Code of Conduct, page 1
CODE OF CONDUCT
AN SBG NOVELLA
P. A. DEPAUL
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
352 2ND Street Pike, 291, Southampton, PA 18966; contact@northfairpublishing.com
CODE OF CONDUCT
A Northfair Publishing Book/ published by arrangement with the author
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Northfair Publishing / 2024
Copyright © 2024 by P. A. DePaul
Excerpt from Crossing the Line copyright © 2024 by P. A. DePaul
Cover design © 2023 Sarah Hansen, Okay Creations
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
eBook ISBN: 978-1-959324-03-4
CONTENTS
Synopsis
Playlist
Acknowledgments and Dedication
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
Epilogue
Special Preview
Chapter 1
Newsletter and Thank You
Also by P. A. DePaul
Author Biography
SYNOPSIS
Can a computer wizard write a code that apprehends criminals and attracts the woman who captured his heart?
Tech genius Ted Byrnes spends his days assisting a lethal black ops squad. Their missions are usually global, but Ted uncovers a national identity theft ring has infiltrated the small town he calls home. Instead of remaining behind the scenes, he takes the lead.
Doreen McKenna is a struggling widow attempting to raise her ten-year-old genius-IQ son. For four years, she’s pushed aside her own needs to focus on her son. Working long days as the office manager in a doctor’s office, the highlights of her week revolve around grocery shopping and taking her son to the bookstore…until she’s approached by a man in the fiction section whose intellect and looks have her suppressed desires rising to the surface.
Ted has narrowed the source of the identity theft ring and needs Doreen’s help. Working together, they devise a plan to expose the criminals, but what's written on paper doesn't always happen in real life. Their attraction escalates alongside the danger. Apprehending the ring may break all the codes of conduct . . .
Playlist
“This Means War” - Nickelback
“For You” - Keith Urban
“Where We Rise” - Neoni
“Love Me Anyway” - P!nk/Chris Stapleton
“Yours” - Russell Dickerson
“Freeze” - Kygo
“Eyes On You” - Swim
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing a book may be a solitary venture, but I could not bring this story to life without help.
Thank you, Michelle Grajkowski, for reading the early draft and offering suggestions. Thank you, Elizabeth Mazer, for all your suggestions and feedback. Your editing made this book so much better!
And a MASSIVE thank you to YOU, the reader, for taking a journey with me. I hope you enjoy these kick-ass characters as much as I do.
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to intellectual badasses. Y’all are amazing. Keep being you.
1
“Christ, Ted, someone’s going to see us if you don’t hurry up.”
Ted Byrnes cringed and the lock pick slipped in his sweaty fingers. Talon, a veteran black ops operative and one of five mentors Ted had to survive, hovered closer.
A dog barked in the distance and a breeze made the branches on the perfectly pruned trees lining the parking lot clack together, ratcheting up Ted’s nerves. He’d never been in the field before. As an MIT graduate and self-professed computer egghead, his contribution usually came from writing programs, hacking into systems, creating aliases, or fiddling with tech gadgets, but yesterday he received authorization to run his very first mission. He really didn’t want to screw it up. Especially with Delta Squad, the fiercest, most successful black ops squad in SweetBriar Group’s history, offering assistance.
The yellow-white lights mounted to the brick above each office’s door in the business park created more shadows than they illuminated, doing nothing to help Ted with the deadbolt securing the doctor/physical therapist’s office. Pushing his glasses back up his nose for the umpteenth time, Ted re-gripped the pick and—
“Move.” Talon bumped Ted to the side. With his own set of well-used tools in his gloved hands, Talon made quick work of both locks, then swept the door open.
Beep. Beep. Beep. The tell-tale warning of the alarm counting down reverberated in the otherwise silent night, spiking Ted’s adrenaline. Dammit. Could the neighborhood behind the complex hear that?
With a Vanna White gesture, Talon’s emerald eyes flattened—the only part Ted could see beneath the ski mask—motioning for Ted to head inside first.
Bright light flared behind them, sweeping steadily closer as the throaty growl of an engine turned into the lot.
Shit!
Talon grabbed Ted’s jacket at the shoulder and pushed him inside. Ted stumbled and grabbed onto the closest object. The long, tall object wobbled and swayed, making everything worse. Talon pulled the door shut just as the lights flared across the glass.
Ted tried to wrap the object tighter to stop it from moving, but his grip kept slipping. Stubbing his tennis shoes against the base, the weight of it tipping yanked him off-balance.
“Wha—”
Ted’s cheek smacked the heavy plastic bottle of the water cooler as it crashed to the floor. Sploooooooosh!
“What the hell are you doing?” Talon hissed.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
“The alarm,” Ted wheezed, rolling off the cooler system into a pool of cold water. He wiped at the deluge making the ski mask stick to his face.
“You are the worst,” Talon rasped, peering out the glass door with one eye. “Shit. Police are patrolling. Are your gloves on?”
Beep. Beep. Beep.
“No,” Ted sullenly answered.
“Do you want to get caught?”
The bright light outside disappeared and the noise of the engine faded into the distance.
Splick. Water droplets coated Ted’s hand and wrist after he plunked his palm on the industrial carpeting to push himself up.
The office didn’t offer much in the way of lighting. Just a faint tinge of a single overhead fluorescent inside the reception office and whatever weak beams traveled in from the slat-blinded window beside the door.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Talon gracefully leaped toward the alarm panel on the wall between the front door and the reception desk. “Code?”
“7309.” Ted snapped on a pair of latex gloves, grimacing at how they locked the moisture in his hands. He felt the area around him until he found the brand-new set of lock picks the leader of Delta Squad had gifted him right before Ted headed out for tonight’s adventure, and stuffed them in his jacket pocket.
The alarm went silent. “Move it, Ted. We can’t stick around long.”
Out of all the team members, he had to draw Talon. The most impatient, anti-social, and lethal member of Delta Squad. But, also the most skilled at infiltration and acquisition (i.e., breaking in and stealing stuff).
“Go. I’ll clean this mess up.” Talon thrust out his gloved hand and Ted took it.
With squishy footsteps, Ted scurried from the waiting room to the office behind the reception area. The subtle lighting allowed him to read the P-Touch labels on the lower cabinet doors, and he found the one helpfully marked, “Server.” Fishing the flash drive out of his other jacket pocket, he searched for a dry spot of clothing. Finding one beneath his coat, he wiped the wet flash drive dry, then jabbed it into a USB port and woke up the monitor.
Soft noises drifted in from the waiting room and a shadow flitted by the back of the office. Talon hoisted a new bottle of water into the cooler system, dragging everything back into place.
Ted’s conscience should twinge at the extensive list of illegal activities he’d racked up the entire day, including fraudulently obtaining the alarm codes for all the doctor’s offices in Ridge Creek, North Carolina, but it didn’t. Ted oversaw all the IT projects for SweetBriar Group, an environmental company that was really a front for a large, private black ops agency. He handled both the public (supporting causes such as lobbying for law changes, preserving habitats for endangered species, cleaning the air and oceans, etc.) and black ops (battling against sex/human trafficking, drug cartels, weapons trading, terrorists, and more) sides of the corporation. He committed a number of illegal offenses every day all in the name of justice (and with the blessing of numerous governments through contracts).
“I checked out the other side of the setup.” Talon sauntered into the room with his favorite, black-bladed knife absently swirling in his hand. “The physical therapy section shares this reception desk with the doctor’s office, so these are the only computers.”
“Thank you.” Ted continued breaking through the password prompt on the server.
Talon moseyed closer. “Ted, we’ve got nine more of these offices to go on the list. Do you honestly think you can continue your first mission with a demonstration like that and not wind up in handcuffs?”
Ted ignored the well-deserved barb.
“You thought I drilled you hard before?” Talon taunted, his knife almost hypnotizing from the corner of Ted’s eye. “After this display, I’m recommending to Cappy you hit the obstacle course twice as much, and wait until you see the lock wall I’m setting up for your ass. I think I’ll rig it so you’re electrocuted if you don’t have a lock open in a set time.”
Jerk probably would too.
At Ted’s request, Cappy—the leader of Delta Squad, a hulking badass and former Green Beret—had been making Ted’s life miserable with a strict daily regimen. Once the secret leaked about the lessons, the other five Delta members began putting him through their own drills to train him in their areas of expertise. Ted knew Cappy hoped he’d give up and concentrate on being the resident computer wizard, but Ted no longer had that luxury. He needed to know how to survive and defend himself for real. SweetBriar Group, or “SBG” as they referred to the secret side of the company, used to be run by Ted’s uncle. But a few weeks ago, his uncle’s paranoia and machinations had landed the man in jail. Now Ted was in hiding and officially under Delta Squad’s protection. Uncle Victor would figure out—if he hadn’t already—it had been Ted’s skills and information that had gotten him thrown behind bars. Once that happened, it would only be a matter of time before one or more of his uncle’s personal assassins sought to end Ted’s life. He had to be ready.
Most days, he felt like a pet; Delta’s adopted computer wizard and gadget guy. Then yesterday, he’d uncovered evidence that The Institution, a nasty national identity theft ring, had a tentacle in Ridge Creek. He didn’t know exactly who or how many people were involved, but he had determined the source was a doctor’s office. It didn’t take much convincing to receive the all-clear to run his very own op.
Bing. “I’m in.” They’d hit the offices of three doctors so far, and this was the third that used bargain-priced protection on their computers. Shameful. Did they want their patients’ confidential information stolen?
“Any sign of The Institution?” Talon’s knife paused.
“Too early to tell.” Ted clicked on his flash drive’s folder and downloaded the program he’d written from scratch yesterday. The software sought spyware embedded deep or anomalies that flagged this office as being The Institution’s source.
“Let’s hope that carpet dries before the first person arrives tomorrow.” Talon jammed his knife back into its sheath.
Ted pulled up the drive containing the security cameras. “Score. The office doesn’t use an online site to backup the footage.”
“Goody.” Talon leaned against the doorframe. “We done?”
Ted’s fingers flew over the keyboard. “Almost.” He built a backdoor into the server, allowing him to access it whenever he needed, then did the same for the security feeds. “Done.”
Talon disappeared.
Ted erased his keystrokes and tucked the server away. “Once we’re outside, I’ll delete our presence from the cameras and replace it with previously recorded footage. They’ll never know we were here.”
Ted met the operative by the door. Fingers crossed, breaking into the doctor’s offices yielded results.
2
“Uh, Cappy, are you sure about this?” Ted pseudo-whispered, angling his mouth toward the small, black dragon head pinned to his suit jacket’s lapel. The wire stringing down from the device into the transmitter/receiver prototype clipped to his belt wasn’t the most comfortable. He’d have to do something about that.
“Yes,” Cappy replied in a tinny voice, making Ted’s ear itch.
Ted fingered the earpiece, which resembled a small hearing aid. It constantly felt like it was about to fall out, and every time someone spoke, it vibrated against his inner ear. “Maybe I should re-run the credit reports or dive deeper into bank records.” Anything to waylay the current plan. He was okay with breaking and entering, but, um, what Cappy wanted him to do now... gulp.
“It’s a dead end,” the commanding officer of Delta Squad retorted. “Nothing popped. That means it’s most likely blackmail with the currency being patient records. Only way to uncover the players is to cultivate a source and pump her for information.”
Ted scratched his lobe. How did the operatives stand wearing these things? He swallowed against Cappy’s words sinking in. Cultivate a source. Yikes. His gaze flickered to the two imposing men sitting at a small table in the coffeehouse-style café section to his right. Casper Grady, a retired Marine, owner of a local entertainment center and newest member of Delta Squad, sat across from Cappy, a huge hulking man with a crew cut and no-nonsense attitude. Both ignored their specialty drinks to shoot glares at Ted, then continued to scan the bookstore.
“You’ve graduated to the next stage of your training,” Cappy reiterated, just as he had earlier when Ted reported for his daily ass-kicking. “You located the target. Now it’s time for the next step.”
Ted’s program had run through the night and spit out a log of viruses, adware, spyware, and anomalies in all the doctor offices’ computers.. In one glance, he found the source. Only one had all the markings of The Institution’s involvement. It didn’t take long for the operators of Delta Squad to offer a horrifying solution. The one he currently wished he opted out of.
“You want to continue as point on your first op?” Cappy asked, his chainsaw voice just shy of growling. “You have to be flexible enough to adapt to following wherever the information leads and doing whatever it takes to accomplish the goal.”
Ted swallowed again and played with the button on his suit coat. Every word Cappy said made sense in theory, but it became a whole new level of terrifying when he actually had to put them into practice. Rubbing his hands together, he studied the overlarge bookstore bustling with customers on a Thursday night. The store personnel had gone all out in decorating for Halloween. Cobwebs and cutesy ghosts hung from the ceiling, and endless displays of books promoting everything spooky were placed throughout the store. He’d bet that in two weeks, probably the day after trick-or-treating, the store would flip to Christmas.
“Congrats.” Cappy’s voice yanked him out of procrastinating his next move. “You’re now advancing beyond weight training and hand-to-hand combat lessons to developing a contact.”
Ted rubbed one of the many bruises riddling his thin, three-years-shy-of-thirty body. The new muscle tone he saw in the mirror had come at a painful price.
“Stop fidgeting and remember,” Cappy continued, “keep the chatter to a minimum.”
Chatter. Did that mean the conversation he was supposed to strike up out of thin air or the talking over the comms?
Edging in front of the glossy wall of the magazine section, he fingered the dragon head. “I get what you’re saying, but is asking someone for a date really a necessary step?” A thin layer of sweat coated his hairline. “You all aren’t hazing me, are you?”
“For christsake,” Talon bitched. “Grow a set of balls, will you?”
Ted’s gaze flew to Talon leaning against the far end of the magazine wall, pretending to leaf through a reference book about knives. Shocker he’d pick that. But honestly, the man could have picked up a book on knitting patterns for Christmas sweaters and it would have done nothing to tame the stone-cold-killer vibe shining from him.
