As she worked on the second bag, which would serve as her flotation device, the “Why me?” question was growing louder in her mind. A little voice that wanted to make her small and pitiful.
And then she remembered the story of how Creed’s fellow Team Charlie operator, Halo St. John, had met his wife, Mary.They were strangers working together to save a family. His wife had shown up in that city for a singular reason: Mary’s horoscope said it was her responsibility to be there for the greater good.
Talk about leaning into the woo-woo.
That story didn’t quite fit Auralia’s present reality.
Fact: Auralia was in no position to be helpful to anyone, except perhaps herself.
Another small, selfish part of her brain was voicing astonishment that Creed and Gator weren’t calling out to her that they’d have her down in a minute, hang tight.
But she also wasn’t in dire need. Maybe Gator and Creed checked in the ether and saw she was okay, and trusted her to save herself, so they could focus on the truly vulnerable.
Auralia decided to go with that story.
They checked on her.
She was okay.
This was all going to be fine.
Now, to make herself believe it.
Chapter Fifteen
Creed
It was bad. Really bad.
And the worst of it was that the cars on this four-lane highway kept coming.
Looking back over his shoulder, Creed could see massive Jack, nearly seven feet tall, standing at the top of the hill in the middle of the damned street with his high-vis neon limon—the eye-catching color that looked like a lemon and lime had a baby—rain gear pulled over his Iniquus uniform with flares in his hands, waving them as a signal, wasn’t having much success.
Physics says a body in motion tends to stay in motion, and Creed would be damned if he hadn’t seen it time and again. Someone comes upon something that doesn’t make sense to them; perhaps their inner child got scared by what might seem like a giant asking them to slow down for no apparent reason.
Then, over the hill, they’d go, and all bets were off.
They’d see the pile up; they’d stomp their brakes.
Some were able to bring themselves to a stop. Some were even able to start a three-point turn just to get T-boned while trying to head back in a safe direction. BAM! They got bowled into the crisis by the next guy, who wasn’t going to be dissuaded from their route by some guy in a neon jumpsuit.
Creed held his phone off to the side for Logistics to view and record the situation in real time.
When Creed was going through his orientation, the tour of Iniquus Logistics reminded him of something out of a sci-fi movie. The people sitting at their computers with large boards that could bring up real-time maps that locked in the movements of personnel—both human and K9—as well asvehicles, the satellite feeds that would make the intelligence communities salivate at the clarity of detail both day and night, and the systems managers that protected the operators' cover stories. “Movies and fiction novels,” he repeated to himself as they showed how a call would come in to a dedicated line. The people who sat in front of those lines were not only trained as improv actors but also by the intelligence community to extract information while revealing little. They could be anyone that the operator had set up in advance to protect their cover story.
One of the stories they told was about Honey Honig, an operator in Panther Force (the first field operations team that Creed trained with after signing with Cerberus). Honey had the cover of being a high-dollar executive. When Honey was captured by terrorists, he had the kidnappers call the line to prove he was worth a great deal of money. Whatever the actor said was believable enough that the threatened decapitation was postponed. Iniquus knew this cover was for extreme circumstances, and they were able to pinpoint his location halfway around the world.
Strike Force was in the air, and Honey came out the other end whole and healthy.
“Stuff of thrillers and novels.”
Iniquus Security ran on a golden reputation. Men and women were held to the highest of personal ethos and moral code.
All of it was damned impressive.
Creed was a lucky man. He had a dream job, his dream pup, and, most cherished, his dream woman in Auralia. Could there be anything deeper and more satisfying than loving someone all your life as smart and kind, rock-solid, and fearless, and then discovering there was magic laced beneath the surface that wove them together, like ribbons of gold and sweet like honey?
Those thoughts were the opposite of what he ran past.
