Blood & Bitcoin E-Book

L.A. Witt

• Herausgeber: GallagherWitt Publishing LLC
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Chris Emmett has a talent for screwing up and landing on his feet. As a SEAL, he managed to evade bullets and court-martials alike. As an FBI agent, he dodged danger and disciplinary action—right up until he didn’t.

With his career and freedom hanging in the balance, he’ll do whatever it takes to clean the slate… including an off-the-books deep cover solo mission.

The objective: infiltrate the Hive, a complex crime syndicate operating on the dark web, and find out who’s trying to kill Piker, the organization’s enigmatic and strangely alluring modern day Mob boss.

The moment he’s pulled into the Hive, Chris enters a world where no one is what they seem, including the man he’s there to protect. Lines blur between moral and wrong, legal and criminal, ally and foe, and—as Piker’s seductive magnetism draws Chris in—straight and queer.

Chris is running out of time to stop a killer. He has dangerous feelings for a dangerous man, and the deeper he moves into the realms of organized crime, the less he knows and the fewer people he can trust.

And that’s before he learns the truth about Piker’s assassin.

Leseprobe

Blood & Bitcoin

Criminal Delights - Organized Crime

L.A. Witt

Contents

About Blood & Bitcoin

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Also by L.A. Witt

Also by L.A. Witt

About the Author

Copyright Information

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Blood & Bitcoin: Criminal Delights – Organized Crime

First edition

Copyright © 2019, 2023 L.A. Witt

Cover Art by Natasha Snow

Editors: Leta Blake, Jules Robin

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher, and where permitted by law. Reviewers may quote brief passages in a review. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact L.A. Witt at [email protected]

ISBN: 978-1-64230-042-0

Print ISBN: 978-1-79876-974-4

Created with Vellum

About Blood & Bitcoin

Chris Emmett has a talent for screwing up and landing on his feet. As a SEAL, he managed to evade bullets and court-martials alike. As an FBI agent, he dodged danger and disciplinary action—right up until he didn’t.

With his career and freedom hanging in the balance, he’ll do whatever it takes to clean the slate… including an off-the-books deep cover solo mission.

The objective: infiltrate the Hive, a complex crime syndicate operating on the dark web, and find out who’s trying to kill Piker, the organization’s enigmatic and strangely alluring modern day Mob boss.

The moment he’s pulled into the Hive, Chris enters a world where no one is what they seem, including the man he’s there to protect. Lines blur between moral and wrong, legal and criminal, ally and foe, and—as Piker’s seductive magnetism draws Chris in—straight and queer.

Chris is running out of time to stop a killer. He has dangerous feelings for a dangerous man, and the deeper he moves into the realms of organized crime, the less he knows and the fewer people he can trust.

And that’s before he learns the truth about Piker’s assassin.

Chapter 1

Chris didn’t know which of the assholes had split his lip, but did it really matter?

Sitting under blanched and buzzing fluorescent lights in an uncomfortable metal chair with his hands bound behind his back, he tongued the cut for the hundredth time. At least it had stopped bleeding. The steady trickle down his chin had annoyed him like a bad itch, and there’d been nothing he could do except dip his head and try to brush it off on his T-shirt. The shirt was already trashed, so he didn’t care.

He scanned the room, searching it yet again for some hint about where he was. No such luck. The bare concrete walls and floor offered nothing. Apart from the chair he was tied to, the room was empty. The structure could have been literally anything from an abandoned warehouse to something still under construction, especially since he hadn’t seen a damn thing before he’d been locked in here. He’d been blindfolded when they’d dragged him from the van into this place, but he’d counted steps. Twenty-three from the vehicle to the stairwell. Twelve steps down. Hairpin to the left. Twelve more steps. Another door. Forty-seven steps straight forward. Left turn. Twelve. Right turn. Six. Door. Room. Chair.

Over and over, he replayed that mental map and all the details of his situation. Not that he had a lot of faith that he’d be getting out of here on his terms or on his own power, but it was something to focus on.

There were voices outside the room, some just beyond the door behind him. He didn’t catch what they were saying, but he recognized the deceptively relaxed banter of bored sentries.

People had come and gone. Presumably sentries changing shift, and he assumed they were well-armed. After all, between the beating and the blindfold, he’d caught a glimpse of firepower—pistols, a Mach 10, something big, black, and nasty—and he had no reason to believe the men outside had left those in the van.

Zip ties bit into his wrists and ankles. He’d tried to break them, but they weren’t plastic, and no amount of struggling on his part would snap them. Struggling was a challenge in and of itself. His knee and shoulder had taken a few hits during the struggle. Bruises throbbed all over his body, especially in the places pressed against the chair. He wasn’t even sure how long he’d been here. A couple of hours at least. Possibly longer.

Earlier, a tall black woman in a well-tailored suit had come into the room. Natalie Harper. The consigliere. Even with his bell rung, he’d immediately recognized her face, especially those steely eyes, from his pre-mission briefing. She’d demanded to know why he’d been sniffing around Worley Security Tech property. What his business was. Why she shouldn’t have him turned over to the cops or tossed into the river, depending on her whim.

He’d gritted his teeth and—quietly and repeatedly—demanded to see her boss. “I need to talk to Trent Worley. It’s important.”

She’d injected more contempt into a single huff of humorless laughter than he had ever heard. “I can’t imagine you have anything to say that’s worth Mr. Worley’s time.”

Chris had turned his head and spat blood on to the bare floor beside him. “Might be worth his time if he wants to stay alive.”

She hadn’t reacted. Not visibly anyway. He’d refused to give up any further information, and Harper had stalked out. That had been at least two hours ago. Maybe more. Since then, no one had come into the room.

That could only mean they were waiting for someone, and if they were smart, that someone was Trent Worley. Though it was a long shot, Chris held out hope.

Trent was not an easy man to meet. He was the public face of WST, his father’s multibillion-dollar cybersecurity empire. And if meeting the son was difficult, an audience with the father was nearly impossible to obtain. Jim Worley never attended functions, preferring to address his shareholders and the media from the comfort of his plush high-rise office by way of teleconferences and televised speeches. Some said he was a modern-day Howard Hughes—an agoraphobic germaphobe. Others said he was paranoid someone wanted to kill him.

Ironically, it was his playboy son who was in the crosshairs. While the media painted Trent Worley as a carefree heir who partied his father’s fortune away, anyone within the cybersecurity industry knew the truth—Trent was a business savant and a ruthless negotiator. He was the brains of WST, effortlessly securing so many contracts his list of clients read like the Fortune 100 list.

And that was to say nothing of the Hive—his very secret, astronomically successful, and highly illegal side hustle. The Hive was notorious among law enforcement for its unapologetic manipulation of cryptocurrency values, particularly Bitcoin, in order to undermine competing black market cartels. They especially targeted any cartels going head-to-head with The Tea Horse Road, the Hive’s virtual marketplace on the dark web. Billions of dollars of profit had been thwarted again and again by Trent’s side job.

Wasn’t hard to imagine why someone wanted him dead.

Chris closed his eyes and swallowed against a wave of nausea. He’d been queasy ever since someone had landed that blow to his head. It was worse now that the adrenaline and endorphins were gone, leaving him with pain and the twitchy fear of a caged, cornered animal. Though getting grabbed by Worley’s people had more or less been part of his plan, his instincts and senses didn’t know that. They did know, just as his brain did, that this was dangerous, and everything could go south quick, fast, and in a hurry. Fight-or-flight had been crackling at the very edges of his nerves, one threat away from exploding to the surface. Only his training was keeping him from snapping. One slammed door or sudden shout or a goddamned spider dropping on to his shoulder, and he’d lose it.

He concentrated on breathing. If he panicked now, he’d just give himself a heart attack. He was bound to a chair and contained in a room inside a building whose layout and location he didn’t know. This was going according to plan. It wasn’t fun, and he’d feel like shit for a few days, but he was on Trent Worley’s radar now. And he hadn’t been shot. So far, so good.

Far away, a metal door opened and closed. He assumed they were changing out guards again.

But then the banter outside ceased abruptly. Footsteps approached that didn’t match the others that had come and gone, and not just because these were the rapid, determined strides of someone on a mission. Throughout the hours he’d been here, there’d been only the heavy sound of combat boots, but now…

Those were high heels. Chris would have recognized that sharp thunk anywhere.

Damn. Who the hell had they called in? Natalie Harper, who hadn’t been wearing heels when she’d been here earlier, was Trent’s right hand woman. No one else ranked higher on the food chain aside from Trent himself and his old man.

Nerves prickled along Chris’s spine. He listened to the approaching footsteps. There was nothing else to listen to—the background buzz of conversation remained MIA. The entire place had fallen deathly silent except for those sharp, fast footfalls.

Just outside the door, the steps halted.

Chris held his breath.

“He’s in here, boss.” A gruff voice he didn’t recognize.

Boss? Who the fuck…?

Behind him, a lock clanked, echoing through the stillness. The door opened, the change in pressure popping Chris’s ears and making his head swim again.

The high heels came closer, no longer muffled by walls and distance. The door shut with a heavy thud, but the sharp steps didn’t stop and the conversations outside didn’t pick up.

His senses tingled with the proximity of another person, and his brain whirred with attempts to conjure up a picture of who this woman might be. It was an instinctive response—a primal drive to know what the predator looked like so he could be vigilant and protect himself. Too bad millennia of evolution didn’t take into consideration that the prey might be zip-tied to a metal chair with absolutely no means of escaping the faceless predator.

The woman came around him, moving in two long, graceful strides through his peripheral vision and right into his line of sight, and—

And this wasn’t a woman.

The slim, dark-haired white man in a finely cut suit stopped in front of Chris and watched him with intense but somehow disinterested blue eyes. As if he intended to let Chris know with nothing more than a look how bored and annoyed he was, and at the same time wanted to intimidate the hell out of him.

Intimidation should have been laughable. The man was much slighter than Chris, and had they both been standing, he would have been at least two or three inches shorter even in the heels he was wearing. Because yes, he was wearing heels. The black dress boots under his trousers were men’s shoes, but they definitely had heels. The shoes alone would have given the man a disadvantage in a physical altercation. Heels or no heels, he’d have had a disadvantage going up against Chris, who’d been extensively trained by both the SEALs and the FBI.

Except Chris had to admit there was something about this man that did intimidate him. Something that put him on edge, anyway. The icy stare, maybe. The fact that he’d almost felt the guards in the hallway snap to attention when their boss had appeared. Chris had been held prisoner and tortured before, and while this man didn’t remind him of any of those captors in the least, there was something about him.

Or maybe it was simply the fact that he hadn’t expected Trent Worley—the painfully cheerful and charismatic man with a smile that could light up a city block—to be so murderously cold in person.

Gritting his teeth, Chris tugged at the restraints again. They still didn’t budge. He wasn’t sure what he would have done if they had.

His silent captor folded his arms, the motion revealing the subtle outline of a pistol under his jacket. “You going to tell me why I’m here? Or are we just going to silently enjoy each other’s company?” Dangerous boredom and irritation permeated his tone, and Chris marveled at how easily Trent presented himself as calm, cool, and threatening as fuck. Like he was one eyeroll away from snapping his fingers and ordering the goons outside to finish Chris off. And yet at the same time, his voice was smooth and lyrical, hinting at a man who was incredibly charming when he wasn’t so obviously restraining himself from decking someone. Yes, this was definitely Trent Worley.

Chris swept his tongue across his lips, wincing when he brushed that stinging cut. “Nice to finally meet you, Piker.”

The man’s posture stiffened so subtly, Chris wouldn’t have caught it if he hadn’t been zeroed in on Trent’s every twitch. Trent—Piker—strolled closer, his movements graceful like a dancer. He stopped just in front of Chris and stared down at him, as if to emphasize that at least for now, he was taller and had the advantage. “My name is Trent.”

“Yeah. It is.” Chris held Piker’s gaze. “But we both know you go by Piker, too. We both know you’re the hacker who runs the Hive.”

Piker leveled a menacing stare at him, fury darkening his expression. In a low and warning tone, he said, “You’re bound and I’m armed. If you want to walk out of here, I would suggest you start talking, because this is where you make yourself either very useful or very dead.”

Chris’s heart went into overdrive. Shifting in the hard metal chair, making his restraints bite into his raw skin, he lowered his voice. “I know who and what you are, and I also know that someone is trying to kill you.”

The icy laugh that broke through the man’s features did nothing to quell Chris’s nerves. “Tell me something I don’t know. I wouldn’t have a bulletproof limo and a legion of personal security if—”

“I can stop them.”

Piker’s humor vanished. He set his jaw and narrowed his eyes. “How do I know you’re not the one who wants to kill me?”

Chris looked down at himself, then up at Piker, hoping his expression conveyed Seriously? “Listen, I—”

“How do you know who I am and why do you care if I’m dead?” There was a note of warning. A distinct don’t fuck with me or I will happily shoot you right here and now.

“I’ve been… I’ve been researching the Hive.” Chris dropped his gaze, avoiding Piker’s piercing stare. “I need a job.”

“Anyone ever tell you you’re shit at charming Human Resources?”

“I don’t know about charming anyone, but I got your attention, and you’re part of the Hive, so—”

“Part of the Hive?” Piker laughed. He moved his hands to his hips, his unbuttoned jacket sliding back enough to reveal the butt of the gleaming nickel-plated pistol under his arm. “Bitch, if you know who I am, then you know I’m its queen.”

Yeah, and now that Piker had admitted out loud who he was, this situation was ten times more dangerous for Chris. He’d seen Piker’s face. Knew he was both Piker and Trent Worley. That was a fact guarded like a state secret, and rumor had it the Hive—especially its queen—had no problem using bullets to keep its secrets safe.

Refusing to let his renewed apprehension show, Chris said, “So we both know who you are. How about we cut the crap and—”

“You’re a little too tied up to be making the rules here,” Piker snapped. “And you need a job? Is this really how you think you get hired?”

Chris sighed heavily. “Obviously not. But when I started digging around for information about the Hive, I stumbled across people talking. Rumors mostly, but the more I dug…” He lifted his gaze again. “The bottom line is that there’s a threat out there. I want to work for the Hive, and the Hive is nothing if you’re dead. So when I realized someone wanted you dead, I needed to make contact.”

“Oh. Yeah. Nicely done there.” Piker gestured at him. “Get your ass kicked by my security team who, by the way, has authorization to use deadly force. Impressive.” He rolled his eyes.

Chris offered a tight half-shrug, wincing at the pain in his shoulder. “Nothing else put me on your radar. That, and I needed to see you one-on-one like this because there’s a damn good possibility that whoever wants you dead is in your inner circle. Either at WST or the Hive.”

Piker scowled. After a moment, he began to pace across the floor, heels clunking on concrete in a way that shouldn’t have been this unnerving. He pivoted on one heel and headed back the direction he’d come.

From the chair where he was bound, Chris watched the man pace. It reminded him of a pendulum swinging under a clock, except this clock was counting down until the Hive dumped his body somewhere.

It was still hard to believe that this was Piker. The kingpin. The unrivaled hacker who had, in between running WST for his father, built the Hive from the ground up and run it like a modern-day Mafia. Most people would—and in fact did—dismiss Trent Worley as an entitled kid with loads of sex appeal and no brains. They thought Trent was an idiot blessed with natural charm and a mouthful of silver spoons, but no one doubted for a second that Piker was razor sharp. He could work a business or a computer like his airhead alter ego could work a crowd. That they were the same person had blown Chris’s mind. It was difficult to conceive of just how much power this man really had, just like it was impossible to imagine how ruthless and brutal he could be in order to hold on to that power.

“You say you want to work for the Hive.” Piker didn’t stop or look at Chris. “In what capacity? Why the fuck would I hire you?” He paused. “What good is an ex-SEAL and recently fired FBI agent to my organization?”

Chris blinked.

Piker glanced at him and laughed humorlessly. “You don’t think I had my people do some digging of their own before I came down here to meet you? I know who you are, Special Agent Emmett.”

It wasn’t surprising. It really wasn’t. Just…unnerving. The Hive had an incredible reach when it came to accessing data that wasn’t supposed to be accessible.

Chris shifted, trying to ease a cramp in his arm from having his hands bound behind him for so long. “I picked up a few skills in the SEALs and in the Bureau that might be useful.”

“Like breaking into secure buildings without being detected?”

“Your boys only caught me because I wanted to be caught.”

“Is that what you said about the FBI?” Piker threw back. “Did you want them to catch you too?”

Chris gritted his teeth. “That was different. I didn’t…” He hesitated. “I didn’t kill those people.”

“So you say. I’ve only read a little about what happened there.” Piker tsked. “Does sound like they did you dirty.”

“And you won’t?”

“I never said that.” Piker glanced at Chris before he turned again and continued pacing. “The difference between me and the Bureau is that I won’t tell you to your face that I’m your friend, and then stab you in the back.”

“You’ll just look me in the eye and stab me.”

“Shoot you, most likely.” He said it so casually, as if he were picking out a restaurant.

Chris swallowed hard. “Look, I want a job, and someone wants to kill you. I’ve got training. Resources. Put me on your security team and I’ll keep you alive.”

Piker stopped pacing. The sudden absence of his resonating footsteps jarred Chris. Left his ears ringing in the silence. The seemingly unlikely Mafia boss looked right in Chris’s eyes. “You’re pretty confident that I’ll keep you alive.”

“It’s your call.” Chris tried to sound more flippant than he felt. “But if I had a red dot on my forehead and someone said he could figure out where that dot was coming from, I think I’d take my chances and see what he could do.”

Piker’s lips pulled into a thin, bleached line. “You still haven’t given me any reason to believe this boogeyman with the laser sight actually exists.”

“You think I’d let your boys bust me outside your building, hand me my ass, and tie me to a chair if I wasn’t serious?” Chris forced himself to hold Piker’s gaze and not let it slip that he was even the slightest bit intimidated. “No legitimate company is ever going to hire me. The Hive is my best chance at a paycheck, and it’ll crumble if someone kills you. I’m out of career options, so I’ve got every reason to want to keep you alive and in charge of the organization. And I know you’ve got the resources to figure out if I’m bullshitting you. Only an idiot would try.”

Piker didn’t speak.

Chris took a deep breath, which hurt like hell. “I know someone shot at your car three days ago. I know that an explosive—specifically an IED with a cell phone attached to it—was received at WST’s downtown facility the day before that. I know that someone has started making identical death threats against both Piker and Trent.” He looked right in Piker’s eyes, more than a little satisfied that the hacker appeared duly unsettled. “And I know that last week, you attended the funeral of a member of your security team, and that he was dead before he took the bullet he allegedly used to kill himself.”

Piker went white.

Do I have your attention now?

“Look.” Chris let some impatience slip into his tone. “At the moment, I don’t know who wants to kill you, only that whoever it is knows your movements. I have no idea if the person pulling the trigger is being paid to kill you, or if whoever wants you dead is doing it himself. Whoever it is, they know you’re both Trent Worley and Piker. There’s a good chance this is an inside job. If you want to go it alone, be my guest, but I’m trying to help you, and I got my ass kicked tonight for my trouble.” He shrugged despite the pain. “Your call.”

“Yeah, but the part where you keep losing me is why the fuck I should trust you to find this would-be assassin when I have plenty of people on my own payroll who can get the job done.”

“Have they gotten the job done so far?”

Piker glared at him.

Chris moved to put his hands up in a placating gesture, but of course he couldn’t because…zip ties. “Flushing someone like that out and grabbing them before they pull the trigger is what I do. No one is better at it than me.”

Piker huffed a humorless laugh. “And they say I’m full of hubris.”

“Call it what you want. It’s the truth.” Chris moistened his dry lips, barely registering the sting as his tongue brushed the cut. “When an enemy operative needed to be identified, found, and extracted quickly and cleanly, I’m the one they sent in. I’m the one who got it done.” He paused. “As long as your people are digging into my files, tell them to look up a disciplinary hearing from about eight years ago. Didn’t go to court martial, and most of the identifying details have probably been redacted, but there will definitely be enough left to prove my point.”

Once again, he seemed to have the hacker’s attention. “So why don’t you just tell me what happened?”

“Would you believe me if I did?” Chris looked Piker right in the eyes. “Check my file. Read what went down. Then decide if you’ve got someone else on your payroll who can even try to get this job done better than I can.”

Piker’s eyebrow flicked up. He watched Chris, wheels obviously turning in his head. If nothing else, Chris had him curious, and Piker wouldn’t be able to resist pulling up that file and seeing what happened. Once he did, Chris would be his to lose.

After a long moment, Piker stepped closer, and as he did, he reached under his jacket. Fight-or-flight juice shot through Chris as Piker drew his pistol. Chris forced himself to stay still. Flight wasn’t happening, and fight would just mean being tired and sore when Piker shot him.

Smoothly, with what seemed like sociopathic calm, Piker raised the nickel-plated pistol and pressed its cool muzzle to Chris’s forehead.

“Before I let you walk out of here, Special Agent Emmett,” he said in that chilly, lyrical voice, “let’s get one thing absolutely crystal fucking clear.”

Chris didn’t dare nod. He just said, “Yeah.”

“And I’m going to say this once. Are you listening?”

Chris gulped. “I am.”

Piker narrowed his eyes and pressed the gun harder against Chris’s forehead. “You don’t contact me. Not WST. Not the Hive. Not anyone associated with those organizations. If we want to communicate after we’ve seen the information in your file, we’ll reach out.”

“Don’t call you, you’ll call me. Got it.”

Piker nudged him with the gun, letting the sharp edge of the muzzle bite into Chris’s skin. “And if you breathe a single word to anyone—even to a fucking cockroach in that shithole apartment on Ninth Avenue—that I’m Piker? I promise you you’re a dead man. Am I clear?”

“Absolutely clear.”

They stayed like that for a moment, eyeing each other across the space occupied by Piker’s gun.

Then Piker straightened, withdrawing the pistol, and Chris released his breath.

Piker holstered his weapon. “My team will take you back to your apartment. We’ll be in touch.” Then, without waiting for a response, he left, high heels clunking hard with every step. The air pressure changed with the opening of the heavy door, and then again when it banged shut.

Once again, Chris was alone in the cold, stark room. As he replayed everything that had just happened, his head swam. The whole encounter had been surreal. On some level, he wondered if he’d imagined the whole thing, but no, it had happened. It was real. Piker was real. Hell, he had to be. With or without a concussion, if Chris’s imagination was going to conjure up a cybercrime lord, the result would not have been this guy. Even when he’d seen photos of Trent Worley and intel confirming that Worley was Piker, Chris had struggled to picture the mythical hacker-businessman-Mafia boss as a slender, flamboyant man known for his love of the finer things in life. He sure as shit hadn’t easily imagined Piker in heels, never mind expensive suits tailored to hide his gleaming high caliber pistol.

He was convinced now.

And the important thing was that he had done what he’d come here to do. The beginning of it, anyway. It had taken longer than he’d expected, and he’d wound up battered, bloodied, and bruised for his trouble, but he’d succeeded.

He had Piker’s attention.

Chapter 2

An underground service walkway connected the unfinished hotel to its completed tower next door. Flanked by two members of his security detail, Piker strode down the fluorescent lit tunnel, his mind whirring and his stomach twisting. He maintained his outward appearance of calm bordering on apathy, but it was taking some serious work. There were some cameras along the way back to the garage, but he didn’t pay them any mind. He’d taken precautions before venturing into the building at all.

The tunnel led into the hotel’s basement, and from there, a stairwell took him up to the lowest level of the parking garage. The service elevator would have been faster, not to mention easier in these shoes, but he was paranoid now and didn’t want to risk the machine malfunctioning. Fortunately, his staff had very carefully provided him a route through security blind spots. That was easy enough; security staff had already made their rounds and wouldn’t pass through for another forty-five minutes.

The cameras had taken slightly more finesse, and that finesse had come in the form bribing the man monitoring them this shift. For five thousand in cash, he’d shut off every camera in the parking garage and maintenance passageways. The man was severely in debt, so the cash was all it took, but Piker’s staff had chased the bribe with a promise to make sure his crushing debts would be the least of his problems if he breathed a word to anyone.

On the second-to-last level of the huge underground parking garage, his car waited. In between the two SUVs that would be occupied by his security detail, the stretched silver Bentley occupied three parking spaces along one wall. Its engine was idling, so one of the men with him must have radioed ahead to let Walt know it was almost go-time.

Walt stood beside the open rear door. With a nod, he said, “Sir.”

“Walt.” Piker usually gave his long-time driver a smile, but tonight he was someplace else. Without a word or a look at anyone else, he slid into the back of the car. He kept his game face on until the door was shut and he’d settled on to the leather seat beside Natalie. Then and only then, he chafed his arms and exhaled.

Natalie put a hand on his knee. “I wouldn’t have bothered calling you down here, but the fight he put up against our team said he’s definitely got some training. Don’t get me wrong. I still think he could just be batshit crazy, but when I ran the check on his name… Well, like I told you earlier, his credentials gave me pause.”

As Walt eased the limo into motion, Piker nodded, thumbing the file folder on the seat beside him. The folder full of everything Natalie had briefed him on when he’d arrived. A few fragments of Emmett’s history as a Navy SEAL. A few more of his history with—and very recent termination from—the FBI. Everything she’d been able to find on Special Agent Chris Emmett on short notice.

It was entirely possible Emmett was delusional. That this was some sort of PTSD-induced delusion. But when an ex-SEAL shows up at your door claiming someone’s trying to kill you, it’s only good manners to hear him out. And good sense, given the bullet that had ricocheted off the limo’s bulletproof glass windows three days ago.

“You were right to call me in.” He nudged the folder away. “I’m not entirely sure what to make of him, but…”

“What did he say?”

“Well, for one thing…” Piker rubbed a hand over his face, suddenly exhausted. “He knows who I am.”

“Of course he does. Everyone knows—” Beat. Her tone flipped from dismissive to oh shit serious. “He knows you’re Piker.”

“Yeah. Fuck.”

“How in the world does he know that?”

“I don’t know.” Sighing, Piker rested his hand on top of hers. “But he knows someone’s trying to kill me, and on top of knowing who I am, he knows way too much about the incidents over the last couple of weeks for a guy who’s just making shit up.”

“Too much, as in…?”

Piker let his head fall back, and he stared upward with unfocused eyes. “He knows Barnes didn’t commit suicide. Nobody but us and the M.E. are supposed to know about that.” He turned to her. “Nothing was disclosed to the press or made public, was it?”

“I personally made sure of it. A confidential report was submitted to his life insurance company, and our friends down at the Seventeenth Precinct are quietly investigating, but…” She shook her head. “That information is definitely not public.”

Piker nodded slowly. The cops investigating Barnes’s death were well and truly in the Hive’s pocket. Bribes and blackmail had ensured that Piker’s organizations had a small army of local, state, and federal law enforcement who would get him any information he needed, bend any laws that inconvenienced him, or take care of any damning evidence before it saw the light of day. None of them would leak the reality of Barnes’s death unless they had death wishes of their own.

It was possible Emmett had obtained the information from the life insurance company, but he didn’t exactly strike Piker as the kind of pencil-necked geek who made his post-FBI living as a claims adjuster. And anyway, he’d said no one would hire him after the Bureau had axed him. He’d been fired before Barnes’s death, so unless he’d left himself a backdoor into the FBI’s databases…

“Piker?” Natalie squeezed his leg. “You still with me?”

He shook himself. “Yeah. Sorry. Just trying to put the pieces together.” He met her gaze. “What do you think?”

His consigliere pursed her lips for a moment. “My first instinct is that if he knows all of that, he’s involved in it. I mean, how do we know he isn’t the one trying to kill you?”

Piker swallowed. “If he knows that much about me, and he knows who I really am, then he’s got enough access he could have killed me already. There was nothing for him to gain by putting himself at a total physical disadvantage like this.”

“Except a job in the Hive. And confirmation that you’re Piker. For all you know, he just suspected it. Now he knows.”

“True.” Piker broke eye contact this time and stared out one of the tinted windows at the scenery—the city’s lavish south shore district, hotels and high rises gleaming in the light of the rising sun. “Let’s do some digging on him before we make contact again. Reach out to everyone we have at the alphabet agencies. See what any of them can find about Special Agent Emmett, and about any active federal investigations into either of my organizations.” He paused, drumming his nails beside the Bentley’s minibar. “According to him, there’s something in his military personnel file. A disciplinary hearing from about eight years ago.” He turned to her again. “I want to see it. Even if parts of it are redacted.”

Natalie nodded. “I’ll make some calls.”

“Thank you.” Piker may have been at the helm of both WST and the Hive, but it was no exaggeration to say it would all unravel in seconds without Natalie.

They rode in silence while she sent some texts and Walt maneuvered the Bentley through the throngs of early morning traffic. All through the city, Piker’s mind kept whirring. Emmett had been careful about covering his tracks on both the clear web and the dark web. Careful enough that most people, even some degrees of law enforcement, wouldn’t have been able to track him down. The Hive was not most people. If information was on a computer that was accessible by any kind of network, the Hive would find it. Maybe some networks took more work to crack, and some data was more difficult to reach, but the Hive could and did find whatever it needed or wanted.

They collectively had the skills to breach any and all obstacles they encountered, and they kept their own data protected by security protocols so advanced, WST hadn’t even released them to the public yet. The Hive was anything but vulnerable, and Piker intended to keep it that way.

So what to do with this ex-special forces ex-FBI agent who wanted a job, knew who Piker was, and knew details about his would-be assassin? Because Piker couldn’t discount that if Emmett really was as good as he said he was at finding and extracting enemy operatives, and he was in a position to be begging for a job from a criminal organization, then he wasn’t above some shady shit. Not that Piker was, and there was a certain amount of honor among thieves, but not enough for one thief to breathe easily with his back to another. The most valuable and useful people were often the most dangerous, but the reverse didn’t usually apply. Piker could be sure that Emmett was dangerous. Valuable? Useful? Someone he could or should trust? Impossible to say at this point.

“What’s on your mind?” Natalie asked after a while.

Piker moistened his lips. “I’m thinking this might be a situation where I need to keep my friends close and my enemies closer.”

Her eyebrow rose. “In what way?”

“Emmett knows details that aren’t public, and he allegedly has skills that can help him do more to find my assassin than anyone I already have on the payroll. Which means he could be a hell of an asset or he could be a serious liability.”

“Or both.”

“Yeah. The fact that he does know those things, on top of the fact that someone took a shot at me the other day…” He let his head fall back against the seat. “It might not be a bad idea to take him seriously. Keep looking into him, but also hire him.”

“Hire him?” she scoffed. “Why?”

“Because then we’ll have access to him all the time.”

“And he’ll have access to us.”

“Limited access.” He ran his thumb back and forth along hers. “He has no idea just how much surveillance we have on him. Whatever information we let him have, he’s going to try to do something with it. Report it to a higher up. Sell it. Gain access to a facility.” He waved his other hand sharply. “Whatever it is, we’ll be watching. If he’s working for someone, we’ll know about it. If he’s up to something, we’ll know about it.”

“So give him just enough rope to hang himself.”

“Exactly. Let him close enough to find whoever’s trying to kill me if that’s what he really wants to do, which is also close enough that we’ll see if he gives away his real motives.”

She scowled. “I’m still not sure I like the idea of letting him into the Hive, or even WST.” Her tone was flat and businesslike, but there was a subtle undercurrent of concern. “Not even in a peripheral capacity.”

“I think it’s our best bet for figuring him out. Emmett is too smart to let his guard down. If he’s up to something, then he needs to believe I’ve let my guard down. That I don’t have any reason to suspect there’s more to this than meets the eye. So he’ll tip his hand.”

“Because if he thinks you’re naively letting him in closer, he might get sloppy.”

Piker nodded. “Exactly. And at the same time, bringing him into the Hive means the Hive will see and hear his every move. Speaking of which, what about his apartment? Did your team find anything?”

“Not so far. The team searched it while you had Emmett on ice, but we didn’t find anything useful. We’ve got eyes and ears on every inch of the place now, though. If anything moves in that apartment, we’ll know about it.”

“Good. What about his background?”

“Everything he said about being fired from the Bureau lines up with what we’ve found. I’m amazed he isn’t in prison.” She huffed. “Must be nice to be a decorated, white war hero.”

Scowling, Piker nodded. “Agreed. But my gut won’t let me believe he’s just some disgruntled ex-government employee who wants to stick it to Uncle Sam.” He drummed his fingers on the edge of the seat. “I want to give him a job inside the Hive or WST. Not something that brings him all the way into either organizations’ inner workings, but something that lets us see how he operates.”

“Where we can more actively monitor him?”

Piker nodded. “Exactly.”

Natalie seemed to mull it over for a long moment, and he was sure she was going to shoot it down. She was the cooler head between them, after all. To his surprise, though, she said, “Maybe we need him on the field ops team.”

He blinked. “Go on.”

“He has special ops training, so he could be useful. And let’s face it—no one is more paranoid than that team. If anyone can sniff out a rat…”

“Good idea. And if they find out he’s a rat, well…” Piker grinned. “Then Emmett won’t be anyone’s problem anymore, will he?”

“No, he certainly won’t.”

“I say we go for it. Step one, dig up everything you can on him. Keep an eye on him at his apartment. Then we’ll figure out how to bring him in without compromising the Hive.”

“All right. It’s your call.” From her tone, she wasn’t entirely onboard, but they both knew she’d put her foot down if she thought it was a really bad idea.

“Check deeper into his background. See if you can find anything about his time in the SEALs.”

“See if I can?” Natalie smiled. “You make it sound like ‘above top secret’ has ever been a deterrent for either of us.”

Piker laughed. “Of course it’s not. But I know it can make the process slower.” Sobering a bit, he met her gaze. “Do what you can to expedite this.”

She squeezed his hand. “It’s my top priority.”

“I know.”

They exchanged uneasy smiles. There were a lot of variables here that Piker didn’t like, but thank God he had Natalie in his corner.

Chapter 3

The blonde lying beside him—Chris had already forgotten her name—propped herself up on her elbow. “You got any smokes?”

“Sorry.” Chris wiped sweat off his forehead. “I quit.”

She frowned. “Damn it.” After a moment, she sat up, naked breasts bouncing with the movement. “You mind if I take a shower?”

“Knock yourself out.”

She picked her clothes up off the floor and disappeared into his tiny bathroom. He watched her go, but even the sight of her ass didn’t stir any excitement in him. Not that he was surprised. It had taken way more effort than it should have to get it up and get both of them off in the first place. Another round just wasn’t in the cards.

He scrubbed a hand over his unshaven face. She was a nice enough lady and had been fun to fool around with, but his heart wasn’t in it. He’d only gone to the bar out of boredom, and that was the same reason he’d taken her up on the offer to go “someplace quiet.”

Most of what he did these days was out of boredom. There hadn’t been much to do since he’d moved to this shitty part of town. Hack. Drink. Fuck. Not necessarily in that order.

There seemed to be been even less to do ever since the Hive had picked him up. There’d been talk of future contact, but so far? Silence. He was waiting now. Waiting for someone to get in contact with him. If they didn’t make contact and soon, he’d have to devise another plan. For now, he stayed visible on the sites and forums where the Hive operated, and in between…he drank and he fucked.

It had been three days since his encounter with the infamous Piker. His body still hurt all over. Of course that hadn’t stopped him from bedding the blonde. Or that redhead with the tattoo sleeves. The vertigo from the concussion had slowed him down, and his sore muscles had kept him from being quite as acrobatic as he would’ve liked, but the women had come and he’d come, so he didn’t waste much energy worrying about it.

What he did worry about, though, was where his head was whenever he took a woman to bed. How bad had those goons rung his bell? Because before that beatdown, he’d never—never—had to fight so hard to keep a man out of his brain while his dick was in a woman.

But every moment he’d been naked with the redhead and the blonde, there’d been someone else there. Every brush of lips on skin, every caress, every grope, every stroke Chris took in her mouth or her pussy—he was there in the back of Chris’s mind.

Piker.

And it wasn’t just when Chris was screwing a woman. This morning, he’d been jerking off in the shower and caught himself imagining Piker. Imagining the hacker’s slim fingers taking the place of his own, and what kind of filth he might whisper in the midst of a handjob. How satisfying it would be to shut him up by pushing his dick between those hypnotic, slim lips, and how much Piker would probably love that too.

Chris had been too aroused to be horrified, and he’d let the fantasy carry him to an orgasm that had nearly knocked him off his feet.

Now he was tempted to get in the shower with the blonde and will himself to go another round just to prove to his brain that he could focus on her and not him. That he didn’t have any rogue thoughts about dudes and dicks.

He’d never touched a guy before. Well, not like that. At least, not sober, anyway. And he’d never wanted to. During his SEAL days, he’d had a few threesomes, but those had always been him and a buddy focusing on a woman. That, or him with two women. Sure, it was hot watching a friend make a woman scream, but it wasn’t because Chris was into that guy’s physique or because he’d wanted to be in the woman’s place.

There’d also been a handful of times when he and his team would get absolutely shit-faced during a deployment, and his cock ended up down another SEAL’s throat. When he was that drunk and horny, he didn’t give a damn who was blowing him, and he’d had to admit even back then that some of the other SEALs gave incredible head.

But he’d never gone looking for a man. He’d never had a cock in his own mouth. The only times he’d ever fucked a man’s face had been when he’d had access to too much alcohol and not enough women.

Sober in a city with plenty of single ladies and three hookup apps on his phone? There was no reason he should be thinking about a man.

So why in the fuck was so much of his headspace being taken up by thoughts of Piker? Especially Piker stripped out of that tailored suit? Why in God’s name did Chris keep wondering if Piker hid any tattoos under his clothes? Or scars? Why was the thought of him having either of those so hot?

Holy shit, I am losing my damned mind.

Chris swore under his breath and rubbed his temples, wincing when he brushed the slowly shrinking goose egg on the left side. Yeah, Piker’s boys had rung his bell. That was all it was. He’d had a couple of head injuries during his SEAL days and one shortly after becoming a fed, plus a very recent one at the hands of the Hive. TBI could and did do weird things to someone’s brain.

Including, apparently, making him wonder what a particular man’s dick tasted like.

At a quarter after midnight, Chris left his apartment, checking over his shoulder the whole way to his car in case someone tried to jump him again. He made it unmolested, drove in circles for a while to make sure no one was tailing him, and then headed down to the warehouse district. Here, among the decaying remains of the city’s industrial past, the hookers and drug dealers always came out as soon as the sun went down.

Chris turned the corner, and he slowed his battered old Honda as the line of streetwalkers came into view. They were becoming familiar, though a lot of faces came and went.

He stopped mid-block in front of half a dozen or so hookers, gestured at one, and beckoned. Two of them pointed at themselves in an unspoken, “Me?” Though he would have preferred the blonde on the left, he pointed to the right, indicating Mia, the brunette with smoky eyes. The blonde was more his type—round hips and big tits about to tumble out of her lingerie—but he beckoned to Mia instead. Maybe he’d come back later for the blonde.

Mia got into the car without a word, and he pulled away from the curb. In silence, he drove them away from the warehouse district to a cheap motel in a shitty neighborhood. He was relieved she’d agreed to start taking their liaisons into motels instead of that godforsaken park where they used to go. He fucking hated that place. It wasn’t one of those parks where people brought their kids or pets. Just their habits; usually the kinds involving sex or syringes, if not both. Chris had dubbed it Hepatitis Park after his first visit, when an unseen hypodermic needle had become lodged in the sole of his boot. At least it hadn’t punctured all the way.

Now that he was on the Hive’s radar, he didn’t like the idea of doing this out in the open.

He paid cash at the front desk. Once they were in the room, Mia perched on the edge of a bed and gingerly rubbed her ankle while Chris set up a jamming device that would interfere with any bugs, cameras, or other electronic eavesdroppers in the vicinity. As the little machine hummed in the background, Mia put her foot back down, grimacing.

He eyed her towering stripper heels, which dwarfed the ones Piker had worn but made him think of Piker because heels—hell, everything—made him think of Piker these days. Hoping he wasn’t wearing his weird thoughts on his sleeve, he said, “How do you walk in those things?”

“When was the last time you saw a hooker in New Balances?” She glared up at him. “By the way, you’re damn lucky we didn’t send in an extraction team the other night.”

Chris eyed her coolly and leaned against the dresser, folding his arms. “I sent you a message to stand down before I went in.”

“Uh-huh.” She started rubbing the other foot. “You could’ve waited to make sure I’d received that message before you threw yourself into—”

“So check your messages more often,” Chris muttered. “And don’t act surprised by any of this. You knew my reputation when you brought me into this op.”

Mia shot him another glare. Then she sighed. “I’m going to assume that since you’re still in one piece, you’re in with the Hive.”

“I think I’m in. I’m waiting for him to make contact.”

She huffed out a breath. “We don’t have time to wait. That’s the only reason I let your stupid plan go forward instead of extracting you for your own safety. What were you thinking?”

“That there’s a ticking clock, and I’m better off protecting him from close by than far away.”

“And you knew we’d never go for it.”

“Why do you think I didn’t wait for authorization?” He laughed. “I never do, so what made you think I’d start now?”

Mia just scowled.

“Even if I wasn’t that kind of operative, think about it—what else do you want me to do?” His growing impatience made it into his voice, and he didn’t give a shit. “Getting into Piker’s inner circle—especially in the Hive—is going to take time. This guy isn’t stupid.”

“Neither is whoever is trying to kill him.” Mia got up and moved to the sink, which was outside the bathroom. She dampened a washcloth and started carefully smudging her makeup. “Do whatever it takes. Get into his inner circle, figure out who else in that circle wants him dead, and stop them. Unless you’d rather I sent in another agent who could get it done—”

“I can get it done,” he growled. “But you can’t expect results overnight. Not from me and not from anyone else.”

She turned around, pointing sharply at him with the same hand that still held the wet washcloth. “You’ve had weeks.”

“Because that’s how long it takes to infiltrate an organization like this. What did you want me to do? Go bang on Piker’s door and ask him to friend me on Facebook?”

Her lips thinned and her eyes narrowed. The fact that she was dressed like a hooker in black and red lingerie and stripper heels didn’t detract in the slightest from her commanding appearance. She could blend in seamlessly with the prostitutes when she wanted to, but when she switched to her game face, no amount of leather and lipstick took away from who she really was. Beneath it all, she was still Special Agent Mia Bradford, and she’d still make anyone with a badge snap to attention with a look.

Facing the mirror again, she continued messing up her makeup, smearing the sharp lines and smoky shadows so she’d emerge from the room looking like she’d just been fucked. “What have you learned about the Hive so far?”

Chris eyed her. “Do you want intel on the Hive, or who’s trying to kill Piker?”

“Given that the killer is most likely part of the Hive’s upper ranks—”

“Or WST’s.”

“Yes, but we know the power structure of WST. We know how the organization works, who’s who, what their backgrounds are.” She paused to smear some eyeliner. “I need whatever you can find on Jim Worley, especially since no one can get eyes on him. Otherwise, until we can be absolutely certain the killer isn’t part of the Hive, I need to know the organization’s players and methods.” She inclined her head. “What have you learned so far? About their facilities? Inner workings?”

“Not much so far. They roughed me up and took me to an abandoned building. An old office building by the looks of it, but I was blindfolded going in and out of the room where they kept me. And anyway I don’t know if it’s one of their usual hidey holes, or if they just commandeered it for the occasion.”

“Where did they take you after that?”

“Back to my apartment. Piker said he’ll be in touch. Or at least, don’t call him, he’ll call me.”

Mia tossed the makeup-stained washcloth in the sink and came back into the main part of the room. “You don’t have a way to contact him?”

Chris rolled his eyes. “Yes, Mia. The most cautious and overly paranoid crime lord on the planet found out I know who he is, and he immediately hooked me up with all his social media and told me to text him any time. Of course I don’t have a way to contact him.”

“He let you see his face, didn’t he?”

“Yes, he did. And he made it very clear that since I know he’s both Piker and Worley, I’m either an ally or a liability. The minute he thinks I’m in that second category or that I’ve compromised his identity, he’ll have me floating in the river.”

“Well, good thing you tipped your hand then, isn’t it?” she snapped.

“What choice did I have? He’s too high-profile as Worley, and he has too much security around him. It was the only way I was going to get him one-on-one, and I wasn’t getting in close to him until I got him one-on-one and told him there was a reason to bring me in.” Chris shook his head. “He’s too careful. I had to do something.”

“Yeah, and now there’s a good chance our inner circle assassin knows what you’re doing. He’s just going to step up his game and take out Piker sooner.”

“I highly doubt a man that careful is going to let it slip to anyone that—”

“I don’t care what you think or what you doubt,” she said through her teeth. “You had a ticking clock already, and now it’s ticking a lot faster because there’s a chance the killer could find out about you. You need to find as much as you can on WST, the Hive, their paramilitary team, Jim Worley—anything you can find. Get that intel, find that killer, and don’t waste any goddamned time—”

“For fuck’s sake,” he hissed. “With all the years you spent in the field, you know damn well how delicate covert ops like this are. It’s not like I can go in and demand this shit. It’s not as easy as walking in and asking for a meeting with Jim fucking Worley.” He shook his head. “If I rush any of this more than I already have, it’s going to blow up in my face.”

“Yes, I understand that. But that ticking clock is attached to a timebomb, and none of us can afford to allow it to detonate. It is imperative that the Bureau gain control of this situation, which means it’s—”

“I’m aware of that. I’m doing everything I can.” He paused. “Listen, I’m even more motivated than you are to get this done fast because once it’s over, I can have my goddamned life back. Don’t think I’m just out here spinning my tires.”