Overture (North Security, #1)

“Yes,” she says. “Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

So she doesn’t want to talk about it. I should tell her to go back to her room. It isn’t appropriate for her to be here. Except that she wasn’t lying about having nightmares. Sometimes she cries out in her sleep. Remembering the night her father died?

Part of me wants to rage at her for leaving. Part of me wants to push her out of the fucking nest, to let her fly or fall, not to catch her on the way down. It isn’t in me to make her leave, so I climb back into bed with her. She curls herself against me, her hair dampened from standing in the bathroom, steam rising from both of our bodies.


LIAM

I’m asleep when the call arrives, but my body is trained to come fully awake at the first sign of trouble. I suppose I would have cultivated that skill in the military if I needed to.

I had it the day I enlisted. That’s what comes of growing up with a man who believed the devil resided in you. My childhood was a study in wild opposites, the intense high of an exuberant, loving father, and then the inevitable turn that came at night. He would charge into my room because of some nightmare he had, a sense that the devil was inside me, determined to drive him away. Anything that had happened during the day, a phrase I had used or an expression on my face, could be caused by the devil. My father would do anything to drive him out—press my hands onto the lit burner of the stove, choke me until I passed out. Throw me into the well so the cold and damp would drive away evil spirits.

The red light blinks on my phone, which means it’s coming in from a secure line. We have servers set up so that teams on deployment can reach us from anywhere without our location, and thus their identity, being compromised. “Hello,” I say, my voice hoarse as if I’ve been shouting in my sleep. I didn’t even realize I still had nightmares about the well until Samantha woke me up. She’s sleeping soundly in bed right now, and I take a few steps away, toward the bathroom, so I don’t wake her up.

A female voice identifies herself using a nine-digit alphanumeric code, her latitude and longitude, and an abbreviation that means she’s not being coerced to make this call. Laney’s mother. That’s a fucking relief. The last thing we need is another orphan around here.

“Sitrep,” I say, already pulling on my jeans. I give Samantha a last glance before I shut the door to my bedroom, keeping her shielded from the darkness in my world. This is one area where I won’t compromise her safety.

“We ran into some trouble during our exfil from the region. A local drug lord and pimp was making an example of one of his girls. The team commander took exception.”

Striding through the hallway, I almost collide with Josh, who’s heading to the office. He got the same notification that I did about the secure line and probably hit the Answer button a millisecond after I did, barely missing the call. He managed to pull on a shirt, which is one step more than I did. His eyes are alert, but he doesn’t say anything, waiting for me to finish the call.

“Where is the team commander?” I ask, flipping on the lights.

“Uncertain. He ordered us to hang back while he scoped out the situation.”

I press two fingers to my brow where a sharp pain slices my skull. There’s a wealth of problems in a handful of words. As the team commander, Elijah’s word would be final on a situation. Team members like Laney’s mother could advise him, but he had the final say—chain of command is crucial to these missions. Of course, sticking to the objective is also crucial.

An objective that has nothing to do with a local drug lord.

“What were his exact orders?”

“He told us to go dark until we met up at the rendezvous point, which would have been this morning. We waited three hours past the mark before retreating.”

“Are any of you injured?”

“Negative.”

Christ. I give the sitrep to Josh, who swears in a long and creative streak.

“He wasn’t going to scope out the situation,” Josh says, biting off the words. “He was going to assassinate the fucker, and probably start an international incident while he’s at it.”

Unfortunately there’s a very real possibility of that. While no one would cry over a shitty drug lord, the balance of power in these places is precarious. It’s even possible this person was backed by the local authorities, making Elijah the target of a corrupt government. “At the very least it sounds like he may have gotten himself captured.”

“Or killed,” Josh says. “And endangered his team in the process.”

Any other employee of North Security would have found himself fired for even a fraction of the breaks in protocol. Elijah North is more than an employee. He’s our brother. Which means I’m more interested in finding his ass than firing it—and then giving him a well-deserved black eye.

“Hold your position,” I say into the phone. “We’re sending reinforcements.”

It will take at least twelve hours to get on the ground there, but I’m not going to send the team looking for them when they’re already a man down and probably half-frozen from hiding out in the godforsaken wasteland that is northern Russia. I give her details of a rendezvous point for us to meet while Josh notifies the pilot to get his ass out of bed.

“Three men,” I say when we’re both off the phone. “I don’t want to send in the whole Blue Team now that I know the situation. Who knows what kind of fucking drug turf war we’re walking into. Quiet as a fucking mouse. Lewis and Jameson.”

“And you?” Josh says, raising his eyebrows.

It’s hardly uncommon for me to join a mission, especially one as crucial as this one. If word gets out that North Security was in the area, fucking around with criminal activity, then it means our true objective will also be exposed. “Do you have an objection?”

A sardonic rise of his brow. “Samantha’s graduation.”

How could I forget? There are a thousand dates in my head, but I don’t want to think about her graduation. It’s one step closer to taking her away from me.

Her graduation and then her birthday. And then the goddamn tour.

We’re only a month away from it now. I would give almost anything not to attend the damned ceremony with her self-righteous principal and the piece of paper he’ll give her that says she’s all grown-up.

I would give anything not to attend, except that it would hurt Samantha. That’s pretty much the one thing I’m not willing to do. “You’re right,” I say, gruff in my sense of loss.

“I’ll bring Elijah back,” Josh says, sounding grim. And of course he will.

Elijah’s the youngest of the three of us. For a time it looked like he would turn out the most normal. He was going to marry his high school sweetheart, until she was kidnapped on her senior trip. It’s been years now, but I think some part of him thinks she’s still alive somewhere. That poor girl that the pimp made an example of, she could have been the girl he loved.

Hell, I probably would have done the same thing. If Elijah wasn’t successful in exterminating the pimp, I’d help him do it. The girl would have reminded me too much of Samantha, at the mercy of terrible men.

Of what could have happened to her if I hadn’t gotten custody.





CHAPTER EIGHTEEN





“I love power. But it is as an artist that I love it. I love it as a musician loves his violin, to draw out its sounds and chords and harmonies.” – Napoleon Bonaparte


LIAM

“A damned embarrassing business,” a man says.

I recognize him from the St. Agnes Board of Directors, of which I’m also a member. It’s a fancy name for parents who’ve paid enough money to ensure their children get special treatment at the elite private school. Or in my case, my ward.