Chapter 1
Chapter One
White House — Washington D.C.
Four months before the election…
“Ijust don’t understand why you want it to be us,” I said to Vincent Collier as I stood in front of his desk.
My head was still buzzing from the red-eye flight that they had forced us to take from Kuwait back to the states yesterday and I was seriously regretting not trying to get at least a couple hours of sleep last night even though I rarely ever slept on planes.
My team and I had been working with the American ambassador in Kuwait for the past six months because he’d pissed off the wrong people in the capital city and with that had come death threats.
That meant he needed a team better equipped to protect him and that was where we had come in.
Protecting high-risk diplomats was our job and Zeke, Dallas, Brooks, and I did it very well.
We’d been a team for the better part of a decade now—Zeke and I becoming friends during high school and later being recruited straight out of university by the state department.
Brooks and Dallas had joined us later after leaving the military and had fit in with our team like they had always been there.
It had been a point of pride for us to take the hardest and most complicated jobs—the ones other security teams working for the United States government wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole. We thrived on it.
But this? This was not that.
This was glorified babysitting and the omega at the center of it looked like a spoiled brat.
Everyone had seen the aftermath of Lennon Holloway’s attempted kidnapping two months ago. People on the street that night had whipped out cell phones and cameras to record the firefight that took the lives of several agents—including her longtime security head Greg Brady.
There had been rumors about her return to the campaign circuit for the past few weeks.
Even Zeke who rarely kept an eye on the chatter that didn’t have anything to do with our own protection detail, had offhandedly mentioned it a few days before our mission had changed abruptly.
Suddenly, we’d been dragged stateside and pushed from the state department and into the Secret Service like that made any sort of sense.
We had made it a rule to avoid the transfer from state to Secret Service. It was too much monotony and it overlapped too much with mine and Zeke’s personal lives for comfort.
So it was hard for me to understand why, of all of the possible people who would have been chomping at the bit to take on this job, Collier had chosen us.
The man in question leaned back in his plush desk chair and regarded me with cool blue eyes that always seemed to stare right through me.
He had worked in the state department when I had been a new recruit and I could never figure out whether he liked me or not. He always tended to look at everyone with an air of suspicion and for me, the grandson of the longtime Greek ambassador, I was never sure I measured up in his eyes.
I had never been more grateful when he had been tapped to head to the White House and head up the Secret Service agency.
“Are you saying you and your team are not capable of protecting the president’s daughter?”
The question was a test that I wasn’t sure I wanted to pass.
Truthfully, we’d grown accustomed to life outside of the states. In high-risk countries the boundaries were clear: keep the target alive by any means necessary. It was simple to a fault.
But this would mean protecting someone amongst the trappings of an election. Someone whose every move was watched, documented, and televised. Someone who also already had one attempt on her life.
If something were to happen to Lennon, then our careers would be over… not that that mattered even an iota to the man in front of me.
“We are fully capable of protecting her,” I finally said with a sigh, my surrender evident to Collier whose face remained neutral except for the irritating twitch of a smile at the corners of his mouth.
Collier picked up the laptop that had been sitting shut on his desk when I walked in and held it out to me.
“Here is all of the information you need to know about Lennon Holloway, call sign: Flicker. Brady was nothing if not organized and the man wrote ad nauseum about his daily protection detail of the president’s daughter.
You and your team are expected in the Oval at 0700 to meet with POTUS as she would like to see your faces and you will meet Ms. Holloway thereafter.
I trust you can brief your men before then? ”
I grimaced at that. I had promised that I would try to get us out of this protection detail and on the first flight back to Kuwait this evening, but even I should have known that promise was being made in vain and I was a complete and total jackass for making it.
Taking the laptop from him, I tucked it under my arm and resisted the urge to tug at my too-tight tie—the standard for the Secret Service in D.C.
It had been a while since I’d worn the complete regalia all agents were supposed to be outfitted with every day because things were, ironically, a lot more relaxed in the Middle East.
“I will make sure they are ready,” I begrudgingly told Collier before turning on my heel to leave, so irritated with the entire situation that I didn’t even wait to be dismissed.
“Onassis,” Collier’s cold voice stopped me.
I turned to look at him, schooling my expression so the man couldn’t see just how he’d played me like a fiddle during the entire thirty minute span of our meeting.
My pappou would be disgusted at how easily Collier had danced circles around me and I made a vow that if he asked me about it during our weekly phone call next week that I would do my best to try and change the subject.
Though I was sure Philip Onassis, like Collier, would see straight through me right away.
“Before you and your team meet us in the Oval tomorrow, you should know that Ms. Holloway,” Collier said, oblivious to my trailing thoughts, “doesn’t exactly know that she will be losing her entire detail yet. She thinks we’re promoting from within and keeping the same team.”
“So when exactly do you plan on telling her?” I questioned, surprised that they wouldn’t just explain it in clear language to the omega.
Was she that much of a hassle that they felt the need to treat her with kid gloves? I thought, groaning inwardly.
Everything I’d seen of her on television and in the papers had portrayed her as a pretty capable young woman, but then again I’d met people who could put on a mask of magnanimity in public while being a monster behind the scenes, so I wouldn’t put it past her either.
The idea of dealing with a spoiled omega princess was starting to give me indigestion. Dallas was going to have a field day with the whole fucking thing, especially seeing as he was the most vocal on the team about not accepting the job.
I watched with a grimace as Collier’s face broke into an evil grin. “Tomorrow morning. In the Oval.”
Great, I thought as I turned and left the office without another word. Just fucking great.
Not only were we being forced to take this job, pushing us out of our comfortable lives with the state department and right back into the thick of things, the chances were high that the person we were supposed to be protecting was going to throw the shit fit of a century.
I needed a drink and a nap, but I had the feeling as I stomped my way through the Secret Service offices and back toward my car that I wouldn’t be getting either of those any time soon.
“What part of go and tell Collier ‘no’ did you not get, Mav?” Dallas asked, glaring at me from over the metal barbell currently being lifted by his twin brother.
I had headed straight back to the apartment we shared whenever we were stateside and had found the rest of my pack in the home gym that we’d set up in the spare room.
Truthfully, we were rarely ever here, so the entire place felt clinical and clean like a hotel room thanks to the housekeeper my mother sent to clean the place once every couple of weeks.
“The part where you thought I could realistically say no to our boss, asshole,” I shot back at him with a roll of my eyes. “I was pretty sure he thought that the desert sun must have cooked our brains to mush when I initially refused him.”
“To most people it’s the job of a lifetime,” Zeke pointed out before chugging down most of his water bottle.
He’d been in the middle of what looked like a brutal run on the treadmill when I’d come in but had quickly hopped off when he saw me.
“Hells, I’m not actually sure why we’re so mad about it. ”
“That’s what I’m saying, maybe it won’t be so bad being in D.C. for a while,” Brooks said, sitting up and slotting the barbell on the rack before wiping his face with a towel. It always amazed me how similar yet different the Wilson twins were.
They had the same auburn hair color and bright green eyes that seemed to glow in the dark like a cat’s, but that was where the similarities ended.
Where Brooks was broad and built like an NFL linebacker, Dallas was refined like an Olympic sprinter, all sharp edges and judgy looks like a cat while his brother often reminded me of an overly excited Great Dane.
Brooks also had perfect vision whereas his younger brother wore a pair of black wireframe glasses that always seemed to be slipping down his nose.
Dallas shot a withering look at his older brother before letting out a growl. “There are about a million things I can think of that would be a better job than following a bratty omega around on a tour bus while she panders to the masses.”
Dallas had always made his opinion on omegas—and anyone who he viewed as ‘pampered’—very clear. It had taken both of the Wilson twins years to open up about their less-than-ideal childhoods and Dallas carried a lot more of that on his shoulders than his more affable brother.