Dominance Never Dies (Masters and Mercenaries Book 11)

by Lexi Blake

  “That’s not what I’ve heard, man. I’ve heard Miles is perfecting a piece of software that’s going to revolutionize how we search for missing persons. Why would he stay and work close cover when he can change the world? You honestly think Big Tag would hold them back? He didn’t hold his brother back. Sean left a long time ago.”

  Fain had no idea what he was talking about. He didn’t know the team. They stuck together. They were a family. “We’ll see.”

  He didn’t need to argue with Fain. He had way too much to think about as it was. Like whether or not he was capable of making proper decisions around Mia.

  He could concentrate on that because he didn’t need to think about the company getting torn apart. That wasn’t going to happen. Fain was simply wrong about that.

  But Sean had left. Sean had followed his bliss and that had brought him great satisfaction. Would Ian stand in the way if Adam and Jake wanted to grow their own business?

  “Stay here and watch her door,” Case ordered. He pulled the baseball cap he’d brought out of his pocket and settled it on his head. Between the cap that would disguise the color of his hair and the aviators he covered his eyes with, he would be fairly nondescript as he walked the streets of Cartagena.

  “I can help,” a deep voice said.

  Case looked up and Michael was leaning against the door of the room he shared with Hutch. His skin was a little pale, but otherwise he was upright and his eyes were steady. Still, he’d taken a bullet not four days before. “You need to rest.”

  “No, he needs to watch me so you have backup,” Fain said with a sardonic tone. “You won’t take Hutch with you if Malone is out. This is what I was talking about. You’re making decisions based on the fact that you like a girl, decisions that could get you killed. He’s your partner, right? You have partners from what I understand. He’s got your back.”

  Case walked toward Michael’s room, unwilling to have this discussion in front of someone who wasn’t family. He already didn’t like how much Fain knew about the inner workings of his company.

  Michael stepped back in and shut the door, a grimace on his face as he moved. “He’s right, you know. You’re making this decision based on your dick.”

  His dick didn’t make decisions for him at all. Never once in his life. His heart was another matter altogether. “I’ll be fine.”

  Michael’s face darkened. “What would you say to me if I wanted to head out into a foreign city where my brother had last been seen and where there’s likely someone who wants to take a member of our team. You would be an awfully good bargaining chip when it came to Mia. She would give herself up to save you. Hell, she gave herself up to save me and she’s not in love with me.”

  In love. The idea made him nervous. It was one thing to want her. It was another to give his soul to her the way Ian had with Charlotte and Sean with Grace. He’d seen his mother do that and she’d been left with nothing when his father had walked out. She’d been a shell, empty and hollowed out.

  Did he even want to feel that way about a woman? He couldn’t forget how shitty it had felt the first time she’d lied to him, how everything had fallen apart and he’d been more alone than he could have imagined.

  He needed to think about the mission. The op. That was what mattered. Sometimes when in the thick of things, it was important to draw back and get through each step separately.

  He needed to take a look at the bank that had been hit, needed to see where his brother had stood. If there was any way to quietly talk to some people at the bank, he would do it. Discreetly.

  Theo was the important thing here. Still, he couldn’t leave Mia alone and leaving her with Fain was like leaving her alone. He didn’t know the man yet. He couldn’t trust Fain. Not with her.

  But Michael had a point. If this was about Michael’s brother, JT, Case would never allow him to go in alone. He wouldn’t ever let his partner walk into a situation without backup. Not if he could do something about it. “Watch Fain, please. I’ll take Hutch with me.”

  Michael rolled his eyes. “You’ll have to wake him up, but I made sure his SIG is in working order. He’s been busy tending crops or something on his online game and hasn’t cleaned it in months. One of these days, that boy is going to grow up.”

  Hutch was the perpetual manchild, but his heart was in the right place.

  Hutch had been there that night. Hutch had watched Theo die. Case crossed into the bedroom where Hutch was laid out on one of the two double beds, his head covered with a pillow as though he was trying to keep out the sunlight.

  Or invite someone to smother him.

  Case picked up the pillow. “Hutchins, time to wake up. Get your lazy ass out of that bed right fucking now and back up your CO.”

  Hutch damn near came off the bed, his eyes wild and his hands moving as though looking for his gun. “What the fuck?” He frowned. “You suck, Taggart. Where’s my gun?”

  “Michael took it from you and cleaned it so now it’s shiny and ready for use on you. Never let a man take your piece. Not even when you’re fucking asleep. Let’s go. We have a job to do.”

  Hutch yawned, seeming to regain his usual lackadaisical composure. “I’m going to need some coffee.”

  Lucky for him, they were in Colombia.

  Thirty minutes later, Case stood outside Old Town, the most popular part of the city with tourists. Surrounded by Las Murallas, thick stone walls that had once protected the city from invaders, the small district was filled to the brim with foreigners enjoying the day. The sky above was a clear crystal blue and he had to wonder if his brother was sitting somewhere, staring up at the sky and wondering why he’d been left behind.

  “Fain seems pretty solid to me, boss,” Hutch said quietly. He carried his second cup of heavily sweetened coffee of the day. Case had noticed early on that Hutch had habits. Coffee, thick with cream and sugar in the morning, some kind of soda after noon. Never any alcohol. Not a beer or a shot of whiskey. “I ran his records and he was in the Marines for five years. Did four tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. Served in Force Recon. One purple heart. Only child of Marie and Hank Fain of the great state of Iowa. One half brother from Marie’s first marriage, but I didn’t find much on him. The Fains ran a farm until they sold out to a big corporation and retired to Florida.”

  It didn’t sit well. “How deep did you dig?”

  Hutch sighed. “I’ve been awake for thirty minutes, boss. For the last couple of days finding the identities of our dead dudes and lady corpse was, according to you, my highest task in life.”

  “I’m sure I didn’t put it that way.”

  “No, you said something like figure it out or I’ll fire you. Which, might I point out, is a threat you never follow through on so now it’s a little like white noise. All I’m saying is I’m your lone tech guy. In the words of Scotty…” Hutch went into a bad Scottish accent. “I’m giving her all I can, Captain.”

  He did get the point. “I can’t bring anyone else in. I need your best work, man.”

  Hutch sobered. “You’ll have it, but I’m working with one hand tied behind my back. I don’t have Adam or Chelsea to run interference and some of the sites I’m pulling files from aren’t the easiest hacks in the world. Fain was up for recruitment into our old black ops team. I did find that paperwork. Will you at least let me try to contact Ten and ask why he didn’t make the cut? I’m not sure where he is, but I can probably find a number he might or might not be using right now. I can try the last one I had, but he likes to change things up.”

  Case was definitely interested in why Fain hadn’t joined their CIA team. But he also knew getting Ten on the phone could take a while. “Yes. You can do that. Tell him I’m worried because Mia hired him. That’s all he needs to know right now. What did you find out about our would-be kidnappers?”

  Down the street he could see the bank his brother had robbed. Case had studied the police reports. Theo and his team had been precise and professional. Like the other Gringos
jobs. They’d gotten in, blown the safe, and gotten out with over a hundred grand in under three minutes. How long had Theo prepped for the job? He would have cased the place. He would have taken his time and learned the ins and outs of the building and the habits of the people around it.

  “Facial recognition identified our lovely flight attendant Angela Burns. She’s worked for 4L Software for the last year. Her Facebook feed is full of cats and she has a real thing for Barry Manilow. Yeah, I thought that sounded fishy, too, so I dug a little deeper. Angela Burns is a construct for Angela Winslow, who’s done time for fraud and assault. Angie was a bad, bad girl, but she apparently had some good connections because her documents were nicely done. The pilot and the copilot were clean, which means one of two things.”

  “Either they hadn’t gotten caught yet or they’re backed by someone who can really scrub a record clean.”

  “And that’s what scares the mother fuck out of me.” Hutch kept pace with him, walking slowly, as though they were simply two more tourists, enjoying the Colonial architecture. “I’ve got some feelers out on the Deep Web. We’ll see what comes up. I’ve asked some hacktivist friends of mine about Kronberg.”

  The company that had funded Hope McDonald’s research. “I thought you were trying to stay away from that crowd.”

  Actually, Ten had ordered him to. Case hadn’t thought he needed to reiterate what just made sense.

  “They’re not all bad,” Hutch argued. “And this is a special case. This is for Theo.”

  Case nodded, his eyes on the bank ahead of him. “All right. Do what you need to do, but understand that there’s a reason Ten didn’t want you hanging with that group.”

  “He thought I’d relapse, I’m sure. Once a black hat, always a black hat.” There was a bitterness to Hutch’s tone that couldn’t be denied.

  Hutch had spent some time in juvie for hacking into places he shouldn’t have. Case thought he was being a bit dramatic calling himself a black hat hacker—a name that typically described someone who hacked high-level security for little to no reason beyond being a complete dick. “No one thought you were a black hat, but that lifestyle got you in trouble once. Those dudes can be malicious. If they knew who you worked for now, they would out you. Or use you. Ten was worried about you. He wouldn’t have hired you if he’d thought you were going to turn on him.”

  “Yeah, well, I was pretty fucking happy to get out of juvie. I’m never eating another baloney sandwich again.” Hutch stared ahead. “Is that it?”

  The bank was outside the walled portion of the city. It was neat and nondescript. It wasn’t a chain, but a local bank. Older and established, but obviously small.

  “Have you looked for any connections between the bank robberies?” Case slowed as they approached the bank.

  Hutch stared at him, frowning mightily. “As I didn’t know about the bank robberies until approximately four days ago, and then there was the kidnapping and trying to track them down, and now there’s the ‘who’s Ezra Fain’ game I’m playing, no. I haven’t tried to connect the robberies I didn’t know about. Again, this is where Chelsea or Adam as backup would be helpful. I get that Big Tag wants to keep this op a secret, but we need them. I’m completely shocked he hasn’t gotten Chelsea on this.”

  Chelsea Weston was not only Big Tag’s sister-in-law, she was also one of the best hackers on the planet. She’d been an actual black hat at one point in time. She’d been known as the Broker and she could get into any system. And now she had Agency clearance. “She’s working the problem from another angle.”

  Hutch stopped, his hands coming out in that “why the fuck didn’t you say that earlier” gesture of his. “She can take ten minutes to help me out. I’ll get her on the phone and she can handle the pilot and copilot issue. If I can bring Adam in, he can run the faces through his software. It’s better than anything I have on my system. I’ll deal with the bank robberies. I can also have her ask some of her contacts for anything they’ve got on the Gringos gang. Is that what she’s working on?”

  He should tell him yes and throw him off this line of questioning, but he needed Hutch working on all of it. Michael could help him, but calling back to Dallas was out of the question. “No. Just get the job done. You can do it. You’re the only one I want on it.” He looked around for a convenience store. South American candy was supposed to be pretty spectacular. Maybe he could bribe his buddy. “Let’s get you some candy and some soda. It’s going to be a long night, right?”

  Hutch had gone a pasty shade. “What have you done, Case?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s one reason you would leave Chelsea out of this. I’m not stupid. She’s the queen. I bow to her brilliance. I can match Adam on occasion, but never her. So if you’re leaving her out it’s because Big Tag doesn’t know we’re here.”

  “He knows we’re here.” They’d gone over this.

  “I know that, but if I screw this up, he’s going to be mad. Chelsea won’t fuck everything up.” Hutch looked a little sick. His hand started to go for his cell phone.

  Case had to shut that shit down. “Don’t.” He moved in close because he wasn’t having an open argument in the middle of the street. “You can handle this, Hutch. You can be every bit as sharp as Chelsea when you want to be. If you pick up that phone and get Chelsea involved, she’ll call Ian and we’ll lose Santos. I can’t afford to do that.”

  “And I can’t afford to die the painful death coming to me the minute Big Tag realizes I could have handed this off to someone smarter than me and I didn’t.”

  He wasn’t doing this. Not now. He glanced around, looking for a restaurant he could haul Hutch into, and he saw it. There was a park across the street from the bank. It was a tiny thing, but had a couple of benches and some pretty landscaping. It was the perfect place to sit and drink some coffee and plan a robbery.

  “Hey, where are you…” Hutch’s question died out as Case took off toward the park.

  He jogged across the street, careful to avoid traffic, but he needed to be there. Needed to be where he was sure Theo had sat and planned and plotted. Theo would have gone about it in a methodical fashion. He was a great planner. He wasn’t always great at executing the plan and could definitely make mistakes in the field, but his brother had been excellent at planning an op. He would have had that studious expression on his face that Case joked he had when he was either planning something or constipated. Then Theo would send Case his happy middle finger and they would both laugh.

  He wasn’t laughing now.

  “What’s going on?” Hutch asked as he caught up. “I’m sorry about what I said back there. I will get this done.”

  “Ah, you come back,” a feminine voice said. “You like your usual? I have…missed you.”

  Case turned and saw a young woman, likely around twenty, standing next to an ice cream cart. She was dressed in a white T-shirt with an ice cream on the front, her dark hair in a ponytail. “You know me?”

  He knew the answer before she said a word, before her eyes flared in obvious confusion.

  She shook her head. “No. I’m sorry. I was mistaken. You look like someone who used to…what is the word? Uhm, he would relax here in the afternoons. He was nice American man.”

  And she was into him. It had been there in the way her smile had dimmed when she’d realized he wasn’t Theo. It had always been like that. Women flocked to Theo and his good-natured charm. It was good to know his brother still had some charm, that it hadn’t been burned away by whatever Hope had done to him.

  “He was my brother and he and I got separated. There must be something wrong with his cell because he was supposed to meet me at the hotel yesterday, but he didn’t get there. I’m worried about him. He’s been down here for a while, but I just got in. I thought I might find him here. He talked about how much he liked this park.”

  The girl blushed and Case knew he had her. She’d had a thing for his sunny, happy brother.

 
“He’s such a nice man,” she said in her thick Colombian accent, her lips curling up. “I mean he’s not all soft or anything. But was nice to me.” She frowned a little. “I think he might have been involved with someone rough.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She glanced behind her as though trying to make sure no one was there. When she turned back, her voice was hushed. “He had one friend who seemed nice, but then another one showed up and they argued. The other man was very short with him. I don’t think Tomas wanted to go with him. I didn’t see him again after that. Do you think he’s in trouble?”

  Tomas? Was that the name Hope had given him? Kai had warned Case that Hope would likely have tried to rewire Theo’s entire life. Case didn’t understand the technology, but Kai had explained that through a combination of drugs, torture, and reconditioning therapy, Theo would forget his old life and believe whatever Hope told him.

  It seemed to Case that Theo was bucking her training a bit, but his brother was definitely in trouble.

  He couldn’t scare the crap out of the girl though. “I’m not sure. I need to find him though. Is there anything you can remember? Did he tell you where he was staying?”

  “He just said he was staying around. At first I thought he was probably at one of the big hotels, but I saw him on the bus one day.” She blushed.

  He couldn’t have her too embarrassed to speak. “It’s okay if you followed him. My brother is a good-looking kid. Rather like myself.” He could turn on some charm. “I’m sure he would be flattered that you liked him enough to follow him.”

  “I’m not into guys, but even I know he’s pretty hot,” Hutch said with a grin. He pulled out some cash. “Could I get a cone? Chocolate.”

  She laughed, her shoulders relaxing as she went about her work. It was obvious they’d put her back at ease. “Of course. It was a silly thing to do, but I was curious. He got out in an industrial part of the city. I stayed on the bus, but the building he went into looked like a clinic of some kind. He told me he worked security. I assumed he was a guard at the clinic. You might look there. He hasn’t come back here for a week. I think perhaps that bank robbery scared him off. I know I was scared. Please tell him it’s peaceful here again.” She held out the cone. “Sal?”