Three

 

JAGGER

 

Trudging through the grass behind the clubhouse, I listened to a couple of the guys moaning about being up at the ass crack of dawn. Technically 11am wasn’t, but the assholes had been partying with some chicks last night and didn’t think about what Preacher had briefed us about late last night.

Duke wanted to see who were the shooters in the club, so he and the Ghosts had set up a range with different targets. There were a couple of watermelons, some tin cans and on top of a couple of boxes there were matchboxes. They didn’t look like they belonged with the rest, but the way they were set up got me thinking.

Looking around, I tried to find Kyle, but there were a handful of the Ghosts missing. Maybe because she just got back she’d been allowed to sleep in?

Leaning against a tree, I waited for the rest to reach us and watched the Ghosts set up something I couldn’t see before I put some earpieces in and watched them set up their rifles. I knew Kyle was supposedly a hotshot with her rifle, so the fact she wasn’t here was kind of disappointing. That got me thinking, too. Normally, I went for women who were feminine and made a big deal about their image and shit. Kyle had that all naturally and she had her Ghost skills, too, which was something I couldn’t help but admire and find sexy as shit.

“Dearly beloved, we’re gathered here today…” Duke started, getting all of our attentions as we tried to figure what the fuck he was going on about. Looking around, he smirked and looked over at the Ghosts who were standing shaking their heads. “Now that I’ve got your attention, ladies. Today, I want to see your shooting skills. Knowing who is good at what, will help us when we’re engaging with them and also when we’re planning.” A dark look crossed his face as he broke the biggest shit storm inducing news to us. “Two hours ago, Senator Menzie’s sixteen-month-old baby was taken. The nanny who was out walking her is in hospital in a critical condition. A signal jammer was also used to block all footage from security camera’s in the area.”

“They were fucking prepared,” I whispered, disgusted that these sons of bitches would take a tiny little kid.

Nodding, Duke continued. “It was a deliberate hit on a high profile civilian. So, we’ll be moving soon to find the Senator’s daughter, Perry, and we need to fucking know who can do what. Let’s get started.”

“Where’s Kyle?” Preacher asked looking around.

“She’s…waiting,” he replied with a big grin on his face as the other Ghosts started laughing. “Kyle is an experienced sharp shooter, as you know. At this moment, she’s waiting for us to get into position.”

I could see the rest of the Knights looking at the trees and then around us trying to find her. I’d been doing it discretely and couldn’t see anything that didn’t fit in. I took a quick look at the compound, but we were far away from it, so she wouldn’t be there.

Sighing, Preacher pinched the bridge of his nose. “Duke, man, I appreciate the fuck out of you looking after her, but I’m really not fucking happy about what I found out yesterday. She’s a fucking girl, she shouldn’t be…”

He didn’t get any further than that when the watermelon next to him exploded covering him in crap, causing the rest of us to pull out our guns and get down on the ground or behind the trees. The fact I didn’t know where Kyle was became a huge issue now with an unknown firing at us.

We were all pulled up short by Duke laughing along with the rest of his team. “You little shit,” he chuckled and I noticed that they all had a band on their throats. The others started laughing harder as he said, “finger slipped, my ass.” Turning to Preacher, he helped him up off the ground. “Seems she didn’t appreciate the shit coming out of your mouth; I’d watch what you say from now on. These new mics can be left on instead of being manually activated to communicate, so she can hear everything.”

We all turned in circles trying to figure out where the fuck she was now that the panic was over and we realized that we weren’t getting shot at by fuckwads, just a girl pissed off at her daddy.

“You won’t find her,” one of them said seriously. “If she doesn’t want to be seen, you won’t find her.”

 

KYLE

 

“Shit, oopsy. My finger slipped,” I told Duke while I also listened to my friend Hunter. I had the coms piece that connected me to the rest of the team in one ear, and my hands free bud in the other. That didn’t mean I hadn’t heard what that asshole had said about me; like Preacher actually gave a shit. She’s a fucking girl…asshole.

“What are you doing?” Hunter asked.

“Cleaning my new scope. It had an asshole between the hairs.”

After we hung up, I went back to watching through the scope as they all moved around and the guys swept the watermelon shrapnel off the box. I was lying up on the roof of the compound for forty-minutes now and I was waiting for them to signal me to start taking out targets.

The Senators daughter being taken was fucked up and I wanted to get moving as soon as possible to retrieve her. The thought of any of those fuckers having their hands on her sickened me. Now that we had Hunter and his guys working with us, I felt much better. I knew how they worked, how efficient and organized they were and we needed that right now because fuck knows the guy’s I was currently watching through the scope didn’t seem to know their ass from their elbows.

“Are they trying to figure out how to solve world fucking debt?” Match snapped beside me.

“I doubt they’d be able to figure out how to spell world fucking debt,” Sharkey snorted.

“Kai,” Duke sounded in my ear.

“Yo!”

“From right to left,” he ordered and I shifted slightly checking all of the readings on my scope humming Alanis Morissette’s, Jagged Little Pill for once.

“Affirmative. Might want to tell the little girls to hold onto their panties, Duke.” Match gave a rare snort beside me.

Focusing on the new watermelon, I pressed the trigger before moving to the tin can beside it and shooting again. Next was a grapefruit, followed by an apple, then a matchbox and finally the one that I loved the most – the match itself. Flicking the safety back on, I watched through the scope at their reactions.

The Knights were standing looking at where the objects had been. As I passed the sight by a gray looking Preacher, I saw Jagger standing there grinning.

“Think the Veep has a thing for you, Kai,” Sharkey commented as he watched through his binoculars.

Ignoring him, I waited for an update from Duke, finally getting it just as the Knights started moving to set up more targets.

“You can show yourself, Kai.”

Standing up, I brushed off my shirt and pants and placed the strap for my rifle over my shoulder and waited. Duke must have told them that I was now standing in the open because as I raised my own binoculars up, they were looking around themselves confused.

“Give the boys a wave,” Sharkey suggested, so we held an arm up and waved it waiting for them to see.

It was Jagger who noticed us first. We were a long distance away from them and I think the only reason they even noticed us was because of the bright sky behind us. Once Jagger pointed, they all turned and stood staring at us in shock.

“Y’all can come down now,” Duke said through my earpiece.

The space from Preacher had been nice, but we had a job to do and as discussed this morning, if the Knights had no skills, then we’d have to use Hunter and his team and keep the Knights for backup. That wouldn’t be ideal because we really needed as many as we could get to fight back at the traffickers.

To be on the safe side, I contacted an old buddy of mine called Wolf, who I knew from way back when I’d first started training. His wife Caroline wasn’t a slouch when it came to figuring shit out and had foiled a terrorist plot. I knew one of his guys, Mozart, would definitely be quick to help out if we needed it. So far it was just a case of giving a heads up, but at least we had them if we needed them.

Following Sharkey and Match down the stairs and out of the clubhouse, we made our way across the grass to where the Knights were standing.

“How the fuck you see so far?” One of the guys who’d been bragging about pussy this morning asked. I’d instantly taken a disliking to him because I didn’t have time to babysit someone whose brain was in his dick. Actually, doing a quick reassessment, with the question he’d just asked and the fact he couldn’t phrase a simple question properly, he obviously didn’t have a brain.

Bringing my rifle round in front of me, I pointed to the scope. “Well, now see,” I deliberately put on a simpleton style hick voice making some of the guys laugh. “I looked in this here area and didn’t not see nuttin’. So, Match here says I should look through this here hole doohickey. It was magic, like I was right behind y’all. Then I closed my eyes and pressed this here thingy here,” I pointed to the trigger.

Looking behind him, I saw Preacher watching me with a blank look on his face. He could disapprove all he wanted; the days when he got a say in what I did were long gone.

“So, now that you know about the doohickey and the thingy, lets break up into groups and figure out what y’all can do,” Duke said, clapping his hands and separating us. By the end of it, each of us had three Knights and were set to put them through their paces. Somehow, I’d gotten Jagger. Teaching him how to use my scope had involved me leaning over his back which had been a total adventure. I’d had to lean in close and when my chest pressed into his back we’d both groaned.

Fucking distractions were always dangerous.

 

JAGGER

 

It had been a long ass day of training with them testing us on everything. It started out as shooting skills and moved onto hand-to-hand combat. I don’t think there had been one Knight who hadn’t watched mouth open as Kyle fought with other Ghosts and then we all paired off. I had been up against the guy called Match and he was fucking brutal. I’d held my own, but I could feel bruises on top of bruises.

We’d finally called a halt at eight o’clock. I could see that Preacher was feeling the same level of smugness that I was, that the Ghosts were moving stiffly too. It hadn’t made sense to beat the shit out of each other, but we’d given as good as we’d gotten. Now I was determined to catch Kyle on her own.

“Kyle,” I shouted as I followed her up the stairs. Turning to face me at the top of the stairs, she raised her eyebrows and watched me as I walked up them. Not elaborating, I caught her wrist in my hand and walked toward her room.

“You know,” she drawled, “I can walk without help going in the right direction.”

“We need to talk.”

She opened the door to her bedroom and I followed behind her, not giving her a chance to say no. Closing the door behind me, I tugged her back and pressed her up against the door, her rifle making a noise as it hit it. I’d been intending to talk to her about anything at all, but being this close to her, I was done.

“What are yo…” I cut her off by slamming my lips down on hers. I hadn’t meant to be so rough, but I had no control left; I needed to taste her.

I knew she could break my neck if she wanted to, but it seemed that was the furthest thing from her mind because she softened beneath me and moved her hands around my back. Licking across the seam of her lips, I pressed my tongue against them urging her to open her mouth. The second she did, I didn’t hold back and swept inside groaning as the taste of her hit me. This was what fucking heaven was, it had to be.

Moving my hand slowly and gently down her side, I’d just gotten it under her t-shirt when there was a knock on her door. The two of us jerked apart, breathing heavily and staring at each other.

“We need to talk,” I repeated, rubbing my nose against hers. Her breath hit my lips in little pants as she nodded until the knock sounded again, this time harder. Swiping my thumb across her lips, I gave her a soft kiss, something I’d never done in my life. In fact, kissing wasn’t even an option for me, normally. “We’ll talk later.”

Pulling away from each other, I tried to control the disappointment over having to end the kiss as Kyle opened the door.

Duke was standing with his arms crossed. His eyebrow raised slightly and he looked like he was fighting a smirk when he saw the two of us.

“Well now, it seems I have shit timing, but Kyle, Hunter has just pulled up so you better put that away,” he nodded at the rifle that both of us had forgotten about before turning around and walking back toward the stairs.

“Go do it, baby,” I gave her a gentle push. “Then we’ll go see who this is.”

Putting the rifle back in its case and locking the door behind her, she walked up to me and said something that I wasn’t sure was an insult or not. “I know who he is. He’s my back up.”

Following behind her as she walked through the main room of the clubhouse, I caught Duke’s subtle nod to the side and followed him.

“She’s not what she seems,” he said as we walked toward a couple of his guys.

“What do you mean?” I’d had a suspicion that this was the case, but I wanted him to clarify.

Sighing he stopped and turned around to face me. “Kai will make you think that she could take on the world one handed, but I remember how broken she was the day she arrived after her mom had killed herself. Since then, she’s kept herself active, constantly protecting or saving someone. She’s never just…” he broke off and looked down at the floor between us, “stopped.”

Not wanting to be away from her, especially now that my suspicions were confirmed, I gave him the only assurance I could. “You have nothing to worry about from me,” before turning and walking toward the door.

I was just opening it when he walked up behind me and grumbled, “I never thought I would have. She’d play ping pong with your balls before you could blink.”

I might have stumbled a bit as I took a step out of the door, but quickly walked up beside Kyle and her dad as the men that I didn’t recognize approached the door.

She didn’t know it, but Preacher would get there way before her if I fucked her over. It wouldn’t ever happen though. There was something different, in fact everything about her felt that way.

 

 

As we walked outside to meet the new MC, Valiant, that Kyle had asked to help, I made sure to stay close beside her. I might have seemed possessive, but it was also fueled by an element of protectiveness. There was no doubt that she could handle herself, but there was a voice screaming inside of me to make sure she didn’t have to and I didn’t know the guys who had just pulled up.

“Glad you could join us,” she shouted as they’d shut off their engines. “Let’s get this show on the fucking road.”

Duke had hit the nail on the head when he said she didn’t let herself stop. Since we found out about the Senator’s daughter, she seemed to have put all of her free time when we weren’t training into researching and getting a majority of the information that we now had. I hadn’t seen her take a break all day and what we did today had been no joke. How the hell did she keep going?

Following them all into Church, I sat back as they briefed the guy called Hunter and his guys on what was going on and what information they already had on the traffickers. Data was tapping on his keyboard as Kyle spoke flicking through images that were being projected onto the wall behind her.

“Who the fuck are these people?” Gauge asked the question that we’ve been asking all day. The kidnapping had been far too planned out to be a case of a simple grab. It screamed of being a personal one.

“Assholes is who,” Kai answered before breaking into an almost sinister smile. “That said, they dropped the ball about an hour outside of where the child was taken from.” A picture flashed up behind her of a guy walking into a service station. “Look familiar?”

“Fucking Demingo,” Hunter growled.

We had already been briefed on this before they arrived, so I sat back and watched the interaction between them all. You could tell they all had military backgrounds, purely by the way they carried themselves and the way they were processing the information in front of them. I noticed a couple of hand movements and gestures between them. Working with them was going to be an experience.

“The best new is, because of this we have pictures of the plates of the car…and we know where it’s headed,” Kyle pointed at a close up of the license plate and then turned back to the men as a map took its place.

“You have got to be kidding me,” one of Valiant snapped, leaning forward in his seat like he wanted to jump up. I knew from earlier, that this was where they found the bodies of a group of girl’s years ago, murdered by the same group of assholes.

“Game on!” Kyle said grinning, as Preacher took her place to finish the briefing.

Shifting slightly, I did my best to hide the hard-on that wouldn’t seem to quit around her, and that just gotten a shit ton worse watching her in action. Fucking game on!