Page 2 of Fire and Ice

"You've already received the dossier of my team. Six people will be guarding Castle—codename for the safe house—two outside for perimeter surveillance and four inside. There will be position rotations between the six. It shouldn't be too hard since we only have to keep Mr. McCord safe for 60 hours and every single member on the team can stay sharp for extended time periods. Here's the layout of the structure and the schematics of the security installed. Alarms and cameras of the interior and exterior are connected to AGS headquarters with 24-hour monitoring. There is an onsite panic room. We have our own emergency response team. Everything we do is kept below the police radar. We also have our own paramedics for the odd gunshot wound."

"Uh...what about life-threatening injuries?" Brett interjected. "Like getting shot through the chest?"

"Since you'll be wearing a vest, you'll be fine—unless they aim for your head or use armor-piercing bullets. In any case, they'll have to get through me and my men to get to you," Maia assured confidently. "But if it is a life-threatening injury, we'll have to take you to the hospital and unfortunately it'll be on everyone's radar by then. We really don't want that." Maia laid both palms on the table and leaned in towards Brett. "So Brett, it is very important that you do exactly as you are told. If we tell you to stay put, you stay put. If we tell you to haul ass, you ... haul ... ass."

At that point, Jack understood what it meant to underestimate the female Guardian. Her beautiful blue eyes turned frosty with cold determination, managing to hold his brother's gaze despite offering an eyeful of cleavage when she leaned forward. Jack had no doubt Miss Pierce was skilled in the use of guns and knives, but her biggest asset was psychological misdirection. An unsuspecting enemy would certainly underestimate her. Always. And before he had realized his mistake, he would have taken a bullet through his head. Maia Pierce was a beautiful stealth weapon.

"Delivery as usual?" Mike Callahan broke in.

"Yes. Under the courthouse. I will personally do the handover, my men will follow through to the courtroom," Maia confirmed.

Jack frowned. Leafing through his file-copy of the playbook, he said, "You're not hanging around for the trial?"

"No. My assignment ends when I deliver McCord to the DA. The prosecution's protective detail will be expanded to include him. They will take him to your designated estate after the trial to lay low until everyone involved is apprehended. No use having two leads on this."

"Some other place you need to be?"

"No."

Jack smiled. One word answers of the evasive kind. They stared at each other for a beat; her eyes flashed challengingly into his, almost daring him to ask another question. Then she shifted her gaze back to his brother.

"Brett, we will need to scan your laptop for bugs and tracking devices. I'm sure Derek had already done that but I'd like to do it again. No offense, Derek."

"None taken," Derek replied.

"I also hope you have no cell phone on you. We have a secure SAT phone at the safe house. After the scan is done, we're all set to go. I'll have my men bring the transport over to the underground garage, load you up and we'll rendezvous at Castle."

Shifting her attention to address everyone in the room, she said, "Any questions or concerns, voice them now. After we leave here, I prefer to limit communications."

***

Maia frowned at the recent report from the AGS data center. They had been at Castle for 48 hours without incident. Striding with her tablet to the kitchen where Brett and three of her men—Manning, Danner and Edmunds—were having dinner, she clicked on the communications device to the rest of her team patrolling outside. "Chavez, Lucas, you guys on?"

"Affirmative, boss."

"An update from base. It's not good. Been confirmed that Vergara has brought in some PMCs from Eastern Europe."

A flurry of expletives erupted around the room and on comms.

Brett quirked an eyebrow. "PMCs?"

"Private military contractor. Mercenaries."

"How come we're hearing of this only now? We're screwed aren't we?" Brett's agitation started spiraling out of control.

Maia shook her head. How could two brothers be more different? Jack McCord exuded badass calm, contained in that delicious lean compacted-muscular physique of his, while Brett—though equally handsome—was lanky and rife with nervous energy.

"Oh ye of little faith," Maia muttered. "Brett, calm down. We deal with their kind on a regular basis."

Brett pushed back from the table and started pacing. Maia sighed and continued the briefing. "Guys, it seems we won't be dealing with amateur gun slingers plucked from the streets of Mexico after all. There was enough chatter to warrant a cross-check with Immigration arrivals compared to what we have in our database. Our intel suggests the PMCs got in 36 hours ago via Dulles airport. Two guys have been identified, but we think there are eight. Viktor has alerted the emergency response team (ERT) just in case we get hit."

"The road leading to Castle is mostly deserted, it shouldn't be too hard to identify hostile transport," Danner added.

"Manning, do we have satellite uplink?" Maia asked.

"Yes. Cycles every 3 minutes covering the exit to Castle."

"Castle is about 30 clicks from the main highway, that should give us roughly 20 minutes heads up."

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