Magnum's Fortress

Chapter 1

Storm

Four seconds. That was all it took for a professional crew to bypass my dual-proxy encrypted security network, get past a supposedly unpickable lock, and enter through my mega-expensive hardened-steel back door.

And all of this forty minutes after I arrived at the private airport in Virginia, asking completely unaggressive questions.

The response to my opening inquiries had made me think twice about asking the more serious ones, and had made me put my cell phone in a signal-blocking bag before I left the small airport.

I held off on firing my burner phone up until I was sitting in the parking lot of a mom-and-pop motel ninety miles south of the airport, mostly because it felt imperative for me to check my home security logs.

And, because I’m paranoid, I went through a series of proxies before I logged into it.

I only gave myself thirty seconds to freak out about the fact people had been inside my house, though.

I deposited the burner phone in the back of a pickup truck loaded with furniture at a nearby gas station, paid cash for gas and a ton of snacks, then headed south to an off-grid primitive campground in Cherokee, North Carolina, for two reasons.

Mostly, because if the bad guys were going to track me down, I didn’t want them following me to my friend’s house, but also because it was eleven at night and not safe for me to drive to Atlanta without at least a few hours of sleep.

I probably would’ve loaded up on coffee and tried to make it if I could do so safely though, because I was no longer just chasing a story; I was most likely running for my life.

And that isn’t me being overdramatic. I was fairly certain the group’s leader isn’t just ex-CIA, but from the Special Activities Center — the teams that make SEALs and Delta look like a junior varsity football team compared to an NFL Super Bowl team.

Better toys, better training, and they heavily lean toward psychopaths.

A county clerk in rural Virginia had died in a single-car accident six days after pulling land records on the property I was trying to learn more about.

I’d found her obituary while I was pulling the same records, and I don’t believe in coincidences.

Thankfully, I hadn’t pulled the records under my real name.

I’ve been an investigative reporter for seven years, and I learned early on that having paranoid habits more than pays for the hassle. Today, it was paying big-time.

I kept watching the cars around me, noting color and make, looking to see if any were following me. My heart raced when a plain black SUV followed me for ten miles. I was so relieved when it turned off, I thought I might puke.

Saying the drive to the campground was uneventful doesn’t tell the story, because my imagination kept seeing bad guys everywhere, and I was mentally and physically exhausted when I arrived, where I was thankfully the only person making use of this little-known campground on the edge of the reservation.

I slept in the backseat of my 1999 Lexus LS 400. It was my grandmother’s, and now it’s mine, though it’s still in her name. Not the most comfortable way to sleep, but it meant someone would need to make noise breaking in to get to me, and then I could shoot them.

I was banking on the fact they’d want to take me alive, to find out what I knew and who I’d told, meaning they wouldn’t just shoot me through the glass.

However, this also meant there’d likely be torture involved when I tried to convince them I hadn’t told anyone — so I was doubly determined not to let them catch me.

I set my alarm to wake me in five hours, and I actually slept until it sounded.

I peed in the woods, brushed my teeth with bottled water, used wipes to clean my face, brushed my hair into a ponytail, added some powder, contour, eyeliner, and eyeshadow, and hit the road with a bottle of Coke and a banana.

Other YouTube influencers go for the vapid brainless thing, but I focus on what I’m researching and never on myself. It annoys some of my followers, but you can’t please everyone. Still, looks matter in my business, so I’m rarely seen without basic makeup, even when I don’t expect to be on camera.

Speaking of cameras, most roads have the ones that keep track of who is going where, but the back roads have less, so I stayed off the main roads and drove through the Appalachian Mountains to Buford, GA, where I stopped for gas and asked a bougie young woman also pumping gas for directions to Lenox Square, since I was pretty sure I could find the house from there.

I’d only been to Bud and Nickie’s place once, but I’m good with visual landmarks.

Worst case scenario, I’d have to borrow a stranger’s cell phone and call my old friend for directions.

I keep an updated printout of my contact list in a waterproof container in my trunk for just this reason.

I regretted thinking worst case scenario because my mind immediately went to what might happen if I asked the wrong person to use their phone and ended up dead. Or worse.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I made it into the right neighborhood and spotted my friend’s fancy gate. It was six-thirty in the morning, so the odds were good she’d be home.

I rolled my window down, leaned my head out the window, and heard a man saying, “Announce yourself,” through the speaker.

“It’s Storm. Tell Nickie I said oleander and aloe, please.”

I counted slowly in my head, and the gate opened when I got to seventeen.

Nickie was waiting for me on her front porch in leggings and a T-shirt, barefoot.

“Were you followed?” Nickie asked when I stepped out of my car into the muggy heat, even this early in the morning.

I shook my head. “I drove here from bumfuck Virginia, with a stop in Cherokee to grab a few hours of sleep and make sure no one was following me. Pretty sure they’d have taken me out already if they could find me.

The car is in my maternal grandmother’s name, so she has a different last name, and my main phone is in a signal-blocking bag.

I had a burner for a short time, but dumped it long before I made it to Cherokee. ”

I sighed. “I’ve gotten into deep shit. Bad enough to warrant going off-grid and just forgetting it, except…

” I met her gaze. “I can’t. I feel like I know some of the people they’ve taken.

I have to follow it through, even if it gets me killed.

The goal is for me to not get anyone else killed though. ”

I leaned into the car, reached across to the passenger seat for my purse, and then stood with it to ask, “I drove with my gun tucked between my leg and the console. Is it okay to bring it in? Or should I stow it out here?”

Nickie smiled. “Bring it with you. We have plenty inside, but you undoubtedly know how to shoot that one and are an excellent shot with it.” She tilted her head. “Bud and his people are hard to kill. Come tell us what you’ve gotten into, and maybe we can help you find a Plan B.”

I unzipped the compartment in my purse with a holster velcroed in, slid the weapon into it, and zipped it back up. I grabbed my duffel as well, but didn’t go into the trunk for my suitcase.

“Bud and I have a houseboy now,” Nickie told me on the way in. “He’s my submissive. You know I’ve always preferred switching, and this lets that happen. He’s in a cock cage and nothing else. Don’t pay him any attention, please. Bud and I are the only ones who give him orders.”

I couldn’t help my smile. “Someone hasn’t been sharing all the fun details.”

Nickie grinned and shrugged. “Bud’s rule is that anyone who visits, we decide on how much they know. Beau has butler clothes he can wear when we have visitors, but I know you’ll be chill with him.”

It made sense to keep the info to people who visit, and the fact I was getting the skinny on him up front meant Nickie trusted me with it.

Nickie and I had worked together multiple times.

One of our investigations led to a scammer who happened to be a Dom.

We’d found out what club he attended and then joined.

Nickie is way more of a masochist than me, so she’d hooked up with him for an intense scene.

I managed to clone his phone while he was working Nickie over, and then I found someone who prefers focusing on high-protocol play rather than pain play.

We’d left hours later, gone home to digest what we’d learned, and then written the story about how he was bilking retirees for millions.

Since he’s a well-known financial influencer, we’d sold the story for a nice sum, with licensing so I could put it on my channel twenty-four hours after the news organization broke it, giving me a double payday.

Asshole was still in prison, last I looked.

Nickie took me to the den, where Bud was sitting in a chair wearing only jeans, and I didn’t feel at all guilty about noticing his arms and abs. I can admire my friend’s husband as a work of art without wanting to be under him.

Besides, this man is a sadist, and no way am I interested in sex with one of those, but I was beyond happy my friend had found the perfect Dom for her… and the fact he’s a biker turned into a positive, because he’d kept Nickie alive when a Mexican cartel wanted her dead.

And now I hoped he could help me figure out how to stay alive, too.

Bud looked at me as if he was seeing inside my head, and asked, “Whiskey, rum, vodka, or something else?”

“Whiskey,” Nickie told him, and she walked to a cabinet, pulled a bottle of Whistlepig out, filled a shot glass, and handed it to me.

I stared at it, realized it would settle my nerves, and tossed it back.

Seemed a shame to not take my time and enjoy the pig, but I appreciated that Nickie had one of my top favorite brands.

The burn blazed a trail from my throat to my stomach, and I nodded when Nickie moved to fill it again, but I didn’t toss this one. I’d drink it slower.