Live Wire (8 page)

“Oh. My. Effin. God.” She basked in her creation and turned him toward a mirror. “You are seriously utter nerd-boy perfection.”

“Beth…”

“People do man-candy model shoots that don’t look nearly a tenth as orgasm-worthy as you right now.”

He glared. “Would you take this seriously?”

“I am serious as a heart attack. If you don’t look the part, no one’s buying shit. And brother,
you look the part
.”

He turned back to the mirror. “Yeah. Works, huh?”

“Totally. Plus, you’ll get laid tonight.”

He shook his head, feeling the tips of his ears burn. “Alright. Out. Let’s go. Out the door.”

But he turned and grabbed one more glance over his shoulder at the mirror. Not that he wouldn’t get laid anyway, but if Lexi had a serious reaction in
any
way like Beth’s over-the-top joking reaction, rescue night would be… fun.

That was not at all what he needed to focus on. But for all Beth’s screwing around, he had finally relaxed, and knowing Beth, that had been the point of her antics.
Ding, ding, ding.
She did everything for a reason. “Thanks, Beth.”

She twisted as she powered down Titan’s hall, winking over her shoulder, knowing he’d figured out her grand plan. “Anytime.”

Time to bring his woman home.

CHAPTER TEN

The air conditioning blasted as Jared drove to the Belvoir Hotel. Parker sat in the passenger seat, and the teams were already in place. They were two men on the way to where their worlds—their wives—were. Parker’s was in a more precarious situation, but that didn’t matter. A pregnant Sugar could get herself into trouble no matter what the situation.

Jared’s tight throat tensed, and he popped a Tums. Even if Sugar swore up and down that the feeling she gave him was the remnant or the anticipation of orgasms, this time it really
was
indigestion.

Parker perched quietly in his seat, arms crossed, waiting for the moment he could charge across the parking lot and meet with the Russians. “Doing okay over there?”

“Yup.”

The last few months—hell, the last few years—shit had changed at Titan. The guys had grown up. Before, they’d all been brothers in arms, fighting the good fight, tearing up the world, making it better, bleeding because shit went down, bruising and busting heads because why not? They’d grab some broads and head home to blow off steam after a job.

Times had changed.

He wanted his woman and his family. He had the big-ass house. He had the cars, the trucks, the guns, the money. Jared had it all. When Sugar and Asal had come into his life, all that hard-living shit had seemed so… pointless.

He’d bust his ass to keep it all, to keep them pampered.

“
You
okay?” Parker turned the question on him.

Jared rubbed his chest, readjusting the seat belt. “How long have you been with Titan?”

“Let’s see… more than ten, less than twenty.”

“Years,” Jared mumbled.

“Yup.”

“A lot of hell has gone down.”

“A lot of jobs,” Parker agreed. “Most of which have gone right, and this one will be fine. If that’s what you’re worried about.”

“No.” He chewed his lip, exiting off the interstate. “Just… Colby has kids. Everyone’s pregnant. Having babies.”

“Sugar’s about to pop any day, right?”

“Next few weeks.”

Parker chuckled. “Doc Tuska going to deliver your kick-ass little bundle of joy?”

He smiled, shaking his head, reminded that he’d come full circle. “Not his area of expertise.”

Shifting in the passenger seat, Parker asked, “You guys were Rangers together?”

“We were.” Jared nodded as he changed lanes. Tuska was their medic, the man on the team sent to offer what he could during the storm of combat. He’d also been in the hell of Africa when Jared was at that life-altering pinnacle in his life, when he’d stood there with Buck Baer, and when they’d gone down separate roads. Baer, Tuska, and Jared each saw warlords destroying their own people. The three of them crawled through mass graves and hid their faces as tears slipped down their cheeks.

But each man had reacted differently to seeing genocide. Baer internalized it and rotted. He started GSI to make money and wield power. Tuska could’ve gone the Doctors Without Borders way, wandering around the world, administering aid and holding hands, but decided to focus on private practice. Jared had a steady supply of
clients
for him over the years, and their partnership continued. But in reality, Tuska had used his field experience and medical genius to raise money and awareness for people and places ignored by politicians.

Jared ran his hand over his cheek. His reaction to witnessing genocide had been to start Titan. Baer was greedy. Tuska worked for a greater good. Jared had seen a way to do the things that needed doing, whether or not his government—or any government—wanted to get their hands dirty.

It paid well enough that he could do jobs that didn’t pay a dime. He could recruit and command the best and the brightest, expand at will, and ignore red tape.

And it provided for a safer world for his family. “Funny how life prepares you for the next big thing.”

“Sugar would kick your ass for anything resembling a comment about her as the next big thing.” Parker snickered.

Jared slowed down on a two-lane road. He smiled. “No shit.”

“Right.” He paused. “You ready?”

“Of course I’m ready. Dick.” When the hell wasn’t he ready for everything and anything?

More laughter. “Ass.”

“Yup,” Jared said. “Point being?”

“You’re going to do a hell of a job with a newborn.”

The words hit him like a throat punch. Jared grunted his agreement. “Tell me something I don’t know.” But maybe that was his concern. Everyone listened to him. He’d yanked Asal off a cliff, and she became his daughter. He’d sparred with Sugar, and she became his wife. His team listened to him yell and give orders. They respected the fuck out him because he was good at his job. He knew the right moves—the best tactical, strategic way to win in almost any situation.

But a newborn baby? That little girl wouldn’t be forced to love him. There was no fighting and antagonizing the kid to endear her to him. He took care of people the way he knew how: by
telling
them how best to do things then making sure they listened to him. He wasn’t Boss Man for nothing.

Babies didn’t listen. They called the shots. He was completely and categorically out of his comfort zone. What was he going to do about that?

***

If Parker had worked one job undercover for Titan, he’d worked a hundred. He could broker with the bad guys and shoot a target a hundred yards away with his eyes closed. Whatever the situation was, Parker generally handled it with a certain amount of calm, coolness, and collection. He knew with precision accuracy what the risks were and what triggers and solutions would mitigate them.

That
was his normal. Lexi in a room changed the game. Even though his risk analysis said this was a relatively safe operation, he didn’t like it.

Parker pulled at the starched collar and pushed his glasses up his nose. Wearing them already felt like second nature. The earpiece went live, and in Titan HQ, Cash Garrison manned his office.

“Alright, Parker. We’ve got eyes on your building and from your shirt. Give me a test.”

Parker coughed.

“We’ve got sound streaming live.”

Parker nodded and pushed into the front doors of the hotel. His two Russian points of contact waited, their eyes narrowed on him with a calibrated focus. He swallowed, praying to God that Beth’s new hairstyle trick was worth its salt.

One man stood, then the other. Both were clearly armed, and he, the greedy scientist, was
not
. Not ideal. All Parker had was a computer bag. It had a knife tucked into the lining of the fabric, but a blade versus a bullet? Even on a good day, the odds weren’t great.

They approached, and Parker extended his hand. “Gentlemen.”

They grumbled and groused in Russian. One nodded his head, and pleasantries were obviously off the table. They left the hotel lobby briskly and walked down the hotel hall.

“Where have you been?” the taller, blonder one asked.

“Working.”

“For us. You work for us.”

“I have a real job,” Parker said.

“You haven’t been there.”

“They send me to conferences, site visits.” His gaze swept the room numbers, keeping his team visually in the know about where he was. “Minnesota. Iowa. I tested fertilizer in Iowa. Poor cell services; I know I’ve been hard to connect with lately.”

The other Russian grumbled as they stopped. Parker took note of the room number as the two men opened the door. He hoped to see Lexi but also knew that they wouldn’t walk him into the same place they were holding—

Well. So he was wrong, and statistically that was an anomaly, so rare an occurrence his palms tickled with sweat. How had he been wrong when it came to Lex?

The hotel room was a suite. Several men and Lexi sat, not looking completely uncomfortable, while the Russians and their weapons hovered nearby. Some reality trash TV was playing that he vaguely remembered Rocco loved the hell out of. Lexi looked up and...
please…
she didn’t say a word.

Of course she wouldn’t.

Their entourage proceeded to the kitchenette, and then one other joined their group, pulling chairs out at a small table. Parker’s blood pressure climbed. If he was wrong about her in the room, what else would he be wrong about?

“Sit.” The man’s weathered face showed years of war and tyranny. Speaking in a thick accent, he sounded unamused that Rossi had gone missing.

“Sure thing.” Parker swallowed away his unease and pulled out the only chair left, setting the bag on the table after he made sure that his camera scanned all faces in the room. “So about my disappearance. I know it’s not great business etiquette. I want to apologize.”

A powerful hand slapped the table, and for a second, the entire rickety piece of hotel furniture almost gave way. “You owe us—”

“It’s here.” He patted his computer bag. “But what’s with the peanut gallery?”

“That’s your incentive.”

“For?” Parker raised his eyebrow and ignored the trepidation thumping in his blood. “I’m good for the work. You know that.”

“You went missing.
We do not know that.
”

He dropped his eyebrow and shrugged. “Point taken.” He opened his computer. “We have three things that we last left off with.”

“Get to the only one I care about,” the hand slapper said.

“Alright.” Parker had read Rossi’s file and knew to expect this man as the head honcho. He was clearly the highest-ranking Gornovsky man in the room. In the city of Kirovo-Chepetsk, the man was a corrupt, dictator-like ruler—the bad-seed kind who didn’t mind poisoning the rivers with the runoff from his chemical companies and making a nice profit from weaponizing fertilizer.

“You disappear—my trust in you has all but vanished. Tell me what I want to know.”

Parker’s spine stiffened, and he leaned forward, resting his elbows on either side of his laptop. “Then pay me.”

The Gornovskys stared as though the greedy scientist had broken Russian business etiquette, and maybe he had. But it was too late to be concerned about that.

“You want the formula. I want my bank transfer.” Parker closed his laptop. “If you pay, I’ll tell you whatever you want, create whatever you need.
You know this
. But if you don’t authorize the transfer now, I’ll disappear. Again.”

A man who Parker decided was number two in the pecking order cleared his throat and nodded to the crowd on the couch, one of whom got up and placed two Makarov semiautomatic pistols on the table. The threat had been made.

They stared. He stared. Parker’s blood thumped, pulse racing. Sweat trickled down the back of his neck. Wrong once before, he needed to read this situation right.

He narrowed his gaze on the leader. Everything Parker needed to know was there as he tried to read his mind, to see the gray area in the black-and-white world that the guy lived in.

The Russian’s eyes narrowed. His jaw flexed. Anger? Impatience? Or was it a hollow threat?

The man was greedy. What Parker offered stood to make millions, and the time lost to finding another Rossi… if Render had been that easy to replace, they would have done it already.

“I work for you.” Parker pointed at the lead Gornovsky, playing to his ego. “Not
him
or the rest of your underlings.”

There was a shift of testosterone, an uncomfortable challenge made. But Parker was right, and the man let out a sputtering of Russian without taking his eyes of Parker. There was no doubt what the words had been. They weren’t
Kill the woman
or
Shed blood
. They were clear and simple:
Pay the man
.