Acting on Instinct (Cerberus Tactical K9 Team Charlie #5)

Chapter One

Johnna White

The caramel and black German shepherd stepped back from Johnna White’s car after doing a thorough sniff test, ensuring that White wasn’t driving a rolling bomb, aiming to wipe out the Iniquus Security campus.

White turned to her passenger, Nomad, who had crammed himself into the front seat of her sports car, looking like the Jack in a “Jack in the box” must look before a child cranked the handle, and he could finally burst out of the confines into his full stature, poor guy.

Nomad was six-foot gagillion. His shoulders were wide set with functional muscles—muscles that saved lives doing hard things, not the gym-bro mirror-flexing kind. Ranger school to Green Beret, to Delta Force, then, just last month, out on his ass with a medical retirement.

Rumor had it that Nomad’s aspirations were turning toward the State Department.

He’d be good at it, too. He grew up in American embassies in various EU countries and could, at a minimum, hold a polite conversation in all the European languages.

This was an astounding feat that White would like to accomplish eventually, baby steps.

White, herself, was about as big as Nomad’s left leg.

At just over five feet tall, just over a hundred pounds, she’d chosen a car that fit her body structure—and sure, her personality as well.

She did enjoy a run of tight curves at top speeds, the feel of the drag and pull on her body, the power purring under her thighs, control in her hands.

Yes, one thing Johnna White enjoyed was control and having the upper hand.

So in circumstances like today’s, she was less comfortable.

“Have you ever been to the Iniquus campus?” White asked.

“I’ve only been in D.C. since the car accident,” he said, lifting his hand to cup the black eye patch that made him look like the hero on the front of a romance novel.

“Most of that time I’ve spent with Red in the hospital, so I haven’t been able to get around much.

The closest I’ve been to Iniquus was a meeting at the Pentagon,” Nomad said as White inched toward the massive black security gate, yawning wide for her to pass.

“Though I know a couple of people who work here. Ares, a brother from back in my days as a Green Beret in Africa. He’s with Cerberus Tactical K9 Team Bravo. His wife, Hailey, is here now on the logistics team.”

“Where were you in Africa?” White kept her foot light on the gas, rolling slowly toward the guest parking lot. Today, White was shooting what felt like her last bullet. She needed a bull’s eye. And she was about to find out if she missed the target altogether.

“My last post with the Green Berets was in Africa. Hatari.” That last word sounded gritty on Nomad’s lips, rough like sandpaper, snapping White’s focus back to their conversation.

“A massacre. Shit, Nomad.”

“That about sums it up. Hey, are you all right?”

“Fine. Why?” White asked.

Nomad spoke English with a non-precise European accent. Somewhat British, somewhat mutt. White thought that Nomad sounded the way a nobleman should sound.

White, on the other hand, despite looking exactly like her Japanese-born mother, sounded like a girl from the South, y’all.

“You suddenly look nauseated,” Nomad said, “or like you’re smelling a hot pile.”

“This isn’t going to be my favorite encounter.”

“With this Lynx woman?” Nomad asked, shifting in his seat to get a better look at her.

White tried to recompose her facial muscles to look neutral. “Woman is a stretch.”

“Ogre then.” A smile wiggled at the corners of Nomad’s lips.

“I suppose I should prepare you for the mindfuck that you’re about to encounter.”

“That bad?” Nomad turned to look at the Iniquus Headquarters, a massive building camouflaged for Washington, D.C.

safety. Set in a park-like setting along the Potomac, the landscape designers had chosen the grass that covered the rolling hills and training fields because it never changed color even in summer drought or winter cold.

They’d painted the roof of their monstrous headquarters in flat green camouflage that blended so well with the grass that, from a helicopter, if you didn’t know exactly where to look, the building was nearly invisible.

From the ground, Iniquus took a different approach.

The white facade of the building could easily pass as a country club where the rich and monied swirled ice in their scotch tumblers, murmuring industry secrets that kept bank accounts as fat and happy as a gluttonously swollen belly after a holiday feast. But that was simply the illusion the owners wanted to create.

Looks were highly deceiving.

Walking past the colonnade, if you thought that you were going to get wood paneling and oil paintings, you’d be right, but only up in the Command Suite, where shmoozing went on—high-dollar corporate and government contracts were negotiated and signed to set Iniquus in motion, doing the thing that needed doing, keeping their protectees safe and sound.

Iniquus was worth every penny that they negotiated to engage their shiny golden trustworthiness and their eminently ethical work, a rarity in today’s world.

Langley often contracted with Iniquus when something needed doing, but their hands had to be well away from the heat.

It must be nice to work for Iniquus and put your head on the pillow each night knowing your fight for the greater good was clean and shiny.

Did that sound catty?

Yep.

She shouldn’t, though.

Still, here at Iniquus, and in particular talking with Lynx, White often felt that her deodorant couldn’t do enough to hide the stench of the hard choices she’d made as a CIA field officer.

There was so much on the line with today’s meeting, and White was feeling the pressure. This wasn’t just for the CIA and keeping the United States safe; this was damned personal.

White pulled into the parking lot and put the car in park, releasing her seatbelt before swiveling around to look at Nomad.

“Okay, let’s talk about Lynx. Lynx is in her mid-twenties.

She has long blond hair and the kind of looks that any casting agent would choose if the script said, ‘girl-next-door.’ She will smile at you sweetly, wearing a feminine pink dress with wide skirts and kitten heels.

She will ask you nonsense questions. She will put her hair up into a ponytail.

She will slide her shoes off her feet and look at her pretty, pink-pedicured toes.

And then she will pull some answer out of her ass and hand it to you wrapped in a ribbon.

And as you reach out to accept the answer, you will look down and think one of two things: “How is it possible that you came up with that?’ or, ‘I am such a dolt, why didn’t I see the answer sitting there as plain as the nose on my face? ’”

“What do you think today will be?” Nomad asked.

“Has to be the first. We fine-tooth combed everything that we had.”

“Which was precious little when it came to identifying the men.” Nomad looked toward the front entrance. “Has she ever failed?”

“She has failed, but she failed because we handed her garbage and we knew it and she’s said so.”

“We’re handing her garbage now. There are what, four billion men in the world? We’ve asked this young lady to identify four of them, when our advanced systems couldn't. It stretches my imagination that Lynx can tell us who they are. I am setting my expectations at subterranean.”

“Don’t count her out,” White said with a scowl.

“But you don’t like her.”

“I have no reason to dislike her. It’s just …

Look, Lynx and I have a complicated history together.

She has always been clear about her job and her ethics.

Uncle Sam chose to screw her over on a personal level in a very horrible and ongoing way, and I was part of that scene.

Not that I did anything to her. I was an extra in that play.

But I would prefer to use other tactics than to supplicate at her feet.

Here, we have no more cards to play, so I’m biting the bullet. Mixed metaphor, shut up about it.”

“She requires supplication, this young lady? You’re cussing quite a bit, and that’s unlike you.”

“She does not need supplication. She deserves supplication, though, not from me, but from someone. What you’re sensing from me is stress. If Lynx isn’t successful, we’ve hit a dead end, and innocent people will die.”

“I feel the pressure, too,” Nomad said quietly.

“In my mind, that Moroccan mission for Delta Force Echo isn’t complete.

I left the enemy out there to attack again.

I had an opportunity to kill them, but in that moment, I couldn’t see well, and I thought Red and I were the victims of a robbery, not that assassins targeted us. I didn’t assess the event accurately.”

“It was a complicated scene, and you didn’t have orders to kill. If you had followed through, it would have been murder.”

When White grabbed her door handle, Nomad immediately popped his door open, grunting as he unfolded himself. Once out, he took a moment to unkink his tight muscles.

White stood up and waited for him to get it together.

She knew how big Nomad was, and she should have rented a bigger car.

Details, even as seemingly simple as the size of vehicle choice, weren’t usually overlooked by her, and White felt bad.

Here she was, the gal highly trained in psychological manipulation, letting her mind get the better of her.

White jumped up and down in place, shaking her hands as she looked at the green grass, letting the color shift her brain waves to calm and creative.

When she felt her mood switch, she stopped to find Nomad adjusting the patch over his eye, looking at her. “Do or die,” she said, starting off across the parking lot toward the atrium entrance.

Nomad strolled beside White, taking a single stride for every two that White made to keep up. She thought it was like being a toddler running along beside her grown-up. She didn’t like the dynamic, so she regained the upper hand by offering information and counsel about Lynx.

“Lynx’s answers stretch everyone’s imagination, every time.

Believe me. And at the CIA, many a man is extra butt-hurt because she looks so innocent as she offers up a theory, and they look like dolts.

You’ll see once you meet her. She’s going to throw you off because it will all seem so improbable. Brace yourself.”

Nomad reached out, grabbed the handle of the glass atrium door, and pulled it wide. “Glad to look foolish for the cause.”