by Amy Gamet
Engaging his Enemy
Amy Gamet
Sign up for Amy Gamet’s mailing list
1
Zach “Moto” Sato wiped sweat from his brow, hot on the trail of a kidnapper. Four thousand miles away, a teenage girl’s life hung in the balance, a series of keystrokes here in New York HERO Force’s only hope to find her.
This was what he was good at, his skills honed like the tip of a bowman’s arrow. He could wield a firearm as surely as his SEAL team brethren, but computers were his weapon of choice, the system of interconnected machines and languages the currency with which he would secure the girl’s freedom.
This job was a dream come true, a chance to go after the devil himself on his own terms. It was as if he’d spent his life preparing for this job, his education and military training converging on his position at HERO Force like a laser. Somewhere out there, the girl’s desperate parents waited for her return, and Moto was hell-bent the men who’d taken her would pay the price for their actions.
The door behind him opened and a deep voice belched. “There’s pizza in the conference room,” said Trace.
“I’m a little busy here.”
“They make the drop?”
“Late last night.” Moto had been at his computer ever since.
“And the girl?”
“Not yet. Supposed to be returned by sundown.”
“Tell me you got the bastards.”
“Almost.” The ransom had been paid in electronic currency, as demanded by the kidnappers, and immediately disappeared into an internet labyrinth hidden behind firewalls and state-of-the-art encryption. Ninety-nine out of a hundred computer programmers would have lost the trail right out of the gate. Of the one percent capable of tracking it, Moto knew he was one of the best.
It wasn’t arrogance, it was confidence and an accurate understanding of his abilities. God willing, the girl would be returned safe and sound. But if not, or hell, even if she was, their only chance of finding the people responsible for her ordeal and getting any kind of justice lay in his hands. “I tracked the funds to an account in Liechtenstein, where they split up into hundreds of individual packets, each routed to a different destination.”
“How the fuck do you track ’em all?”
“I don’t. I make the computer do it. I created a virus that investigates each individual transaction routed out of the account in Liechtenstein. A little bit of code that follows each electronic signature and reports back to me. All those packets need to converge again at their final destination, which means my code will recognize itself and tell me where the money went.”
“You can do that?”
“I can.”
“Is it legal?”
Moto narrowed his eyes. “Kidnapping is illegal.”
Trace took a swig of Mountain Dew, then raised it in a mock toast. “I’m good with that logic.”
Moto considered Trace a friend, a position only a few of his teammates occupied. He respected the others, had put his life in their hands on several occasions, but true friendship was a matter of another kind. His trust was hard-won and unable to be restored when broken. Moto trusted Trace.
Mac walked into the room. The leader of HERO Force had stayed the night at the office, just as Moto had, the older man’s youthful gait belying any fatigue. “Moto, you’ve got a phone call on line two. It wouldn’t ring through for some reason.”
“I put it on do not disturb.”
Mac clicked it off. “Someone named Davina.”
Moto’s head snapped up. He hadn’t heard that name since he’d left home ten years earlier, and the very sound of it made the wall he’d built around the past vibrate and shake. He refocused on his computer screen. “Take a message. I can’t talk to her now.”
“She says it’s important.”
He hesitated, his mind instantly flashing to his brother with a painful lurch. Was Ben okay? He wouldn’t have thought he could be so affected by the thought of his brother hurt or in need. Memory was funny like that, refusing to bow to distance or apathy. He set his jaw. “This is more important.”
Trace perched his hip on the opposite side of Moto’s desk. “Davina, huh? Nice name. She pretty?”
Moto glared at him, even as her image floated up from his mind. He’d once thought her more beautiful than any woman could be, but betrayal had a way of turning even the sweetest features foul. “No.”
“That the chick from the party last week?”
A petite brunette with a low-cut blouse and a particularly small vocabulary. Moto had thrown away her number. “No.”
“Tinder?”
He’d never even downloaded the app. “God no.”
Mac gestured to the phone. “So, why don’t you answer it?”
“I’m working.”
Trace frowned. “Is there a whole lot you can do until those packets arrive at the end of the line?”
“I’m monitoring the process. Making sure the tracing virus is doing its job. Tell her I’ll call her back.”
Mac picked up the phone on Moto’s desk. “He’ll have to call you back.” He listened for a moment, then put the handset on his chest. “She says it’s an emergency.”
Moto hesitated. That phone was a connection to his past and the people he’d left behind, and he wasn’t so keen on accepting it. But what if something was wrong? What if Ben had been hurt or needed a kidney?
That fucker’s not getting one of my kidneys.
His hand reached out for the phone as if in slow motion. What if Ben was dead, the rift between them cementing like some kind of cosmic stone, unable to be rewritten? A twinge of regret pierced his consciousness. “Hello?”
“Zach, I need your help.” Her voice cut a slice down deep into bone. No one had called him by his given name in years, the sound of it like an echo he hadn’t expected. But it was the concern in her voice that alarmed him. “What’s wrong?”
“Ben’s been arrested.”
Moto squeezed his eyes shut and bowed his head. Anger with his brother and this woman was instantaneous. He shouldn’t have gotten on the phone. “This is why you called?”
“Please. They think he killed a federal agent.”
“Murder?” That got his attention. Ben had always been looking for the easy way out, a shortcut designed to thwart hard work and provide the greatest reward with the least amount of effort, but murder? He squeezed the skin between his eyes. Who knew what time and desperation could do to a man?
“He needs your help,” she pleaded.
She sounded so concerned for her husband. Were the two of them still together after all this time? Had the young girl who’d stolen his heart and then gutted him with her betrayal been living this whole time with his brother, sharing Ben’s bed? The idea hurt like alcohol on a wound, bitterness like a storm over a raging sea. “What he needs is a lawyer. What are you calling me for?”
“He has a lawyer. He was set up, Zach. He’s being framed.”
Moto rolled his eyes. Someone else was always responsible for Ben’s problems, no matter how big or how small. “Of course he is.”
“He is! And he says you’re the only one good enough to help him, that somebody created all this fake evidence on his computer.”
“Look, there’s nothing I can do to help him. If there’s a trail of evidence, it’s probably because he did it.” His eyes went to the computer screen as the machine spit out a string of IP addresses and electronic routing numbers. The packets he’d been tracking had arrived at their final destination. “I have to go.”
“Please, he needs you,” she begged. “It’s all this computer stuff, and his lawyer says they have an open-and-s
hut case, but it’s all fake evidence. You have to help us.”
Us.
The pronoun scratched at his insides like he’d swallowed a beast. No way would he go back there. No way would he let them in. Ben didn’t need his help. Yes, Moto’s skills were some of the best in the world, but it was highly unlikely such a detailed knowledge of forensic computing was necessary. “Someone else will have to help him. I’m sorry.”
“He needs you. No matter how you feel about me, you have to know how hard it was for him to reach out like this. How can you just leave him in his hour of need?”
“Oh, that’s rich, coming from you.”
“Damn it, Zach, come home.”
“I am home, Davina.” He hung up the phone, aware of the curious eyes of the other men as he worked. He homed in on the guilty account, printing out a name and account number before locating their tango in the national database of scumbags. His heart was racing, the kidnapper in his sights having nothing to do with the adrenaline overwhelming his system. “John Patrick Kilbourne, age thirty-nine. An Armenian national with a hell of a rap sheet and a very public bone to pick.”
He handed the printouts to Mac.
“Good work. You trace all the money?”
“Every last dime.”
The intercom on the phone buzzed. “Moto, you’ve got a call on line one.”
His head dropped to his chest and he forced himself to breathe. “Take a message.”
“She says it’s an emergency.”
“Jesus Christ,” he grumbled under his breath, punching the blinking light and answering the phone. “Damn it, Davina—”
“Shut up and listen,” she snapped. “I promised myself I wasn’t going to do this. I swore to God in heaven I wouldn’t give you the freaking satisfaction of stooping to this level, but your incredibly selfish attitude leaves me no choice. If you can’t find it in your heart to help Ben, if you truly hate your own brother so much because of some stupid misunderstanding that happened years ago, then come back for your son.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“But Ben—”
“No, Zach. Wyatt is your son. At the very least, you owe it to him to meet him face-to-face. Just don’t stay too long or else he’ll figure out what an egotistical, self-centered jackass you are.”
The phone went dead in his hand. He took it away from his ear and stared at it. The clock ticked loudly on the wall. Davina’s baby had been his child. His child, not Ben’s. Sweat broke out across his body as an image appeared in his mind, a pregnant Davina in the distance, waddling down the high school steps as Ben gloated in Moto’s ear. “We’re getting married.”
He hung up the phone with a trembling hand and covered his mouth with his fingers.
Mac cocked his head and eyed him questioningly. “What’s up?”
“I need some time off.” He swallowed against the panic that rose in his throat like bile. “All the information on the kidnappers is there. I printed it out. I gotta go.”
“Where are you going?” asked Trace.
Nothing scared Moto. Not gunfire. Not a steady stream of tangos headed his way. But this was fear, sure as the blood was draining from his head and weighing down his feet like concrete in his boots. He looked from one man to the other. “I’m going home.”
2
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…
The world as Zach knew it was over. His parents were dead, killed in a snowy collision with a tractor trailer on their way to pick Ben up from a party where he’d had too much to drink. The horror of it was too difficult to bear, the desperate need to connect with another human being too much for Zach to control.
The funeral ended just hours before. Davina was fitted beneath him on his bed, her skirt around her waist, the sweet heat of her groin through her cotton panties and the gentle touch of her fingernails across his fevered skin tempting him to steamroll over the line he’d sworn never to cross.
She was sixteen to his eighteen, a year and a half into a relationship her parents had never wanted to be—for this very reason. And he’d tried, oh, how he’d tried to resist her, but the pain of loss was raw and demanding a desperate response, an act of love to fill him up where grief had drained him completely.
Her hand slipped beneath his shirt and skated over his lower back, then lower, cupping his ass through his dress slacks. His hips jerked forward in response, the sensation of his eager erection against her willing body almost too much to bear, even through their clothes. He looked into her eyes. “We have to stop.” He didn’t even have a condom.
“I love you.” It wasn’t the first time she’d said the words, but this time they meant something different. She wanted to make love with him. Or was she only saying that to offer comfort in his time of need?
I shall fear no evil. Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me…
Images from the last few days assaulted him, the pain of grief threatening to drown him before he took her mouth in a desperate kiss that instantly chased the darkness away. More than a year he’d wanted her like this, hundreds of days of careful control insisting he force his hands to his sides even as he longed to stroke her tender flesh.
She unbuttoned his dress shirt, those nails scraping his chest as she went. He wasn’t capable of stopping, hadn’t the will or the desire to push away the one person he needed now more than he’d ever needed anyone.
She moved to her own shirt, unbuttoning her blouse, exposing a plain white bra with a satin bow in the middle, her breasts burgeoning from the top of the garment as if she’d outgrown it long ago. He buried his face in her cleavage, inhaling the scent of her heated skin and all she was offering.
His hand reached up to cup her breast, and her breath caught in her throat with a tiny moan of longing. “Jesus Christ,” he whispered reverently, wrapping his arms around her to undo the clasp of her bra and exposing her completely to his hungry stare. Her nipples were dark, the tips protruding like glorious peaks from perfectly shaped mounds, and his lips went to them of their own accord, tasting her with his tongue before sucking her fullness into the depths of his mouth.
Her back arched and her legs trembled. There was no going back. The hardness of her nipple against the roof of his mouth felt like it was meant to be there, his tongue and jaw knowing how to caress her without ever having been told. She writhed beneath him, her hips insistent against his as her breath came in little spurts and gasps.
Moving higher, he kissed along her neck until he was eye to eye with her. His cock was so engorged, even the friction of the change in position was threatening his control. He’d never been with a woman, having long since decided to wait for this one. “Are you sure?”
She nodded. Bracing his weight on his elbow, he reached down with his other hand and undid his belt. She held up a hand. “Wait.” Disappointment crested over him, but he worked to keep his expression the same as she struggled to sit up and turned back to look at him. “Lie on your back,” she whispered.
She wasn’t going anywhere.
He did as she asked, aware of the hard ridge of his penis tenting his pants as her stare moved down to see it. Then her hands were on him, carefully unzipping his fly and releasing his erection. He thought again of his need for a condom and wondered if his brother might have one he could use. But he was angry with Ben for the role he’d played in his parents’ death and was equally sure Ben would try to talk him out of making love to Davina.
He would pull out. His cock twitched with eager desperation, the thought of being inside her driving him insane as she lightly grazed his length before fisting her fingers around the base of his shaft and squeezing him tightly. He cursed under his breath and she quickly let him go. She suddenly looked scared.
He touched her arm. “We don’t have to do this.”
“Is it going to hurt?”
“I don’t know.”
She nodded, reaching for his pants and pushing them down his body, then
carefully removing his socks. She took off her open blouse, dropping it to the floor, then the bra that dangled from her arms before moving to the waistband of her skirt.
“I want to do it.” His voice was a growl, barely recognizable to his own ears. He wanted to undress her, needed to be the first man to take off the garments that hid her from view. His hands slipped beneath the fabric to cup her bare hips, taking her skirt and panties down in one movement, caressing her thighs and calves. His face was close to her mound, and he sniffed the heavily perfumed air at the apex of her thighs, his erection bouncing with his need to have her.
Davina was perfect, every curve of her body, the satiny feel of her skin, the way she pulled him on top of her despite her obvious fear. He needed to get lost in her, but he also needed this to be good for her, his inexperience telling him only to go as slowly as he could muster. He kissed her lips reverently, and she opened to him, taking him in her mouth as the head of his swollen cock pressed at the entrance to her body.
She was slick, and the first inch or two slipped inside with ease, the sensation of her enveloping heat better than any he’d ever known. But she tensed up beneath him, and he instinctively retreated, drawing his attention back to her mouth, her breasts, her waist as she once again pressed her hips against him. Gripping the base of his cock, he guided himself back into her tight channel. This time, she didn’t resist when he pressed farther inside.
He gasped with pleasure, desperate to thrust himself fully into her body. He lifted his head, his stare melding with hers in complete understanding. She wanted him no matter what that meant, be it pleasure or pain, fear or reckless abandon. He withdrew and thrust deeper into her core, pressing against a barrier that prevented further passage.
Bracing her shoulders with his arm, he kissed her neck and whispered in her ear, “I love you.” With one hard thrust, he broke through the barrier and filled her completely, her body clenching in obvious pain. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Shhh…” he coddled.
