The Ex Assignment (Rogue Protectors Book 1) Read online

  The Ex Assignment

  Victoria Paige

  Copyright © 2020 by Victoria Paige

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, names, places, events, organization either are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to any persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, places or locale is entirely coincidental. The publisher is not responsible for any opinion regarding this work on any third-party website that is not affiliated with the publisher or author.

  Edited by: edit LLC

  Content Editor: Edit Sober

  Proofreader: A Book Nerd Edits

  Photography by: Wander Aguiar

  Contents

  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

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Connect with the Author

  Also by Victoria Paige

  1

  LOS ANGELES

  The tip came at fifteen hundred.

  Gabrielle Woodward had just come home from her father’s funeral. You would think it was a Hollywood premiere with the who’s who in attendance. The reporters were ready with their cameras, waiting for when the stars, dressed in Armani, and Stella McCartney would make their way past them.

  No one paid attention to Gabby. She wore no labels, just a simple, ill-fitting black dress. No one questioned why she was at the back of the funeral crowd rather than in front with Peter Woodward’s ex-wife and son. She’d shunned the spotlight such a lifetime ago that people had forgotten the famous Hollywood mogul had a daughter.

  Crossing the threshold of her apartment, she pulled the dress over her head and walked to the utility room, tossing it into the hamper, probably never to be needed again. Her LAPD blues, perfectly pressed and laundered, hung ready in her closet for when she would attend the next funeral of a victim or a fallen officer.

  As a detective with the LA Gang and Homicide Division (GHD), death was her constant companion, and she’d witnessed its brutal ripple effect on the loved ones left behind. And yet today her emotions laid dormant inside her. Granted, she and her father had not spoken for years, but she should feel something, right? A wave of grief? Gabby was still waiting for the first one to hit.

  Heading into her bedroom and straight for her closet, she kicked off her equally uncomfortable pumps and dragged her black tactical clothes from behind columns of gray suits and white button-down shirts. With the hours she put into her job, this self-imposed uniform made it easier as if she had her shit together.

  Her phone buzzed with a message from her partner and adrenaline breathed new life into the numbness of her muscles and limbs.

  There was a high probability that the crime lord of LA was meeting his minions in the house on Zamora Street. Since the fentanyl aerosol attack in a downtown shopping center eight months ago, Raul Ortega had become public enemy number one. Going after him had wrung every bit of blood, sweat, and tears from her team. Endless stakeouts, monitoring money drops and exchanges, and going undercover as drug addicts took a toll on everyone. The price of getting Ortega couldn’t have been higher after one of their own was killed a few months ago.

  She thought about her LAPD blues again.

  Wash.

  Repeat.

  Gabby squatted beside the puddle of blood. A low current of rage zipped through her veins as her brain struggled to comprehend how the operation had gotten fucked up beyond recognition.

  A mother was dead and a child had been traumatized.

  Ortega was nowhere on the property. Their sting operation failed.

  Off to the side, a CSI tech documented the carnage.

  “You okay?” asked Brock Kelso, her partner of five years.

  “No.” Her lips pressed into a straight line. A child had witnessed her mother’s death. The girl would have nightmares for years if not her entire life. The higher ups would have to answer to the press, but bad publicity was the furthest from Gabby’s mind. “They better not pull us from this case.”

  “I don’t think they will, but it’s not looking good for us.”

  “It should’ve been our call. We’ve been on Ortega’s case since the beginning. Captain wouldn’t have okayed the op with the patchy intel we received.”

  GHD was in charge of the case, but the order for the raid involving different units of the LAPD—SWAT, Narcotics, and GHD—came from the top. The mayor needed a win for his reelection and pressure cascaded down the chain of command.

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “They should’ve let us do our job!” Gabby exploded. “We’ve only alerted Ortega.”

  Eighteen months of work derailed by damned politics.

  “Kelso! Woodward!” Captain Frank Mitchell strode into the room with his distinctive gait, as if his ramrod-straight back was held up by a plank. Tall and lean with a shaved head that gleamed, the whites of his eyes were a stark contrast to the deep mahogany of his skin. “Why are you still here?”

  “This”—Gabby pointed at the pool of blood—“This shouldn’t have happened.”

  “Agreed,” the captain replied. “But it did. And it will be investigated. So, go home, both of you. Nothing else to be done here.”

  “How’s Lucia?” Gabby asked.

  The lines around the captain’s mouth softened. “She’s with a patrol officer. She’s shaken but you did a good job calming her.”

  Gabby gave a somber nod. In all her years on the force it was a constant balance to stay emotionally detached on the scene while at the same time showing compassion when called for. The latter was easy when a child was involved. When the girl rushed toward her, Gabby’s instinct was to shield the child and not let her see the horrific state of her mother’s body. “Is she going to be okay?”

  “Social services is taking over. It’s out of our hands,” Mitchell said. “Go home. It’s Friday. I don’t want to see your faces until Monday morning.”

  “The reading of the will is tomorrow, right?” Kelso asked.

  Her mouth flattened and she gave a brief nod.

  “Not looking forward to it, huh?”

  Gabby shrugged. “Just want to get it over and done.”

  Long and short of it was, she didn’t care.

  “And your brother?”

  “Half-brother,” Gabby corrected, getting slightly irritated that her partner would bring up such a matter now. “He’s got money of his own. I’d be surprised if he didn’t apply for emancipation.”

  “If you need more time to get your personal affairs in order, take some vacation,” Mitchell
said.

  “I’ll take that under advisement.” Gabby jerked her head to the CSI techs who seemed to be interested in their conversation. The last thing she needed was to have one of them talk to the tabloids.

  “It’s okay to slow down, Woodward.” Mitchell exhaled an effusive breath and studied the carnage in the room. “Hope we don’t start from square one. Ortega is a slippery bastard.”

  “That’s what happens when you go in half-cocked.”

  Kelso coughed.

  Mitchell raised a brow.

  “Which is why you need all hands on deck at Division, sir,” she quickly added.

  Mitchell’s shoulders sagged and it pained Gabby to see him this way. He’d been her mentor for fourteen years, taking the wide-eyed rookie under his wing, but their bond went back much further than that. The captain was a hard ass, a legend in the LAPD who gave up rank and position so he could remain on the streets where his experience was needed the most.

  He put a hand on her shoulder and gave it a brief squeeze before striding to the door. He paused under its frame and turned back to her. “The dead are important to us, but so are the living. In this case, I think your brother needs you more.”

  NORTHERN VIRGINIA

  Staring at ceilings was nothing new for Declan Roarke. Getting thrown into jail wasn’t new either, but he’d never been incarcerated on U.S. soil before. As a former mercenary, he was no stranger to dungeons and prisons in foreign countries. What he did was not always legal.

  After the Judge Advocate General (JAG) disbanded their private military company, banning them from any form of international work, Declan thought personal protection was the way to go. Turned out, the void left by his former life couldn’t be filled with new businesses, more money, or the first world comfort of booze and functional indoor plumbing.

  The cot was comfy for short-term confinement in Loudoun County, but he hadn’t been comfortable in his own skin for a while.

  He shifted his gaze to the cracked cement wall he shared with a drunk who was brought in at the same time he was. The eardrum-shattering snore of his jail-mate assured him he wasn’t getting any kind of sleep tonight, and Declan wondered if the man’s off-key singing earlier would have made a better companion. He winced in remembrance. Probably not.

  The door to the drunk tank opened, and a shadow danced on the arrow of light before a lanky man in khakis appeared at his barred door.

  “You’re free to go.”

  Declan swung his long legs off the cot, got up, and approached the deputy. “I made bail?” He’d been in here for twenty-four hours.

  “Charges dropped,” the deputy said shortly and slid the cell door to the left. “You’re lucky the Congressman didn’t press assault charges.”

  It took all of Declan’s self-restraint not to say that Congressman Tomlin deserved it. He merely nodded at the officer and stepped out to his freedom.

  Declan glanced over to his business partner, driving their company vehicle. Kade Spear opened Elite Shield Security—ESS—a year ago and asked him if he wanted to join in. Declan thought it was a good idea at that time. Now he wasn’t sure if personal protection was the right fit for him. Bodyguard duties were an intrinsic part of private military work, but there was usually a level of imminent threat. Protecting someone whose politics he didn’t agree with had never been a problem either. But being here in the Capital, he’d witnessed how vicious politicians could get in pushing their agendas. Constituents only saw the packaged message, not the behind-the-scenes ugliness and machinations it took to get there. And when a clear abuse of power went against the wrong side of his mercenary heart, he couldn’t turn away.

  “Do I have Yara to thank for Congressman Douche not pressing charges?”

  Kade huffed in slight exasperation. “No. But she would have intervened.”

  Yara was Kade’s fiancée and their last client as PMCs. The CIA had hooked them up with the Saudis to do a targeted assassination of the humanitarian aid’s hosts, but the op ran into a snag.

  Kade fell in love.

  It all turned out for the best, and Declan was one hundred percent behind his friend’s decision to break the contract with the Saudis. Getting trapped in a foreign country as hostile as Yemen was no picnic. Declan and a few other contractors loyal to Kade got thrown into a Yemeni jail controlled by the rebels. And yet he’d been more in his element in that dank prison than he’d been in the Loudon County one.

  The traffic on the DC beltway was stop and go, amplifying the silence in the SUV.

  “I wish you had come to me instead of taking matters into your own hands,” Kade said finally.

  “The man is a pedophile. He was making a fifteen-year-old student squirm—”

  “And you decided breaking his nose was the answer?”

  Snapshots of the other afternoon came back to mind. The congressman was meeting with the student council from a high school. One of the students was a pretty cheerleader. Congressman Douche had no business putting his hand on the curve of her ass regardless whether she was wearing a short skirt.

  The first time. Declan took notice and gritted his teeth, telling himself it was an accident.

  The second time. He was clenching his fists.

  When it happened yet again, the girl flushed and flinched away from the politician. The damned congressman grabbed her arm and was speaking to the girl in a sickening skeevy voice.

  Declan saw red and before he knew it, Tomlin was on the floor with blood all over his face.

  “Didn’t mean to put the company in a bad light.” He stared out the window.

  “Fuck the company,” Kade growled with such vehemence, it pulled Declan’s gaze back to his friend. “I told you to get help. You’re having trouble transitioning into civilian life and I get that. Fuck. Do I get that.”

  “The congressman wasn’t an ideal client.”

  Kade smirked. “No, he wasn’t. No immediate threats against him to feed the adrenaline junkies in us. He doesn’t really need a bodyguard, but it makes him look important. We wouldn’t have taken the job if it wasn’t a favor to Yara’s dad.”

  The traffic began to move and Kade changed lanes as their exit came up.

  “Let’s stop playing the politics game, shall we?”

  His friend cleared his throat but didn’t respond. It was a gesture Kade was doing more lately when he didn’t know how to broach a subject. Transitioning into civilian life wasn’t easy on him either, but he had Yara to keep him centered.

  As for Declan, he didn’t need a woman. He’d figure this shit out eventually. Or maybe the JAG would lift the restrictions on them and let them take jobs where they were needed.

  Kade made the turn into the exit leading to Declan’s condo. “How about the Hollywood game?”

  “What?”

  “I know you used to live there, Roarke.”

  “And I left for a goddamned reason.”

  “Whoa there, buddy.” Kade laughed but threw him a shrewd look. “I know you changed your name from O’Connor to Roarke before you got accepted to Ranger school. At the time I checked, your records were sealed by the military.”

  “And yet you never pried, so why bring it up now?”

  “It’s relevant.”

  “I’m not going back there.”

  “Hear me out.”

  “No.”

  But his friend wasn’t easily dissuaded. This was confirmed when Kade parked the SUV instead of dropping him off at his condo. Declan lived in a maintenance-free high-rise building in Reston. The two-bedroom unit was enough for his needs given a job could send him across the country at a moment’s notice.

  Since it was late in the evening, the front-desk concierge had left, so Declan punched in his code to open the glass doors of the vestibule that led inside the building.

  “You like the area?” Kade asked as they stepped into the elevator.

  “Yeah.”

  “How much is it costing you?”

  Declan told him how much
then asked, “You and Yara plan to stay in Manhattan?”

  “Both her office and ours are there so it makes sense, but we’re thinking of getting a place in Brooklyn.”

  The elevator doors opened on the tenth floor. Declan had the unit farthest on the right near the stairwell. When they entered his residence, he didn’t apologize for the state of his place.

  Stacks of unpacked boxes, some opened and some still sealed, laid in a row.

  He had one couch, a leather recliner, and a coffee table. Strewn on its glass top were tactical magazines and stacks of books.

  “Still don’t watch television?”

  Declan shrugged. “No need. I’d just use it for the news, but I can get that on the tablet or my laptop. Want a beer?”

  “Sure.” Kade surveyed his surroundings. “What do you do for entertainment?”

  He walked to the kitchen. “Ever heard of reading, Spear?”

  His friend chuckled. “When your fiancée is a staunch supporter of the performing arts, you can’t just not have a television.”

  Snagging two beers from the fridge, he popped the cap off each and handed one to Kade. He leaned against the counter and took a long pull from the bottle. “You haven’t told me why Congressman Tomlin didn’t press charges.”

  “He decided to forget the incident. Can’t you leave it at that?”

  Kade was messing with him judging from the twinkle in his eyes and the twitch at the corners of his mouth. The grumpy soldier was a memory. Now his friend was quick to smile and was rarely in a bad mood. It was sickeningly sappy.