CHAPTER ONE
Sixton “Six” Rapp parked his truck but left the motor running, taking a long moment to stare at his first civilian workplace since a lifeguarding gig in college. Never had a nondescript warehouse with peeling paint looked so incredible.
There was no sand here to work its way into every crevice known to man. Just good old American black asphalt and some brown grass in desperate need of the elusive San Diego rain. There was no gunfire, no screaming, and no whirring aircraft propellers. Instead, the sweet sound of Nina Simone singing about sugar in her bowl blasted from his speakers. Most importantly, the building was his. Well, a third of it.
He checked his watch. He was late—a new habit he’d subconsciously developed in the last two weeks since he’d left his Navy SEAL career behind.
“Shit,” he said, pocketing his keys and grabbing his gym bag and garment bag from the passenger seat. He threw them over his shoulder as he got out and winced as the straps crossed over the four lines of scratch marks that Lauren … Lori … whatever her name was … had left on his back after an impromptu heated farewell against his front door. Some things were worth being late for.
With a gait borne of over a decade of military conditioning, Six jogged into the building. The smell of still-drying paint lingered in the air as he made his way past the empty reception desk. Hiring somebody for the post had been Mac’s responsibility, but he was out on their first real two-week job, finding and retrieving a child who had been abducted by her biological father and taken to Mexico. It was nasty case involving years of abuse and a restraining order that was as useless as the paper it was written on.
It was hard to believe that what they had been working on and saving so hard for over the last few years was finally about to be realized. Five years earlier, when Cabe had floated the idea to start planning and saving for a business of their own for when they were done with the military, Six and their best friend, Mac, had thought Cabe was getting ahead of himself. Still hardcore committed to the SEAL brotherhood, retirement had been far from their thoughts as they’d scoured the dusty, barren foothills of the Hindu Kush for signs of a terrorist cell suspected of using the Wakhjir Pass to gain access into northern Pakistan.
But now, at thirty-three, with a Purple Heart and a healed bullet wound to the stomach, Six appreciated Cabe’s foresight. Cabe had invested the money they’d saved from salaries, reenlistment bonuses, jump pay, and special-duty assignment pay. The guy was such a freaking genius when it came to playing the stock market that Six wondered why Cabe didn’t just stay home and play Warren Buffett all day. Their modest savings had grown enough to make Eagle Securities a reality, if not a particularly wealthy one.
It was going to take time to build their special-ops reputation and grow their business, and Six stopped to look at the large board that listed events and names, an idea Mac had had to fill the gap. High-end, discreet security services. Nobody would ever call it exciting work, but it would help pay the bills in return for minimum effort until they were fully booked.
“Hello,” he shouted into the empty building. There was a slight echo as his voice bounced off the tiled floor and undecorated hallway.
“Down here,” a voice shouted from a corridor to his left.
Six followed the sound and found his best friend and former kindergarten carpet partner, Cabe Moss, on his knees underneath the table, fiddling with wires running into the floor.
“I swear to God your ass gets uglier and uglier,” Six said, walking into the room.
Cabe crawled from underneath the table. “And I swear to God, your face gets uglier and uglier. Better my ass than your mug.” He jumped to his feet and hugged Six. “How’ve you been, Viking?”
Six laughed at the old nickname. A family project during high school had uncovered the origins of his tall frame and blond hair. His family was descended from the original fierce raiders. And though the guys had always teased him about it, knowing that fighting was in his blood had been a source of incredible motivation in the hours before getting the go on a mission.
“Glad to be back in San Dog. Spent most of the weekend on my board instead of unpacking. Surfing Seaside was one giant welcome home.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re here, finally. We’ve got shit to do, man, to get this place ready for business. Let me show you around.”
Six followed Cabe out of the room and into a wide-open space the size of a small plane hangar.
“Fitness center is over there,” Cabe said, pointing toward a bank of strength-training equipment and some cardio machines. Two treadmills, a rower, a couple of spin bikes, and a recumbent. Six had plans for those later. “Showers are down the corridor to the left. There’s a dorm with three bunks in it to the right. Can double as medical. Got basic supplies in there for now.”
The guys had obviously been busy. “We doing training in here too?” he asked. The space would be great for it.
“Yeah, folding desks and chairs are in the storeroom over there. And we can project onto this wall over here. Black out blinds and shit.” Cabe lifted his chin to the narrow windows that ran along the upper wall. “For when we need to do briefings, unit level training, specialty training, etc.”
Six could see it. Teams, missions, debriefings. Their own chain of command, with them ultimately in charge. “Did we end up hiring any of those resumes I screened?”
Cabe led them back down the hallway they’d come from. “We got five on the books and a couple more starting over the next week, including an ex-SAS guy from the UK. Will intro two of them later. Mac took three of them with him to Mexico to retrieve the child. The job only needed two, but he wanted to test them out.”
“Good plan,” Six said as they stopped in front of a steel cabinet. “Armory?” he asked.
Cabe nodded. “Electronic code lock. The date Brock died, followed by the date we enlisted,” he said quietly, entering the number on the keypad.
They didn’t talk about Brock often. Especially not with Mac. But the two dates went together, one having led to the other. It had been Brock’s dream to become a SEAL, but when he’d died in their final year of college, everything had changed, even their own career aspirations.
“We look a little light because the guys flew out privately with their weapons. Had to fight to get all the permits. We should have set up in the OC. Would have been easier. Or somewhere we’re allowed automatics as well as semis.”
Six could only imagine the paperwork Mac had had to take care of, and he felt shitty that he hadn’t been there to help out. But their separation dates were never going to line up properly, especially with different quantities of terminal leave due, so he’d done what he could from Virginia. “It’s good to be home, Cabe.”
Cabe looked at him and grinned. “Sure as hell is. Over there you’ve seen. It’s a conference room for meeting with clients. One that still doesn’t have reliable Internet. And we also have a smaller one that’s completely blacked out for security,” he said, taking them down a small corridor. “This is my office, and Mac’s is next door.” Cabe pointed to the left of the corridor. “And this side is the secure conference room. And, finally, your office.”
A sign hung on the door. SIX RAPP.
A phone rang in the distance. “Gotta get that,” Cabe said, heading back down the corridor. “But you and me, security detail tonight at a big fundraiser. I’ll catch you later with the details. Settle in for a while.”
Six stepped into his office. Black shelves and cupboards lined one wall. A large glass desk with chrome legs dominated the space. On it were two large monitors and a laptop with a sticky note.
User id: sixtonrapp
Password: #i<3unicorns
(You can change that->8 characters, 1 number, 1 symbol)
Six laughed. “Asshole,” he said. He ran his hand over the cool glass, walked to the other side of the desk, and took a seat in the chair that was probably ergonomically designed, given that Mac had picked it. It was sturdy for his large frame, though, which was all that mattered to Six. He turned to face the window looking out over the parking lot.
Home.
He’d not only made it, but he’d survived.
So why did he feel so lost?
* * *
Someone has touched my files.
Louisa North blew her bangs out of her eyes and flicked through the folder one more time. There was something wrong with her notes, but she couldn’t put her finger on exactly what it was. If she didn’t know better, she’d swear someone had been through them. It wasn’t anything obvious, but she was anal about lining up the corners of the pages before she closed any binder, and the pages were out of alignment as though someone had hurriedly flipped through them.
In the largest privately funded medical laboratory in San Diego, it wasn’t unusual for researchers to collaborate, consult, and borrow information from one another in their quests to find answers to global problems as quickly as possible. But usually people asked permission.
She closed the file and pulled up her notes on her laptop. She bookmarked the article she hadn’t yet finished reading on gene silencing and its possible effects on clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats. CRISPR for short. While the findings were crucial to her research into treating Huntington’s disease, the acronym always made her think of the salad drawer in her refrigerator.
Everything about her computer files and email looked normal. The last modified date matched the date she could last remember opening them. No emails were marked as read that she hadn’t opened. While it was possible that her lab partner, Ivan, who was also the lab owner’s grandson, had taken a look at her handwritten notes, it was very unlikely. After all their time working together, he knew better than to mess with her things.
She looked through the glass-fronted cleanroom walls to the two labs across the hallway that faced hers. Six to eight people shared space in each of them, a thought that made Louisa shiver. It had been a condition of her mother’s investment in the laboratory that Louisa be given her own lab to avoid having to deal with people on a daily basis. It was a good thing too, because some days it was almost more of a drain than she could bear having only Ivan around. Cognitive behavior therapies had only gone so far in helping her overcome her chronic anthropophobia, but her extreme shyness still took over her life at times. While all the breathing and modifying thoughts enabled her to get out of bed in the morning and come to work, daily challenges like looking someone in the eye remained an issue. It was part of the reason she’d let her bangs grow so damn long, even though it aggravated the hell out of her mother.
Diligently, she straightened all the corners of the pages so they lined up and placed the binder to one side. She couldn’t spend more time worrying about it right now, because there were other things that needed tackling.
Louisa pulled up the presentation she was supposed to give at tonight’s fundraiser. Her palms began to sweat as she paged through it. It wasn’t so much the presentation that made her feel ill, more the crowds who usually came to listen to what she had to say. And she knew she was a double whammy. Researcher who’d dedicated her life to understanding Huntington’s—check. Potential carrier of the disease—check. She’d buried her beloved father, Isaiah North, a decade ago, when he’d finally succumbed to the disease, and she was well aware that there was a fifty-percent chance that she, too, was a Huntington’s disease gene carrier. Like most potential gene carriers, she’d chosen not to be tested, a decision that those who were not in the line of fire rarely understood. In her mind, there was no point living under a storm cloud when she had the chance to dance in the sun.
The slide with her credentials popped up on the screen. Usually she hated talking about herself, but she knew that if she wanted to stand a chance of convincing some of the attendees at tonight’s gala to part with even more of their money, she needed to prove that she knew what she was talking about. Thanks to her parents’ generosity, Louisa had been afforded an education most people could only dream about. With an undergrad degree from Harvard University and an MD from Yale, she’d been on the fast track as a neurology resident and ultimately fellow in neuro-therapeutics and movement disorders at Johns Hopkins—until her phobia got in the way. When people asked why she’d chosen to bury herself in a lab, she offered them a vanilla answer about dedication and focus.
She wished she could tell the attendees tonight that her quest for an alternative to Tetrabenazine, the drug that had been developed initially to treat schizophrenia but had proven useful in treating conditions with involuntary movements, like Huntington’s disease, had proven fruitful. It would have been wonderful to share with the audience that she’d found one with potentially less-harmful side effects, that her research was on the right track, but in truth, the drug she’d been working on had ended up being more poison than medicine. She’d been convinced that she was on the way to creating a drug that would reduce hyperkinesia, the uncontrollable muscle spasms, without increasing the risk of psychiatric conditions such as depression, paranoia, and suicidal ideation. The same psychiatric conditions that caused her prone-to-depression father to succumb to his despair and hang himself in the garage of their estate in Torrey Pines. But instead, the drug she’d tested had gone too far, causing paralysis in rats while leaving them fully aware of what was happening to them. They’d been unable to eat or drink or help themselves.
Louisa studied each slide in detail. The audience wouldn’t have the patience to hear long scientific proclamations, so she used layman’s terms, like genes and chromosomes, and explained how everyone’s fourth chromosome produced a protein called huntingtin, and faulty genes caused mutant huntingtin, which could ultimately kill. She’d learned over the years to avoid phrases like “basal ganglia” and “C-A-G repeats” because, in truth, no one really cared. People were attending the fundraiser for her work because her mother had asked them to. Because other rich people would be there. Because they needed to be seen doing good. Cancer they worried about because it could affect them at any point in time, but a hereditary disease that they knew their family didn’t carry …
Her eyes caught the clock on the wall.
Crap.
It was already four in the afternoon. She normally didn’t leave the lab until eight or nine in the evening. Fewer people in the lab, fewer people on the roads, fewer people, period. But Highway 5 to her home in Mission Hills was likely to be as congested as a nasal infection, and if she wanted to get home, get ready, psych herself up, and get back into the city for the fundraiser, she needed to get going now.
She grabbed the folders and made her way around the lab, turning off lights and locking up as she went. On her way to the exit, and the small room where they stored their files, Louisa stopped in front of the laboratory refrigerators and looked at the sample, trying to think dispassionately about what had happened on the last test.
But the trays drew her eye, and the same feeling crept over her skin as she’d had when she’d opened her files.
It was impossible to tell if anybody had tampered with it. Were the trays a little off-center? Maybe. Had the doors been opened? Impossible to say. But was it safe to assume this was all in her head? To do nothing?
If someone had been messing with the sample, they’d either found what they were looking for or hadn’t finished searching. She pulled out an earlier sample drug that had been equally unsuccessful but had had nowhere near the same kind of side effects as the sample she had just finished testing. Carefully, with her back to the lab across the hall, she removed the labels from both of the samples, switched them, and replaced the samples on the shelf. It was her laboratory, so she could manage the samples any way she liked. Even in a way that might seem—or worse, be—paranoid. Paranoia had been one of her father’s earliest symptoms at the onset of the disease.
Louisa closed the door and tried to ignore the way her heart raced. She reminded herself that fear was simply a signal for the body to engage, a command for adrenaline to flood the skeletal muscles in preparation for some kind of physical activity to avoid disaster, and that while it was one of the most adaptive emotions, she wasn’t in any real danger right now.
She squared the microscope so its edges matched up with the corner of the desk and turned all the Erlenmeyer flasks so the measurements faced toward her. Then she hurried over to the autoclave and grabbed a clean beaker, just to make sure there were an equal number of beakers lined up with their spouts at forty-five degrees.
Relieved that the lab was in order, Louisa inhaled a deep breath in preparation for the battle to get out of the building. She left through the cleanroom air blower, allowing the hard jets to blow any chemical residue from her before she stepped into the small hallway where she kept her coat and purse in the locker.
Keeping close to the wall of the corridor, she hurried from the building. I’m fine, she reminded herself as she thought about the samples.
If only she could command her trembling hands to agree.
* * *
Six took another tour around the ballroom, eyeing the exits and balcony while trying to avoid the not-so-discreet glances of some of the female attendees and a couple of the men. He tugged the cuff of his crisp white shirt beneath the sleeve of his black tux. Maybe it was years of conditioning, but his head was running multiple scenarios. There was a truckload of money in the room. Not that he’d been to too many fundraisers hosted by the ultra-rich, but this one seemed to be swimming in a sea of diamonds. Sure, it was all for a good cause, but he couldn’t help but imagine how much impact that money could have on the lives of injured veterans.
“Sixton Rapp. I didn’t know you were back in town.” Ivan Popov held out his hand and Six took it, politely greeting his old school friend even though he couldn’t stand the guy.
“Just two weeks. How’ve you been, Ivan?” he asked, trying to sound like he actually cared. After all, Ivan and his grandfather were the ones paying their bill for the night.
“I’m good. Just bought a new place in La Jolla and picked up a McLaren 650S. Pharma always did pay better than fighting. Still serving our country, man?” This tool had the audacity to talk about serving America in the same breath as he gloated about his wealth. Rumors abounded about huge multipliers on the prices of the most basic drugs. The guy was gouging Americans, not helping them. Six should kick his ass just for that.
“Out two weeks. I’m actually working.” Six pointed to the earpiece and mic.
Ivan laughed. “No shit. This is a fundraiser for my project. You remember my grandfather owns VNP Laboratories? This is to fund our research.”
That Vasilii Popov, a billionaire who could probably find between his sofa cushions the kind of change these rich jet-set rollers were handing over, was fundraising instead of giving only reinforced Six’s view that these things were a crock of shit. Rich people had no idea how privileged they were.
“Small world,” Six said politely, but it was time to disengage before the thoughts pinging around inside his head came out through his mouth. “Look, I gotta get back to work.”
“Yeah. Good seeing you, man,” Ivan said, shaking his hand again.
Six began another circuit, walking carefully to ensure he looked everywhere for the possibility of trouble. A loud crash sounded behind him, and without a moment’s hesitation, he turned, the palm of his hand wrapped discreetly around the handle of his holstered Sig Sauer P220, a gun he carried legally, in spite of San Diego’s tight gun laws. He relaxed his grip when he saw two servers picking up broken china from the floor.
Why was his heart rate way up over broken plates? He didn’t do jumpy. He did cool under pressure.
He began box breathing. In for four, hold for four, out for four, hold for four. His brothers would laugh if they knew he’d been spooked by silver serving trays and china. And if he told them the truth—that it was a fairly regular occurrence—they’d start some kind of well-meaning outreach program like he was a charity case.
“Next time Mac has a good idea to make money, remind me to tell him to go fuck himself,” Six said into his microphone, looking for some way to release the pressure he felt. Banter between the brothers had been the one thing that had kept his naive, idealistic ass sane on his very first tour and the ones that followed.
Cabe’s laughter crackled through the earpiece. “It’s not all bad. See the red dress over by table eight. I’m calling dibs.”
Six shook his head and turned to look over at the blonde wrapped in a bandage dress. They always looked sexy on, those dresses, but trying to help a girl out of one was like wrestling a gazelle out of the jaws of an alligator. “In that case, I’ll take the white dress at the bar and the green dress over by the third exit, preferably at the same time.”
“Good to see you haven’t lost your appetite,” Cabe said. “The presentation is up soon. Daughter of the main fundraiser is some med-geek researcher who works at the lab. Probably going to be as dull as dishwater.”
Six made his way over to the podium, checking the surrounding area thoroughly. It was already beginning to feel highly unlikely that anything out of the ordinary was going to happen tonight, but if anything were going to happen, it would likely be when all the guests were definitely in the room for something like a presentation.
“Do we know what’s behind these?” he asked Cabe, taking a step toward the closed, rich blue velvet drapes behind the temporary podium.
“Yeah, I checked it out earlier.” A crackle cut through his earpiece. “A small balcony.”
Curious, Six took the few steps over to the curtain and wiggled the handle of the doors. Unlocked, it swung open on to a small space.
“You can do this,” a soft voice whispered in the half light. “It’s nothing. Go in. Get it done. Get out.”
“You okay?” he asked, spotting the woman seated doubled over on a white chair. She was half-hidden by the ivy that crawled up the brick wall next to the door.
“I’m fine,” the woman replied, in the most unfine tone he’d ever heard.
He took a few steps closer. All he could see was the top of her head, messy brunette waves fluttering in all directions as a breeze came in off the bay. The hem of her aqua tulle skirt danced around her calves. Toenails that matched the skirt peeked out through tall-heeled silver sandals. He crouched down in front of her. “Can I get someone to come out to you? Get you some water maybe?”
The woman lifted her head. He could barely see her eyes through her bangs, but the snatches he could see were as brown as the Negra Modelo beer he’d drunk by the bucketload in Mexico the week before. Plump lips and defined cheekbones, both with minimal makeup, added a softness to a strong nose and brow. Not hot, like the women he usually went for. More interesting. And he got the feeling she’d hate that word.
“Crap,” the woman said and lowered her head to her hands, not quite putting her head between her knees.
“You sure you aren’t going to pass out?” he asked. At a loss, he placed his hand on her back, wanting to bring her comfort. She was definitely shaking.
“You need help, Six?” Cabe whispered in his earpiece.
“Nah. I got this,” he replied.
“You got what?” Her words were mumbled.
“Oh. No. I was just talking to my partner,” he replied. “I’m Six. I’m part of the security team tonight.”
“Louisa,” the woman said. “I’m part of the dog-and-pony show.”
The med-geek researcher. “You’re the presenter who’s up in a few minutes?” Six placed his finger under her chin and raised her face until he could just about see under her bangs to her eyes if he crouched low enough.
Her eyes found his for a moment, and then they looked away quickly. “Shit. Is it time already?”
“It’s getting close. I’m sure you are going to do great.” Though he was pretty certain he was going to have to crane her out of the seat when it was showtime, he needed to say something to encourage her. Abject fear pulsed from her, and he could have sworn he felt the chill of it.
Louisa stood suddenly. “Hardly,” she said, walking to the balcony.
Now that she was standing, he could see that she’d topped the tulle, knee-length skirt with a fitted white waistcoat with very little underneath as far as he could see. It was quirky and so unlike anything he’d seen inside of the room. Part of him assessed her as outdressed by the attendees, but there was something very unique about her.
“The last time I did this, on the way back from the stage I puked into a large, potted Dieffenbachia fortunensis.”
Six laughed, and she turned to face him.
“It wasn’t funny,” she said, but her pout turned into the makings of a grin.
“I wasn’t laughing at the puking. I was laughing that you knew the plant and its … make or whatever.”
The sound of someone testing the microphone drew Louisa’s attention to the door, and she shook her head. “Its species and genus,” she said casually before taking a deep breath and squaring her shoulders. “And I guess it’s showtime.” She walked toward the door and reached for the handle, but turned back before she opened it. She blew her bangs out of her face, and he finally got a good, straight look at her. “Pretty” was the first word that came to mind. “Compelling” was the second.
“Thank you for rescuing me, Six,” she said.
The door opened and the lights shone brightly through her skirt, making it ever so slightly transparent. From the silhouette, he could see she had legs that went on for days.
“You’re welcome,” he said as the door clicked shut.
Copyright © 2017 by Scarlett Cole
