Lear: Alpha One Security: Book 5 Read online

  Lear

  Alpha One Security: Book 5

  Jasinda Wilder

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Sneak Peek

  1: Knife in the Dark

  Also by Jasinda Wilder

  Chapter One

  On the Hunt

  I snapped the freshly cleaned barrel back into place, loaded a fresh mag into my HK MP5A5, and hung it on the rack next to my M4 carbine with the M203 on the lower rail. Beside that was a Remington M40A5 sniper rifle, and next to those were an AK47, an M16, a Steyr Aug, a Mossberg tactical shotgun, and an HK MP5SD. Another smaller rack above the large weapons held an assortment of handguns, from holdouts to hand cannons. Running vertically in my gear locker beside the gun racks was a series of shelves holding the appropriate magazines and clips for each weapon, and boxes of ammo. The bladed weapons were on another shelf on the other side of the guns, a wonderful array of folding knives, tactical knives, survival knives, throwing knives, switchblades, exotic knives, custom-made knives and throwing stars. If it had a blade, I had one of them, including an actual antique Roman short sword, and a ninth-century Viking spear, but those were housed in special cases in my personal weapons locker in my Chicago condo.

  Chico, the squadmate I was closest to, both in physical proximity and personally, watched me finish cleaning my HK, put it away, and then do the same thing for my sidearm. “Yo, Cuddy. Anyone ever tell you you’re obsessive about your guns, even by our standards?”

  I laughed. “It may have been mentioned.” I gesture at his HK, which, while not dirty by any means, wasn’t what I would personally call clean. “A clean rifle is a good rifle, and a good rifle keeps you alive.”

  Chico, a spark plug of a man from El Salvador, tilted his weapon this way and that. “You call this dirty? I clean it, bitch. Just not like you do.”

  I gave him a wry grin. “Watch who you call a bitch, bitch. Tits or not, I’ll kick your ass.”

  Fonz, on the other side of me, snorted as he ran a whetstone over the blade of his beloved balisong, also known as a butterfly knife—his was a hand-forged custom number, with a six-inch, S-curved, serrated blade, and a black walnut handle polished to a glossy shine. “Chico, you know better than to fuck with Cuddy after an op. She’ll gut you like a fish and you know it, son.”

  “Eh, she would not,” Chico said, slotting his HK into his weapons locker. “She love me too much. She want to have my babies, she just don’t know it, yet.” His wary glance at me and hesitant grin told me he knew damn well the ice below his feet was very, very thin.

  Fonz slowly let his whetstone drift to a stop, as he watched my reaction to Chico’s needling.

  I didn’t answer right away, letting Chico sweat as I pieced my Beretta back together and slid it into the holster at the small of my back. When I finally responded, it was in that low, icy voice which the guys all knew meant trouble. “Chico, we all know nerves run hot after an op like we just finished. So I’ll let it go, because you had my back…back there.” Then I stood nose to nose with him, or nose-to-chin, because even Chico’s stumpy five feet nine was three inches more than my height. “But, buddy, you know better. This is the only warning you’ll get when it comes to jokes like that.”

  A bead of nervous sweat ran down his jaw—and this was a man who had dropped six tangos in less than thirty seconds, from eighty yards, in the dark. “Sorry, Cud. My bad. Adrenaline, you know? You’re my bro, okay? No big deal.”

  I stared him down until he looked away, fiddling with a box of 9mm shells and a magazine.

  When I was sure I had made my point, I finished taking care of my gear in blessed silence. The last thing I did was take off my vest and hang it up—that was the ceremonial portion of finishing any operation as a combat specialist with RMI—Raze Mercenary Industries. Taking off that bulletproof vest was the final act in divesting myself of the “Cuddy” persona.

  Cuddy was the badass, the trained killer, the ice queen with a heart of cold, hard, razor-sharp steel. If you were a merc, a security contractor, a hitman, assassin, black ops specialist, or otherwise ran in those circles, Cuddy was a name you knew and feared. I’d worked my ass off since the age of nineteen to make sure of it.

  But once I took off the vest, I allowed myself to relax, just a little. I could be Danielle. But, of course, Cuddy was never far below the surface.

  I tossed a wave over my shoulder as I left the communal locker room at RMI’s compound in rural Illinois. “See ya, boys.”

  There was a chorus of “See ya, Cuddy,” from the locker room, and I could identify each one by voice: Fonz, Nolte, Tompkins, Hal, Gypsy, Toro, Belly, and Padre. Including me and Chico, that made our two five-man squads, RMI’s primary muscle. I headed for my tricked-out ’93 Defender, lugging my gear bag over one shoulder—I always left my heavy iron at the compound, but I never went anywhere without a backup kit which included an HK UMP, a Glock, a KA-BAR, cash, a vest, a spare passport, BDU’s, and ammo. Tossing my go-bag in the passenger seat, I started up the custom-tuned diesel V-8 and waited.

  Sure enough, a few seconds later, there was a quiet knock on my window. I cranked the window down and eyed Chico. “What.”

  He shifted nervously. “I was just kidding. I hope you know. No hard feelings, you know? Just jokes, okay, mama?”

  I snorted. “I was good until you called me ‘mama,’ Chico. What’s gotten into you? You know better. We’ve been squadmates for three years.”

  He shook his head. “I dunno. Been some close calls, last few ops. Too close. I dunno. Makin’ me think, I guess.”

  I sighed, and took the bait. “Think about what?”

  He shook his head, casting a quick speculative glance my way. “Nothin’. Something I know better than to say.”

  I’ve known for years that Chico had feelings for me, but I hoped they would fade away. “Goddammit.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I’ll have your back, no matter what. But that’s it.” I kept my eyes laser-focused on his; let him have the full force of my stare. “Keep it under wraps or transfer out, Chico.”

  He growled. “You knew.”

  “Of course I knew.” I plucked at my sweat-drenched black T-shirt. “Why do you think I stopped showering and changing at the compound? The others know I’m one of the guys, and that’s it. They take a little too long in the showers, I remind ’em. I’m a chick, they’re guys, I get it, no harm no foul. But I’m on the squad, Chico. I am the squad. The only original surviving RMI operative to run ops with Johnny Raze himself.” I let that sink in. “So, last warning, buddy. And I do mean that word, buddy—we’re friends. More than that, we’re blood brothers. I’ll drink with you, I’ll kill with you, I’ll kill for you—shit, I’ll die for you if there’s no other way out. But what I will not do is let you risk our squad integrity because you’ve got a hard-on for me and can’t accept the fact that that’ll never, ever, fucking ever happen.”

  He stared back at me, his dark eyes hardening. “Okay.”

  “Got it?”

  He nodded. “Got it.”

  “Good.” I held out my fist, and he bumped his against mine; I revved my engine. “Now, get gone. I have ten days of downtime starting now, and you’re cramping my style.”

  The RMI crew all knew my downtime was sacred—do not call, do not text, do not email, and certainly do not show up where I am when I’m on personal time. Chico stepped
back and I floored it, that fat, torquey V-8 snarling as I slewed around and rocketed for the compound exit. I put Chico out of my mind, and the crush I’ve known about for years. Hopefully I’d officially crushed that crush, because I had no time for it, and less patience. Chico was good, really good, and I liked having him at my side on ops. When shit went sideways, he showed his salt, and there was no one I’d rather be cornered and outnumbered with. But him crushing on me complicated things. Made his judgment, where I was concerned, suspect. Made him likely to hesitate, and in the world of black ops security, hesitation meant death, and not just for you, but for your whole team.

  Which was why I was so harsh about shutting it down. Not that I didn’t like him or that, under different circumstances, I wouldn’t enjoy spending a few hours in the sack with him—god, no. He was a good-looking guy—rugged and not exactly pretty, but good-looking. But he was strictly a work dude—he was one of the guys, and my status as one of the guys at RMI depended on me maintaining that distance. I’d been nude around all of them, and wasn’t fazed by it, but I had to enforce the rules; I could take a joke—and there were plenty of them at my expense, but I gave as good as I got, as long as the jokes never turned sexual or suggestive toward me. Dick jokes abounded, along with the usual accusations of homosexuality in various ways, questions of motherhood and parentage, the usual. If one of the guys pissed me off, I’d tell him to suck my dick. And they said the same to me, but that was meant the way they’d say it to anyone else. If I was riding one of them about following RMI rules—I was the ranking member with the most seniority—they’d tell me to get off their cock. But turn the jokes truly sexual, and aim them at me? I’ve aimed cocked and loaded guns to foreheads for that…take one look into my big brown eyes and gamble I won’t pull the fucking trigger—you’d lose that bet. Nearly took a rookie’s dick off with my KA-BAR, one time.

  Don’t fuck with Cuddy—that’s the message. Cuddy was one of the guys, full stop. Cuddy may be a female, but you best damn well call her sir and walk on eggshells because she will straight up fuck you up, and Johnny Raze—owner, president, and founder of RMI—will help me disappear the body if necessary.

  I made the drive back to downtown Chicago, where I owned a penthouse condo on the Magnificent Mile. I let the valet park my Defender, and then took the exclusive elevator up to my condo. I checked the first layer of security—a piece of Scotch tape spanning from door to frame, low down near the floor. Intact, I knew no one had entered the space—this way, at least. Next I unlocked the door, pressed my palm to the biometric scanner, then looked into the retina scanner, and the motion detector was disarmed. This system didn’t alert the police, however. Rather, it rang a bell in Johnny’s personal office, on his cell, and any other device slaved to his ID. If I didn’t log off the system correctly, a dozen mad-eyed RMI killers would swarm this place within minutes.

  I palmed my Beretta and cleared the rooms one by one, until I was sure my condo was clean, and then I spoke the final code to totally disarm the system: “Charlie, Uniform, Delta, Delta, Yankee, six one five seven nine.”

  A disembodied, pleasantly neutral female voice filled the condo. “Disarmed. Welcome, Cuddy.”

  “Any messages?” I asked, as I unstrapped my holster and plopped down in my favorite easy chair to unlace my boots.

  “One message. Shall I read it?”

  “Yes.”

  “From—Jonathan Arazel. Timestamp—eighteen forty-six, today.” Five minutes ago, then. A pause, and then I heard Johnny Raze’s distinctive smoke-damaged rasp. “Cuddy, babe. Good work today. Our clients are so impressed they offered a ten-million-dollar bonus if I let them hire you away. As if, right? You oughta take an hour and see Dr. Thelis over your leave, but I know you won’t. Gotta say it, though.” A pause. “Anyway. Just keep your head up and your eyes peeled. Watch your six, okay, Little Trouble? Love you, girl. See you in two weeks.” I heard the smirk in his voice. “You heard me, bitch. Take four extra days, and check your account. I may or may not have left you a little bonus.”

  I sighed, because Johnny’s idea of a little bonus was probably something in the order of seven digits; I grinned as I checked my account on my personal cell. He’d given me a four-million-dollar bonus. It paid to be the best, and to be Johnny’s favorite person. I was the only one at RMI who knew him on a first-name basis, and he was the only one on the planet who could call me things like babe or sis. He’d earned my loyalty a dozen times over throughout the years we’d run ops together, before RMI was a global security juggernaut. I was also the only human on the planet who knew he was gay, a secret he guarded more fiercely than even RMI’s reputation. Don’t let that fool you, though—Johnny Raze was the most dangerous man on the planet, a killer with icier veins than mine, and a graveyard in his past that made even me shudder. Scary, dangerous, deadly, terrifying—and gay. My boss was a bit of a conundrum, all right.

  Little Trouble—that was his personal, secret nickname for me, because I had a tendency to attract unwanted trouble the way blood in the water attracts sharks.

  He was the only person I would ever admit to loving, and that was as a brother—a bond deeper than anything I could fathom—borne from a record of a hundred and ten successful operations…and one failed, the one op I’d never forget, and the reason I was so vicious about my neutrality as one of the guys.

  I shoved that train of thought way down deep, and headed for the shower, already planning how I was going to invest and then spend my bonus. I stripped my BDUs off and twisted the water on, waited until it was scorching before stepping in. I’d invest three-quarters of the bonus as usual—safe, long-term plays mostly, in a variety of ways, ranging from stocks to real estate. Investing was my secret passion, and I loved playing with money. So far I’d set up a whole set of capital management businesses under a variety of fake names and shell corporations, and was worth, all income streams netted together, somewhere in the hundreds of millions. I was paid absurdly well, of course, as my last bonus reflected, but my actual worth was due to my love of playing with money during my downtime—and I was as good at that as I was at combat. The final quarter of my bonus, I’d spend recklessly. Probably on something that went really, really fast, and could kill me if I blinked at the wrong moment.

  I planned my financial moves while I scrubbed myself clean, and then pushed those thoughts aside to decide on my outfit for the evening. First night of leave? Time to hunt.

  I take four things seriously: combat, fitness, money, and sex. Those four things made up my entire world. Combat was over for the next two weeks, and I was taking a week off from the gym to rest and reset, and my next financial moves were planned out. That left the next two weeks for sex. Hell, yeah. Time to get me some dick.

  I kept the towel wrapped around me as I perused my closet—despite my predilection for lots and lots of wild sex, I didn’t go in for mini-skirts, booty shorts, or low-cut tops. Nor did I wear dresses or pantsuits. I preferred a sleek, casual look. I was all woman, despite my career and the metaphorical—and sometimes literal—blood on my hands. I just didn’t like looking super girly. It was a delicate balance, for me.

  I decided first on lingerie—a classic red lace-and-silk set that plumped my boobs and left no lines around my butt. Nothing super crazy revealing or anything, but it looked sexy, and more importantly, made me feel sexy. That was important. I had to feel sexy, or Cuddy would start taking over Danielle, and then the guy would go running for the hills. I flipped through the hangers until I found a good outfit: tight black denim jeans with a good bit of stretch to fit around my muscular hips and ass which, just being honest, were too big to fit in anything that didn’t stretch. When you can deadlift over two hundred pounds at five-six and one-forty, run a mile in five minutes flat under full gear, back squat over twice my body weight, and box jump almost as high as I am tall, you tend to have a bit of a butt—all muscle, baby, but still, I packed a good bit of gear in my trunk, you might say.

  So—stretchy black j
eans, calf-height black combat boots, an ivory sleeveless button-down, and a light leather bomber jacket. Add a few trinkets, cuffs, and bangles around my wrists, and you’ve got a look that says badass female. At least, I thought so.

  I set the outfit out, and whipped off the towel, using it to scrub my hair once more before tending to it properly, which meant some product for volume and gloss, and then blow-drying it off to one side—my hair is short, jet black, and so thick I’ve broken brushes in it. I kept it short for professional purposes, but cut so that I could still rock a sexy look for going out. Swept over to one side, it tended to drape over my left eye, which is equal parts annoying to me and—according to most of my sexual prey—hot for the men looking at me.

  Hair done, I added a touch of color to my lips and some dimension over my cheekbones—and if anyone were to tell the men in my squad that I wore makeup, I’d kill that person in a split second and dump their corpse in the Mojave.

  I stood in front of my full-length mirror and scrutinized my naked reflection: Five-six and one-forty, as I’ve said, but the numbers didn’t mean shit. I was cut—ripped. I worked my ass off in the gym two hours a day minimum, five days a week, because I was vain as hell, obsessed with being as fit as humanly possible, and because in my line of work I had to be fit. Especially if I wanted to not only keep up with the bigger, stronger men, but be better than them. I have abs you could grate cheese on, a slender waist, layers of muscle over my shoulders and back and arms, thick and muscular hips, a hard round ass, thighs that can—and have—cracked a man’s head like a walnut. Naturally tan skin, thanks to a biological father who was, reportedly, half-black and half-Columbian, and a biological mother who was, again according to official reports, a refugee from the conflicts in Lebanon. Thus—I was a woman with a hot temper, a wildly uncontrollable libido, a killer body, naturally tan skin that goes four shades darker in about five minutes in the sun, and thick glossy black hair.