Forever by Janie Crouch

Sneak Peek - Zodiac Tactical

Chapter 1

Ian DeRose

“Strike first. Strike hard. No mercy.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Did you really just quote Cobra Kai to Baxter as life advice?”

Landon crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in the conference room chair with a good-natured grin. “Not so much life advice as dating advice, but yeah. I’m surprised you get the reference, Sarge. Did they even have movies when you were growing up?”

Sarge tilted his head to the side and narrowed his eyes at the Landon. “You know what they did have when I was growing up? Ways for me to kick your scrawny ass, and that’s still true.”

I leaned back in my own chair at the head of the table. I could put an end to the bickering between my two right-hand men, Landon Black and Harrison McEwan—AKA Sarge—but didn’t. It was harmless enough.

Besides, I recognized the actions for what they were: Landon deliberately trying to get a rise out of Sarge. That wasn’t unusual. But this time, he was doing it for a reason. To get him focused in this room.

Besides, quoting a karate movie from the 80s as dating advice for someone who looked like Isaac Baxter, my new employee who had enough good looks to star in such a movie, was ridiculous.

We’d just finished our monthly conference call with the other Zodiac Tactical offices around the world. They could be found on nearly every continent—Paris, Singapore, Rio de Janeiro, New York, as well as our home office here in Denver.

Our different offices handled the branches of our expertise as security contractors—risk consulting, intelligence gathering, private and corporate guarding, hostage rescue.

If the law couldn’t or wouldn’t handle it, my team and I would. So I had some of the best tactical minds in the world working for me. Cobra Kai references notwithstanding.

“I think I’ll just try taking her out to dinner,” Isaac muttered. He was new, but so far was fitting in well. Landon and Sarge continued bickering like an old married couple, hardly paying Isaac any mind even though they were supposedly giving him advice.

It was 0600 here, but it was impossible to find a time for our monthly meeting that was within regular business hours for all the different offices. We varied the time of the interoffice call each month, but someone always had to get up in the middle of the night. And this month had been our turn.

I might be the owner and head of Zodiac, but I tried to make a practice of never requiring my people to do things I wasn’t willing to do myself.

The meeting had been relatively uneventful.

I stood up. “Let’s get some breakfast and head home.”

Isaac immediately nodded. “Yes, please. Thank God. I was afraid Landon was about to tell me to wax on, wax off once I got this girl to say yes to a date, and I was afraid to find out what that meant.”

“Oh,” Landon replied with a grin. “I can gladly demonstrate the wax on, wax off if Sarge here would volunteer to bend over-”

“Fuck off.” Sarge flipped him the bird.

Landon stood and patted the older man on the shoulder. “Now Sarge, it won’t hurt a bit if I do it rig—”

“Breakfast,” I interrupted. “If it will shut you guys up, I’m buying.”

Landon was still taunting Sarge with details of the so-called waxing on and off as we walked out of the conference room, but he stopped mid-sentence as he received a text.

His eyes narrowed. “We’ve got an incoming text, boss, from Kendrick Foster. He’s got some sort of intel on Mosaic.”

The men around him immediately fell into combat readiness, even though there was no battle to fight. Mosaic, or more specifically this new version of Mosaic, was a pretty word for a group of very ugly people.

“Anything concerning Aspen Rourke?” Sarge asked.

This was the reason Landon had been using all his annoyance skills to get Sarge focused on him. To distract Sarge from Aspen.

Landon shook his head. “Sorry, man. Nothing mentioned about her. Kendrick says he has some sort of hard drive, and he hopes to crack it soon. Intel on Mosaic, but he doesn’t know what.”

I squeezed Sarge’s shoulder. “We’re going to get her back.”

Sarge nodded. “Yeah, I know.”

I hadn’t even been aware Sarge knew Aspen Rourke, one of Zodiac’s most unique agents based out of the Paris office, but he’d nearly lost his shit when we’d gotten word she was missing. She was supposed to have been on a special and highly dangerous solo mission in Marrakesh.

When she hadn’t reported in, we’d sent multiple contacts to ground looking for her. Nothing. She’d disappeared.

Eventually, we’d assumed the worst. Ended up the worst wasn’t what we thought.

She wasn’t dead, but it was arguable that what she was going through now was even worse. She was at Mosaic’s mercy. And they’d made sure I knew it.

I kept a tight lid on my own personal weaknesses that simmered close to the surface when it came to Mosaic. Landon saw it and raised an eyebrow at me. He was the only one who knew the truth. But I wasn’t about to let any emotions get the best of me.

“Who is Kendrick Foster?” Sarge barked out. “And can we trust him?”

“Yes. He does some work for Linear Tactical. He’s a computer expert, code name Blaze.” I had to hand it to Landon, he didn’t say anything when Sarge snatched Landon’s phone out of his hand to read the text himself.

Landon may have been egging Sarge on before, but that had been for a purpose. He cared about the other man. For whatever reason, Sarge was taking Aspen’s disappearance harder than anyone else.

“Zac MacKay and the guys trust Kendrick, so we can too.” I said. “Landon and I have met him a few times. He’s one of the good guys.”

Sarge handed Landon back his phone and scrubbed a hand down his face. “Sorry.”

“Who is Zac MacKay? And what is Linear Tactical?” Isaac asked. “Is that a sister company or something?”

“No. They work with civilians in survival, self-defense, and weapons training in a small town in Wyoming, but happen to have a similar name. I respect the hell out of those guys. Almost all of them are former Special Forces soldiers.”

I’d been a Navy SEAL, not Army, but I’d fight shoulder to shoulder with any of the Linear men. Hell, I’d use them for Zodiac assignments—which had nothing to do with teaching civilians and everything to do with real-world danger—if any of them were the least bit interested.

They may no longer be active duty, but they definitely hadn’t given up their warrior instincts.

So when I said Zac Mackay and his team vouching for someone meant something, I wasn’t lying.

“We’ll have to take you out to the Linear training facility sometime,” Landon told Isaac. “It’s impressive. Law enforcement SWAT teams from all over the country travel there to have Linear put them through the paces.”

Isaac looked intrigued. I didn’t blame him. Hearing there were people who could improve your game intrigued us all. That desire to improve—to be the absolute best you could be—was one of the reasons I’d hired Isaac.

But training would have to wait. We had real battles to fight before we could get to the pretend ones.

Landon turned to me. “Kendrick wants to meet face-to-face. Says there are too many potential breaches in electronic transference of data.”

“Then let’s get the jet ready. Looks like we’re going to Wyoming.”

I’d never spent much time in Oak Creek itself, just knew the town was small enough that my assistant called it a logistical nightmare—few hotels, no car rentals. Only a couple of restaurants, neither of which took reservations. She’d had to line everything up via phone.

“You want me to come?” Sarge asked.

Isaac took a step closer. “I’m available too. Whatever you need.”

Everyone in this office knew that taking down Mosaic, or this new version of Mosaic, was the most important thing. The old version of them had been bad enough, information and weapons sales, providing the tools any organization would need for its own little terrorist attack. But this new version of Mosaic, if we could believe the videos we’d received that included footage of one of our own, had branched out into human trafficking and mind control.

“Landon and I will go. You guys stay here in case we have any actionable intel. I want you to be able to move at a moment’s notice.”

Sarge nodded. “Then I’m going to head home. I don’t feel much like anything to eat.”

Isaac nodded too. “We’ll be ready if you need us.” Both men took off down the hallway.

“Walk with me,” I said. “Tell me everything we know.” Neither of us were in the mood for breakfast any more either.

“Evidently, Kendrick has a drive that Dr. Sevier gave to one of the Linear guys .”

I stopped. “They found Dr. Sevier?”

Dr. Sevier was a highly regarded neuromorphic engineer and the reason we knew Mosaic was back in business and developing a method of human trafficking using engineering and biotechnology. Mosaic had coerced him into working for them, but he’d contacted us weeks ago to try to help get him out.

Landon shook his head. “No, he’s still missing but somehow got the drive to Linear. I don’t know how. Kendrick’s been trying to crack the drive without damaging any of the data, but hasn’t been very successful. He needs forty-eight hours and then should have intel for us.”

I shook my head. I wasn’t going to wait forty-eight hours for intel. “We leave this afternoon for Oak Creek. If Kendrick doesn’t have something for us by then, maybe we need to bring the hard drive back and let our tech team look at it.”

I’d met the younger man a couple times, and he seemed competent, but if he couldn’t get the job done, I would find someone who could.

“Roger that. I’ll have our tech team standing by. Nothing gets the nerds salivating more than a computer puzzle to solve.”

We called them nerds, at the tech team’s request, but Landon and I both knew we couldn’t do our jobs effectively without them.

I rubbed my eyes. “We need to find Dr. Sevier. We need to find Aspen. It’s hard to operate with a guillotine hanging over my head.”

“This is not your battle to fight alone this time, Ian. We need to bring everybody in on this. Let them know…everything.”

I shook my head. “No, not unless we have to. I know what my weaknesses are, and I can fight them.”

Landon was the only one at Zodiac who knew exactly how strong my ties to Mosaic were and the price I had paid to cut those ties the first time.

And now it looked like I was right back where I’d started.

“Grant is dead,” Landon said. “You don’t have to keep fighting him anymore.”

I pulled out the key card that opened the elevator that led up to my penthouse apartment. Living in the same building as my office had proved invaluable over the years.

Landon stepped in along with me, both of us silent. He knew better than to talk to me while we were in an elevator. I focused on breathing and keeping my heart rate steady in the few seconds it took to get up to the penthouse.

And even though I managed to do it, I still stepped out of the metal box the second the doors opened. Landon followed at a more normal pace.

“I may not have to fight Grant, but someone has picked up my brother’s ghost and decided to give their villainous organization the same name as his. Then proceeded to bring the fight to my doorstep when they kidnapped one of my employees.”

“But it’s not Grant. Grant is dead.”

Because I’d killed him.

But in my defense, he’d killed me first.

“All I know is that I stopped Mosaic the first time, and I will stop this new version of them, too.”

* * *

Chapter 2

Wavy Bollinger

“Honey, are you sure? I don’t like the thought of leaving you here for an evening shift alone. And this is supposed to be your day off to work on your little art project.”

Little art project.

I forced a smile at the older woman I’d been working with here at the Frontier Diner for ten years and had known my entire life. Leeann didn’t mean any harm. “Little” was her preferred adjective for almost everything. She referred to Linear Tactical as that “little business” the “boys” had built.

Still, slightly teeth-grindy for me to hear my passion referred to as such.

I kept the smile plastered on my face. “No problem, Leeann. You know Mr. Earl wouldn’t call you if he wasn’t feeling poorly.”

The older woman’s face crumpled. “Since his stroke…”

I reached out and squeezed her hand. “Absolutely. You go on home to him. And I’m not here alone, Nolan’s here and Matthew. So you don’t need to worry.”

Granted neither the cook nor the dishwasher would come out here to the front of the house unless I started screaming my head off. But at least they would come.

Leeann was a little on edge since some bad guys had followed Wyatt Highfield back into the area a few days ago and might still be hanging around. Since the Frontier was in the middle of town, the Linear guys had asked me to keep an eye out for anyone suspicious. Something about an organization known as Mosaic and that people had been killed because of them.

Leeann had overheard the request and had been a mess ever since, even though there hadn’t been any sign of anything out of the ordinary. Thank God she hadn’t heard that Mosaic was a human trafficking network, or Leeann probably would’ve joined her husband with the stroke. The older woman worried.

The good thing about the town the size of Oak Creek was people looked out for one another. That’s why I loved living here.

The bad thing about a town the size of Oak Creek was that, good Lord have mercy, people were always up in your business. That’s why the town usually drove me crazy.

It was time for me to get out. I’d been feeling that way more and more. But a lifetime’s worth of ties to one place wasn’t easy to unravel.

I sent Leeann on her way. I’d been looking forward to spending the evening painting, but my art would wait. It had been waiting a decade for me to actually do something with it.

The evening went like most any given weeknight at the diner. Leeann had gotten us through the dinner rush, so now it was just a few stragglers for the couple hours until we closed. Some teenagers sitting at separate booths but flirting back and forth. A young family who’d decided to splurge and go out for pie. Old Mr. Collier who was a regular on any given night when he was missing his wife of sixty-seven years who’d died a few months ago. He sat at the counter with his magazine, just liking to be around other people.

And then the man who had walked in fifteen minutes before closing.

Everything about him had me on high alert. I’d been around the Linear Tactical guys long enough to recognize when someone was at a place for more than merely pie.

I couldn’t see the color of his eyes, but recognized fierceness in his gaze. Strong chin and carved jaw. Broad shoulders, trim waist. A warrior’s awareness.

Everything about this man screamed danger.

“Can I get you something?” He had chosen the very back booth and had his back to the wall so he could see the whole restaurant. The same booth the Linear guys tended to gravitate toward.

The man glanced at me, but I had no doubt he was fully aware of everything that was happening in the diner. Brown eyes, I could see them now, with little specs of gold. “Just coffee. Thanks.”

I nodded and walked to get it. He was probably stopping for coffee before a long road trip or something. No need to assume the worst just because he sat in the back booth and was aware of what was going on around him.

I made a fresh pot before bringing a steaming mug over to him. I wasn’t normally so suspicious. The Linear guys might have criminals shadowing them everywhere, but I didn’t want to be someone who refused to trust others for no reason.

I smiled at him as I set down the coffee. “You need creamer?” I should’ve asked that when I first took the order, but I’d been too busy assuming he was about to kill everyone in the place.

“No, black is fine.”

Of course it was. How could someone who had a jaw that chiseled drink anything but black coffee?

I wanted to paint him. I didn’t normally like to create anything having to do with people, but I’d love to paint this man.

Naked.

No! No, not naked. Just regular.

Or…half naked. Which half?

“Are you okay?” He looked at me with one dark eyebrow raised.

And why wouldn’t he be? I was staring at him like some sort of pervy-perv.

“Um, yeah. Sorry, I’m fine. I—”

His phone lit up on the table, a text message coming in. I couldn’t read the whole thing, but one word very definitely caught my attention.

Mosaic.

All thoughts of painting him flew from my mind as he slid the phone so I couldn’t see the message any more.

“I’ll — I’ll just be over here if you need anything else.”

“Thanks.”

I walked towards Mr. Collier, but heard Dark and Dangerous’s phone chirp behind me. I couldn’t hear most of his conversation, but one word caught my attention once again.

Kendrick.

Oh shit.

“You know what, Mr. Collier? Your meal is on us tonight.” I smiled at the older man. “We’re glad you came in. It’s good to see you.”

“Why, thank you, Wavy…”

“Excuse me for a minute, I just need to take care of something in the back. I’ll see you next time.”

I hoped Mr. Collier would leave. I didn’t want him around if things with Dangerous Man turned ugly.

I took out my phone and texted my brother Finn.

Stranger just came in diner. Suspicious. He got a text with word Mosaic, talked to someone about Kendrick.

Finn’s response was almost immediate.

Get out.

I peeked out the kitchen window. The guy was still sitting in the booth. If Linear could get information from him, maybe it would help put these Mosaic criminal people behind bars. Human traffickers were the scum of the earth, and I wanted to do my part to take them down.

I looked over at Nolan, but the cook had his headphones on. I didn’t want to involve him in all this if I didn’t have to. In a physical altercation, Dark and Dangerous would win. Nolan would be no match. Neither would Matthew, the teenage dishwasher.

I’d have to keep the guy here myself.

I shot off another text to Finn.

I’ll keep him here, you send someone.

Response was immediate again. No. Get out.

Damn it, I was going to do my part. You better hurry.

I slipped my phone back into my apron pocket, ignoring it when it started buzzing a few seconds later, Finn calling rather than texting.

The guy looked like he was fishing for his wallet, so I loaded a tray full of slices of the diner’s different pies and walked it over to him.

I forced myself to smile at him. “Hi. I know you said you just wanted coffee, but we’re about to close, and I’ve still got all these pies. I’d hate for them to go to waste; I’ll just have to throw them out.” My brothers would have a heart attack if I ever once threw away extra pie from the Frontier. “Can I offer you a free slice?”

The guy was going to turn me down. I could already see it.

I tripped and dumped the tray in his lap.

“Oh my God! I’m so clumsy. I’m so sorry.” I set down my tray and immediately started wiping huge chunks of pie flowing all down his front. Chocolate smeared into apple, and lemon meringue covered it all.

But it kept him in the booth. So I kept wiping.

Oh God, had I just brushed his crotch? Now my mortification wasn’t just acting.

He grabbed my hands, more gently than I would’ve expected given the current circumstances. “I’ve got it.” He set me away from him. “You have a bathroom?”

I pointed to the hall near the back corner. He stood and began walking in that direction.

Finn better hurry up. Short of undressing the guy, I was probably out of ways to keep him here.

Dark and Dangerous’s phone rang again right as he got to the hallway of the bathroom.

“Where the hell are you? I’m going to pop a fucking cap in your ass myself. This town is already on my last nerve.”

Oh shit. Maybe I should’ve gotten out when Finn told me to.

I pretended to wipe down the table so I could watch him go into the bathroom. I needed to call in backup while he was in there.

But instead of going in the bathroom, he went through the door that led to the side alley outside.

Damn it. That was where some of the customers went when they needed a smoke. It didn’t really lead anywhere, but you could get out if you wound around the side and went through the back.

He was going to get away if I didn’t stop him.

Knowing I was all sorts of stupid, especially since he’d just threatened to pop a cap in someone’s ass, I still ran for the side employee door. I would cut him off and crack him on the head with my tray. He wouldn’t be expecting anyone coming at him from the opposite direction.

I hoped.

It wasn’t the best of plans, but I didn’t have time to develop a full-fledged Linear Tactical mission. I just needed to buy a few more minutes until Finn arrived. If this was my chance to stop human traffickers, then I was about to get all ninja with this tray.

I rushed toward the back door through the kitchen. Nolan saw me, but I didn’t have time to explain.

Out the back, I could hear the guy saying something else on the phone about taking whatever opportunity presented itself. He ended the call, and I could hear him muttering about fucking pie.

He was getting closer.

I backed myself against the darkened wall, waiting for him to come around the corner. When he did, I brought my tray down on the side of his head as hard as I could.

He let out a roar. “Mother fuc—”

I moved backward, then brought the tray back up to hit him again, was swinging back down when someone caught it from the side.

“Sorry, lady, I can’t let you beat up my boss, even if he did threaten to pop a cap in my ass. Seriously, who says that?”

I waited for some sort of blow or to be shoved to the ground, but it didn’t happen.

Maybe now would be a good time to do the screaming-my-head-off thing and hope Nolan and Matthew could hear me inside.

Dark and Dangerous Man turned to me. “What the hell is wrong with you, lady?”

“I don’t like human traffickers. That’s what’s wrong with me.”

“What are you talking about?” The guy was covered in pie and rubbing the side of his head, glaring at me. Now, I really expected some sort of violence.

I can take a hit. I grew up with two brothers who roughhoused all the time.

“I’m gonna have to ask you to step away from my sister.”

Baby. Thank God.

My younger brother walked farther into the back alley, the moon gleaming off the gun he had pointed at them. Dark and Dangerous and the other guy both backed up, holding their hands up near their heads.

“Your sister has assaulted me with both pie and her tray in the past three minutes.”

“Yeah, she’s sassy like that,” Baby said. “And although she and I are going to have words about her wasting pie like that, I’m still going to need you to step farther away from her.”

Baby stepped into the light, and both men took another step back.

“Look, I think there is some mistake here,” said the man who’d stopped me from getting my second thwack in. “We don’t mean any harm.”

Dark and Dangerous glared at me and muttered something suspiciously like, “Speak for yourself.”

“Wavy doesn’t generally attack her customers without due cause,” Baby said. “Bad for tips.”

“This guy was talking about Mosaic and Kendrick. That was enough for me to let Finn know there was trouble.”

“And Finn told you to attack him?” Baby raised an eyebrow. “Using pie?”

I shrugged. “More or less.”

“Can I join the party back here?” Zac Mackay, head of Linear Tactical, came through the same entrance I had used. “Finn called. Asked me to stop by since I was already in town.”

His voice was slightly breathless. Zac may be acting cool, but he’d been in a rush to get here.

“Wavy might have caught a couple of members of Mosaic,” Baby said.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Dark and Dangerous said. “I’m not—”

I held up the tray like I was going to hit him again, and he rolled his eyes and turned to Zac. “You going to tell them or just let me be assaulted by Killer Waitress here?”

Zac chuckled, and I grimaced. Zac laughing in this situation wasn’t good.

“Waverly and Baby Bollinger, can I introduce Ian DeRose? He owns Zodiac Tactical. We work with them occasionally. He is also the foremost expert on Mosaic and how to stop them.”

Ian DeRose. Shit. I’d heard the guys talk about him and Zodiac before.

Baby lowered his weapon, laughing. “Sorry, man. I got a panicked call that Waverly here had a possible tango, and that I needed to get my ass over to help, stat.”

“Thanks for checking your info before shooting,” Ian said. He raised an eyebrow at me, message clear: I hadn’t checked.

Boo-hoo. I hadn’t had a real weapon either.

“This is Landon Black, my right hand,” Ian said. “We got a message from Kendrick that he might have an update. He’s not at his place.”

Zac nodded. “Yeah, I can help you with that. He’s at a safe house.”

“I’m getting back home to my fiancée. I’ll let Finn know to stand down.” Baby reached in to hug me and whispered in my ear, “Way to take down the enemy, sis.”

“Piss off.” But I kissed his cheek.

He laughed as he walked away.

“I’m going to grab a slice of pie.” Zac glanced at Ian’s shirt and pants. “If there’s any left.”

“I’ll take some of that action,” Landon said. “I’ve already heard about the pie here.”

That left me out here alone with Ian Dark and Dangerous DeRose.

“I guess I owe you an apology.” Why was that so hard to say? With anyone else, I would’ve already apologized while laughing at how I’d been such a moron. Make a joke about free pie for life.

But somehow, I was too aware of Ian DeRose to laugh like I did with everyone else. Instead, I had this unnerving need to run away from him.

Or step closer.

“You were trying to detain a member of Mosaic, so that justifies a lot.” He looked at me with brown eyes that were way too intense. Like he never let his guard down.

I felt the uncanny need to reach up and rub my fingers through the dark hair behind his ear. A touch to soothe. To connect.

I had no idea why. He didn’t seem like he would accept that sort of touch from anyone, much less a stranger.

“Still, bad guy or not, I’m sorry I hit you.”

He took a step closer, and I couldn’t help but take a step back. His smile turned the slightest bit predatory as he moved toward me again.

My back was to the wall. Literally and figuratively.

He got closer.

He reached down, and I thought he was going to touch me, but he grabbed the tray in my hand instead.

“Next time, come at your enemy’s temple with the edge of the tray where it’s hardest.” He tapped the edge with his knuckles. “You’re a lot more likely to do damage that way, Wavy Bollinger.”

And then he was gone.

*****

Click HERE to continue Ian and Wavy’s story in CODE NAME: ARIES, the first book in the new Zodiac Tactical Rescue Unit series.

My code name is Aries.And I will burn the world to the ground to get her back.

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