“My laptop would be nice.”
“Not going to happen. Next?”
“If I’m going to be on lockdown I need to work or I’m walking out of here right now.”
“Really,” she smirked more of a non question than anything. Abby turned around and saw two men standing in both corners of the closed door room. Both men had guns fastened to their hip.
“Bloody hell,” she turned her attention back to Autumn with swift haste. “What kind of group is this? You can’t just kidnap people—that’s a federal offense you know.”
Autumn gave a soft laugh. “I’m sure our federal government will get around to reading the rules they created one day and actually instituting them correctly. However, until they do that, you’re ours and you’re on lockdown. Going willingly will be more comfortable for you, Abby.”
She understood the words spoken and unspoken. She didn’t have a choice in the matter because she was being abducted and held prisoner whether she liked it or not. “My notebooks and my sketching pads then?”
“Okay. Anything else?”
“The drawing pencils and a nice supply of pens and the color pencils too. I could use those too.”
“Okay. I’ll put in a call. Stay comfortable.” She walked away, uttering something to both men in the room that Abby couldn’t understand because it wasn’t English, but she could understand it involved something about keeping her locked in this room by the way both men looked at her as if they were ready to do anything it took to anchor her behind to the chair.
Perhaps what got Abby’s attention most about this reclusive place that inspired fear was that a little woman was commanding all these big, gun laced, men. Something about that told her Autumn Kitsap was a lot more lethal than she looked. Something about that made her admire the little woman with a nearly visible bump in her stomach indicating a baby was growing in there.
Abby situated her back against the back of the chair and let her shoulders drop alerting the ready to knock her down if she got up men that she was going quietly, willingly—well as willingly as she could given the circumstances.
It was just a game—a simple space alien war game that overgrown men who really should have been working or having sex with a good looking woman played on end until their thumbs were ready to fall off. A game was not something that should have put her life in danger, and it most definitely shouldn’t have landed her in some tough as nails, tighter than a military training camp, office where she wasn’t given a choice in this witness protection thing. She wasn’t a witness for cryin’ out loud. She was just a friggin’ worker bee who did a fabulous-o job and earned a fairly decent pay grade. Okay, so she had mad design ideas and could make any game a best seller, but she hadn’t done anything to incur the wrath of the devil incarnate.
When the far too serious woman came back into the room she had a feeling she wasn’t going to like her words. Gee, she wondered what gave that away. Maybe because she hadn’t liked any of them so far.
“You’ll be picked up tomorrow and you’ll go right into protective custody.”
“Excuse me, but where are you all putting me?”
“You’ll find out when you get there. Your protector is skilled and he can keep you safe. I just got off the phone with him. He marches to his own drum.”
“Grand,” she said with a sarcastic and snarky reply.
“And he will do whatever it takes to keep you anchored in this program.”
The harsh tone in her voice told Abby this woman was not going to take any refusal. She tossed her hands up. This was insane, but it didn’t look like she had much of a choice so she might as well get comfortable and try to go along step by step. Maybe they would get the guy and she could go home soon. Yeah, think positive is all she kept chanting in her mind while the other corner of her brain kept telling her only an idiot would ignore the obvious—she wasn’t going home anytime soon, and if these people after her had their way she just might not ever get there.
Rhys played the conversation over in his mind. He tried to figure out just where he went wrong in the conversation with Autumn. The phone had rang and had he known what was coming his way the smart man that he was would have ignored the incoming call. But no, he was quick to answer and almost as quick to get sucked into a job that wasn’t his own.
Rhys was so not feeling this shift. He was intelligence only and now they wanted him to put some woman in his house under his protection? What the hell was wrong with Autumn? Pregnancy, that was the only answer because he was sure it was working dysfunctional chaos on her mental computing capabilities. If she was already like this at only three months God help them all when the hormones really started raging and waging war on her sanity.
No he did not want to be the man watching over this woman in need of protection. Technically he wasn’t a Marshal. “Can’t you get somebody else?” He growled.
“No. Nobody else can handle the man who is after her.”
“Put a bullet in him and you’re done.” He brushed his hand over his red short cropped hair. Full on retirement did not retire the Marine in him. He still kept the cut of his hair to military standards but sometimes he had to grow it out or add a little extra for his cover if his cover required hair more swiftly than what letting it grow could handle.
Very few people knew what he looked like now and the only people who truly did were long dead. His mother and father had always called him the master of disguise and trickery. Of course his father thought he was going to go join a three ring circus or something like it. Never had he expected his little boy to grow up to be an elite military man. He knew had he lived to see him retire from the military that he wouldn’t have expected to see his boy become a CIA man turned man on a mission of his own. His life had been against what anybody thought would come for him, and that was part of his skill. People didn’t know him and they never would. That mastery had allowed him to become the best at what he did. His skill, wisdom and higher IQ had just sealed the deal for him. But this, watching over a woman and playing protector was not his job.
“Won’t work, they tried.”
“Get better shooters.” He growled. This was not what he wanted. “I was Special Ops Intelligence and while I know how to fight and kill I’m out of that war. I’d like to stay out and focus on my own mission now.”
“And what if I were to tell you she collides with your mission? Look, I know you have a vengeance against select agents in the CIA, but I need you on this, Rhys. Nobody else can keep her safe.”
“Autumn,” he growled. “Don’t use my past for leverage.”
“I’m not. The guy who’s after her is MARSOC. You know the Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command.”
“I know what MARSOC is. I was in it long enough to know that.” He growled. “Find somebody else.”
“He’s a triple treat, Rhys. Simper Fi means nothing to him.”
“I don’t care.” He had met many of Marines who had gone rouge and didn’t believe in the Always Faithful line unless they were being faithful to themselves and their wallets. This wasn’t his fight. But something told him Autumn was going to keep pushing until he made it his fight. Well she would be sadly mistaken. He was not going to pull out bottle of noir dye, taint his hair, put in the blue contacts to mask his emerald eyes, nor was he going to dust off the makeup bottles he would use to convert his natural look into something unnatural to him.
His mother was a beautiful Irish woman while his father was a Colombian import to America. Two first generation immigrants who found each other on that fateful day of swear in. Their citizenship brought them together completely. Their joining brought him to life. He had his mother’s emerald eyes, but he had a hint more of his father’s coloring—a hint of darkness to mix with the pale Irish of his mother. He tanned like a world class beach bum, so he had been told, but that color was more his than sun kissed induced. Golden gorgeous red, the girls in school used to call him. they got in his nerves so much he wanted to run as far
away from all of them as he could—sadly for him, school was mandatory and running was not an option.
He would have gotten a different reaction had he looked more like his father than his mother in some features. Thank gods in heaven for that because his father looked like a girl. Well maybe girl was too hard of a blow for a soft looking man, but he did. His features didn’t look tough man-like. He was short, yes, thin for a man, and his facial features were soft like the features of a woman. While his mother was the opposite. She was tall, broad shoulders, stocky hips, thick muscles even though she didn’t lift a bit of weights other than growing up working on a farm in Ireland where she was the only child and the family needed her to work like a boy since a boy is all they wanted in the first place. She was six feet even and her nose was stark and sharp on her face. His nose had taken the longer slender look from her. his cheekbones had taken the tough as nails look from her. his height had surpassed hers by two inches, but the hair and they eyes had come from her too. Well, maybe not the hair although even though she swore nobody in her perfectly Irish family had red hair, and she didn’t either, he couldn’t imagine getting this shade of red from his father who had dark eyes, dark hair, and features that screamed his Columbian heritage. His mother and father were like night and day but they were strong together and in love with each other. Most women wouldn’t have looked twice at his father, and most men would have run from his mother. Yet somehow they found beauty in each other’s outer and inner appearance. They found it and they shared it proudly. The Jessops were an enigma of a couple. He had shaken his head at the last name. Why his father had changed his name when he came to America had been a bit of a mystery to him until lately. That mystery was unraveling and his anger was intensifying.
“He was part of their Force Reconnocense team.” Autumn’s voice brought him back to the here and now.
“FORECON, I know it.” He also knew those men were lethally trained because he had been a part of that too.
“He was also one of their top men for the Military Intelligence teams too.”
He growled. Now he got it. They needed him because this man was a younger version of him. Force Recon, military intelligence, lethal training with the intellect to know how to use it and use it well. The man could find anything and get in and out without a hint of warning. He knew this because he had been that man during his career.
“So then how do you know he’s the guy you’re after? In my day FORECON men didn’t get seen.”
“In your day men probably didn’t get distracted by their southern head. He has a heart on to sink his dick inside this woman before he kills her.”
He grumbled several curses in perfect Columbian Spanish as he saw the file with the picture of the woman that Autumn sent to him. He couldn’t blame the guy, he’d want to introduce his southern head to her vagina too, but back in his day men followed their mission through without distraction. Maybe…just maybe…he traced his fingertips over the picture of her delicious looking lips.
He wasn’t thinking with his southern head here; he was thinking with the northern one. There wasn’t anybody in the Special Conditions Witness Protection program who was qualified to deal with a man with this guy’s training. Not even a southern distraction would save an officer guarding her. She would be dead in less than three days.
“Don’t make this a habit, Autumn. I mean it. I’ll pick her up at the stopping ground…you know which one I’m talking about and how we’ll do this. Don’t be late. I won’t wait.” He disconnected the call. He had twelve hours to get his stuff together, and less than forty eight before the war commenced.
Yeah, the conversation had ended with him willfully taking on this job. What was he thinking? Or more like what wasn’t he thinking? That Abigail Hayashi was one sexy woman. He couldn’t deny that the second he saw her picture regions of his body that had been dormant for far too long started to awaken with a blazing fire. He told himself to kick that mess out of his mind. This was not his job—protection was not what he did. But something in those eyes, that soft innocence that he saw within them, made him want to help keep her safe.
“Damn fool,” he mumbled to himself as he drove toward the pickup point. “As if you don’t have things to take care of for yourself.” He chastised himself again. “You’re not in the business of saving the world anymore, especially when the world doesn’t want to be saved.” He tried to tell himself his mission came first. Never abandon a mission he chided himself, but the other half of his brain told him protection, fighting for justice, that was a part of him that wasn’t going to die just because he needed a special kind of justice of his own. He wasn’t going to stop with his mission he was just taking a break long enough to keep this woman safe. “Besides, you can still work yours while you help her. You know how to do more than one thing at a time, Rhys.” He chuckled to himself realizing he was talking to himself out loud far too often now. He laughed even harder when he told himself, “you know you’re right.” Of course he was right. Could he live with himself if that woman died and he knew he could have helped save her life? No; he couldn’t do that because he was still a Marine first. He was still the FORECON Marine who went into the hot zones because he knew it was the right thing to do and because he knew his mission was to fight evil and save lives even if that meant risking his own in order to do it.
He had just about talked himself into focusing on his new, unexpected mission until he pulled up to the pickup point and saw Autumn waiting for him with Abigail. The woman was a hell of a lot more beautiful than a picture could show. Another instinct kicked in that made him not only want to protect this woman, but made him want to claim her too.
He growled low forcing himself to get the dick out of his thought process and realizing this mission to protect her had just gotten a thousand times more complicated. Those legs barely covered by shorts that wrapped seductively around her mid thigh region made him want to have those legs wrapped around him. no, maybe he just wanted to discard her shorts and have his body wrapped around hers, inside hers. Thank the gods for a hot pass otherwise she probably would have been in jeans or something like it. He imagined Autumn had gotten her to their unit with haste so that meant she probably hadn’t packed the clothes herself. A South Carolina unit must have gone in and packed and whoever had done it must have missed the fact that some places were still trying to warm up. Thankfully, today this place wasn’t one of them. Today this place was already warm and that woman had it heading toward scorching hot.
He shook his head. The low sexual haze was going to kill him if he didn’t get his mind out of the woman’s shorts.
“We go now,” he said roughly. He noticed Autumn’s wide eyes and realized his voice had been military meets pissed off man. He was pissed at himself. As a Marine there is no way he should be letting desire get in the way of his thought process and he was going to, without hesitation, nip his need to take her body hard and fast before it endangered his or her life.
“Well hello to you too,” she said in a sultry voice that was natural, yet somehow it held enough force to jumpstart his need to go primal male on her and for that he was even more pissed off.
“Look,” he heard the roughness of his tone but he didn’t care. He couldn’t stop it and that, too, pissed him off. “Standing out here exposes you; it exposes her, and it exposes me, so unless you want to take a bullet in that precious head of yours get your ass in my car.” He had bit those words out like a commander over a battalion instead of in a sweet tone for a civilian woman who had probably never spent more than five seconds with a real military man.
“I don’t have an ass—oh I assumed you were talking ass of the biblical persuasion.”
His eyes narrowed his jaw started to tick and he knew he was ready to take her to task. He was not in the mood for any prim and proper lectures. The look on his face seemed to be making even Autumn’s shock level go up.
This wasn’t his standard way of dealing with a woman—not unless she was under his
command and he hadn’t had one of those for many years, even before he left his unit and retired from the Marines it had been a while since a woman was on his team.
It may not have been how he usually spoke to women, especially a civilian, but It worked. Her eyes widened and he saw that look of fear in them before she hustled to the car like a scared kid. She got in the back seat and slammed the door shut. Autumn laughed. “I see you’ll be able to handle her just fine. Thanks Rhys. I know this isn’t your thing, but we need you on this. None of the guys in my unit can handle this guy. He’s…he’s different.”
He nodded. “I know he’s killed some of the best of you. I know none of you have the skill to combat him. but I can’t make you any promises, Autumn.”
“I know, but what you can give her is better than what any of us can. Stay safe. You know how to contact me.”
He nodded and watched Autumn get in her own car. The driver was a young man he knew to have recently moved from Homeland Security and was now under her command in the Special Conditions Witness Protection unit. Apparently the young man knew her from her days in Homeland Security and she had said he was one of the best when it came to spying. Yeah, she had admitted it, not that he didn’t already know about it.
Rhys walked back to the car, pulled the backdoor open. “Get out.” He watched as one toned leg followed by the other came out the car. “This isn’t driving Ms. Daisy. You sit up front with me.” Not that having her up front was a good thing given those legs would be in full view. Good lord the woman had sexy looking smooth legs that made him want to slide his tongue from knee to dead center thigh. He hated having people sitting behind him, out of his range, out of his surveillance zone, and he wouldn’t have her doing it no matter how innocent she seemed.
He watched as she walked to the front of the car where he had opened the door for her. The view from behind was good too.
Code of Honor Page 3
