Barracuda Security Complete Trilogy
BARRACUDA SECURITY
The Complete Series (Books 1-3)
by: CAMILLA BLAKE
Copyright © 2019
All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. All characters appearing in this work are products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to events, businesses, companies, institutions, and real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Table of Contents
BOOK ONE
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
BOOK TWO
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
BOOK THREE
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Epilogue
BOOK ONE
Prologue
Kai
Five Years Ago
The pain was all I could think about. There was pain and then there was nothingness, then the pain again, back and forth, day in, day out. It got to the point where I didn’t even notice the days passing. The doctors would come talk to me, say things—I knew they were talking because I could see their lips moving—but none of it made sense. Words about crushed blood vessels, blood flow to my foot, gangrene. I knew gangrene was bad, but I just…I was in too much pain to wrap my mind around it all. And then, one morning, I woke and my leg was gone.
Gone, as in chopped off. Completely missing. From just below the knee. No foot. No ankle. No calf. It was gone like a magician had waved a hand over it and made it disappear.
The pain, however, was still there, only…different.
“We did all we could,” the doctor came and explained. “There was just too much damage. In an injury like this, there’s a lot of soft-tissue damage. We did everything we could, but there was no saving it. I’m sorry.”
Anger filled my chest; the only thing that made my heart beat. Anger at everything I’d lost in that one decision that I hadn’t been allowed to make. No leg meant no Army. The Army was all I had! My plan was to put in a full twenty, take my pension and make a life for myself in some quiet place, somewhere I could fish and hunt and live a peaceful life. Just another few years…but that was over now. I’d get an honorable discharge, but what the hell could I do with that? What was I supposed to do with the rest of my life?
I’d never walk again. I’d never care for myself again. I couldn’t even go to the damn bathroom alone! I had this damn catheter…there was no dignity in being a patient in a hospital.
A few days after they mutilated me, I was moved to a new room. There was another man there, his head wrapped in bandages.
“This is Sergeant Roman Pierce,” the orderly announced. “His unit was hit by enemy fire while taking refuge in an abandoned building. Debris fell on his head, giving him one heck of a head injury. Doctors don’t know if he’ll ever wake up.”
“Too bad.”
“He’s scheduled to be moved down south in a few weeks, closer to his family, I suppose. Until then, you’re stuck with him.”
“Lucky me.”
“Could be worse. You could have a moaner like Private Prior across the hall.”
The orderly set the brake on my chair and came around to help me up. I refused, pushing him away. I’d always done everything for myself. I could do this, too. I grabbed the safety rail on the side of the hospital bed, putting all my weight on it as I jerked myself up out of the chair. I was doing good, nearly on my one foot, until the sweat on my palm made my hand slide a little. My knuckles got caught between the mattress and the rail since it wasn’t raised and my entire body went over to left, pushing me off balance. My knee twisted and flared through my leg up into my hip as I toppled over and fell back into the chair.
“Shit!” the orderly cried, grabbing my arm to pull me into an upright position. I jerked away from him again, but the damage was already done.
“What the hell did I tell you about letting these guys maneuver themselves this soon after surgery?” the nurse muttered to the orderly as she came to check out my knee. “You’ve twisted it pretty good,” she told me, a hard look in her dark eyes. “I’ll have to get orders from the doctor before we can do anything, but it looks like we’ll have to put the catheter back in for a few days. No getting out of bed for you for a while.”
Just what I wanted to hear
Nothing but television and my thoughts to entertain me. And those thoughts were the darkest I’d ever had.
One night, the nurse brought me my pain meds, setting the tray that held all the pills for all the other patients on my side table. I slipped a couple of pills off the tray when she turned to check on my neighbor, and slid them under my hip against the mattress.
“Goodnight, Captain,” she said, a big smile shining down on me. If only she’d known what I’d done…I watched her go, and then lifted the pills to my lips, thinking how nice it’d be to fall into a dark oblivion. What did I have left? No family, no girl waiting for me. No home, no kids. I’d never had a real home—never had more than a mildly interested mother in my life. A couple of girls here and there, but they were just as wary of attachments as I’d ever been. What was the point in fighting for my life now?
I was about to pop those pills in my mouth when the door opened and another nurse appeared. “Forgot to get your temp, Private.”
I jerked, trying to hide the pills back under my hip.
“Wrong room.”
She looked at me, a little frown marring what must have been a beautiful face some twenty years ago. She glanced at her chart, and then sighed. “You’re right. I should be across the hall.” She came over and pulled the sheet higher up over my chest. “You okay, Captain Gabriel? Comfortable?”
“Comfortable enough.”
She rested a hand on my shoulder, this look on her face that was a mixture of pity and fear. I wondered if that was the way all women would look at me for the rest of my life. I’d never get laid again, not with this missing leg!
“You can go. I’d like to get some rest.”
“Of course.” She patted my shoulder, then turned, a frown once again crossing her face. “What in the world?” She bent over, her ass not bad under her tight scrubs, and picked something up off the floor. She held it up and my heart sank. One of the pills I’d pilfered from the other nurse’s tray. “Lazy LVNs! They barely pay any attention, do they? If this was my floor…”
She looked around for a moment, to see if there were any more. Then she sighed, and headed for the door. “Sleep well, Captain.”
I would have. If she hadn’t just taken half my suicide attempt! I took the other pills, anyway, and slept better that night than I ever had. But it wasn’t enough to get the result I’d wanted. It might not have been enough even with the one she took away, but I’d never know now.
“You need something to concentrate on other than that television,” the head nurse told me the next day. “I keep telling the volunteers to bring you a book or something.”
“I don’t want books.”
“What about puzzles? Do you like puzzles, Captain?”
“Not particularly.”
“Maybe a tablet to play games on. We’ve had some donated to the floor. I can get you one.”
I shook my head, gesturing to the television. “I like this.”
She didn’t even look at the screen, clearly not interested in what I was watching. “You need to get your head off your situation. I’d take you for a walk or something, but you can’t get out of the bed.” She glanced at my roommate, the coma guy with his head still swathed in bandages. “Have they been by to sit with him yet? I told a couple of the volunteers to come talk to him for a while, but they keep finding other things to do. Something about him creeps them out.”
“Maybe it’s the fact that he’s just this side of dead, lucky sap.”
She frowned as she focused on me again. “You don’t mean that. You fought valiantly your entire career, and I’m sure that wasn’t j
ust for your country. You want to live.”
“Do I?”
“Losing your leg doesn’t change anything, Captain. It just alters the way you face the world.”
“Have you ever lost a leg?”
“No. But I’ve worked with boys much younger than you who did and most of them handled it a hell of a lot better than you’re doing.”
“Thanks. I appreciate that.”
“Life is worth living, Captain. You might not think so, but it is. And you have to find whatever it takes to make you believe that, too.” She patted my shoulder. These nurses really liked to pat shoulders! “Find something that inspires you. Call an ex-girlfriend. Talk to your mother.”
“No, thank you.”
“Read a letter.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed,” I gestured toward my bedside table, “I’m not exactly overrun with mail.”
“Then read his.” She opened a drawer in my roommate’s side table and pulled out a whole stack of letters. “Maybe we could kill two birds with one stone here. You read his letters out loud to him. The sound of your voice might help him, and the letters might help you.”
“How do you know?”
She shrugged. “A good letter from home has never disappointed, even when it’s not addressed to you.” She set an impressive stack of letters on the edge of my mattress. “Think about it.”
I ignored the letters. Just let them sit there while I watched my reality shows. Who needed to read some other guy’s letters just to make himself feel better? But then…what else was there to do?
I started with the most recent letter and then realized I should begin at the beginning. This woman had a story to tell that I suddenly wanted to know very much. I ended up reading them all in just a few hours, going back through them again and again as I concentrated on the little details, on the things you don’t always get the first time around. I read them because I was bored, but I kept reading them because this woman was…did this man know what kind of a woman he had waiting for him back home? Did he appreciate how damn lucky he was?
Sometimes I wondered how things might have been different for me if I’d met a special girl, a girl who would be willing to fight this hard for me. Would I have been open to it? Would I have tried to make it work? Would it have given me something more, something outside of the military? Would it have given me a reason to live?
And then I began to fantasize that the woman in these letters was mine that her words were meant for me. It was an innocent fantasy, but it grew and became more intense as the days turned to weeks. They moved coma boy out of my room and took the letters with him, but I didn’t forget about them. In fact, I’d memorized so many passages that I could almost recite the things by heart. And I thought about her, this woman I’d never met. I thought about her when the physical therapist pushed me to walk with my crutches, when he ran me through exercises that used muscles I swear I didn’t have before my injury, when he fitted the preparatory prosthesis to my stump, and when he forced me to wear the shrinking sock even when I was in so much pain I could hardly breathe.
I thought about her and it gave me a reason to fight. She wasn’t mine, I knew that. But her letters gave me something I hadn’t had before. They gave me hope.
Chapter 1
Kai
If you’d asked me before I left the Army if I could ever be happy just sitting still, enjoying the sound of the waves hitting the shore, I would have laughed. I’ve never been the kind of guy who could find enjoyment in just sitting. I wanted to be busy, wanted always to have some sort of purpose, some sort of reason to my life. I suppose I still had that. But I’ve also found joy in just sitting still.
I watched the waves, not really thinking about much of anything. It’d taken me some time to decide where I wanted to settle after getting out of the hospital. When your life plans are destroyed by a devastating injury, and then the hope that you developed while trying to recover is taken away by reality, it takes a while to get your feet back under you, both figuratively and literally. I traveled around for about three years, struggling to get used to the limitations my leg presented, and learning how to work around those limitations. I spent a few weeks visiting to my mother in California, who hovered over me, asking when I’d be moving on again. I guess I was something of a hindrance to her social life, but it was time I settled And then I remembered the letters and the pretty coastal town in North Carolina where the author of those letters lived, and I thought, why the hell not?
Here I was, six months into a new life, and it felt good. It felt right.
I lifted my phone to check the time, and wouldn’t you know, it chose that moment to ring?
“Where are you, boss?”
“On my back deck, enjoying a hot cup of coffee.” I reached down and rubbed the bare stump below my right knee. “Letting it all hang out for a bit.”
“Sounds nice, but you’re going to have to put it away. We have a client.”
“No kidding?”
“Don’t sound so surprised! We are open for business.”
“I know, Cady.” She sounded quite offended, as if her life savings were on the line with this new security business. “Sorry.”
“So, this guy’s waiting in your office. You might want to get here as quick as possible.”
“Why is he in my office?”
“He insisted. He said he’s an old friend of yours.”
I frowned. I didn’t have that many friends, and those that I did, weren’t in this part of the country. Most of them were still in the Middle East, fighting terrorism.
“I’m on my way.”
I reluctantly set the coffee down and grabbed my crutches, hobbling with both on one side while I grabbed and carried the coffee cup just inside the door to the kitchen. I rinsed the cup and put it in the dishwasher, hearing my mother’s voice in the back of my head telling me what a great wife I’d make some day. I ducked into the bedroom, across from the narrow living room, and dropping the crutches, I hopped around the room as I gathered my clothes, my prosthesis, and all the crap that went with it. The first time my prosthetist brought all this stuff out, I thought he was insane. We’ve all seen those television shows where some guy just tugs a sock over his stump, then pulled the prosthesis on and starts walking around like it’s nothing. What an overly simplified version of reality!
I sat on the edge of the bed. First was the nylon sheath that was meant to protect the skin and scar tissue that now covered the area where the leg was removed. Then the prosthetic sock that was made of heavy wool, again meant to protect my remaining flesh. Then the foam sock liner which had to be worked carefully over the previous two items, a process that often took me more than five minutes, sometimes longer. It was tedious and irritating, but I’d learned from experience what might happen if I didn’t take my time. Back when I was still getting into the routine of this stupidity, I once raised a blister that was so large I wasn’t able to use the leg for nearly three weeks. I wouldn’t do that again! The next item was another nylon sheath that helped the leg slide on easily, and finally, the prosthesis itself. I’d already had several prostheses; the one I was donning now had a plastic foot on the end that was already wearing one of the sneakers I wore most days to work. I also had one with a specially formed foot for running, one that looked like a sort of cross between a spring and a spatula. There were a couple of older ones in the back of my closet, too, just in case I had an emergency or something. With the prosthesis in place, I stood up and pulled the suspension sock high up over my thigh, tugging good and hard until everything felt right.
It was a process. Not as bad as it could be, but not as easy as just turning over and rolling out of bed, either. I would never be able to do that again. But I was alive, I had a new business that wasn’t failing, and I’d found some measure of peace to offset my broken dreams. That was progress.
I pulled on a pair of jeans and a button-down, my Army training forcing me to shove my shirt tail into my pants. Properly dressed, I grabbed my car keys and headed out, whistling under my breath as I went. It was a beautiful day. Nothing could possibly go wrong on such a beautiful day.
Walnut Estates—that was the name of this little village and it fit perfectly—was a small town that aspired to be a big city. There was a cluster of big, beautiful buildings downtown that housed all the official offices, then a scattering of smaller buildings branching out in all directions, most housing touristy shops for the people who flocked to the beaches during the summer. There were a few national chain restaurants in town, including a McDonald’s tucked into a corner beside a bakery, across from the strip mall where my office was, a candle shop, and a tattoo studio. The old gentlemen gathered outside in the early spring sunshine waved as I slowed to turn into the parking lot. I waved back, wishing I had time to head over and join them for a little of their morning gossip.