Sign of the Maker (Boston Crime Thriller Book 4), Brian Shea [free reads .txt] 📗

The two hadn't met when she was in the service. In fact, a chance encounter had brought them together. Hodges met her at a battalion Christmas party when she'd accompanied her father, who was the guest speaker. He spilled his glass of wine on her dress. In the aftermath of the awkward conversation starter, they'd hit it off. Three dates and he'd fallen in love. A few months later, they were talking about moving in together. But as the relationship blossomed, Lyndsey refused to entertain the idea of taking things to the next level unless he left the Marine Corps behind. She told him a million times over that she wasn't going to be a mistress to the Corps. It was the hardest decision of his life, and there were still days where he debated it silently. Today was one of those days.

Transitioning from military to civilian life didn't come as easy for Hodges as it did for her. Lyndsey had some ideas on that too. When Hodges reached the pinnacle of frustration in the months of job hunting following his separation from service, he threatened to return to the Corps. In a desperate attempt to find him something that married the two worlds, Lyndsey had used her father's influence to connect him with a privatized dignitary protection company.

He looked around at the ornate room where the private gathering was taking place. McLaughlin had finished his speech early, a minor concession made after Hodges’s endless pressure to get the millionaire-businessman turned politician to listen to reason. Yet here he was, pressing the flesh and laughing with one of his cronies.

Lyndsey had gotten him the job. McLaughlin had initially dismissed the idea of a private security team following him around. But she ground the stubborn Irishman down over time, and a year ago Hodges and his team from Elite Executive Services took the contract. Hodges took his job seriously. His previous ten years in the Marines Special Operations Command dictated it. He was good with weapons and even better with planning. During his last tour in Afghanistan, Hodges had been tapped as the unit logistician, focusing on risk analysis. He was also the guy responsible for cranking the numbers and making sure things got from point A to point B.

He'd seen combat, as well as supervised the operations from the tactical command post. He'd planned out flawlessly executed missions, but he'd also been at the wheel of several failures. Those were the ones that stuck with him to this very day. Hodges had borne witness to the cost of those failures and the lives of his fellow Marines that were lost. For that pompous ass Langston to accuse him of arbitrarily throwing caution to the wind had cut deep. He fought to control the anger brought forth at the insinuation.

Hodges didn't hate McLaughlin for his insistence in keeping to his schedule. He'd worked with many like him in his past life. For some, the mission was everything. For McLaughlin, that mission was power, and his quest for it was boundless.

McLaughlin treated Hodges and the small contingent of security team members decently enough, but there was definitely a different tier of respect. McLaughlin kept his distance, only speaking with Hodges and always keeping the conversations professional, never engaging on a more personal level. McLaughlin was a man of business and Hodges a man of war. The two could coexist, but not always easily.

Hodges only spoke to McLaughlin when it was pertinent. Like their heated conversations since the bombings first began. Typically, any issues regarding safety and security measures were just run through Kim, his overweight secretarial pit bull. Hodges had joked one time that Kim was the real talent in their security team. Nobody could get past her, not without the risk of catching her wrath. Hodges had taken the brunt of it a few months back and preferred another tour of combat rather than facing off with her again.

It was Kim who proved a major barrier to this morning's schedule. He'd begged her to try and convince McLaughlin after he'd had no success. She said she would try, but either she hadn't or she failed to bring her boss around, because McLaughlin wouldn't budge. The only concession came during the T ride over. He told Hodges he wanted to switch the schedule up just a bit, opting not to stay as long at Harvard. McLaughlin didn't seem comfortable being inside the city after the two days of attacks. He never mentioned the reason, but McLaughlin was scared. Hodges couldn't tell what alarmed his boss more, the possibility that the bomber was targeting him or the fact that the bombings were being investigated by the FBI. After the agents had left yesterday, McLaughlin looked shaken. Although, as was the norm, he never spoke about it, at least not to Hodges.

Hodges didn't like when people disregarded a potential threat. This one loomed over his boss like a massive storm cloud, yet McLaughlin failed to see it and Hodges was left scrambling to get the umbrella open. For months now, as the campaign began to ramp up, Hodges had been begging McLaughlin to add more personnel to their team, at minimum two. Currently it was comprised of four individuals. McLaughlin, a man who liked to maintain a low profile when in public, split his team into two cars. That meant half the team was in a follow vehicle, which wasn’t bad if you had enough with the principal. But as McLaughlin would have it, it was a two-man close-in security element consisting of Hodges and the driver. Hodges hated the split. And right now, McLaughlin only allowed Hodges to be seen by his Harvard chums.

McLaughlin had a strict dress code for the team members. "Look the part," McLaughlin had said when Hodges arrived on his first day in a black polo and khaki cargo pants. "Don't look like a Marine." Hodges tried