Code Name: Aries by Janie Crouch

3

Ian

The next day, Landon and I were on our way into Reddington City, the largest city in western Wyoming. Hell, it was pretty much the only city in western Wyoming.

We’d already been there once, me covered in pie, to meet with Kendrick at the safehouse where he was still trying to crack the drive. I wasn’t surprised to find the drive was more difficult to access than anyone had figured.

Mosaic had never made anything easy for anyone.

I’d wanted to take the drive and give it to my people to work on, but the head of my tech team had assured me that if Kendrick and his girlfriend Neo couldn’t crack it, the Zodiac nerds wouldn’t be able to either. “Elite white hat hackers” was the term my team leader had used to describe them, awe clear in her tone. She joked about getting their autographs.

At least I thought she was joking.

So Kendrick and Neo were continuing their computer voodoo. Landon and I were on our way to check out a building they’d suspected was a front for Mosaic activities and had an entire secret underground level.

My tech team had been up all night getting as many details about the Hemingway building as possible. The layers of electronic and personnel security for the facility were way too high for a building that housed a couple of lawyers’ offices, an accounting firm, and a travel agency.

Last I checked, none of those had need for guards with Uzis and electronic key-coding that rivaled military bases. It meant Mosaic was protecting something. I wanted to know what that was.

Landon and I had decided not to wait. We were going in ourselves. He would be posing as a wealthy businessman interested in renting an entire floor of offices while I gained access to the hidden level to see what I could find.

We should be going over the details of the mission to make them as solid as possible, but Landon was more interested in giving me shit about the past eighteen hours we’d spent in Oak Creek.

Specifically, the minutes involving Wavy Bollinger.

“All I’m saying is that you didn’t stop her from hitting you with the tray.”

I raised my gaze heavenward with a long-suffering sigh. “You weren’t there. How do you know she didn’t get the drop on me?”

Landon scoffed. “She’s an untrained civilian who weighs a buck twenty sopping wet, half of that in her smile. I’ve seen you take down guys twice as big as her trained in hand-to-hand combat and subterfuge.”

I kept on driving. “Maybe she got lucky.”

Or maybe I’d known that stopping the tray would have meant hurting her in some way. Or at the very least, knocking the wind from her by throwing her against that wall.

I hadn’t wanted to do that.

But I sure as hell didn’t want to explain it to Landon right now. Especially when I didn’t understand it myself.

It was something about her smile.

I didn’t know why, but on some instinctive level, my body hadn’t wanted to do what it had been trained to do. And in the split second I’d realized it was her, I’d stopped myself.

“Maybe I was being a gentleman,” I finally muttered.

Landon let out a sigh. “That would actually make me feel better.”

“Why?”

“Better to be a gentleman who doesn’t want to hurt a lady than be unfocused because of who we’re going up against.”

“I’m fine,” I protested.

“You still haven’t dealt with all the ramifications from your last battle with Mosaic, and you know it.”

“I’m not going to let it affect me.”

“Ian, you died multiple fucking times. There’s no way that’s not going to affect you now.”

“It’s not the same. That part of Mosaic is dead. So let’s leave it alone.”

Landon wanted to say more. I knew he did. But we didn’t have time for a therapy session. And God knew, I’d been through enough of those over the past three years since my first bout with Mosaic. I’d clawed my way back to mental stability while making sure nobody knew I woke up sweating and panicked nearly every night.

Landon was concerned, and he didn’t know the worst of it.

“And I was being a gentleman,” I insisted. “Or at least I didn’t want to be the asshole who hurt her.”

Landon grinned. “In that case, let me explain the finer nuances of the move known as Wax On, Wax Off. You might want to try it on your waitress friend.”

“I’ll leave that one for you and Sarge. Let’s focus on the mission.”

Because I sure as hell would not be dating Wavy Bollinger despite whatever there had been in that moment between us as I’d pushed her back against the wall. I hadn’t been sure what I was going to do as I’d stepped into her personal space.

Warn her that I was dangerous and she should keep that smile far away from me?

Tell her that her instincts hadn’t been off—I wasn’t Mosaic, but I was definitely dangerous to someone like her?

Drown in those ridiculously green eyes while kissing her senseless?

Instead, I’d given her advice on how to more effectively attack me next time. All in all, probably the smartest thing I could have done for either of us.

With who I was and what I did, contact with another person was never casual, especially not with a woman. But that honest appreciation in her eyes—before she’d wanted to knock me unconscious—had caught me off guard.

She’d had no idea who I was.

Some women were attracted to the power that came with my position at Zodiac. Some liked to know they were with a former Navy SEAL. Damn near all were attracted to my bank account.

Wavy had been attracted to the guy at her diner to get coffee.

It didn’t matter. Nothing was going to happen.

“Let’s just get the info we need and get out of this damn state,” I said.

“Roger that, boss. But if we can’t talk about your past with Mosaic, can we at least talk about you smiling this morning at the diner?”

I shot him a look. “I did not smile at Wavy this morning.”

I had been very careful not to smile at her. One, I wasn’t a big smiler, and two, I didn’t want to give anyone the impression that I was here for anything other than business.

But hell if it wasn’t hard not to smile at Wavy Bollinger. She smiled at every fucking person she saw whether she knew them well or not. She made jokes, made people feel comfortable and at ease. Everybody liked her.

“You didn’t smile at her,” Landon said. “You smiled when we walked into the Frontier Diner and you saw she was working. This cutest little, OMG, my crush and her tray are here smile.”

Landon wasn’t wrong. I had smiled. Because I had been glad Wavy had been working this morning so I’d been able to see her. Crazy as it sounded, there was something about her presence that…soothed a part of me.

She’d chatted with us for a long time, despite being a little embarrassed about the tray incident.

She’d brought me a slice of pie. Even though it had been breakfast time. But when my eyes had met hers, the only thing I had been able to think about was the feel of her fingers wiping pie off of me the night before. And how it would be worth having pie staining another set of clothes to feel them again.

“Yeah, that smile. You’re thinking about her now, aren’t you?”

I definitely wasn’t going to provide him with that intel. “I should have fired you years ago.”

“You can’t fire me. I know too much. You’d have to kill me.”

“That can be arranged,” I said.

But we both knew I couldn’t run Zodiac without him. Landon, Sarge, some of my other core team members…I trusted them with my life. If I died, my fortune and the Zodiac Tactical company would continue on in their very capable hands. They were my family. The ones I trusted above all others.

Family wasn’t always blood, and blood wasn’t always family. I had learned that lesson the hard way.

“If you bring up Wavy Bollinger or my past with Mosaic again, I’m going to make good on my threat to put a cap in your ass.”

Landon blew a kiss at me in the way only he could, but he grew serious as we got closer to the Hemingway building. “You sure this plan of ours is a good idea? You did hear the nerds tell us that the technology they gave us might not work, right?”

“Yeah, all five thousand times they said it.” I knew it was a risk, but at this point I was not willing to give up any lead that might give us the upper hand with Mosaic. Kendrick and Neo had discovered that this building, with its huge underground bunker, had ties to Mosaic. We had to move quickly if we wanted any details.

“I still think you should let me head down into the underground section and you stay and pretend to be the interested party.”

“I can do it. I’m not sending anybody I care about into a situation where they could get captured by Mosaic.”

Even if the thought of entering an underground, windowless set of rooms already had my entire body tense.

“You can’t protect every single person every single moment,” Landon responded. “Putting yourself at higher risk in order to make sure everyone else is safer is not the way to go. Like setting yourself on fire to keep everyone else warm, that sort of thing.”

I shook my head. This was nonnegotiable. “They have Bronwyn. I’m not taking a chance on them getting you too.”

Landon didn’t argue further. He was my friend, and I trusted him with my life. But ultimately, I was the boss, and I was not going to budge on this.

“Besides,” I added, “I’m too recognizable considering my history with Mosaic.”

“Suit yourself. If you get killed, ‘Landon Black, CEO of Zodiac Tactical’ will have a nice ring to it.”

I drove by the building. It was pretty nondescript on the outside—nothing to draw attention.

Landon gave a dramatic sigh. “Just once I wish someone would throw up a Bad Guys Hang Out Here sign so we know we have the right place.”

I parked around the back of the building, close to the door, and we got out. “You just do your thing with people, and I’ll see if I can get us any information.”

Landon was good with people. Good at reading them, good at talking to them, good at giving them what they needed so they would trust him. He would have no trouble pretending to be a rich snob who wanted to rent out half of the building and expected everyone to pay attention to him as he toured the facilities.

We placed the comm units in our ears and tested them. I would be going in as his assistant, keeping my head down and making my escape at the scheduled time.

“Ready,” he said. “Finally, I get to be the boss for a while. As it should be.”

“In your dreams.”

We didn’t make it ten feet inside the front door before we were met by a security guard and required to walk through a metal detector. My tech team had prepared us for that, so we weren’t carrying any weapons, at least not any metal ones. We both had tranquilizer darts that could put a tango down for a couple hours.

Also, we could both kill the security guard with our bare hands before he had a chance to draw his weapon.

We made it through, and I kept my head tucked deep into the electronic tablet I was carrying as part of my cover as Landon—in Landon style—charmed the front receptionist. We waited as the building’s rental representative made his way to the lobby.

“Mr. Ashton-Phelps.” The guy rushed over to shake Landon’s hand. “It’s very nice to meet you in person. I’m so glad you could make it here this afternoon.”

Ashton-Phelps? I rolled my eyes while keeping my head lowered. This was why Landon shouldn’t be allowed to choose his own fake ID.

“My name is Gregory Simmons,” the man continued. “I’ll be showing you around today, answering any questions you have. Let’s step right over here to the elevator.”

Landon cut him off. “I assume there’s some sort of secondary elevator or staircase I could take? I am not going to be riding the common elevator with everyone if I move my enterprise into this building.”

I swallowed a laugh. Landon was laying it on like he was a sheik in Dubai, not a suit in the middle of Wyoming. But it seemed to work with Simmons.

“Yes, sir,” the younger man said, suitably impressed. “There are two staircases, one on either end of the building, and there is, in fact, a private elevator down a secondary hall.”

Landon nodded. “Then that is what I will use.”

That’s what we needed. That elevator was what led down to the subbasement. I wasn’t sure if Simmons knew about the activity underneath this building or not, but it didn’t matter.

My team was currently running every single person who’d set foot in here for the past six months. We would see if that led to any useful intel.

The only part of security our nerd team hadn’t been able to crack remotely was the private elevator itself. If anyone entered without a card, it would set off alarms. But once you were inside, you could override the system.

And Landon had gotten us access without asking.

I grit my teeth as we stepped inside and Simmons activated the elevator with his swipe card. As soon as it began to move, I pretended to get an email on my tablet. “Mr. Ashton-Phelps,” I said. “I’ve received a message, sir, about that emergency situation in Dubai.” Since Landon was playing this over the top, I might as well join in. It helped me get my mind off the metal walls threatening to close in on me.

“Damn it, Struthers, I told you to handle that.”

“Yes, sir. I will, sir. I probably shouldn’t do it here in front of . . . others.” I turned away the slightest bit from Simmons.

“Fine,” Landon said. “Go back down to the lobby and don’t come back up until it’s handled. I don’t want to deal with this anymore.”

The elevator’s doors opened and Landon and Simmons stepped out. I nodded.

“You won’t be able to get back up in this elevator, so you’ll have to use the regular ones near the lobby,” Simmons offered.

“Yes, sir,” I said. Simmons liked that. He liked not being the lowest man on the totem pole. That was fine with me as long as he left me alone in here.

I ignored the panic that wanted to swallow me and pulled out my tablet’s specialized drive cord, plugging it into the elevator’s computerized control system. This was the first hurdle, and the entire mission was for naught if the nerds couldn’t get the elevator to go where we needed it to without activating the alarm.

But it worked. I bypassed the ground floor altogether and headed deeper to a level that was definitely not on the elevator’s keypad. I stayed to the side as the doors opened, squelching my need to get out as soon as possible, tranquilizer guns in both hands, knowing there would be guards.

If I couldn’t take out any guards before they sounded the alarm, I’d be a dead man.

I stepped out of the elevator just as the doors started to close, when anyone watching would’ve assumed no one was inside. There were two guards. I took out the one closest to me with a fast roundhouse kick. As I came out of the spin, I let the tranquilizer dart in my left hand fly at guard number two. Two seconds later, he dropped to the floor. I returned to the first guard and tranquilized him even though my kick had already knocked him unconscious.

They’d be out for a couple hours. If I was here longer than that, we’d have bigger problems than security guards.

I left them where they lay, not wanting to waste precious minutes dragging them somewhere. Not that there were many choices. The hallway was long and narrow with multiple doors.

“Landon, I’m in.” He wouldn’t respond but could hear my reports. “Took down two guards.”

I pointed my tablet at each of the doors, sending the visual back to the tech team. They couldn’t speak to me through comms, but they could message me over the tablet.

A message showed up a few seconds later. Third door has the most potential for intel. Instructions on how to bypass the electronic lock flooded in less than a minute later. I paid my tech team double the normal rate for a reason.

I followed their instructions, and seconds later I was inside. I looked around. The nerds had been right. This was it. This was what we needed. This was what we had been hoping for. I picked up the tablet and turned so the camera was catching the different computers and screens. I’m sure my tech team was struggling not to orgasm just looking at the cutting-edge equipment around us.

They sent me to the computer console in the southeast corner of the room. That’s not the one I would have chosen; it seemed more unassuming than the rest. But I wasn’t the expert.

I could hear Landon babbling on to Simmons upstairs, so everything was okay, but we didn’t have a lot of time. The nerds told me what to type, and I did so. Data started flying up on the screens all over the room.

Can’t download. Record manually.

I set my tablet up so the camera was taking in as much of the information as possible, pulled out my phone, and began recording with it too. Once I got the footage back, the team would analyze it.

Hopefully, it would provide what we needed to take Mosaic down.

I’d only been recording about fifteen seconds when Landon’s voice came in through the comm unit.

“Ian, do you read? Get out now.”

“I need more ti—”

“Right fucking now.”