Manipulating Mikey (First Wave Book 8) (11 page)

Mikey fought against the urge to
pull the trigger and put a bullet between the teen’s eyes for hurting Lauren.
The internal struggle was taking his full attention as a part of him that he
assumed was the beast showed an extraordinary determination to kill the threat
to his mate.

“Blade, get me something to go on.
Brandon?” Grai growled lowly as he held his own rifle at the teen’s head.

Brandon Thomas shook his head
slowly as he raised his own rifle and drew a bead on the kid.

“Grai, he’s the cartel leader’s
son, and he’s pretty pissed,” Brandon warned.

“What the hell is he saying? He’s
talking too fast for the translators,” Crator complained, keeping his eyes
trained on the teen.

Mikey gripped his rifle tighter as
he watched the thin line of blood trickle down Lauren’s neck to the edge of her
blouse. The roaring sound in his head became louder as his head became colder.
His hands steadied on his weapon and his vision became laser-like as he trained
his eyes on where to shoot the kid to end the threat to Lauren.

He scanned the teen from his head
to his shoulders, ignoring the dark mass of color surrounding him before moving
to the arm holding the machete.

There!
he thought
with a cocky grin as he lowered his rifle, knowing he couldn’t take a chance
with a bullet while the teen held Lauren.

While the teen’s attention was on
Brandon, Mikey reached down, pulled out his ka-bar knife, and was getting ready
to throw it when Blade cursed and walked up beside Mikey before pulling the
trigger.

Lauren screamed as the teen’s head
jerked backwards and Mikey ran forward to catch her and pull her away from the
teen’s falling body. Mikey held her as she cried in his arms, clutching him
tightly to her as she trembled.

“What the hell, Blade?” Grai
demanded, turning on the man.

Blade shrugged and turned to Grai.

“He was going to kill her. There
was nothing but hate and evil in him. He had every intention of rebuilding what
his father had, only he would have been even more brutal. He was torturing
animals at five years old and planned on carving up the unconscious kids when
he got us to leave,” Blade responded.

“Are you sure?” Grai asked, looking
at the dead teen in shock.

Blade nodded his head.

“He radiated evil so strongly it
was easy to sift his thoughts. He may be small, but he was 17 years old, and we
gave him the opportunity he was looking for to get rid of his father and take
over. Even his father feared him, which is why he was left to perimeter
patrol,” Blade explained, feeling like he needed a bath after seeing what was
in the teen’s mind.

“You murdered him!” Lauren screamed
at Blade.

“Hey! Shhh, Blade’s right. The kid
was surrounded by darkness. If he hadn’t done it, I was going to,” Mikey said,
trying to calm her. It didn’t work.

Lauren pulled out of Mikey’s arms
and stared at him with tears streaming down her face.

“You would have killed a kid?” she
asked, incredulous that he had even considered it.

They all heard the transport craft
landing in the airfield, and Grai ordered everyone to evacuate. Mikey thought
he was saved from answering her and headed towards the airfield when she
grabbed his arm and stopped him.

“Answer me! Were you going to kill
a kid?” she demanded.

Mikey stared at her with hard eyes,
unwilling to be grilled for something he hadn’t done.

“Yes, I would have. Blade was right;
the kid was evil and would have been more brutal than his father. Besides that,
he was going to kill you,” Mikey said before he jerked his arm out of her grasp
and headed back to the airfield.

Lauren stared after him with her
mouth hanging open in shock. She was a doctor; she healed people. She’d just
healed that same teen of potentially deadly parasites not more than an hour
earlier and now . . . she shook her head to clear her thoughts.

Her eyes landed on the dead teen
with his dark eyes fixed skyward, and her stomach heaved. Lauren dropped to her
knees as her stomach emptied its contents. When she finally felt she had
control of her stomach, she looked up to thank the person who’d rubbed her back
while she threw up, expecting it to be Mikey. She was surprised to see Blade,
and she jerked away from him.

Blade shook his head at his
childhood friend and antagonist. He and Lauren had always had a complicated
relationship. They’d spent years teasing and taunting one another, but Blade
always knew that underneath all the aggravation they put one another through,
they were friends. And he’d never tell her that he did it because he knew Mikey
was going to, and Blade didn’t want her hating on her mate. Instead, he
shouldered her anger, knowing that no matter how angry she was at him now,
she’d get over it.

Blade gave her a hard look.

“You . . . all of us, grew up in a
bubble thinking things like this could never happen to you because we were
isolated, protected, hiding behind computers. This is the real world we live
in, and these are the choices that have to be made. The teen was a stone cold
killer. We just saved the lives of countless people that he would have joyfully
brutalized. This is the human world. If you can’t take it, go back to your
bubble,” he said before he headed off to the airfield.

Lauren looked at the men still
guarding her and the way they wouldn’t look at her.

“We need to go,” Simya said, more
than a little disappointed in the doctor’s narrow-minded view.

Without a word, Lauren stood and
headed towards the airfield and into the transport ship. She walked past
everyone already seated and strapped in and headed to the back of the ship,
wanting to be left alone for a while.

She ignored the disappointed looks from
everyone, unaffected by their disapproval of her anger until she saw Mikey’s
face. The look of hurt and anger on his face caused her to stumble in the
aisle. She thanked those who reached out to keep her from falling and she
continued to the back, sitting down in the rear facing seats.

She was irritated and surprised
when Blade sat down beside her and strapped himself in.

“Why are you back here?” she
whispered at him in anger.

Blade turned to grin at her.

“I figured since your unrealistic
expectations were making you a pariah I would be your voice of reason and
company,” he said.

Blade knew she was hurt. Not only
by the reaction of the others—which he felt was appropriate—but by Mikey’s
anger. He knew Lauren meant well, but she had also never really left the safety
of her guarded world either.

Lauren had never faced the threat
of rape, theft, or violence. She’d watched what went on in the world under the
delusion that it would never touch her or the bubble she had lived in. In a
way, Blade was glad she’d gone through what she had. Lauren needed to see the
world as it really was, not through the rose colored glasses that she’d been
wearing.

“You’re an asshole,” Lauren
whispered through gritted teeth. As angry as she was at him, she was grateful
that she wasn’t alone.

Blade chuckled at her before he
tested her shoulder strap to make sure it was secured properly, ignoring her
hands slapping at him to stop.

“Yes, I am. But at least I see that
things aren’t as black and white as we thought growing up. There’s evil all
over the world, and it doesn’t discriminate by age, race, or religion. It can
be everywhere. No one wants to kill a kid, but what if that kid was a 10 year
old in a suicide vest coming right at you and your team? That is the real
world; those are the decisions made every day by the humans and our people,”
Blade said gently.

Lauren shook her head and turned
away from him, trying to comprehend what he was saying. She was having a hard
time merging the world he spoke of with the world she grew up in.

“Kids shouldn’t be killed,” Lauren
whispered.

“There’s something I got from
Mikey’s mind that is really applicable here. Parents should never put their
kids in a position to be killed. Those parents put their own kids in danger
when they hand them a weapon, when they teach them to hate. When you’re fed and
nurtured with hate, death, and a lack of respect for life that is what you do.
It’s all you know. It’s the parents that are responsible for the death of their
child, no one else,” Blade said, hoping to make Lauren understand that things
weren’t a utopian dream in the real world.

“He could have changed,” Lauren
said, speaking of the teen.

Blade shook his head.

“Any other time that might be
possible. Not with that kid. He was almost 18 years old, and he’d been planning
to kill his own father for years in order to take over,” Blade assured her,
still a little creeped out by what he’d seen in the kid’s head.

“But Mikey didn’t know that, and he
was going to kill him anyway!” Lauren argued.

Blade snorted and shook his head at
Lauren’s stubbornness. He was losing patience with her and was going to end up
purposefully antagonizing her if she didn’t try to see things from a realistic
point of view.

“Let me guess . . . if he didn’t
consider it, then he didn’t care. When he did consider it, he’s a horrible
person. Man, you women are a joke sometimes, you know that? Maybe the problem
isn’t what he did or didn’t do, maybe it’s the unrealistic expectations you
have. Maybe you ought to decide if you’re going to join him and everyone else
in the real world before you decide to judge,” Blade said, disappointment clear
in his voice.  

“Oh please,” Lauren said, refusing
to listen to what Blade was saying. “You grew up the same way I did. You can’t
think it’s OK under any circumstance.”

Blade laughed outright at her.

“Man, you sound just like a
spoiled, elitist human child. You’re no different at all. You grew up behind
guarded walls, seeing only what you wanted to see because you didn’t have to
deal with what was really going on! You didn’t have to fight your way past the
drive-by shootings and drug dealers to get home from the bus stop, hoping all
the way that there was food to eat when you got home.

“You’ve never seen the mental
devastation left behind in the mind of a man who had to do what he had to in
order to save the lives of others. You believe the world is all rainbows and
sunshine because you ignore the brutality happening to everyone else that
doesn’t live behind guarded walls like yours. You’re a fucking snob, Lauren.
And if you don’t get your head out of your own ass, you’re going to lose more
than your mate,” Blade warned before he stood in disgust and walked away to sit
with the others.

Chapter
Eleven

Grai paced the conference room
while Blade, Traze, and David sat around the table studying the information on
their comms. He had ordered Mikey and Brandon sent to Base Beta while Amun did
a full work up on both men to ensure they didn’t have any more trackers
embedded in them and to give them a chance to bond a little. The two men had a
lot in common and had hit it off pretty quickly.

“Grai, are you listening?” David
asked for the second time, pulling Grai’s attention from his thoughts.

Grai turned to the others and
nodded his head.

“Yes, I’m sorry. My thoughts
momentarily strayed. Can you repeat that?” Grai asked, forcing himself to
concentrate on the task at hand.

“We need to send the vids to Mikey
and see if he can find something in there that we missed. He may be able to see
a trail or something,” Traze repeated.

Grai nodded his agreement.

“I’ve already sent them to
Thjodhild. She’s going to make sure that he and Brandon take a look at them
once Amun clears them,” Grai said.

David cleared his throat.

“On a bright note, we heard on the
news that Lt. Col. Marcus Ballard, the asshole high on our list, was killed in
the house in Mexico,” he said with a grin.

He was the one name on their list
they had a hard time tracking down because the bastard had stayed hidden and
protected after what happened in the national forest.

“Who’s taking his place?” Grai
asked, wishing he’d been able to capture the lieutenant colonel instead.

“Major Kyle Morris. He’s the one on
the original list that disappeared after the incident at Fiorn’s Folly. We
couldn’t find anything on him the last time. No records prior to his enlistment
in the Army. I got bad feelings about this guy,” David said.

Grai remembered the man.

“The one with the fake high school
diploma and hometown. Yeah, there’s something off about that guy. Blade, is
there any way for your guys to dig deeper?” he asked, turning to Blade.

Blade shook his head.

“We dug as deep as we could go the
last time. The guy is a ghost. He basically appeared out of nowhere and joined
the military. All of his documents and transcripts are some of the best fakes
we’ve ever seen,” Blade admitted.

Grai stood in thought for a moment.

“Why would anyone do that? If you
can make fake documents, why go in the military? Why not become a banker or go
into another profession? Why the military, and why that unit? Do we even know
how he got in one of the most classified units in the world?” Grai asked.

“We got a lot of medals, high
ranking recommendations for heroic behavior,” Blade said as he skimmed through
the file they’d made on Kyle the last time. “It seems he was recommended after
taking part in a lot of shady and sketchy, secret operations.”

“Something isn’t right with the
guy. He would have had to put himself in the right place at the right
time—every time—in order to get where he is in less than 10 years. No one is
that lucky. Not in the military,” David offered.

Grai turned back to Blade.

“And we got nothing? No girlfriend?
No family? Address?” Grai asked again.

Blade snorted and shook his head.

“Either the guy finds a base to
sleep in every night or he just disappears. No address, no girlfriend, no
family or friends . . . either he’s the loneliest guy in the world or he’s
Santa Claus and disappears to the North Pole. Which only makes him more
suspicious and creepy,” Blade said.

Traze turned incredulous eyes to
the hard, jaded man.

“You think Santa is creepy?”

Blade shrugged while a little pink
color tinged his cheeks.

“Hey, don’t judge. I just think
it’s creepy that human parents teach their kids that some fat guy can pop into
your house when he wants and eat your cookies,” Blade said defensively.

Traze laughed.

“Dude, the fat guy leaves presents
while the kids leave him cookies and milk. It’s a trade. They feed his need for
ridiculously decorated cookies, and he gives them presents in return. Win–win.
Besides, it’s not real,” Traze said, surprised the tough guy had a weakness. A
stupid one at that.

Blade extended his middle finger
toward Traze.

“Screw you, man. I bet there’s a
boogey man in your closet too,” Blade said.

Traze laughed bitterly.

“I was sired by the biggest boogey
man on any world. Trust me, not much else compares,” he countered.

Blade tipped his head to Traze in
respect.

“You win,” he conceded.

Grai ran a frustrated hand through
his hair.

“You two can group hug later. We
need to find out where this Major Kyle Morris is and who he is. Something isn’t
right here. I’ll go to beta and talk to Mikey about looking at the vids,” Grai
said.

“Maybe I can put my vet friends on
this,” David suggested. “They may be able to dig something up that we missed.”

“Absolutely. They were invaluable
in getting Mikey out of there. If they can get something on Kyle Morris, then
I’d be in their debt yet again,” Grai agreed. He’d been impressed by the
wounded warriors the last time they had helped him.

*****

Mikey and Brandon were sitting in
the kitchen talking about their army days as they ate and waited for Grai to
come. Amun had told them that he would be there soon. Since they were starving
after their jungle adventure, they figured Grai would find them in the kitchen.

Brandon threw the last piece of his
half-eaten bread on his plate and sighed.

“I think I’m going to be stuck
staying this time. It’d probably be a little too suspicious for me to be the
only survivor of two encounters with them,” Brandon said with a sigh.

“What do you mean,” Mikey asked
curiously.

“Grai gave me a way out of the
special operations I stupidly signed up for. He wanted to bring me in after
Plum Island, but I wanted to stay in and help find his brother. I figured it
was the least I could do. Now I don’t think I’ll have a choice,” Brandon
explained.

“What do you think Grai will do to
you?” Mikey asked, worried for the soldier.

Brandon looked at Mikey curiously
before he burst out laughing.

“Sorry . . . the look on your face
was too funny. I think he’s going to let them claim me as killed in action, and
he’s going to give me a whole new identity,” Brandon said, wondering why Mikey
looked afraid.

“You don’t think he could just as
easily kill you,” Mikey countered defensively, crossing his arms over his
chest.

“Of course. But I damn sure don’t
think he will. The guy has more honor than any man I’ve ever met. If he says
he’ll have your back, he’ll have it. I think my biggest challenge will be
convincing him to let me join one of their mission teams,” Brandon said
honestly.

Mikey looked at Brandon like he’d
lost his mind.

“You want to take the chance of
crashing in the jungle again and going up against . . . everyone? Are you
nuts?” he asked.

Brandon chuckled and leaned back in
his chair, balancing on two legs.

“You’re kidding, right? I have no
family and the closest I’ve ever felt to doing the right thing has been working
with Grai. They are the ultimate good guys, and to be honest with you, I’m
honored that he even gave me a chance to be a part of something this big. Come
on, you gotta know what that’s like. You’re actually one of them. You’re a part
of the bigger picture, a soldier making an actual difference. How can you not
be in awe of how lucky you are,” he asked.

Mikey shook his head, trying to see
it from Brandon’s point of view.

“How can you turn your back on it
so easily?” Mikey countered.

Brandon snorted.

“On what? The lies and deceit? I
walk down a street now and wonder why so many are blind to what’s going on
around them. Think about it. We watched on the news where they blamed what we
did out there on a joint military mission to take out a cartel gone wrong! From
where I’m sitting, this is the real truth; everything else out there is a
candy-coated lie,” he said with disgust.

“How can you be so sure that this
time you’re fighting on the right side?” Mikey asked, curious what Brandon’s
answer would be.

“That’s easy. I could have died out
there in the jungle, and I wouldn’t have questioned what I was fighting and
dying for. As many times as you’ve been overseas, like I have, how many times
could you say that?” Brandon said before he got up and left the room.

Mikey ran his hands over his head
and stood to put his plate up, thinking about what Brandon had said. He had to
admit—tense moments and serial killer teenager aside—he had felt like they did
a good thing taking out the cartel. Sad thing was, as easy as it was for them,
he knew that if anyone had actually made an effort they could have done the
same thing a long time ago.

Even more lies. The good guys were
in bed with the bad guys everywhere. The truth was stranger than any fiction
ever written, and he was smack dab in the middle of it. Mikey sighed and headed
outside, needing to clear his head.

He breathed in the clean, crisp air
and without thinking turned the corner of the building. He looked up and
stopped dead in his tracks, standing spellbound.

“Did you find him?”

Mikey stared at the ghostly image
of Emily and closed his eyes, wondering if she’d be gone when he opened them.
He slowly opened his eyes.

Nope, not crazy. She’s really
there. Again
, Mikey thought.

“Please, it’s really important that
I talk to Indrid. Have you seen him?” Emily asked, her voice pleading.

Mikey walked closer as he looked
around to see if anyone was around and could witness him talking to . . .
nothing. Seeing no one, he looked down at Emily.

“No, I haven’t seen him. I was gone
for a little while though, and he could have come while I was gone,” Mikey
whispered.

“Is there any way that you can get
hold of him for me? Please, it’s very important,” Emily said, desperate for
help.

“I’m sorry, I only met him once.
Can’t one of the other . . . um, angels here help you?” Mikey suggested.

Emily shook her head.

“No, I don’t know any of them.
Indrid always helps me. Is there someone you can ask? Please, I don’t know what
else to do,” Emily pleaded.

Mikey was getting ready to ask her
if he could help when she looked behind him and squealed before she
disappeared. He turned around to see Grai coming towards him and wondered why
Grai would scare her.

“Who were you talking to?” Grai
asked as he approached Mikey and looked around for he’d been speaking to.

Mikey sighed and threw his hands up
in the air.

“Myself. Just trying to figure
things out in my head,” he said, unwilling to sound crazy to the alien leader.

Grai snorted.

“Let me know how that goes for you.
I’m still trying to figure it all out. Want to talk about it?” Grai asked,
figuring the kid needed an ear and not a request to look at vids.

“I’m not even sure what to ask,”
Mikey said with a laugh.

Grai motioned for Mikey to start
walking and waited for him before falling into step beside him. They walked in
silence for a few minutes before Mikey turned to Grai.

“How the hell do you even know
what’s real?” Mikey asked.

“Real is determined by the person
who believes it to be real. You have to figure out for yourself whether or not
you choose to believe the facts that are before your eyes. You will make your
own reality based on what you choose to accept and believe,” Grai said.

“That’s not true. I can’t go back
and forget everything that’s happened since the forest. So the reality I had is
gone forever,” Mikey said with a sad shake of his head.

“You can’t make it perfect, but you
can go back. We can give you a new identity, you can pick a country or even
stay in the US. All you have to do is pretend like you don’t know the truth and
soon your mind will forget,” Grai suggested.

Mikey barked out a laugh.

“Yeah, that’s never going to
happen. I could never watch the news again without wondering what the truth was
beneath the lies being told. I’ll never look at the skies the same way again,”
Mikey said.

“Is that really a bad thing? Would
you have rather remained like so many others who are sheep to the slaughter for
their governments? Or have you spent so much time hating this reality that you
didn’t even try to like it?” Grai asked, knowing he made a direct hit by the
way Mikey flinched.

Grai took pity on Mikey and put a
hand on his shoulder.

“Look, I need a favor, and you need
time to think. Take all the time you need to think about what you want your
reality to be, and we’ll do what we can to help in any way. Even if you choose
not to remain with us, we will always be here for you. So don’t allow that to
influence your decision. We won’t abandon you, but we will respect your
wishes,” Grai offered.