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“I’m actually a gray hat.” I instantly regretted correcting him, but I wanted him to know that I followed my own code. That I was the one who made the choice, good or bad.
“Let me be very clear. Not signing isn’t an option, despite what Agent Brooks just suggested. That contract is a formality at best. You will be a part of Ghost Unit, whether you want to or not. Don’t make this more difficult for yourselves,” Fake Santa said, sounding bored.
Kingston tossed a few pens on the table. I forced myself to grab one and held it so tight I was surprised it didn’t break and spill ink everywhere. I scribbled my name across the dotted line, sealing my fate.
When I stood up, I glared at Agent Brooks, who only gave me an approving nod. He waited until each of us had signed our names. “Welcome to Ghost Unit, ladies.”
Happy fucking eighteenth birthday, Peyton.
ChapterTwo
PEYTON
Ten years later…
It was pitch-black out,clouds covering the light from the moon. Crickets were chirping, and a breeze swept through, ruffling the trees.
We couldn’t have asked for a better night for the op.
“Drones up,” I said into my headset as I activated three drones and flew them high in the sky, stopping them once they were hovering over the mansion.
Three of the four screens lit up, giving me the night vision view with heat blobs that represented people in and around the mansion. The fourth screen showed a man watching TV in a penthouse an hour away.
Hunched over my keyboard, I wished I had more room in this van to move. The only thing I disliked about these missions was how condensed my workstation was.
Five heat blobs show up on screen, exactly where they were supposed to be. My knee bounced. Hands suspended over the keyboard, I waited to hit the keys to hijack the mansion’s security cameras. The eight blank screens on the other side of my desk came to life with a single press of a key, giving me real time footage of what the security guards on this massive estate were seeing. The switch happened so fast, the people watching would have no way of knowing that it was a recording from yesterday.
They were blind, and they had no idea. Amused at their incompetence, I huffed a laugh. It made my job easier.
I turned on my mic. “All clear. Wife in primary bedroom, one child in small bedroom in the east wing. Retraction on my count. Three. Two. One.” I started the timer.
We’d studied the schematics of the entire twenty-acre estate, gotten intel from the security team about how often the guards changed positions, and accessed the closed-circuit security feeds. The only piece left was confirmation of where our targets were for extraction, which I’d just provided. We had three minutes and four seconds to secure both the woman and the child, then get them out of the house and through the woods to the waiting car.
As though they had one mind, all five heat blobs moved at the same time. I kept my eyes locked on the feeds from inside the house, watching for anything that shouldn’t be there. The fact that he had cameras not only monitoring the public areas of the house but also all the bedrooms, including the main bedroom where his wife lay sleeping, played to our advantage.
He used those cameras to watch his wife, to make sure she was where he wanted, when he wanted. It made me want to lock him up and leave him for weeks, teasing him with food and water just out of reach. I wished we could wipe his miserable existence off the face of the earth, but he was too high profile.
I kept one eye on the man in the penthouse. Lyle Lowenstein, the scumbag husband who was responsible for our mission here tonight. He didn’t hire us, but if it weren’t for his frequent and vicious abuse, we wouldn’t have needed to extract his wife and child. His money and power granted him immunity. Mrs. Lowenstein had finally summoned the fortitude to file a complaint, only to watch the evidence disappear and the report get buried.
It had taken me less than an hour to dig up three complaints. A deeper search yielded five more. Eight times she’d found enough courage to seek help. Eight times she’d been failed by the people who were supposed to protect her and her child.
It made my blood boil.
If it wasn’t for the private forum I’d created for social workers, so many more lives would’ve been lost. They needed a place to safely vent their frustrations over the bureaucratic red tape, and I needed a way to find the people who slipped through the cracks.
Some situations didn’t call for an extraction and we were able to help without ever leaving HQ. Sometimes more extreme measures had to be taken.
This wasn’t our first rescue mission, nor would it be our last.
The infrared bobs showed exactly where Izzy, Chris, Tyler, Adrienne, and Jessen were on the property. A guard turned the corner and headed toward the wife’s room. I checked the timer, even though I didn’t need it to know that he was early. He wasn’t supposed to be there for another five minutes. According to our intel, the guards checked to make sure she was still in her room at every shift change. The numbers on the clock climbed, screaming at me that we had thirty seconds left before we moved to plan B.
“Position one, beware, guard early.”
“You gotta be kidding me, man,” Izzy muttered.
“Nope, hang on.” Literally.
“Not much of a choice.” Her voice was strained, and I didn’t need to check the drone feeds to know she was holding onto the tiny ledge of the balcony outside the primary bedroom.
