Wade's War Read online

  “Of course I’m not,” he muttered, shutting his eyes again. “Who wants to deal with that?”

  “You, apparently.” He smirked.

  Wade shook his head. “She’ll be a lot of trouble.”

  “Nope, she won’t be,” Terk argued, “but you might.”

  Wade opened his eyes and glared at his boss. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that obviously she wants something … and you’re it.”

  “Yeah, I know that.” Again his eyelids fluttered closed.

  “She doesn’t seem the type to take no for an answer either. I’m surprised you’re even fighting it.”

  “Why?” Wade asked in a flat tone. He waited for a moment, and then opened his eyes and glared at his friend.

  “You know why,” Terk said quietly. “You know perfectly well what I can and cannot see.”

  “Well, for once,” he snapped, “you could just not tell.”

  “I can tell if I want to, but you do know that you’re not being the easiest person to deal with right now.”

  “So what is this? My punishment?”

  “No. It’s hardly that,” Terk stated. “And nobody who had caught Sophia’s interest would ever consider it a punishment.”

  “Look. We hit it off. We had fun. Then I realized how deep it was getting and how much danger she would be in if we continued on the same pathway, so I called it quits.” Wade made it sound like it was no big deal.

  “Except for the fact that you’re obviously not over her. Not even close. And she has that kind of energy that you could use to heal, and you’re too stubborn to see it. It’ll be a problem if she keeps you off your game.”

  “Well, you’re the one who hired her,” Wade snapped. “And don’t go telling me now that you couldn’t see the energy between us because you would have seen it in a heartbeat, if you’d looked.” In frustration, Wade snapped his eyelids shut and tried to turn away from Terk.

  “Maybe I didn’t look,” Terk admitted. “We were a little desperate, in case you don’t remember.”

  Wade opened his eyes, turned his head, and stared at his boss, his friend. This discussion was getting them nowhere. So he changed the subject. “Anything new?”

  “A lot,” Terk muttered, “and none of it good.”

  “Speak up,” he said, “and, if I don’t have to move, all the better.”

  “I don’t want you to move,” he noted. “As a matter of fact, I might just bring a computer in here for you.”

  “I don’t know if that would help or hurt. The noise out there, the energy, it’s making me vibrate pretty badly.”

  “How are your senses doing?”

  “At about 40 percent,” he replied bitterly. “It’s like walking around three-quarters blind, then getting blindsided in my own corner of the world.”

  “I get it. I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought her on board, but, as I said earlier, we are critically short-staffed.” Terk was truly remorseful.

  “I know. I know.” Wade groaned. “And, honestly, if I had the time and energy, I might have done things differently.”

  “Well, after this, you can do things differently,” Terk replied, “because sometimes it’s good to go with your heart.”

  “She doesn’t need to know,” he snapped, and a threat hung in his words. “I really won’t appreciate anybody interfering.” A razor-sharp tone filled his voice.

  “Doesn’t matter if you appreciate it or not,” Terk replied, with an equally hard tone. “Anything that interferes with what we have to do becomes a team issue. We are all trying to hold it together with the small working team we have. I don’t want a problem with you, and I need all you can muster,” Terk murmured. “We’re expending a lot of energy, trying to not lose any member of this team, and some are hanging by a thread.”

  “Okay.” For the first time, Wade sounded uncertain.

  “Take care of yourself,” Terk said, “and I need you to pick up as much as you can—but not to the point that it puts you at risk. Get back on your feet, and let’s see if we can find the asshole doing this.”

  “Yeah, sure. What do we have so far? And please tell me that it’s not nothing.” Terk was tired too. Wade saw that. It only made him feel worse.

  “No, it’s not nothing. We did find quite a lot, but we just haven’t found enough to nail down this shit.”

  “Is your brother still in the area?” Wade asked quietly.

  “Yes, and I think he’ll stay for a while. He’s the one who brought Sophia.”

  “I’m surprised they didn’t take her on over there. It sounds like your brother and Levi’s team are always looking for more people.” Wade was hoping to push her away.

  “I think they asked her,” Terk spilled, “but she declined, saying something about having some old business to settle.”

  Wade winced; he knew what that was. “She’ll wage war against me, won’t she?” he murmured.

  “Probably. The question is, do you deserve it?” Terk asked. “Or want it?”

  “I walked and never went back.” Wade contemplated the situation. “It’s not like we made any promises. We just hit it off, and she was expecting me for dinner, but I got called for a job, and that’s when I got hurt a while back.” He shrugged. “I didn’t call her again. That’s hardly an unusual situation.”

  “Yeah, but maybe take a good look at what you want now. Our lives, our priorities, all have changed.”

  “And what then? Get her sympathy?” Wade hated uncertainty. Hated being questioned. Even worse, he hated being judged.

  “I don’t know about sympathy, but maybe some understanding would resolve this mess between you two.” Terk nodded. “I think she would appreciate it if you just told her the truth.”

  “Well, I’m not explaining our particular skill sets to her.”

  Wade was being a hard-ass, and Terk had no idea how to get him to see reason. He was working off emotions right now. So Terk just remained quiet, letting Wade stew in his thoughts for a moment.

  “I could tell her a little bit, but I think it would just make her angrier that I was trying to hide out and to not get her involved.”

  “Yeah, it’s funny how these women all seem to think that trying to protect them is almost a crime in itself.”

  “You’re abso-fucking-lutely right there.” Wade sighed and let his eyelids drop closed again.

  “These women are tough, smart, and they don’t appreciate being canceled out of the equation, Wade.”

  Terk had put a spin on the equation analogy to make his point, and Wade picked it up right away. It was not a bad way to let him know what he already knew—that Sophia was a spitfire.

  “Sophia could serve your head on a platter.” Terk chuckled. “She is independent, strong, and knows what she wants.”

  “And here I thought all the good women were gone,” Wade mumbled. “That’s what you told me a long time ago.”

  “Except now I’m starting to wonder if I was wrong,” Terk muttered.

  “What?” Wade jerked open his eyes to study Terk. Wade’s earlier exhaustion had been somewhat diminished at the change of tone in his friend’s voice. “What happened? Maybe you better bring me up to date. What the hell is this about?”

  Terk hesitated. “It’s not an easy story.”

  “Well, you can start at the beginning.” Wade wouldn’t let this go—not when interruptions had cost them an earlier very important discussion—and Wade had the time.

  “The trouble is … I don’t know what the beginning is.”

  What came next was not what Wade had expected at all, ending with some poor woman in a coma, now carrying Terk’s child. “Jesus Christ.” Stunned, Wade could only stare at him.

  “Considering the fact that I’ve spent all my adult life making sure that I didn’t get a woman pregnant,” he stated, “it’s pretty upsetting.”

  “Yeah, that’s one word for it.” What an insane turn of events. “When I was out of it, I was really out
, wasn’t I?”

  “You weren’t out long enough is the problem, as you are still hurting from coming back too soon.” Terk shook off the effects of the conversation, standing straight. “I really would appreciate it if you would get yourself healed before you jump right back into this craziness.”

  “Well, if there wasn’t such craziness,” he replied, “it would be fine. If I can help, I need to help.”

  “Just so we’re clear. It’s not just you. I know that she needs to be protected, and everyone else on the team does too. “Trouble is, we needed people. We still need more people.”

  “I know. I get it.” Wade added, “And I’m trying to be understanding of everything that’s going on, but it’s hard because I wasn’t there, because I couldn’t do anything about it.”

  “Remember. Everything has to happen in a certain way, and, unfortunately at this point, it feels very much like things will still blow up.” Terk was clearly exhausted.

  “You think?” Wade’s question was interrupted by a series of alarms.

  Terk muttered under his breath, then disappeared out the door.

  Listening to the chaos going off around him, Wade had no idea if he should get up or not. He knew that they were all capable, but he had no idea what the alarms meant. Then the alarms shut off, leaving everything eerily quiet for a second. He leaned back in bed with a sigh of relief, noting Terk had left the door open. Wade was mustering up the courage to get out of bed and shut it, when she stepped in; Sophia was nothing if not persistent.

  She looked at him hazily. “Good thing you stayed where you were. It was a false alarm.”

  “I doubt it was a false alarm,” he argued, “more like somebody tripped the wire as a test.”

  She nodded. “I wondered about that.”

  “Yeah.” Wade sighed. “You pretty well have to assume that, when it comes to the team here. I don’t know what’s going on, but obviously we’ve pissed somebody off pretty badly,” he noted.

  “I think you’ve pissed off lots of people,” she stated, “and you know what? Maybe that’s not a bad thing because some of this has to come to a head in order to get it all purged properly.”

  “That’s not as easy as it appears,” he muttered.

  “Nope, it definitely isn’t. Maybe that’s also why you shouldn’t do it alone,” she noted, and, with that, she turned and walked out again.

  It seemed like his bedroom had turned into a highway, with everyone speeding through all day long—not something Wade appreciated. But just when he was about to go back under and finally get a bit of sleep, the alarms went off again. This time something was different to it, and the yells and curses coming from the next room told a completely different story.

  Pulling on his reserves, he closed his eyes to send out a trace. His heart squeezed in terror. Maybe they found what they were looking for after all.

  *

  Sophia was really no good at subterfuge. For her, life was all about living in the moment, stepping in with everything she had. She had determined a long time ago that she wouldn’t mold herself to anybody’s liking, and, in a world with so much abuse and so much negativity, she had her own way of doing things, and she worked hard to be who she was. She had never tried to fool herself into thinking that Wade would be here, yet she’d secretly hoped to see him again. But seeing him injured like this—mentally drained and spiritually low—she wasn’t exactly sure what to do, to say, or even to feel. Predictably she’d come across too strong and too crass and had pissed him off immediately. But, then again, what else was new?

  It was hard for her to hide her emotions and to keep them all bottled up inside. It was hard for her to be anything other than who she was, and usually she wore her heart on her sleeve. The fact that he’d stood her up and then had never called her had been a terrible blow to her ego. It wasn’t just a bruised ego that she was worried about; she would get over herself. She was worried about him, and to find out he’d been badly injured on a job and possibly because he was distracted over her was just too much to handle. She got it, and she really did understand that these guys were all about honor, discipline, and duty to protect everyone, but they also had to protect themselves.

  She wasn’t most women, and she knew how to protect herself. She may have mushy feelings for a guy not willing to admit he cared, but she still had control over everything. She understood the need for somebody to stay home and to keep the home fires going, to look after a spouse or a family, but she didn’t come from the same era that said all women must be at home.

  She was different, no matter how reluctant she was to admit it.

  In fact, she was a lot like Ice.

  Sophia had done a couple jobs with Ice, but more as a consultant than an actual working member of the team. Sophia hadn’t wanted to take on another position like that, at least not until she figured out exactly what she wanted out of her life and Wade. And that hadn’t been all that easy to determine, and now she was even more confused.

  Her personal struggles aside, facing two cyberattacks in a matter of a few minutes had both her and Tasha sitting in front of their computers, blocking out everything else, as they worked hard to unscramble whatever the hell was going on.

  Tasha suddenly yelped, “Gotcha, you little bastard!”

  Sophia immediately pushed over her rolling chair and was by her coworker’s side. “What did you find?”

  “It came in through this door.” She pointed at the screen. “Crap! What’s that doing there?” she muttered.

  Sophia rolled back to her station to look at her screen, typing fast to close off as many back doors as she could. “We need to do a full test on this system.”

  “Why don’t you try to hack in now?” Tasha suggested. “I haven’t even had a chance to give you a log-in, so just hack in, and let me know what you find.”

  “Oh-kay. Fine by me.” Sophia immediately began her assault, and it didn’t take long for her to realize that Tasha hadn’t disappointed. “No way to get in quickly,” she muttered. “This will take time.”

  “But then they had a little bit of time because they had plans in place,” Terk suggested, leaning over her shoulder.

  Sophia didn’t feel threatened or in any way upset by his presence. Something was calming but also distinctly unnerving about having him this close. She nodded. “And they’ve taken whatever steps they needed to. But what was the purpose of these two attacks? What does it mean?”

  “They’re testing our system. They’re phishing to see how good we are. They want to figure out how many people we have left and which people at that,” he noted.

  She looked up at him and frowned. “Isn’t that dangerous for them to know?”

  “Yes, for us. If you know the strength of your enemy,” he murmured behind her, “you can make plans on how to weaken them.”

  “Well, we can’t let them weaken anything,” Sophia muttered. “This is starting to piss me off.”

  “You and me both,” Tasha said beside her. “We’ve been through a lot with these guys already.”

  “I get that, Tasha.” Sophia turned to her friend. “I’m sorry. If I’d known you needed help, I would have been here sooner.”

  “I know that.” She nodded, glancing at her friend.

  “Do we go on the attack or …” Sophia trailed off, her attention now on Tasha, as she continued clicking her keys, frowning.

  “I think a physical counterattack is already in progress,” Tasha replied.

  Terk looked at her sharply. “In Manchester?”

  “Yes! And following the routes they’ve been taking, I’m pretty sure they’re heading toward your brother.”

  “That would be good if they did,” Terk agreed quietly.

  Sophia gasped, turned, and stared at him. “What?”

  He smiled. “I was hoping we could send them in that direction.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, Merk and Damon set up a trap.”

  Sophia was not convinced. “But did you re
ally expect the bad guys to get into our system this quickly?”

  “Again, knowing the strength of your enemies allows you to better understand who they are,” he muttered. “Am I happy about two cyberattacks? No. But it also means some other really good hackers are out there. And we need to prepare accordingly.”

  “Maybe,” Tasha agreed bluntly, “but we’re the best.” She twisted a bit to look up at Terk. “So you set up your brother as bait?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “My brother offered to set himself up as bait. We needed information, and, in order to get that information, we needed to find somebody … anybody, to get answers from.”

  Tasha slowly nodded. “That’s your department. I handle IT.” And, with that, she pivoted around and went right back to tracing the cyberhack.

  Both women turned to their computers, moving on from the discussion, since the hacking team had more pressing concerns at the moment. Sophia was lost in a way, her tenure short here, and working with Ice had been different. Sophia knew and liked Ice, but to even begin to tell Ice to watch out for a trap was foolish in the extreme. Except as a heads-up warning. “You’ll warn them, right?” Sophia asked Terk.

  “Already done,” he confirmed. “I stay in close contact with my brother.”

  Sophia wanted to ask just what that meant, and it didn’t appear she would get the chance to privately ask Tasha if she knew. Finally Sophia shook her head. “Rather than tiptoeing around this, I’ll just ask. Has Merk got some of the abilities you have?”

  “If he does, he never has developed them,” Terk murmured. “So it’s generally understood that the answer to that question is no.”

  She pondered his wording carefully. Generally understood was the phrase that caught her attention. “That would be very unusual in twins. Wouldn’t it?”

  He gave her a ghost of a smile. “All kinds of things in life are very unusual in our world.”

  She half smiled. “That, sir, sounds like an evasive answer to me.”

  “Whatever works,” he replied, with a shrug.

  And Sophia understood because, when you got into this shit, there was just no joy for anybody. “I hear you,” she muttered. “Now, would somebody just tell me what it is that we’ll encounter?” Just then she noticed activity on her computer. “A visitor is in the system right now.”