Love and Wargames: A Bad Boy Hacker Romance (4 page)

“Boxcar…”

“This isn’t exactly the reunion I had in mind!”

“Well, it’s the one you’re getting,” he argues. “You can’t walk away from this. If she’s in danger, you have to tell her about it.
Now
.”

“Yeah, but…” I snap my fingers. “I know!
You
can call her and I’ll—”

“Nope.”

“Dammit.”
I sit back and sigh loudly. Caleb Fawn. The love of my life. The bane of my existence. “Fine. I’ll go see her.”

“If something goes wrong, she can protect you.” He’s not wrong. Caleb saved my ass plenty while we were all overseas. “You should be able to find her in the loft above—”

“Above her shop.” I twist my neck until it pops. “Yeah, I know…”

“Been keeping tabs on her?”

I wince. “Kind of.”

“Well,” he says, “you never know. Maybe she’ll be happy to see you.”

I laugh. “Doubt it. I haven’t seen her since…” My words fail. Almost two years later and I still can’t say it out loud. “Since we came back,” I say instead.

“Just keep your cool and everything will be fine,” Fox says. “I’ll try and get stateside as soon as I can.”

“Stay away, man,” I warn. “I’m not worth getting caught over.” It’s quite possibly the most heroic thing I’ve ever said but it’s also honest. Fox’s life matters to other people.

Mine? Not so much.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Fox says. “I can’t just sit out here and do nothing. I’m coming home.”

“Fine.” The air around me weighs heavy and smothers my shoulders. I push it aside. “Oh! How about — instead — you stay in Japan and take Dani to one of those love hotels. Trust me, you’ll thank me later.”

Fox chuckles. “I’m not doing that.”

“Seriously! I read about one in Shinjuku. They’ll deliver a girl to your room and you can eat sushi off her bellybutton. Dani will love it!”

“This conversation is a pretty sterling example for why you’re still single, Boxcar.”

“Ooo! Look at me!”
I mock.
“I’m Fox Fitzpatrick. I’m a man of action. I jump out of windows and date movie stars!
We can’t all be James Bond, dude. Some of us are perfectly content with being Q.”

“Quit stalling and go talk to Caleb.”

“Fine,”
I exhale. “Say hi to your sister for me.”

“
Step
sister.”

“Still weird.”

“Bye, Box.”

“Buh-bye.” I hang up and fall forward until my head hits the table.

Caleb Fawn.

The last time I saw her, she told me she never wanted to see my face again.

Not exactly how a man pictures the end of his honeymoon, but…

Shit happens, right?

Chapter 5

Boxcar

Afghanistan

Two Years Ago

I jiggle my hands, listening to the metal clanging of handcuffs latched around my wrists. The chain is fastened to the floor beneath my chair, making it nearly impossible for me to stand up. I guess this is where they throw prisoners of war they need to
question
. It sure would be nice if they did that — or, at the very least, made some sort of contact with me. The walls are made of metal and I’ve officially sweat out all the water that soldier gave me.

It’s been about an hour since they dropped me into this room. I could easily have picked the cuffs by now but I’d really rather not get shot today and it’s not like I could just sneak out of here without someone noticing.

I’m fucked. No ifs, ands, or buts about that. I’m on the road to Fuckedville with a one-way ticket. No stops. No piss breaks. No way out — but can they really blame me for doing what I did? If they could, I’m sure they would have done the same. Stuck in the desert with no water, trapped in a collapsed room with nothing but a laptop and brains. Of course, I sent out that signal. I’d do it again if I had to.

Finally, the door opens and that same tall, butch son-of-a-bitch that threw me in here steps inside. Sergeant Rhys, if I recall?

“Excuse me,” I say, clearing my dry throat. “May I have some water, please?”

He slams the door behind him and lingers over my chair. “You’re in some trouble, son.”

“I’m also an American citizen,” I point out. “Last I checked, that warrants a sippy cup.”

He smirks and crosses his arms over his chest, flexing his mighty biceps as if it would intimidate me. “How did you
hack
our equipment?”

“I already told you,” I sigh. “Your equipment functions through satellites, which transmits waves—”

“You’ve said that already.”

I pause. “Well, sir, you asked
twice
—”

“Where’d you learn to do that?” he asks.

“I looked it up.”

“Where?”

“The internet.”

He chuckles but he’s far from amused. “You looked up how to hack into highly sophisticated government equipment on the internet?”

I scoff. “Your equipment is hardly
sophisticated
, Sergeant. In fact, I can list off about a half dozen more exploits that are just as easy to break into and don’t require nearly as much effort. Anyone with even the slightest knowledge of radio frequencies and mechanical engineering could figure it out.”

“Really?”

“Yup.”

He pauses and chews on his lip for a moment. “You’re in some trouble.”

“You have a real problem with repeating yourself, man…”

“But I can get you out of it.”

I raise a brow. “How?”

He turns and grabs the second chair from the corner and sets it down in front of me. “How old are you?”

I straighten up a little taller as he sits down, listening to the familiar jingle of cuffs. “Twenty.”

“As it stands right now, you’re looking at about twice that in prison,” he says.

“Oh,
please
,” I say, rolling my eyes. “I sent out an S.O.S.”

“And you put the lives of myself and four of my men at risk in the process.”

“That’s not very P.C. of you, Serg,” I point out. “I believe one of the soldiers that dug me out was a
woman—
”

“Kid...”
He leans forward. “I’m serious. Now, I can ship you back to the United States today where you won’t see the outside of a cell until you’re sixty
or
… you can wise up and work for us.”

I wait for his stare to break but he never flinches. “What?”

He eases back in his chair. “You say our equipment is
subpar.
”

“Your equipment
blows
, actually.”

“Then fix it,” he says. “I’m sure you have a few ideas in that head of yours, right?”

“I might.”

He shrugs and stands up. “You work for us, tighten our security, keep me and my men safe, and you won’t see a day behind bars.”

“For how long?”

His chin juts to the side. “You got somewhere else to be?”

“Don’t you?”

“Quite…” He reaches into his pocket and withdraws a key. “Let’s just say long enough for me to forget to ever ask you what the hell you’re doing out in the middle of the damn Afghani desert alone in the first place. Does that sound fair?”

My eyes scrape the floor. “Yeah, that’s fair.”

“Smart kid.” He gestures for my hands and I raise them as high as the chain will allow. The cuffs drop off my wrists and he lets them fall to the floor. “Come on,” he says. “Let’s go meet my team.”

He leads me outside and I immediately hold up a hand to shield the sun from melting the fucking eyes out of my skull. I don’t know how they do it. Here I am in a white shirt and its done nothing to keep me cool since I got here while these guys walk around in outfits made of who-knows-what. Looks thick, whatever it is. I can’t imagine what these guys must smell like after a single day…

The camp is small, surrounded by nothing but desert on all sides. A large tent sits in the center with communications equipment stacked on tables and large generators to power them. There are three jeeps parked in a line on the far side next to a pair of very cringe-worthy porta-potties. On the opposite side, some soldiers sit around a long table with prepackaged food, enjoying a shade that I would very much like to get into.

We finally walk into a small barracks with about a dozen cots — two rows of six with an aisle between them and a tent overhead that’s been torn in several places and crudely repaired with duct tape. It must be downtime as most of the cots have body-shaped lumps in them. I guess you catch whatever sleep you can out here.

The air grows tense as we pass the occupied mattresses. Some soldiers stand to attention but the sergeant waves them down. All of them stare at me as I pass by them and their faces tell me all I need to know about their thoughts.

Who’s this asshole?

Rhys stops at the back of the tent and my eyes instantly fall on the girl that helped dig me out.

She lies on her back with her neck propped up on a really uncomfortable-looking pillow with a very tempting bottle of water in her small hand.

“Team, this is Carson,” Rhys announces, his eyes scanning the four cots at the back.

I pull my eyes away from the girl and make eye contact with the other three — one I recognize as the soldier who gave me water. The others I also recognize but only because one kicked me to the ground while the other handcuffed me.

Pricks.

All four of them stand up and Rhys steps to the side. “This is Rogers,” he says, pointing to The Kicker, a muscular man with buck teeth and black hair. His hand moves down the line to The Cuffer, yet another muscular guy except he’s got red hair and a cleft chin. “This is West — Fitzpatrick — and Fawn.”

Fawn.
That’s cute.

“Sup?” I greet.

“Carson is going to be joining our unit from here on out,” Rhys explains.

The girl blinks with confusion. I don’t notice if the others do the same as my eyes are pretty much locked on her. Her hair is trimmed short, auburn in color. The tent blocks plenty of light but I can easily see green irises shining out from behind her long eyelashes. Pointed cheekbones, concave cheeks. She’s fucking gorgeous and I can’t for the life of me figure out what the hell she’s doing out here.

“In what capacity, sir?” she asks.

Rhys shrugs. “I don’t know—” He looks back at me. “A
civilian… intelligence freelancer.
That sounds official enough. Basically, he broke our equipment and he’s gonna fix it for us.”

“Well, it’s not really
broken
,” I say. “It’s just shitty…”

“Either way, he’s part of our unit and we’ll treat him like it from here on out. Sound good?”

“Yes, sir,” they all say in unison. I flinch slightly at the sudden bark of voices. I guess I’ll just have to get used to that if I’m going to be hanging out with the cast of
Platoon.

“Fawn—” Rhys says. “I’m sticking him with you. Keep an eye on him.”

Her posture sinks. “Sir—?”

“Show him around. Teach him the rules. Keep him from getting shot at.”

She steps forward, trying very hard to keep her cool. “Sir, I’m not—”

“As you were, boys,” Rhys says, spinning around and darting down the aisle fast enough to dodge her questions.

I turn back to the team, my eyes once again falling on her. “You can call me Boxcar,” I say. “No one calls me Carson.”

Fitzpatrick steps forward as The Kicker and The Cuffer wander back to their cots again to ignore me. He holds out his hand. “Fox,” he says.

“Rabbit,” I say, shaking his hand.

He chuckles. “It’s my name.”

“Cool. I figured, but then again, why give up the opportunity to list off cute, woodland creatures, am I right?”

Fox’s hand drops to his side and he gestures to the girl. “This is Caleb.”

Caleb.

She stands still, ignoring the hand I extend out to her. Only her eyes move, darting to look past her little button nose at my dirt-covered fingers. “Excuse me.”

As she darts past, I catch a quick whiff of her scent — one far more pleasant than I ever thought possible in this area of the world. I can’t imagine she has perfume stashed in her footlocker but I detect flowers in my nose for a brief, wonderful moment. I turn to watch her exit and my eyes fall to her perfect, toned ass as it sways back and forth with anger.

I look at Fox. “Was it something I said?”

“
Rabbit
, probably,” he nods.

“Ahh…”

Fox pats my shoulder and shifts around to plop back down onto his cot. “She’ll adapt… always does.” He gestures for me to sit down on the cot next to his —
Caleb’s cot
— and I’m not about to pass up the opportunity to smell her again, so I lower myself down.

I gaze over my shoulder, meeting the suspicious eyes of the other soldiers scattered about the tent. I lean forward to whisper. “Am I gonna get a
code red
in here, or…?”

He chuckles, running his hand over his buzzed, brown hair. “Nah… tensions are just a little high right now.”

“Why?”