Chapter Two

CHAPTER TWO

Detective Woodley

Woodley wasn’t fooled. Harris was hiding something. As a detective, Woodley had spent his life unraveling other people’s mysteries, and his gut was telling him something was up with his lover.

From the ranch, he stood, hands on the wooden guardrail, staring out at the scenery, tuning out the chatter from around him as the other occupants of the house jibed and teased each other. He smiled at their antics, then delved back into his dark thoughts about his upcoming personal mission. One that was sure to have ramifications for everyone he loved and respected.

When Woodley was a kid, his father had been killed while away on a mission of his own. Recruited to be part of a specialized tactical team of former Noah Project subjects, the sole goal was to take down the Noah Group for good. His father had been doing just that until he was murdered by the very same group he was pursuing.

They were eventually shut down, the subjects dispersed globally, and the project wiped from records. Only that wasn’t the end.

With the Noah Group now splintered into multiple factions, each vying for superiority by collecting test subjects in a fucked-up form of an arms race, no one was safe.

Not only was the Fire Lake team of highly trained Navy SEALs knees-deep in ending the Noah Group’s reign of terror, but they had a win with former subjects working alongside them. The team was off the charts regarding tactical ability and experience by nature of them being operatives. If anyone could stop this dangerous and out-of-control group, it was his Fire Lake team. So Woodley had taken leave from his position back in Hood River PD to remain here and help take down those he believed responsible for the defining moment and greatest sorrow in his life—his father’s death.

The squeaking of the board on the deck made him turn around to face a grinning Kyle. “How long are you planning on standing there staring at the gravel?” his friend asked as he stepped out of the house, leaning on his cane to join him on the back deck. “Harris and Jennifer left for the lake house over twenty minutes ago.”

“ I’m not staring,” Woodley was quick to point out. “I was thinking. Can’t a man have a moment to stare off into the distance?” Okay, yeah, that sounded weird even to him.

“ Thinking, sure. Anything I can help with?” Kyle asked, looking all kinds of amused.

“ I’m good, thanks.”

The last thing he needed was to air his suspicions that Harris was keeping something from him. Especially when neither he nor Harris made it known they were lovers. They weren’t hiding it, but it wasn’t a topic of conversation either.

“ Okay, well, breakfast is ready if you’ve had enough of staring longingly…I mean thinking,” Kyle said with a wide grin.

The guy was as good a person as they come. He was Fletcher’s brother, rich as sin, with a philanthropic streak as wide as the Mississippi. He’d suffered traumatic abuse at the hands of their parents, hence the limp and the cane.

“ Think you’re funny, eh?” Woodley growled in amusement.

“ I know I am. You two aren’t fooling anyone. You’re way more than friends. Everyone knows it. I don’t understand why the two of you aren’t open about it. Especially around here, considering the ratio of gays to straights is ever growing.”

“ Everyone knows what exactly?” Woodley wanted specifics. He always worked better with details.

“ That you and Harris are knocking boots, doing the horizontal tango, bumping uglies, getting jiggy, boinking, doing the humpty hump, being freaks between the sheets.”

“ Okay, okay. Are you finished?” Hell, he felt like he might be back in high school.

Kyle grinned and glanced upwards as if considering his answer. “Yeah, I think you get the point.”

Woodley knew denying it was useless, so he went with another version of the truth.

“ What good would it do?” he asked in all seriousness.

Kyle looked at him strangely. “What do you mean?”

“ What good would it do acting like we’re some damn couple or some shit like that? We ain’t. We both know the ground rules. One way or another, it’ll end. Either by one of us leaving or being killed. This ain’t no fairy tale, kid.”

“ Shit. That’s morbid,” Kyle whispered.

“ Morbid or not, it’s the truth, and the truth sucks sometimes. Why throw useless emotions into a lost cause? It’d just screw everything up. So we like fucking, big deal. If it wasn’t me, I’m sure Harris would find some cowboy to bend over for a time, but that would be destined to end just the same.”

Kyle’s all-too-inquisitive eyes felt like they were trying to bore a hole into Woodley’s mind, but he’d find nothing but the truth in what he’d said. He and Harris knew the score. They’d have their fun for a time, and there’d be no hard feelings when that time was over. Point blank. Nothing more to see here. Move along, folks.

“ I’m sorry,” Kyle said.

“ Sorry? For what?” Woodley’s head snapped back in shock. What was this guy sorry for? He had nothing to do with it.

“ That the two of you have been so badly hurt that neither of you thinks you’re fixable.”

Woodley felt the blow as if he’d been hit with a sucker punch, but Kyle hadn’t moved. What the fuck? Where did the guy get that from? Fixed? He wasn’t looking to be fixed. He was looking for his father’s killer. That was his life now. That was his mission. There was no other part left of who he was before.

As Woodley was about to respond, young Freddie ran out of the house. “Isaiah said to tell you two that the bacon was getting cold, and if you weren’t going to eat it, we were.”

Isaiah was Bryan’s grandfather. Bryan was the ranch owner in a throuple relationship with Kyle and one of the Navy SEALs, Shaw. Though Isaiah was in his late seventies and confined to a wheelchair, he was as tough a rancher as any man in Texas.

Woodley took this opportunity to duck out of answering Kyle. “Okay, okay. We’re coming,” Woodley said as he followed the young boy back into the kitchen without looking back at his friend.

There would never be a happily-ever-after for him and Harris. He lived in a world of facts, not fiction, and that was where he’d stay.

***

Harris

“ No way in hell is this happening,” Jennifer growled as she stood from the kitchen table in the lake house. “Have all of you lost your damn minds?”

“ Sis, calm down,” Harris said as he closely watched the laptop floating a couple of feet above the table. “You can’t allow your emotions to get the better of you. Take a deep breath.”

“ To hell with that, and easy for you to say,” she growled as good as any SEAL. “What if I told you I was willingly taking off to become a prisoner of the Noah Group again? That I was headed back to California, to the cult? Would you be calm? Would you sit by and let it happen?”

Rick, Spencer’s boyfriend, walked around the kitchen table, refilling coffee cups as if the sight of a hovering laptop and yelling people were nothing new.

“ Would you like more cream, Jennifer?” he asked calmly.

“ No, thank you, sweetie,” Jennifer answered with a smile before turning her scowl back on the team.

“ Um, Jennifer, can I have my laptop back?” Spencer asked, never taking his eyes off it as it floated, responding to Jennifer’s anger. Harris chuckled. Spencer was very attached to his cherished laptop. Jennifer’s emotions sometimes caused her telekinetic abilities to appear in random ways. Then again, she could be doing it on purpose, considering all the information about their plan was within those thin pieces of metal.

“ I don’t know. Are you still planning on using it to send my brother back into hell?” she asked, tilting her head and waiting for his response.

Well, that answered Harris’s question. Levitation on purpose, for the win.

“ Jennifer, give him back his laptop before he has a heart attack. This is my choice. I’ve made the decision alone.” He had to de-escalate this situation quickly, or more objects would fly around the room.

Jennifer huffed loudly, but the laptop lowered back into Spencer’s waiting hands.

Harris continued. “I approached the team with this idea. They’re only helping me do it as safely as possible. I’d be going with or without their help. This is the only way.”

“ It’s insane. You can’t just expect to be captured back into that group and not be hurt or worse. They could kill you without a second thought. They don’t give a shit about your life or any of us survivors. We’re only good if we can be controlled and used for their benefit.”

“ I’m useful to them; they won’t kill me. At least not right away.” He was betting on that, but there were no guarantees.

“ Oh, that makes me feel so much better,” Jennifer growled in frustration. “Next, you’ll tell me that Woodley okayed this fucked-up idea.”

“ He doesn’t know yet, and what does it matter if he did? It makes zero difference.” Why would the guy care? As Woodley repeatedly said, it was only convenient sex, nothing more. Why did everyone think there was some emotional bond between them?

Jennifer looked at him like she wasn’t buying what Harris was trying to sell.

“ I realize this is a shock to you,” Brick said in an obvious attempt to bring the hostility down a few notches. “However, Harris approached us months ago with this plan, and we’ve gone over every other option, but your brother is correct, even if we don’t like it. The information he could provide us of the inner workings could lead to us shutting down at least one of the Noah Group factions, if not more.”

“ It’s either we try this method, or we wait until they come for one of us next,” Harris said, trying to get through to his sister. “What if next time it’s Freddie or Frank? They’re only children. I can’t wait around and allow that to happen. It’s past time to take the fight to them.”

Harris looked around the table at the members of the Fire Lake team as his sister slowly sat back down. He could easily discern their mixed reactions and understood why. He was a heartless criminal, after all. Why would he risk his skin for anyone other than his sister?

“ They’ve already sent a bomb to a house containing innocent women and children, kidnapped John from his own shop, and messed him up. What if John hadn’t been at the lake house the day that package arrived? Most of the people around this table would be dead had he not seen the bomb in that delivery.” He waved a hand around the room. “Nothing is stopping them from doing that again or worse.” It sucked, but it was true. “Please understand why I must do this, Jennifer. It’s truly the only way left open to us now.”

This mission required a man who’d been pushed too far, a man without fear of dying, and with the brain of a supercomputer. A hacker without constraints of rules or codes. Add a healthy dose of engineered telekinetic and telepathic ability, and the Noah Project had the exact weapon they’d been trying hard to make.

Him.

That’s the thing when you rush to create a weapon of unknown strength and ability. You never really knew how or if you could control it. Attaining the necessary control was like trying to catch smoke with your bare hands. As it slips through your fingers, before you realize what’s happening, that smoke invades your lungs, cuts off your air supply, and chokes the very life from its creators.

Harris was that smoke, and he’d do what was necessary to ensure the air supply was finally cut off.

“ With your heightened abilities, Harris can send vital information through your shared mental link. We’d know where he is at all times,” Spencer explained. “There’s no one else with your special abilities.”

“ They’re unaware of how far your skills have advanced,” Fletcher added. “That you both no longer need to be in the same location to share thoughts or touch to move objects. We can use that to our advantage.”

“ We? What ‘we’? It wasn’t that long ago that this team wanted my brother behind bars,” Jennifer said. “Or dead. And didn’t give a rat’s ass that he was trying to save my life.”

“ Well, he was selling government secrets and details of US military installations,” Shaw countered with a shrug of his shoulders and a narrowed gaze. “You can’t blame us.”

“ Secrets, yeah, right. You truly have no clue,” Jennifer scoffed. “If you knew—”

“ Enough, Jennifer,” Harris growled harshly as he touched his sister’s shoulder to soften his words. He had to stop her before, in her anger, she blurted out the truth about the information he’d coaxed parties into buying to fund her cancer treatment. It made no difference he’d manipulated the data to target rebel encampments instead—it was amazing what changing a single number on a line of code could do for a targeting system—but perhaps it would be better if the team thought he was the ruthless bastard they believed him to be. “We’re past that point. There’s no need to relive it.”

Jennifer looked as if she wanted to argue but thankfully remained silent. When Harris turned back to the team, he couldn’t help but notice Brick watching them closely. The man had a habit of seeing deeper than what was on the surface. Harris had often wondered about the tough team leader, but he was all human—no enhancements, just downright talent and skill.

“ Do we have a plan then?” Harris asked, wanting to push the conversation forward. Sitting around arguing wasn’t getting them any closer to their goal.

“ Yes. As far as our intel can confirm, we might have a chance of crossing paths with members of the Noah Group based out of New Orleans or at least a faction of the main group. We still don’t know how many splintered factions of the original group we’re dealing with,” Spencer explained while keeping his left arm wrapped protectively around his laptop.

The man wasn’t taking any chances, making Harris grin, knowing that he or his sister could simply lift him along with the laptop and the table if they wished, but he’d keep that to himself.

“ New Orleans? I wasn’t aware there was a group based out of that city. The West and East Coasts, yes, but not Southern. What do we have on them?” Harris asked. This was the first time he’d learned about this group. Who were they, and where the hell did they come from?

“ They appear to be new on the scene. I’m getting feelers back that indicate they might be an offshoot of the California group,” Brick said. “I’ve made a few calls, and we should have more information before we leave for the airport.”

“ The cult?” Jennifer asked, her voice raising slightly. Everyone could understand her fear of that place after only recently being freed from their clutches.

“ Yes. We’ve noticed some similarities between the two. They may have dropped the cult front they used in California, but the backers are the same,” Spencer explained. “We’re following the money to make sure.”

“ Always follow the money,” Fletcher huffed. “There never seems to be a lack of people willing to fund these extremist organizations.”

“ It’s typically the quickest way to the people in control,” Harris agreed.

“ We cut off one head, and another grows back someplace else. Like a damn weed,” Shaw grumbled. “Need some serious weed whacking.”

“ True, the roots run deep in this organization,” Brick said. “And we need to find the right pesticide.”

“ That would be me,” Harris chuckled. “Though I’ve never considered myself a noxious substance.”

“ I have,” Brick said, but his grin gave him away.

“ Ditto, buddy,” Harris chuffed.

“ Okay, so how’s this going to work?” Jennifer asked. “We drop my brother in the middle of New Orleans and hope for the best?”

“ Our plan is a bit more precise,” Spencer said without looking up from his laptop. “We’ve sent Conor and Gunner down to get the lay of the land and get eyes on the group. It appears the members work out of a building in the Mid-City area fronting as a local dive bar.”

“ Is he supposed to walk in, sit at the bar, and order a drink?” Jennifer asked.

“ In a nutshell, yes,” Brick said.

“ Seriously?” Harris questioned. “It won’t be that easy.”

“ Agreed, it won’t be, but with a few carefully planned confrontations prior to your clandestine drink, it won’t be such a leap,” Gator chuckled.

“ Confrontations?” he asked.

“ Yes. Your criminal past isn’t a secret,” Stryker said. “We simply run with it. Nothing like a bit of internal team drama played out in front of key players to convince them that we’ve turned our backs on you and won’t come running if you were to go missing.”

“ A small group of us head down to New Orleans for a meeting where an argument breaks out, and Harris leaves the team on bad terms. If we play it right, that’s when members of the local Noah Group will move in,” Spencer added.

“ And if they don’t?” Harris asked.

Previous experience suggested that even with the best-thought-out plans, nothing ever went exactly according to plan.

“ Then we have Harris hang back after the rest of the team leaves. Confirming we’ve parted ways,” Spencer added. “Regroup, pivot, carry on.”

“ It’s a fluid plan. We typically have to adjust on the fly with most plans,” Shaw explained. “It’d be more unusual for the plan to go exactly as planned.”

“ You’ll leave him there? That doesn’t make me feel any better,” Jennifer said.

“ I’m sorry, facts are facts. We aren’t here to make anyone feel better. It’s to stop the Noah Group from tearing apart any more lives,” Brick stated bluntly. “This is a military mission and will be conducted as one.”

Harris agreed. As the always logical Spock said, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one.

He waited for things to go flying. His sister wasn’t in the best mood and was protective of the people she loved. No one needed to get hurt. They were all on the same side, even if his sister’s temper may suggest otherwise.

As Brick and Jennifer faced off, the room quieted. Brick’s look brooked no arguments. He was a man used to being in charge and confident in his duty—a leader of men. Jennifer seemed to be sizing him up as the tension rose around them until she finally spoke.

“ I respect your honesty, and here’s mine. If my brother dies, nothing and no one will be able to stop me from exacting my type of justice on those responsible. Even if that includes any of you,” Jennifer stated calmly, and Harris couldn’t have been prouder. She’d never be a victim again.

“ Understood,” Brick agreed with a nod and a faint look of amusement.

Harris sighed wearily. A war was about to break out between the Noah Group and those opposed to their ideology. There’d be casualties on both sides. Wars didn’t care which side you were on when death came calling. Harris was betting on his personal sacrifice, shifting the odds in their favor. Whether he won or lost, that bet was yet to be seen.