Broken Hero Read online

  Broken Hero

  London James

  Copyright © 2019 by London James

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Epilogue

  The Secret Baby (Sneak Peek)

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  Chapter One

  Baker

  Four Years Ago...

  “Perimeter is secure,” she says as she steps inside, and locks the door behind her.

  “All seems quiet, enough,” I agree.

  “Good,” he says, from his spot on the couch in the living room. “I don't need any excitement.”

  I roll my eyes so only she can see, drawing a grin from her. Jenny Colton has been my partner for just over a year now, and in that time, I've fallen in love with her. I wasn't looking for anything, wasn't expecting anything, but I suppose when you work in such close quarters for so long, things like that are sometimes inevitable. She's the most remarkable woman I've ever met – strong, independent, fierce, and is easily the most intelligent person I've ever known.

  She really is the whole package and somebody I want to spend the rest of my life with.

  We're in one of the safe houses where we store material witnesses in big cases, and people transitioning into the witness protection program. Which is what we're doing here now – protecting a key witness in a big case the Department of Justice will be bringing soon. After the case is done, he'll go into WITSEC – witness protection – and get a new name, new identity, new everything. This piece of garbage will get a whole new lease on life, and sometimes, all I can think about are the number of people who no longer have a life because of him.

  We're both working with the U.S. Marshal's Service, which means in our department, we're usually tasked with providing protection for witnesses, and transporting high-value prisoners. For the last week, we've been on babysitting duty, protecting this scumbag, Marco Perez – a former lieutenant, and chief hitter, for a Mexican drug cartel. He's got loads of incriminating information that could help the DOJ roll them up once and for all.

  Which means, there are going to be some people very keen on making sure he doesn't get a chance to testify.

  I follow Jenny into the kitchen and grab a couple bottles of water out of the refrigerator. I hand her one, and twist the top off mine, taking a long swallow. Our gazes lock, and there is an intense wave of emotion that passes between us. What I wouldn't give to walk out that door and whisk her away to somewhere else – some tropical location where we can spend the days sipping Mai-Tai's on the beach and spending our evenings in each other's arms.

  But she's married to the job and has a sense of duty that might even be stronger than my own – not an easy feat, given the fact that I spent more than a decade in the Marine Corps. But, it's just one of those facets of her personality that have drawn me in and continue to hold me tight.

  “Hey, can we get some food in here?” Marco bellows from the living room. “I'm hungry, man.”

  “He's always hungry,” Jenny says quietly and rolls her eyes.

  Marco isn't exactly the easiest house guest we've ever had. He's pretty high maintenance, actually. Always demanding this, always ordering us to do that. He seems to have forgotten that we're not his staff – we're there to keep his ass from getting shot.

  “I'll order a pizza,” I tell her.

  She sighs. “Again? I'm getting so tired of pizza.”

  “At least it shuts him up,” I say and chuckle. “How about this? I'll order a pizza for him, and I'll order us some, what – Chinese?”

  “Actually yeah, that sounds great.”

  “Done.”

  “Hey, you guys hearing me?” he calls out.

  I slip my phone out of my pocket and walk into the living room. Marco is sitting on the recliner, his hands over his ample belly, an annoyed look on his face. There's a baseball game playing on the TV, and the area around him is littered with candy bar and fast food wrappers, empty soda cans, and days old newspapers. He's a disgusting man in clothes he hasn't changed in days, has greasy hair, bad skin, and smells like he hasn't showered in a week.

  “About time, man,” he says.

  I narrow my eyes as I look at him. “You need to get something through your head, Marco,” I said, my voice low and menacing. “We're not your staff. We're not your servants. We are the only things standing between you and your old boss cutting your head off with a machete. Don't forget, Marco; you're a criminal.”

  “Actually, cabron,” he says. “I'm a star witness. Getting all set up by your government because I'm willing –”

  “Yeah, because you're willing to be a snitch,” I say. “Not like you had a lot of choices. You either snitch, or you catch a bullet in the head.”

  I lean closer to him, taking shallow breaths through my mouth, to keep from gagging on the stench of the man. I fix him with my most menacing, cold-blooded gaze.

  “See, that's what happens when you're a piece of shit lowlife criminal, Marco,” I growl. “Your options tend to suck.”

  “Hey, puto, you can't talk to me like that. I –”

  “Yeah, I can talk to you like that, and I will,” I interrupt. “Don't try to make yourself out to be the white knight in this whole shitshow. You're not. You're a dirtbag who's just doing what he has to do to save his own ass. You're getting a sweet deal – a whole new life – by rolling over on your boss and his buddies. You're not a hero, Marco. You're a coward and a punk.”

  Marco's face is purple, and he looks apoplectic, stuttering and huffing, but says nothing. Slowly, he lowers his gaze and tries to push himself deeper into the seat, as if trying to create some distance between us. I didn't blame him. At six-four, I have half a foot on him, and although he is pushing two hundred and sixty or seventy pounds, his is all flab and gut, where I am still tightly corded muscle. I could tear that man in half if I wanted to, and he knows it.

  Satisfied I've made my point, I stand up. “What do you want on your pizza?” I ask him.

  “Sausage, mushroom, and peppers,” he mutters, still refusing to meet my eyes.

  I put the call through and order his pizza. The whole time, Marco still refuses to look at me. He's afraid of me. Good. He should be. I hate dealing with pieces of human garbage like Marco Perez. Don't get me wrong; I love what I do. I think what I do is important work. But having to deal with pieces of shit like him is distasteful. At b
est.

  But, because I believe in the system of justice in this country, and because I think what we do serves the greater good for our society as a whole, I tolerate filth like Marco Perez. Getting him to flip, with the potential to roll up an entire cartel that floods the country with drugs, guns, and trafficked women is a good thing. And it's worth putting up with scumbags like him – despite how difficult it is to remember that sometimes.

  “Your pizza should be here in half an hour,” I tell him.

  I turn and walk back into the kitchen, where I find Jenny sitting at the small table with a grin on her face. I grab another bottle of water out of the refrigerator and sit down. Jenny just sits there with that amused smile on her face, just looking at me.

  “What?” I finally ask.

  She shrugs. “Kinda hard on him, weren't you?”

  I scoff. “Please,” I say. “He's lucky I restrained myself, the disgusting maggot.”

  “I can hear you, you know, cabron,” he calls from the living room, seemingly feeling bolder without me in the room with him.

  “Like I give a shit,” I fire back, then turn back to Jenny. “People like him – if you want to call him a person – need to be put in their place and be reminded of their exact spot in the food chain.”

  “Can still hear you, puto,” Marco bellows, prompting a laugh from Jenny.

  I roll my eyes. “Don't encourage him,” I whisper, then call out to Marco, “Shut your mouth, or I'll come in there and shut it for you.”

  The TV gets louder, and Marco falls silent again. I nod and turn back to Jenny, giving her a soft smile.

  “Remind me to never get on your bad side,” she jokes.

  “Don't be a degenerate dirtbag like that, and you never will.”

  She laughs, a high tinkling sound, sweeter than any music to me, and shakes her head. I twist off the top and take a drink of my water, giving her a grin.

  “Have you always been such a hardass?” she teases.

  “It's a byproduct of growing up in Texas,” I answer. “They breed 'em tougher out there.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she laughs. “Tough Texas boy. Good thing I know better than that.”

  “Yes, you do,” I say. “But, cretins like him out there don't, and I aim to keep it that way.”

  She leans forward, and puts her hand on my smooth cheek, caressing it softly. “Your secret is safe with me.”

  I look at her, feeling the longing within me. I want to kiss her. Want to take her in my arms. Make love to her. But, we're on duty, and given how duty-bound the both of us are, it's a line we'll never cross. Still, being so physically close to the woman you love, and not being able to touch her, or kiss her – it's frustrating as hell.

  “You know,” I say. “We both have some vacation time coming up that we're gonna need to take before we cap out.”

  “Yes, yes we do,” she replies.

  “I was thinking that maybe we should get away for a while,” I say, speaking softly so Marco can't hear me. “Maybe go to Hawaii, or Tahiti, or something.”

  “Wow, exotic,” she whispers back. “But really, can we afford Tahiti?”

  “You let me worry about that,” I tell her. “It's my gift to you.”

  We can; she just doesn't realize it yet. My father was an oilman in Texas, and his company hit it big. As he got older, he transitioned the company over to more renewable resources, which made the company boom even more. Truth be told, as the sole heir, and majority stockholder in Redmond Energy – and now that my parents have passed – I'm worth billions. Money will never be an issue for us once we get married. Ever.

  I haven't told her about my fortune yet, simply because I haven't been ready. I know that money can change your perceptions about a person and lead you to draw certain conclusions about them. When I met Jenny, she got to know me for who I am, and not for what I have.

  Not that Jenny is the type to use me for my money. I'm pretty sure that would go against everything she stands for. She's a self-made, independent woman. She has trouble asking for help in most anything. She prefers doing things on her own, without help from anybody. That's just who she is.

  As for me, I don't live the kind of lavish lifestyle that would lead anybody to think I'm anything more than a woefully underpaid civil servant. No flashy cars, no luxury yachts – nothing like that. I live a simple, modest lifestyle.

  Being flashy isn't for me. It's not how I was raised. My dad had more money than just about anybody in Texas, but he believed deeply in being humble, in giving back, and in being a decent person. He instilled in me a strong work ethic – putting me to work in the oil fields when I was fifteen years old. When I wasn't in school, I was up every day at four-thirty in the morning, doing some of the most backbreaking labor you can imagine, and learning about the business.

  It sucked at the time, but looking back on it, I'm grateful to him for it. I'm grateful to him for a lot of things. He never let me get too comfortable, never wanted me to be the spoiled, entitled, trust-fund kid. It's because of his encouragement that I opted to forgo stepping right into the family business. He encouraged me to seek out my own way and create my own identity. That was why I joined the Corps, to begin with. And why I spent twelve years serving – eight in Force Recon.

  That experience honed and shaped me. It has as much to do with who I am today, as my father's teachings ever did. I feel lucky in that regard – I not only had a strong father who taught me the value of a hard day's work, to appreciate what I have, and to take nothing for granted. But I had strong leaders in the Corps who helped mold me into something more, and somebody who valued serving others. It's a big part of why I do what I do now.

  Before he passed away, my father put together a board to oversee the day to day operations of the company, while I was off finding myself. That board will remain intact until I decide what I want to do. Personally, I'm happy with the current arrangement. Yeah, because I'm still the majority owner, I still have to deal with major decisions from time to time, but it's limited. I appointed an executor to act in my stead, which helps ease that burden. I still keep up on what's going on with the company, but I no longer feel I have to have my fingers in the pie on a daily basis.

  Thanks to my upbringing, I just don't feel like the corporate CEO type. I'm more of a hands-on, boots on the ground, roll up your sleeves type of guy. I prefer getting my hands dirty, rather than stare at charts and graphs all day long. That's just not my thing. But I'll keep cashing the checks, doing what I have to do, and doing what I want to do. I've toyed with the idea of selling the company, but I found that I just can't do it. My father built it from the ground up. It's his legacy. And even though I don't want it to be my legacy, I can't let my father's name go by the boards.

  Besides, I'm hoping that one day, Jenny and I will have kids of our own. And when that comes to pass, I'll give them the decision to either take up the mantle in the Redmond Energy leadership, or forge their own paths, and let them create their own identities. Same as my father did for me. Which is also honoring his legacy – maybe, even honoring the most important part of his legacy – as far as I'm concerned.

  “Hey, when's the pizza getting here, man?” Marco shouts. “I'm starvin'.”

  “You're always starving,” I reply. “It'll be here when it gets here.”

  I hear him grumbling to himself, no doubt cursing me out in Spanish – which seems to be all he's done since we got him to the safe house.

  “The guy is going to eat his weight in pizza this week,” I mutter.

  “I think he already has,” Jenny replies. “I've never seen somebody eat so much.”

  “Tell me about it,” I say. “Speaking of which, do you know what you want to eat?”

  She nods and gives me her order. I call the Chinese food place and put the order in. I'm suddenly feeling kind of hungry myself. As I do, Jenny is checking her phone, likely for messages from the home office.

  They update us regularly with any specific threats or things w
e need to be aware of. We're sort of isolated out here in the safe house. It's stuck in the middle of a residential neighborhood, in a nondescript housing tract. The idea is to blend in and make ourselves as invisible as possible – not something you can do if there is a squad of heavily armed guys surrounding the house.

  The downside, of course, is that it's just the two of us out here. We're on our own, and we know if the shit goes sideways, help is not going to get here in time. It doesn't happen often, but it has happened before. Leaks in the office, people being blackmailed or tortured to give up the location of a safe house – there's plenty of ways the bad guys can figure out where we are.

  Thankfully, it's rare. Information is isolated and compartmentalized. Typically, the only people who know who is in a safe house, and where that safe house is located, are usually people attached to the case – and of course, our higher-ups in the DOJ. The circle though is relatively small. It has to be when you're dealing with a group of people as ruthless and vicious as the Zavala Cartel. They'll stop at nothing to protect themselves and won't think twice about gunning down a federal officer.

  “Anything?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “Nope. No chatter. No threats. Nothing.”

  I cock my head and look at her. “You seem a bit uneasy about that.”

  She looks up and gives me a small shrug. “Doesn't it seem odd to you?” she remarks. “I mean, we're what, a week out from him testifying, and there's – nothing?”