Chapter 1 #2
There had been a handful of times over the past six years that he’d very nearly gotten us in trouble because he thought the person we were protecting was just some rich asshole and not a diplomat working for international relations.
In fact, another reason we had been transferred to Kuwait, outside of the guy pissing people off, had been because Dallas had butted heads with the U.S. ambassador in Ukraine and the jerk had requested a change in security detail.
Not that he was totally in the wrong. Dallas had told him that he was a pompous, cheating bastard with elephant ears and a small dick because he caught him in a compromising position with his secretary.
I shot Dallas what I hoped was a quelling stare, wondering if he was going to get us fired before we finished this election or if there was an ambassador to the Antarctic for them to send us to if we botched this assignment.
Knowing Dallas’s attitude, they’d probably find something worse than the sandstorms of Kuwait to send us to.
“We don’t know anything about Lennon Holloway yet,” I pointed out to them, somehow becoming a defender of our new position despite my attempts to get out of the job only an hour earlier.
“She could be totally fine to guard and it sounds like it’s just until the election is over and they’ll find her a more permanent team to replace the one she lost.”
Dallas shook his head with a derisive snort.
“She’s a privileged rich girl who grew up in one of the most politically prolific families of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and to top it off she’s probably been put on a pedestal by her family because she’s an omega.
That doesn’t exactly breed humbleness and someone particularly easy to deal with. ”
“Wow, prolific,” Brooks teased, reaching back to elbow his brother in the stomach. “You’re really making use of that word-of-the-day calendar I got you, aren’t you, bro?”
“Shut up,” Dallas growled, but his twisted expression relaxed a bit thanks to Brooks’ joke. Leave it to the older Wilson twin to calm Hurricane Dallas with a finesse that could only be achieved by someone who had shared a womb with him.
He was the only one who seemed to speak Dallas’s language, soothing his temper with a few well-placed jokes that would get anyone else decked by the bespectacled alpha.
Which was ironic considering Dallas spoke four languages damn near fluently.
I’d never seen anyone pick up a new language quite as quickly as the stubborn alpha did—it was one of the reasons why I put up with his temper tantrums. That and his ability to think four steps ahead of everyone around him.
He was the logistician of our team, proving himself invaluable every time I thought he had pissed me off for the last time.
Zeke, who had been quietly observing everything, his dark eyes bouncing back and forth as we talked, finally looked up at me and shrugged his shoulders. “It doesn’t really matter how we feel either way though, does it, Mav?”
I shook my head. “Not really. Collier made it very clear that this is our assignment whether we like it or not.”
“Fine,” Dallas huffed, throwing his hands up in the air in surrender.
“Let’s just get through this shit. What’s four months of our lives anyways?
It’s not like we aren’t on a downward march toward death every day that we live and we won’t ever get these days back again.
Might as well waste them following a spoiled rich girl around. ”
“That’s the spirit,” I told him cheerfully, giving the alpha a hard slap on the back. “And one more thing. We meet her in the morning and, according to Collier, she has no idea about any of us.”
“What the fuck?” I heard Dallas say from behind me as I turned on my heel and headed out of the gym, a grin on my face despite our current situation.
Despite my irritation with the head of the Secret Service, I kind of understood why he liked to drop information like that. It was pretty fun.
“Have you called your grandpa yet?” Zeke, never one to leave questions unanswered, asked as he followed me on my heels to the kitchen.
“Have you called your dad?” I shot back, avoiding his question.
I was dreading having to call my pappou and tell him that we would be stateside for the foreseeable future.
It usually meant that I would be forced to attend as many events at the Greek embassy as I could and be trussed up in a tuxedo and trotted out like a dancing monkey for all of my grandfather’s old friends to hem and haw over.
Then there were the inevitable questions from everyone in my very large extended family about when I would settle down with a nice omega and a nice pack.
Just the thought of it made me shudder with distaste.
I wasn’t ready to settle down yet, nor did I think I ever really would be.
Which was not the answer my grandfather or my father were looking for because, out of the fifteen cousins of my generation, I was one of three boys and Demetrius and Nico had gotten married young and already popped out a bushel of kids years ago.
“Don’t try to distract me, Maverick Onassis, you and I both know what comes with being back in D.C.”
“You more than me,” I pointed out. “I’m not the son of a sitting state senator. Again, did you call your dad?”
Zeke grimaced but still shook his head. “Not yet. Though I’m sure he’ll have heard through the grape vine by now. You know all of those old heads still talk to each other.”
I did. In fact I was surprised that my pappou hadn’t already called me because he’d heard it from his friend who’d heard from theirs.
They must really be trying to keep this change in detail under wraps.
“In the excitement of everything I’d forgotten just how weird it is to be back here again,” Zeke continued, his gaze moving to the kitchen sink and the window above it that showed the bustling streets of D.C.
While we’d all grown up in the city to an extent, Dallas and Brooks had grown up out of the public eye whereas Zeke and I had grown up within the walls of the everlasting political arena.
While our relatives weren’t especially powerful in the grand scheme of things, it still didn’t stop others from accusing us of getting where we were because of nepotism.
I could still remember one of our classmates in the academy teasing Zeke because he’d appeared alongside his father during one of his election campaigns a few days before.
Any Secret Service jobs we got there were always a dark cloud hanging over us, reminding us of where we came from.
One that continually accused us of not deserving the things we’d worked so hard for, and if I was being completely honest?
I wasn’t always 100% sure that Senator Adams and my grandfather hadn’t stepped in during some situations.
They would never in a million years tell us if they had and that was the worst part of working professionally in this place. Never being sure that the goals you were working toward were achieved by your own merit.
It had soured this place to us and made working abroad with the diplomatic security service and the state department all the more enticing.
Moving back stateside and working within the bounds of the Secret Service again wasn’t ideal, but at this point I wasn’t sure if we had a choice.
Not to mention the tiny voice whispering in my ear that somehow, some way, this seeming promotion hadn’t been earned by us.
“Mav?” Zeke’s voice cut through my spiraling thoughts and I blinked up at him. “I asked what you want to do with the rest of our last free day?”
I wanted to sit on the couch with a beer and catch one of the soccer games on TV. But then my mind went back to the laptop Collier had given me filled with everything I needed to know about Lennon Holloway.
“I’m going to review those files I was talking about and then probably head to bed early,” I finally said with a sigh.
Zeke’s lips pulled up into a cheeky grin as he just shook his head at me. “There’s the workaholic we all know and love. You go do that and I’ll rally the troops and try to get Dallas into a better mood.”
We shot each other mock-salutes before turning to our respective tasks, me sitting at the kitchen island and Zeke disappearing back into the house to find the twins.
Resolving to at least drink a beer, I popped the cap off and opened up the laptop, signing in with my own special login that Collier had given me—completely new thanks to our new positions within the Secret Service.
The old information we used when we worked with the DSS would be decommissioned, another lovely fact I hadn’t mentioned to the guys.
I didn’t know how to tell them that, once we finished our current mission, the chances were very high that they would reassign us to someone stateside.
That would have to come later once Dallas had calmed down a bit.
The laptop finally booted up and, as I scrolled through Greg Brady’s files, I realized that Collier had been right. They were extensive, and yet so very dry.
Clicking on the entry from the day that he died, I found it started at 0500.
‘Flicker up and in hair and makeup for the day. Spoke on the phone with POTUS.’
Then it went in hourly increments until around the early afternoon.
‘Flicker en route to DNC dinner, accompanied by Alivia Powell. Expected to arrive at the hotel by 16:00 and stay until 22:00.’
That was the last entry and the next link was everything that had been gathered about the attack.
On the way back to the White House Lennon Holloway’s armored SUV was rammed into by a reinforced 18-wheeler without the trailer.
From there a fire fight had broken out and Greg Brady and several other agents were killed and many of the others were injured, including assistant Alivia Powell who was still on leave due to a broken collar bone from not wearing her seatbelt.
The only reason that the kidnapping attempt had failed was because Lennon Holloway was pinned underneath Brady’s body and was hidden from the would-be kidnappers just long enough for law enforcement to get onto the scene.
None of the kidnappers had been arrested and they fled on motorcycles, evading law enforcement until they seemed to disappear into thin air.
The driver of the eighteen wheeler and several other bodies of masked men had been recovered and all were seemingly normal men—all alphas.
From what I could tell, the angle that Collier was going with was domestic terrorism from one of the red-pilled alpha groups that had been on the rise in recent years.
Lennon Holloway had often spoken out against such groups, making her a target.
It seemed cut and dry, but as I looked at all of the information it just didn’t add up.
Greg Brady was infuriatingly by the book.
He wouldn’t do anything if it would risk Lennon’s safety, so how had anyone gotten her location in the first place?
Especially considering they had changed course from their original destination to a local ice cream shop far out of the way of their route back to the White House.
So how had the would-be kidnappers planned around such a thing?
None of it made sense, but I also wasn’t sure if Collier’s investigative team would appreciate me stepping in where I didn’t belong.
My job was to protect Lennon Holloway and I would do that, then after the election we would figure out where to go next.