part0019

B y the time the convoy that he’d put together converged on the facility, Carlson felt more than a little buzzed. The place had been one of Pegasus’ longest-running operations and had opened before he’d even assumed control of the company. It had made sense to move most of their goop testing there when it became clear that they would get the bulk of the government contracts for it. All things considered, this was the end of an era, in one way or another. Even when he retook the reins of the company, he doubted that he would be allowed to reopen the lab.

Then again, even if he could reopen it, the facility would probably not see the same kind of work that it had before. There was a lot of history embedded in the walls, and it was sad that things had come to an end like this.

He could feel the whiskey starting to affect him as they parked in front of the facility. It had, he admitted to himself, been a questionable choice on his part to put the partition up to keep the driver out of his decision to continue drinking. Three-quarters of the rich liquid was gone. He was no lightweight and had been known as something of a party boy, even after he’d married and taken control of a Fortune Five Hundred company, but these days, it was difficult to find drinking partners. Some of his old buddies were in rival companies and couldn’t be seen with him. Some were out of reach, living comfortable lives in countries that didn’t have extradition treaties. A couple were in jail. There were risks involved in the lives they lived.

Regrettably, he had begun to slide into that part of life when he lost more friends than he made. That was a fucking depressing thought—and one hell of a good reason to keep on drinking, as far as he was concerned. There was always a good reason if one simply looked for it.

He waited for the driver to come around to his door this time and allowed the man to pull it open. With extra care, he stepped out and thankfully didn’t have to lean on the side of the car as he pulled a pair of sunglasses out of his jacket pocket, flipped them open with one hand, and put them on smoothly. It was a practiced move that was meant to show that he wasn’t as drunk as people might think he was if they got in close enough to smell his breath or see his bloodshot eyes.

Speaking of, he would probably need to talk to someone about getting a breath mint. He would light up a breathalyzer test like a Christmas tree. While a mint wouldn’t help with that particular problem, it would certainly play better with the employees if they didn’t know that their boss’ boss three or four times removed got himself hammered while on the job.

These people didn’t know that they would all lose their employment with the company, and him showing up sloshed would only hint at bad things that would happen in the future. Even if the reason why he drank wasn’t necessarily a sad one. Not a particularly happy one either, but hey, who was counting?

“Sir, are you ready for the site inspection?” one of the men asked him. They all looked like they were dressed for combat. Carlson could appreciate that, considering the new elements that had been introduced. What was the term? The fly in the ointment. The wrench in the works.

“Mr. Carlson will be ready to inspect the facility when he says so, and not before,” his head of security Mr. Stevens remarked. The executive narrowed his eyes and stared at the two men who seemed to be locked in a silent yet very real battle of wills. He mused that if both these men were as drunk as he was, they would be throwing punches.

It really was comforting that not everyone was as unprofessional as he was.

“I think I’d like to have a quick view of the facility, first, to make sure that everything’s up to code,” Carlson said and drew in a deep breath. If anyone would notice his condition, it would be scientists, so he might as well start with them and get it over with. Besides, he was interested only in what they attempted to accomplish. Nothing mattered except meeting the deadline.

He took a moment to gather his balance before he moved around the car. While he wasn’t sure what he would do to cover for himself during his inspection, he would think of something. Maybe those pills the doctor had given him. He still had those, right?

The driver saw him check his pockets and moved quickly back into the limo. Carlson watched as the two men in charge of the security on location argued once again over how the viewing would proceed.

Well, maybe they weren’t as professional as he would have liked.

The driver stepped out of the car. He held a small white pill in one hand and a glass of water in the other and handed both to Carlson. Without comment, he stood between his boss and the two arguing security men as the executive popped the pill down the hatch and chased it with some water. It would be a little while before it kicked in, but it would have to do.

“A mint, sir?” the man asked and handed him a small container.

“Thank you, Linus.” The driver tapped a couple of the little white tablets out. Linus was the one who had been with him the longest. The exact nature of his training had never been explained, but he had seen the man handle some tough situations with ease and precision. That fact alone told Carlson that whatever training it had been, it was not something to scoff at.

And the man had something that was even more valuable than the ability to break people in two, drive like someone who had just robbed a bank, and to always have something up his sleeve that would help with whatever maladies Carlson experienced. That was loyalty. The man had been with him for the better part of a decade and a half and had never faltered in his duty. He was being well-paid for it, of course, but so were the people who had failed him in the past.

The executive could feel the pill already starting to take effect. The buzz in his brain slowly faded. He knew that he had a killer headache coming on, but that was par for the course. Linus would have something for that, too, when they began the return trip to the hotel.

Hopefully, he could put all this bullshit behind him and turn his attention once more to reclaiming his company from those assholes.

“If the two of you are done arguing,” he said, and straightened his suit. “I think we have a facility to inspect, don’t you, Mr. Stevens?”

“Oh,” Stevens grunted and turned away from his argument with the man in combat armor. He cleared his throat. “Of course, sir. If you would just—”

“Follow me, right this way, sir,” his opponent cut in.

These two men needed to get a hotel room and work all this angst out, Carlson mused and shook his head. Seriously.

“I don’t give a fuck who I follow,” he snapped, and his tone of voice immediately sucked the testosterone out of the air. The fact remained that neither of them was the one in charge of this shindig.

“Of course, sir,” the man in armor said and turned without further comment to guide them toward the building. As per his original request, all markings of who it belonged to were erased. The only people who knew that the facility belonged to Pegasus were the ones who handled the paperwork, and not even them, sometimes.

God, that pill was working miracles, Carlson thought. He would have to ask Linus what it was when they were alone.

“I followed the paperwork,” Anja replied and sounded much calmer than he felt. “Continue in that direction, and you should reach the junction.”

During the days leading up to this moment, he had taken the time to buy some equipment that he might need should push come to shove. The one purchase he definitely didn’t regret was the heavy clothes. Anyone else in his position would have gone for a ghillie suit, but he didn’t have the time to crawl secretly closer and closer to the facility over a couple of long days in the sun. He had never done that himself, although from what he knew of the few truly skilled snipers he’d met in his time, they had been men and women of incredible focus and patience and had ice water running in their veins.

Thankfully, the Russian had filled him in on the details as he’d shuffled in closer. Three hundred yards could be covered fairly quickly when he didn’t have to worry about outside security. A place like this didn’t rate the kind of security that usually came with government testing facilities. It made sense since what the government wanted these third-party companies to do was lower the cost of the testing they needed.

The price was usually accommodated by lowering security standards. In this case, it was replaced with the remoteness of this location and the fact that there wasn’t much in evidence that could identify it as a testing facility. For all anyone knew, it was a place that tested lipstick on bunnies. Anyone who broke into the place would find themselves up against some angry people with guns, and that would usually be sufficient to scare them off.

If it didn’t…well, it was an isolated place with a lot of open space in which to bury the bodies.

“Fuck,” Savage grumbled under his breath.

“What?” Anja asked and sounded distracted.

“I’m really glad I don’t believe in ghosts right about now,” he admitted. He’d reached the fence surrounding the facility and started to circle around it.

“Well, thanks for that very random piece of information. Do you anticipate that ghosts might be a problem if you did believe in them?”

“I’m merely wondering how many bodies have been buried out here,” he explained as he finally reached the junction that she had mentioned.

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing, really,” he responded. “But I would imagine that these people don’t really turn any intruders over to the police. So the real question is how many people would be stupid enough to break into a place like this.”

He paused beside a massive upheaval of dirt that had clearly been removed from a hole under the fifteen-foot fence.

“I wish to amend my previous statement.” He dropped quickly into the hole that came up to his waist and allowed him to slip through the gap under the fence without any difficulty. It even amused him that he didn’t need to do much more than bend over at the waist. “What the hell kind of paperwork would tell you about the work of the world’s largest and most industrious dog?”

“They planned to restructure the sewer system in the facility. About six months ago, the paperwork went through for the construction of the new sewer line and it got clogged in the local bureaucracy until about a month ago when it was authorized.”

“You’d think that companies like Pegasus would be able to jump to the front of the line,” Savage commented, now safely inside the facility’s fence.

“Come on, you’ve worked with the government.” Her chuckle was definitely derisive. “You know better than that. Six months is the front of the line.”

“Fair enough.” He sighed. “How did you know that it wouldn’t be covered up by now?”

“Well, all construction work was put on hold when Carlson sent out the alert that the place would close down,” she explained. “There wasn’t any paperwork to hire people to fill the hole in, and since the people working in this place aren’t exactly the most ambitious of creatures, I assumed it would still be open.”

“You assumed?” he mused with a smirk. “You gambled the success of this mission on an assumption?”

“It worked, didn’t it?” She sounded suddenly defensive.

“Hey, I’m not criticizing,” Savage whispered as he eased closer to the front of the facility. “It was an informed guess and a good gamble that paid off, so that’s the end of the discussion.”

“Well, that conveniently moves us on to the next problem,” Anja continued. “All I can do is get you inside the fence. There isn’t any paper trail that will magic you a way into the building proper.”

“You have your magic, I have mine.” He took a deep breath as he hugged the walls. He couldn’t see any cameras in place, which meant that they really hadn’t put too much money into the outside security on site. It didn’t matter, though, since he couldn’t walk through walls.

“Are we going through with this magic metaphor?” Anja asked. “Because I think I like it. I do all my stuff from afar, and that makes me a spellcaster, while you’re a battle magic sort of guy. You like to get all hands-on. What do you think, Jer? Jer?”

He didn’t answer because it really wasn’t an option. Voices drifted closer—a pair of them, two men walking at a leisurely pace. There were other voices too, but they were further away and sounded fairly heated like an argument was in progress.

If he could have talked, he would have disagreed. Like anyone with a hint of sense, he had to say that he didn’t particularly enjoy getting up close and personal. But still, he was pretty damn good at it.

Savage slid back behind the wall as the men moved even closer. He drew the knife he’d bought from Max out of its sheath and tucked it into his jacket. While he wasn’t sure what he would do, he knew that he needed it to be quick and precise. He doubted that he would have the chance he’d had in the Pegasus building in Philly.

“Like, I knew she was doing the open relationship before we started dating, you know?” one of the men said as they circled toward where he had been forced to drop back. “And she keeps saying that everything’s great and why change it if it’s going so well? I don’t want to say it, but it’s not really going well for me, you know?”

“She’s not acknowledging your feelings, Ray,” the second guard said, patted the man’s shoulder, and shook his head. “You need to talk to her about this, and if she’s not willing to put up some kind of commitment for you, you need to let her go.”

Jeremiah almost felt bad for what he was about to do. He could understand that the guy had some girl problems and he didn’t really want to do anything to make it worse. But he was there to do a job, and he could only hope that the guy ending up in the hospital would buy him some kind of sympathy from the woman he had trouble with. Honestly, he’d never really seen the kind of open relationship that the man described. He had heard of them and it actually worked, from what he’d been told.

It didn’t mean it wasn’t complicated, though, and he was about to put a whole heap of complication on top of that. Work troubles tended to spill out into relationships.

He remained close to the wall as he advanced on the men. The fact that they moved from where the sun was shining on the building and into the shade would hopefully give him enough time as their eyes adjusted to close the distance.

Anja wasn’t the only one who gambled in this. He could only hope that his had as good a payoff as hers.

The men’s eyes flickered to the side as he sprinted toward them, but their eyes were drawn to where he had been a half second before. It gave him time. Not all the time in the world, but in these situations, seconds might as well be decades.

The man on his right—the one having girl troubles—was the first one he closed on. He didn’t have a kill on his mind, but he needed the fight to be finished quickly so used the momentum of his advance to crack the handle of the knife on the man’s skull. His eyes immediately went blank as he slumped. Savage was already on the move and spun before the first man had even fully fallen. He dropped to his knees as the other man tried to track his movements.

Dammit, what was his name again? The first guy just said it a few seconds ago? Ray? He wasn’t sure why it mattered, but it did for some reason.

Savage used the power provided by his spin and drop to ram the blunt end of the knife as hard as he could on the inside of Ray’s knee. He could feel the crack and pop that told him of a possible tear in the ligaments as he pushed up from his kneeling position and hammered his gloved fist under the man’s jaw. The pain of the impact flared up his arm, but the damage done to Ray was much, much worse. The man’s head snapped back as his knees immediately buckled and his eyes rolled to show the whites. He caught the unconscious man by the collar and dragged him and then his friend into the shade cast by the building.

“Sorry about this, guys.” He made a quick guess as to which man wore what was closest to his size and selected the lovelorn unfortunate as his best match. There wasn’t time to strip the man down, but thankfully, his own dark pants and boots were similar enough to pass a quick inspection. All he needed was the blue coat and Kevlar vest that the man wore.

“You really should talk to your girl about committing more to you,” Jeremiah said softly once he had finished donning the uniform and dragged the two men over to the hole under the fence. “I’m not saying that open relationships are easy, but if you can pull it off, they can be rewarding. So talk to her, and maybe get to know the other guys she’s dating. If you can be friends with them, all the better.”

Savage paused once he’d dumped Ray into the hole first, followed quickly by the other man. “You might want to see a concussion doctor first, though. Just my opinion.”

He inspected the radios and IDs that he’d retrieved from both men. Again, a quick judgment call was needed, but in this case, he actually looked a lot more like Ray—brown hair, green eyes, and rugged features. The man actually had a nicer jawline than he did, but nobody would peer too closely at the two-by-two picture that he pinned on his chest. He retained one of the radios and smashed the second. No need to have either one of them wake up and call for help at the worst possible time. Ray also had a pack of cigarettes and a lighter in his coat pocket, which he kept. There was no telling when those could be useful.

“Let me guess…you want someone to be alerted that these boys are down too?” Anja asked in his headset.

“How did you know?” he asked and adjusted the jacket. As it turned out, the lovelorn dude had broader shoulders than he did himself. It would be a little uncomfortable, but he would simply have to manage.

Savage circled toward the group that lingered near the vehicles. They were engaged in what appeared to be a battle of wills between a couple of the men who looked like they were in charge and wanted to be more in charge than their opponent. They yelled and generally attracted the attention of the others, which was why he was able to slip into their ranks.

The weakest part of any security system would always be the human element. When would people actually understand that?

Well, he really hoped it wasn’t soon. Otherwise, his part in this sordid business of cloak and daggers would rapidly come to a very ignoble end.

Carlson stepped in quickly to remind everyone that he was actually the man in charge. He pulled the reins on the two and briskly told them to get moving. Just in time, too, as Savage didn’t want to hang around in one place for too long and risk being made. He moved toward the door leading into the facility as the others fell in behind the leaders. It was necessary to stay in formation and remain a nameless, faceless part of the horde. Anderson was right. He did have some theoretical training in how to do this.

His experience called for other skills, though. The kind that had taken care of the two men who had loaned him their uniforms and radios.

Savage grabbed the door quickly and held it open as the executive passed him.

The man didn’t even glance at him and looked like he was on that magical bridge between being drunk and being hungover. Savage wondered how much of a scene he would have to make before the man realized that he wasn’t part of his security detail. The men who were actually guarding him were in a similar situation. They appeared to be more focused on the job than who they were working with.