Duke: Alpha One Security: Book 3 Read online

  “How about Playboy?”

  I whirled on him. “No, I haven’t been in Playboy!” I shouted. “And do you not possess a filter?”

  “Nope.” He ejected the magazine of the pistol, looked at it, and replaced it, exactly like they do in the movies. For my benefit, probably. Asshole. “I say what I’m thinking, say what I mean, and mean what I say because, sweetheart, I may be a lot of things and not all of them good, but one thing I’m not is a liar.”

  I huffed in irritation, because I couldn’t exactly find fault with that logic, since I had similar tendencies. “Are we going to stand here bickering all day, or are we going to get out of here?”

  He pointed at me with index finger and thumb. “That, hot stuff, is an excellent point.”

  I let my head hang back on my neck. “Swear to god, you have more misogynistic ways of talking down to me than I can even keep track of.”

  He led the way through the house, a modern suburbia dump. White pressboard cabinets, warping laminate floor, low popcorn ceiling, claustrophobic floorplan…ugh. Double shudder. Except this place was clearly used by the deceased thugs in the basement as a sex, drugs, and torture den. There were empty forties everywhere, crumpled cigarette packages, overflowing ashtrays, glass drug-smoking pipes, bongs, condoms both used and still wrapped, empty Styrofoam carryout containers, McDonald’s bags…a vile, filthy pigsty.

  “Hurry up and get me out of here before I catch a disease,” I said. “This place is disgusting.”

  Duke moved through the kitchen, at the back of which were the stairs down to the basement. There was also a side door leading out into a driveway. Instead of exiting the side door, however, he went through the kitchen into the living room, stopping at the front door, a solid wood slab painted white with three small square windows near the top and a heavy glass storm door on the other side.

  “Um.” I tapped his shoulder, which was kind of like tapping the side of a boulder. “Go?”

  “Hush, Fancy.”

  “I’ll hush when you use my fucking name.”

  He glared at me over his shoulder. “Okay, then. Temple, please, shut the fuck up.”

  “Well that was uncalled for.”

  His growl in response was feral enough that I paled, backed up a step, and promptly shut my mouth. “Okay, then. Shutting up.”

  Duke was just looking out the window in the door, as if the quiet, lower middle class suburban neighborhood was going to suddenly erupt in gunfire in the middle of the morning. Which, now that I thought of it, wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility, given the events thus far.

  And then, as abruptly as he’d halted, he jerked open the door, shoved the storm door out of the way, pistol whipping up and then sweeping side to side as he stepped through, the motion done in one smooth glide. Satisfied that the street was clear, he reached back, grabbed my wrist, and yanked me out of the house. I tripped forward, lost my balance as my toe caught on the transition plate of the doorway, and landed flush against Duke’s chest. My hands automatically shot out and wrapped around him as my cheek flattened against his hard chest. And, totally by accident, obvs, my hands might have possibly grabbed onto his ass.

  “Not the time for hanky panky, Fancy,” he said with a laugh.

  I shoved away from him. “I tripped.”

  “Sure you did. And I’ve got a Nobel peace prize.” He didn’t push it though, just trotted down the three short steps of the porch, gesturing at me to follow him. Waiting for me, his eyes flicked up to the eaves of the house, and his expression darkened. “Shit. That complicates things.”

  “What does?” I asked, turning back to see what he was looking at.

  He pointed, and I followed his gesture to see a home security camera pointing down at the front porch. “That.”

  “Are you going to shoot it out?”

  He snorted. “It already saw us.”

  “Maybe it’s not recording?” I suggested.

  He sighed. “Unlikely. From what I know about Cain, he’s not the type to waste resources. Putting a security camera on a dump like this, in a neighborhood like this? Not only is it definitely recording, but it’s probably transmitting to a remote server somewhere that Cain’s tech monkeys can monitor the feed.” He grabbed my arm and hauled me into a trot. “Which means we need to get scarce, pronto.”

  “Who even says pronto anymore?” I asked, trying to keep up with Duke’s long strides, which was tough seeing as I was at least a foot shorter and wearing Louboutin wedges. “And who, exactly, is this Cain you keep mentioning? Also, can you please slow down? I’m not exactly wearing the right shoes for a run.”

  “Then take ‘em off, princess, because running is what we’re doing.”

  “I’m not running barefoot in a neighborhood like this! Not only will I ruin my brand new pedicure, I’ll probably step on a needle or something.”

  Duke halted again and whirled to glare down at me. “Ruin your pedicure? Are you not hearing what I’m telling you? Did you miss what just happened in that basement? I don’t go around killing people for shits and giggles, sweetheart—I kill when I’ve gotta remove a threat to myself or the person in my care and, in this case, it’s both. You’re about as helpless as a kitten, which makes you my responsibility, for one, and you’re only here because of me, for another. Those guys would have likely raped you six ways till Sunday, and once they found out who you were, it would have only gotten worse. And then, after they killed me in front of you, they probably would’ve raped you a few dozen more times. And then they would’ve given you to Cain, and Satan himself only knows what would’ve happened to you then.” He put his face up close to mine, and his expression was dark, grim, and scary. “Listen to me, Temple Kennedy. All jokes and bullshit aside, this situation I’ve gotten you into is life or death. Meaning, if I can’t keep you alive, you’ll be very quickly and very painfully dead.”

  “How’d you get me into this? I’m not following.”

  “Told you already, I went outside after you, back at that bar. I was planning on puttin’ the moves on you, see where things led. They wanted me; you were there, so they got you too, thinking having a piece of ass around is never a bad plan. Right? They got their target, but they can’t leave witnesses behind, so they knew they’d have to get rid of you eventually, which meant they could do whatever they wanted before putting a bullet in your head.” He shrugged. “I couldn’t have prevented them snagging you, but you’re still here because of me.”

  “You’re out of a bad movie, Duke, seriously. You were going to put the moves on me? Let me guess, you have a tried and true pick up line, too?”

  “Don’t need pickup lines when you look like me, sweetheart.” He pulled a frown. “And you seriously focus on the wrong parts of what I’m saying.”

  “Yeah, well, call it a coping mechanism.” I gestured back at the house. “How else would you like me to handle what I saw back there? Either I’m going to dissolve into a sobbing mess, or I’m going to pretend I didn’t see anything. And probably channel all my fear into extreme sass.”

  “I guess that’s fair,” he said with a shrug and a nod. “As long as you don’t lose sight of that fact that listening to me is going to keep you alive.”

  He grabbed my hand and pulled me into a trot again, so I kicked off my wedges and held them in one hand by the straps. What followed then was a good thirty or forty minutes of barefoot jogging on cement sidewalks through a run down neighborhood. Block by block the houses got shabbier, the yards smaller and more overgrown, the cars older and more rusted.

  Eventually my feet were throbbing, and I had a stitch in my side. I hauled on Duke’s arm to stop him. “I need a break…tough guy,” I panted. “Running…barefoot here…remember?”

  He halted immediately, gave a quick look around at the deserted neighborhood, and then nudged me off the sidewalk and into a clump of trees at the edge of a run-down park a few steps from the curb. “Sit.”

  The asshole wasn’t even winded.

/>   I sat, and he crouched in front of me taking my feet in his hands, and proceeded to give me the single most incredible foot rub in the history of the world. It would have been thrillingly erotic, had I not been in pain.

  “Okay, so maybe I’m missing something here, but why are we running? Even if that camera was live and transmitting, how soon can this Cain get here to catch us? I haven’t seen a single person in the last half hour, let alone signs of pursuit. Which reminds me, you never told me who Cain is, and why he’s after you.”

  He kept rubbing as he answered me. “Cain won’t show up himself, he doesn’t work like that. He’ll send more guys like the ones back at the house. He’s a crime lord, basically. Like Kingpin from Daredevil?” He eyed me expectantly. “No? Nothing? Well anyway, he runs a huge, complicated operation which, from what I’ve learned is drugs, mainly, along with some hardware and other black market shit like underage prostitutes. He operates on a cellular basis like the cells of operatives, terrorist style. Most of them don’t interact with each other, so there’s an element of overlap and deniability, plus few of them will have ever interacted with Cain directly.”

  He set my foot down and I flexed my toes, and then poked at the blisters on the bottom of my feet. “And why were you kidnapped by a kingpin?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Because my boss pissed him off. He was probably hoping to use me as leverage to get back at Harris.”

  “How would he do that?”

  “The usual,” Duke said. “Videos of me being tortured or having parts hacked off until Harris agreed to give himself up for me.” He said this casually, as if the thought didn’t bother him a bit.

  “You mean that literally, don’t you?”

  “Oh, very literally.”

  “Would your boss have traded himself for you?”

  A shrug. “If there was no other way, probably. But the rest of the boys wouldn’t have let him. Especially Thresh. He’ll probably want to go after Cain directly. They’re probably mounting a very pissed off rescue operation right about now, which is going to be bad for Cain and his guys. ”

  “Thresh?”

  Duke grinned. “My best friend. Biggest, toughest motherfucker I’ve ever met, and the only man who’s ever beaten me in arm wrestling.”

  I just stared at Duke. “Bigger than you?”

  “By several inches and at least twenty pounds of muscle.”

  “Jesus.”

  Duke laughed. “Yeah. Thresh is a monster.”

  “He sounds terrifying.”

  “Yeah. He’s huge, insanely strong, and knows as many ways to kill you with his bare hands as I do, but…once you get to know him, you’ll find out he’s pretty much a teddy bear, most of the time. Never seen the man angry, like, not ever. Even in bar fights, he’s just…chill. So, yeah, he looks scary, and you should be scared of him if you’re not his friend, but…truly scary? Nah.” He rocked back on his heels and then sat down in the grass beside me. “Now Anselm…he’s scary.”

  “And who is Anselm?”

  “The wild card on the team. From Germany, I think, but I could be wrong. Somewhere over in that area, at least. You wouldn’t want to get stuck in a dark alley with any of us, but Anselm? I wouldn’t want to be stuck on the same continent as Anselm if he didn’t like me. The problem with Anselm is you never know where he is. You piss off Anselm, he’ll put a rifle slug in the back of your head from a mile away, and you’ll never even know what happened. Or you might brush up against him walking down the street and you’ll just…drop dead. You hear people say, oh that guy’s a ghost, you know? Like he’s impossible to keep track of? Well Anselm isn’t just a ghost, he’s a fucking…he’s why people are afraid of the dark man. Anselm scares the poop right out of me, and I’ve known the man for several years.”

  I let a few beats go by. “So…what exactly is it you do that you know people like Thresh and Anselm?”

  “I’m a private security contractor.”

  “Like Blackwater?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Overpaid grunts. No, not like Blackwater. I’m the kind of security that billionaires hire to be their personal Secret Service, except we don’t answer to Uncle fuckin’ Sam.”

  “So which billionaires do you work for, then?”

  “We don’t do long term contracts. We’re more…specialized than that.”

  I frowned. “And what the hell does that mean?”

  “It means I don’t get paid to walk around some rich dick’s fancy ass estate with a taser,” he said. “We get hired when a billionaire’s daughter gets kidnapped for ransom. Let’s say you’re yachting around the Mediterranean or wherever with your mommy and daddy, and someone like, oh, Cain for example, decides there’s money to be made kidnapping your fine ass. So you find yourself locked in the hold of a stinking fishing boat while Cain sends a video to Daddy showing Cain severing your finger and demanding a couple hundred million dollars be transferred into an untraceable Swiss bank account. Your dad, instead of calling the FBI or Interpol, would call my boss, Harris, and hire us. And instead of bargaining with the assholes, we’d go in heavy, shoot their shit up, make off with you, and we wouldn’t leave anyone left alive to talk about us afterward, either.”

  “And there’s enough of that kind of thing happening that you have steady work?”

  He laughed, and it wasn’t exactly a pleasant sound. “Sweetheart, you have no idea what goes on in this world.”

  “Not sure I want to, either.”

  “Yeah, probably not.” He slapped his knees. “Time to move.”

  “Are we going somewhere in particular?”

  “Indirectly, yes.”

  “Care to elaborate?”

  Duke hesitated, eyeing me as I stood up and brushed the grass of my butt. “Well, not really, no. I’m not sure you’ll like it.”

  “I’m not going to faint on you, Duke.”

  “Okay, well here it goes, then. My plan is to steal a car from a gangbanger, haul ass to my stash spot in downtown Denver, and then figure out some way of getting in contact with Harris. Those assholes back there took my phone and I couldn’t find it anywhere in that piece of shit house. There wasn’t a car in the driveway or in the garage either, so I’m guessing there was at least one more person in that cell, which in turn means at some point our absence is going to be reported, assuming the camera hasn’t already done that. Which means Cain is going to have his guys looking for us. I know Cain has deep pockets and a lot of resources, so the faster I can get in touch with my guys, the faster I can get you somewhere safe. The longer we’re out here alone and out of contact, the more likely it is Cain will find us.”

  I processed what he’d said. “When you say Cain has a lot of resources, what does that mean?”

  Duke set off at a brisk walk rather a jog, so I paused and slipped on my sandals to give my feet a rest.

  “You ask a lot of questions, Fancy.” Duke shot me a glance as I caught up to him. “Someone like Cain has only one way he can get his product across state and international lines, and that is if he has contacts that can facilitate the process. Airspace is monitored, borders are monitored, cargo ships, planes, trains, tractor trailer haulers…all that shit is kept track of. So if he wants to get fifty kilos of coke from South America to Europe, or a load of guns from Europe to the States, he has to grease palms, has to own somebody who’ll turn a blind eye to a shipment in exchange for a stack of cash.

  “He also has to own well placed cops here and there, because people are going to notice a sudden influx of drugs or guns or whatever, right? Those kinds of contacts, they can do other favors, for the right price. A dirty cop can find someone pretty easily. A cop asks a few questions, puts out an APB, or gets a buddy in tech to do a facial recognition search and then, bam, Cain’s target is acquired, and he can send his boys to fetch. And those are just the small-time local cops. If he happens to know someone higher up, there’re more possibilities in terms of favors Cain can get done. None of which is good for you and me at t
he moment, since he’s going to be pulling in favors to get eyes on us.”

  “And why are you going to hijack a car from a gangbanger?”

  “Less likely it’ll be reported, for one, and I won’t feel as bad, for another. I don’t like stealing rides from innocent middle class folks. Some little punk slinging dimebags? I just don’t feel as bad. Maybe that makes me an asshole, but…fuck it, right?”

  “Oh.” I made it a few more steps before a thought occurred to me. “But isn’t it more likely that a gangbanger will put up a fight?”

  “Yeah, but that’s half the fun. And besides, if one lonely little thug from the hood can get the best of me, then it’s time I retire.”

  “Retire?” I ask, baffled. “You can’t be more than thirty at the most.”

  “Twenty-eight,” he answers. “And in my line of business, you only get old by staying good. You get sloppy, you get iced.”

  “Iced,” I repeated. “You’re seriously a commando straight out of Central Casting.”

  “Not sure if that’s supposed to be an insult or not.”

  “Me either, actually,” I said, and I wasn’t quite able to hold back a grin.

  “Well, at least we agree on that.”

  We walked a bit longer, turning down this street and another, seemingly at random, until I was thoroughly lost.

  We’d been walking for another half hour at least when we stopped at an intersection, Duke glancing around as if deciding which way to go.

  A low-slung car pulled up to the intersection, long as a battleship and old as the houses around us, with tinted windows and spinning rims and thudding bass notes hitting in the trunk. The driver’s window slid down slowly, revealing a young black guy wearing a Broncos hat with a flat brim, a long, thick blunt dangling from the corner of his mouth.

  “Yo,” he said, over the bass. “Ya’ll must be lost, rollin’ up in this hood.”

  Duke swaggered over, confident, easy, hands clasped casually behind his back to hide the gun in his right fist. “Got that right,” Duke said. “And I think you can help.”

  The guy in the car just laughed. “Yeah, right. Step off my shit, man.”