Page 54 of Shrapnel

Jackson bared his teeth as he watched Jamie dart out of the room.

When the pain abated, he realized he wasn’t even mad. Actually, he was a little impressed. For the second time in his life, he had let someone get under his defenses. And both times the little fucker had left him speechless.

Rubbing his balls, he pushed himself to his feet. Grumbling, he went about erasing any security tapes and hiding Jamie’s presence.

11

A Melancholy Town Where We Never Smile

Owen watchedas a black shape emerged from Satex Pharmaceuticals. Jamie sprinted across the empty parking lot before scrambling over the ten-foot chain link fence. Somehow wriggling through the razor wire, he dropped to his feet and jogged toward Owen’s car. He slapped his palm on the window before throwing himself into the passenger seat.

“Got it!” he held up a USB triumphantly. “Got a little hairy but I managed.”

Owen swallowed as he looked at the small black piece of plastic. “I heard.”

Jamie launched into a wildly inaccurate explanation of what happened as Owen drove the predetermined route back to his apartment. It was important to pick a route that didn’t have any security cameras close to Satex. Ideally, Jamie got in and out without tripping any of the security so no one would even be looking, but they couldn’t be too careful.

He removed the earpiece and tossed it into the cup holder. Owen had been in Jamie’s ear the entire operation, talking him through which computer to access and how to get around the passwords. The plan was to get into Satex’s database to look up all employees, their work history, and a complete inventory list. With this information, Owen thought he might be able to get some insight as to how the victims might have crossed paths and even what Satex was working on.

But at the moment all he could think about was the grunts of pain he had heard over the earpiece. Owen wasn’t sure what shocked him more—the fact that Jamie had bested Jackson in a fight or that he had slept with him.

Owen had never thought about Jamie’s sexuality. It just hadn’t come up. He knew the assassin flirted with everything that moved but lots of people did that. Owen didn’t care, of course. It wasn’t any of his business.

Except that ever since he heard their scuffle, he couldn’t shake this weird feeling. A pit in his stomach felt cold. He wanted to ask Jamie about it, but he couldn’t. There was a 50/50 chance that Jamie would just wink and keep his secrets or give him a detailed play-by-play.

Owen wasn’t sure which one would be worse.

He tried to focus on the drive but every time his attention drifted, he pictured Jackson’s massive hands on Jamie. Rough, aggressive, cruel. Did he leave bruises? Owen remembered the bruises on Jamie’s neck a couple of weeks ago. Was that Jackson’s doing?

He clenched the steering wheel and bit down on his tongue to keep from asking. Jamie was a trained assassin. He just listened to him kick Jackson’s ass. Clearly, Jackson didn’t do anything to Jamie that he didn’t want.

Even knowing that Owen couldn’t help but remember the night he picked Jamie up from the bar. He didn’t seem ok. Maybe it wasn’t Jackson that Owen should worry about. Jamie might be his own worst enemy.

“Do you think we’ll find anything on this?” Jamie asked.

Owen glanced over at him. With his seat leaning back and feet on the dash, Jamie looked young. He was far from the morose guy in the Sunspots parking lot.

“It’s not a coincidence two victims worked there. And Donahue was a chemist. She would easily be able to create some killer inhalant.” Owen nodded determinedly. “There’s got to be something.”

Owen stared at the screen with his mouth hanging open. “There’s nothing.”

He groaned, rubbing his eyes as he closed out the final tab on his screen. Jamie managed to pull a lot of information from Satex’s database. Owen combed through their employee records, inventory, and even any security breaches. Donahue and Dalton worked at Satex around the same time, but Dalton had been painting an entirely different set of offices that Donahue worked in. There was no way their paths would have crossed.

Refusing to give up hope, Owen began looking through the chemical inventory.

Satex Pharmaceutical manufactured multiple drugs but their most famous was a migraine medication. Supposedly it worked a lot faster than any of the leading brands out on the market. They had just received FDA approval and the drug—whose name was some horrible assortment of letters Owen wasn’t even going to begin to try and pronounce—was about ready to hit shelves everywhere.

Looking through its ingredient list, Owen couldn’t see what made it so much better than any of the other over-the-counter medications, but he wasn’t a doctor. What he did find was that like most drug companies, their stock was heavily monitored. It was highly unlikely someone was stealing the kind of quantities they would need to mass produce a chemical weapon without the FDA or law enforcement getting involved.

Satex Pharmaceuticals was a dead end.

Running his hands through his hair, Owen willed the caffeine in his system to jump-start his brain. But even caffeine had its limits, and his brain was well and truly fried.

Pushing back from the desk, he sighed. “All right. Let’s call it a night. We made some good progre…”

He trailed off when he looked over towards the living room floor. Jamie was curled up among stacks of printouts. Head cradled on his bicep. He was softly snoring as he clutched the highlighter sword he made by stacking all of Owen’s markers cap to end. He must have fallen asleep shortly after using it to poke Owen in the ear.

Owen’s lips curled in a self-indulgent smile. They had been on multi-day ops before, but Owen had never seen Jamie sleep. He looked young. Before he realized what he was doing, Owen was kneeling beside him, brushing his fingers through Jamie’s hair. His skin was warm. Without meaning to, he caressed down Jamie’s neck. Fingers light as a feather, he wanted to make sure his skin remained unmarred. There were no bruises this time.