by Tara Oakes
DARK WEB
Book Two
BADGE BOYS
TARA OAKES
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
First edition. April 8, 2016
Copyright c. 2016
Twelve Oakes Publishing, Inc.
Cover designed by CBB Productions
Edited by Dana Hoffman
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
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ALSO BY THIS AUTHOR:
THE KINGSMEN SERIES
Book #1: A LIL' LESS BROKEN
Book #2: A LIL' LESS LOST
Book #3: A LIL' LESS HOPELESS
Book #4: BITTER SWEET DECEPTION
Book #5: BITTER SWEET BEGINNINGS
Book #6: BITTER SWEET CRAVINGS
THE CHIANTI KISSES SERIES
Book #1: BABY V
Book #2: BOSS
Book #3: BETRAYED
MY SOUL TO WAKE
Book #1: STAIN
THE SLAYERS MC SERIES
Book #1: FIRST RIDE
Book #2: HARD RIDE
Book #3: LONG RIDE
THE “A” LIST SERIES
Book #1: ALL THE PRETTY LIGHTS
CHAPTER ONE
BEAU
Is that her?
The loud music pumping through the speakers into the overly warm and sticky air of the room is reverberating through me, causing my thoughts to jumble. The dark, seedy glow, which flashes in bursts from the overhead strobe lights, is harsh, making everything look like a movie in slow motion, and even more difficult to study the woman I’ve been eyeing from across the bar.
Sitting here, sipping on my watered down Vodka and soda, I act casual. Every single one of the skills I’ve learned back in the Academy, which have been lying dormant for so long, seem to rise to the surface. I use them to size up my mark.
The only photo I have of the woman who I’ve been chasing down for months now is grainy and old, but it’s all I have to go on while judging whether or not the attractive brunette sitting alone could be her or not.
She seems to be the right height and build according to the file we’ve been given from her old agency- the latest incarnation of what’s left of the KGB in her home country, Russia.
I’m careful not to look too long or hard, but I can tell she’s nervous. Something about that strikes me as odd, although it probably shouldn’t. She has a bounty on her head the size of which makes her a very alluring target. I’d be nervous in that situation, too. That’s why she’s been on the run for so long.
The woman looks to the main door of the underground club, but then quickly darts her eyes over to the remaining exits.
She’s scanning the perimeter.
That’s wise. It’s what I would do.
Everything about this meeting is being done the way it would have if I had been the one to set it up. But, I wasn’t. After playing cat and mouse for months now, she’s finally reached out to meet in person.
She chose the place, although it required a last minute overnight flight to the Ukraine, and she chose the time. I’ve been sitting here for the last thirty-five minutes, waiting. Waiting for what, I’m not exactly sure. For all I know this could be another wild goose chase.
She’s already led me on a few, seeming to get enjoyment from playing with me like a little toy.
No, I tell myself. Not this time. Things are different now.
We’ve got enough intelligence on her to have found out about the attempt on her life last weekend in Prague. I never assumed that I was the only person looking for her, but I had thought I was the closest to finding and bringing her in before others claimed the ransom on her head.
According to our sources, last weekend, during a gala held at the Imperial Opera House in Prague, Czech Republic, she came close, too close, to a bullet aimed at her pretty little head.
It had spooked her, it must have, because I received an encrypted message the very next day that she was ready to turn herself in, in exchange for protection. It was a complete 180 from all of our past dealings.
That was the turn of events that has led to where I am now, sitting here with my eyes locked on the person I believe may have been on the other end of the countless messages exchanged back and forth over the past months.
Raven.
That’s the name she goes by now, her hacker name. But, once upon, a time she was known as Marina.
According to her file, she was always quiet and soft-spoken, the daughter of two former KGB intelligence officers, also known as spies.
One pop-up agency after the next would use her parents’ services until they eventually fell off the grid, presumed dead with good reason. There are very few outcomes for people who live this lifestyle.
With them gone, Raven had gone haywire, having been trained by two of the best agents to have ever lived. She used her skills to perform tasks for the highest bidder until one day that wasn’t enough anymore. Turning against all, or most of her former clients (who just happened to be the most powerful countries in the world today), she’s now in possession of state secrets that most, if not all, would kill to retrieve.
And, last week, someone tried just that.
“Another?”
I keep my eyes locked on the nervous woman fidgeting with her drink as the attractive woman tending the bar asks to refill my glass.
“Sure,” I nod my chin in her direction as I peel another bill from the neatly folded cash buried in my pocket and slide it across the worn, cold surface of the bar.
The liquid splashes in an echoed way, followed by the crackling of new ice cubes being swallowed by the drink. In my periphery I can see the neon pink wigged woman finishing up the presentation of the cocktail and placing it neatly on a square paper napkin.
Her petite hand with black painted fingernails gingerly takes the large bill from my view. I’d left in more than a hurry last night to get here in time, without a second to spare, especially one to switch over any currency from dollars to the local currency, Hryvnia.
The Bureau has plenty on hand, but that would have required a special trip down to the Travel Department and there was no time for that. So, it looks like my buddy, Ben Franklin, is covering tonight’s tab. I’ll have to remember to fill out the expense reports for all this when I get back to the home base.
Sipping the cold drink slowly, the tiny bursting bubbles feel good against the tip of my tongue. It’s strong, much stronger than the first one. Two sips in and I can feel the music coursing through me in a whole different way. I concentrate to focus on the real reason I’m here. Not the loud house music playing at an obnoxiously high volume, not the scantily clad, colorful-haired women gyrating against anything they can find, and not the potent drink in hand.
My mark. Raven.
That’s who I need to concentrate on.
With an almost too perfect timing, she finally spots me from across the bar and our eyes meet. All of these months, all of these hours studying her cold, dark eyes from the one photo in her file… and they seem different in person.
She blushes and casts her gaze down onto the newly lit screen of the phone set down before her.
Hmm. That’s not at all like her.
You can tell
a lot from someone without actually having met them. All of the cryptic baiting that she and I have done to each other since our first meeting in a hacker for hire chat room in the dark web has given me a pretty good sense of who she is.
She’s brazen. Reckless. Fearless. Cunning.
She’s not the type to blush.
Hell, the things she’s said, or implied, had me blushing. In more places then one.
Something’s not right. Something feels… off. Maybe it’s the booze rushing to my brain, but I’m starting to see a foggy haze outlining the people passing by.
I feel a cold sweat begin to bead on my brow. The open collar of my button down shirt feels like it’s trying to strangle me.
This is most definitely not normal.
Almost immediately my eyes land on the drink in my hand. It looks innocent enough. I raise it to my nose and inhale as if I expect to smell anything different with it, and although my training from the Academy was such that I’d know if anything is in it, it’s not traceable.
The fast paced beats of the techno music become eclipsed by the pounding thuds of my own heart beating in my ears. Firmly seated in the tall bar stool, I can feel my sense of balance begin to waiver.
The attractive brunette that I had been spying on catches my awkward movements and wrinkles her nose. I must look as bad as I feel right now. Whatever this is, it’s working fast.
“E—excuse me!” I call over to the black muscle shirt clad bartender serving the person nearest me. “The pretty thing in the pink wig that served me this drink? Where is she?”
I try my best to point to the guilty drink but my finger suddenly feels like heavy lead and drops to rest on the bar.
The heavily gelled man looks at me as if I may be crazy. Either that or I’m pressing my luck and he may be one of the few people here that doesn’t speak enough English to understand what I’m saying.
“No girl,” he finally answers in a thickly accented stacattoed voice that matches his overgrown biceps perfectly. I’ve sized him up as best as I could given my deteriorating mental state. I can probably take him if I had to. He’s got some weight on me, no doubt thanks to the steroids he probably pops like candy, but I’ve got the training and stamina that these lug heads sacrifice for their bulk. “Only Ivan.”
He points to his own chest to convey that he is, in fact, the Ivan he speaks of.
What the fuck?
I take a quick, hazy inventory of the length of the bar and see that he’s right. There’s no one else back there. How can that be?
My momentary laps has caused me to lose sight of the brunette I’m here to catch, so I struggle to find her once again. The last minute or so has proven to be eventful for her. She’s now sitting with two newly arrived women, talking animatedly, and hugging in greeting.
No. That’s not her. I’m sure of it.
Breathing deeply, I grasp onto whatever diminishing control I have, and force myself to stand, however wobbly.
I’ve been had. Played.
Just another one of her games.
“Hey, bro,” my tongue feels lazy in my mouth as I address Ivan. “Toss this. It’s spiked.”
I have just enough physical strength left to push the heavy glass his way. My lazy eyelids fall several times as I stare at the smudged napkin left in its wake.
The blue ink is bleeding into the white paper from the moisture of the glass that hid it. My vision is blurry, with no benefit at all from the dark lighting and almost violent sparkling of the strobe lights above.
Squinting and staring does little to help make out the fading words as the lines begin to soak into each other, near incomprehensible. I feel like I’m back in Mrs. Miller’s kindergarten class, called upon to read a sentence that is foreign to me.
Time is running out as the words are dangerously close to becoming nothing more than a large blue blob of wet ink, lost forever.
Every bit of resolve is pulled from the depths, aimed at forcing my mind to focus on the clue.
Go outside. Get into the white cab with blinking lights and dark windows. Now. Hurry.
~*~
Fuck, that hurts. A wispy breath and sallow moan escape my lips as I force my body to roll.
Ah, fuck! That hurts even more!
What happened? Why does my head feel like it’s been ransacked by a herd of wild animals?
My eyes fly open as I begin to remember the details of what appears to be last night, judging from the strong rays of morning sunshine pouring through the dirty window near me.
Raven.
The club.
The drink.
The cab.
That’s it. That’s as far as my mind and memories will take me. It’s up to me to piece together the rest and figure out how the hell I got to be in what appears to be a hotel room of some sort. A cheap hotel at that.
Squeaky springs come to life under me, as the old saggy couch that had been my bed last night complains from the movement I’m making. The action seems to demand an almost identical moan from me when my muscles scream and curse at me.
Whatever she slipped me last night is still wearing off, still having tortured remnants of effect on me. I power through it, though, searching around on as high of an alert as I can gather. I’m alone. At least I think I’m alone.
Despite the pain, I push my body up and immediately reach around my waist to the empty holster at my back.
Shit!
She took it.
No gun. No protection, except for my bare hands and my wits right now, and both of those things have been medicated. Moving silently, I search for anything that can prove useful to protect myself.
The lamp?
The dusty vase on the coffee table?
Hmm. The dusty vase on the coffee table next to a note?
The lingering gifts of the drug she slipped me in my drink last night no longer have any control over my vision, so I’m able to read the words of the short note with little to no effort.
Take these, they’ll help with the headache. I’ll be back soon.
Ha! Yeah, right. As if I’d trust her and take anything she had to offer. Not a chance in freezing hell. The two small brown tablets left out for me are ignored. I can live with a headache; I’ve lived through far worse.
Before I have an opportunity to move further, the doorknob of the room door begins to jiggle. A sudden shot of adrenaline quickly pushes through whatever aches and pain I may have been in and I ready myself for whatever, or whoever, is about to come through that door.
My years of training and experience as an FBI agent seems to flow naturally, assessing all of the possible exits and points of danger. I can be deadly enough with my hands but I instinctually grab the heavy cut glass vase I’d been pondering earlier and position myself on an angle to the front entrance.
This is it.
As I prepare for the swing of the cheap door, I’m caught off guard by the sound of a voice, a very feminine voice from the other side of the hollow wood.
“Put the vase down. I’m not going to hurt you.” It’s muffled but I can hear it well enough. With no trace of an accent, either foreign or American, I don’t have much to begin a profile on who could be speaking. Nothing other than the slight trace of amusement laced beneath her words.
My eyes dart around the room until they spy the tiny, shiny lens of the camera that’s perfectly perched on the window sill to have full view of the main room. I can’t help the crook of a smile that twitches at the corner of my mouth.
She’s good. She’s really good.
I tighten my amused smile into an overly sarcastic one and hold the vase up higher for the camera before placing it back down where it came from.
“Now take two steps away from the door and keep your hands where I can see them. No sudden movements,” she commands yet again through the generic door that divides us.
Hmm. She’s a bossy little thing.
I oblige and do as I’m told. For now. We’ll have to renegotiate this situatio
n a little later on.
With my hands held up in playful surrender, I stare into the dark eye of the camera lens and wink. “Your move, Raven.”
There seems to be a moment of hesitation on her part as the door is slow to open, but when it does, I fight myself holding in the hitched breath begging to pass my lips.
It’s her. Minus the short, hot pink wig from last night, of course.
With the door now securely closed behind her, we each stare at our opponent.
Her deep chestnut hair flows loosely down her shoulders, settling in thick waves against the thin, grey jacket covering her body. It’s zipped tight, but the swells and curve of her ample gifts are easily visible against the tightly stretched material in front.
She’s shorter than I’d thought, shorter than what we have in her official file back at the Bureau, with the top of her head coming up to my chin. I can see her eyes moving just the slightest back and forth as she inspects me too, no doubt comparing me to the mental image she’d fostered.
Her flawless skin lays smooth over high cheekbones and perfectly cute, little chin. Deeply set mahogany eyes are wide and alert, penetrating into me. Her lower lip moves, parting as if to speak, but doesn’t.
The very first moment when a man sees a woman for the first time can elicit a whole array of physical reactions. Sure, she’s gorgeous, but she’s a damn genius, too, with a mind sexier than that perfect little body of hers, as if that’s even possible. I realize that the one thing that had never occurred to me the whole time I’ve been chasing this lethal agent, is the one thing that’s happening to me now.
Looking away, I talk myself down, mentally commanding my swelling manhood to calm before she notices. I somehow sense her eyes falling to the area I’m trying to control, so I offer a distraction.
“I hope you’ll understand my hesitation in accepting another drink from you,” I nod to the carton of paper coffee cups in her hands. Regardless of what I say, my body betrays me and a loud grumble can be heard as my hunger makes itself known.
