Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
Aaron
I walked into my place of employment and was immediately greeted by Annalee's smiling face and an overeager "good morning!
" I didn't have the heart to tell her it wasn't a good morning at all, so instead I mumbled the same response back and headed through the glass door to where our workstation was.
"Why do you look like someone pissed in your Cheerios?" Hendrix was the first to speak to me and I wanted to punch him in the face for merely being so damn happy while I was miserable.
"Because they did and that someone was Maisie," I snapped back.
Hendrix's evil laugh and response was exactly what I should've expected from my friend. "That's my girl. I knew there was a reason I loved her so fucking much."
I rolled my eyes and walked away before I could say something I would regret. My give-a-damn filter was clearly busted after my interaction with Valerie. So instead I headed straight for Maverick and found him talking to Nolen.
"You said you had something you wanted to talk to me about?" I asked impatiently of the man who was not only my friend but now my boss. I respected the hell out of him and any other time I would've given him the respect he deserved, but today wasn't that day.
"What the fuck crawled up your ass and died?" was of course Maverick's response.
For the second time today I dropped my head in shame. I should've stayed in bed when I had the chance. Today was clearly not one of my finer days.
"More like Maisie handed him his ass because she caught him stalking Valerie again," Hendrix unhelpfully answered.
My head snapped up and I glared at the man who was slowly becoming a pain in my ass. "Who the hell told you that?"
I certainly hadn't gone into that much detail when I snapped at him just seconds earlier.
Hendrix gave me a cheeky grin. "Maisie texted me before you came in."
Of fucking course. "So you already knew my day sucked when you made your comment." It really wasn't a question since he already admitted it, but Hendrix answered anyway.
"Of course I did. I just wanted to see if you would say something."
The motherfucker. I wanted to punch the smile right off his face. I barely resisted the urge. Instead I looked back at our boss. "You had something to discuss with me?"
"There's been a breach."
Maverick's words immediately put me on edge and had me glaring at Nolen, our resident computer expert. "I thought you said we were secure here?"
When I decided to move back to Willow Creek, my friends decided to follow me.
At that point, Maverick was already looking for someplace to be a home base for his business and wanted us to join him.
I begged for Willow Creek because Nolen assured me the people of the town would be safe from everything we’d done in the past.
"Not us," Maverick answered before Nolen could.
"Then I don't understand why the urgency to have me come in." Not that I was doing anything important but he didn't need to know that.
"Because the breach does affect us."
I grabbed a chair and spun it around so that I was straddling it. With both arms on the back of it, I tried to keep the annoyance out of my voice when I spoke. "Enough with the riddles. What the hell is going on?"
It was Nolen who sighed and answered my question. "Someone hacked into a secure server and accessed the information about our last op before we retired."
Memories of our last mission, and the shit show it turned into, flashed through my mind. "Our names and personal information were redacted though, right?"
There were protocols for things like this that kept us safe. Only those with top government clearance were supposed to be able to see something as confidential as our last op had been.
"We were advised that there's a possibility they were able to obtain that information," Maverick said somberly.
My mouth dropped open but no words came out. This was worst-case-scenario kind of shit. The people involved in that op weren't just your typical pieces of shit. These were nasty motherfuckers.
"How?" The one word was a bit of a croak.
"They’re still trying to figure that out," Nolen answered.
I couldn't believe what they were saying. "Does the rest of the team know?" My friends weren't just operatives anymore. They had families and lives. Hell, Easton and Hendrix were raising kids.
"They do. I told them this morning while we were waiting for you."
I glanced around the office but the only person I found was Hendrix. I wasn't sure where the rest of my friends were, but Hendrix wasn't acting any different.
"Aren't you worried?" I hollered across the room to where Hendrix was sitting with his feet up.
"Nah, but I am pissed off." Hendrix played with a stress-relief hammer. "Now I have to worry about Maisie shanking another person, and me having to hide the fucking body."
That was a real possibility but I couldn't understand how he could act so casual when inside I was freaking the fuck out. "What about Olivia? Aren't you worried about her?"
Olivia was Maisie's niece, and after both of her parents died, she moved in with her aunt and Hendrix.
"Nah. I already took care of that. Wes was kind enough to lend one of his guys to be her bodyguard. She'll have constant protection whenever I'm not around."
Damn, I apparently missed a lot while I was busy watching Valerie, and then sparring with her.
"Do you think he can spare someone for my mother?" I turned back and asked Maverick.
"Wes has already promised that his teams are at our disposal for as long as we need. He's not happy about this situation any more than we are."
Of course he wouldn't be. Wes had been about to leave the Marines when he was called in to rescue us from our last op. It could've just as easily been his information that was leaked.
Then, like a bolt of lightning had struck me, a thought occurred to me, and before I could think better of it, I was spitting out another question. "What about Valerie?"
"What about her?" Maverick looked genuinely confused. He was probably the only one of my friends who didn't notice how much attention I paid to my old friend.
"Oh come on, Maverick. Don't tell me you don't know Aaron here practically stalks her?"
I turned my head slightly and shot daggers at the man who just moments before I considered my friend. Now I was thinking he was more like someone I wanted to punch in the face.
"Huh?"
"Yeah, boss? Did you really think we all moved here just because it was his hometown?" Nolen jumped in with his own jab.
"Who the hell is Valerie?"
Hendrix snickered but I looked at Maverick like he had a million heads. "The owner of Sophisticated Sheen. You know, one of the few shops on Main Street.”
Maverick didn't look the least bit amused by the conversation despite both Hendrix and Nolen laughing. "I know the shop but it's not exactly the kind of place I would bother to enter."
That was certainly true but it did beg the question, "I thought you made a habit of getting to know all the shop owners when we first moved here?"
My boss scrubbed at the beard along his jaw. "I did but now that I think about it, she went out of her way to avoid me. I didn't think much of it at the time but now it makes sense if she was trying to avoid you. What's the deal with you two?"
"Aaron fancies himself in love." Hendrix and his immature attitude drug out the last word. "But Valerie wants nothing to do with him."
"That's not true," I tried to defend myself. "She's just mad at me and I need to figure out why."
"Well, maybe you can figure it out while you keep her safe because if everyone in town knows how you feel about her, then there’s a good chance anyone watching us knows as well."
The thought of someone watching us no longer turned my stomach. Instead the prospect that I would get to spend more time with Valerie had me giddy like a teenage boy going through puberty.