Logan

by Theodora Lane

“Mission?” She pulled away. He talked as if he was still in the military. “Logan, I thought you were…retired?”

  Logan’s cheeks pinked. “Discharged.”

  Shae had no idea what that meant. “Like an honorable discharge?”

  He glanced down at the table and then back to her. “Something like that.” He wasn’t telling her everything, but for now, she didn’t care. Her father needed help.

  “So, you want to do some sort of mission?” Shae straightened in her chair. What was the man proposing?

  “I’m not sure, but I may have a solution. Promise me you won’t do anything for the next twenty-four hours. I’ll call you tomorrow by nine a.m., and if you like my plan, we’ll do it, okay?”

  Her mind spun as she chewed at her bottom lip, and then she released it with a pop. “Twenty-four hours. After that, I’m on the next plane to Brazil.”

  “Good girl.” His voice, deep and rich, sent another wave of shivers through her, landing deep in her pussy. This man was so dangerous, but she wasn’t afraid of him. No, she wanted him. She wanted him to command her again, tell her what to do to him. How to pleasure him and tell her again she was his “good girl.”

  She slipped her voice down an octave into rich and sexy as she leaned closer to him. Looking into his eyes and with a soft breath, she whispered, “I’m not a girl, Logan. And I’m rarely good.”

  Logan stared at her, a flare of hunger burning in his eyes.

  What the hell was she doing? Flirting? Seriously?

  Shae Walker a bad girl…er, woman? She’d never thought of herself that way, but right now, she wanted to be one. Just for Logan.

  What he made her feel and think were just wrong.

  So very wrong.

  Chapter Three

  Logan turned off Highway 290 and drove down the crushed rock road to the garage, kicking up gray dust behind his Jeep. No rain in a month, and the ground was hard, the roads dusty, and the vegetation dry and brown. Only two months ago, bluebonnets, pink evening primroses, and red Indian paintbrush blanketed the fields along the roads and highways, creating a patchwork of color. The hordes of tourists taking photos, parked along the side of the roads, were a pain in the ass to the locals.

  Now, drivers just kept going. Nothing to stop for, except perhaps at a few of the roadside stands selling homemade jerky, wildflower honey, and sausage.

  Despite their rural location, Maximus Garage had been doing well, and Logan was proud of what he and Max had created. They didn’t depend on tourists, or the locals, for that matter. Very few of them could afford what they sold.

  Their high-end clients didn’t care where they operated, just that they received what they ordered. Houston’s train yards, airports, and port transported the finished products to their owners and made their life easy.

  Logan liked easy. The last three years had been good. No money problems, not that he had to worry about money, but the garage did. Logan and the rest of his ragtag band of warriors had avoided drama ever since returning home with only shreds of their honor intact.

  Licking your wounds took time. And someplace safe to hide.

  Stripped of their pensions, benefits, and glad not to spend the rest of their lives in a military brig, they had received an “other than honorable discharge.” After that nightmare, they needed a place to call their own.

  A place to call home. To work. To hide. To heal.

  For most of them, healing took a hell of a long time. Logan knew some wounds might never heal. His included.

  Maximillian Howe, their captain, had made sure his men had all they needed since the military had done their best to screw them with trumped up charges. Max believed there’d been a conspiracy to make their squad the fall guys for a mission gone sideways. Logan and the others had no reason not to believe Max. They were all there when they walked into that village.

  Except Billy. He’d escaped arrest and dishonor by dying before they arrived.

  Logan clenched his eyes closed, and then opened them to blink away the moisture.

  Logan owed Max. They all did.

  Ahead, a grass-covered hill rose behind the large metal Quonset hut Maximus Garage called home. Tucked into the south side of an abandoned salt dome, the garage was partially sheltered from the late afternoon sun.

  A row of vehicles, trucks mostly, lined up outside the building with their front ends facing out for an easy escape, except for a vintage ’65 cherry red Mustang parked away from the others. Rowdy Richards’s car. The man babied it like, well, a baby.

  Logan smiled as he backed in close to the Mustang’s driver door, just to screw with Rowdy. Logan grabbed his laptop case, hopped to the ground, and slammed his door shut. He headed toward the door marked Office to the left of the tall, wide, open service doors spanning the front of the hut.

  Every time he came here felt like coming home.

  Logan loved these guys. They were his family, his support group, and the men at his back. Without them, he never would have been able to survive after the military booted them out without as much as a thanks for serving.

  Not that he couldn’t make it financially. He had money, his trust fund saw to that, but Logan was alone. No family since his father’s death. No one to give a shit about him, remember his birthday, or send him a Christmas card.

  But these guys, they understood him. Knew what he’d been through overseas. Knew what it felt like to walk into a village and find every man, woman, and child executed. And have to take the blame for it. Knew what it was like to hold a dying friend, feel the life drain out of him as his blood fed the parched earth of a war-torn nation.

  They knew. And Logan needed that. He needed not to have to answer questions about why he was so tired or why the dark circles under his eyes came and went.

  Leaving these men or this business wasn’t an option. No fucking way.

  With the nightmares plaguing him, he still needed them. They got it. They understood, and no one laughed at him or told him to suck it up. And even better, no one wanted to talk to him about it.

  Talking wouldn’t make Billy’s ghost go away or make him or those villagers come back to life, and Logan knew it.

  But maybe, just maybe, helping Shae would.

  As he approached, banging and loud music blasted out of the garage’s open doors. Logan tilted his head. Aerosmith? Rowdy. The man’s musical tastes were stuck in the 80s, despite being born in 1986. The banging had to be Rowdy working metal.

  Logan grabbed the handle to the office door, pulled it open, and walked in. The sounds from the shop quieted, muffled by insulated walls. He expected to find Max in the office. The man lived in a small apartment over the office and rarely left, except to have the occasional chicken fried steak and gravy at the local diner or a whiskey at his favorite bar.

  All four desks sat empty.

  He threw himself into the chair at his desk, put his case on the floor next to him, and fired up the company’s computer. It wasn’t as good as his personal laptop, but for what he used it for, managing their accounts, it worked. And it could only be traced back to the garage. Not that anything was untraceable these days, but he and all the men here kept their on-line presence to a minimum as much as possible.

  They’d just as soon not draw attention to themselves.

  The accounting program opened, and he grabbed a stack of invoices on his desk. Searching through them, he found the ones he hadn’t entered and typed them into the spreadsheet. Once that was done, he ran them through the scanner, checked the pdfs, and then shredded the originals. He’d set the program to save to a backup server every thirty minutes to keep their data protected.

  Logan hated paper. If he could get all of their suppliers to go digital, he’d be happy as a pig in shit. Until then, he made it his mission to keep their operation paper-free. Control what you can. Worry about what you couldn’t.

  He’d been working for about twenty minutes when the door from the garage opened. Sound filled the room. Max filled the doorway.
<
br />   “Hey. Didn’t know you’d made it in.” Max grunted at him.

  Logan looked up from the screen. “Got in about twenty minutes ago. You weren’t here.”

  Max gave him a pointed look. “Fair enough.” He offered no excuses. Typical Max.

  His ex-captain and now business partner fell into a chair. He leaned back until it squeaked in protest, and then narrowed his eyes. “What crawled up your ass this morning?”

  Logan shook his head. “That bad?”

  “You look like you had a rough night. Again.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Billy?”

  He nodded and pushed away from the desk, knowing Max wouldn’t take it farther. The man respected his team. If they wanted to talk, he’d listen, but he’d never push. Logan liked that about Max.

  He walked over to Max’s desk and sat in one of the two chairs in front of it. Clasping his hands between his knees, he leaned forward. “Look, I need to talk to you.”

  “Business or personal?” Max’s steel gray gaze bore into him. Logan shook off the urge to spill his guts. The older man had that effect on him, always had. But now was not the time for some Max therapy.

  “Personal.”

  Max sighed. “Fire away.” He sat up in his chair, and Logan knew he had Max’s total attention. Another thing he liked about Max.

  “I called Shae this morning. She’s in trouble.” Max was one of the few people who knew of his promise to Billy.

  Max frowned. “What kind of trouble?” Despite Logan’s promise, he knew Max was the type of man who believed once you’re in his squad, dead or alive, he had responsibilities to you and yours. Logan counted on that.

  “She hasn’t heard from her father in almost a week.”

  “Is that unusual?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’re talking about Billy’s father? The man who blames you for Billy’s death? Who would rather let you burn than spit on you?” Max raised his eyebrows.

  “Yep. That’s the man.” Logan nodded and held out his hand as Max opened his mouth. “I know. He hates me. I got the memo. In triplicate. But this is Shae asking.”

  “Okay. What’s the deal?”

  “Shae’s had no word from him in a week. No one at the oil company he’s an executive at will talk to her or explain where he is. She thinks he’s been kidnapped.”

  “What makes her think that?” Max cocked one eyebrow up.

  “She asked yesterday if he’d been taken. Today, no one will answer her calls.”

  “Suspicious. But not proof.”

  “I agree. She’s ready to go to Brazil and hunt him down herself.”

  “Brazil? He’s an oil exec?” Max frowned. He leaned forward and typed on his computer. “Give me a minute.” More typing.

  Logan nodded. “She said he left two weeks ago to go to the company office in Brazil. He contacted her as usual for about a week and then nothing.”

  “Rio?”

  “Not sure. I forgot to ask.”

  “What’s the name of the company?”

  Logan racked his brain. Damn, he’d forgotten to ask that also. He closed his eyes and thought back to previous conversations with Shae as Max waited, hands poised over the keyboard.

  “Woodway International Oil and Gas, I think.”

  Max typed again. “Okay. They have an office in Brasília.” He typed again. Frowned. “When you mentioned Brazil and oil companies, something I read recently came to mind. Hold on.” He leaned closer to the screen. “Here it is.” He glanced at Logan and then sat back. “So, in Brazil there’s this group of environmental terrorists in the news lately. Their website states their mission is to protect the rainforest. Stop the lumber industry. And the oil industry both onshore and offshore.” He looked at Logan.

  “Are they violent?”

  Max turned his gaze back to the screen. “They’ve claimed responsibility for several…actions. Destruction of logging machinery. Pouring cement down wells. Sabotaging drilling rigs. That sort of thing. Nothing violent. Nothing about kidnapping.”

  “Maybe they decided they needed to get a little more serious? Or have a cash flow problem? What do you think?”

  “Maybe. Could be just your everyday run of the mill kidnapping for fun and profit. But there’s been no ransom demand, right?” Max turned as Logan nodded. “So. What do you plan to do?”

  “She’s Billy’s sister. I promised him I’d take care of her.”

  “I know. But I’m not sure this is what he meant.” Max’s gaze turned from hard to something else. Something Logan didn’t want to see…pity.

  “It’s exactly what he meant. And her father is gone. I’m the only one she has to turn to.”

  “Did she ask you to help her?” Now he narrowed his eyes at Logan.

  Logan sighed. “Sort of. I think she just wanted to talk to someone. Look, she told me she was going to Brazil to get to the bottom of this. I asked her to give me twenty-four hours before she made a decision.”

  “And what do you hope happens in a day?” Max stared at him.

  “I can’t let her do this alone. She has no idea what she’s getting into.”

  “Nor do you.”

  “But I’m better equipped than she is for this sort of mission.” Logan tapped his finger on Max’s desk.

  “A mission?” Max exhaled. “Christ, Logan. This really is about Billy, isn’t it?”

  Logan stood. “If you mean do I still owe Billy my promise, yeah. I can’t let her go alone. She’s just a…”

  “A grown woman. Who knows what she’s doing, I’m thinking.” Max shook his head. “My advice is stay out of it. You don’t owe her or her father anything. You’ve done your best, kept your promise. She’s an adult now, not a kid.”

  Logan slammed his hands on Max’s desk. “I can’t! I have to do this. If I don’t…” He ran his hands across his hair, grabbed the short ends, and tugged.

  Max stood and came around the desk. “Easy, Lieutenant. Easy.” He murmured softly at Logan as he cocked a hip on the edge of the desk. “Let’s talk about this mission.”

  Logan let the grip on his hair loose. “Okay. Sorry.” Christ, he’d almost lost it.

  “It’s okay. You need to do this. I got it.” Max put his hand on Logan’s shoulder and guided him back to the chair. Logan sat under Max’s gentle pressure.

  “So, what do you need from me?” Max returned to his chair.

  Logan stared at him. “I guess I need some time off.”

  “You got it.” Max leaned forward, his hands clasped together on the desk. “So, how are you going to do this? You don’t even know if he’s been kidnapped or by who. Where to start looking? Who do you talk to at Woodway?” Max machine-gunned questions at Logan faster than he could think or answer.

  “Whoa!” Logan held out his hands. “I haven’t thought it all through yet, but I will.”

  Max gazed at him until Logan closed his eyes and groaned. “I have no idea. I just had to act. But I can’t disappoint Shae, and she can’t go there alone.” Logan grinned as an idea took hold in his head.

  Max narrowed his eyes.

  “I have a crazy idea, Max.” Logan rubbed his hands together. “This might be more than either I or Shae bargained for. What if the team helped?”

  Max blinked. “Are you out of your mind?”

  “No. In fact, I think the guys would go for it.”

  “No.” Max shook his head. “Look, Travis and Gunnar might go for it, but Jake’s in no condition to take on a mission.”

  “Rowdy would.”

  “Mentally, yeah. But physically? I’m not so sure he can cut it.” Max shrugged. “Besides, you’d have to pull him away from the Hummer he’s working on.”

  “I’ll need everyone in on this. Including you.” Logan leaned forward. “Come on, Max. You’re the brains of this outfit. Won’t be able to do it without you.”

  Max sighed. “Christ. This could turn out so bad, have you thought of that? Men could be killed. Her father c
ould be killed.”

  “I understand the risks.”

  “Do you? I’m not so sure.” Max stood and paced. “Look, I’ve got a group of men, most of whom are suffering from some sort of PTSD, including you. They’ve found a safe place here.” He waved his arm to indicate the building. “Work. Friendship. A sense of purpose.”

  “Right. Building armored vehicles for millionaires and politicians, not to mention the occasional drug cartel.”

  “You’re not supposed to mention it,” Max muttered.

  Logan flashed a grin, and then sobered. “I know these guys have had a rough time of it, we all have. But the hardest thing about it was being goddamned good at something and having it yanked out from underneath you. We were a crack squad. Get in. Kill who needed to be killed. Get out.”

  Max nodded.

  “I need them to pull this off. Maybe they need it too.”

  “Please rethink this, Logan.”

  “I think they should make the decision to participate or not.”

  Max spun around in his chair and faced the wall. Logan waited, holding his breath. If Max squashed this, the men would follow him. Even without the insignia, he was their captain, their leader, and Logan knew it.

  Time ticked off a minute on the old school clock on the wall.

  Max swiveled back around to face Logan and leveled his gaze at him. Logan tensed.

  “Okay. We tell the men. See if they agree to the mission. But it’s all or nothing, Logan. We’re all in, or it’s a no-go. I can’t leave any of them alone here, you know that.”

  “I know it.” Any of the men could go off the rails, even him if it got too bad. He’d gotten damned close a few times.

  Alone, they were broken, unable to function in the real world.

  Together, they were a team, a squad of men with special talents that dovetailed like a fine piece of furniture, solid and dependable.

  “We’ll discuss this with the others at lunch.” Max turned back to his computer, ending the discussion. Arguing wasn’t worth the breath.

  Logan’s money might have made all of this possible, putting together the finances for Maximus Garage, but Max was the glue holding them all together. Logan owed him respect and to do this Max’s way or not at all.