Page 1 of Acting on Instinct
December
Chapter One
Johnna White
The caramel and black German shepherd stepped back from Johnna White’s car after doing a thorough sniff test, ensuring that White wasn’t driving a rolling bomb, aiming to wipe out the Iniquus Security campus.
White turned to her passenger, Nomad, who had crammed himself into the front seat of her sports car, looking like the Jack in a “Jack in the box” must look before a child cranked the handle, and he could finally burst out of the confines into his full stature, poor guy.
Nomad was six-foot gagillion. His shoulders were wide set with functional muscles—muscles that saved lives doing hard things, not the gym-bro mirror-flexing kind. Ranger school to Green Beret, to Delta Force, then, just last month, out on his ass with a medical retirement.
Rumor had it that Nomad’s aspirations were turning toward the State Department. He’d be good at it, too. He grew up in American embassies in various EU countries and could, at a minimum, hold a polite conversation in all the European languages. This was an astounding feat that White would like to accomplish eventually, baby steps.
White, herself, was about as big as Nomad’s left leg. At just over five feet tall, just over a hundred pounds, she’d chosen a car that fit her body structure—and sure, her personality as well. She did enjoy a run of tight curves at top speeds, the feel of the drag and pull on her body, the power purring under her thighs, control in her hands.
Yes, one thing Johnna White enjoyed was control and having the upper hand.
So in circumstances like today’s, she was less comfortable.
“Have you ever been to the Iniquus campus?” White asked.
“I’ve only been in D.C. since the car accident,” he said, lifting his hand to cup the black eye patch that made him look like the hero on the front of a romance novel. “Most of that time I’ve spent with Red in the hospital, so I haven’t been able to get around much. The closest I’ve been to Iniquus was a meeting at the Pentagon,” Nomad said as White inched toward the massive black security gate, yawning wide for her to pass.
“Though I know a couple of people who work here. Ares, a brother from back in my days as a Green Beret in Africa. He’s with Cerberus Tactical K9 Team Bravo. His wife, Hailey, is here now on the logistics team.”
“Where were you in Africa?” White kept her foot light on the gas, rolling slowly toward the guest parking lot. Today, White was shooting what felt like her last bullet. She needed a bull’s eye. And she was about to find out if she missed the target altogether.
“My last post with the Green Berets was in Africa. Hatari.” That last word sounded gritty on Nomad’s lips, rough like sandpaper, snapping White’s focus back to their conversation.
“A massacre. Shit, Nomad.”
“That about sums it up. Hey, are you all right?”
“Fine. Why?” White asked.
Nomad spoke English with a non-precise European accent. Somewhat British, somewhat mutt. White thought that Nomad sounded the way a nobleman should sound.
White, on the other hand, despite looking exactly like her Japanese-born mother, sounded like a girl from the South, y’all.
“You suddenly look nauseated,” Nomad said, “or like you’re smelling a hot pile.”
“This isn’t going to be my favorite encounter.”
“With this Lynx woman?” Nomad asked, shifting in his seat to get a better look at her.
White tried to recompose her facial muscles to look neutral. “Woman is a stretch.”
“Ogre then.” A smile wiggled at the corners of Nomad’s lips.
“I suppose I should prepare you for the mindfuck that you’re about to encounter.”
“That bad?” Nomad turned to look at the Iniquus Headquarters, a massive building camouflaged for Washington, D.C. safety. Set in a park-like setting along the Potomac, the landscape designers had chosen the grass that covered the rolling hills and training fields because it never changed color even in summer drought or winter cold. They’d painted the roof of their monstrous headquarters in flat green camouflage that blended so well with the grass that, from a helicopter, if you didn’t know exactly where to look, the building was nearly invisible.
From the ground, Iniquus took a different approach. The white façade of the building could easily pass as a country club where the rich and monied swirled ice in their scotch tumblers, murmuring industry secrets that kept bank accounts as fat and happy as a gluttonously swollen belly after a holiday feast. But that was simply the illusion the owners wanted to create.
Looks were highly deceiving.
Walking past the colonnade, if you thought that you were going to get wood paneling and oil paintings, you’d be right, but only up in the Command Suite, where shmoozing went on—high-dollar corporate and government contracts werenegotiated and signed to set Iniquus in motion, doing the thing that needed doing, keeping their protectees safe and sound.
