Dangerous Protector (Aegis Group Book 5) (21 page)

“Bring him here. I’ve got a few questions for him.” Randy scratched that off the list.

“It’ll be a few hours.”

“Let me know when he arrives.”

Randy adjusted his schedule. It was only Tuesday. Still, he’d like to have this whole thing wrapped up by tomorrow and his team out. Let the authorities make of the remaining mess what they would.

By Friday, NueEnergy would be gone, their employees fired and the banks swooping in to foreclose on massive amounts of debt. Everything else would land squarely on the shoulders of Eli and George. Who were conveniently dead.

Marco slammed the door
shut to Ghost’s one-room rental. It wasn’t the same one as before. It was across town in another walk-up over a different store. At least this one didn’t smell of grease, and it had two single beds. As a bonus they had a hot plate and a tiny sink, in addition to a bathroom down the hall. So long as they paid in cash, no one asked questions.

“No luck?” Ghost didn’t turn from the mountain of monitors.

Marco was pretty sure Ghost added a new one every time he left.

“No. He’s not fucking there.” Marco dropped onto the single bed, exhaustion weighing him down. The texts from his family weren’t stopping. Everyone wanted to know what the hell was going on, and where was Danny? Since Marco couldn’t give them answers about current events, he’d gone in search of his cousin and come up empty handed.

“He’s probably jacked up somewhere, living the life.” Ghost’s tone was dismissive to the point it got Marco’s hackles up.

“What would you know?” It wasn’t like Ghost was very personable. A paper bag had more empathy than Ghost. The only reason Ghose was here was because he felt like he owed Marco some huge debt. If it weren’t for that, Marco was pretty sure the guy would have disappeared a long time ago.

Ghost’s fingers stopped moving and he turned his head toward Marco. There was something…prenatural about the movement. The hair on Marco’s arms rose and Ghost’s eyes seemed to swallow him up.

The only time Marco had seen that look on Ghosts’ face was the time the shit had hit the fan. They’d been holed up in a shack, their enemies closing in. Ghost had given him that same look, told him to stay out of range…and then death had rained down. They’d fought tooth and nail that night, and come out alive. Somehow.

Marco did not want that death stare aimed at him, but here it was.

“What do you think they did to me to make me this way?” Ghost’s stare bored into Marco.

“I never asked.” He swallowed. No, he’d turned off his conscience, handed Ghost his medication when it was time, sewed up the gashes, and dug bullets out of him.

“Always the good soldier.” Ghost turned back toward the monitors, the moment over.

Marco shivered.

Fucking Ghost. Sometimes he got off on being creepy.

“What would you have had me do?” Marco stared up at the ceiling, memories tugging at him. Things he didn’t want to remember.

“Nothing. You did your job. You kept me whole.”

“I made you a fucking pincushion.”

“I wasn’t…as strong back then.” Ghost’s fingers slowed and he stared up at the wall, at a point above the monitors.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Do you know what Tank stood for? In the beginning?”

“Tactical and neutralizing something…”

“Tactical, assault, and neutralizing combat unit. TANC.” He shrugged. “I bet someone thought they were real cleaver calling it the
Tank Project
. The pills, the injections, they kept us together.”

“I knew…you weren’t normal.”

“That’s a word for it.” Ghost’s laugh was bitter. “You’re a badass motherfucker, but I bet you’d go down if someone shot you a dozen times, huh?”

Bile coated the back of Marco’s throat.

He tried to not think about that night.

“You thought I was going to die.” Ghost glanced at him, one side of his mouth pulled up.

“Fuck, man, I can still hear you laughing.”

Marco squeezed his eyes shut. He’d had to dig into Ghost’s chest, between the ribs, to get a bullet out. It’d punctured the body armor and wasn’t in that deep, but then Ghost had begun to laugh and getting the bullet out became half restraining Ghost and half cutting him open more.

“It was pretty funny.”

“The hell it was.”

“It didn’t hurt that bad.”

“Didn’t hurt? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“A lot, but we don’t have time for the list. Besides, those little pink pills? Those deadened any pain for thirty-six hours.”

“What?” Marco blinked at Ghost.

“Yeah, take a couple of those before going on an op, and I didn’t feel a thing.” He shrugged.

Marco was torn between wanting to know more and self-preservation. The less he knew about Ghost, and how Ghost came to be…whatever he was, the better Marco would be.

“Danny probably doesn’t know what day it is. He’ll turn up. Besides, we have bigger problems.”

“Shit.” Marco scrubbed a hand over his face.

He needed sleep and solutions, preferably in that order.

“I’ve got news you’re not going to like.” Ghost stroked the keys, never once glancing Marco’s way. Did the guy even sleep?

“Hit me with it.”

“Scott DuPry.”

“Fiona’s ex?”

“This one wasn’t. Scott’s social security number goes back to a guy who was buried about nine months ago. Someone went to a lot of trouble to build a lot of background on this new version of Scott, but it doesn’t go that deep.”

“What?” Marco sat up and swung his legs off the bed.

“Scott’s a fake.”

“Who is he then?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out. Or I was before you busted in here.”

“Fuck.” Marco leaned forward, elbows on his knees.

He’d known Scott was bad news, but this?

Scott could be anyone.

Anyone at all.

And Marco had simply let Fiona go with him.

Scott stared at the
lock screen.

Their passwords weren’t working. He couldn’t log onto his laptop. Or the desktop they’d set up in the other room. Fiona couldn’t get into her laptop either.

“What the fuck did you do?” He turned toward Goon #1. “What the hell were you doing? Watch porn on your phone like any other normal human being.”

“I didn’t do this.” Goon #1 flung his hand toward the machines.

“Out! Everyone, out.” Scott held up his hands.

“What’s going on?” Brat—Fiona—stepped out of her cave, dark circles under her eyes. She wasn’t sleeping, which had pleased Scott but no longer mattered.

“You. Sit.” He pointed at the chair next to him.

They’d been going nonstop at the data. The NueEnergy servers had kept everything orderly and filed correctly. A glitch in their hacking parameters hadn’t nabbed file folders, which meant linking files by hand using cookies and file references. It was time consuming, but they’d made some headway.

Brat stared at the monitor, her nose scrunched up.

“That’s not right,” she said.

“Log in.” Scott stood, hands on his hips, and watched her.

Fiona typed in her password.

BadassBrat2020.

Scott knew it because he’d run a password breaker on it while she was crying her eyes out in the other room.

The screen blipped, and a red X appeared over the input field with the words LOCKED under it.

“What?” Brat’s voice rose in pitch.

Yeah, that was his reaction as well.

That fucking soldier boy did this.

“Move.” Scott shoved Brat out of the way. He brought up a DOS prompt and began trying to work his way into the laptop that way, but even the simplest commands didn’t work.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Would this nightmare never end?

Why couldn’t these idiots code a goddamn thing right?

The files should have been organized. This should never have happened. It should all be over. And yet it was dragging on, and on and on. He was trapped in some sort of nightmare where he had to watch over Brat instead of kill her outright.

Goddamn her, and her soldier boy, he was going to kill them all.

20.

Fiona stood in the
kitchen, too scared to cross the living room back to her cave of a room.

Scott was seriously pissed.

All she’d been able to figure out was that they were somehow locked out of not only her computer, but all of the machines connected to the network they had remote access to.

The phone calls had started rolling in a few minutes after Scott threw a tablet against the wall. The shards of glass and bits of the external casing had been worked into the carpet by the other two guys going back and forth. Apparently, they weren’t the only ones who could no longer access their machines. If what she suspected was true, this block extended not only to their location, but whatever server system they were attached to. Thursday morning, everyone in the company would be just getting in, trying to get their email. It was a disaster.

Fiona didn’t know a lot about the way the federal government ran their IT departments, but she knew the kind of permissions it took to just get access to their WiFi, much less a hard-line. It shouldn’t be this easy.

Something wasn’t right. A lot of somethings weren’t right.

Yesterday, she’d forced herself out of her heartache fog enough to pay a little more attention to her surroundings.

She had yet to see any one of the four men produce a badge. God, she’d been so distraught over Marco she hadn’t paused to think beyond getting away from him. Had she gone from the frying pan into the fire?

If these guys were agents they should have badges. IDs. Something.

Marco had taken a bullet for her.

Scott had brought the guys who fired the bullets with him.

Fiona had fucked up. Big time. She didn’t know who Scott was, but as the moments dragged on, her doubts about the team were growing.

Josh, one of the body guards, opened the fridge and pulled out a bottle of water.

“We need anything? I could run out and grab a few things.” She needed to test them, figure out where she stood. How much of a prisoner was she, really?

Josh stared at her a second, his nose wrinkling slightly as if he smelled something bad.

“You can’t go outside,” he said, and turned around.

Well, that solved that question.

She meandered out the other side of the kitchen and stood in line of sight with the door.

The nook just off the entry had a card table and an ongoing poker game.

She’d thought they’d set up there to protect them from the men NueEnergy had sent after her in the parking garage. Now she had to wonder if they were there to keep her in.

Fiona sucked down a deep breath and slowly wandered toward the door. The hair on the back of her neck rose. She reached for the curtain shielding the long, rectangular window next to the door.

A hand wrapped around her wrist.

Josh glared down at her.

“Don’t. For your protection.” His voice was not kind. The way he stared at her, she had to wonder if he wanted her to try the door so he’d have an excuse to do more than bat her hand away.

“Oh my goodness, you’re right.” Fiona stepped backward. “I wasn’t thinking.”

Josh put himself between her and the door, his head bent forward as if he were some sort of bull. Ready to charge.

How had she not seen the danger the moment she’d stepped in the condo? How had she ever taken these men for federal agents?

“Fiona!” Scott bellowed her name.

She’d never been so glad to hear Scott’s voice. She turned, quick-stepping into the living room.

Scott whirled toward her. His face was red and he’d loosened the top few buttons of his shirt.

“Yes?” She didn’t want to be here, either, but at least with Scott she was more certain about where she stood.

“What did he do to your laptop?”

“He, who?”

“That soldier.”

“Marco?”

“Yes!”

“Nothing.”

“What” —Scott took a step closer, then another one— “did he do? I know he did something. What?”

“Nothing. Marco never touched my laptop.” For every step backward she took, Scott followed her.

She could see Josh and the others in the corner of her eye, circling like sharks.

This was bad. Very bad.

Fiona backed into the wall, and Scott kept coming. He wrapped a hand around her throat and squeezed.

Randy was ready to
terminate some people. Permanently.

Clearly capturing a druggie kid was too hard a task. It was Thursday. Fucking Thursday. He’d wanted to have this whole thing wrapped up and done with by tomorrow, but the kid had eluded his guys for two whole days.

God damn it.

His timetable was off and the board was going to have him over a barrel with the way this was going. He did not want to have to mitigate the paranoid fucks on the board.

If Randy wanted a job done right, he was going to have to do it his fucking self.

Good help was so damn hard to find, and it wasn’t like he wasn’t willing to pay for it.

He rolled his shoulders and set off down the block at a brisk jog. He tugged the hoodie’s hood up farther. The last thing he wanted to do was show up on someone’s security feed.

Hopefully, the fuck faces in the van wouldn’t screw this up, too. They’d already lost the girl because the idiots couldn’t do a simple grab-and-run properly. The authorities were still banging the Missing Person Alert drum over Fiona’s disappearance, which meant she and her accomplices had gone to ground. The only way to get to her was to flush them out.

Which brought him back to the purpose of this jog.

He glanced up, checking the numbers on the storefronts.

Here it was.

Randy slowed, walked a circle to cool down, and pushed through the entrance of the store.

Green, leafy plants decorated the walls and a glass case displayed the latest and greatest marijuana combinations. Pot was a growing industry, especially here in Colorado.

“Hey, man.” The target rose from an arm chair in the corner. Danny Benally had none of his cousin’s bulk. The kid was lanky and emaciated-looking, but that could be from the drugs or prison. “I’m going to have to ask you to put the hood down. Security rules and all that.”

“Walk out the fucking door and get in the van.” Randy pointed the gun at Danny’s chest.

“Wow, wow, hey man, it’s cool. I’ve only got two hundred in the register, but it’s yours. You can take it.”

“Get the money, go out the door and get in the van. Now.”

If Randy took the cash, the cops might simply call this a hold up and assume Danny would show up later. If not, well, Randy didn’t mind more cash on hand.

“Okay, okay.” Danny reached over the counter and jabbed at the buttons on the register. The drawer popped out and he scooped out the cash.

“Out the door.” Randy ducked his head, keeping his face out of the camera’s view.

“You can just take the cash, man. Seriously.”

Randy grabbed Danny by the shirt and pressed the gun to the kid’s ribs.

“I don’t want the cash, but keep a tight hold on that. It’ll make the cops think I just wanted to rob you. Now, move.” Randy propelled Danny through the front doors, across the sidewalk and into the waiting van.

He crawled into the back after his new hostage and one of the guys shoved the door shut.

“That is how you get a job done, gentlemen.” Randy sat down in the rear facing seat, his gaze sliding from Danny to the other two men, who wouldn’t meet his gaze. “Now, will someone tell me where the fuck Marco Benally is and how to get a hold of him?”

Marco pecked at the
computer keys with his index fingers. He’d never picked up two-handed typing, and whenever possible, he kept far away from a computer. Especially if other people were around. This was an exception.

Ghost paused from time to time to glance at Marco and snort.

They didn’t have time to toss the shit back and forth.

At 10 a.m., Ghost had flipped the switch on his bit of code, locking everyone out of the Good Global network. It was time to force Fiona to come to them, before it was too late.

They’d found Scott’s true identity.

In an odd turn of luck, it was Marco who lucked on the trail that led him from Scott DuPry of Vernon, West Virginia to a computer tech who had fixed Scott’s laptop on a work trip to Boise, Idaho. According to data on that name, the tech had to be around a hundred and twenty years old. From there, Ghost and Marco had followed a digital trail of identities around the country.

There was a pattern.

Dead people’s social security numbers repurposed by someone who worked on computers, tablets and phones. They could place the guy at dozens of shops all over the country. The link between his victims and the predator seemed to be customer-dependant.

Scott DuPry was an excellent example. Almost right out of some sort of serial killer’s playbook.

He’d gone to Boise one week.

Two weeks later, Scott DuPry was dead.

And another Scott DuPry was living in Denver.

Neither Marco or Ghost had any idea who they were dealing with, except that he was technologically savvy and he had no qualms about killing. Bodies littered his past.

Now it was a race to make sure Fiona wasn’t one of those bodies.

She’d spent her life hiding from people like Scott, or whatever the hell his name was. Marco wasn’t about to let her become this guy’s next victim.

“Anything?” Ghost asked out of the blue.

“Not yet.”

“I’m going to—”

Marco’s phone rang, the sound loud in what had been silence.

“Tell them you aren’t looking for Danny again.” Ghost stretched his arms up over his head.

“It’s not mom.” Marco frowned at the number. “Trace this.”

Ghost rocked forward, his hands flying over the keys. He’d done…something…to their phones that now allowed him to do some sort of techno-magic.

“Go,” Ghost said.

Marco jabbed at the green button.

“Hello?” He drummed his fingers on his knee.

“Marco?” Fiona’s voice wavered.

His stomach dropped through the floor and he sat up straighter.

“Marco? Are you there?” Fiona’s voice broke at the end, fracturing a bit.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m here.”

How are you?

Where are you?

I’m sorry…

So many things he wanted to say, and his throat wouldn’t work to get any of them out.

“Scott wants me to ask you about my laptop.” Her voice was funny. Strained. Wrong.

“Fiona, are you okay?”

Silence.

“Has he hurt you?”

“Marco…” She inhaled, her breath rustling the microphone. “My laptop, did you do something to it?”

“Am I on speaker phone?”

“No, I don’t want to see you. Please, Marco, just tell me what you did to the laptop?”

“No, I’m not on speaker phone?”

“Yes, that’s all I want to know.”

“Okay, good. Sweetheart…I…” What did he say? Did he warn her? Scare her?

There was some muttered voices, sounds in the background. She wasn’t alone, but she also wasn’t on speakerphone.

“Marco, what did you do?”

“I locked down the Good Global servers.” Well, Ghost had, but that was a technicality. “Tell Scott the only way we’ll give him access is if I get to see you face to face. None of this video chat bullshit. Face to face. You might not believe me, but I’m trying to protect you.”

“When did you do that?”

“When you went to the bathroom, before I stitched my leg up. It was originally to make sure we got whatever was left of NueEnergy’s data, but then you connected to Good Global instead. Scott’s not who you think he is.”

“Hold on, please.”

The line went quiet. Either she’d muted, or was covering the microphone so well he couldn’t make out a word she said.

“I can’t get a trace on her at all. They must be re-routing the signal or bouncing it around or something.” Ghost scrubbed a hand over his face. “This isn’t a very sophisticated means of tracking the call.”

Marco nodded. All he understood was that he had no fucking idea where Fiona was, and she was in danger. Those two things had him almost sick with worry. He’d created this situation. It was all his fault.

“Scott doesn’t want to meet face to face,” Fiona said.

“Too fucking bad. I don’t see you, no one gets what they want. I’ll have Ghost nuke every goddamn thing if it comes to that.” He was yelling. Shit. He reeled in his volume. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m worried about you.”

“I know,” she whispered.

Marco could hear the nuanced notes in her voice, but he didn’t understand them. He hadn’t had enough time with her to memorize all of her ways, to decipher all her secrets. They’d barely begun to learn each other, and if he couldn’t figure this out, if he couldn’t get her back, they might never have the chance.