Manipulating Mikey (First Wave Book 8)

by Mikayla Lane

  He scanned the teen from his head to his shoulders, ignoring the dark mass of color surrounding him before moving to the arm holding the machete.

  There! he thought with a cocky grin as he lowered his rifle, knowing he couldn’t take a chance with a bullet while the teen held Lauren.

  While the teen’s attention was on Brandon, Mikey reached down, pulled out his ka-bar knife, and was getting ready to throw it when Blade cursed and walked up beside Mikey before pulling the trigger.

  Lauren screamed as the teen’s head jerked backwards and Mikey ran forward to catch her and pull her away from the teen’s falling body. Mikey held her as she cried in his arms, clutching him tightly to her as she trembled.

  “What the hell, Blade?” Grai demanded, turning on the man.

  Blade shrugged and turned to Grai.

  “He was going to kill her. There was nothing but hate and evil in him. He had every intention of rebuilding what his father had, only he would have been even more brutal. He was torturing animals at five years old and planned on carving up the unconscious kids when he got us to leave,” Blade responded.

  “Are you sure?” Grai asked, looking at the dead teen in shock.

  Blade nodded his head.

  “He radiated evil so strongly it was easy to sift his thoughts. He may be small, but he was 17 years old, and we gave him the opportunity he was looking for to get rid of his father and take over. Even his father feared him, which is why he was left to perimeter patrol,” Blade explained, feeling like he needed a bath after seeing what was in the teen’s mind.

  “You murdered him!” Lauren screamed at Blade.

  “Hey! Shhh, Blade’s right. The kid was surrounded by darkness. If he hadn’t done it, I was going to,” Mikey said, trying to calm her. It didn’t work.

  Lauren pulled out of Mikey’s arms and stared at him with tears streaming down her face.

  “You would have killed a kid?” she asked, incredulous that he had even considered it.

  They all heard the transport craft landing in the airfield, and Grai ordered everyone to evacuate. Mikey thought he was saved from answering her and headed towards the airfield when she grabbed his arm and stopped him.

  “Answer me! Were you going to kill a kid?” she demanded.

  Mikey stared at her with hard eyes, unwilling to be grilled for something he hadn’t done.

  “Yes, I would have. Blade was right; the kid was evil and would have been more brutal than his father. Besides that, he was going to kill you,” Mikey said before he jerked his arm out of her grasp and headed back to the airfield.

  Lauren stared after him with her mouth hanging open in shock. She was a doctor; she healed people. She’d just healed that same teen of potentially deadly parasites not more than an hour earlier and now . . . she shook her head to clear her thoughts.

  Her eyes landed on the dead teen with his dark eyes fixed skyward, and her stomach heaved. Lauren dropped to her knees as her stomach emptied its contents. When she finally felt she had control of her stomach, she looked up to thank the person who’d rubbed her back while she threw up, expecting it to be Mikey. She was surprised to see Blade, and she jerked away from him.

  Blade shook his head at his childhood friend and antagonist. He and Lauren had always had a complicated relationship. They’d spent years teasing and taunting one another, but Blade always knew that underneath all the aggravation they put one another through, they were friends. And he’d never tell her that he did it because he knew Mikey was going to, and Blade didn’t want her hating on her mate. Instead, he shouldered her anger, knowing that no matter how angry she was at him now, she’d get over it.

  Blade gave her a hard look.

  “You . . . all of us, grew up in a bubble thinking things like this could never happen to you because we were isolated, protected, hiding behind computers. This is the real world we live in, and these are the choices that have to be made. The teen was a stone cold killer. We just saved the lives of countless people that he would have joyfully brutalized. This is the human world. If you can’t take it, go back to your bubble,” he said before he headed off to the airfield.

  Lauren looked at the men still guarding her and the way they wouldn’t look at her.

  “We need to go,” Simya said, more than a little disappointed in the doctor’s narrow-minded view.

  Without a word, Lauren stood and headed towards the airfield and into the transport ship. She walked past everyone already seated and strapped in and headed to the back of the ship, wanting to be left alone for a while.

  She ignored the disappointed looks from everyone, unaffected by their disapproval of her anger until she saw Mikey’s face. The look of hurt and anger on his face caused her to stumble in the aisle. She thanked those who reached out to keep her from falling and she continued to the back, sitting down in the rear facing seats.

  She was irritated and surprised when Blade sat down beside her and strapped himself in.

  “Why are you back here?” she whispered at him in anger.

  Blade turned to grin at her.

  “I figured since your unrealistic expectations were making you a pariah I would be your voice of reason and company,” he said.

  Blade knew she was hurt. Not only by the reaction of the others—which he felt was appropriate—but by Mikey’s anger. He knew Lauren meant well, but she had also never really left the safety of her guarded world either.

  Lauren had never faced the threat of rape, theft, or violence. She’d watched what went on in the world under the delusion that it would never touch her or the bubble she had lived in. In a way, Blade was glad she’d gone through what she had. Lauren needed to see the world as it really was, not through the rose colored glasses that she’d been wearing.

  “You’re an asshole,” Lauren whispered through gritted teeth. As angry as she was at him, she was grateful that she wasn’t alone.

  Blade chuckled at her before he tested her shoulder strap to make sure it was secured properly, ignoring her hands slapping at him to stop.

  “Yes, I am. But at least I see that things aren’t as black and white as we thought growing up. There’s evil all over the world, and it doesn’t discriminate by age, race, or religion. It can be everywhere. No one wants to kill a kid, but what if that kid was a 10 year old in a suicide vest coming right at you and your team? That is the real world; those are the decisions made every day by the humans and our people,” Blade said gently.

  Lauren shook her head and turned away from him, trying to comprehend what he was saying. She was having a hard time merging the world he spoke of with the world she grew up in.

  “Kids shouldn’t be killed,” Lauren whispered.

  “There’s something I got from Mikey’s mind that is really applicable here. Parents should never put their kids in a position to be killed. Those parents put their own kids in danger when they hand them a weapon, when they teach them to hate. When you’re fed and nurtured with hate, death, and a lack of respect for life that is what you do. It’s all you know. It’s the parents that are responsible for the death of their child, no one else,” Blade said, hoping to make Lauren understand that things weren’t a utopian dream in the real world.

  “He could have changed,” Lauren said, speaking of the teen.

  Blade shook his head.

  “Any other time that might be possible. Not with that kid. He was almost 18 years old, and he’d been planning to kill his own father for years in order to take over,” Blade assured her, still a little creeped out by what he’d seen in the kid’s head.

  “But Mikey didn’t know that, and he was going to kill him anyway!” Lauren argued.

  Blade snorted and shook his head at Lauren’s stubbornness. He was losing patience with her and was going to end up purposefully antagonizing her if she didn’t try to see things from a realistic point of view.

  “Let me guess . . . if he didn’t consider it, then he didn’t care. When he did consider it, he’s a horrible person. Man, you wom
en are a joke sometimes, you know that? Maybe the problem isn’t what he did or didn’t do, maybe it’s the unrealistic expectations you have. Maybe you ought to decide if you’re going to join him and everyone else in the real world before you decide to judge,” Blade said, disappointment clear in his voice.

  “Oh please,” Lauren said, refusing to listen to what Blade was saying. “You grew up the same way I did. You can’t think it’s OK under any circumstance.”

  Blade laughed outright at her.

  “Man, you sound just like a spoiled, elitist human child. You’re no different at all. You grew up behind guarded walls, seeing only what you wanted to see because you didn’t have to deal with what was really going on! You didn’t have to fight your way past the drive-by shootings and drug dealers to get home from the bus stop, hoping all the way that there was food to eat when you got home.

  “You’ve never seen the mental devastation left behind in the mind of a man who had to do what he had to in order to save the lives of others. You believe the world is all rainbows and sunshine because you ignore the brutality happening to everyone else that doesn’t live behind guarded walls like yours. You’re a fucking snob, Lauren. And if you don’t get your head out of your own ass, you’re going to lose more than your mate,” Blade warned before he stood in disgust and walked away to sit with the others.

  Chapter Eleven

  Grai paced the conference room while Blade, Traze, and David sat around the table studying the information on their comms. He had ordered Mikey and Brandon sent to Base Beta while Amun did a full work up on both men to ensure they didn’t have any more trackers embedded in them and to give them a chance to bond a little. The two men had a lot in common and had hit it off pretty quickly.

  “Grai, are you listening?” David asked for the second time, pulling Grai’s attention from his thoughts.

  Grai turned to the others and nodded his head.

  “Yes, I’m sorry. My thoughts momentarily strayed. Can you repeat that?” Grai asked, forcing himself to concentrate on the task at hand.

  “We need to send the vids to Mikey and see if he can find something in there that we missed. He may be able to see a trail or something,” Traze repeated.

  Grai nodded his agreement.

  “I’ve already sent them to Thjodhild. She’s going to make sure that he and Brandon take a look at them once Amun clears them,” Grai said.

  David cleared his throat.

  “On a bright note, we heard on the news that Lt. Col. Marcus Ballard, the asshole high on our list, was killed in the house in Mexico,” he said with a grin.

  He was the one name on their list they had a hard time tracking down because the bastard had stayed hidden and protected after what happened in the national forest.

  “Who’s taking his place?” Grai asked, wishing he’d been able to capture the lieutenant colonel instead.

  “Major Kyle Morris. He’s the one on the original list that disappeared after the incident at Fiorn’s Folly. We couldn’t find anything on him the last time. No records prior to his enlistment in the Army. I got bad feelings about this guy,” David said.

  Grai remembered the man.

  “The one with the fake high school diploma and hometown. Yeah, there’s something off about that guy. Blade, is there any way for your guys to dig deeper?” he asked, turning to Blade.

  Blade shook his head.

  “We dug as deep as we could go the last time. The guy is a ghost. He basically appeared out of nowhere and joined the military. All of his documents and transcripts are some of the best fakes we’ve ever seen,” Blade admitted.

  Grai stood in thought for a moment.

  “Why would anyone do that? If you can make fake documents, why go in the military? Why not become a banker or go into another profession? Why the military, and why that unit? Do we even know how he got in one of the most classified units in the world?” Grai asked.

  “We got a lot of medals, high ranking recommendations for heroic behavior,” Blade said as he skimmed through the file they’d made on Kyle the last time. “It seems he was recommended after taking part in a lot of shady and sketchy, secret operations.”

  “Something isn’t right with the guy. He would have had to put himself in the right place at the right time—every time—in order to get where he is in less than 10 years. No one is that lucky. Not in the military,” David offered.

  Grai turned back to Blade.

  “And we got nothing? No girlfriend? No family? Address?” Grai asked again.

  Blade snorted and shook his head.

  “Either the guy finds a base to sleep in every night or he just disappears. No address, no girlfriend, no family or friends . . . either he’s the loneliest guy in the world or he’s Santa Claus and disappears to the North Pole. Which only makes him more suspicious and creepy,” Blade said.

  Traze turned incredulous eyes to the hard, jaded man.

  “You think Santa is creepy?”

  Blade shrugged while a little pink color tinged his cheeks.

  “Hey, don’t judge. I just think it’s creepy that human parents teach their kids that some fat guy can pop into your house when he wants and eat your cookies,” Blade said defensively.

  Traze laughed.

  “Dude, the fat guy leaves presents while the kids leave him cookies and milk. It’s a trade. They feed his need for ridiculously decorated cookies, and he gives them presents in return. Win–win. Besides, it’s not real,” Traze said, surprised the tough guy had a weakness. A stupid one at that.

  Blade extended his middle finger toward Traze.

  “Screw you, man. I bet there’s a boogey man in your closet too,” Blade said.

  Traze laughed bitterly.

  “I was sired by the biggest boogey man on any world. Trust me, not much else compares,” he countered.

  Blade tipped his head to Traze in respect.

  “You win,” he conceded.

  Grai ran a frustrated hand through his hair.

  “You two can group hug later. We need to find out where this Major Kyle Morris is and who he is. Something isn’t right here. I’ll go to beta and talk to Mikey about looking at the vids,” Grai said.

  “Maybe I can put my vet friends on this,” David suggested. “They may be able to dig something up that we missed.”

  “Absolutely. They were invaluable in getting Mikey out of there. If they can get something on Kyle Morris, then I’d be in their debt yet again,” Grai agreed. He’d been impressed by the wounded warriors the last time they had helped him.

  *****

  Mikey and Brandon were sitting in the kitchen talking about their army days as they ate and waited for Grai to come. Amun had told them that he would be there soon. Since they were starving after their jungle adventure, they figured Grai would find them in the kitchen.

  Brandon threw the last piece of his half-eaten bread on his plate and sighed.

  “I think I’m going to be stuck staying this time. It’d probably be a little too suspicious for me to be the only survivor of two encounters with them,” Brandon said with a sigh.

  “What do you mean,” Mikey asked curiously.

  “Grai gave me a way out of the special operations I stupidly signed up for. He wanted to bring me in after Plum Island, but I wanted to stay in and help find his brother. I figured it was the least I could do. Now I don’t think I’ll have a choice,” Brandon explained.

  “What do you think Grai will do to you?” Mikey asked, worried for the soldier.

  Brandon looked at Mikey curiously before he burst out laughing.

  “Sorry . . . the look on your face was too funny. I think he’s going to let them claim me as killed in action, and he’s going to give me a whole new identity,” Brandon said, wondering why Mikey looked afraid.

  “You don’t think he could just as easily kill you,” Mikey countered defensively, crossing his arms over his chest.

  “Of course. But I damn sure don’t think he will. The guy has more honor
than any man I’ve ever met. If he says he’ll have your back, he’ll have it. I think my biggest challenge will be convincing him to let me join one of their mission teams,” Brandon said honestly.

  Mikey looked at Brandon like he’d lost his mind.

  “You want to take the chance of crashing in the jungle again and going up against . . . everyone? Are you nuts?” he asked.

  Brandon chuckled and leaned back in his chair, balancing on two legs.

  “You’re kidding, right? I have no family and the closest I’ve ever felt to doing the right thing has been working with Grai. They are the ultimate good guys, and to be honest with you, I’m honored that he even gave me a chance to be a part of something this big. Come on, you gotta know what that’s like. You’re actually one of them. You’re a part of the bigger picture, a soldier making an actual difference. How can you not be in awe of how lucky you are,” he asked.

  Mikey shook his head, trying to see it from Brandon’s point of view.

  “How can you turn your back on it so easily?” Mikey countered.

  Brandon snorted.

  “On what? The lies and deceit? I walk down a street now and wonder why so many are blind to what’s going on around them. Think about it. We watched on the news where they blamed what we did out there on a joint military mission to take out a cartel gone wrong! From where I’m sitting, this is the real truth; everything else out there is a candy-coated lie,” he said with disgust.

  “How can you be so sure that this time you’re fighting on the right side?” Mikey asked, curious what Brandon’s answer would be.

  “That’s easy. I could have died out there in the jungle, and I wouldn’t have questioned what I was fighting and dying for. As many times as you’ve been overseas, like I have, how many times could you say that?” Brandon said before he got up and left the room.

  Mikey ran his hands over his head and stood to put his plate up, thinking about what Brandon had said. He had to admit—tense moments and serial killer teenager aside—he had felt like they did a good thing taking out the cartel. Sad thing was, as easy as it was for them, he knew that if anyone had actually made an effort they could have done the same thing a long time ago.