Dangerous Connections (Aegis Group Book 9) Read online

  Dangerous Connections

  Aegis Group #9

  Sidney Bristol

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  Inked Press

  Dangerous Connections

  Aegis Group #9

  Being a bodyguard to an internet celebrity should be a walk in the park. At least that's what Marine Silas Herrera tells himself when he agrees to escort the woman he's never heard of on some kind of press grab. He doesn't much care about how beautiful a woman is if she's rotten on the inside.

  Ekko Kaur is playing chicken with a country, and she's not about to blink. With cameras aimed at her she knows her former home country can't make a move and silence her like they've done to so many others. Like her brother. Now if a certain hunky, obnoxious someone would just stay out of her way.

  The simple bodyguard job turns complicated when Silas discovers that Ekko is smuggling people out of the country. And not just anyone. Whistleblowers scheduled to testify at the United Nations. His camera hungry client isn't at all what she appears and very soon he finds himself falling for the woman the world doesn't know. But he has to keep her alive first.

  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 Secrets

  Dangerous Betrayal

  Dangerous Heat

  Dangerous Connections

  Dangerous Exposure (2020)

  More Coming Soon!

  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

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

  Dangerously Taken

  Dangerously Involved

  Dangerously Deceived

  Dangerously Broken

  Dangerously Entwined

  Troy Team has signed on to work an ultra-secret case in the Aegis Group Task Force series.

  (prequel) First Risk: a newsletter exclusive serial

  Stolen Risk

  Forged Risk

  Technical Risk (2020)

  More soon!

  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

  Stay tuned for the appearance of the Omega Team.

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

  Heart of Danger

  Spirit of Danger

  Soul for Danger (2020)

  The other Smith brother takes us to the Texas SWAT series, a small town suspense series.

  Fighting Redemption

  Stolen Redemption

  Forbidden Redemption

  Reckless Redemption (coming soon)

  Thanks to the SWAT team, Ransom, Texas enjoys a slower pace of life beginning in The Love Barn.

  Give Me Back My Man

  Summer of Love

  Party out of Bounds

  For Lily who showed me a whole new world.

  Love and hate are two horns of the same goat.

  ―UNKNOWN

  Table of Contents

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  6.

  7.

  8.

  9.

  10.

  11.

  12.

  13.

  14.

  15.

  16.

  17.

  18.

  19.

  20.

  21.

  Epilogue.

  1.

  Wednesday. Hotel, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

  Silas Herrera was never doing anyone another favor for as long as he lived.

  Hell, he should have learned his lesson after the last favor he’d done for his best friend had them tromping through hip high savanna grass hunting people that liked to shoot at other people.

  This time he was learning that lesson. This was a mistake he would not repeat. Ever.

  No. More. Favors.

  He scrubbed a hand over his face. At least this job was simply tedious. There were small things to be thankful for. No one shot at them. He got to stay in nice hotels. Nothing exploded. His meals had been decent. There hadn’t been any deaths. Though he was about ready for a change of pace. If he had to watch one more emergency make-up situation, he might just stab his own eyes out.

  He glanced at his watch again. If his asset waited much longer, he’d have to insist she hold tight while he scouted the route to the meeting room again.

  Did he dare tell her to get her ass in gear?

  Not in those words.

  Silas cleared his throat and took a calming breath. Only then did he dare speak to her. “Are you ready to go?”

  “Not... quite... yet...” Her voice was sensual and throaty, the sound amplified by the tile bathroom.

  No doubt she was doing some last minute touch-ups to her already perfect face.

  Silas leaned against the entry and grit his teeth.

  Deep breath.

  Just a few more days.

  This job wasn’t that bad. It really wasn’t the asset. Sure, she could be difficult, but all people were. The problem was him and he knew it.

  Silas had been off-balance ever since the South Africa trip last summer. His best friend and partner had fallen head over heels in love with a prickly bridesmaid and left Silas in the dust. Sure, they still worked together and rented a room in the same house and nothing would change the fact that they had a friendship forged through trials many hadn’t survived. But they weren’t walking this new path together. For the first time since Silas’ divorce and joining the Marines he was alone and he didn’t like it.

  “There.” The woman’s voice broke into the moment, rescuing him from his thoughts.

  “About damn time,” he muttered under his breath, then mentally kicked himself. Normally he held his tongue in the field, but this woman got under his skin.

  Ekko Kaur stepped out of the bathroom, tossed her silky, blue-black hair over one shoulder and posed with one hand on her hip. She locked eyes with him and smiled. Today’s outfit was another skin-tight tank top with some brand name plastered over her chest. The same brand name was printed on one thigh of her yoga-style pants that molded to her toned legs. Add to that the picture perfect face and boobs he’d gladly let suffocate him, and she living proof she as doing her job well. She was a walking, talking billboard.

  Five days ago that smile had just about cut him off at the knees, stolen his breath and made him want to worship her. Too bad he’d gotten to know the woman under the shiny veneer. Sometimes it didn’t matter how good the packaging looked, the insides were simply rotten.

  “All set,” she announced. “You know, it’s totally unnecessary to escort me around the hotel?”

  “We all have our job to do, ma’am.” He drawled his words, drawing on his Texas roots.

&n
bsp; Ekko’s eyes narrowed slightly. Either she didn’t like her implied command ignored or being called ma’am. He hadn’t puzzled it out yet.

  Silas turned away from the beautiful woman and opened the suite door. He’d feel better if he could scout their path once more, but he didn’t think she’d stay put and wait for him.

  The hall was empty save for a trio of people he knew to be part of the United Nations team. They were likely headed to the same place as Ekko.

  “Come on,” he said over his shoulder.

  Ekko sighed and he knew she rolled her eyes, but she wanted in front of the cameras more than she wanted to annoy him. He pulled her room door shut then tried the lock to ensure it was secure. Satisfied they were leaving things as safe as he could they set off for the elevators.

  “You know people are starting to talk about you?” Ekko fell into step beside him.

  Silas didn’t acknowledge her words. He was too busy paying attention to the hall, the sounds from the rooms. Just because the job had been easy didn’t mean it would continue to be so. He was there for a reason after all.

  She sighed heavily again. “Are you going to pull that stick out of your ass and actually have fun?”

  Then what would you have to look at?

  Silas bit his tongue. Normally he didn’t have such a difficult time with people. He’d actually prided himself on being easy to get along with, charming even. And then he’d met her.

  It had been abundantly clear to him from the moment he met her that Ekko did not want a bodyguard. Maybe if she’d been more flexible this working relationship wouldn’t have soured quite so fast. But it had and now they alternated who was annoying who any given moment.

  Yeah, he was done doing favors.

  They reached the elevator landing and he pressed the button then turned to stare behind them.

  “You do not have to be my constant shadow all the time.” Ekko pulled her phone out of a slim pocket on her thigh.

  Was she going to start her broadcast right here?

  God, he hoped not.

  “Just doing my job, ma’am.”

  This time she spared him a momentary glare.

  Was it the ma’am?

  The elevator dinged. Silas’ hand was at his hip before the doors slid open.

  “Keep protecting me from nothing.” Ekko sauntered into the empty elevator and jabbed the button for the first floor.

  Silas held his tongue and followed her in.

  Neither spoke during the short descent. With luck she was done needling him for the evening. By the time she finished in the main hall she’d be too tired to spare him more than a few words before falling into bed. Or so he hoped. She could always surprise him.

  The lower floors of the old hotel clung to the grandeur in which it had been built. There were polished marble floors, gold gilding on the walls, oil paintings. Everything he could have wanted from a European hotel. Except they weren’t in Europe.

  Being in the Marines and then working with Aegis Group took him all over the globe. Still, there were places he hadn’t expected he’d get to see. Mongolia was the top of that list. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected of the hotel, but opulence hadn’t been it.

  Ekko strode along, forcing Silas to match her pace. She wasn’t a tall woman, but those little legs of hers carried her along quickly. He grit his teeth and did his best to watch for threats from all sides. Privately he thought Ekko was really only in danger when it came to internet trolls, but he wasn’t about to slack on the job.

  A pair of hotel security guards posted at the main hall eyed them. Silas produced their credentials and glanced over his shoulder at the hotel patrons.

  No red flags yet.

  Could this job really be this easy?

  They were admitted to the hall without further inquiry. No pat downs. Nothing more than a glance at some paper.

  Silas ushered Ekko through the doors and into the event space.

  It had been transformed from a banquet type area. Tape sectioned off areas, allotting each news crew an equal amount of floor space while also leaving some room for onlookers.

  “Try to have some fun,” Ekko said over her shoulder.

  She hadn’t gone ten feet before a journalist swooped in. The man said something that had Ekko tossing her head back in laughter. It had that fake, plastic sound to it. Silas shook his head. Hardly anything about the woman was authentic. Her eyes sparkled and she tilted her head, every bit of her attention on the man guiding her toward the cameras and lights, but even that was an act.

  Silas edged along the wall, keeping her in sight. He didn’t want to get in the way, but this was his job.

  He’d never heard of Ekko Kaur before his boss’ wife had mentioned her. She was some sort of internet video game celebrity. One of the reasons Silas had been their pick for this job was because he never put much stock in famous people. They were just people after all.

  Ekko didn’t seem to know that though. The moment he’d laid eyes on her he’d been momentarily taken with her beauty. She had the caramel skin tones unique to the mixed ethnicity common in her home country of Dauria. Her eyes were large and a bit almond shaped. With the colored contacts she favored she almost looked like a cartoon character. One of those anime girls or whatever they were called. If she wasn’t nearly so full of herself, he might call her beautiful, but the way she walked around with her nose in the air and always in front of a camera really put him off. She couldn’t even pause her non-stop live streaming to meet him or act like she cared if she had a bodyguard. Hell, Silas was half certain Ekko didn’t actually want him there. He wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the people behind her sponsors were the driving force for his presence.

  Silas crossed his arms over his chest and frowned around the room. The space had seemed large when they were shown to it late last night, but now there were five different news sets and an area for crew to lounge. Since there wasn’t much to do around the hotel most of the United Nations team was there, too. And almost all of them were watching Ekko.

  At this rate Silas’ job would be more about scaring off the love struck guys than anything else.

  The whole job was strange. Though in the beginning when Zain had called him into their new, temporary offices it had sounded fairly normal. There was a woman traveling to an area where she might be threatened because of her notoriety. Obviously she needed a bodyguard. But Zain always did know how to present a job in the best way possible. Silas should have known that having the boss’ wife there was significant but truth was they were all still reeling from the attack on their offices to begin with. He’d been unprepared for the job pitch.

  At least Zain had been up front that this was a favor to Andrea, his wife, and the video game company she worked for.

  Andrea was one of the lead programmers for the Drudge video games. Drudge was one of the most popular, multi-platform video games on the market. Even Silas had played it. And Ekko Kaur was a prominent on-line celebrity connected to the game. The way Silas understood it, people subscribed to Ekko’s on-line accounts to watch her play and talk about the games. She was even a sponsored celebrity with endorsements from the game, her computer manufacturer, even down to the make-up and clothes she wore while on camera. And so far it seemed like she lived on camera. If they weren’t in the air, she found something to talk about, be it to her phone that posted to her own channels, or discussing the trip with one of the news crews accompanying the team.

  The only reason why Ekko would need a bodyguard to begin with that made sense had to tie back to why they were accompanying the United Nations team to the border of Dauria.

  According to Ekko’s file she and her family had fled Dauria years ago. And who could blame them? Everything Silas had heard made it seem like a circle of hell.

  Tucked between Russia, Mongolia and China, Daria was a small, land-locked country that barely registered with most people. Silas knew about it, but only because of Dauria’s close relationship with China and to a les
ser extent Russia. It was well believed that many people disappeared into Dauria and were never seen again.

  If people thought the Chinese had an iron grip on their people, they had nothing on the so-called President of Dauria. The man had been in power since his mid-thirties and had to be pushing nearly seventy now. The only reason most people were unaware of Dauria was because the country had a relatively weak military. Otherwise they’d be another North Korea with the way the government tried to control its people. There might as well be a ten mile high wall all the way around the small country. Nothing went in or out that wasn’t approved, be it movies, books, and don’t even get started on the internet.

  And now Dauria wanted a seat at the United Nations. With both China and Russia backing them, they had a better chance than Silas wanted to admit of making that happen.

  Silas had listened to Ekko talk at the cameras enough to understand that she was against any kind of international support for Dauria. It was the one thing she’d said they could agree on. Too bad she seemed to be here for the sole purpose of self-promotion. After they went to the border and the United Nations team went in to do a tour of the country’s interior he had no doubt she’d be camped out in front of whatever camera would point her way.

  He wasn’t looking forward to that week. If he was lucky, she’d get bored and want to go home. Too bad his luck was shit lately.

  He grimaced and glanced around the room. Nearly every man was staring at Ekko. And why not? She was a beautiful woman. If only the insides matched the outside.

  WEDNESDAY. HOTEL, ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia.

  Ekko’s face hurt from smiling and she was fairly certain she could taste the journalist’s cologne. She was so ready to be done with this and back home. Being on camera and talking to her regular viewers was nothing like this circus. But if she wanted to stay alive, the best thing for her to do was make sure the cameras were rolling.

  She was playing with her life being this close to Dauria.

  Dauria was a messed up hell hole hiding behind a curtain of national pride. She was eternally grateful her parents had made it out and that they’d enjoyed freedoms the people of Dauria didn’t dare dream about.