Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5

Cord

***

 

“They’re up to something over there.”

“How do you know?” That got Ty’s attention. Ever since he found out that Vicki’s pregnant with his child he’d lost what little mind he had left. Now everything is a major occurrence. If she even sneezes he buys out half a pharmacy and growls at everyone until she’s on the mend. They’re all nuts if you ask me, these brothers of mine, who think that they’re in control. I could give them some pointers but I like to see them sweat when it comes to their women. That’ll teach them to laugh at me, and the way I choose to live that part of my life.

“Because Susie’s been playing lookout for the past ten minutes.” They all trooped towards the windows and I shook my head in shame even though we couldn’t be seen from outside. “Geez guys where’s your training?”

“Logan can you put your woman on a leash for fuck sake?” Zak shoved his shoulder.

“Who says it’s my Gaby?”

“It’s your house bro, you know the rules, your house your headache.” Devon kicked back in his seat and put his feet up. He didn’t have a dog in this particular race and took great pleasure in rubbing our noses in it. He’d taken up where Ty the sap had left off.

“I can’t wait ‘til it’s your turn Dev, then we’ll see.” Lo grinned and popped a few peanuts in his mouth.

“Not gonna happen bro, after seeing what you fools have to put up with I’m confirming my bachelorhood.” Or so he thinks. But as Ty was once fond of telling us, we’ve been dropping like flies since the minute we settled here. I know if I wasn’t able to escape the web no one else would, and that’s a given.

That opened the floodgates and we spent the next ten minutes playing ‘whose woman is worse’ it’s a game we’ve been playing a lot lately. Only since heading down to Law’s and then Lyon’s place, the damn game was now spread over three states. It’s funny that even in the midst of what we were dealing with, most of our conversations lately have been about the women and what they’re up to.

I’m the only one who seems to have any real control over mine, since she knows that unlike my brothers, my bite is worst than my bark. She hates getting her ass beat for anything other than pleasure, and trust me she knows the difference. The rest of them don’t dare lift a finger against theirs since they’re all breeding. It’s funny as hell watching the theatrics. The punching bag in the workout room is damn near falling off its chain these days. Fucking women are more work than an Op.

I have no doubt that I’ll soon have to come up with an alternative punishment for Susie, as soon as I plant one in her, or two. And after last night I think that time might come sooner than later.

She was ripe for a good hard fuck, no doubt about that, but it was her mind I’d been more concerned about than her pussy. I’ll make sure her pussy can take the pounding I need to give it in order for me to get off. But I’m not willing to take chances with her heart and mind. She’d done so well the night before that it gave me hope that we were making great strides there, much sooner than I’d expected for someone with her penchant for rebellion.

“Well what is it this time? What can they possibly be up to over there? They haven’t been off the grounds, and no one has been here except the little Chinese lady who did their nails before we left, so what now?” Connor glared across the yard in frustration.

I felt his pain. As much as Susie minds me, when she gets with her sisters she can still be the same hardheaded pain in the ass she was the first day we met. It’s a wonder she doesn’t stay tied to my bed twenty-four seven as much shit as she and her sisters get up to. I guess we have to cut them some slack, it can’t be easy having their wings clipped, having to stay behind the compound walls all the time. But regrettably there was no other choice.

“Are you serious Con? They have a black Ops officer in their ranks now, and with the shit they pull we’re damn near outnumbered.” Devon finds great joy in the fact that the women keep us on our toes.

“Vanessa’s ass better be watching my kid and not getting into shit over there. I’ve told her a thousand fucking times.” Ty snorted at Zak’s rant. We all knew Nessa was gonna do what she wanted, as long as there was no danger, or she perceived there to be none. We also knew that Gabriella was more often than not the ringleader. Logan knows it too and it makes him nuts.

“They called Lyon’s place, probably to pump his woman for info. Good luck with that.” Lo walked away from the window still diddling with his little spying device. I’m not sure if the women knew we had them under twenty-four hour surveillance and that all the houses and whatever technology was inside, were tapped in some way or the other, including their asses. Vanessa might suspect, but I’m not sure if she knew for sure.

The lock on Susie’s new waist chain had a nice little chip in it and we were seeing about getting some stuff down to Law and Creed’s places for their women. Those men have been so caught up in other bullshit that they hadn’t even had time to think about such things, except for Lyon. Him, I’d like to know who his connection was, because that boy had some Grade-A shit. Fucker needed it. He got himself a battalion over there with all those kids. Shit makes me break out in a sweat.

“Didn’t we tell them to stay the fuck away from this shit?”

“Chill Zak, they could’ve been catching up.” Quinn is damn near clueless when it comes to these women, could be because they see him as their little patsy since he lets them get away with shit when it’s his turn to ride herd.

“My ass, they wouldn’t need a lookout if it was anything that innocent. Isn’t the kid supposed to be keeping an eye on them, keeping them out of trouble?”

“Sure Ty, he can control them about as much as the rest of you can.” Which would be not at all. “Now can we get back to work?” I’ll have the truth out of Susie in five seconds flat. Since no one was bleeding and nothing was being blown to shit it could wait, this couldn’t. The shit was fucking with my program. It had to stop.

Everyone took their places again spread out around the first floor room we’d turned into a command center for now. Until two days ago the old man’s home was still the way he’d left it; no one wanted to touch a thing. I think though none of us would admit it, we each believed that leaving this place the way we’d found it kind of kept his memory alive. Sort of like his presence was still here in some small way, looking over us the way he’d done when he was alive.

But since this whole mess had started, since we realized how deeply involved the CO was, we knew that we’d have to tear the place apart if we wanted answers. Now we had Candy set up in the trailer on site doing office work because we couldn’t risk having anyone else here but us.

“We’ve got to do something. This thing has snowballed way beyond anything we were expecting. We’re catching at our own asses looking for answers, but we’re getting nowhere. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t like playing catch up with these fucks and I’m tired of feeling like we’re under siege here.”

We’ve been going through everything the old man had left behind looking for any evidence of whatever it was that Mancini had hinted at. After getting back and doing our own search on the guy we’d decided as a whole that he could be trusted, though what information could be found on him still left a lot of unanswered questions. It just meant that whatever he was into, whatever organization, had to be top secret like we once were.

That should probably scare us into heading in the opposite direction, since it was looking more and more like the people we once trusted were hip deep in this shit. But it was the man himself more so than what we’d found that had convinced us to take a chance. Having lived in the shadows ourselves for so long, we well understood the need for that kind of secrecy. And we’re not fools, we know when someone is on the safe list.

“We’ve gone over every inch of this place in the last couple days since we came back from Lyon’s and found nothing. We’ve got to get into the old man’s head. If he had something that hot to hide where would he keep it?” Logan popped the cap on his water bottle and took it to the head for a long draw.

“We know the place was bugged, but there were no eyes on it. Why if they thought he had something would they put ears but no eyes on him?” Connor prowled the room back and forth while Devon and Quinn booted up the old man’s computer.

“Was he dictating something maybe? There was no hacking device on his comps, no one was ghosting him so what exactly were they looking for? Unless; someone else was here. Who visited the old man before he died?” As much training as we have it’s not that easy putting a puzzle together when you’re missing half the fucking pieces.

“You’re thinking he was sharing information with someone and they were listening in? I want those bugs out of here.” We’d left them in to fuck with whoever was on the receiving end of that shit, but now that we were on their trail I saw no need for it. Whoever we were dealing with had to know that we were good enough to have found the devices by now unless we were dense. That only opened the door to more questions. Why hadn’t the old man suspected, or had he?

“There’s no way to know that since the CO was such a private person. Davey hadn’t seen anyone around except the locals. And we know if the old man was dealing with something he’d have taken steps to keep it contained. If there were any secret meetings between him and anyone they would’ve been done under cover of night.”

“That’s true Con unless he was handling it himself. We all know he had the habit of talking shit out loud to himself. What if whoever planted the bugs knew that? What if that was the reason for them all along?” It had always been a running joke among us that one of the men most trusted with world secrets couldn’t beat the habit of talking to himself. He’d once told us that he’d come up with his best strategies that way.

Lo nodded the okay for the bugs to be taken out and Zak and Ty headed up the stairs to take care of it. I looked out the window into the yard where our homes were, where our women were going about their not so normal day. It figures that I would find my forever in the middle of a shit storm. Nothing in life had ever come easy for me, why should this be any different?

We’d worked for it the seven of us, protected our country, even going above and beyond in our fervor to keep our borders safe. Was it too much to ask to be left the fuck alone to live what was left of our lives in peace?

My brothers had started dropping like flies the second we moved here, no, more like dominoes. Me, I hadn’t been expecting it for myself. I had long accepted that that shit wasn’t for me. I’d been sure that there wouldn’t be anyone out there who could fulfill the raging need I had inside, not for longer than a few encounters anyway.

But then she blew into my life out of nowhere, totally unexpected and turned everything on its head. I didn’t care what it took I knew from day one that I wanted her. She was the first woman who’d made me say ‘fuck it’, I don’t care if she can handle it or not, I will have her.

Because I’m only too aware of the rarity of what I am, I knew it would be selfish of me to ask anyone to sign on for the long haul. With her, I wasn’t giving her a choice I’d made it for her. It may not be fair, and add the fact that she was so young it seemed like a fucked up thing to do, but none of that mattered.

If it had only been my lust that she’d awakened I could’ve fucked her ten ways from Sunday and moved on already. But, there was so much more going on between us, even from the very beginning. The fact that I needed a little bit more out of my wife than my brothers did from theirs is the only reason I haven’t taken her to my bed as yet. Funny, it’s because I’m gonna make her my wife that I’ve had to hold off.

It wouldn’t be fair to her to take her before I showed her what she was getting into. The kind of life she could look forward to once she gave herself over to me completely.

Sometimes in the beginning I’d worried that she might not be strong enough, and that scared me, because I know she’s what I want no ifs ands or buts. But our relationship is not going to be like the others and it’s up to me to make sure that she can handle that.

My brothers have it easy. Their taking the plunge was a no brainer. Not that their relationships are any less than mine, far from it. It’s just that all men are not made the same and I’d be the first to admit that my predilections set me apart, and require a little extra something. Something that not all women are equipped to handle: especially not one so young.

Though being caught up in this mess couldn’t have come at a worse time, I would never regret finding her. I smiled across the way before turning back to the room. Now isn’t the time to take my mind on that trip. Now I have to concentrate on making sure she stays safe, she and all my new sisters.

I went back over what we had so far in my head, but it was like walking into a brick wall every time. You know there’s something on the other side, but you can’t get to it because there’s something in the way. Maybe it was time to climb over that wall.

We might have to change things up a little though. Maybe it’s because I’ve always been the observant one, the one who took everything in and dissected it until it made sense. But I was beginning to think that we were going about this shit all wrong. We’ve never had this much trouble getting to the bottom of shit before, so why now?

I hadn’t said anything until now. I was more than happy to follow the norm. The way we always did on an Op. Logan as the leader of our little gang here had his own ideas about how to deal with the situation. I’ve been following his lead for so long now that I never questioned it. But this wasn’t the frontline where we were fighting for the greater good, to protect a faceless number of people in our home country from terrorist. This shit was personal. Maybe it was time we started treating it that way.

“You know Lo, I think we’ve been coming at this thing all wrong. We’ve been handling it like an Op, but we forgot, on those ops we had the military behind us, calling the plays. Now from all that we’ve gathered so far, it seems those same men or at least some of them, are involved in this shit, and we’re the enemy.” It wouldn’t be the first time a government had turned on its own.

“We’re no longer inside brother, it’s us and them now. I think it’s time we use what we learned on their dime and go to war, our own war. I feel like a fucking sitting duck with this back and forth shit and it’s getting us nowhere. I say from here on out we go for first strike and bring these fuckers down.”

“What the fuck are you talking about Cord? Open warfare against the Pentagon?” He’s such a hothead, that’s the difference between my brothers and I. I prefer a systematic destruction of my enemies; they like to go in guns blazing, so of course that’s what he’d think.

“No, just against the ones involved in this no matter how high up the food chain they are. They’ve been calling the shots so far. Whoever is in bed with The Fox has their ducks all in a row. I say we start taking out those fucks one by one starting at their flank. I’ve given this shit a lot of thought and in retrospect we’ve been playing defense this whole time, it’s time we make the first move on these fucks.”

“I see, you’re becoming like Ty, you’re taking lessons from Lyon now.” Ty threw him the finger as he came back into the room. “It’s done and we went over the rooms up there, we’re clear.” Ty dropped into a chair and folded his arms behind his head. “So what have we decided?” He’s been chomping at the bit since our time at Law’s. The fact that the man who’d worked his woman over was gone didn’t make much of a difference to him. Like the rest of us, he wanted the ones pulling the strings.

It was a fact that this thing was hanging over all our heads. It wouldn’t have mattered if they’d only gone after one of our women or all of them. We are a team always, inseparable. I want my happily fucking ever after, and I want it for my brothers and their women.

I want to watch Susie walk down the aisle and put her hand in mine, and I want to do that shit without worrying there’s a gun pointed at my back. “I have an idea-I was just telling the others that we need to take lead on this shit starting now. We have the players, we know some of what they’re up to, but waiting around for them to make the next move isn’t gonna get us any closer to finding out the rest. I say we use what we have now and make a move on them.”

“Sounds good to me. At least we know what would hurt the fuck up and his family, even if we don’t exactly know what the Fox’s stake is in this.” Of course Ty would be on board, no surprise there. But we all needed to be on the same page.

Quinn, Dev and Zak said pretty much the same thing. The only holdouts were Logan and Connor, which was not surprising either. Those two would make great CEOs. Thinking fucks. They like to have everything lined up from beginning to end and I know Lo especially, wouldn’t make a move unless he could see the end result.

No one said anything as we waited. I guess it’s hard to break out of that habit. We’d fit together as a team so well for so long, that it wouldn’t feel right to do anything else this late in the game. We’d planned out our lives together for fuck sake, even going so far as to build our own little compound so we could be together always.

Logan did his pacing shit, which always meant the wheels were turning, and Con tapped his finger on his chin. “Okay, let’s rock.” Lo looked around the room at all of us with that gleam in his eyes.

“As always we watch our six every step of the fucking way. These people have resources we can only dream of. But to tell you the truth, if it comes down to going head to head with them, or telling Gabriella that we have to put off the wedding of her dreams one more time, they’re pretty much fucked.”

“Looks like we’re going rogue.” Connor took his seat and booted up his secure comp. We’d left Davey at my place the last two days since we weren’t sure what we were gonna find in here, so it was just the seven of us sprawled around the room. Each of us had our own special skills when in the field, but for a job like this we were all schooled on how to go digging.

“Okay let’s get to work. We’ll keep searching for what if anything the old man has, but in the meantime let’s get what we can on all the players involved.” Lo pulled up the projector screen we kept hidden in the wall and lit it up. On the screen were the names of everyone involved that we knew of so far. We had their addresses, their numbers, where they worked, who they associated with, down to where they got their laundry done.

I felt the first zing of excitement. This is what I was made for, when I was at my best. That waiting around shit is for the birds, and now that I had something to work for, it made it all the more necessary to be on my best game. “Hooyah.” The others picked up the cry and it resounded around the room. Time to go to war.

“Since these humps are spread all over the place we’re gonna have to do our thing from here using the comps. First we make sure that they’re absolutely secure, Dev that’s you. Quinn I need in-depth runs on all of them running concurrently. Zak, run all their names in the database. I wanna know if any of them have so much as a speeding ticket. I want known associates, going back twenty years. Cross their names, see where they met and what they worked on together. Find the connection.”

“I’ll do the cross.” We got to work to the sound of machines beeping in the background. Not our usual milieu, but it’s what we had to work with. Every once in a while, I looked up at the board, at the faces we had up there. Some of them were the faces of men we’d trusted in the past, men we believed had the nation’s best interest at heart. It was fucked to now learn that they might’ve been looking after their own interests all along while we, and others like us were putting our lives on the line.

The one that bothered me most was the red question mark next to the CO’s old friend’s picture. We still weren’t sure if he was in on what was going on. But since he was Logan’s contact on the inside, and new information had come to light that he should’ve been aware of but hadn’t passed on, there was a question as to his loyalty. It would suck ass if he turned out to be dirty, but I would have no problem putting a cap in his ass if that is the case.

We got down to work using our highly illegal but very effective computers. A job like this was more time consuming than hunting some asshole out to destroy the world. There were pockets of information hidden behind a hundred smoke screens that if you didn’t know what you were looking for, could send you around in circles until you said fuck it and moved on.

I was crossing the names of the players and their known associates and the shit that was unfolding before my eyes only helped to send my pressure through the roof. There was a fuck load of money changing hands between parties, but they were sending the shit through so many channels it would be hard for an inexperienced eye to catch on. Then I peeled back the first layer we’d found so far and that zing became a hum.

“If this shit turns out to be about money, I’m gonna lose my shit. I found the General.” Are you shitting me? These fucks were willing to sell out their country for a few million pieces of fucking paper? We all know the rumors, we’ve heard worse than what’s being reported on the evening news.

If our government was willing to sacrifice a few thousand of its own to build a fucking pipeline in the Middle East, I might hate that shit, but I gotta figure those fucks know what they’re doing. But if these fucks were only out to pad their own bottom line, I’ll end every last one of them myself.

“I told you fucks all along that they were up to no good. Since when do we get called to do a job only to be put on hold? Never.” Ty was right, we dropped the ball on that one.

“Let me see that.” I printed out the list of names for Lo as the others waited. “Son of a bitch.” It was easy to see the connection now where we had missed it before. It wasn’t a well-known fact that the General in question had gone to school with the fuck up, which is our code name for one of the country’s former leaders.

“How did we miss this?”

“We’re fighters Lo, since when have we ever given a second thought to politics?” They kept us so busy who the fuck had time?

“Yeah, but this shit was right under our noses the whole time. Did you find the other one in there?”

I knew whom he meant without asking. “No, but I still have a ways to go yet.”

“I hope to fuck he’s not caught up in this. I’d hate to think the old man was surrounded by enemies at the end.”

That shit left a bad taste in my mouth and sent my mind down a whole new path. I didn’t say anything about what I was thinking, not yet. I needed to do a little more digging and a lot more thinking before I voiced that particular evil. Because I knew if there was any truth to it, my brothers would be destroyed. Though it was no fault of ours. But if it turned out that the ‘friend’ in question had been the one to set him up, this place was gonna become a battlefield.

“We go back to the beginning, connect the dots.” Lo opened a drawer and pulled a file. Organized fucker that he is you can trust him to have every move written down in there. “Here it is, general Starks made the call about Khalil’s resurfacing. This was a few weeks after we settled in here. A few weeks after that, we were told to stand down until farther notice.”

“Yeah and in the midst of that we learned that the commander may have been murdered, stumbled onto a trafficking ring and have assholes trying to kill us and our women.” It was beginning to look more and more like the place had a direct link to whatever was going on, but how do we connect a small town in Georgia to the middle east and one of the most dangerous men in history?

We threw around some ideas but it was obvious we were still missing way too much of the puzzle and just going around in circles. I tried an old technique that came in handy in the field. I disassociated myself from everything and built the blocks, each in their own place, like with like. Pretty soon a picture was beginning to form in my head and I felt that rush of excitement in the blood. The one that tells me when I’m on the right track!

“It’s not the place, it’s the commander.” How the fuck had that one slip by us? It was glaring us right in the face. “Remember what Lyon said, he asked us if we had all worked for the commander at some point in our career, meaning us Law, and Creed. We know how Lyon got involved, through the Porters. Stockton told Lyon and Ty that the thing with his kid was a favor to the Porters, payback. We know the Porters are in bed with Khalil and how, through the uncle who’s a senator. But we never figured out why here. I mean let’s face it, there are a million better places to run that shit. Who was here before we came?”

“We already thought about that Cord and still couldn’t come up with anything remember? We know Law and Creed worked with the old man over the years, but we don’t know on what.”

“But, Lo what if it was all to do with the Fox? What do you wanna bet that this begins and ends with him?”

“Get those boys on the phone. All our Ops were confidential, but maybe they won’t mind sharing. We’re all playing on the same team now aren’t we?”