“So, Eli, is it?”
I jerked around with a hissed, “Fuck,” to see Maris almost on me. “Sneak the fuck up on me, why don’t you.”
She giggled lightly. “I can’t do it often. Apparently I need a man around to distract you.” She wiggled her brows at me. “I figured he was a fast worker, but he deserves a speed medal for this one.”
How she knew just from looking at me, I wasn’t sure, but neither was I going to deny it. “Would you keep your voice down?”
Her amusement sobered. “You know you can’t hide this sort of thing from the guys any more than you could me.”
“Of course I do.” It hadn’t taken long traveling together to realize just how little privacy we actually had. We’d all handled it like adults, but that didn’t mean I hadn’t been squirming internally. Here, with Eli... “I don’t intend to hide it. I just don’t want them giving him a hard time.”
Leah exited the kitchen wing of the house with a tray of snacks and drinks. “Giving who a hard time?”
I refrained from scrubbing my hands down my face—barely. Instead I watched Maris hurry toward her to grab the tray. “Let me take that.”
Leah shook her head, a laugh escaping. “You are as bad as Remi, Maris.” One hand dropped to her stomach, which I now noted had the slightest curve to it, though I doubted I would have noticed had I not already known she was pregnant. “I’m a nurse; I’m on my feet and carrying things all day. There’s no need to baby me.”
But Maris was having none of it. “Not for us, you aren’t. Gimme.” Securing the tray in her hands, she turned, motioning toward what I knew was the downstairs living area with a tip of her head. “The guys are in here, Mikaela.”
Leah, hands now free, turned to me. “It’s nice to officially meet you. And thanks.”
The thanks surprised me. “For what?”
“She’s blind to her own virtues,” Maris called over her shoulder as she disappeared through the doorway.
Leah chuckled, a throaty sound that I had little doubt brought Remi to his knees. “Aren’t most women? It’s a definite shortcoming most of us share. But thank you for having Remi’s back. And Levi’s, and Eli’s.” She hesitated, then, “Remi says you’re very good at what you do. He is too, but you probably know by now, he agreed to step back from working actively with his brothers.”
I was surprised Remi had given her details about our team. It must’ve shown on my face, because one side of Leah’s mouth quirked up. “We don’t have secrets from each other, not anymore.” A haunted look came and went on her face. “Too many years and too many secrets nearly destroyed my family.”
With a soldier for a parent, secrets had always been a given for me, but there was no military here, no government to rule what Remi Agozi said to his lover. I didn’t know her well, but Leah seemed tough enough to handle it. A law enforcement family, if I remembered correctly, though her brother had died recently.
And now she had a new family. My gaze dropped again to that hand on her slight baby mound. I thought I could guess exactly why Remi was no longer in the field.
“The only time he goes out is if it’s absolutely necessary, so I knew this time...” Leah drew a shaky breath. “Anyway, knowing he has a team like yours alongside him means a lot.”
“Nothing is a guarantee, Leah.” I needed to be sure she knew that. Every time we went on an op, we accepted that we might not come back.
“I know that,” she assured me, and I almost believed she did. “I just needed you to know your presence isn’t unappreciated”—she glanced toward the elevator, and a bit of mischief appeared—“no matter what the resident hard-ass says.”
“And you agreed to marry into that hard-ass’s family,” I pointed out, following as Leah moved toward the opposite side of the foyer. “What were you thinking?”
Leah threw me a side glance. “That Remi’s worth it. But it was a close call. I’ll tell you all about it someday.”
I lingered thoughtfully over that someday as we entered the living room—or should I say dorm room? The massive space consisted of several conversation areas, couches and chairs and tables grouped together, perfect for a cocktail party. I didn’t think the brothers had many of those, not here where someone might compromise their security, but the possibility was obvious. The whole space was bathed in midafternoon light from the floor-to-ceiling windows that lined the entire front of the house. But that wasn’t what drew my eye.
The central area of the room had been cleared, and my guys were setting up camp. Pallets, linens, their personal supplies lined up along one wall. One couch had been stripped of extraneous pillows and made into a bed. “For Sullivan,” Rhys said, rolling his eyes as he walked toward me. “Apparently being a CEO makes you soft.”
“I like real beds,” Sullivan called from across the room. “So sue me.”
At least it looked like the “soft” CEO was pitching in with the work. We had agreed to forgo the handcuffs as long as he continued to be cooperative, although he would remain with two of my men at all times just in case.
“I couldn’t afford the legal fees,” Rhys called back.
“Who could with his team of lawyers?” Titus said.
“Damn straight.” Sullivan smiled smugly as he snuggled into the nest he’d built on the sofa.
Leah chuckled next to me. “It’s like having duplicate Agozis, all of them giving each other shit.”
I could definitely see that. “Wait till you get all six of them in a room together,” I warned her. “Although it’s not so much shooting the shit as it is comparing dicks—figuratively, not literally, thank God.”
“I bet.” She pointed to the tray Maris had settled on a clear table across the room, then raised her voice. “Y’all help yourselves. Anything else you need will be in the kitchen. I’ll let you know when dinner is about ready.”
The men murmured thanks, even Sullivan, and descended on the food like a horde of locusts after a famine. Leah snorted at the sight. “Thank goodness I set back some snacks for us in the kitchen.” She turned to me. “Interested?”
“I am,” Maris said, joining us.
I glanced toward the elevator as we moved back into the foyer. “I’ll probably head downstairs and see if Eli needs anything first.”
Leah’s eyebrow went up at Eli’s name. From Maris’s smirk, I figured my sister would probably fill her in, in my absence. Whatever. One less person I’d have to explain myself to. But before I headed out... “How is Abby doing?”
Leah’s shoulders drooped. “As well as can be expected,” she said quietly. “You’ll see an older woman around, Geneva Sanderson. She was a friend of Abby’s mother, and they’re very close. She is seeing to Abby as much as possible so I didn’t have to leave Maris to babysitting duty all the time.”
Maris shook her head. “Brooke is a delight, and you know it.”
Leah perked up. “I certainly think so. I can’t imagine what I’ll do if this one is a boy.” She patted her stomach. “Girls seems so much easier.”
“Considering who the father is—and the uncles—I think that’s probably an accurate statement.” I laughed. “I cannot imagine a little Agozi boy running around this place.”
“A little terror, more like,” Leah agreed, but she didn’t look like she minded in the least.
“Mommy!”
Leah looked over her shoulder. “I need to get back to the kitchen. All these extra bodies in the house has left Brooke feeling a bit off-kilter, especially with Diesel down in the basement with the brothers.”
Eli’s dog. I was sure the pup was happy to see his owner again. Come to think of it, so was I. I waved Leah and Maris off to the kitchen and took the elevator to the basement. The bat cave, Maris had said they called it. The name brought a snigger as I stepped onto the elevator.
Chapter Thirty-One
Eli —
“The damn thing hacked our jammers and figured out the algorithm for the lines that were open.”
Levi growled beside me. “Why were the lines open?”
Diesel whined from his spot beside my feet. He hadn’t gone more than five feet away from me since I’d gotten home, settling right down half-in, half-out of his bed so he could lay his head against my foot. I murmured a low sound to reassure him that Levi was all bark and no bite; then shot Levi a warning glance that clearly said, Don’t upset my dog, asshole.
“They’re always open,” I snapped, but quietly. “We recycle them on a regular basis; that’s part of our security protocols. You know that.” I’d spent hundreds of hours over the years lecturing Levi on the tech I’d put in place to keep our family safe. Getting him to acknowledge that any plan had loopholes?
“Damn it, Eli.”
Yeah, there was no acknowledgment coming.
Remi slapped his hand onto Levi’s shoulder, squeezing down hard. “We get it; you’re frustrated and angry. That’s not important right now. What’s important is that we fix it.”
I finished entering the series of keys I’d started. “Already done.”
“What did you do exactly?” Levi asked.
“I shut down all frequencies through the jammer. Walkie-talkies only, gentlemen.”
“Fuck,” Levi growled again. Beneath the desk, Diesel met Levi’s growl with one of his own.
“It’s only temporary,” I assured him as I shifted my chair to face a new screen. “I’ll add some new security measures to keep intrusions out, right after I—”
The elevator doors opened, and a live wire lit up my body. Mikaela. I didn’t even need to see or hear or smell her; on some deeper level than even the physical, I recognized her presence and reacted to it.
“Right after you what?” Remi asked, a grin in his voice.
I forced my attention back to the screen. “Right after I make X’s half-a-million-dollar drone a flying hunk of useless metal.”
Mikaela clapped her hands as she sauntered up to us. “Sounds like fun. Can I help?”
I cocked my brow, knowing she could see that side of my face. “Emotional support animal, anyone?” Her gasp had me laughing. “Seriously, Beautiful, this is all hacking. There will be plenty to do after.”
“There better be,” she grumbled. “Real work.”
Remi crowed. “Fucking burn!”
That even got a chuckle out of Levi.
“Actually...” Mikaela propped a hip against the desk right beside me. Nails clicked on the floor, and Diesel’s nose appeared beneath the lip of the desk. After meeting my eyes, the dog flopped down to lie on Mikaela’s foot this time. She leaned down to rub his head. “Before you turn that expensive toy into a useless expensive toy, I have an idea.”
My brothers pulled chairs up and sat, their intent gazes on Mikaela. I shifted closer—like dog, like owner—and wrapped my hand around her thigh, the touch settling something inside me I hadn’t even known was there. “What’s that?” I asked.
The crease between her brows deepened. “I don’t know the ins and outs of the equipment and what is possible, but is there a way to take over the drone without them realizing it? Use it for our own needs?”
“I’m not sure that would do us much good,” I pointed out. “It’s hovering right over us—we don’t really need to see ourselves.”
“Right.” Mikaela bit her bottom lip. She wasn’t looking at me, probably had no idea what the sight of her white teeth pressing into that supple flesh did to me. I squirmed a bit in my seat.
“It would have intel in its programming about where it came from, right?” Remi asked. “Can we use it to track back to X’s location?”
“We already know X’s location,” I said, rubbing my thumb along the taut muscle of Mikaela’s thigh.
“Yeah, I’m not sure I want to take Sullivan’s word as gospel on all that,” she said.
“You think he’s lying?” Levi said. His tone told me he had considered the idea as well.
“With your gun to his head?” Mikaela shook her head. “If he was, he has brass balls. But I’d still like confirmation of the information he’s given us.”
Levi grunted, a pleased light moving in his gaze. “Me too.”
“So...” She glanced to me, tilted her head. “Is it possible?”
“If it is, I’m the one who can do it, Beautiful.”
“I bet you are.” Mikaela smirked. Remi snickered.
Levi cleared his throat. “You get on that, Eli. Nix, I need to get a rundown on your team and their specialties, where and when they will plug into a mission best.”
Mikaela nodded, and I gave her leg a squeeze and let her go. I suspected she and Levi had said some things to each other after I walked away from them back at the warehouse, but whatever those words had been, they seemed to have cleared the air between them—at least as far as work went. Personally? That was a whole other story.
We’d never had to deal with women being around until Abby. I had adapted to that even faster than Levi, but I knew I would always be “the baby” around here. Levi and Remi would always feel that they needed to look after me—it was in their nature as much as it had been our life experiences, and I had accepted that and quit fighting it, for the most part, years ago. Not to mention they were sometimes nosier than teenage girls. A woman in my life was going to draw both their attention and their comments.
Good thing Mikaela and I both were capable of telling them to fuck off when needed. And enforcing it if necessary.
I grabbed some headphones, cranked up some old-time rock, and got to work. First I needed a back door to the drone currently hovering a couple of miles above our heads. Personal drones were used for a variety of amateur reasons, including aerial photography. Commercial-use machines had greater capabilities and possible uses, and then there were military-grade drones that could do everything from surveillance to delivering bombs. And because high-altitude machines were too far away for noise or even heat to give away the drone’s presents, they were often effective in their missions. But if you knew they were there...
Pulling up our jamming program, I re-opened a single line and waited for X’s drone to take the bait.
Gotcha, son of a bitch.
A single link wouldn’t be enough to give someone access to a military drone. Regular hackers risked setting off government security protocols built into the machine—and a couple of AKs in their face the next time they answered their door.
Then there was me. I could subvert anything.
Using the link, I began to work my way backwards through the machine’s code, systems, security protocols. Just observing, no interference. Learning my way around what the computer was capable of. Noting any idiosyncrasies, how the security worked—and where its gaps were. Setting a couple of programs up to begin hacking access, I moved to another computer and started coding.
I have no idea how long I was at it, but eventually a hand on my shoulder brought me back to awareness. I pulled the headphones off, the tinny sound of Rush spilling into the room. “Hey.”
Mikaela took her hand away—a fact that earned her a frown—then eased her ass onto the edge of the desk next to me. “What did you find?”
It took me a moment to pull myself away from the fantasy of lifting her fully onto the desk, stripping her clothes, spreading her legs, and fucking us both senseless. Mikaela waved her hand in front of my face, a spark in her gaze telling me she might have guessed the direction of my thoughts. I wheeled my chair back and turned off the music before I stood to stretch. “I found lots of good stuff, Beautiful, just like I always do.”
Diesel came fully out from beneath the desk to lean against her leg, brown eyes begging for affection. I’m not even sure Mikaela realized what she was doing as she rubbed his ears. “You always find good stuff, huh?” she asked, grinning.
“Always.” My voice dropped as I stared at her mouth, turning the word into a growl.
Remi slapped me on the back as he joined us. “For fuck’s sake, quit the sex talk and get on with work.”
�
��Who said anything about sex?” Mikaela asked.
She wasn’t wrong, but Remi smirked. “I’m practically an old married man. I know sex talk when I hear it.”
Mikaela laughed, a blush painting her cheeks the faintest pink.
“So?” Levi asked, arriving as well.
“So”—I pulled my mouse closer and planted a fist on the desk, leaned in to look at the screens—“I think I found some things that might help us.”
“Like what?”
Reaching behind myself with one foot, I blindly scooted my chair forward and sat despite clicking on various screens and programs. “Like this.”
The two wall-mounted screens above the desk came alive. On the left was the system operations I’d managed to capture, data streaming back to X’s compound via the line the drone had hacked through our jammer. Levi cursed as he recognized the aerial view of the mansion. “Is this live?”
“It’s not,” I said and gestured to the right-hand screen. “That is.” That screen showed continued data collection, but being fed back to us, not forwarded to X. A closed loop he wasn’t aware of.
“What are we looking at?” Remi asked as he stared at the video of land flying by.
I grinned my best shit-eating grin. “I have the data X was collecting on us set up to loop, over and over, in a continuous stream. Video programs, systems, everything. That’s what you’re seeing on the left. When we’re ready to shut down the drone, that stream will die.”
“I’ve never heard of any system capable of doing that,” Mikaela said.
“A little program I wrote,” I said. Mikaela snorted, muttered, “Show-off.” I bumped my shoulder against her hip.
On the right screen, the rapid progress of land below the drone slowed. “This screen is current land coverage from the drone. It’s approaching the location it was launched from, hopefully X’s location.”
“Why is it slowing?” Mikaela asked.
“Based on what we know about X, we have to assume he’s a paranoid bastard. I programmed the drone to hover no closer than a hundred yards out.”
Assassin's Game Page 20
