Parker: A Reed Security Romance

by Giulia Lagomarsino

  “Blake, stop!”

  She saw it too late, stumbling at the edge of the water, but she couldn’t stop. She fell in and disappeared beneath the water as I dove for the edge and shoved my arm down to try and grab for her. I couldn’t see her. There wasn’t enough light in here to see into the depths of the water.

  “Blake!”

  When she didn’t come up after a few seconds, I stood and tore the vest from my body and dove into the water. I could feel the pull as the water started sucking me down further. I let it pull me down until the light from above was too dim to see anything else. A sudden yank had me spinning in the water. Blake was holding onto the wall down below me, as a particularly strong current was pulling her down. She seemed to be just on the edge of it. I motioned for her to grab my leg and hold on, then I gripped onto the rock wall and started pulling us up. When she broke the resistance of the current, she grabbed onto the rock and propelled herself up to the top. We broke the surface of the water, panting and shaking from the cold water.

  I swam for the side where my vest still laid and held it over the water as I swam to the other side. I had the journal in one of the pockets and I couldn’t risk getting it wet. Then all of this would have been for nothing. Pulling myself up to the ledge, I hoisted myself up and then held out my hand for Blake to take. Once on dry land again, we both collapsed to the ground, panting and trying to catch our breath.

  “Sorry I almost got you killed,” she panted.

  “It’s okay. Don’t feel bad about it,” I said, not mentioning that I had shot her. I had to have some leverage over her.

  “No, really. I’m sorry. I should have been paying better attention.”

  I waved her off and sat up on one elbow to face her. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”

  She sat up quickly, pressing her lips to mine. “You are so gonna get lucky when we get out of this.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Oh yeah. I’m gonna do so many dirty things to you.”

  I swallowed hard, a million thoughts running through my head. Positions, lingerie, and those gorgeous tits, all running on a reel in my head. It almost made me feel bad. I should really tell her that I shot her. I should really tell her that now we were even.

  She leaned in to whisper in my ear. “I’m gonna suck you so hard that you see stars as you come, and then I’m gonna let you fuck my ass and take me until I’m so sore I can’t walk.”

  Yeah, I definitely wasn’t telling her anything.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Senator Cortez

  “Sir, the lab was broken into.”

  It was the phone call that I thought would never come. Nobody knew about what we were doing, aside from our small group, and there were measures in place to make sure that no one talked.

  “What did they get?”

  “One of the journals I was using to document the research. We’re still going through everything else. At this time, it doesn’t look like any samples were taken.”

  Shit. “What will that tell them?”

  “Everything. All my notes, everything we’ve tested, all the lab results…it’s all in there.”

  “What about names?”

  “No, that was all kept separate.”

  “So, they have no proof.”

  “Sir, with all due respect, they have proof of what I was doing.”

  “No,” I said angrily. “They have the ramblings of a scientist. There are no bodies, and if they don’t have the actual vials from the lab, then they have nothing.”

  “They have evidence of what we’ve done. If they get their hands on anything else, we’ll be exposed.”

  “Then bump up security. I want video feed from the lab so that I know exactly who the fuck snuck in and what they were doing.”

  “I’ll have the security team send it over.”

  “What’s been done to capture the men that broke in?”

  “Security enacted our protocols as soon as we knew there was a threat.”

  “Any word yet on if they’ve been captured?”

  “I know they called in the air squadron.”

  “Shit.” They’d better get these fuckers or there could be hell to pay. It was one thing to capture them quietly. It was another to have to bring in such a lethal team that could bring attention to us.

  “Sir, our whole operation could be compromised. There’s so much in the journals, so much information that they could use to stop us.”

  “Then we’ll have to move up the timeline. Get me that video feed. I need to do some digging and find out who’s looking into us. You just keep working and get the final product finished.”

  “There’s one more thing that you’re going to have to consider, sir.”

  “What’s that?”

  “When this is tested, it’s going to come out that this was created in a lab. And if you don’t get the journals back, it’ll only prove it.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” I smirked. “I have that all covered.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Blake

  “Hang on. I need to stop for a minute.”

  We had been walking for what felt like hours. My feet were killing me because my shoes were soaked and my socks were rubbing against my feet. It felt like my feet were bleeding, but I wasn’t about to take my shoes off to find out. There was nothing I could do about it anyway. Parker leaned against the rock wall and slid to the floor. I followed suit and sighed when my feet finally had a reprieve.

  “This was not the way I thought our day would end,” I muttered as I closed my eyes.

  “Really? You saw this going differently?”

  I rolled my head to look at him. “Yeah, walking around a mine was not part of the plan.”

  “Huh,” he said, his shoulders shaking slightly. “I didn’t really see us jumping out a window of the research lab.”

  “That was the strange part to you?”

  “Well, to be fair, I’ve already been thrown through one window. I wasn’t really expecting it to happen twice in one week.”

  “I didn’t throw you through the second window. You jumped through that all on your own.”

  “Still, you can’t seriously think that this is normal.”

  I shrugged. It didn’t really seem that odd to me. “Well, it’s not something that’ll happen every day. I’ll give you that much, but I think you’re going about this all wrong.”

  “Is that right.”

  “Yeah, you should be happy. This is an adventure.”

  “In a mine. That’s the kind of adventure you would go on,” he said slowly.

  “Well, not purposely, but you have to admit that it’s original,” I said with a grin.

  “Okay, maybe, but that doesn’t mean this is my idea of a good time.”

  “But think of all the stories we’ll have to tell. When I go home at Christmas, I’m definitely going to beat my brothers out for best stories of the year.”

  “If we get to go home at Christmas,” he reminded me.

  “Alright, if we get to go home at Christmas. Still, my brothers always beat me, but this will definitely put me in the number one spot.”

  He stared at me strangely. “Sorry, but your family sounds kind of weird.”

  “You would get it if you met them. We’re all very competitive.”

  He chuckled slightly, his face almost sad.

  “What?” I asked, wondering what had changed his demeanor so much.

  “Nothing. I just…I was wondering what it would be like to be around my family again and have that kind of closeness.”

  “You don’t have that?”

  He shook his head. “Nah, not anymore,” he said quietly. “A few phone calls to my baby sister is about all the contact I have with them.”

  “Why?”

  “No one wants to hang around with a rapist.”

  I sat up and twisted to look at him. “But they’re your family. They have to know that you didn’t do that.”

  He lifted one
shoulder in a shrug. “They do. That’s the problem. Everyone wants to fix everything, but this isn’t something they can fix. They all looked at me with pity and wondered how I was doing. I couldn’t take it, so I walked.”

  I couldn’t imagine what it was like for him, to be made to feel like he was a rapist to the point that he would walk away from his family. It had to be a very lonely life.

  Parker stood and held out his hand for me. “We should get moving. We can’t stay here too long.”

  “Do you think we lost them?” I asked as we continued down the tunnel.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “They fired an RPG at us. They’re not likely to walk away until they have our dead bodies.”

  A shiver ran down my spine at his words. It wasn’t like I was clueless as to what I was getting into when I started this, but having just come so close to death, I didn’t relish thinking about it any further.

  “We need to have a plan for when we get out of this tunnel. If they’re waiting for us, we can’t go out with what little we’re armed with.”

  “We have no way of calling Reed Security, or making contact with anyone else. Our only chance of getting out of this alive is to take them out before they take us out.”

  “The good news is that this mine shaft is taking us all over the fucking place. With any luck, we’ll be able to pop up somewhere no one is waiting for us,” I said, trying to convince myself that’s what would happen.

  An echo sounded down the tunnel and I stopped, placing a hand on Parker’s chest. We flattened ourselves against the wall, straining to hear anything we could. The voices were growing louder, but the echo was distorting the sound, making it impossible to understand what they were saying. It sounded like there was a fork in the tunnel up ahead, and they were coming from another direction.

  “I’m going to move to the other side of the tunnel up ahead. I’ll take the first from behind and you get the second,” Parker said quietly. “If we kill them here, we can take that tunnel to find our way out. No bodies to be found.”

  I nodded. “And if there are more than two?”

  His smirk sent shivers through my body. God, he was so sexy. “Then you’ll take care of it,” he said, running his thumb down my cheek. “If you can kick my ass, you can take out these chumps.”

  It made sense, and at this point, it was our only option. He moved quickly ahead of me, sticking as close to the wall as possible. I could see the shadows of the men moving down the tunnel as he slipped into the other fork of the tunnel and held himself against the wall. I hung back, just out of sight and waited. The men were just about to us, guns in hand, but not really watching for a threat. Parker made his move, slipping out and wrapping his arm around the first guy’s neck, snapping it instantly. I moved quickly, firing off just one shot as the man turned to see what was happening. He dropped to the ground, dead just like his friend.

  “Nice shooting.”

  “Nice…neck breaking.”

  Parker grinned at me and motioned me forward. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

  There was more light in this part of the tunnel and we moved much faster down this passageway. I was excited to get out of this hole and see daylight again. It wouldn’t hurt to have warm clothes either.

  “There’s the ladder,” Parker pointed up ahead.

  “Oh, thank God! I need a warm bath and the biggest steak ever.”

  “When we get out of here, I’ll massage your tits.”

  I glanced back at him in confusion. “Did you just say that you would massage my tits?”

  “Yeah,” he shrugged. “You look stressed, like you need a good tit massage.”

  I just stared at him as he waggled his eyebrows at me. And then I started laughing. Leave it to Parker to make jokes about tits at a time like this.

  He motioned for me to climb up first, which I happily agreed to. We still had a long way home once we got out of here. Without any way to call anyone, we were basically on our own. I really hoped that Parker was good with directions. I hit the last rung of the ladder and smiled as the sun hit my face, but it was all short-lived when I saw five men standing just a little ways off and a helicopter sitting beyond them. We were so fucked.

  “Why did you stop moving?” Parker asked.

  I took in all the men standing there and calculated our odds of getting out of this thing alive. They weren’t very good if we stepped out there, but if we went back down in the tunnels, there might still be a way out. I got ready to drop my weight and glanced down quickly.

  “Run!” I shouted, placing my hands on the outside of the ladder and letting my legs dangle. Parker’s eyes widened and he slid down the ladder. I released my tight grip and slid down, just barely missing Parker as he rolled out of the way in time. He grabbed my arm and yanked me after him just as a man appeared at the top and started firing into the shaft.

  “Fuck! I thought we got rid of them!” Parker shouted as we raced down the tunnel.

  “They’re like a bad case of acne. They just keep popping up.”

  “That’s a really weird reference,” he shouted over his shoulder. “Remind me to ask you about that if we ever get out of here.”

  A loud boom sounded from above and the ground shook beneath our feet. Parker turned, his eyes wide as he leapt toward me and tackled me to the ground, his body covering mine as rocks fell all around us, crushing us beneath their weight.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Cap

  “What exactly are we doing, Cap?” Sinner asked from the seat beside me.

  “We lost communication with Parker and Blake. They were doing a job for Knight, and their SUV stopped moving about a half hour away. Then the signal was lost completely. We need to go get them.”

  “If they’re still alive,” Burg muttered from the back seat.

  “They’re alive,” I insisted. I hadn’t lost a man in years, and I wasn’t about to change that any time soon.

  “Let’s face it, if their SUV is stopped and the signal is gone, that most likely means that the SUV was blown up or something.”

  “That doesn’t mean they’re dead,” Cazzo jumped in.

  “Thank you,” I said, happy that someone else was seeing things my way.

  “Yeah, Cazzo’s right. They could have been taken hostage or shot after the SUV was blown up. It all depends on who captured them.”

  “Thanks,” I muttered, happier when he hadn’t gotten involved.

  “Who are these guys anyway?” Burg asked.

  “I’m not sure exactly. We were tracking down a senator’s connections-”

  “Oh, for the love of God,” Cazzo all but yelled. “Another fucking senator? When is this shit gonna end?”

  “This doesn’t have anything to do with Knight and his vendetta,” I assured him.

  “Nothing?” he questioned.

  “Alright, he found the information in Blakely’s home safe, but it’s not about anything to do with Knight. This is about something bigger.”

  “And what’s that?” Burg asked curiously.

  I tightened my hands on the wheel and gritted my teeth. “I don’t know that either.”

  Cazzo and Burg threw their hands up and groaned while Sinner started laughing.

  “But there is something going on,” I reassured them. “I swear, you know I wouldn’t let Knight go off half cocked if I thought there was nothing to go on.”

  “So, what’s the plan?” Cazzo asked. “I mean, is this a shoot ‘em up situation or a recon?”

  “Considering who’s involved and how this all came about, I would say definitely shoot to kill.”

  Knight slowed in front of us. He was traveling in another SUV with Hunter, Derek, and Alec. Knight pulled over to the side of the road and I followed. He called my phone and I put it on speakerphone for all of us to hear. “Cap, are you seeing this?”

  “I’m not seeing anything.”

  “Two o’clock.”

/>   We all shifted and looked out the passenger side of the vehicle. In the distance, I could make out some dark shapes, but I couldn’t see anything else from this distance.

  “Someone grab the binoculars,” I said.

  “Holy shit,” Burg said as he looked out the window through the binoculars. “There’s a fucking Blackhawk and…five guys standing around holding machine guns. There are quite a few weapons on the Blackhawk. Someone’s not playing nice.”

  “What are they doing?”

  He shook his head as he continued to look at the area. “I see Blake. She just popped out of a hole.”

  “There are mines all around here,” Knight said over the phone. “They’re probably hiding out.”

  “I’m on it,” Sinner said, jumping into the backseat and hitting the button for the roof.

  “Sinner, no,” I said with as much authority as I could muster.

  “Oh yeah, it’s go time.”

  “It’s not go time.”

  “It’s time to turn and burn.”

  “There’s no turning,” Cazzo said as he hopped into the backseat, “but there will most definitely be burning.”

  “I said no,” I said more forcefully.

  “Burg, take this end,” Cazzo nodded as he passed him a fucking RPG from the trunk.

  “Are you not listening? I said no.”

  “You got it?” Burg asked as he started passing it to Sinner. Burg hopped out and climbed on the roof, helping to mount the weapon in place.

  “This is going to be so awesome,” Sinner grinned, rubbing his hands together.

  “You got targeting locked on?” Cazzo asked.

  “Does anyone want to hear what I think?” I asked hopefully.

  “Are they planning on taking out that chopper today or were they planning on waiting for the next one?” Knight asked over the phone.

  “I guess no one cares about my opinion,” I muttered to myself. “It’s not like I’m the boss or anything. Why would they listen to me?”

  “Locked and loaded,” Burg said, banging his hand on the roof.