Ricochet (Locked & Loaded #1) (3 page)

Throughout the day, her mind inadvertently kept drifting back to Rick.
No
, she scolded herself. He was bad news, and bad was not what she needed right now— or ever. Resigned to keeping him firmly in the category of “look but don’t touch”, she continued to work. Her little pep talk seemed to have done the trick. She was proud that she managed to forget about Rick for a whole five minutes.

RICK HEADED TO the offices at the back of the building. Sanctum, an MMA training facility, was renowned in the fighting world for their world-class experts and varied training techniques. Besides Rick’s Muay Thai skills, they also had a Ju Jitsu titleholder, a champion kick boxer, a Kyokushin karate black belt, a Russian Sambo specialist, and a traditional boxing instructor. Rising MMA hopefuls from all over the world applied to get a chance to train at Sanctum. What they didn’t know, was that each trainer had other skills in their various backgrounds. Skills necessary to carry out Sanctum’s real purpose.

Rick was dragging badly. He needed coffee, ASAP. He went directly to the break room, following the scent of a fresh pot and poured a cup.

“Finally! Here we were thinking you were waiting on an engraved invitation, Ricochet.”

Rick didn’t need to turn away from the break room coffee pot to know who was harassing him.

“Hey killer, good morning to you too.” Rick stirred some creamer into his mug and leaned back on the counter, facing the huge former Navy SEAL slash Jiu Jitsu expert. “I’m only twenty minutes late. Mack can’t possibly be that angry already.”

He could, he was probably fuming mad.

Dane Nolan slid his size fourteen booted feet off of the small break room table and stood up. His six foot four inch frame moved as easily and nimbly as a jungle cat. There was no mistaking that the man was a lethal weapon. It shined in his dark eyes, the shrewd way he took in everything around him, strategizing his exit points and constantly planning for attack every second of every day.

Right now, this very dangerous man was getting up in Rick’s face, and Rick found it damn amusing.

“Daney… killer,” Rick said with a smirk as he sipped his coffee, “what are you doing?” Rick loved poking the big man. With Rick’s penchant for silly nicknames and Dane’s utter disdain for them, it was always entertaining to watch his reaction.

The large blonde man carefully looked Rick up and down, like one would check out a thoroughbred racehorse they were interested in purchasing. He leaned in close, his nose almost touching Rick’s neck, and sniffed.

Rick didn’t move an inch, but he did watch his co-worker as he invaded his personal space.

“Just seeing if I could smell the gunpowder, Rick.”

“Gunpowder?”

“From your latest
ricochet
. You know, hit the target, skip out of her bed and on to the next one, leaving destruction in your wake. Mack’s gonna kill you if he finds out that you’re late because you were getting your nuts off.”

Rick put his free hand on Dane’s wide chest and shoved. “Get out of my face, man.” He couldn’t help but laugh with his friend and coworker. Rick didn’t admit to Dane that he was right about why he was late.

“Hey,” Dane joked, “you wouldn’t have earned the nickname if it wasn’t true.”

Rick refilled his mug and followed Dane out of the break room. “Ever stop to think it’s because my name is Rick?”

Dane stopped in the hall, looking over his shoulder with a grin. “Never. Now c’mon. Mack is waiting to debrief us.”

“Great,” Rick groaned as they entered the conference room.

Dane lifted his chin to greet the gruff, fifty-something year-old man sitting at one end of the large table. “Mack.”

Mack scowled, the lines on his face deepening, before resuming his discussion with a thin but muscular black man who was wearing athletic gear and an Atlanta Braves hat.

“Good morning,” the man said to Rick and Dane.

“Price,” Dane responded as he took a seat.

“Hey Ace.” Rick inclined his head in the man’s direction and sat opposite Dane. Ben Price was ex-FBI who quit the bureau when his partner was killed in the line of duty. He was also a champion boxer, having won several world titles in his youth. His right hook was deadly, a fact that Rick discovered the hard way multiple times. Mack recruited Ben hard when he heard he left the bureau, not letting up until the man agreed to work for him.

“Alright assholes. Since you’re late, let’s skip the bullshit.” Mack glared down the table at the three men, making sure to give Rick an extra-long frown. “Tucker is in Mission Control, working on a new case. So he won’t be sitting in on this meeting. I’ve already debriefed him, so unless something comes up, he’s getting a pass.”

Rick sat back in his chair, calm and collected. He’d known Mack for so long, and been the recipient of so much worse than just a disparaging look from him, that he wasn’t phased one bit. In fact, it was damn entertaining to get Mack all riled up. Rick tented his fingers, holding them in front of his lips to hide his smile.

Howard “Mack” McEvoy had been Rick’s staff sergeant during his sixty-five day initial Marine Corps Recon training at Camp Pendleton. The man had screamed in Rick’s face, humiliated him, ran him until he vomited, forced him to clean the latrines, hell… there wasn’t much Mack
hadn’t
seen him do.

After sustaining injuries during a Recon mission in Iraq, Rick was honorably discharged from the Marines. Mack heard about it through the grapevine, and with Rick’s special-ops background, he offered him a job here with his misfit group of ex-military men and spooks.

“Price here is gonna start.” Mack leaned back and waited for Ben to begin.

“Okay, so the mission was to extract three Americans— two journalists and one person of high political importance, and one British journalist— from a militant group in southern Turkey on the Syrian border. Locate, liberate, extract. Casualties of rebels acceptable.” Price cleared his throat before continuing. “Result was the removal of all four hostages, alive, with a total of sixteen rebel fatalities. No damage to property, no casualties on our side. Clean in and out.”

“Okay,” Mack said. “Nolan, your quick summary on the ground.”

Dane sat up straight in his chair, pulling a paper out of the manila file he had in front of him. “Helo’d in undetected. Hiked half a day to rebel camp. Gathered intel for approximately two days…”

Rick started spacing out while Dane broke down the three days they spent in Turkey last week. Rick loathed paperwork. His mind was too active to sit at a desk and so was his body. He twitched at the thought of a desk job. Unfortunately, the U.S. government loved paperwork, and they were the main client for their in-demand hired mercenary services. Whenever they did a job for them, it always came with a fuck ton of forms and reports and debriefings. The government used Sanctum to complete their black-ops jobs, jobs that needed to be done, but weren’t exactly “legal”. Mack had built his operation carefully and selectively. It was the best-kept secret in the country. No one knew what they did outside of very high-ranking officials at the Pentagon.

Over and over throughout the debriefing, Rick’s mind wandered back to Quinn. He couldn’t remember ever having seen a woman that beautiful in person before. Sure, he’d seen gorgeous women. Fucked a bunch of them too. But this girl? She was stunning, and Rick was positive she wasn’t wearing a single bit of makeup to create that look.

But it was something else about Quinn that drew Rick to her. He wasn’t sure how to define it, she was just… different. There was a delicateness about her, like a fragile porcelain doll, needing to be wrapped up in his arms and protected from the elements and dangers of the world. That’s where he came up with his nickname for her. Rick gave practically everyone he knew a nickname if they didn’t already have one. Doll fit Quinn perfectly. But she was also feisty, immediately dismissing him when he came on too strong. The combination of vulnerable and lively really turned him on for some reason.

He was in the middle of wondering where she was from and what she would look like naked, when Mack yelled his name.

“Rick!”

“Yes chief?” He met Mack’s scowl with a lazy grin.

“You and Nolan are on your two-week downtime. I’ve got fighters scheduled for you idiots to train during that time. Don’t want you getting all soft on me. Now, get the hell out of here and have your reports typed up and on my desk by tomorrow. Your psych evals are scheduled for Friday.”

Rick leapt from his chair, eager to see if the girl was still sitting at the front desk. Before he could get one foot out the door, he heard Mack’s voice again.

“And be nice to Quinn, our new hire. First off, no, she doesn’t know what we really do here. Keep it that way. Second, she’s the daughter of a very close friend of mine that passed away a few years back. She’s like family to me. Don’t fuck with her, she’s one of us now.”

Rick heard Dane and Ben immediately acquiescence to Mack’s demand, but he had no doubt that the warning was really for him. Mack knew Rick’s reputation and almost certainly didn’t want him going anywhere near his friend’s daughter. Unfortunately, Rick didn’t think he could stay away from the intriguing new receptionist with the wide amber eyes.

Chapter 4

ON THE LAST day of her first full week of work, Quinn shut down her computer and locked up her files for the weekend. She wanted to talk to Mack before she left. He’d been more than generous to her after she showed up in Atlanta last month with nothing more than the clothes on her back, a backpack full of fancy lingerie, and a few dollars in her pocket.

Quinn swiped her badge and headed into the main gym. Usually, she hurried through the large open area, much too uneasy to be surrounded by large, violent men as they hit things. It brought back horrid memories. She tried her best to avoid the men that were training with punching bags, weight sets, or even sparring in one of the three separate fighting rings set up, including what she was told was a regulation sized octagon surrounded by chain link cage. It was bad enough they were huge and intimidating, but while they were fighting? No way could she stomach that sight without freaking out.

“Hey. Quinn, right?”

Quinn froze in place halfway between the lobby and the hallway, too scared to move or speak. Her eyes darted between the two exits as she tried to figure out which escape was closest.

“You okay?”

Quinn’s flicked her gaze to the tall, Latino man as he gracefully stalked towards her. Rationally, she knew she didn’t have anything to be afraid of. Mack assured her that the men in his gym were nothing but professional. But it had been over three years since Quinn had spoken to any male that wasn’t either Travis or Mack, or in passing like the blue-eyed man earlier this week.

“I’m fine.” Quinn took a step back when the fighter got too close. She struggled with the instinct to bolt from the room.

“Okay.” He held his tape wrapped hands up to show Quinn he meant no harm. “I’m Xander Vega. Mack told me we had a new employee. I just wanted to say hi.”

She let her eyes wander down Xander’s body, trying to feel out how much of a threat he was to her. Barefoot and only wearing a pair of black fight shorts, his dark bronze skin shone with the sweat that glistened on each of his well-defined muscles.
Dangerous
, her mind told her, overriding the fact that she knew, logically, that he wouldn’t hurt her. Then she remembered his specialty from the schedule she did for the gym… Russian Sambo. He was lethal and it scared the heck out of her.

“Sorry. I-I have to go.” Feeling ridiculous, Quinn ducked her head, turned, and practically ran down the hall to the break room. She shut the door behind her and sagged into it, leaning her forehead against the hard surface. “Shit,” she whispered to herself.

“You do that a lot.”

“Oh my God!” Quinn spun around to see the man with the striking aquamarine eyes, staring at her from his seat at the break room table. She choked, which made her cough, making it difficult to catch her breath.

Rick, his name is Rick.

The dark haired Adonis reclined in his chair, hands clasped behind his head as he smirked at Quinn. “You okay there?” She nodded, still unable to speak. “You scare too easily, doll.”

“What?” Quinn rasped as she dug her fingernails into her palms to stop her hands from trembling. She was still recovering from surprise he gave her, otherwise she would have scolded him for the doll comment... maybe. If she weren’t so frightened of the man.

“Every time I see you, you’re cursing under your breath.” Rick lifted an enormous bottle of water to his mouth and chugged down a third of it, never taking his sharp gaze off of Quinn’s. She noticed the large hand he had wrapped around the drink, knuckles scarred and bruised from fighting. That’s what all of these men did for a living, they fought or trained other men to fight. Those hands could hit… hard.

Danger!
Her mind told her again. Quinn’s heart was racing frantically, feeling as if it may explode in her chest.

She shivered in response, but not from the fear she should be feeling from being so close to such a dangerous man. No, Quinn shivered because he was so damn hot she couldn’t stop imagining those large, rough hands running all over her skin. The way his lips surrounded the bottle and his throat working to swallow… she felt it in a way that made her uncomfortable. The fear mingling with desire had her flat-out confused.

Quinn unintentionally let her eyes roam over his broad chest, which was covered by only a thin, tight T-shirt that had the sleeves cut off and was damp with sweat. His sinewy arms were on full display, each muscle cut perfectly. The only mark on his beautiful tan skin was a black tattoo of a skull inside a circle with wings coming off of it and a knife or weapon behind. For a minute, she thought she recognized the tattoo, but she wasn’t close enough to know for sure.

I would love to lick that tattoo. Oh my god, where did that come from?