The Trainer (military romantic suspense) (The Dregs Book 5)

by Leslie Georgeson

  And then an idea occurred to me. “Can you hack into someone else’s security system?”

  Noah leaned back in his chair and eyed me. “If I can locate the signal and lock into it, then yes, I can hack into it. I created a software that does exactly that.”

  “So, can you hack into someone’s phone or iPad?”

  “Yep. I can hack into anything if I can lock onto a signal. But the moment I lose the signal, I lose the connection.”

  I glanced around at all the fancy equipment he had. “So if you can locate the signal for the phone that sent me that video, then you can hack into that phone.”

  “Sure can.”

  “I want you to do that. I want you to hack into the phone and spy on them.”

  Noah’s lips twitched, his eyes twinkling—well, the real eye twinkled, the prosthetic one just stared straight ahead. “In order to spy on them, I’ll have to secretly install my bugging software that records all activity. It shouldn’t be a problem. As long as I have a steady signal, and internet access, I can send my software to their phone. Most people won’t even know it’s there. But another hacker might pick it up and realize they’ve been hacked.”

  “Will that lead them to you?” I asked worriedly.

  Noah smirked. “Nope. I have another app that I send along with the hacking software that blows up that person’s phone if someone tries to delete the software or track where it came from.”

  He was brilliant. “So if Ling is on his phone and somehow finds your app that is monitoring his activity or whatever, and he tries to delete the app, his phone will blow up?”

  Noah grinned. “Sure will.”

  I laughed. “That’s awesome! I didn’t know anyone could do that.”

  The door opened and Logan returned. “Ryan and Luke said they would help us get Nishi’s mother.”

  Something bleeped on Noah’s computer monitor. Noah turned away. “I’ve got a lock on the phone. It’s in south Augusta. At Brenau University.”

  Logan glanced at me. “That means they’ve got your mother at the Black Dragons’ compound.”

  That was both good and bad. Good, because it meant my mother was only an hour and a half away. Bad, because it would be extremely difficult to get past my father’s men and inside the compound to free her.

  “Or the phone is there, but her mother is somewhere else,” Noah pointed out. “Since it’s only been fifteen or twenty minutes since you received the text, I would guess that your mother is at the same location as the phone.” He glanced at me. “What do you think, Nishi?”

  “I think you should hack into that phone. I want to know whose it is. I’ll bet it’s Ling’s. I want to monitor what he is doing.”

  Noah glanced at Logan, who nodded. “Go ahead. Do whatever you have to. The more information we have, the better.”

  Logan came to stand beside me. He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and drew me against his side. I leaned into him, accepting his comfort. His support. He was a good friend. A good man. I was so fortunate to have met him.

  We waited while Noah typed something on his keyboard. Then he turned to us. “I sent my surveillance app to the phone. It will take a few minutes to install, then I will open it up and see what’s going on.”

  “Does it have a camera so we can see them?”

  Noah chuckled. “I like how you think, Nishi. You would make a good spy. I can hack into the phone’s camera and activate it, and use it to take pictures and videos and send them back to me here if I want.”

  I glanced up at Logan with a smile. “This is awesome. Noah’s a really cool guy.”

  Noah chuckled softly, color creeping into his face. “Thanks. Logan’s pretty lucky to have found you. I hope you plan to stick around for a while.” He winked.

  I glanced back at Logan. “I’ll stay as long as Logan wants me to.”

  Logan gently squeezed my shoulders. “You can stay as long as you need, Nishi.”

  As long as you need.

  What if I needed to stay here forever? What if I wanted to stay here forever? Would he let me?

  “Ah. Here we go.” Noah typed something else on his keyboard, and then motioned for us to come closer. “I’ve hacked into the phone. Listen…”

  Faint voices came from the phone. It sounded like they were speaking another language, one I wasn’t familiar with. Chinese? Cantonese? Vietnamese? I wasn’t sure. One of the voices sounded like Ling, which meant they were probably speaking Chinese. Logan leaned closer, pressing his ear next to the speaker so he could better hear the conversation. He closed his eyes and remained perfectly still. I glanced at Noah.

  “What’s he doing?” I whispered.

  “His mind is processing the words,” Noah whispered back. “If he already knows what language it is, then he simply listens and makes note of what they are saying. If he doesn’t know the language, then he scans over the words, his brain interprets them, and then he trains himself to understand the entire language in a few minutes or less.”

  I felt my eyes go wide. That was utterly fascinating. Logan had said he could speak in any language in the world, but I hadn’t realized exactly what that meant or how he was able to do so. It was simply amazing. Incredible.

  Logan opened his eyes, his gaze landing on me. “They’re speaking in Chinese. They are moving your mother to another location in anticipation of the dregs showing up.”

  “Did they say what location?”

  “They did. I’m not sure if it’s much better than the current location.”

  My heart thundered. “Why?”

  He hesitated, his gaze holding mine. He gently squeezed my arm. “They are handing her over to the Rapsters to safeguard until you return. They are giving her to Malik.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Logan

  “What?” Nishi gasped softly. “No! They can’t give my mother to Malik! He’s a monster!”

  My heart pinched, seeing the fear in her eyes. “It’s okay, Nishi. We are going to get her back.”

  “You don’t understand, Logan! Malik is a beast. Inhuman. What if he hurts my mother? I hate Malik. I hate him. He’s evil. He terrifies me.” She shivered. Her bottom lip trembled.

  I drew her into my arms, trying my best to comfort her. “Shh. Everything will be all right. I won’t let him hurt you or your mother. Do you trust me?”

  “Of course. But–”

  “Then let the dregs handle this. We will find your mother and bring her back. Have faith, okay?”

  She stepped back. “Okay.”

  Twenty-four hours wasn’t enough time for the other dregs to get here to help us, since they were all several days’ drive away (and flying was never an option for a dreg, not with airport security the way it was nowadays). So we either had to stall Nishi’s father somehow, or go in with just the five of us. Nishi advised that there was no stalling her father. If he’d said he would kill her mother in twenty-four hours, then that was exactly what he would do.

  And the clock was ticking.

  We all met in the gym several minutes later to discuss what the best strategy would be.

  “If your father kills your mother,” Luke pointed out, “then he will have no hold over you. So do you really think he will kill her if you don’t show up by the deadline?” Luke was always a thinker, a strategist, analyzing every situation.

  Nishi contemplated his words for a long moment. “If he goes back on his word, it will make him look weak in front of his men. So yes, I do think he will kill her if I don’t show up by the deadline. He’s counting on my emotional attachment to her to bring me in. But we have the advantage because we know Mama is with Malik. My father will be expecting us to show up at his place, not Malik’s. And I doubt Malik will be watching for us. They will all expect me to go to Brenau and turn myself in.”

  A moment of silence stretched while we all contemplated that.

  “We need to somehow lure as many of Malik’s men away from his place as possible,” Ryan said. “That way, there
will be less resistance for us when we arrive.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem,” Noah replied. “We can let off some explosives nearby and their curiosity will draw them out. Then we can go in and free Nishi’s mother.”

  We really had no choice but to go in and try to save her mother before it was too late. We couldn’t take the chance that her father might not do as he’d threatened.

  We strategized for a few more minutes, then we all headed to the weapons room to gather an arsenal. When we’d escaped our own slaughter a little over a year ago, none of us could have foreseen that we would later find ourselves involved with gangs and having to do the very things we’d run away from: fighting and killing. Our lives had been uneventful for about a year while we adjusted to life outside of The Company. Then Jessica had shown up at the maze, looking for Tracker, and ever since then, we’d had to fight. To kill. To save people.

  All for love.

  Now I would be fighting for love. Nishi’s.

  Noah had recently picked up several Kevlar vests in anticipation of more war. Now, we all put them on, protecting our vital organs. I made Nishi wear one, too. I wasn’t about to lose her. This upcoming fight was for her. To save her mother.

  Fifteen minutes later, we headed out, loaded down with plenty of weapons and ammo. Even with the distraction of explosives going off, it would be more difficult with only four of the eight surviving dregs to undertake this mission, which meant we would have to be doubly alert. And prepared for anything. But we’d gone through worse than this before. All of us had. We might not be superheroes. But we were survivors. We were dregs. We would undertake this mission like any other one.

  And we would come out alive.

  With Nishi’s mother.

  There was no other alternative.

  Ryan and Luke drove in Luke’s Camaro, while Noah, Nishi and I rode in my truck. I drove, Noah sat in the passenger’s seat, and Nishi sat in the back. Noah brought along some of his tech stuff, including a mobile tracking device that kept a lock on the phone that had sent me the text.

  The last time we’d been to the place where the Rapsters hung out, we’d killed their leader Gunner and several dozen of his men. That was why Malik hated us so much, because we’d killed his brother. But not before they’d killed Tracker’s dreg partner, Gordon. If the Rapsters were still at the same location, then that meant they were high up at the top floor of a large apartment building. Lots of stairs. Lots of vagrants hanging about. We had decided to go in disguised as homeless people to see how close we could get before they discovered we were dregs.

  We all wore beanies and ragged jackets or long trench coats, and blackened our faces with smudges to make us look like vagrants with no real homes. Nishi was able to disguise herself as a boy, pulling her beanie low over her forehead, but if anyone got close enough to see her face, they wouldn’t be fooled. Her features were too soft and feminine to pull off the boy disguise for long. But she insisted on coming with us, going in with us, and she was a trained fighter, so we didn’t argue. Our plan was to find her mother and get her out of there without any of us being hurt.

  While I drove, Noah engaged Nishi in conversation. He asked her questions about Asia and her mother. She explained that her mother was a surgeon in Japan, but that it hadn’t been an easy road for her. Nishi said that it wasn’t uncommon for medical schools in Japan to discriminate against women, so getting her medical degree had taken her mother many years and extreme perseverance. Nishi said her mother had raised her on her own, that her mother and father never married, and she didn’t know the exact nature of their relationship—if she was just the result of a one-night hookup, or if they had dated for a while, or what. She hadn’t even known who her father was until the night he’d stolen her and whisked her off to America when she was sixteen. She’d been a prisoner of the Black Dragons ever since, locked up tight, not allowed to go out in the world or do any type of the normal activities that young people did these days. She had no friends, no one she could trust. Except for us. She didn’t know much about her father, except that he’d once been a powerful shinobi in Japan, and that he was now a criminal in America, a cruel man, who had taken her mother prisoner. Yes, she was terrified of her father, but he’d taught her in the ways of the shinobi, and as a result, she considered herself a strong woman, though a bit naïve about the world in general, due to being held captive for the past eight years.

  I listened intently to her responses, but I remained silent for most of the drive, thinking about the mission and how we might be able pull this off. If I didn’t free Nishi’s mother, then Nishi would be heartbroken. And she’d already suffered enough in her life. I had a supreme desire to impress her, to earn her respect. To please her. I couldn’t let her down.

  As a fellow fighter, Nishi was skilled, a worthy opponent. She would be a valuable asset to our team.

  The closer we got to Augusta, the more uneasy I became. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something terrible was about to happen.

  Noah glanced across the truck at me, sensing my turmoil. “Hey, man,” he murmured. “Relax. You can’t go into this mission all messed up inside or you might fuck up.”

  I jerked my head in a nod, glancing at Nishi in the rearview mirror. Having her there would make it difficult for me to do my job because I would be worrying about her constantly.

  As if she’d read my mind, Nishi said, “Don’t worry about me, Logan. I can take care of myself.”

  “I’m not saying you can’t take care of yourself. But the Rapsters aren’t fighters. They shoot first and ask questions later. It’s going to be extremely difficult to get inside.”

  “I am a kunoichi.” She held my gaze in the mirror. “I can sneak close and knock their guns aside so we can incapacitate them.”

  “She’ll be fine, man.” Noah slapped my arm. “She knows her stuff. You’ve seen her fight.”

  He was right. I had seen her fight. She was tough. Very skilled. But she was also tiny, no more than a hundred pounds. Malik and most of his men were large like me and the other dregs, easily twice her size. She might be a worthy opponent against a normal-sized person, or even someone who wasn’t a skilled fighter or a dangerous criminal, but a large man like the dregs—or Malik or his men—could easily take her down. And that was what I feared. That someone would take her down tonight. Take her captive. And that we would fail this mission.

  Nishi’s small hand landed on my shoulder and squeezed. “I will be fine, Logan. Don’t worry about me. Just focus on the mission and freeing my mother.”

  She was right.

  Focus, man. And stay focused.

  I couldn’t fuck up this mission. I had to go into “beast mode” like I usually did on a mission, and turn off my emotions so that I could do whatever must be done. I couldn’t react emotionally, I had to remain detached, in order to maim or kill any resistance I encountered tonight.

  I could not fail Nishi.

  I placed my hand over hers on my shoulder. “Thanks, little one. You ready to do this?”

  She nodded, holding my gaze in the mirror.

  We passed through the military barricade without incident, then headed toward the area where the Rapsters resided. The tension in the car ratcheted up a notch. We were all anxious.

  I parked in a dark lot next to Luke’s Camaro. We all got out and discussed strategy, deciding to head off into two separate teams—Ryan and Luke on one team, and Noah, Nishi, and me on the other. Whoever found Nishi’s mother first would notify the others and get her out of there.

  Ryan and Luke headed off to set up the explosives, while Noah ran his scanner device, checking for a surveillance system. The last time we’d been here, there had been no security cameras.

  “They’ve got surveillance,” he informed us. “Give me a few minutes while I hack into their security system.” Nishi and I waited patiently for several minutes, then Noah nodded. “I intercepted their system, so their cameras are all paused on whatever they are seeing ri
ght now. I checked all the feed, and the only thing coming through is stillness, and sleeping people in some areas, so they shouldn’t become suspicious. Most of the guards are on the eighth floor. As soon as Ryan and Luke let off the explosives, we can go in.”

  Ryan and Luke returned a few minutes later. We all checked our communication devices, making sure they were working.

  Then Ryan pressed a button on his remote. Booms rocked the area, a nearby building exploding, cars flying up, then crashing down, concrete falling everywhere, glass exploding…

  Nishi glanced at me, wide-eyed. “They blew up a building?”

  Ryan winked at her. “Sure did, doll. Don’t worry. It was vacant.”

  We waited a few minutes more, watching as more concrete fell. Then the front door of Malik’s building burst open and people came pouring out. At first, it was mostly curious vagrants. Then, Malik’s men rushed out. Around twenty or thirty of them.

  Perfect. Our odds had just increased.

  “Let’s go,” Luke whispered, leading the way forward. He and Ryan went in the building. Noah, Nishi, and I hung back for a few moments to give them time to check things out.

  “We’re heading up the stairs.” Ryan’s voice came through our earpieces. “Everyone’s cleared out. We aren’t encountering any resistance so far.”

  Noah and I exchanged a glance. “Let’s go.” I motioned for Noah to lead the way, then followed with Nishi by my side. She moved silently, gracefully, her gaze alert.

  A large group of vagrants clustered near the front of the building, staring at the explosion across the parking lot, and talking excitedly amongst themselves. We slipped past them, heading for the stairs.

  First floor. Second.

  Then Luke’s voice came through our earpieces. “Armed guards on the sixth floor. Four of them. We’re sneaking up on them right now.”

  “Roger that,” I answered, exchanging a glance with Noah. We waited for the count of one, two, three, then we rushed up the stairs, moving as silently as possible. Nishi followed, keeping up with us, her gaze alert, her movements fluid and graceful, her body poised for possible attack. We all carried weapons, but the less noise we made, the closer we could get to Malik and his men before they discovered us. And the better chance we had of freeing Nishi’s mother. So, if we could avoid gunfire, we would.