Chapter 5
IN PEACE PREPARE FOR WAR
“Y’all, we’re startin’ our descent into Heathrow, and I’m out of coffee. Someone bring me a refill,” Annabelle said over the comms system in the private jet.
“Sorry, amiga. We drank it all!” Trevor yelled.
Annabelle’s swearing could be heard through the open cockpit door behind them. Katie arched an eyebrow, but her attention never wavered from her laptop and the holographic images it projected into the air.
“Haven’t heard that insult in a while. Trevor better watch his back,” Katie said.
“There will be more coffee at the house. Annabelle can have some while we get settled,” Jamie said as he swiped to the next page of the report on his tablet.
“I’d ask if you could afford the stuff, but this is you we’re talking about. Did you already call ahead and have the place stocked?”
“My mother did. A cleaning crew went through it yesterday from top to bottom, and the food delivery service should have arrived this morning.”
“And security?”
“The UMG sent a couple of agents to handle it.”
Katie hummed wordlessly as she fixed something in the code she was working on, which altered the depth of the web page’s background.
Sean might be excellent at building identities, but whoever he’d tapped to create their fake company’s website had shit taste, according to Katie.
She’d been upgrading it for the past two days with an eye to security options the Pavluhkins might possibly prefer after several suggestions from Alexei.
“Does this mean we’re going to be eating with platinum flatware again?” Katie asked.
Jamie rolled his eyes. “That was one time.”
“That was three times. The gold flatware happened only once, and I was afraid to use every single piece of cutlery surrounding my dinner plates.”
“If I promise you everything at the house will be normal, will you believe me?”
“Not for a goddamn second. This is your mother we’re talking about.”
“I’d prefer we didn’t unless there’s alcohol involved.”
An ice bucket sat on the side table connected to the leather couch Katie was sprawled on.
The bottle of Don Pérignon it used to hold had been emptied within ten minutes of takeoff.
Currently, it contained several different bottles of beer resting in half-melted ice.
She grabbed one without looking, tossing it to Jamie.
Jamie caught the bottle one-handed, making a face at her. “I’m still not discussing my mother.”
“I didn’t ask you to,” Katie retorted, rolling her eyes. “But while we’re on the subject of your family, you need to tell them to back off about what we’re doing out here. They’re driving you up the wall, which is driving me up the wall.”
Jamie pried the bottle cap off and tossed the bit of metal back into the ice bucket. It hit with a tiny splash. He drank down half the bottle in several large gulps before responding with “I can’t not take their calls. Things would be worse if I completely ignored them.”
“They’re making you worse, Jamie. I’m having flashbacks, and not in a good way. It’s like our first year together in the Marines all over again, and that was a hellish first year, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“I haven’t. But it’s one mission, Katie. We can handle it.”
“It’s never just one mission, and you know it.”
Jamie sighed and rubbed at his eyes hard enough he saw spots. “When this is over and done with, I’ll let you punch me, all right? It’ll be just like old times.”
“I’d rather it wasn’t.”
“Tough shit. We have our orders, and mine is to be a complete fucking bastard for the foreseeable future.”
“Then I’m definitely punching you when this is over.”
“I look forward to your love tap,” Jamie said with feeling.
It wasn’t exactly a lie. Portraying the rich, arrogant asshole the MDF needed him to be was going to drive him crazy.
That wasn’t who he was, not anymore. Jamie needed Katie to knock him back down to the ground when the trappings of his life became too much, too real, too cutting.
He privately thought it might be easier this time around, if only because Kyle would be with him.
Jamie’s gaze drifted away from Katie to search out his lover in the group of people scattered through the private jet.
Kyle was playing a first-person shooting game with Alexei on the other side of the lounge area.
With anyone else, it wouldn’t be a fair fight.
With Alexei, it was pretty much even, only because the older man had no qualms about shoving his hand in Kyle’s face to make him miss.
“Foul!” Kyle yelled as his soldier took a hit that looked fatal in the projected holograms of the game. “I call foul!”
“Is not my fault you bad shot,” Alexei said with a straight face.
Kyle tossed his controller at Donovan and lunged for his brother, the pair of them getting into a wrestling match on the couch while Madison stole Alexei’s controller and challenged Donovan to a round.
“All y’all better quit messin’ around back there and buckle up. We’re landin’ in ten,” Annabelle said testily over the comms, apparently still mad that all the coffee was gone.
Trevor separated Kyle and Alexei with the help of his telekinesis, pulling them apart without lifting a finger from where he sat at one of the window seats. “I’m calling this one a draw.”
“Fine,” Kyle said mulishly. “I won.”
“Did not,” Alexei retorted.
“That’s not a draw,” Trevor said.
Jamie biolocked his tablet and tucked it into an inside pocket of his suit jacket. “Game over for everyone. Let’s get ready.”
Everyone immediately obeyed his order, even Sean.
The agent had kept to himself for most of the flight over, taking up a small table between two window seats at the far end of the lounge area.
His presence wasn’t exactly welcome, but he didn’t seem to care about the cool distance the team was treating him with.
Alpha Team had a long history of being antagonistic toward outsiders.
Only Kyle and Alexei had ever managed to break through the team’s defensive walls.
The team would work with Sean; they just wouldn’t like it.
Jamie got up from the couch, rolling his shoulders a little to get the dark gray suit jacket he wore to fall correctly before buttoning it up. He grabbed the champagne bucket and was about to take it to the small kitchen beyond the lounge to empty it out when Madison popped up beside him.
“Nuh-uh, boss,” she said, taking the bucket out of his hands. “Cleaning up after yourself isn’t in character. We’re the ones looking after you, remember?”
Jamie bit back a sigh. “Fine. Have at it.”
Everyone’s cover identities for this mission were grounded in their real ones.
It left them all more than a little on edge, knowing they couldn’t resort to code names.
Under the trappings of this mission, they were supposed to be human, not metahumans.
Which meant the only weapons they were supposed to have was the gear stowed in the cargo hold of the jet.
The UMG had pre-cleared every last one, right down to the ammo.
On one hand, Jamie was glad he’d made the team train without their powers over the last few months.
On the other, sometimes he hated the fact nearly all his just in case plans were almost always needed.
That being said, Jamie could grudgingly admit Sean’s detailed cover identities for the team passed Jamie’s notoriously high-threshold level for good work.
Each cover took into account each person’s strengths and weaknesses, making it easier to pretend to be someone else when that someone was a colder, more ruthless version of themselves.
Katie, as founder and CEO of Root Source, Inc.
, could rely on her background as a sergeant and second-in-command to be the cool, demanding businesswoman her role required.
Alexei, as her business partner and COO, made sure what she wanted got done, even if it required a few threats here and there.
Sean had plied deep into Alexei’s childhood background as a refugee, playing up aspects of his years in Ukraine to hint that his family hadn’t been quite on the up and up as their generational refugee asylum request indicated.
There was nothing like the possibility of criminal undertakings within a business to make someone of the same ilk sit up and take notice.
With Jamie bankrolling the whole operation and on the outs with his family, he’d turned to his team for support they gladly gave him.
He’d hired Donovan, Trevor, Annabelle, and Madison as his personal security after they left the Marines, which gave them an excuse to stick close and be armed.
Kyle’s role was the one Jamie had told the director, in no uncertain terms, needed to change.
Nazari may have been initially reluctant to grant Jamie’s request to change Kyle’s role from personal security to just personal, but Jamie had made a compelling argument.
Surprisingly, Sean had backed him up because one less person to bring into the mission was one less detail they all had to account for.
Sean had amended their service records to include an investigation into an inappropriate relationship charge between officer and subordinate that didn’t pan out due to lack of evidence.
Pretending to be together for the sake of a mission while hiding the fact that yes, actually, they were together was bound to backfire spectacularly in some way, no matter how careful they were.
The team would watch out for them because they already knew about Jamie and Kyle’s relationship, but Sean wasn’t part of the team. He didn’t know and couldn’t know.