Raincheck Read online

  RAINCHECK

  Caldwell Brothers Book 6

  By

  Colleen Charles

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Foreword

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Epilogue

  Foreword

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  Chapter One

  Hawk

  “That’ll be thirty-one seventy-two, sir.”

  I nod as I reach into my pants pocket for my wallet. After handing over my credit card, I look down at the items on the counter and roll my eyes. What the hell has the world come to when a guy faces an all-nighter but can’t even sustain himself with some processed food without taking out a loan?

  “Man,” I say to the cashier. “If someone had told me that Hostess cupcakes would be over two dollars one day, I’d have laughed them out of the room.”

  The cashier, a pretty girl-next-door type, huffs out a sigh. “Right,” she says without really looking at me. Nagging emotion that I don’t want to feel stabs at my gut like a dull butter knife. I don’t like it when women dismiss me out of turn. I may be a techy nerd, but I’m not disgusting. In Vegas, unless you’re a ripped, chiseled jawline billionaire like Nixon Caldwell or a celebrity with a lucrative standing gig on the strip, the chicks don’t give you the time of day. “You need a bag?”

  “No,” I say, annoyance snaking up my spine. “I’m just going to stuff all of this in my pockets.”

  The girl begins to turn around, and I groan.

  “Yes,” I say through clenched teeth. “I do need a bag. Unless, of course, that’s a problem.”

  “It’s five cents extra,” the girl replies in a bored voice. “Recycling and all that. Al Gore says we should care about global warming and our carbon footprint.”

  She snaps her gum and puts one hand on a curvy hip as I fumble in my pockets for a nickel. The whole exchange takes maybe thirty seconds, but I feel like I’ve been standing at the counter for an hour by the time I walk out of the convenience store. The plastic bag looped around my wrist feels precariously close to breaking, and I gingerly set it down on the passenger seat of my matte black Mustang GT350R.

  As I peel out of the parking lot, I take my hand off the gearshift and rub my temples. I’ve got a long night ahead of me, but at least I don’t have to face it alone.

  Sugar. Fat. Jim Beam.

  They’ll make great dates. The car vibrates underneath me. Normally, I love driving – especially in badass little cars that corner like they’re on rails. But today, my heart’s not in it. All I care about is getting home with my giant plastic sack of junk food and focusing on my latest project – security software that’s going to completely change the way people visit Las Vegas. I already have a buyer lined up in mind, and this is the thing that’s finally going to put me on the map. Caldwell says he’ll pay whatever it takes to get his grubby little hands on it. It might even be the thing that finally brings down that super douche, Dante Giovanetti.

  I’ve been working on it for weeks, and it’s almost ready. As a software developer, I’ve had to make some hard choices in the past, especially when it comes to selling my ‘babies.’ I can’t even begin to count how many times I’ve pulled multiple all-nighters in a row, just to make sure my programs compile smoothly with no bugs. Those were all rush jobs, but I still put in A-plus quality work. I pour my heart and soul into every single program I develop.

  But this is different. It’s simple yet revolutionary technology that makes it incredibly easy to track someone with just their mobile number. And to be completely honest, I’m a little surprised that no one else came up with the idea first, like MIT. But they didn’t. I did, and this is what’s going to put Hawk Stryker on the map. If it goes as well as I think it will, I can branch out internationally. Start selling software all over the globe as well as high dollar speaking gigs. Maybe even a TV show.

  As I drive through my gated community, my lips curl into a grin. Quiet has fallen over the neighborhood since it’s the middle of the night – I tend to do my best work when everyone else visits The Sandman – and with my armload of Mountain Dew, Hostess cakes, Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, and Bugles, I know I’m going to do some great work by the time the sun peeks over the horizon.

  Darkness swirls around my house like a black cloud. Despite living in a huge mini mansion all by myself, I rarely have anyone come in to help. My cleaning lady, Rose, comes once a week and tuts at all of the takeout boxes in the garbage can. “Mr. Hawk, you gonna die young,” she says, clucking her tongue like a mothering hen. I ignore her, just like I ignore most women. I usually only acknowledge the ones I want to fuck and let them take care of my natural male urges. I used to have a chef, but we didn’t get along – for some reason, she was morally offended that I tended to skip breakfast, the “most important meal of the day.”

  I grin again. A real breakfast. Like I’d take a break from coding at eight in the morning just to eat a cardboard tasting waffle. The only real breakfast to me is an expensive bottle of scotch with a sodium-filled junk food chaser.

  Climbing out of the car, I loop my precarious plastic bag around my wrist and stretch. That’s when the smell hits me, and my smile fades in an instant.

  Smoke. Acrid, burning smoke.

  Coming from my house.

  “Shit!” I yell into the black night as if it has ears. With trembling hands, I pull my phone from my pocket and dial the emergency line.

  “Nine-one-one, please state your emergency.”

  “My house is on fire,” I bark, looking up at the sky. Columns of smoke billow from my home to the stars, and with them comes a horrible sense of foreboding, wrapping around my heart and squeezing.

  No, my mind screams as my stomach clenches and my heart sinks. There’s no way I can lose all my work on my special software! Not like this!

  Thankfully, it’s only a matter of minutes before I hear sirens screeching into the quiet of the Las Vegas night. When they rush through my neighborhood, lights come on. Soon, my neighbors creep out onto their lawns to survey the damage. More likely they want to get a gander at me since most of them think I’m a vampire.

  By the time the firemen find the cause of the smoke and extinguish it, I’m devastated. The chief walks over to me, covered in soot and ash, clutching a clipboard.

  “Sir?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Are you the owner of this home?”

  “Yeah,” I mutter.

  The fire chief looks at me blankly. “Well, sir, that’s the interesting part,” he says, glancing down at my combat boots. “You have a room downstairs that appears to be sealed off from the rest of the house. Is it some kind of panic room? Bomb shelter?”

  My heart sinks even lower. “My private workroom,” I spit out. “I work from home.”

  “Yes, well, it looks like that’s the origin. And it was isolated, sir,” the fire chief continues. “Nothing else in the house was damaged. Th
ere’s a little bit of smoke that we’re clearing out now, but nothing that a visit from a professional clean-up service won’t cure.” He chuckles, as if the destruction of my most precious property is a good reason to laugh. One of those glass-half-full pricks.

  I hate them.

  “My lab was down there. That’s the most important part of my house – that’s where I work.”

  The fire chief takes a good look at me. For a second, I can almost see myself the way he sees me. Just a tall guy who’s built but not muscled, with dark hair in a manbun and wire-rimmed glasses, wearing fatigues and a menacing expression. His gaze drops to my Thotcon t-shirt, and he laughs.

  “What, you had your anime collection down there or something like that?”

  “No,” I growl. “I had software down there – multi-million-dollar software that I was planning to sell. I’m sure you can tell by the multi-million-dollar price tag on this house that I’m not some loser. I excel at what I do.”

  The fire chief blinks, and for a moment I can tell that I’ve caught him off guard, blowing his self-imposed judgments sky high.

  “Well...” he shrugs, “there’s always insurance, right?”

  I resist the urge to punch him in the face.

  “Right.” The bitter taste of regret burns my tongue. “There’s always the insurance.”

  “Right now, we’re treating the fire as an accident.” The fire chief makes a note on his clipboard, holding it possessively close to his chest.

  “This couldn’t possibly have been an accident,” I reply. “There’s no way. As you said, the room’s sealed. With top of the line security. The only way you can get in is with face recognition.”

  The fire chief shrugs. “You’d be surprised at what can catch on fire when no one is around.” He leans in close as if we’re besties sharing a little secret. “And anyway, we have no reason to treat it otherwise. Unless you have enemies?”

  I stare at him as Dante’s ugly mug floats through my brain. Either him or that asshole, Ostrich. That annoying douche pisses me off to no end.

  “I was working on something very, very important.” I realize with bristling frustration that I don’t really have any evidence to throw either nemesis under the bus. But I want to. The wheels of the bus go round and round, all over town. “Something that was going to make me a lot of money. And you don’t think someone would’ve tried to sabotage me?”

  The fire chief narrows his eyes. “If your project was that valuable, why wouldn’t someone break in and steal it? I doubt anyone would set something on fire to destroy it if they wanted it themselves. They’d steal it instead.”

  I take a deep breath. I know better than this idiot fire chief, but I can tell now isn’t the time to argue. Typical Vegas law enforcement bullshit. They’re so used to dealing with vagrants, thugs, and mafia they don’t put regular Joe Citizen in the top three of their priorities. If I want to make this right, I’ll have to take matters into my own hands.

  By the time the firemen leave, dawn breaks. Pink, purple, and orange streak the sky with lines of vibrant color, and some of my wealthy neighbors are waking up to start their days. The group of trophy wives jogs down the street together, every one of them with impeccable makeup and designer togs even at this ungodly hour.

  Sometimes I wonder why I choose to live in a place like this.

  Because it’s so different from everything you knew growing up, a voice in the back of my mind pushes, clawing at the farthest recesses of my brain. Because you never thought you’d live somewhere that wasn’t made of tin.

  With a shudder, I head inside to assess the worst of the damage. Like the fire chief said, most of my home is fine. The marble floors are untouched by ash and smoke, and the walls look freshly-painted. But as soon as I try to access my basement workroom, the smell of char hits me me like a fist, and I cover my face with both hands.

  “Dammit all to hell,” I growl under my breath. “Who would do something like this?”

  Nearly everything is destroyed, burned and desiccated. And what hasn’t been burned has been ruined with water from the automatic sprinklers and smoke. My expensive panel of computers and servers hangs there, a mere shell. My newest invention – the thing I’d finally hoped to complete tonight – is a mass of ruined metal and glass.

  I’m not normally a sentimental guy but looking at this makes tears prick the backs of my eyes.

  Just as I pick my way through the rubble and try to see whether or not anything can be saved or salvaged, my security system announces a visitor. At least the damn thing is working now.

  “Nixon Caldwell is at the front door.”

  I programmed the virtual assistant to talk in a sexy French accent, so whenever she’s telling me to lock the doors or clean the pool, it doesn’t grate on my last nerve.

  Great. I wipe my dusty hands off on my black utility pants. He probably wants his software, and now one of the most powerful men in Vegas is going to be pissed. My one and only friend here.

  I make my way upstairs, pour myself a glass of water, and open the door.

  “Hey.” Caldwell’s lips are pressed together in a white line, and his normally perfect suit looks rumpled.

  “I guess you heard about what happened.” I step back to allow him inside.

  He nods solemnly as he looks around at the rafters. “Was your house just talking?”

  “Yup. Smart house. Upgraded a couple weeks ago.”

  “Shit, I need to get that technology in my house. Between Linc and Marcella, the damn doors are always open.”

  “Didn’t stop a damn tragedy from happening in this one,” I mutter as Caldwell walks inside. “Too bad she can’t cook, clean, or suck my dick.”

  His nose twitches as he chuckles under his breath. “No doubt. You’re going to need this place fumigated. It smells like smoke in here. I’ve got a great cleaning company on staff. I’ll call them when I get back to my office and send them out here.”

  “Yeah, I’d appreciate that.” I lead him into my grand two-story living room before opening the French doors and sitting down on the couch. I’m exhausted. It hits me that I’ve been up all night, with no Mountain Dew or caffeinated chocolate to keep me focused. But I doubt that would make a difference now. What work do I have to do, aside from clearing out my ruined workspace?

  “Drink?”

  He shakes his head. “I know you rarely ever leave the darkness of your lair, but it’s eight in the morning.”

  “Yeah, well, my work of the better part of a year just got destroyed,” I say drily, pouring myself a couple of fingers of aged scotch.

  “About that. I really need your help.”

  “I won’t be able to give you the software. At least not yet.”

  “Wait. Didn’t you back it up? Make copies? Anything?”

  “Yeah.” I shrug helplessly, feeling like a complete dipshit in front of a man who never makes a mistake. “All the backups are on my server which is now a melted mass of blown out circuits. I’m sure it can be scraped from my old laptop that I keep in my briefcase, but it will take an experienced hacker.”

  Like Ostrich. But I’ll be damned if I grovel at the Converse of that fuck wad.

  My friend looks deeply depressed. “Damn,” he mutters. “I’m at a personal low right now, Hawk. I can’t believe the smartest man in Vegas doesn’t know to back up.”

  “I did back up, on two different servers.” I scrub my face with my hands. “They’re toast too, though.”

  Nixon frowns. “No off-site servers?”

  Hell, yeah, I have plenty of those. Did I use them? I kept ignoring the iPhone alarms that reminded me, so deep in passion for my work they didn’t even register.

  I scrub my face again. “A lot of coders and programmers get so wrapped up in their work that they lose track of time. Even if I set the alarm on my phone to backup, I still ignore it sometimes.” I sigh, because someone like Caldwell is never going to understand my world. “Look, I’m working on getting everything ba
ck as soon...”

  “No.” Caldwell cuts me off mid-sentence with a wave of his manicured hand. “I mean, I’m really in trouble. This quarter was the first quarter in Armónico history where I didn’t make a profit. All I can imagine is the disappointment in my dad’s eyes. Thank God I don’t have to actually see it, but it’s bad enough that I see it in my mind’s eye.”

  My eyes grow wide. “You’re shitting me.”

  He looks grim as he shakes his head. “I wish. I was hoping your software would turn everything around for me. I know it will turn everything around.”

  My heart sinks. I’m ten kinds of a fuck up today. “Yeah. I know.”

  “There has to be someone behind this.” Caldwell gestures toward the hidden door that leads down to my lair. “It had to be deliberate.”

  “Try telling that to the Vegas fire chief,” I say in a low growl. “He seemed to think it was an accident.”

  He looks at me with an even stare. “Anyone who thinks accidents can happen in the city where Dante Giovanetti lives is an idiot.”

  I know he’s right, but I also know that until I have proof – or a plan of revenge – I won’t be able to do jack shit. And I’ve not yet had time to go through all my security measures to determine the cause of their failure too.

  Not that I don’t already know the cause. My teeth squeak I grind them so hard.

  Chapter Two

  Waverly

  “Neon,” I bark into the headset. “Where the hell are we?”

  “Hold on.” Neon pauses, and I hear a rustling against the microphone. “We’re right here.”

  I lean closer to the computer screen, my fingers poised above the keys. As players run back and forth on the screen ahead of me, my pointer finger itches to take one of them out.

  Toast. Dead. Obliterated.

  “No kills yet, and they’ve got our men,” Neon says. “Don’t forget that.”

  I look to the side. His avatar moves across the screen, loaded down with a giant grenade launcher. Yes, sir. This is about to get real.

  “Yeah, well, it’d be a lot easier to remember if these guys weren’t such assholes,” I mutter as I drag my mouse across my desk and move my avatar on the screen. “They don’t know what’s coming – these cocky assholes are going to get the piss kicked out of them.”