Broken Falcon, page 2
He needed to figure out how to better channel this energy. How to deal with this flood of emotions. Because it was all new since the chip was taken away. For two years, the chip had spoken to him with silent words, controlling his actions, his memories, his emotions.
Eleven months after the chip was removed, the range of emotions he was able to feel once again remained both terrifying and exhilarating.
He hadn’t known there’d been a mute on his feelings until it was stripped away, and the first thing he felt was horror over what had been done to him, followed by earth-shaking rage.
Two years’ worth of banked rage meant he had a mountain of it inside him.
Rage he’d let loose tonight when he snapped a guy’s arm like it was a popsicle stick.
He wanted to do it again.
He breathed through the ferocious urge as he navigated the busy city streets. He tried to exhale the fury, as if that was a thing. This wasn’t who Chase was.
The violent vigilante was who they’d made him into.
He didn’t want to be a man who craved violence. A weapon they’d wielded like he was some sort of monster.
Wake the sleeping monster with the ring of a silent bell.
He’d seen the note. Knew what it meant.
When he tapped into the rage, was he waking the monster? Or was he merely releasing the demons that haunted him?
He reached the compound and parked in the fleet garage. He nodded to the guard at the front desk as he passed and made his way to his quarters. Thankfully, he didn’t have a scratch on him from the fight, or he’d find himself facing questions he didn’t want to answer. The only compound residents who knew about this extracurricular sideline were Tricia Rooks and the tech wizard who insisted everyone call him Mothman. Isabel hadn’t even told her husband about the vigilante aspect, and he owned the company.
The hacking they were doing was illegal, but then, the business they were going after wasn’t legal, and they weren’t looking to gather evidence for arrests and convictions. They were trying to save kids from being trafficked.
Chase could be fired for using company computers this way, so he only used a personal computer, as did Mothman and Tricia. They used the company network, but there was no way around that. Mothman had set up firewalls and VPNs to prevent anyone from following their trail into Raptor’s system, and the company had their own internal setup for Mothman’s…sometimes questionable security work.
Chase wasn’t really worried about getting fired, not after what had been done to him—all because he worked for Raptor—but still, if he were, so be it.
He was doing what needed to be done in a feeble attempt to save his sanity along with the lives of runaway teens. And one thing was certain, without this work—this lifeline Isabel had thrown him last winter—he might well have given in to his demons months ago.
One foot in front of the other. It was how he made it through each day and how he made it to his quarters now. He was on the first floor and had a two-room suite with a window in deference to his status as a member of Falcon team but also because he’d been to hell and back—twice—thanks to Raptor.
He’d play that card if he had to with the company CEO, Keith Hatcher, but he had a hard time believing it would ever come to that. Not when the owner’s wife was working with him and using the man’s money to rescue teens at risk of being trafficked. The majority of the runaways they rescued identified as female, but there were a growing number of trans and nonbinary kids who were unsafe at home, and they were especially vulnerable and targeted by predators.
He punched his code into his door and pressed his thumb to the reader. He trusted everyone who lived in the compound—a year ago, he’d been the threat within—but he would never leave his quarters unlocked. Aside from not wanting his extracurriculars found out, deep down, he wondered if there could be another like him. Another sleeper.
But eleven months ago, every single Raptor operative had shaved the spot behind their ear in solidarity and to submit to inspection. Plus, Dr. Parks was in prison.
There weren’t others like him. There couldn’t be.
And yet the fear was there. Deep inside. With nowhere to go.
He locked the door and leaned against it. He radioed to Tricia that he was back, then signed off. He was alone. Safe. He remembered everything.
No blackouts. No glitches. Tricia would have told him if there was a gap in time.
He hadn’t had a gap since October, but still, he tracked his movements every time he left the compound. The lock on his door was his time stamp. If he left in the middle of the night, Mothman would alert him and ask why.
He’d built this structure of check-ins and tracking to keep himself sane. After his cabin burned down, he’d tried to rent a few for away time, but quickly realized he needed others available to track him one way or another. The five weeks he’d spent in Oregon had been fine because he’d been with Josh, Ava, and Maddie. Josh knew his concerns.
Now he was back and pumped with adrenaline, and there was only one thing that appealed, and it wasn’t the gym.
No. The thing he wanted most right now was what he’d promised himself he wouldn’t do again when he returned to Virginia.
He’d also promised himself he’d never go there when pumped on adrenaline like this. Was it dangerous to mix the two? Would the adrenaline heighten his reaction?
Would it become another drug? Would violence and Desiree become the hit he needed to keep going?
He hadn’t logged in to that account in six weeks. Since before Portland. He was done. He didn’t need her.
Well, he did. But he didn’t want to. He wanted to be normal. He wanted to be attracted to women who weren’t pixels on a screen. He wanted to walk into a bar and see an attractive woman and feel something, even if it was nothing but a mild attraction to a pretty face.
But out in the world, he was numb. It was only here, in this private room, and only Desiree who made him feel.
He was so utterly broken. He hated that the only time he felt strong emotions was when the violence was triggered.
Sure, he laughed. He cared. He had spent many hours enjoying being in Portland with Josh and his family.
But right now, he was in his skin, feeling in a way he couldn’t process. And he wanted to see Desiree when he was feeling like this.
He needed to see her.
He sat down in front of his laptop and logged in, hoping she was online tonight and looking to earn a little money.
Chapter Two
Eden O’Keeffe’s feet ached and her hand throbbed where she’d burned it earlier in the day. One would think after six months as a barista that wouldn’t happen anymore, but there were some lessons that had to be learned over and over.
She cricked her neck as she scanned the counter to make sure everything was restocked or put away for the night. This wasn’t her usual store; she’d filled in tonight when an employee was hit with a stomach bug and the closing protocol was different.
A loud bang sounded, and she jolted, her gaze going to the locked coffee shop door. Two men stood on the other side of the tinted glass. She couldn’t see their faces in the dim light, but their skin was white and both appeared to be squat and beefy, like bouncers at a nightclub. One wore a sling on his right arm.
They looked like trouble, and judging by the way they pounded on the door, that was what they were here for.
With the front lights dimmed, she stood in the shadows. Curtains had been pulled down over the large front windows. Only the door wasn’t covered, because she hadn’t been able to get the blind to release. Given that she was on the interior side of tinted glass, there was a chance they couldn’t see her. Maybe she could just ignore them?
She inched toward the back where her coworker for the night, Tony, was balancing the cash drawer.
“We see you in there!” one of the men shouted.
Whelp.
“Open up!”
“We’re closed,” she yelled as she continued to inch along the rear counter, staying as far from the light as possible. Had it been a mistake to answer them? Maybe they’d lied about seeing her. She cursed her probable blunder.
The man’s meaty fist hit the glass again, causing the door to rattle. “Where did they take Jasmine?”
She had no clue what that meant and decided it was unwise to engage again. She ducked down below the counter and crouch walked through the doorway to the back of the store. “Tony, there are two creeps pounding on the front door, asking for someone named Jasmine.”
Tony frowned. “Wonder if this has to do with the girl who came tearing in here earlier like she was being chased?”
Eden knew exactly who he was talking about, and the girl’s terrified face flashed in her mind. Her eyes had been wild as she’d searched the tables. She’d calmed when she spotted the two women in the corner. “If it does, we could probably track them down. The redhead is Senator Ravissant’s wife.”
Tony’s brow furrowed, then he laughed. “Shit. Yeah. Isabel Ravissant. I didn’t recognize her. Good catch.”
She wanted to correct Tony that Isabel Dawson hadn’t taken her husband’s name, but that hardly mattered right now. “Well, red hair with curls like hers is distinctive.” The woman had been in the news last year after there had been some threats made against her and then a building on the Ravissant estate blew up.
Eden had recognized her the moment she entered the shop and had been surprised when the frantic girl joined the two women who’d been quietly chatting for over an hour at that point.
“The other woman,” Tony said, “the one with the blue hair, left her card. She said if anyone asked questions about the girl to call her.”
That explained how Tony was quick to guess this was about the girl. “Do you have the card?”
“I put it in the register.” He waved to the desk in front of him. He’d emptied the drawer of all cash, then returned it to the front. “It’s still in there.”
Eden frowned as she faced the front of the shop. The pounding was muted back here by the desk, but as she moved closer to the front, it got louder and more menacing.
“We should just call the police,” Eden said.
“It’ll take them forever to respond. I’ll get the card.”
“The door blind is open. I couldn’t get it to close,” she reminded him. She’d asked him to close it earlier and he’d agreed, telling her it was sticky if the cords weren’t pulled just right.
He nodded and crouched down as she’d done and disappeared into the front. A moment later, he was back, smiling as he studied the card. “Raptor. Of course. Makes sense given she was with the owner’s wife.”
Tony dialed the number on the card, which was answered immediately.
Eden could only hear his side of the conversation, but she gathered that an operative would be sent ASAP to check out the front and back entrances and to escort them to their vehicles, but if they felt there was immediate danger to call 911 because police would be able to use sirens. Raptor had to obey traffic laws, and the drive would take at least forty-five minutes.
She glanced at her watch. She had hoped to put in a few hours tonight on her other job, but given the long Metro ride home, this would make her later than late. She shrugged it off. When she’d agreed to the shift at Vivace, she’d known it might mean missing a night at her work-from-home job.
There was back-and-forth conversation between Tony and the person at Raptor, then he put the shop’s landline phone in the charging cradle on the desk. “Do you want to call the police?”
She wrinkled her nose. She doubted it would speed up the process of getting out of here and could delay things quite a bit. She listened for more pounding, but the front of the shop was quiet. “We can wait. It feels weird to call the police just to walk me to the Metro. But the Raptor folks seem to have expected something like this, so they can do it.”
Tonight would be a good night to use the rideshare app, but she found those scary. She cursed her car, which had given up the ghost a few months ago. She was saving up to buy a decent used car because she’d sunk all her money into buying the townhouse and setting up her home business.
She’d had to make the difficult decision to take a semester off from grad school because she couldn’t afford tuition and a vehicle, and she’d need a car for practicums in the spring. Until she had extra cash for a car, she was taking the Metro.
They waited in the back of the store. Tony paced. “I’m kind of feeling like a pussy for not just escorting you out the back.”
She frowned at that. She understood why he would feel that way, but still, it triggered her internal psychotherapist in training who wanted him to understand the meaning of his words as well as the emotions behind them. “First of all, don’t insult vaginas by using them pejoratively.”
“Sorry, I shouldn’t have used the P-word.”
“I have no issues with the word ‘pussy.’ I’m pussy positive. My issue is using it as an insult. But also, there’s no shame in not stepping into a back alley when there’s potential danger. Just because you have a penis doesn’t mean you can protect yourself or me from being blindsided by a baseball bat. We don’t know if they’re out there, but we do know those men were hostile and came after they knew the store would be closed and no one was around. The strength of a man—or woman—isn’t defined by willingness to face danger, it’s in how smart they are in protecting themselves and others once a threat has been identified.”
“I suppose, but it’s not very…manly.”
He was young—barely twenty-one—and she didn’t expect him to jump on board with her take, but it was always worth repeating. Maybe someday it would sink in for him.
“It’s always okay to seek help.” She pointed toward the front of the shop with her chin. “Those men out front scared me with their pounding and shouting. I don’t feel safe. I’m glad we’ve got someone coming who’s trained to deal with this, and who’ll be able to ensure the alley is clear before we exit.”
As a woman, she was taught to respect her response to fear early—before she entered her teens, but she wouldn’t point that out. Tony might just take that as further emasculation, that he needed to embrace the fear that is ever present in the female existence.
Of course, Eden had a healthy respect for fear given that she’d been a runaway teen once upon a time. She trusted the instinct of fear probably more than any other.
And these days, her healthy fear was heightened because of her other job, which made her cautious about everything, including rideshare apps. If she were recognized, she would be extra vulnerable, which was one reason she’d gone solo and started her own business six months ago—so she could block all IP addresses that were in the Maryland, Virginia, and DC area. It wasn’t foolproof, but it increased the odds that no client would stumble upon her in real life.
About forty minutes later, the landline phone rang. If it was Raptor, they probably had broken a few speed limits. Tony answered and put it on speaker.
“This is Tariq Mirza, from Raptor. I’ve got you on the line along with operative Chase Johnston. We wanted to give you the heads-up that I’ll be at the front door and Johnston at the back in one minute. If all is clear, we will knock and say the password you provided on your initial call. If you hear the correct password, it’s safe to open the door.”
“Understood,” Tony said, then hung up.
“What’s the password?” Eden asked.
“Pancakes and horseradish.”
“What kind of password is that?”
“They asked for a breakfast food and my least favorite condiment.”
“That’s pretty random.” But she figured the random part was the point. “You want front or back?” she asked.
“I’ll take the front,” he said, and she guessed he was attempting to show bravery, since the door blind remained open.
She’d let him have the macho assignment. She was content with the windowless back exit that opened into a dark alley. At least no one would see her through breakable glass.
She moved to stand beside the portal, feeling a surge of adrenaline at the idea that there was someone in the alley now, clearing it if there was a threat there.
Had the men gone into the alley? And would they still be here after forty minutes?
A moment later, she jolted at the pounding on the heavy metal door. She’d been expecting it, but still, the sound startled her in her jumpy state.
The pounding stopped, and a man said, “Pancakes and horseradish.”
She let out a huff of relief and threw back the dead bolt, but left the alarm engaged, just in case, and pulled open the door.
A tall white man stood in the center of the light mounted above the alleyway exit.
He looked young—her age or possibly younger, which surprised her given that she was only twenty-six. For some reason, she thought all Raptor operatives were hardened postmilitary men in their thirties or forties. That was the case with the ones who’d made the news, anyway.
He held up an ID card. “Please confirm my ID, then key off the alarm.”
She read his Virginia driver’s license that listed him as Chase Johnston, which, she believed, was the name the other guy had mentioned. Used to carding people because the coffee shop also sold beer and wine, she flicked her gaze to the birth year and was surprised to see the guy was twenty-seven. Older than her by three months.
She stepped back to let him enter and keyed off the alarm.
He closed the door and bolted it, then tapped the headset at his ear. “Front clear, Mirza?”
There were two rooms between the back exit and front of the shop, so it didn’t surprise her that she heard nothing from the front as the man appeared to be responding through the headset. Not wanting to stand in the small corridor in the night security light, Eden stepped back and flipped the switch for the bright overhead light.
The young operative—or rather, same-age-as-her operative—appeared about to say something when his mouth snapped shut.
