Reckless Abandon (Phantom Protector Book 1) (2 page)

“What else happened?” the general asked with a
bit of annoyance in his voice. His inability to understand Lydia’s visions
always set him on edge.

Lydia
glanced at Brody and then Briggs. “They’ll be coming for us, soon. I saw Brody and
Briggs leaving the compound on a trip. They were searching for something, and
they failed. Everyone sitting here dies.”

Briggs crossed his arms over his chest. The last
thing he wanted to do was take a trip with the most annoying person he knew and
cause the loss of those lives he’d been sent here to protect.
 

Ridge leaned forward. “That’s impossible.” He
lifted his hands. “With all of our combined skills and extra security, there’s
no way that Floyd could beat us.”

Lydia
shrugged. “I don’t know how, but he does. That’s why it’s important that Brody
and Briggs find whatever it is they’re looking for.”

Floyd was the psycho that had been after Lydia. He was
the only reason Lydia was
still in the little town of Henderson. Her presence
in Henderson
was supposed to keep her safe. He might not understand what made her tick, but
he’d learned to trust her the same way she’d trusted him.

Leaning forward in his chair, in a controlled
voice, he asked, “What is it? Tell me what I’m after, and I’ll find it. I can
find anything.”

Lydia
lifted
her coffee to her lips. Her gaze over the rim of her cup traveled to Jamie. She
nodded once. “Jamie holds the key. Whatever that key unlocks is our only hope.”
She met Jamie’s eyes. “It could potentially save us all.”

“What key?” Briggs asked, placing his elbows on
the table. He held out his hand to Jamie. “Hand it over.”

Jamie pulled out the gold chain from beneath her
shirt. Attached to the end hung a nondescript silver key. “This is the only key
I’ve got, and to be honest, I’m not sure it goes to anything.”

The general’s brows pulled together. The air
around the table vibrated, either from Brody or Lydia, but Briggs couldn’t tell
which. The general spoke. “Where did you get it?”

Jamie lowered her lashes and clasped her hands
together, entwining her fingers. She looked up and met the general’s gaze. “I’m
sure it’s in my records, but I was abandoned when I was a baby and grew up in an
orphanage.” She lifted the key from her chest. “The women at the orphanage said
this was on a chain around my neck when I was left on the doorstep. I’ve had it
ever since, and I have no idea what it unlocks.”

The general nodded and pushed from the table.
“I’ll get Jonah to start researching.”

Brody stood. “When will Briggs and I be
leaving?”

The general shook his head. “Lydia’s visions
get altered when something changes, and if we all end up dead in her dream,
then something needs to change. You aren’t going.” He turned toward Jamie.
“Briggs and Jamie are. She’s the one that holds the key.”

Brody’s mouth hung open. “But, sir…”

“My decision is final.” He turned toward Lydia. “How
long do we have?”

Lydia
squeezed
her eyes closed as if trying to remember the vision in living color. “A month
tops, I think. In my vision I was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, and the weather
isn’t cold enough yet. So if I had to guess, I would say maybe a month.”

The general nodded intently and walked to the
door, pulling it open. “Time’s ticking, people.” He looked over his shoulder.
Briggs didn’t miss the tightening in the general’s jaw. “Jamie, make sure you
give Jonah the key so he can copy it and research it. He’ll give it back to you
before you leave.”

The general turned toward Briggs. “You leave at
oh eight hundred tomorrow.”

Briggs rose from the table and shoved his hands
in his jean pockets. “I didn’t sign up for this. My mission was to keep Lydia safe, and
to be honest, I think I just need to get her the hell out of here and let you
guys figure this one out.”

Jamie walked over to Briggs and placed her palm
on his arm. “Rick will keep her safe and whisk her away when the weather
changes, but I need your help. You were the one who said you could find
anything and right now…” She raised an eyebrow as if contemplating her words. “You’re
all I’ve got.”

Lydia
smiled
and patted his other arm as she walked by. “Don’t worry. He’s going to help.” Lydia followed
the general out the door as everyone else gathered their things and left them
too.

Jamie’s crystal eyes watered. She was trying to
fight back a tear from escaping. The strong, kick-ass woman he’d come to admire
over the last several months was counting on him. Could he really let her down;
would he?

Chapter 2

There was no way she was going to let him refuse
her. Even if it meant turning on the waterworks like a pansy girl, she would
have done it. The people at this compound were the only family she knew, and
she could shed a bucket of tears if that meant getting the silent giant to
cooperate.

 
He threw
his arm around her shoulder and led her out of the conference room. “I’ll help,
but we’re going to do this my way.”

Jamie opened her mouth to argue but instead bit
her tongue… for now. She thought about using her gift. All she would have
needed was to touch the big brute and she could have made him feel empathy for
her, but she decided against physically manipulating him. If he wouldn’t help a
woman in distress, then he wasn’t the man to go on this journey with her.

She’d dreamed about this moment. Not a vision
like Lydia
had, but dreams of a little girl finding out about her past. As a child, every
year she’d wished during Christmas, and when she blew out her birthday candles,
she wished that her parents would return, and every year she’d been
disappointed. As the years went by and she grew up, she placed another brick
around her heart to protect herself from the disappointment. She’d done the
only thing she could do and toughened up. She would never let anyone wield that
much power over her again…ever.

Jamie held back her smile as she reached up and
pulled the chain over her head. She ran her thumb over the metal key once more just
as she’d done a thousand times before. She handed to over to Jonah, the
computer geek. “Don’t lose this. It’s important, and I’d hate to have to kill
you.”

Jonah chuckled, and Jamie raised her brow. His
eyes widened, and he cleared his throat. “Oh… that wasn’t a joke.” He clutched
the key to his chest. “I’ll guard it with my life and have it back to you
within the hour.”

Jamie nodded and left both men standing there as
she made her way toward the gym. She wanted to grab one more workout before
she’d be leaving to find the answers that had eluded her all of her life. She
felt the aggression building inside of her. She needed an outlet, and she knew
it. Jamie knocked the living crap out of the hanging bag until sweat streamed
down her face. With every punch she drained some of the anger she held for her
parents. After an hour of the intense workout, she returned to her room, only
to shower and collapse on her bed.

Her body was fatigued, but that didn’t stop her
mind from running rampant. Jamie tossed and turned all night thinking about how
she would react to finally meeting her parents, if that was where the key took
them. She wondered what type of possible excuse they could give her for
discarding her when she was just a tiny baby.

Jamie opened her eyes, unable to sleep with all
of the thoughts running through her head. She glanced at the clock. The red
numbers, saying it was only five in the morning, mocked her. She let out a sigh
as she reached up and held the key in her palm and asked the age-old question
she’d whispered countless times. “Why? What did I ever do that was so bad?”

She shook her head and slid out of the bed,
giving into the fact that a peaceful night’s sleep wouldn’t be returning
anytime in her future.

When six o’clock rolled around, she couldn’t
take the anticipation anymore. She grabbed her packed bag full of clothes and
her weapons of choice and strolled down to the cafeteria. Hunger wasn’t
necessarily on her mind, but waiting in the only company of her thoughts was
out of the question.

The cafeteria was like a ghost town. Most of the
linoleum tables sat empty. The large bulletproof windows surrounding the room
gave her a view of the compound walls and indicated that it was the start of
another beautiful day, one that didn’t match the pending doom bubbling in the
pit of her stomach. Brody and a few others were the only ones eating breakfast.
Jamie dropped her bag in a chair at Brody’s table and went in search of
something that would calm her stomach. The smell of eggs and bacon drifted to
her nose. It was the type of breakfast she normally ate, but she didn’t think
she’d be able to stomach it today. She returned only moments later with a bowl
full of fruit and a glass of orange juice.

Brody winked at her as she sat down across from
him. “I suggest you eat more than that. I wouldn’t count on Briggs stopping if
you’re hungry later.”

“I’ll be fine. This will hold me over.”

He leaned across the table. “Anything new to
report on your search for your parents we talked about last month? Last you
told me, they weren’t going to give you access to the hospital records.”

She shook her head and popped a grape in her
mouth. “Nope, after everything that happened since Lydia’s been here, I haven’t really
had any more free time to look into it.”

“Are you scared?”

Jamie almost choked on her grape. “Scared, about
what?”

Brody waved his fork in the air. “Oh, I don’t
know… finding out why they ditched you so long ago. You’ve been looking for a
mighty long time and considering you hold the key”—He pointed with his fork at
the dangling key—“to everyone’s lives, I just thought you might be a little
worried.”

Brody had hit the nail on the head. She wanted
to believe that she could forgive her parents for their terrible deed all those
years ago, but there were new stakes on the table and a future she was going to
have to confront in order to put the pieces of the puzzle together. “I trust
that Briggs knows what he’s doing.” She shrugged. “Besides, I’m sure Lydia will call
if she gets anything new. We all know what happens when we make choices that
weren’t in her vision.”

Brody sipped his coffee. “Yep, the gates of hell
open and everything goes to crap.”

Jamie chuckled, leaned across the table, and
stole a piece of Brody’s bacon. “You can say that again.”

They ate in comfortable silence, well as silent
as Brody was capable of being. He told a few jokes to lighten the mood and
offered more than once to go on the mission in her place. Everything seemed
normal and calm, until
he
walked in
and dropped his bag. His grunt indicated he hadn’t had his coffee yet and
wasn’t likely to be a morning person. She sighed as he made his way to the
coffee pot. “Traveling with him ought to be interesting.”

“Yeah, he seems to be a whole ball of fun in the
morning.”

Briggs plopped down in the chair next to Brody
and grunted again before he sipped his coffee.

“Good morning.”

“Not yet,” he replied.

Brody stood and picked up his plate. “I guess
that’s my cue to leave before he sucks the life out of me too.”

“You must have me confused with Thompson.”

Jamie couldn’t contain her grin and smiled. Rick
Thompson had been captured by Floyd and stuck with a needle containing an
unknown substance. The mission to rescue him had almost cost his fiancée her
life, a fact that Jamie would never forget since she had to perform her magic to
help heal Lydia.
Rick hadn’t been the same since he’d returned. He, just like everyone else at
the compound, had new abilities of performing the impossible. Rick’s was the
hardest to believe. The idea of him sucking the energy from those around him
was just something that was hard to digest.

Brody called over his shoulder as he left.
“Nope, it’s you… All you, big guy. Have fun on your trip and try not to let Jamie
get killed. We kinda like her around here.”

Briggs didn’t reply.

“So I see you’ve got your bag packed. Are we
leaving when you’re done with your coffee?”

Briggs lifted his brow but didn’t reply.

“Not a morning person, are you?” she asked.

Briggs set his coffee cup down and leaned back
in his chair. “Tell me something.”

“Shoot. What do you want to know?”

“How a girl like you, who was born and raised in
Jonesville,
Tennessee,
came to end up at a place like this.”

Jamie was momentarily stunned, and she was sure
it was written all over her face. She shook her head and leaned forward. “If
you already know my background, then you also know the answer to that.”

Briggs grinned. “I do.”

Jamie drained the remainder of orange juice and
rose and lifted her bag. “Then maybe you can tell me who my parents are and we
can forego this whole trip. That would save us a lot of time.”