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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.
