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Authors: Billi Jean

Tags: #Erotic Romance Fiction

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BOOK: Trusting Love
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The senator paled and sweat broke out on his brow, but he remained silent. Robert gave him time to think and walked around the perimeter of the room, checking in on the two silent, unconscious guards and the kid. Walters didn’t speak, but then Robert didn’t expect the man to. At the window, Robert paused. The view of the night sky outside was mostly blocked by his own reflection and that of the room behind him, but he made out the differences in the darkness indicating where the rugged mountains stood in the distance.

“These mountains, they can be hard on skiers. Even vacationers with no use for skiing can be lost, never heard from again. Do you see my meaning, senator? Am I making myself perfectly clear?” Robert asked, turning to face the old man.

Anger buzzed through his body again, making it harder and harder for Robert to hold onto his gut instincts and not just kill the greedy bastard. DeRoy was responsible for the flawed tanks in Iraq, or should have been. It was his company that had got the contract for the armoured tanks that were supposed to be designed to protect soldiers in the field, but hadn’t been able to withstand gunfire let alone anything stronger.

DeRoy was also responsible for the cuts in military spending that had cost many service men their life after coming home from combat. The senator’s insistence that the military paid its retired soldiers too much had caused several thousand injured vets to lose their pensions and be without medical assistance.

Meanwhile, DeRoy had siphoned off funds and cut corners on production so that he made the most money he could on the contracts with the military while leaving men and women in danger simply because he wanted to earn a greater profit by using less than optimal materials.

“So, this is DeRoy, huh?” Walters mused, drawing Robert back from the brink of no return. “Sounds to me like you’ve got your hand caught in the cookie jar, huh, Senator? What do you think, Tazz, my man?”

Thanking Walters silently for easing the tension in his chest, if not the room, Robert gave the surfer-slash-warrior a narrow-eyed look and nodded to the hacker. “Let’s see what the kid has to say. I’m not wasting time on trash. If you can’t talk, sir, your wife and your children will be having their next Christmas without you. And let me assure you, they will be missing you in a lot less comfort than they are used to once word of your acts hit the papers. I believe espionage kills the benefits package, doesn’t it, sir?”

“Hell, even that hot secretary is going to go without a lot more than she’s used to,” Walters added, eyeing DeRoy closely. “But if she was with you, she was used to that, in certain areas, if you catch my meaning,” he added thrusting his hips to make his words perfectly clear.

Robert glared at the man, but he also noticed that DeRoy’s face went from ghostly white to a red that bordered on purple. If he’d been a decade younger, a hundred pounds lighter and not a worthless scumbag, Robert might have worried he’d pull something stupid. Instead the old man croaked something like a curse, glanced from him, to Walters then to the hacker, then finally back to him.

There was something wrong with old men getting angry and being helpless about it, but Robert felt no sympathy for how pathetic and weak DeRoy appeared now that he knew the real deal. It disgusted him, and he’d need a shower and several days of drinking to get the old man out of his thoughts, but in his life, he’d seen much worse than a privileged old man finally realising he’d not get out of the mess he’d landed in.

“I have no idea—”

Robert just walked over, that’s all he did, but whatever expression he wore had the older man sitting down as though Robert had cut his legs out.

“I’ve killed men for less than what you’ve done. And I liked them a lot more than you. Don’t give me any more bullshit because right now, my finger is itching to simply blow your brains out all over the wall behind you.”

“Whoa, Tazz, man, settle down.”

He shot Walters one look and the other man backed down.

“I was waiting here for the buyers,” DeRoy said softly, drawing his attention back on him. The old man had pissed himself, Tazz noticed with a grimace.

Robert backed up and sat on the polished mahogany desk across from DeRoy to wait for more.

“They are bringing me the money and in exchange, I hand over the hard copy of the programme. Benjamin has it in the brief case.”

Tazz’s com link buzzed a second before he heard Jansen say, “Tazz, man, we have company coming. Helicopter due. Five minutes tops.” The com link grew quiet but they didn’t have to say more. The buyers had arrived.

Walters met his look with a slight nod.

“Get the senator cleaned up, he’s pissed himself. And you, kid, if you make one wrong move, just one, you’re toast. You got me?”

The kid, Benjamin, looked too young to be caught up in the kind of shit he’d landed in.

But he had. Robert cut the plastic Walters had placed on his wrists and hauled him closer by his thin arm.

“I’ll kill you, kid. Simple as that,” he added with pressure on his hold until Benjamin nodded quickly. “You make one wrong move, that’s all you get. No second chances here. No detention after school. No community service.”

“Got it, I got it, sir, I really got it.”

Walters grunted under his breath about nursing home duty but led DeRoy from the room at gunpoint. As soon as they left, Robert turned back to the kid’s frightened face feeling suddenly old.

“How old are you, kid?”

“Twenty, sir.”

God damn.
Twenty years old and on his way to selling secrets that could kill thousands without even understanding.

Robert snorted. The kid was spoilt. The Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt, the jeans made to look old but probably purchased off the shelf of some store that charged a thousand just for the extra rips in the knee, together with the haircut, expensive but useless footwear plus the attitude pegged the kid as one of the privileged elite.

“Do you realise what you’re in the middle of?”

Benjamin opened his mouth, shut it then shook his head. “No, no, I just got the—”

“How do you know the senator?”

“He knows my mom, they’re friends, sir. I—”

Friends.
The wealthy in this world stuck together. No doubt this kid thought his actions came without consequences because his parents’ always had.

“Do you know that what you’ve done could land you in jail for the rest of your life? Not a state or even federal prison, but a military installation where you’re not let out to see your folks, or given a television, or even a magazine to jerk off to? Do you understand what happens to terrorists? What we
do
with them?”

“I’m not a terrorist, I swear. I simply got this computer and pulled a file, that’s it, sir,” he said frantically. “I swear.”

Rob didn’t answer, he knew there was more. His instincts raged that more was going on here than just a transfer of a file for money.

DeRoy was too greedy for one. He’d not sell it so quickly. There would have had to be a buyer in place when Kylie was hunting for the files her dad had stashed all over the place. The only computer with the full version of the first formula was the one destroyed, but only
after
the hard drive had been removed. Kylie had gone over this with Robert enough that he understood this was an inside job. Just what he’d thought from the beginning. But that kind of thing took money. A lot of money.

This entire buyer scheme could be a hoax. A roll of the dice by DeRoy to pass off something he didn’t actually have with him to see what he could get for it. Buyer beware and all that.

But is the man that crazy?

“Did you recover the full file from the hard drive?” Robert asked the kid.

“Yes, sir. I did.”

“How many copies did you make?” Robert asked, shooting in the dark to get a reaction.

The kid’s brown eyes widened and too quickly he said, “Ten, but they’re at my dorm back at college. I swear it. This one and ten more. I can get them—”

Robert shut off the rush of words with an upraised hand. The kid was nervous, but was he nervous because he was frightened or because he was lying? Something wasn’t ringing true. He grabbed the briefcase and opened the thing, revealing a flash drive and the burnt-out hard drive. “What’s your last name, kid?”

For the first time the kid stalled but in a grumble he finally said, “Andrews.”

Benjamin Andrews. “What college?”

Ben had enough nerve to roll his eyes and stall again. Robert expected to hear Yale or Princeton, but the kid muttered, “Wyoming State.” At Rob’s look of disbelief Benjamin said, “My folks were teaching me a lesson,” he muttered. “If I stayed out of trouble I could attend Harvard next fall.”

If he could stay out of trouble? Like going to a state college was a punishment? Rob’s anger shot higher but he controlled it. The kid was young. He’d learn. “This is the file?”

Again an odd look crossed the kid’s baby smooth complexion, darkening the rough red splotches on his cheeks. “Yeah.”

Robert focused on the kid for a moment more, not liking the way he’d answered that, as if he’d only told half the truth. But he heard Walters coming down the hall and the copters getting closer. He shot DeRoy a quick glance when the two walked back in, taking in the way he met the kid’s gaze then cleared his expression.

The kid looked guilty, and the look he directed at Robert was full of it.
Had the kid lied? About what? The copies?

“Go get him cleaned up in the bathroom over there, then get these men out of here and into that side room,” Robert told Walters, silencing the other man’s he wasn’t the
potty police
mutter with a glare. “I’ll inform the senator of the plan.”

Walters took the frightened kid with him and Robert turned to the senator, leaving the briefcase open on the desk.

“You seem to know my house better than I do,” DeRoy muttered.

“I make it my business to know what I’m getting into senator. It’s kept me alive so far.”

He let that settle in and watched as the man twisted his lips in a grimace then nodded curtly. Rob’s instincts warned that there was more going on here than he knew, much more, and the kid and senator were central to those uneasy thoughts. What was it? He had the flash drive, he had the man responsible for stealing the files, and soon, he’d have the buyer.

The sound of copters grew closer, confirming that idea, but Robert’s neck prickled with unease.

What the kid had said drew his attention again, not because he’d said anything specific, but simply because that’s where Robert felt the most that this shit was going to go wrong. The kid. Specifically, the kid and the senator were up to something else. And there wasn’t shit he could do other than be prepared for the worst.

“Looks like your guests have arrived,” he told DeRoy. “You’re going to play along, Senator. We’ll act as your guards.” He nodded to Walters when he walked back in with the kid combed and cleaned up, looking in better shape than he’d been before. He’d not pissed himself like the old man, but he’d had the glazed expression of a person that had just survived a life or death situation—and he had—but Robert wanted him cool, a bit nervous, but not looking scared to death. “If either of you want to live to see tomorrow, you’ll not make one move that suggests you’re not in agreement with the plan.”

DeRoy nodded, but the kid mumbled he was ‘on board for that’ under his breath.

Walters rolled his eyes at the heartfelt declaration. He’d removed his white camouflage gear but still held his rifle. Walters levelled it on DeRoy as soon as Robert unzipped and took off his jacket and snow pants. He shoved them and his rifle behind the couch.

“Now, we wait,” he said, settling on the desk again.

“Two minutes, sir,” Taylor sounded winded, but Robert didn’t answer, not wanting the senator to know he had a link to the outside beyond his phone.

Bryson could have changed positions because of the weather, or he could have moved because of the incoming copters. They’d assumed the buyers would arrive in a truck or SUV, not helicopters. Bryson and Jansen would have to relocate or chance being spotted.

“Hand me the copy and put this fake in the briefcase,” he instructed Benjamin, handing over his own flash drive.

The kid scrambled to the briefcase, dropping it off the couch in his hurry. DeRoy was too quiet.

“If DeRoy blinks wrong, shoot him in the head,” he told Walters.

Walters grinned lazily and crossed his arms over his chest hugging his gun in a casual display of power. He was in a tan sweater and jeans, his sun-bleached blond hair hanging down over his forehead but his all-American looks were deceiving. He could kill DeRoy without his gun just as well as with it and probably not have a single qualm about it.

So could Robert. He took out his knife and flipped it a few times, watching the kid get the flash drive out, turn and face him, freezing with a look at the knife.

“Just hand me the file.”

Benjamin caught his toe on the Asian carpet, but couldn’t hand the flash drive over quick enough.

Robert pegged him for seventeen no matter what he’d said about twenty. No way was he old enough to vote.

“Now close the briefcase,” Robert told him, putting the flash drive in an inside pocket of his BDUs. He speared DeRoy with a look. “You remember our deal. You live if you do your part. You die if you don’t.”

“I understand completely,” DeRoy responded, but Robert, Walters, and possibly the kid, knew he’d try something. Benjamin moved over on the couch and made himself as small as possible, which wasn’t hard since the kid was all arms and legs. But Robert couldn’t help but feel as if he was up to something too.

The whirl of helicopters suddenly became loud enough that even DeRoy seemed to make them out with his hearing aid. He straightened in his seat and a calm demeanour settled over his aged face. He folded one leg over the other, as if he was having drinks with the good ol’ boys, and was stupid enough to let a smirk cross his face before he schooled himself into a bored expression. He also avoided all eye contact with Benjamin.

God damn what I wouldn’t give to have more time
.

BOOK: Trusting Love
7.18Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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