Nanny for the SEALs by Cassie Cole
7
Rogan
As soon as the words left her mouth, I cursed.
“This was why I didn’t want you to speak,” I said to Brady in the pink mask.
Behind Heather, Asher slumped his head and sighed. He removed his mask, then pulled his glasses out of his pocket and fixated them on his face.
“Rogan Holt,” Heather said, nodding her head. “I definitely remember your voice. HLM Security.”
“HLS,” Brady corrected.
I let out an annoyed sound and glared at him.
“What? It doesn’t matter now. She knows who we are.” Brady removed his mask too.
“This is fucked up,” Heather said. “You kidnapped me in the middle of the day. Is this some sort of payback for last night? I mooched a beer off you, so now you’re torturing me?”
“Nobody is being tortured.” My mask was hot and stuffy, so I finally pulled it off my face. I let out a resigned sigh. I was tired of all this. “Who do you work for, Heather?”
“I told you!” Heather said. “Outback Steakhouse. Are you guys, like, agents from Red Lobster or something? I’ve never been part of a chain-restaurant mob hit before.”
She was a good liar. Enough that she had fooled us last night, and enough that I suspected she was putting on a show for us now. We couldn’t let her leave without knowing the truth, though. There was too much at stake.
“This is nuts,” Heather said, swiveling her head to look at each of us. “You’ve kidnapped me. I know who you are. It’s over.” She froze, eyes widening. “Unless you’re going to kill me…”
“We’re not going to kill you,” I exhaled. “We just want the truth.”
“I am telling the truth! What do I have to do to convince you? I’ll take a damn lie detector test if you want…”
I perked up at that. “Really?”
Heather snorted. “If it will get me out of here quicker, then why not?”
I gave Asher a look. He turned and crouched at the equipment case, unclipping the two latches and opening it. He began fiddling with the contents.
“Just to confirm,” I said, “you consent to a lie-detection technique.”
“I haven’t consented to any of this bullshit,” she replied. “But sure. I’ll consent to whatever the fuck gets me out of this room faster.”
“She’s got an attitude,” Brady said, smiling. “She’s perfect.”
“We’ll see,” I muttered.
“Perfect for what?” she asked. Her big eyes swung from Brady to me. “What am I perfect for?”
“We’ll get to that later.” I nodded to Asher, who wiped her upper arm with an alcohol swab. Heather looked confused for a moment, and then Asher injected her with a needle and depressed the plunger.
“The fuck is this?” she demanded.
“You consented to lie-detection techniques,” I said.
“I expected a big machine thingamajig! The kind with sensors and shit, and that big earthquake-detecting needle that wobbles back and forth. This is… ohh.” Her eyes began to relax.
Asher retracted the needle and asked, “You don’t have a barbiturate allergy, do you?”
She gawked up at him. “Why are you asking me that after you gave me the shot!”
He smiled and pressed a cotton ball to her arm. “Just making a small joke. We have your medical history, of course.”
“How do you have… Oh. That’s a weird feeling.”
I knew what Heather was going through at that moment because I’d gone through it during SEAL training. Right now, all the stress was melting away from her body. Her consciousness was detaching from her body. It was like everything was happening to another person in another warehouse. This new person, the relaxed one, was as comfortable as a kitten snuggled up in a blanket.
“How long?” I asked Asher.
My blond colleague looked at his watch. “She weighs sixty-two kilograms, so I gave her a dose of one-eighty milligrams. It crosses the blood-brain barrier fairly quickly, so—”
“I didn’t ask for a book report,” I replied. “I asked how long.”
He pursed his lips and said, “A minute or two.”
“Hey,” Heather said. “It’s rude to ask a lady her weight.”
“I didn’t ask your weight,” Asher pointed out. “I stated it.”
“Still rude. Cuntbucket.” She giggled, and then began babbling to me. “I called you cuntbucket earlier. I meant it, too. I don’t think I mean it now. You seem nice. Can I issue a cuntbucket-retraction?”
“Retraction accepted,” I said. “I think she’s ready, Asher.”
“It appears so.”
I stepped toward her. “Can you confirm your name for us?”
“Heather Hart,” she said without hesitation. “That’s my name now. Last night my name was Amirah Pratt. That was fun. Until we got caught. That was less fun.”
“Who do you work for?”
She tilted her head to look up at me. “Uh oh. Serious time. I know it’s serious because you’re wearing your serious face.” She scrunched up her own face like she was trying to focus.
“Heather,” I repeated calmly, “who do you work for?”
“I work for… money! Cash, moolah. Dolla dolla bills, y’all. I think that was a rap song. Money is also a really good song by that other band. The one that did Dark Side of the Moon. Why can’t I think of it?” She started humming a Pink Floyd song. We don’t need no education.
I looked at Asher.
“Sodium thiopental has side effects,” he told me. “No speech inhibition. Thoughts go straight from brain to mouth.”
“Sounds like Brady,” I said.
Brady grunted. “Hey!”
I smiled and turned back to Asher. “I don’t remember any of us experiencing this level when we were tested. Are you sure you gave her the right dose?”
Asher could only shrug. “It affects everyone differently. I gave her the minimum dose. Three milligrams per kilogram of body weight.”
“Ruuuude!” Heather announced. “Stop talking about my weight!”
I turned to Heather and reworded my previous question. “Who is your employer?”
“Outback Steakhouse,” she said immediately. Straight from brain to mouth, like Asher said. “Outback sucks. There are so many better steakhouses. Outback microwaves half their food. I’m not supposed to tell anyone that. I could get in trouble. Can you keep a secret?”
I crouched in front of Heather and rested an arm across her knees. “Focus. Are you employed by anyone else, either on a short-term, or long-term basis?”
Her blonde hair swayed as she looked down at my arm, then back up at me. “I like the way you touch me, big guy. You can do more if you want. Don’t be shy.” She rattled her arms in the restraints behind her back. “I’ve never been into bondage, but I can see the allure. This is kind of fun.”
Brady was laughing hysterically behind me.
“I’ll pass,” I said with a wry smile. “The lines of consent are awfully blurry right now.”
She leaned forward, big eyes focused on me. “I consent. There, I said it out loud. Like your dumb lie detector consent question. Which you totally tricked me on, by the way. Whatever you injected me with is making me talk a lot. But that’s okay. Point is, I consent. Take off these restraints—and everything else I’m wearing—and let’s get freaky, big boy.”
My cock twitched involuntarily. It was impossible not to feel something in that moment. Heather was insanely hot, and she was giving me the most suggestive fuck me eyes I’d ever seen. My brain took over and replayed the kiss from last night, in the suite bathroom. The way she pressed her body against mine, grinding against my leg while sliding her tongue into my mouth…
But of course, this was all fucked up. We had brought her here against her will. She was tied up, and couldn’t give consent while under the effects of the truth serum. And we had a job to do.
Even still, it took me a few seconds to compose myself.
“Uh oh!” Heather said, scrunching up her face again. “The serious face is back!”
“Who do you work for? Pegasus, or Heimdall?”
“Never heard of Pegasus,” she said without hesitation. “But I know all about Heimdall.”
I stood up a little straighter. “You do?”
“Of course I do,” she said. “Heimdall is the guy in the Thor movies. Played by Idris Elda. Now there’s someone I’d love to get freaky with. He’s even sexier than the Hemsworth guy. Granted, I usually don’t have a thing for blonds.” She twisted to look at Asher. “No offense, Mr. Blue.”
Asher blinked behind his glasses. “Mr. Blue?”
“I came up with nicknames before I knew who you were. Your mask was blue, so you were Mr. Blue. He was Mr. Pink.” She looked at me. “And he was—”
“Mr. Green. We understand how colors work,” I said.
“Hah!” Heather said. “I was going to say you were Mr. Cuntbucket. You guys are bad at interrogation.”
“Are you familiar with Heimdall Security?” I asked, trying to steer the conversation back on track.
“Afraid not.” She perked up. “Is their CEO a tall, dark-skinned god with a posh British accent? Because if so, I’d like it better if they interrogated me.”
“Jimmy Cardannon is English,” Brady pointed out. “He’s pasty white, though. And wicked ugly. And an asshole. You wouldn’t like him.”
“Back to the questions,” I said pointedly. “Why did you sneak into our suite last night?”
Heather sat up a little straighter in her restraints. “Because fuck rich people, that’s why. You have all that yummy food and drinky drinks in your suite and won’t share them with anyone else. Our seats were awful. Oh my God, they were so high up, it sucked. My friend Maurice couldn’t see LeBron. He has a big crush on King James. He calls him Bron Bron. Oh, I should mention that he’s gay. My friend Maurice, not LeBron. Maurice loves dick. He wants all the dicks in his mouth.”
Brady busted out laughing behind me. “I knew I caught him eyeing me last night.”
“Can you blame him?” Heather asked. “You guys are hot. Not right now, with all this camo bullshit covering your muscles. But last night, wearing those suits? Like a bunch of sexy secret service agents? Mmm hmm. Come to mama.”
Once again, I felt myself harden at the way she was smiling lustily. My eyes drifted down to the skin-tight jeans and the blouse that showed just a little bit of cleavage. She was leaning forward, and I could see the curve of her breasts, the same breasts that were smashed against my chest last night…
I shook it off and returned my gaze to her big, round eyes. “Good to know,” I said simply. “Why—”
“Maurice says I’m not as dirty as him,” Heather continued to ramble. “But I can be when I want to. He doesn’t even know. I just need the right guy. I’d probably let the three of you do whatever you want with me. Within reason, I mean. I wouldn’t do any weird stuff. Like foot fetishes. Who the hell looks at a foot and thinks, aww yeah, I want to jizz all over those toes? Not trying to judge anyone’s kinks, but I just don’t get it.” She licked her lips and then muttered, “I’d let Idris Elba jizz on my toes. But only him.”
Brady was laughing so hard he had to walk away. Even Asher was struggling to suppress a grin. Me, I was sick of all the games and wanted to finish the questioning.
“You’re a good kisser,” Heather blurted out to me. Her eyes were bright and challenging. “Where’d you learn to kiss so good? Do they teach that in Big Beefy Security School?”
Brady stopped laughing. “Hold the phone. You two kissed?”
“Let’s focus on the suite,” I said emphatically. “I get why you wanted to sneak into one. Because fuck rich people. But why did you pick our suite?”
“We saw Jonah Weiman walk out of there. Maurice—my friend who likes dick, I think I mentioned him—Maurice has submitted headshots to The Weiman Agency a bunch of times. But he’s never heard back from them. We thought if we snuck inside, we could talk to Jonah and convince him to represent us.”
She sighed and slumped her shoulders. “We’re both unrepresented. That means we don’t have an agent. It sucks. It’s tougher to get roles that way. Mr. Howard sometimes gets us auditions, but it’s not the same as having a real agent. Did I tell you about Mr. Howard? He was on a soap opera in the nineties.” She paused. “I don’t know if he likes dick or not. I think he used to be married.”
“We don’t need to know about Eugene Howard,” I said.
“Hey!” Heather said. “You know his first name! Careful, he doesn’t like to be called Eugene. Can’t blame him. That’s a silly name. But fun to say. Eugene. Yew-geen. YOO-gene.”
“See?” Brady said to me. “This girl doesn’t know anything. It’s all a misunderstanding, like I said.”
He was right. This girl was exactly who she said she was: an aspiring actress working a minimum-wage job on the side, who snuck into our suite by coincidence. She wasn’t sent by one of our competitors to make us look bad.
But there was one other thing nagging me, and I wanted to hear what she said while she was loose-lipped. “You insulted our security agency last night. In front of several clients. It was one of the last things you said before leaving. Why did you do that?”
“Because I was lashing out at everyone, and sometimes there’s collateral damage,” she replied. “And frankly, I was right. It’s embarrassing that we were able to sneak in and mingle for as long as we did. You handle the security stuff for athletes and celebrities, right? What if Maurice and I were assassins sent to kill Jonah Weiman?” Her eyes widened. “Oh! That would be such a good script idea! Outback servers by day, assassins by night! Maurice’s specialty would be knives, whereas I specialize in poisoning my targets…”
“I’d watch that,” Brady said. “Do you have skin-tight costumes?”
“Duh,” Heather said. “How else would we dodge the laserbeam security systems?”
I rose and nodded to Asher. “I think we’re done here.”
Asher bent down to his container of supplies and prepared another syringe. Heather twisted her head to watch him, and she slowly began shaking her head.
“No, no, no. Please don’t kill me. Let me live, please! I know I’ve seen your faces, which is kind of a no-no, but I promise not to tell anyone.”
“Relax,” Asher said while wiping another spot on her arm. “This is a barbiturate neutralizer. To cancel the effects of the sodium thiopental. We’re not going to kill you.”
She leaned away from the needle. “Earlier you said you wanted to kill me.”
“Oh.” Asher pursed his lips. “I was attempting to make a joke. I suppose it was not received the way I intended. Now, relax. You’ll feel better in a few minutes.”
She allowed the needle into her arm. “Feel better? Mr. Blue, I feel great. I bet you feel great, too. Take off these handcuffs so I can touch you.” She twisted in the chair to try to grab him with her restrained hands, fingers squeezing at the air.
I walked away and chuckled to myself. Brady was right: this girl was feisty. She was perfect for what we intended, now that we knew she wasn’t a spy from a rival security agency.
But I couldn’t help wondering if we were biting off more than we could chew.