Guarding Aisha

by Zoë Normandie

  The way he could be cranky and intransigent. It drove her nuts but also made her laugh. The way he could be so gentle and sweet. It melted her inside. The way he touched her and loved every part of her.

  Love.

  Aisha got stuck on the word.

  That was it.

  She controlled her breathing. Steadied her mind. She stood up, regaining her confidence. She could do this. Jake told her she could. She knew she could. She remembered what he said to her—that she was the strongest woman he’d ever met.

  She was strong.

  Aisha stepped toward the door. She heard nothing behind it. Silence.

  Was she alone? Had they just left her?

  She knew she had to take a chance. Her life depended on it. Aisha felt around the door. Was she in some sort of holding cell? Finally, she tested the handle. It was locked. She continued to hear nothing.

  24

  Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” rang out over Jake’s Bluetooth shower speaker—the personalized ringtone he’d set for his buddy Mason Ajax, Special Warfare Operator in Development Group. Jake reached a soapy hand toward the talk button to take the call.

  “Yup,” Jake hollered through the speaker, pulling his head out from under the hot water.

  “Brother, where the fuck are you?” Mason’s voice rang out through the speaker. “It sounds like you are in the shower.”

  “That’s because I am.” Jake flipped off the tap to hear better, not even realizing he still had suds cascading down his thighs. “What’s going on?”

  “Our boy Aidan King found out where they’re hiding your girl.”

  “Is she okay? Alive?” Jake grabbed the speaker off the wall and spoke right into it.

  A wave of relief poured over him. He’d been sick with worry about her with no way to connect. No way to know if she would she ever have him back. If he had ruined it for good.

  “She’s alive,” Mason answered. “For now. But—”

  “Where is she?” Jake snapped.

  “By the airport… in Washington.”

  Jake snapped to attention. Every muscle in his body screamed and flexed.

  “We’ve got to go get her!” Jake yelled into the speaker, jumping out of the shower. “Fuck, we are hours behind.”

  “Let’s fucking hope ICE is as slow and shitty as they usually are,” Mason replied. “Let’s roll.”

  “Leaving now.”

  Before the last syllable rolled off his tongue, the call ended, and Jake feverishly worked to get himself out of the fucking house. Whipping the towel around his back to dry off, Jake threw on some gear and smoothed something through his hair.

  This was bad. Very bad. If immigration was involved, they were fighting against the clock. She could be on the next flight out to wherever they wanted to fucking deport her.

  Aisha.

  All he could think about was her. Her sweet smile. Kind eyes. The way she pressed her lips together when she was trying not to smile. Her bravery. Her desire to learn, grow, be a part of it all. Her courage. Her hot ass in those yoga pants.

  He was such a dog, he shook his head.

  But how could he help it? She was breathtaking.

  Barely an hour later, Jake was whipping down the highway in his black rented pickup truck, heading from Virginia to Dulles Airport in Washington. He knew the CIA had an outpost just outside the airport, covert and clandestine, where they interviewed all sorts of people going in and out of the hub. He was losing his mind and losing his shit—the only thing that kept him sane were the frequent calls with Mason, who reminded him that she was going to be okay and that Jake had to chill. The young SEAL seemed to recognize the murderous hunger in Jake’s tone.

  “Slow down, big rig.” Mason spoke in calming tones as he drove in his truck behind Jake. “You aren’t going to be much help if you get held up by the cops.”

  “Dude, I can’t slow down,” Jake snapped at the Bluetooth speaker in his truck. “Let’s fucking go already.”

  But before he could snap further, he got another call—from a blocked number.

  “Hold up, brother,” he said to Mason, switching calls.

  He got a lot of calls from blocked numbers, but there was one specifically that he was waiting for.

  “Yup.”

  “You close?” The voice of CIA Intelligence Officer Aidan King came over the line. Jake could hear whipping wind in the background.

  “Not far off now,” Jake confirmed, literally on the edge of his seat.

  As the line crackled, King said, “Listen, bud, this isn’t going to be good.”

  “What the fuck is going on?”

  “She’s getting deported.” He sighed. “I’m doing everything I can on my end, but Kate’s moving too fast with this one. I need more time.”

  “Fucking hell.” Jake gritted his teeth.

  “I know,” King said. “Just get there, but wait for my signal before going in. Whatever you do, don’t take action until I tell you to. And stay in touch. You have my number.”

  Jake disconnected. He held the steering wheel tightly as everything welled up inside of him. He wasn’t fucking around. Shit had just become too personal. This was the life of the woman he deeply cared about. They had unfinished business, indeed.

  The reality was that Kate and her merry band of misfits were cleaning their hands pretty damn fast. Jake had seen it happen in Iraq. He’d worked alongside CIA agents, bringing them into the darkest areas, and he knew they were ruthless. They had to be. That’s how they handled assets.

  Once ICE got her processed and deported, Jake knew he was powerless. She’d have no rights. And he’d never get to her in time—she’d be back in the hands of her father the second her plane landed, no matter where they sent her.

  As he slammed down harder on the gas, dead focused on finding his off-ramp, he couldn’t stop stressing about everything. The circumstances. Their relationship…

  And how it had ended.

  Jake took a deep breath and prayed to a god he didn’t believe in. It was like she was walking down death row toward the chamber.

  Finally, Jake pulled off the highway and raced toward the agency outpost as planes took off and landed at in the distance. It didn’t help that the rented pickup truck lacked all the juice of Jake’s Shelby. In the heat of the moment, he’d left the broken, beat-up muscle car up in Canada as they escaped on the jet. He had no fucking clue how he was going to get back up there to retrieve her, even if she would never be the same again.

  As Jake moved his truck down the boulevard, he observed a heavily armed detail parked outside the nondescript grey office building located just off the airport campus. Jake parked his truck in a closed long-term parking lot on the property beside the office building—close enough to observe and cover, but not immediately in front where agents could observe him.

  Knowing it was going be a shit fight, he pulled out his pistol and made sure it was ready as he clambered out of the truck. His phone vibrated in his sweater pocket, so he holstered the gun and whipped out his cell for Mason’s report.

  “Talk to me.”

  “Dude, I don’t like the look of who’s in front here. A bunch of black SUVs with dudes in dark-ass suits. They don’t look like feds.” Mason’s voice held trepidation. “Shit’s going down.”

  “No ICE uniforms?” Jake demanded.

  “No. And, I’ll be damned if these fuckers don’t look Arab,” Mason warned. “I think you better get here now.”

  Fuck. Jake took off in a sprint.

  It took everything in Jake’s power to keep his calm and smooth demeanor as he stalked the perimeter of the building. A custodian had a side door open, and Jake swept inside casually, like he fucking belonged there. Nodding politely to the employee, Jake carried on his way, finding a stairwell.

  Jake texted Mason. What fucking floor is she on? But he received no reply.

  He sprinted up the stairs, peeking in at each level to look for action. Finally, on the fourth floor, he saw
a contingent of suited men waiting for the elevator—so he made a break for them, marching down the grey hallway in deep focus.

  One of the black-haired men whipped his head as Jake approached.

  “Back off,” the man growled, adjusting his suit.

  Jake said nothing and kept moving forward, seeing that a few of the man’s entourage were visibly armed. The man held out his arm, creating a barricade to prevent Jake from going further. It was then that he knew he was in the right fucking spot.

  “I said, back off,” the man said again, his Arabic accent clear.

  Jake’s phone buzzed again in his pocket, and he whipped it out to see a new message from King. He was one floor up, and Jake needed to get there immediately.

  It was going down.

  Jake backed up and sprinted back to the staircase. He had no time to play games. He just hoped to fucking god it wasn’t too late.

  And she wasn’t already gone.

  25

  After taking the staircase two steps at a time, Jake found himself trying to pry open the locked door to the fifth floor. He dug in his pockets for his lock-picking kit but grew too impatient, too crazed. Succumbing deeper and deeper to his fear that she was already gone, that he’d taken too long to get there, he felt like he was losing it. With a loud groan, he pulled out his pistol, ready to just fucking shoot the lock off the door.

  But before he could pull the trigger, an unmistakable voice pulled him out of his thoughts.

  “I didn’t know they let assholes into secure buildings.”

  Jake whipped around.

  Senior Chief Liam Blackshot stood not ten feet away, on the third stair leading up to the sixth floor, his arms crossed, scowling at Jake.

  “What the fuck are you…” Jake took a threatening step forward but turned his head back to the locked door in desperation.

  “I’m here. That’s all that matters,” Blackshot snapped back.

  Jake’s hands flexed, and he glanced back at the door. Distractions were the last thing he needed—he had a woman to save.

  “You’d better fucking take a walk, bud,” Jake barked at him. “I don’t have time for this.”

  “Where’s Ryder?” Blackshot said, not willing to relent.

  Taking a step toward him, Jake growled, “You’ve got three seconds to tell me exactly why you want to know.”

  “Fuck you,” Blackshot snarled, and Jake saw the telltale signs of drug abuse.

  Blackshot furrowed his brow. He looked ready to fight. Jake knew he was bigger, stronger, and better at fighting than his ex-boss, but Blackshot was fast and followed no rules. Jake also knew never to fight a dude who was high—and this man couldn’t lay off the coke if he tried.

  “I know they’re hiding him somewhere,” Blackshot continued. “I know what happened to him.”

  “You’d know because you fucking did it,” Jake growled. “You tried to kill him.”

  Blackshot shuddered. His body was covered in a film of cold sweat. The man looked unhinged. His hair was disheveled, and his face was distorted. Jake analyzed his options, debating how he could deal with the scourge in front of him so he could get back to his girl. Checking over his shoulder again, he felt the cold steel of his pistol and knew he needed to take just two shots: one at Blackshot, and one at the lock.

  “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t finish this here and now,” Jake sneered, “after what you’ve done.”

  Blackshot cocked his head and laughed. “For what I’ve done? How about what you’ve done?”

  “Fuck you.”

  Jake had never wanted to throat-punch someone so bad in his life. But SEAL on SEAL was a tough battle—time consuming and dangerous—and Aisha needed him. He was her last defense. A vision of blood on Aisha’s face flashed across his eyes, and he saw her dying before him, just like the other vulnerable people he’d failed.

  Jake shifted his attention back to the door, raising his pistol to shoot the lock. He had to get it just right, so the bullet wouldn’t ricochet through the small space. He’d already taken enough bullets that week.

  But his hand was shaky, and self-doubt plagued him. Why couldn’t he just shoot? He had to fucking go already.

  But his senior chief’s words were stuck in his mind, and he found his vision slipping to another time and place. He tasted sand. Something inside him screamed that he wasn’t a fucking hero, that enough people had died by his hands—and now Aisha would too.

  “You have no idea what I’ve been through,” Blackshot said behind him as Jake tried to aim his pistol at the steel lock. “I didn’t try to kill Ryder. It was a trap. I didn’t know there was an IED. The jihadi shit planted it there—they knew we were coming.”

  “I don’t believe you.” Jake stuttered out the words, but he was in a different time and place.

  He turned around, and instead of seeing a stairwell, he saw carnage.

  “Jihadi shit,” Blackshot spat. “These fucking militants…”

  The senior chief cleaned the blood off his long military knife as he stood in front of a row of dead men. The dead enemy combatants sat with their backs against the crumbling concrete wall, hundreds of miles northeast of Bamako, Mali’s capital. They were deep in the Sahel.

  Jake look wildly between Blackshot and the dead. “Why the fuck did you do that?” he demanded. “Why did you fucking stab him?”

  Blackshot shrugged, inspecting his prized knife for any unclean spots. “He’s a goddamn terrorist, Wilder. We have to make sure they are dead.”

  “He was dead!” Jake’s voice rose, and he squared off furiously against his superior officer. “I told you. I won’t do this shit again. You can’t just run around, maiming dead bodies.”

  Recognizing the challenge, Blackshot squared himself. All Jake could see was his vicious gaze; all he could hear were explosives detonating in the background.

  “Do you have a fucking problem?” Blackshot seethed. “I gave you an order. This is how we get shit done. We’ve got to make sure these fucking cockroaches are dead. Do you understand how the Sahel is swelling with these fuckers now?”

  “Are you saying he was going to suddenly come back to life?” Jake blinked, unable to believe the words coming out of his boss’s mouth.

  “Sure.”

  “He was fucking tied up! A detainee!”

  As the word detainee crossed his lips, he knew he’d struck a chord with the senior chief. Executing detainees was against the rules of war, and everyone fucking knew it.

  “This is how we do shit!” Blackshot spat defensively.

  Jake clenched his fists. So help him god, he was going to throw a punch. He was going to pummel his own boss. The shell shock had mounted to an unmanageable level.

  Why couldn’t Blackshot understand that what he’d done was wrong?

  Jake looked over and saw blood cascading down the throat of the young man Blackshot had decided to slice open. His dead body was rigid. The rope holding his hands together was stained in blood. It wasn’t right. Jake knew it wasn’t right.

  These detained men were barely men—they looked more like teenagers. The rebel forces that controlled the lawless section of the Sahel were fond of child soldiers.

  He looked back up at his boss, a man who’d mentored him all those years. A man who’d shown Jake the ropes when he was a junior SEAL years and years ago. But Blackshot had grown into a monster with every killing, every deployment, every broken rule that he didn’t have to answer for. He didn’t give a shit if they were men, women, children, or civilians—Blackshot only saw enemies. Terrorists. Threats.

  But Jake knew damn well that those weren’t the rules. That was not how the SEALs did business.

  It was like they weren’t even human anymore.

  Blackshot stuffed his knife away in his kit and sneered at Jake, willing him to stand down. He was the senior ranking officer in their tactical position. He was Jake’s team lead.

  “I can ruin you if I want.” Blackshot said with a yellowed, evil smi
le. He rubbed his red nose fiercely. It was a threat. Not even veiled. “I can make it look like an accident.”

  Jake believed him. No one questioned Blackshot—certainly not Fuller, the troop commander.

  Blackshot rubbed his nose again, and Jake recognized the evidence of powder that had just been snorted.

  “Are you fucking stoned?” Jake snapped. “You need to lay off that shit, man.”

  Blackshot’s red eyes focused on Jake. There was a drug problem on the tour, and a few of the guys were starting to think they were a little too special—above the law. Blackshot was clearly one of them. How he evaded the drug tests, Jake had no idea, but he guessed it was the troop commander’s doing. To say the troop’s command was toxic was putting it lightly.

  “Do you know what insubordination is?” Blackshot cried. “Go be a fucking Boy Scout back home. I don’t need you here. I need real men who can handle the realities of war.”

  Jake ached to lunge forward and murder Blackshot. All those years, Jake had thought he was saving the day. He was putting his nation’s needs before his own. He was part of something bigger, important, unique. But he wasn’t a hero. He was one of the bad guys.

  A heavy hand landed on Jake’s shoulder, jolting him. But it wasn’t an enemy. Jake spun and saw the second in command, Blackshot’s boss, Master Chief Ryder Luciano. One of the good ones. Maybe the only good one in command.

  “Your men need you,” Ryder told Jake, relieving him of his position. “Go.”

  Jake let his fist unclench, but he couldn’t take his eyes off of Blackshot. He couldn’t let it go. The man was evil. A psychopath. Jake had to do something about it.

  “You aren’t going to get away with this,” Ryder sneered, staring down Blackshot.

  With those words, Jake had hoped that maybe there would be justice. But just as Jake prepared to turn and leave, Blackshot leaned in with a smug grin.

  “Go be a hero somewhere else,” he sneered, “Boy Scout.”