As it had for two years now, the red light flashed the twelve o’clock of neglect. Fixing it always seemed like wasted effort, and judging by 2-C’s ever-dependable beats, the thing was only a couple of hours off.

Disinterested in the chase, Sloan carried the spoon to her mouth without the prize. The milk chilled her throat as she swallowed. Flipping the handle, she let the spoon hang there, her tongue nestled in the scoop. The last bit of grain pirouetted in the bowl.

The one that got away? The lucky one?

Sloan slid off the faux wood grain of the Formica countertop. With a finger, she dislodged the polyester running shorts from the crack of her butt, walked two small steps to the sink, and dragged the now warm spoon through her lips.

Staring at the Grape-Nut, she dumped the bowl’s contents. “Nope,” she said. “Not the lucky one.”

The whitewash of milk stood in the stainless steel basin for several seconds before the ancient pipe relented to gravity’s pull. Her hips didn’t twerk with the beat, nor did her teeth grit in annoyance. Sloan simply washed the bowl, spoon, and water glass, dried them, then placed them in the pulsating cabinets and drawer.

Silently, she padded out the dark kitchen through the living room, running her fingers over various locks and latches as she went. In the pitch-black room, no interior lights blazed from the fluorescent fixtures above. Blinds, cinched tight, blocked curious eyes. Stubbing a toe on a couch or rapping a shin on the coffee table weren’t concerns. She had neither. She did have a desk in the guest room, which had never housed a guest, but other than that, her bed and night stand were the only pieces of furniture she required, and she could find them with her eyes carved out.

In the bathroom, Sloan depressed the measly lock on the knob. The tinny sound echoed against the muted orange tile walls. Maybe that was another reason she never turned on the light. The color was about as pleasing to the eye as dog vomit. But no, aesthetics had nothing to do with it. Sloan removed the Sig from her waist holster and wiped the sweat from the grip with the side of her T-shirt before placing it on a homemade shelf. Just above the sliding door of the shower, the painted four-by-five strip of plywood blended in to the white of the wall. From under the hem of her shorts, she pulled thin, black-matte blades from sleek leather sheaths strapped to each thigh. The blades clanked as they settled onto the shelf next to the gun. Finally, she unzipped the pocket at the small of her back, retrieved a slender black phone, and then placed it with the weapons.

The tepid water beat onto her chest. She leaned into the deluge, letting it fleece the evening’s dirt from her skin. Back alleys were filthy places filled with garbage of every variety. Turning around, she let the water pound some of the tension out of her shoulders. As she worked the bar of L’Occitane verbena soap, her one and only serial splurge, against her washcloth, the calming scent filled her nostrils. It smelled like what life should be. A spring morning after a cleansing rain. The nip of winter hanging in the air, but the promise of warmth just around the bend. The dream eased the remaining tightness from her muscles. In the dark, Sloan scrubbed the lather of bubbles over every inch of her skin, beginning with the arc of her neck, working her way down.

C
lean
, dry, and dressed in a white tank and grey cotton shorts, Sloan eased back the fluffy comforter and sat on the center of her bed. Blinds shut tight, the inky blackness lightened to grey in her bedroom with the help of the street light filtering in from the parking lot beyond her window. She placed the gun on the bed in front of her crisscrossed legs. One blade she hid under her pillow, the other under the mattress edge. She dropped the phone onto the nightstand, then opened the drawer.

A string of high-pitched curses permeated the wall behind her large wooden headboard. “
Humph
.”

What was it with people and their routines?

As she unrolled the cleaning kit she’d retrieved from the side table, the faint
boom
of 2-C’s radio accompanied the nightly brawl of the couple next door. With deft hands, Sloan released the loaded magazine from the pistol and racked the slide, ejecting the round from the chamber. With the subject of every practice shot and dry fire in her mind, Sloan took aim in the center of his forehead, just a wrinkle above his greasy brow line, and fired. The firearm clicked impotently, but in her tenacious imagination the imaginary bullet exploded out the barrel and slammed into meaty flesh.
Whack.

Too bad she hadn’t gotten the real life chance.
Yet.

While 2-A bit into the habitual two-timer with dirty words Sloan rarely thought, much less used, she methodically cleaned her sidearm. By the time she put everything away and nestled her head on the puffy pillow, the verbal firefight from next door was replaced by the excited voice of an infomercial salesman and rumbling snores.

Routines.

Sloan stared at the crack in the ceiling. The tiny chasm originated at the window frame, spreading upward through the wall and the plaster over her head. The width of the fissure was no more than that of a pin. Hardly ominous. Yet, it mocked her, how closely it resembled her life. A crevice devoid of anything real, filled only with work. The crevice had grown about a quarter-inch in length since she’d last laid here through the night, studying it until the sun had lightened the sky.

Why the hell did she keep this place? Not for the neighbors or the structural integrity of the building. The fact that the upstairs tenant could fall through his floor and crush her skull at any moment should give her pause. Was this decrepit apartment her sick attempt at normalcy? A routine?

No, since the word denoted things happening with regularity. Sloan had a variable existence, because Santa didn’t come down the chimney on Christmas Eve with a sack of goodies, and God didn’t appear in a blinding white puff of smoke to vanquish evil. She had this place because she occasionally had downtime from work, and park-bench-sleepers got arrested.

C’est la vie. And then you die.

No sooner had the thoughts run through her brain, than variability vibrated her phone.