Code of Honor Read online

  She was about ready to retort with something sarcastic when the door burst open. The two men she saw in plain clothes toting guns had her feeling relieved—unless they were drug lords here to kill the guy then that would suck because they would no doubt kill her too.

  “Let her go,” the tall one with the dark hair that fell slightly below shoulder length and the ice blue eyes that looked lethal at the moment growled his command.

  The guy holding her laughed as he yanked her up and held her in front of his body. Blonds, she thought, short blonds were trouble personified. She shouldn’t think that way but this guy was the picture of a good guy she would say. She wasn’t that keen on him, but she didn’t expect this. He was five nine, dirty blond hair and from what she had made out from the tattoo on his arm he was military—or at least had been. Simper Fi, she knew what that meant. He had been a Marine, but the Marines she knew didn’t do stuff like this.

  She had seen the tattoo the first time he came out with shirt and pants missing and only the white boxers covering certain areas of his body. She expected military men to have a certain code of honor that should have defied crazy like this, but then she knew that wasn’t always true. Some people were crazy personified and no amount of suspected honor would change that, but why her? And what did he mean he had wanted her since he saw a picture of her? He had been living in this complex for like three months now; if he was supposed to kill her then why hadn’t he done it before now?

  “Now!”

  The man in front of her scared her more than the one holding her. He looked like a man ready to take a shot and she just hoped he didn’t shoot her. She was five eight and one misaimed shot could make that bullet hit her.

  “If you say so,” the man behind her laughed right before pushing her with force into the two men holding guns. What surprised her was how quickly her attacker had jumped out the side window and taken off.

  “Watch her,” Blue Eyes said to the man who had come in with him before vanishing from the apartment.

  “It’s going to be okay, Miss.”

  She looked up to the man helping her up from the floor. He had sandy red hair and stark green eyes—almost like cat eyes with a hint of flecks of yellow she would say. She noticed once she was standing that he was shorter; she would peg him at about five nine at most because he wasn’t standing that much higher than she was.

  “All my training and it still wasn’t enough,” she said absently. She was astonished and now scared. She always knew there would be somebody better. Her father had told her, “no matter how good you are, somebody will always be better.” She believed him; she just never thought she would ever have to fight that mysterious somebody.

  Her father was Japanese-American, or as he would always say, “just American,” because he had been born in America and didn’t see a need to separate himself from the country of his birth. Her mother was Irish via her father’s lineage and a hint of bi-racial black from her mother. Her mother, the grandmother goddess in Abby’s eyes, had been fifty-fifty black and white biracial mix as Abby’s mom would say. That meant she was Irish from her father and a little bit of coffee and cream from her mother which combined to make her mom super beautiful. Her mother was tall, big breasts, perfect curves and steel green eyes that could kill just with one glare. Abby thought her mom was gorgeous and her grandmother was magnificent too. She had listened to her mother as a child talk about her own looks as she showed her pictures of her grandmother and grandfather. Abby’s mom told her that her ancestry made her a delicious toffee crème latté. Everybody always said Abby looked exotic in a sexy way, but not strikingly beautiful in a “world’s most beautiful woman,” kind of way. She wasn’t sure how to take that really. It was like a compliment and an insult all at the same time.

  “He’s a former Marine, Miss. Dishonorably discharged to say the least. There wasn’t much you could do with his training. It’s not just the military training, but this guy has trained in about seven different forms of fighting. He’s got the upper hand on all of us.”

  She felt fear grip her harder now. A former Marine, dishonorably discharged and ready to kill her. Great, what did she do to piss Karma off this time?

  “So what are you all doing here?”

  “We were conducting an investigation. Some murders have taken place and we think maybe he’s involved.”

  “So you’re cops?”

  “No. We’re U.S. Marshals, part of a special operations division. This isn’t really in the norm, but sometimes we have to operate outside the norm.”

  “Telling her all our secrets, Tony?”

  The man in front of her shrugged as Blue Eyes entered their space. “He got away?”

  “Yeah. I lost him.” He finally set his attention on her. “Are you okay?”

  She nodded. “I will be.”

  “I hate to scare you here but we think he’s in town for a hit but we don’t know who the target is yet and since he’s killed before, people in our unit and in our program, we needed to keep watch on him.”

  “Well, that’s comforting,” she shook her head. Thanks a lot for telling her they had lost people in their program to this guy’s attack because that was not making her feel safer. “Well I’ll do you one better. He’s here to kill me.”

  Both men gasped and looked at each other and then her. “No, that’s not his MO. He never makes direct contact before.”

  “Never doesn’t mean he wouldn’t. He made his contact today. He told me he has wanted me since he got the picture of me and that he was going to enjoy this kill. So now my question to you is, why does this man want me dead? Or more like, who hired this man to put me in the ground?” The fact that they looked like they didn’t have a clue told her she was in a world of trouble here.

  “You should come with us.”

  “Seriously? You just told me he’s killed some of your people before so why should I think you can protect me?”

  “What choice do you have?” Blue Eyes had a point there and she couldn’t deny it. she could go home, but that man would be back and clearly she wasn’t good enough to make sure he didn’t kill her.

  “I need a shower and a change first.”

  Blue Eyes nodded and took her upper arm in his big hand with a firm grip. She pulled away.

  “That arm still hurts from the last guy who manhandled me.”

  “Sorry,” he nodded before taking a softer hold of the same arm. “What is it you do exactly?” He asked her as they walked back to her unit. The other guy had called the cops but he had accompanied them back as a just in case. Having the window broken out wasn’t something they could let go unreported, at least that’s what Blue Eyes had said.

  “I’m in gaming.”

  “Gaming?”

  “I design games. You know, what I help design and create is right up there with Called to Duty. We’re hoping to surpass them this year.”

  “Would somebody kill for that.”

  She gave a rhetorical laugh. “It’s just gaming. Nobody is that crazy in the gaming world. Besides, killing me won’t solve anything. I just help get all the coding and some of the graphics together; it’s not like there isn’t a team of people working on the project.” She opened her apartment door and they all stepped inside. She flicked the light switch on the wall so she could see what she was doing. She knew her home without needing the light but after being disoriented with that attack she didn’t trust her mental process to get her from point A to point B without tripping over her own feet in the dark.

  “So these games are military inspired?”

  She sighed. “I just used that game as a reference so you would know what kind of gaming I was talking about. We’re not making computer games. But no, it’s not military it’s actually science fiction. I do meet with some military men sometimes to get a feel for how the characters who are military in our game would really handle a hypothetical situation, but it’s not a military based game per se. But you know I gather research so sometimes I meet
with political figures to figure out how they handle certain things. I met with Senator Trent Malloy just a few months ago. Nice guy.”

  “Trent Malloy—from the Florida senate seat?”

  “yeah, is there another Senator Malloy I don’t know about?”

  “He was murdered?”

  “No way! When?”

  “Two weeks ago,” he nearly growled at her.

  “Two weeks…my goodness. I hadn’t heard.” Of course she also didn’t watch the news like ever and the people she worked with were too busy working to sit around and chit chat about anything outside of gaming. She liked the environment actually because it wasn’t depressing in the least.

  “It was all over the news.”

  “I don’t watch the news.”

  H shook his head as if that was a bad thing and she shook hers in return. “That’s too bad though. We had several lunches and dinners together. I was almost afraid I’d end up in the paper and people would think I was his mistress or something, but most of the lunches were in his office and when we had the dinner meetings I always had my notepad and a pen and my tape recorder. I think people probably thought I was a reporter or something.” She laughed, but they didn’t. “What?”

  “There’s the problem. Somebody probably thinks he told you about the Mantaza project.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Something worth killing for,” Blue Eyes said. “Did he give you anything at these meetings?”

  “Just basic conversation. I have it all on tape and in my notes.”

  “Get those and make sure you bring everything with you.”

  “Why?”

  “Just in case something he said on that tape is the reason you’re soon to die.”

  “Hey!”

  “That man isn’t the kind of man to abandon a contract kill. Either you have something, or you know something, that whoever hired the hit on you is willing to kill for.”

  “But I don’t have anything. We haven’t even seen each other in a few months. I mean he called a few weeks ago—” The sharp growl halted her words. “He just called to see how the game was coming. I’m still helping with fact checking and designing. I multi task.”

  “What’s this game about?”

  “Well we’re not supposed to tell anybody about it yet. It is such a cool idea. The guy who came up with the storyline was awesome. He told me if I had questions to talk with the senator so I thought it would never happen but I called, I dropped a name and Malloy gave me undivided attention for two hours a day for a few weeks.”

  Blue Eyes growled again.

  “I don’t speak animal, stop growling.” She huffed. She still wanted her shower yet she was standing here talking with the man with no patience. “It’s about the aliens still only they’ve taken over human form and they are planning poison the earth’s water supplies, both natural and the filtrated systems along with the ocean. As you know the senator is…was…very into the filtration of water.”

  “We know,” he looked at her sternly. “I need to speak with the man who came up with this gaming idea.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it sounds a hell of a lot like the Mantanza project.”

  “Your project includes aliens?”

  He growled again looking angrier than before. Was she safer with the guy who wanted to kill her? “No,” he nearly barked. “Take me to him.”

  “Well…”

  “Today!”

  “Okay, but I don’t think he’ll talk to you.”

  “I’ll make him talk.”

  “Now this I have to see. Let me shower and grab my stuff and we can go.” She took the quickest shower she could and still get cleaned. She used a combination of homemade lotion and a soft scented essential oil, pulled on a fitted pair of black slacks that hugged her delicious looking butt—her best asset and she sat on it most of the day—before pulling a pink v-neck cut fitted sweater over her head, pulling her hair back in her standard nape of neck ponytail and dawning her four-inch heeled black boots. Then she realized she wasn’t in the mood for dress pants today so she pulled them off and pulled out her dark blue skinny jeans instead. “There,” she shrugged her shoulder. “Much better,” she checked out her own behind in the mirror and decided the slightly above knee high stiletto boots would be better so she got those from the box in the closet instead.

  When she came out both men looked at her as if she were an interruption to their day. “Let’s go.”

  They carefully escorted her out to their unobtrusive beat up Camry and she gave them directions to where they could find the creator of the latest game she was helping work on.

  “Right there,” she pointed after their walk from the car led them right to where Rick Saunders was. Blue Eyes looked at her with a near lethal glare. “Well you demanded I bring you to him. You said you could get him to talk. So if you can make a dead man talk have at it.” She pointed to the tombstone.

  “Why didn’t you say he was dead?”

  “You kept growling and glaring at me. It felt safer just not to argue with you. He died two weeks ago in a car accident. His breaks went out and he slammed into a gas truck on his way home from one of our discussion sessions. Fortunately the gas truck didn’t explode, but the way his car went under it…well, there was most definitely not an open casket funeral. He was so young—twenty-two just last month.” She shook her head.

  “We need to go; now.” He pulled on her already sore arm again but this time he wasn’t letting go. This time he was dragging her alongside him. What had gotten into this guy? And why was he taking it out on her?

  Chapter Two

  “I don’t think you understand exactly how serious this is.”

  Abby watched the woman they called Autumn Kitsap, their director, nearly glaring at her. Why did she care if she went into their program? The woman didn’t even know her. Oh right, because if, and that was a big if, they could find something of value on those tapes they would need her to testify that she recorded them, when, where, with whom and all that other stuff. Plus Autumn had said maybe she had some other information that didn’t get on the audio recordings so Abby figured that meant they would want her to paint a picture for whatever audience was going to be sitting in judgment.

  Right now none of this made sense to her. She worked with video game design. She did fact checking, part world building, part character design…okay, she did a lot more than most people with her mediocre, non important title, would do, but still it was all about game building. How in the world did game building get her to marked for death status? Maybe the bigger question was what could possibly be this big that they would hire some special reconnaissance Marine, oh no that would be former Marine, to kill her? Either which way she sliced it she was soon to be dead.

  Maybe her lack of connection to their calmed sense of doom was her defense system kicking in. It’s kind of like when her flight to the gaming conference in Hawaii went down hard on the landing. The wheal broke off the plane, the wing took a “load off” as Bruce had said, and one of the engines caught fire. Instead of screaming like a banshee as the other passengers were doing she actually calmly exited the plane on the lovely slide ramp that was not as fun to go down as it looked in all those movies she had seen it used in. Oh yeah, she hadn’t forgotten her purse either. She was the only person calmly exiting with her purse and workbag in her arms.

  Her father had raised her to always be calm. “Chaos does not bring victory,” he had always said. Of course he was talking about that in the context of her fighting skills but it applied to life in general in their house. Chaos and freaking out was not going to save her now. In fact, she wasn’t sure they could save her either.

  “What about the team working on this game; are they safe?”

  “I can’t say for sure. The only person in our radar is you.”

  “How can you say that?” How could they not be concerned about everybody else? She worked on the gaming design for this one but she wasn’t the sole
builder. Other people could be in danger, maybe even marked for death like she seemed to be. They needed to protect more than just her.

  “They’re not in direct contact with two people who were murdered, probably due to something they know; you are. Our priority is you. Now,” she pushed back from her desk. “I’m going to put in a call to the best man for your protection detail. I’ve sent a team over to your apartment to pack and bring things here.”

  “What!? I don’t want strangers going through my stuff.” She halted her impending protest when Autumn held up her hand like a mother trying to shut up her child. They had to be the same age, or at least close to it anyway, yet this woman controlled the situation like she was born to do it. Working as the lead of a team full of men, at least that’s all she had seen since arriving, probably meant the woman had to demand respect and obedience. She doubted any of these guys second guessed her, not just out of fear, but out of something else—out of some sense of family. Abby honored that. While gaming wasn’t a life or death business—usually anyway—she could say the team she worked with did act like a family. They were close, they had each other’s back when need be, and they would always show respect towards one another even if the situation hit the debate mode.

  “They’re gathering the things you won’t be able to go back to get. If you need something else speak now or forever hold your peace.”

  “Like a friggin’ wedding,” she mumbled. “I could pack better if you would just let me go back to my home to get it. The drive won’t take forever you know? I could go back, pack, and you can then induct me into your forced witness protection program.” Sure would have been nice if Blue Eyes had taken her back in the first place. But no, he just hit the road and kept on driving with her protesting the trip with each Welcome to…sign that they passed.

  “Not going to happen. You’re on lockdown until you’re not.”

  Abby felt her anger spiking. She was going to be their prisoner until whoever was in charge of this fiasco figured out what was going on. If the history of their government was any indicator she would say that would be the rest of her life—short as that life might be now.