Bryce: The Project (Indie Rebels Book 3) Read online

  Bryce: The Project

  Indie Rebels, Book 3

  Miranda P. Charles

  MPC Romance Publishing

  Copyright © 2018 by Miranda P. Charles

  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.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, locations, organisations and events described in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination, fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any event, locale or person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cover art by Dar Albert, Wicked Smart Designs.

  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

  The Unwilling Executive Extract

  Also by Miranda P. Charles

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Bryce Green pulled the black mask over his face and donned a pair of dark glasses. He pressed the tiny button at the side of the spectacles to turn on the night-vision functionality, adjusting it so he could comfortably see.

  Stealthily, he crept up the side driveway of a two-storey house and spotted the three skinny figures he’d been looking for. They were trying to pry open a window at the back of the empty property.

  “Just fucking break it already!” one of them whispered impatiently.

  “Shut up! I cut myself the last time, remember?”

  “But it’s locked, airhead,” said the tallest one. “Your crowbar won’t work no matter how much you try.”

  Bryce shook his head. These guys were just kids—probably no older than fifteen—who didn’t have anything better to do but break into homes while the owners were away.

  He could call the police right now and tip them off that he’d found the amateur hoodlums who’d been worrying this quiet Sydney suburb. But first, he wanted to strike the fear of God into them. Clearly, their parents hadn’t been successful in that regard.

  He hid behind a tree and emptied his gun of bullets. Then he turned on the laser pointer and aimed it at the forehead of the guy holding the crowbar.

  “Shit!” said the tall teen, whirling around.

  “What?” asked the dude with the crowbar.

  “Someone’s pointing a laser at you,” whispered the third guy, clearly fearful as he crouched low and tried to hide behind a potted plant.

  Bryce aimed at the chest of the scared guy.

  “Now it’s on you!” Crowbar Dude said.

  Tall Teen took a step in Bryce’s direction. “Who’s doing that?”

  “Shh!” Scared One whispered. “The neighbours will hear you!”

  “Jerome, is that you?” Tall Teen asked. “Fucking come out and stop muckin’ around.”

  Bryce showed himself, gun pointed at Tall Teen. “No. You kids stop muckin’ around.”

  Three jaws hit the ground.

  “You’re an Indie Rebel,” said Crowbar Dude in awe.

  Tall Teen snorted. “There’s only one of him.”

  Crowbar Dude nudged him. “Shut up. How do you know the others aren’t hiding?”

  “Please don’t call the police,” Scared One said.

  Tall Teen scoffed. “As if. The cops don’t like the Indie Rebels. They’re nothing but vigilantes.”

  “Shut up,” Crowbar Dude whispered urgently. “How many times have we heard our dads talk about them? He’s gonna tie us up and leave us here for the police to find us.”

  Bryce hid a sigh. “Why are you stealing from these houses?”

  “None of your business,” Tall Teen answered.

  “Our dad ordered us to, sir,” Scared One said from his hiding place.

  “Now you shut up,” Tall Teen ordered.

  “So you’re all brothers?”

  “I’m their cousin,” Crowbar Dude supplied.

  “So why did your fathers tell you to steal?”

  Tall Teen scowled. “None of your business, I said.”

  Scared One straightened from behind the potted plant. “’Cause our dads and their friends need the money to buy drugs.”

  “Yeah,” Crowbar Dude said with a smirk. “We have to do as they say or they go berserk on us.”

  “And our dads hit our mums,” Scared One added with a tinge of sadness.

  Bryce inhaled sharply. “Where are your parents right now?”

  Tall Teen shook his head, pointing at him. “For the last time, none of your fucking business.”

  Bryce approached, puffing up his chest. The three boys shuffled back, even Tall Teen. The younger guys clearly acknowledged his superior physique.

  “Listen to me, you three,” he said authoritatively. “You have a choice. You tell me what you know about the people supplying your fathers and their friends with drugs or I will hand all of you to the police. I know that the charges against you are longer than my arm. I’d say you’d be up for some jail time—make that a lot of jail time.”

  The teenagers looked at each other, then Tall Teen laughed, grabbing the crowbar from his cousin. “Bull-fucking-shit. You’re not a real Indie Rebel. I bet you’re nothing but a copycat.”

  Bryce calmly put his gun in its holster. Then, swiftly and without warning, he did the unarm-and-take-down move perfected by the Indie Rebels, and Tall Teen was face down on the ground, weaponless. Bryce cuffed his wrists, then pulled him to a standing position.

  “Wow, that was smooth.” Tall Teen was clearly awed despite being immobilised.

  Bryce fished out his phone and opened the secure Indie Rebels app with a retina scan. Then he called his mentor, Aidan Radcliffe, who’d given him this assignment.

  “Bro, could you check out these kids?” He took a photo of the three and sent it off.

  “What did you just do?” Scared One asked, his tone curious.

  “Just wait.” Bryce stood imposingly, facing the guys. He took off his dark glasses so they could tell he was glaring at them.

  He didn’t think these boys were irredeemable. Unfortunately, they didn’t seem to have any good adult role models.

  “I got something,” Aidan said.

  Bryce put the phone on speaker. “Go ahead. Let these boys know what we have on them.”

  Aidan rattled off all the misdemeanour charges against all three. Then he mentioned their names and address.

  Crowbar Dude gasped. “We all just moved together last week! How did you know?”

  “We’re the IRs,” Bryce answered in a low voice. “We know things—”

  “IRs?” Crowbar Dude interrupted.

  Bryce refrained from rolling his eyes. “Indie Rebels.”

  The brothers snickered at their cousin. “Dumbass,” Tall Teen said.

  “As I was saying,” Bryce said, injecting more authority in his tone, “we’re the Indie Rebels. We know things the police don’t know. We can see things they can’t. We have resources they can only dream about. So trust me when I say we will know if you three get u
p to no good again. We have ways of making delinquents go on the straight and narrow that the police won’t even dare try. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” they all said meekly.

  “So tell us what you know about the people supplying drugs to your fathers.”

  “Will you let us go if we do?” asked Tall Teen, his bravado all but gone.

  “Maybe.”

  “Please, will you also make sure our dads don’t hurt our mums?” Scared One asked.

  Emotion rose up Bryce’s throat, and he put a hand on Scared One’s shoulder. “Tell us everything you know so we can conduct a successful operation to catch the bad guys keeping people drug dependent, okay? And we’ll make sure your mothers get help.”

  All three nodded and started spilling the beans. Bryce wasn’t entirely surprised when he recognised some of the names they mentioned. The drug pushers were part of yet another drug trafficking gang the IR team had heard about.

  “Okay, thank you,” Aidan said when the guys had finished talking. “What you’ve given me is very helpful. For now, you three go on home and pretend you never saw us or spoke to us.”

  “We can’t,” Tall Teen said flatly. “We’ll just get punched and kicked for not coming up with the goods.”

  Bryce ran a hand over his face. He was the only one on this assignment tonight. He couldn’t risk getting into an altercation with several adults and have his mask pulled off his head. “Bro, what can we do about this?” he asked Aidan.

  “I’m thinking… Kids, wait for an hour before you go home. I’ll get another of our agents to drop off some stuff at the back of your house so you boys can pretend you stole it. That should ensure they don’t lay a hand on you until we’ve done what we need to do. Okay?”

  “Yes, sir, thank you,” Tall Teen said, while the other two nodded and grinned.

  Bryce smiled. He knew that tracking devices would be hidden in those items. The IR team would know where they ended up.

  What had started as a small IR assignment had become an undertaking against yet another gang of drug traffickers. It felt like playing whack-a-mole, but they couldn’t give up the fight. It was personal to some of the Indie Rebels.

  Bryce said goodbye to Aidan and uncuffed Tall Teen. Then he sent the teenagers off with the warning that the Indie Rebels would be watching them. He got back into his IR-supplied black SUV and watched the silhouettes of the three boys as they walked away from the house they’d been ordered to burgle.

  He identified with those kids, although he’d been already twenty when his own father—whom he hadn’t met until then—had reeled him into a syndicate involved in drug smuggling, kidnapping, and murder. He was lucky his dad had been lenient with him when he’d refused to commit heinous acts. He’d gotten away with doing tasks that hadn’t directly involved hurting anyone. But he’d practically been the syndicate’s prisoner, with a shoot-to-kill order against him if he’d dared leave.

  He’d been powerless in the ten years that he’d been their detainee. Still, guilt from not only being associated with them, but also for being the son of Douglas Caine—better known as Doug Green, founder of the Flowers crime gang—ate at him every single day.

  Every. Single. Day.

  That was why he was on a mission to do his utmost as an Indie Rebel. This was the only way he knew to redeem himself.

  He smirked, remembering how he’d thought that his father’s death nine months ago was the end of his life as well. Fleur Horsefield, his dad’s partner in life and crime, had become the syndicate’s sole boss. She’d been keen to force Bryce to toe the line, having hated that her partner had been so soft with his son. It would have only been a matter of time before Fleur would have decided to pull the trigger.

  Lucky for Bryce, he’d found out how to contact the Indie Rebels. He hadn’t believed at first that the IR—so hated and feared by pretty much all the criminal syndicates he knew—would answer a request for help from the son of the previous head of the Flowers.

  But the Indie Rebels had answered his call, and it had been the best day of his life.

  Now he was free, and Fleur and all her gang members were behind bars. Frankly, he didn’t think he’d be able to fully repay the Indie Rebels for giving him back his freedom—his life and entire future, essentially. So even when the time came that the chiefs decided he could graduate from being an initiate, he’d still owe the team a lifetime of gratitude.

  He started driving home and his phone rang. It was Aidan once again.

  “Hey, thanks for what you did for those boys,” Bryce said. “I didn’t think it was right to call the cops on them at this stage.”

  “I agree. Let’s hope this turns things around for them. Anyway, I’m calling about something else. The chiefs have approved our plans for your next project, so we can now discuss in detail how you can make contact with Emma Fern.”

  Bryce inhaled sharply, the image of an auburn-haired beauty with the most amazing green eyes popping in his mind. His shock when Aidan had shown him a picture of Emma last weekend still lingered.

  “We know you’re the best person for this. Only you can infiltrate the Fixers syndicate as quickly as we need, especially when your dad had been good friends with Addison Fern.”

  “Yeah,” Bryce said with a frown, trying to recall his memories of Emma’s father. He’d met the man several times, when Addison had visited the Flowers’ headquarters at Shallow Waters, one of the private islands in the Whitsundays.

  He still couldn’t believe that Addison Fern, head of the sophisticated Fixers drug syndicate, was Emma’s dad. But Bryce guessed Emma knew how to be careful with her true identity.

  “We do have a few concerns,” Aidan said. “First is the possibility that a Fixers member would somehow try to communicate with someone in the Flowers and get wind of the fact that you and Fleur didn’t get along. We don’t want to give Addison any reason to doubt you.”

  Bryce smiled. “There’s little chance of that. After my dad died, Fleur tried to borrow money from Addison. He refused, and Fleur ranted and raved for days about it. She accused Addison of being an ungrateful bastard, forgetting about the help the Flowers had extended to the Fixers when Dad was still alive.”

  “So Fleur isn’t close to Addison? That’s a relief.”

  “Yup. But I believe that the lack of assistance from Addison was because she didn’t know about the secret code that my dad and Addison agreed to.”

  “What code?”

  “If someone from the leadership team of either the Fixers or the Flowers says five fingers, then the person being spoken to has to answer with but there are only two Fs.”

  “Five fingers and but there are only two Fs?”

  “Yes. Apparently, that code identifies select gang members that the leaders can fully trust without question, because Dad or Addison themselves had already vetted them.”

  “And your dad gave that code to you?”

  “No,” Bryce said with a chuckle. “He might have been fond of me, but the Flowers was his real baby. No way would he have given it to me.”

  “How’d you get it then?”

  “When Dad had that motorbike accident, he deteriorated quite quickly. As you know, he refused to go to the hospital for fear of being caught. I was desperate to know his orders regarding me after he was gone. So two days before he died, I found the chance to hide my phone under his bed while he was sleeping, and I left it recording. Luckily, no one had reason to check the room for bugs, and I managed to capture his conversation with Rebo, his favourite henchman.

  “According to Dad, the code is so top-secret that he’d only ever given it to one other Flowers member before, and that guy died on a shoot-out with undercover cops to help Addison himself escape a sting. Dad also said that while he loved Fleur, he didn’t think she was the best leader for the Flowers, so he hadn’t given it to her. He’d encouraged Rebo to challenge Fleur for the leadership.”

  “So as far we know, no one else from the Flowers knows about t
his code apart from you and Rebo?”

  “Yes. And just because Rebo knows about it doesn’t mean he can reach out to Addison and blurt out the code. A hierarchy has to be followed. Only those in a leadership position can bring up the code by saying ‘five fingers’. If someone down the line mentions it first to someone higher up, it could mean the code has been compromised. So because Fleur doesn’t know it, Addison probably thinks Dad didn’t get to give it to anyone else.”

  “Hm. So you just can’t tell him you know about it?”

  “Not according to the protocol Addison and my dad established. But I can probably drop hints that I know something Fleur doesn’t, and that might make Addison try it out on me.”

  “That’s a good idea. Let me remind you to be extra careful, Bryce. If they find out you’re an IR, you’re as good as dead.”

  “I know,” he said grimly.

  “Well, back to Emma… She’s here in Sydney.”

  Bryce raised his brows. “She is?”

  “Yes. Our surveillance team saw her arriving at the airport three days ago. She’s staying in a serviced apartment in the city.”

  “Right. That certainly makes it easier.”

  “Yes. And since we need for you to start the first phase of this project ASAP, you have the chance of bumping into her tonight. She’s in town right now, watching a movie with her cousin, Sharryn Fern, at the George Street cinemas.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Yes. The chiefs’ orders are for you to drop everything else and focus on this alone.”

  “Okay. The Fixers aren’t getting closer to hacking our systems, though, are they?”

  “Addison wasn’t. As you know, he couldn’t get past a particular firewall after several months of trying. But there’s been a new development. Our tech guys found new hacking codes that are so sophisticated that they believe only one person could have written them. They call him Jester, and no one seems to know his real identity. While our guys were able to reinforce security, Jester came too close for comfort. We believe he’s being paid by Addison to work on our systems because Addison had tried contacting Jester two months ago on the dark web. So you have to somehow inveigle information from Addison regarding Jester. Apparently, Jester’s that good that he could eventually find a way in, if given enough time. We can’t afford to let him keep trying.”