Page 6 of Fatal Love
Chapter Two
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CONNORMCKENZIE WOKEto the phone blaring in his ear.
Probably because he was sleeping on top of it.
Drooling on it as well, because when he jerked back, his instincts automatically directed his hand to the handset, and he found slime all over the black SFI office phone.
Gross.
Of course, since he’d been working 24/7 with no time off, he hadn’t seen his bed since zero dark thirty-seven…no, make that eight, since the clock on the phone’s readout said it was after midnight.
Rubbing his eyes as the phone blared again, he pushed up off of his desk and cleared his throat. Near the desk, Maggie raised her big, black head and looked at him with her perpetually sad Labrador eyes.
Being the office manager for Rock Star Security came with a lot of perks. RSS was the front for Shadow Force International, where former SEALs roamed the hallways, covertly saving the free world on a daily basis. Connor was constantly surrounded by men he respected and who respected him. They understood each other; understood what each other had been through. Add to that the fact Beatrice let him bunk two floors up in an office he’d converted to a bedroom, and it was the best home he’d ever had. The bedroom wasn’t much, but it beat living out of his car.
Maggie was another perk. He loved that dog. Meeting his eyes, she wagged her tail with a solidthump-thump-thumpagainst the floor.
She was always up for an adventure, and good to have around because of his PTSD. She didn’t have any training, but Cal had told Connor she’d saved his mental health many times. The dog had kept Connor from sinking into a dark hole on more than one occasion as well.
Technically since he lived upstairs, Connor could go home anytime he wanted, even though no one was in the office to man the phones but him. He and Rory had set up a system that transferred all calls to Connor’s phone in his bedroom when he quit for the day or needed down time. Beatrice didn’t trust an answering service with the particular calls that might come in from Rock Stars or SFI operatives.
Connor opened his tired eyes and caught sight of the blinking button on the phone as the damn thing continued to ring insistently. Red, not orange. The private line Emit had for the managers to use when they needed immediate assistance.
Shit. Grabbing one of the napkins from the pizza he’d half eaten earlier, he wiped off the drool from the handset and punched the button under the red, blinking light. “This is Slash. How may I direct your call?”
SFI rules were that they never identified the business when answering on the off chance it was a wrong number or one of them had been compromised. Beatrice was strict about that. While the cell phones every employee used were secure, breaches could happen. All personnel used code names and had to answer a security question before discussing any Rock Star or SFI business.
Just in case, Beatrice always said.
Connor had the feeling he didn’t want to know whatjust in casemeant. He also didn’t want to know what might happen if he failed her.
“Con, we’re in trouble.”
Connor sat straight up, nearly knocking over his Coke. The voice on the other end was low and guarded, and the person had already broken protocol.
But it was a voice he knew well, and a person he definitely didn’t want to fail to help. If anything, he hoped to get on the guy’s SFI squad one of these days. “Sir? Please state your security clearance code.”
“Fuckin’ A, that’s my security code,” Cal Reese quipped. “We need help. We need reinforcements.”
“Are you in imminent danger?”
“Yes. The queen bee is in the hive and she is in imminent danger.”
“But sir, there are no…”
The line when dead.
“…reinforcements,” Connor finished.
He stared at the handset. The queen bee was Beatrice. The hive was her and Cal’s home.
Beatrice was in imminent danger.
At home.
