Dangerous in Motion Read online

  Dangerous in Motion

  Aegis Group Alpha Team #4

  Sidney Bristol

  Website | Facebook | Mailing List

  Inked Press

  Dangerous in Motion

  Aegis Group Alpha Team #4

  He let her go once.

  The last time retired Navy SEAL Adam Novak saw his wife was on their wedding day. His runaway bride has made her life...without him. Resigned to going it alone, he’s not expecting her coworkers show up on his doorstep pleading for him to find her.

  She's been waiting for him.

  Virologist Heidi Novak is in over her head. Again. Kidnapped while researching a mysterious outbreak, she's forced to work with the enemy. That is, until an all too familiar silent, giant barges in, guns blazing.

  Old flames burn twice as hot.

  With the threat of pandemic emergency hanging over their heads, Adam and Heidi must face their past if they're going to save everyone’s future.

  Explore the whole Aegis world in these series...

  It all began with the Aegis Group.

  Dangerous Attraction

  Dangerous in Training

  Dangerous Games

  Dangerous Assignment

  Dangerous Protector

  Dangerous Heat (coming 2018)

  In Dangerous Games it continued with the Gone Geek girls.

  Beauty and the Geek

  Mr. Purr-fect and the Geek

  The Jock and the Geek

  The Gamer and the Geek

  The Adorkable Girl and the Geek

  The Fake Boyfriend and the Geek

  When the Seattle office of Aegis Group opened the Twisted Royals took the stage.

  The Origin Story

  Alpha Prince

  Her Prince

  Bad Boy Prince

  Noble Prince

  Within Aegis Group, special teams take on special jobs, beginning with the Alpha Team.

  Dangerous in Love

  Dangerous in Action

  Dangerous in Transit

  Dangerous in Motion

  Dangerous in Charge (coming 2018)

  Other specialized teams exist under the Aegis Group umbrella, including Lepta Team.

  Dangerously Taken

  Dangerously Involved (2018)

  Dangerously Deceived (2018)

  Dangerously Broken (2019)

  Dangerously Entwined (2019)

  Stay tuned for the appearance of the Troy Team and Omega Team.

  For short reads, tune in this December for the Body of Danger novella series kick-off.

  Heart for Danger

  Mind for Danger (2018)

  Soul for Danger (2019)

  Coming in 2018, Texas SWAT: A Small Town Suspense Series.

  Fighting Redemption (2018)

  Stolen Redemption (2018)

  Charity, you’re my angel <3

  A successful relationship requires falling in love multiple times, but always with the same person.

  ―UNKNOWN

  Table of Contents

  Prologue.

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  6.

  7.

  8.

  9.

  10.

  11.

  12.

  13.

  14.

  15.

  16.

  Epilogue.

  Prologue.

  2000. CDC DENGUE EPIDEMIC Treatment Facility, Nicaragua.

  Léo Peloquin huddled in line with the other teenagers waiting for treatment. His body ached, but not like the infirm around him. If he kept his head down he could make it through this farce and back home before his parents were released.

  He was grateful for the outbreak. Probably the only one. It’d given him a respite while his parents got better. To think, if his parents had taken this trip to tour properties they wanted to develop, they’d have been gone before the Dengue Fever got this severe.

  The last week was the best seven days of his life. Mom and Dad were too sick to get up, which meant he’d been able to hide in his room, far away from everyone. But as he’d come to learn, every break from their cruelty was short lived.

  The line shuffled forward. He stepped into the gymnasium at the local school and peered around, his curiosity getting the better of him. Léo wasn’t allowed to attend public school or have friends. His parent’s rules were stricter while they were here. His parents viewed the people of Nicaragua as below them as if they were somehow better because they were from Spain.

  The gym had been transformed into a series of sectioned off patient rooms using some sort of tent fabric. His parents had turned their noses up at the idea of coming here once they accepted that they had contracted the virus, opting instead to go to the hospital. The local hospital had turned them away, citing the CDC was better equipped to help with the outbreak.

  Léo had tried to cover up his laugh by pretending to cough. He was pretty sure Mom had noticed, which meant he’d have to pay the price for it later.

  “Next. This way.” The nurse held out her gloved hand and gestured for Léo to enter one of the examination rooms.

  He ducked behind the curtain and stared at the older woman decked out in scrubs, a mask and gloves. She glanced up at him and the skin around her eyes crinkled with a smile.

  “Hello there. Have a seat?”

  Léo nodded and sat on the chair she indicated.

  He could pretend to be sick, couldn’t he?

  Then again, what if he told someone the truth?

  He fantasized about that from time to time, but he’d given up the hope of being rescued long ago. No one felt sorry for the poor rich boy.

  The nurse chatted at him while she took a blood sample and applied the blood to a set of test strips. She seemed nice. What would it be like to have someone like her as a parent? He doubted she’d lock him in the coat closet. What would it take to convince someone like her to take him away from this?

  Day dreaming was foolish. He knew better.

  “Can you remove your shirt, please?” the nurse asked.

  “Is that...necessary?” He hunched his shoulders.

  “Afraid so.”

  He could handle this. There was always an explanation. He’d tripped. Fallen. Whatever.

  Léo grasped the hem of his shirt and pulled it up over his head, keeping his gaze on the ground.

  The nurse stood there for several, long moments.

  Neither spoke.

  She knew. Some people didn’t understand or couldn’t see it, but she did.

  Sweat broke out along his back, hair line and under arms. He couldn’t draw attention to his parents, not after the last time someone had come asking questions about him.

  “I’m going to get the doctor. Stay right there,” the nurse said.

  Léo stared down at himself. In the light of day the bruises were worse. Darker. How had he ever thought he could play this off as part of the rash associated with Dengue Fever?

  He glanced at the door flap.

  Maybe he should slip out now. He wasn’t sick. He didn’t need to be here. No one need bother themselves on his account. The only reason he’d been swept up in this was because someone had to drive.

  Léo pulled his shirt on, stood and took a step toward the door flap. He peered out through the crack, searching the people moving from exam room to exam room. The nurse was nowhere to be seen.

  Dreaming about a better tomorrow was well and good, but his reality was that nothing would ever change. His best chance was with slipping out now with none the wiser about who he was or what was wrong with him.

  The canvas side of the examination room rustled.

  Léo whirled around and
stared.

  A doctor in a white coat entered from the side and not the front.

  Léo froze.

  For several moments they stood there, Léo examining the wood grained floor and the doctor staring at him.

  “Sit down and take off your shirt, please?” The doctor pulled the chair to the middle of the examination room.

  Léo briefly considered ducking out, but that would only draw attention. He sat on the edge of the chair and stared at the toes of his sneakers. The doctor waited, but Léo didn’t make a move to take his shirt off.

  The doctor finally approached him and gently lifted the back of Léo’s shirt. The doctor pressed against his ribs, down his back and on the fleshy parts of his abdomen. Léo tried not to wince, but even after a week some places still hurt. Finally the doctor’s hands came to rest on his shoulders. They were warm despite the latex against his skin.

  “Do you want this to stop?” the doctor asked.

  Léo tilted his head to the side. What was the doctor asking?

  “I can make sure they never hurt you again. Would you like that?”

  Léo swallowed. He would, but the truth was, unless his parents were dead they would never stop hurting him.

  1.

  PRESENT DAY. WEDNESDAY. Adam Novak’s Home, Seattle, WA.

  Adam Novak stared at the light shining through the curtains in his living room.

  He hadn’t left the lamp on when he ran out to get dinner. There was no doubt about that in his mind.

  Someone was in his house.

  If he called the cops whoever was inside stood a chance of getting away with they’d broken in for. He’d known the neighborhood wasn’t the best place, all things considered, which was why he opted to stash all of his gear at the Aegis headquarters. The last thing he wanted was for some idiot to get their hands on his service weapons and kill someone.

  He left the truck at the curb and cut through the grass into his neighbor’s yard. The elderly couple would be in bed by now, so there was no one to observe his trespassing. He let himself into his back yard by way of a gate between the two properties.

  Lights were on in the kitchen, too.

  Whoever was inside didn’t care about being seen. There was no broken window, no obvious signs of forced entry.

  What did he have worth stealing, anyway? The TVs?

  The back door opened and a familiar, dark skinned man leaned out.

  “Yo, Novak. Get in here and stop creeping around in the dark.”

  Adam gaped at the man, his brain not quite wrapping around why one of the Aegis Group higher up’s was here.

  A job.

  It had to be

  That was the only thing that made sense.

  “What are you doing in my house, Luke?” Adam plodded toward the back door. Truth be told, he welcomed the idea of getting back out in the field after most of his team had been sidelined by medical leave.

  He stepped into the kitchen and Luke closed the door behind him. Adam stared at the four people sitting around his dining table. Zain and Abigail he knew, and two were strangers.

  If this was a job where was his Team Leader? Where were the other guys?

  “To what do I owe the honor?” Adam asked. There was no good reason for Zain—the boss of the Aegis Group Seattle office—and two senior officers of the company to have broken into his home.

  “Sit.” Abigail patted the chair at the head of the table. Luke had already taken up a spot next to his wife on the bench seat. Those two were the real trouble. Adam didn’t know what they were into at the main offices outside of Chicago, but every time Abigail got involved things got worse on a global level.

  “Sorry about this.” Zain’s expression was tight, concerned.

  Adam didn’t like this one bit. Something was up. This wasn’t standard operating procedure, which meant shit was going to get real dangerous if someone didn’t act fast.

  He set the plastic bag containing his dinner on the counter and took the chair at the head of the table. The other two individuals kept staring at him, like he was a ghost or something.

  “This is Cindy and John.” Zain nodded at the two strangers.

  Adam took in their neat, plain appearance. No jewelry, the woman’s nails weren’t done, they appeared to be low maintenance individuals. Clients in hiding? People in need of a bodyguard and a place to crash? Three of their five person Alpha Team were out of commission due to medical leave from their last gig. It stood to reason that Zain might throw a curve ball at Adam.

  “They’re from the CDC,” Zain said slowly.

  Adam’s world slowed to a stop.

  The Centers for Disease Control?

  Sweat broke out along Adam’s spine and his mouth went dry. Their appearance made sense now. They were researchers, lab types who worked too much and forgot the world. They were like her.

  His stomach knotted up until he tasted bile on the back of his throat.

  He’d feared this day.

  There was only one reason anyone from the CDC would want to contact him.

  “Okay, someone is going to have to start talking. You wanted it to wait until you were in the room with Adam, here he is. Now, talk.” Abigail stared at the two newcomers.

  Cindy and John glanced at each other and shifted.

  Cindy was younger, probably in her mid-thirties. She had a slight upturn to her nose and her glasses made her eyes seem too large for her face. John was older, probably in his late fifties, with silvering hair and a thin frame.

  “Is she okay?” Adam’s voice was rough, and it was a chore forcing the three words out.

  “We don’t know,” Cindy said softly. Were they friends? Did they work together?

  “What’s going on?” Adam directed his stare at Abigail.

  Someone was going to give him answers.

  On a good day, he thought about his wife a handful of times. On the bad ones, it was all he could do keep from getting in his truck and driving across the country to find out what she was doing these days. He’d never thought things would turn out this way that they would grow apart, but they had. He still wasn’t sure how it happened, but with Heidi crazy made sense.

  “Start at the beginning,” Abigail said in her no nonsense voice.

  John cleared his throat and leaned forward.

  “We don’t know where to start,” he said.

  “Where’s Heidi? Is she okay?” Adam asked.

  “We don’t know where she is,” John replied.

  “Let me. Heidi works in virology. She brought a matter to us for our input.” Cindy gestured at John. “We’ve seen a higher number of outbreaks in the last...eighteen months or so. A lot of them have been related, but there’s no geographic reason for the similarity. I mean, remote groups with little to no outside contact, on different continents should not be contracting similar, unknown diseases. Unless...someone was making those people sick.”

  “How does Heidi tie into all this?” Adam feared the answer.

  “She saw the connection first and brought it to us to verify what she’d discovered,” John replied.

  “We think someone is using CDC samples to engineer viruses and infect people. We think the CDC has someone exploiting our resources for a nefarious purpose.” Cindy glanced at John while she played with her watch band. She was afraid. Whatever Heidi was looking into was bad.

  “Shit.” Adam glanced at Abigail then Zain.

  “They came to us earlier today, and we hopped a plane here,” Luke said.

  “What about Heidi? Where is she?” Adam could see how engineered viruses would be bad, but they were avoiding his question.

  “She was working on another outbreak near Lima, similar to ones we’ve seen. The last I heard from her, she said she thought she was close to identifying the strain of virus they’d used to create this outbreak.” John glanced at Cindy. “No one has heard from her in a week. The team said she just disappeared. We think... We think whoever is behind this knows Heidi was on to them. That we’ve
been digging into it. We didn’t know what to do at first, and then someone broke into Cindy’s apartment and went through her things. We knew then that we had to do something. Heidi always said if anything ever happened to her, we should come to you.”

  Adam stared at the stranger across from him.

  Heidi, his estranged wife he hadn’t seen him since their wedding day, had sent these people to find him. Adam sat back and scrubbed his hand across his face, somehow pissed off, terrified and hopeful all at once.

  “What the hell am I supposed to do?” Adam knew what he wanted to do: buy a ticket to Lima and go find her. The question was, what should he do?

  “Now we’re getting somewhere.” Abigail leaned forward, her gaze directed at the two scientists. “Do you know why they’d take Heidi? Is it just because she knows something? What purpose would someone have in using these viruses? Are they deadly? Would they spread quickly? Are we talking about a weapon? Some sort of attack?”

  Adam stared at Abigail. There was no real reason for her to be here unless the threat was greater than they suspected. He didn’t know what the hell Abigail did these days, but it was dangerous. Adam didn’t want Heidi involved in danger.

  “Heidi had all that information,” John said.

  “She didn’t want to share it. She said she was scared it would make us all targets.” Cindy gestured at her partner.

  “Why would Heidi send you here?” Adam had thought about just showing up at the CDC a few times and forcing Heidi to see him again, but he hadn’t. She’d run from him to a better, happier life. The last thing he was going to do was drag her back to the past.

  “You’re her husband.” Abigail reached over and squeezed his hand. She glanced at the other two. “What exactly is the job?”

  “Usually we’d go through the CDC to the military, who would then find Heidi. We fear whoever is behind this would be in that chain of command. By going to them, we’d tell them what they might not know already—which is that more people than just Heidi are aware of what’s going on.” To Cindy’s credit she spoke calmly, while her fidgeting told another story.

  “We just want to find Heidi,” John said.