Never Cross the Back-Gate Guard

Chapter 007

Back in Room 104 of the staff dormitories, Cole took a quick hot shower and stepped out of the bathroom wearing only a pair of loose board shorts, toweling his hair dry. His brow remained slightly furrowed as he replayed Elena Cross’s close-quarters combinations in his head. Something about her footwork and the angle of her throat strikes felt naggingly familiar, though he couldn’t quite place where he’d seen that lineage before.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Frantic pounding suddenly rattled his door.

Cole tossed the towel aside, threw an unbuttoned dress shirt over his shoulders, and pulled the door open.

For a second, he just blinked.

Standing in the hallway was a stunning young woman in her early twenties, wearing nothing but a thin, violet silk camisole nightgown. Her face was flushed with panic, and one delicate spaghetti strap had slipped off her shoulder, exposing creamy, porcelain skin under the fluorescent hall light.

Even with Cole’s iron discipline, his throat went slightly dry.

Before he could say a word, Chloe Bennett lunged forward and latched onto his forearm with both hands. “Help! Please—a huge rat just ran into my room! You have to help me get it out!”

Cole chuckled softly. “It’s just a rat. Is it really worth panicking over?” Out in the bush on long-range recon, field rats were practically protein rations.

Chloe didn’t care. She dragged him straight across the hall into her unit. Cole raised an eyebrow—dragging a strange man into her bedroom at night dressed like that? This girl really had zero survival instincts.

The moment they stepped inside, a grey rat the size of a fist darted out from beneath the loveseat.

Chloe let out a piercing shriek and yanked hard on Cole’s shirt to hide behind him—ripping the unbuttoned shirt clean off his shoulders in the process. Worse, startled by her scream, the rat bolted straight across the floorboards and scrambled right onto the top of her bare foot.

Chloe froze solid. Her pupils shrank to pinpricks, her breath stopped, and her eyes rolled back as if she were about to pass out on the spot.

Seeing she was genuinely terrified, Cole dropped low, waited half a second for the rat to shift its weight, and lunged forward, snatching it off her skin by the scruff of its neck. Because he had dropped to one knee right in front of the loveseat—and because her silk nightgown barely reached mid-thigh—as Cole glanced up to check on her, he got an accidental, unobstructed view underneath the hem.

Heat rushed straight to Cole’s ears as he quickly stood up.

Chloe whipped his fallen shirt out of her hands and threw it over his fist to cover the wriggling rat before collapsing onto the loveseat, gasping for air with a hand pressed to her chest.

With a silent, imperceptible squeeze of his thumb and forefinger, Cole crushed the rat’s spine cleanly, walked over to the corner bin, and dropped it inside before picking up his shirt. “Keep your balcony screen latched at night, or they’ll keep climbing up the drainpipes,” he said, turning toward the door.

“W-Wait a second!” Chloe called out hurriedly.

Cole paused with his hand on the doorknob and glanced back. “Something else?”

“Could you… could you just double-check under the bed to make sure it didn’t bring any friends?” As her heart rate finally slowed down, Chloe took her first real look at the man standing in her living room.

He wasn’t pretty-boy handsome—his features were too sharp and rugged for that—but beneath the open shirt, his torso looked like it had been chiseled out of granite. Broad shoulders, lean waist, acrisscross of faded combat scars, and a textbook eight-pack of rock-hard abs.

Chloe’s eyes practically lit up like floodlights.

Feeling her shameless stare burning into his midsection, Cole quickly pulled his shirt closed and started buttoning it up.

Watching the show disappear behind the fabric with obvious disappointment, Chloe tilted her head. “You’re a new hire here, aren’t you? I haven’t seen you around the complex before.”

“Just signed on today,” Cole said, finishing the buttons.

“Which department? Give me your number so I can add you!” For reasons she couldn’t quite explain, just having this guy in the room made her feel safer than she had in weeks.

“Security,” Cole replied plainly. Earning an honest paycheck was nothing to hide.

Chloe’s face brightened. “Oh, awesome! That means I’ll see you at the front lobby every morning!”

“Probably not,” Cole said with a dry smile. “They put me on the back gate watching the scrap dump.”

Chloe blinked, then slapped the cushion indignantly. “The dump?! Are they blind in HR?! Putting someone built like you in the trash yard is a total waste of talent! Look, I’m Chloe Bennett—everyone calls me Chloe.”

Because she was completely relaxed in her own room, she had curled one leg up onto the sofa cushion as she leaned forward to talk—completely oblivious to the fact that the short silk hem had ridden up again, flashing a hint of pale pink lace.

Cole sucked in a sharp breath, bit the tip of his tongue to snap his focus back, and spun around to yank the door open. “Room’s clear. Get some sleep—I’ve got an early shift tomorrow.”

He stepped out and pulled the door shut behind him before his self-control could take any more damage. On the loveseat, Chloe blinked at the closed door, glanced down at her posture, and burst out laughing as her cheeks turned pink. “Wait… did I just scare him off?”

Across the hall, Cole stopped in front of Room 104. His eyes narrowed instantly.

The door was standing two inches ajar, and the room inside was pitch-black. When Chloe had dragged him across the hall five minutes ago, he had definitely left the overhead light on.

Cole pushed the door open and stepped into the dark room.

Whoosh!

The sharp whistle of a heavy pipe slicing through the air came from his blind spot on the left. Without even turning his head, Cole shifted his weight back half an inch and lashed out with a side kick into the dark. His heel connected with a solid ribcage, sending a heavy body crashing across the room with a muffled groan.

Before the first man hit the drywall, two more shadows lunged from the corners, swinging hardwood batons at his head. Moving entirely by sound and airflow—standard night-fighting conditioning for Task Force Wraith—Cole sidestepped the first swing, caught the man’s wrist to use him as a human shield against the second baton, and dropped both of them to the linoleum with two crisp elbow strikes.

Cole reached over and flipped the wall switch.

Blinking in the sudden glare, three burly men in their forties wearing stained warehouse coveralls lay groaning on the floor, clutching their ribs and jaws.

Cole looked down at them calmly. “I don’t think we’ve met. Care to tell me why you’re swinging pipes in my room?”

The one nearest the door grimaced, refusing to meet Cole’s eyes. “We… we saw some guy sneaking around the ground floor earlier and thought a burglar broke in. It was an honest mistake, man.”

“A mistake that had three warehouse loaders waiting in the dark inside a new hire’s room?” Cole’s voice dropped an octave. “Who paid you?”

All three men clamped their jaws shut and closed their eyes, bracing for a beating rather than ratting out their boss. Looking at their calloused hands and cheap work boots, Cole knew they were just desperate dockworkers taking fifty bucks under the table from someone upstairs. And he didn’t need a confession to know it was Julian Hayes.

The next morning at seven sharp, Cole drew his uniform from supply and followed the shift supervisor out to the back-gate scrap yard. Mountains of off-cut fabric, chemical drums, and cafeteria waste baked in the morning sun, sending up a sour stench while clouds of flies buzzed overhead.

From the air-conditioned guard booth stepped Travis Barker, his uniform cap tilted sideways and a lit cigarette dangling from his lip. Looking Cole up and down, he let out a loud, greasy laugh. “Well, look who it is—the CEO’s brand-new brother-in-law! What’s the matter, pal? Couldn’t that spineless loser of a brother of yours beg his wife for a better spot than the garbage heap?”