Chapter 2
two
Jo
“Alright team, we’re about ten minutes out. Gear up,” Sam orders from his spot behind the wheel as he pulls off to the side of the road.
“I don’t need a bulletproof vest,” I argue, pulling my hair up in a bun so it’s out of the way.
“You do if you think you’re going to step one little toe out of this van,” he snaps back, turning in his seat. “We’ve been over this. We can’t stop you from running headfirst into danger, but we can damn well make sure you’re protected while you do it.”
“It’s gonna slow me down.” Shoving an earpiece in my ear, I eye the bulletproof vest that Kole holds out to me with disdain. I move a hell of a lot quicker when I’m not weighed down by ten extra pounds I’m not used to, and that’s what’s gonna put me in danger.
“You could always hang out in the van with West and me.” Hayden grins. “You can sit in my lap while I drive.” He waggles his brows and I snort.
“You know I’m the one driving, Hayden,” West tuts, pulling a vest over his head. “You get to man the surveillance feeds and let the guys and Jo know if they’re in imminent danger.”
“Jo could sit in my lap while I do that, then.” Hayden shrugs before grabbing his own vest.
“Notice how both Hayden and West are gearing up even though they won’t be leaving the van.” Kole pushes the vest at me. “Put the damn vest on, Lisichka.”
I snatch the vest from Kole and scowl at all my men. “Y’all are gangin’ up on me now?”
“If we have to, Siren.” West shrugs. “Unless you’d rather one of us shield you with our own bodies. You know that none of us would hesitate to take a bullet for you.”
“Fine,” I snap, yanking it over my head and pulling the straps tight.
I fucking hate these things. What I want to do is point out that these vests won’t do shit against a headshot or anything below the waist, but I wouldn’t put it past my pack to stage a mutiny and keep me in the back of the van, so I keep it to myself.
“But y’all better not try to keep me from doin’ what I gotta do. ”
“We would not dream of it, lyubov' moya.” Kole nods at me once, and I huff, grabbing a baseball cap out of a bag with a little pizza logo that says “Mission Im-pizza-ble” and putting it on.
As I pull my bun through the little hole in the back of the hat, Hayden hands me a matching windbreaker. “Isn't it weird that Declan just happened to have a fake uniform for a popular pizza place lying around?”
“Not as weird as the boxes.” West tilts his head at the two empty pizza boxes in the corner. Enough to feed the seven men Xavier has stationed here. Five in the house next door and then two in the car that patrols past his street every ten minutes.
I’m starting to think that Xavier Bowen figured we’d come here and amped up security. Too bad he didn’t know that Aidan could hack the doorbell cameras of every home on the street, including the one housing his forces.
He thinks we’ll go into this blind, but they’ll be the ones caught off guard.
“A lot of missions require an unassumin’ cover,” I button the windbreaker so it covers my vest and move to the front seat, “‘specially if the mission needs to take place in broad daylight like this one.”
If it weren’t for Aidan sending a mass email to every resident in Samuel’s HOA’s database, telling everyone to stay out of their homes for a “routine yet slightly risky gas line examination” in the neighborhood, I would be a little more nervous about the civilians in the area.
“Yeah, well, this whole situation just makes me want a pizza,” Hayden mutters as West flips some switches on the console. Sam and Kole put their earpieces in, and Hayden presses a button on the control panel.
“Testing.” His voice comes through my ear loud and clear, so I nod, and Sam and Kole follow suit.
The clock on the dashboard reads three in the afternoon when we pull back onto the road and continue our way to Sam’s daddy’s house.
Only this time, I’m driving, and the stack of pizza boxes is on the seat next to me while the guys sit in the back, out of view. When we turn into the neighborhood, Sam lets out a noise of apprehension from behind me. “Remind me why you have to be the one to go up to the door again?”
“‘Cause, Sammy-boy,” I make a left, following the GPS, “I’m a tiny female. I’m the last person they’re goin’ to see as a threat, and their guard will be all the way down.
Even if they’ve been warned about us, they’ll be expectin’ somethin’ more covert, and they certainly won’t expect it to be in the middle of the day. ”
“Fuck, I hate this,” Sam groans, and I see him run his hand over his face in the rear-view mirror.
“You seem much more stressed than any of the other times our lives have been in danger,” Kole notes thoughtfully.
“That was different. That was…” Sam sighs. “Up until now, we’ve had no choice. We were forced to fight. Kill or be killed. But right now we are making a conscious decision to put our omega in the line of fire and it does not sit right with my alpha.”
“I’m more than just your omega, Sam.” My voice is steely as I turn onto Samuel’s street. “Bein’ with you doesn’t erase my years of experience.”
“I know that.” He sighs as I put the car into park on the curb in front of the house across the street from Samuel’s.
The clock on the dashboard reads ten after three.
“If they’re on schedule, they’ll be passin’ us any second,” I mutter, leaning over the pizza boxes and making a show of counting them.
A beige sedan turns onto the street ahead of us right on cue, and the men driving are eyeing each house, not even trying to pretend like they aren’t on patrol.
I ignore them, like any good employee of Mission Im-pizza-ble would do, and once they pass us, I turn back to Sam.
“Have a little faith, Sammy-boy.” I shoot him a wink before sliding out of the front seat and walking around to the passenger side to grab the pizzas. “And keep an ear out for my signal.”
Glancing down the road, I watch the car with Xavier’s men round the corner before I turn back to the house. Two pizza boxes in hand, my heart pounds as I walk up the steps of the front porch. I wonder how Xavier got the residents to leave so he could station his guys here.
Next door, a face peeks through the curtains behind the window.
The spitting image of Sam, plus twenty-five years, only with salt-and-pepper black hair instead of brown.
The weathered face furrows his brows at me, and I merely shoot him a wink before I make it to the front door and ring the doorbell.
The door swings open. “Pizza delivery!” I say brightly in my best East Coast accent, flashing the grunt in front of me a charming smile.
He’s not wearing any kind of protective gear, but then again, his weapons could be under his clothes like mine are. He frowns. “Sorry, dollface, but we didn’t order anything.”
My eyes widen in feigned surprise. “Are you sure?” I pretend to check a receipt tucked into the boxes. “Oh, that’s why! It was ordered for you. The note says, ‘From Prometheus, thank you for working so hard.’”
The man in front of me lets out a laugh of disbelief. “Huh. Guess the asshole appreciates us after all.”
Three more betas come up from behind him, eyeing the pizza with interest. “What’s that, Hank?” One of them asks, tilting his chin at me. “Does she come with the food?”
Hank turns towards him. “Boss sent us some pizzas. Don’t think the omega comes with it.” He turns back towards me. “What’s an omega doing, working as a delivery driver anyway? You need money, doll?”
His gaze is slimy as it travels across me, despite the fact I’m wearing a shapeless windbreaker and there are two pizza boxes blocking my top half from view.
“I’m saving up to go to college.” I give him a saccharine smile, hoping I don’t have to break cover sooner than we planned on account of these assholes thinking they can get handsy with me.
Where the hell are Sam and Kole?
“Should…should we take these from you then?” Hank steps forward, but I shake my head, pulling the empty boxes back out of his reach.
“Oh, uh, actually,” I let out a nervous laugh before biting my lip. “I’m not allowed to release the pizzas into your custody until I get a signature…”
The man arches a brow at me and I mentally curse myself. Custody? Really?
As I shift the boxes to one hand, Hayden’s humor-filled voice fills my ear.
“Did you really just use the word ‘custody’ when referring to a pizza? You sound like West.” I reach behind me for the gun holstered at my back.
Hayden chuckles in my ear. “Now I’m imagining a legal battle between a pizzeria and a customer for who gets weekend visitation with the pizzas. ”
West says something in the background, and Hayden huffs. “Fuck, sorry. Hold off, Fireball. They aren’t at the back door yet. They ran into an overly-friendly doberman next door.”
I give a nervous laugh, stalling as I pretend to have a hard time finding a pen in my back pocket. “Sorry, this is my first job and I’m…a little nervous.”
The guy who asked if I “come with the pizzas” grins.
“That’s okay, sweet-cheeks. If you want to earn some really good tip money, I have a couple of other ideas.
” He shoots me a wink, and my fingers itch to move an inch to the left to get my knife instead of the gun so I can stab this fucker in his smug little face.
Hayden’s voice sounds in my ear again. “They’re in position, Fireball.”
Smiling, I glance up behind the four men in front of me, and finally Kole and Sam are standing outside the sliding glass door.
My hand closes around the grip of my pistol as the asshat fails to stop talking. “What do you say, sweet-cheeks? Feel like putting something big in your mouth while I put this pizza in mine?”
That’s it.