Page 1 of Spook’s Honor

PROLOGUE

SPOOK

The incessant ringing of a phone jerks me from a deep sleep. I’m so fucking exhausted. The op last night was a clusterfuck of epic proportions, and more than once I wondered if I was going to make it out alive. As it is, I’m babying a knife wound I had to stitch on the fly. If that’s not enough, I’ve also been shot! To be honest, I’m more worried about the knife wound than the scratch from the bullet.

It took everything I had to debrief my handler, and then I found the nearest hotel and fell into bed. I expected to sleep for at least the next three days before getting on my bike and heading home for a bit of R&R. Little did I know that hope was about to be blown out the water.

Being part of the CIA had never been in my game plan. I’d gone into the military right after high school, even though my best friend Maverick had begged me not to. As far as he was concerned, my place was with him in our motorcycle club; maybe if I’d had the type of upbringing he’d had, I’d have been content with that, but I didn’t. I had this constant drive to prove myself.

I loved the club, the brothers, and the feeling of camaraderie, but I needed more.

While I never expected to be recruited by the CIA, I figure I’ll stay with them until I’m too old to handle the kind of operations they give me. Slipping in and out of places and gathering intel comes surprisingly easy to me. Living on the edge feeds the need for excitement that makes me feel alive.

I know this isn’t something I can do forever, and I do have a plan to get out. I also know Maverick is waiting for me to come home and take my place.

I’d done my prospecting in the MC, same as all the other brothers, I just did not do it the same way that other prospects did. Mine had taken forever as I’d had to do most of it while on leave from the military. I’d been a fully patched brother when the CIA had found me.

I know that the second I’m home, Maverick will want to start talking about how I’ll be taking up the mantle of Vice President of the North Dakota chapter of Saint’s Outlaws. It had been mine and Maverick’s plan from the start.

It wasn’t time yet, though… but soon.

***

The phone stops ringing, and I slide back into blissful sleep, only for it to start up again.

“For fuck’s sake,” I growl, sitting up. I switch on the bedside light and look at my work phone, but it’s dark. That’s when I realize it’s my other phone—the one used exclusively for club business. When it stops, then starts ringing again, I hurry to grab it.

Maverick is the only one with that number, and he wouldn’t call me unless it was urgent.

Plucking the phone from my bag, I answer, “Mav, what’s wrong?”

My ears are blasted by screaming, and it takes me a second to realise it’s a baby—or several. That’s how loud it is.

“The fuck, Mav?”

“Give me a minute,” Mav replies. The background noise gets fainter until it cuts off completely with the sound of a door shutting.

“Luca, you need to come home.”

When Mav uses my legal name, I know it’s serious.

My best friend, Travis ‘Maverick’ Wright, is usually a happy-go-lucky, laid-back kind of guy. Unless provoked, then a whole different person emerges.

This is not a happy Maverick on the phone with me.

“What’s going on, Mav?”

He hesitates, then asks, “Do you know Lola Chaney?”

I’m surprised he knows the name. She’s another agent, and we’d spent some time together over the years. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement, with neither of us interested in more. Lola was all about her career and climbing the ladder to the top. I haven’t seen her in a while, though that isn’t unusual. That’s just how our lives work.

“Spook?” Mav presses.

“Yeah, Mav, I do. Why?”

“You need to come home man.”

“Okay, but why?”