by Desiree Holt
Mission Control
The Omega Team Series
Book 2
By
Desiree Holt
Mission Control
Copyright 2015 by Desiree Holt
Published by Desiree Holt
Copyright 2015 Cover Art by Scott Carpenter
Editing and Formatting Services by Wizards in Publishing
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Table of Contents
From Desiree
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
About the Author
From Desiree
People ask me all the time if I always wanted to be a writer. I don’t know if “always” is the word but certainly for all the years I can remember. I was a voracious reads, as were my mother and sister and books held a royal place in our home. The funny thing is I always thought I would write mysteries because that’s what we all read. I didn’t read my first romance until 2004, when I was sitting with the same three chapters of a mystery on my computer that had been there for three months. But then my eyes were opened and they never closed.
Submitting that first book was scary, but after a lot of rejections you stop being scared and become determined I’m glad I never gave up, because I am having the most fun in my life I have ever had. (Well, maybe not ever! LOL!) So here I am, with all these titles under my belt.
Writing a book is a solitary experience but it never comes to the bookshelves, virtual or other, alone. For me it starts my treasured friend and beta reader extraordinaire, Margie Hager, who has the best eagle eye in the world. Thank you, Margie my love, for all the hours you put in to help me bring my stories to life. And for your friendship, which is a highlight of my life.
Thanks to the ladies of Belle Femme authors—Cerise Deland, Brenna Zinn, Dalton Diaz, Regina Carlysle and Samantha Cayto who are my BFFs. Guys, you make me smile on the very worst days.
Then there is my family. Do they read my books? Absolutely not! But they are the best public relations team in the world. From my daughter Amy who tells all her clients about me to my son Steve who makes sure he lets everyone he knows when I have a book released to my younger daughter Suzanne who is my good right hand and my granddaughter Kayla who is my wonderful left hand. Guys, I could not do it without you. If you see me at a convention, Suzanne will not be far from my side.
My cats, of course, keep me company while I write. And you all have seen pictures of Bast at the keyboard with me. She thinks she should get co-author credit!
Thanks to all the people who let me pester them for information, on all the different topics I tackle, from SEALs to Force Recon Marines to Delta Force soldiers to the local sheriff to the people at Beretta and the folks at the San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo. I’m sure I’ve forgotten someone and if I have, I am so sorry because the time you continue to give me is very special.
Last but very far from least are all of you, my wonderful readers, who send me such great emails and posts and are so faithful. A special shoutout to Phuong Phen, Fedora Chen, Shirley Long and Patricia Sager who have been with me since my journey started and in frustrating times give me the inspiration to push ahead.
I love you so much. You are my extended family and I send you all many hugs.
There are a lot more stories to come. Please stay tuned.
Desiree
Mission Control
Krista (Kris) Gauthier and Mason Rowell are like oil and water from the moment they meet. He never expected the team from The Omega Team, the security agency made up of former military, to send a woman to lead the team he hired to fix his problem: find out who is helping smugglers cross his land from the border. Their antagonism is only heightened by the sexual attraction that keeps blazing out of control. Neither of them is happy about the fact they keep falling into bed together and Mason, who values his unattached existence, can’t wait for the team to be finished and Kris to be gone. But when the bad guys are identified and caught and Kris is wounded in the process, the thought of losing her nearly destroys him, and makes him take another look at their relationship.
Chapter One
“Thanks for the update. Yeah, I’ll be sure they check in when they get here.”
Mason Rowell disconnected his call and leaned back in his desk chair. Heaving a sigh, he rubbed his hands over the scruff on his chin. He hadn’t bothered to shave that morning. He’d only that minute gotten back from rounding up the strays and leaving two of the hands to repair the cut fencing. This was getting to be a damn fucking habit, and he was sick and tired of it.
“Nothing this whole year has gone right,” he muttered. “First that damn woman, then the lost cattle, and now the fucking smugglers.”
He had the feeling a cloud had opened up and rained all over his life.
And, yeah, it had all started with that woman. That female. Both of them half-looped in the hotel bar. Each of them searching for something—her for a way to ease back into civilian life after too much time in Afghanistan and Iraq, him to erase the memory of another woman who’d screwed him over. Badly. A woman he’d believed himself completely in love with. It had turned out fidelity wasn’t in her vocabulary. He wasn’t sure even by this time he’d recovered from the beating his heart and his pride had taken.
Mason had never been one to use a woman like he had, but that one night he’d needed her, with the same intensity she’d needed him. No name. Nothing but that big bed in the dark hotel room, where they’d done everything he’d ever heard and read about and more. They were like two rutting animals in heat.
When he woke up in the morning, she was gone, slipped away as if she’d never been there. And he’d carried a cloak of shame about it ever since then, because that wasn’t like him. Wasn’t his style. And making it worse? He’d do it again if she showed up in front of him because, even though it was supposed to be just sex, she’d imprinted herself on him. He had to work hard to get her out of his mind.
That hadn’t been easy, or even completely successful. Too many nights he’d lain in bed, remembering the feel of her sweet cunt clenched around his cock. The touch of her hands. The taste of her lips and her pussy.
It was all the worse because, after that night, things began to go wrong.
Some cattle went missing, a loss they discovered when they were moving part of the herd. One of the hands came upon the cut in the fence between one pasture section and a desolate area, and another cut on the Rio Grande side. Some of the cattle were drinking at the edge of the narrow stream of water. Sonofabitch. He was lucky they’d been able to find them and get them back. That they hadn’t injured themselves wandering around in the landscape with all the cacti and thorny bushes. Hadn’t been killed by predators.
But that led to the speculation about who had vandalized the fence.
Stick Montgomery, one of the older hands, was the first to discover the traces of smugglers crossing their ranchland from the border. He and a couple of the hands rode slowly over the entire area and found signs there had been people moving through there, all the way to a gravel road that cut in from the two-lane highway. Although the ground was hard, there were soft places where footsteps faintly showed, plus not everyone had been careful near the thorny shrubs. Little bits of materi
al had gotten caught, something you wouldn’t notice unless you were actually looking for it. The fence had been snipped there, too. He’d guessed both people and drugs were being trafficked and cursed a blue streak about it.
Mason had to admit his security where his ranch connected with the border had been less than sterling but as the smuggling across the Southwestern United States—and especially in Texas—increased, he’d spent some bucks to beef it up. Sensors that they moved regularly so no one could map them, night patrols by some of the hands, double rows of barbed-wire fencing.
But somehow they—whoever they were—always seemed to be at least one step ahead of him. Four nights ago, two of his hands out checking the fence line and sensors after midnight had been shot and killed. He’d called the sheriff, who took pictures of the scene, removed the bodies to the morgue, and asked a lot of questions. But the man didn’t hold out much hope of catching anyone.
“It’s one of two things,” Sheriff Shaw said. “Poachers shooting foxes for their pelts or coyotes smuggling illegals. Either way, I hate to tell you, there’s not a lot we can do.”
“But you’re the law,” Mason insisted.
“And spread pretty thin,” the sheriff said in a rueful voice. “There’s nothing that points to anyone. Poachers are rodents who scurry away into hidey holes. And if it’s coyotes smuggling illegals, the Border Patrol is already overloaded.”
“So I’m just supposed to write off the deaths of two of my men?”
Shaw simply shook his head and sighed. “You’re supposed to be extra careful and not send people who aren’t trained for such dangerous work out to patrol the area. We’ll report the crime, but I don’t think there’s much else we can do.”
“This is why these people are never stopped,” Mason had shouted at him.
Shaw couldn’t disagree with him. But he’d had no answers.
For Mason, that was the last straw. They’d notified the families of the men, arranged for their funerals, and then Mason dug around to find out what his options were. Fuck the sheriff. Fuck the Border Patrol. This was his land and his men, and he didn’t intend to let some asshole use it for illegal purposes.
After getting recommendations from other ranchers in the area, he made a call to The Omega Team, a security agency owned by Grey Holden, a former Delta Force team leader. His partner was a former cop. Athena Madero. They assured him help was on the way. Tough, former military who could get any job done. They couldn’t do anything about the woman who haunted him, but at least they could make his ranch safe again.
“They coming?” Stick leaned against the doorjamb.
“They are. Our own mission control situation. A six-man team led by some guy named Chris who was a member of the Nightstalkers and flew missions over in Afghanistan. Plus, all their equipment. They’ll run a military-style operation right from here.”
“Nightstalkers?” Stick lifted an eyebrow. “I read about them. Those are some real tough guys. They’ll take care of this shit.”
“Only the pilot is a Nightstalker,” Mason corrected him. “But they are all former military. Different branches, though.”
“Well, whatever.” Stick shook his head. “We need help bad, that’s for sure. Where you planning to house them?”
“I told Grey Holden, one of the partners, sleeping quarters wouldn’t be a problem. We haven’t used the second bunkhouse in some time. It can also serve as their headquarters while they’re here.”
“Good idea. That would have been my suggestion, too.”
Mason pushed himself up from his chair. “They can’t get here a minute too soon to suit me.” He glanced at his watch. “Which, according to Grey, should be at three thirty, about fifteen minutes from now. The guys finish fixing that last section of fencing?”
“They should be back any minute. Want to give them a heads up on what’s going on?”
“I do, so we’d best get to it. Come on. Let’s head out to the barn.”
Stick had been with the ranch for a lot of years, and Mason relied on him more and more as time passed. The man was smart, savvy, and knew his way around ranch animals. Unfortunately, he wasn’t quite as good with people as he was with animals, which was why he would never be foreman. But Mason felt more comfortable with Stick than Greg Ruiz, the man who held that position.
When they reached the yard, he stopped in front of the barn, taking in the scene, inhaling the tantalizing aroma of hay, cattle, horses, and yes, even manure. He’d grown up with it, and nothing smelled better to him. It was the scent of his land, the ranch that had been in his family for three generations.
And now some asshole was using his land as a smugglers’ trail and killing his men when they got in the way. Thinking about it made his blood boil. He hoped The Omega Team was as good as advertised.
He had finished giving the men a heads up on the situation when he heard a sound echoing from above, a sharp noise as if something was slapping the air. He squinted at a dark spot in the distant sky that grew larger and larger as it grew closer. In seconds, a sleek helicopter, black with an interlinked MC on the side, hovered over the pasture closest to the barn then slowly descended to the ground. Mason was no expert on helos, but even he knew this was one fucking expensive piece of machinery. Well, he’d been told they didn’t come cheap, and the retainer he’d sent was a hell of a lot more than pocket change.
It was more than worth the expense, however. If his ranch became a known passage for people trafficking in illegal aliens, drugs, and who knew what else, the Border Patrol or the Texas Rangers, or maybe both, could come in and shut him down. Not to mention the danger of having such traffic on his land. He felt comfortable knowing everyone on the team was former military. Mason himself had served a tour in Afghanistan four years ago and had confidence he was getting seasoned warriors.
“Better bring the truck out,” he told Stick. “They’ll have equipment to haul to the bunkhouse.”
As the blades slowed their whapping motion, he left Stick to fetch the pickup and jogged out to greet the pilot and passengers. He was anxious to meet this Chris who Grey Holden said was one of his best, not only as a pilot, but also as a team leader. Hell, a Nightstalker pilot was aces in his book. Everyone knew they were the best of the best.
The door of the cabin slid open, and four men dropped easily to the ground. Others still inside began handing out duffel bags and HardBody cases to them. They stacked it all efficiently, duffels to one side, cases to the other, ready for loading into the pickup.
The pilot remained in the cabin, checking the controls, head bent low and face shielded by a baseball cap. For a nanosecond, he thought there was something familiar about the person, but then he gave himself a mental shake. He’d never met any of these people before. None of their names were familiar.
He tried to get a better look at the guy still in the helo and thought he saw a ponytail hanging through the opening in the back of the cap. Great. Was this some long-haired asshole he’d have to deal with? What kind of team leader was that? He couldn’t imagine Grey would send a guy whose attitude would get in the way of the operation. Especially as the leader. Well, he guessed it made no never mind to him. He just wanted him to get the job done.
He waited until everything was unloaded and everyone on the ground before stepping forward to introduce himself. He was pleased to see they were all hard, seasoned muscular men with firm handshakes and a no-nonsense look in their eyes.
“We’ll want to sit down with you as soon as we haul all this to the bunkhouse,” the man named Ted Hollister said. “Our team leader wants to get going on this as soon as possible.”
“Can’t be soon enough for me,” Mason agreed. “The quicker the better.”
“We have aerial maps of the ranch,” he added, “but we’ll take anything else you can give us.”
“I have those the appraisal district uses. They’re pretty detailed.”
“Good.” Hollister nodded. “We need to be as specific in locations as possib
le.”
Mason glanced toward the chopper. “I’m anxious to meet your team leader. Chris, right?”
A tiny smile teased at the corners of Ted’s mouth. “Yeah. Give it a minute or so.”
A faint thread of anxiety wiggled its way through Mason. What was that almost smile about? Was something wrong here? Had The Omega Team played some kind of big joke on him? For what he was paying them, they’d better not.
Finally, the door on the other side of the chopper opened. The pilot leaped down to the ground and came around to greet Mason.
Who nearly had a heart attack.
Holy fucking shit. This was the team leader? Was this a joke of some kind?
Standing in front of him was not the tough leader he’d expected, well-muscled and a hardened veteran of the battles in the sandbox. Instead, he stared at the woman who’d burned up his sheets in that hotel room a year ago. The one who wouldn’t stay out of his dreams or his memory. The one he considered his omen of bad luck.
Although her sunglasses partially obscured her face, there was no mistaking the delicate jawline or the body he’d explored every inch of. Lithe and slender, she came nearly to his shoulder. An Omega Team T-shirt fell softly against rounded breasts his hands had cupped and kneaded. Worn jeans clung to nicely curved hips and long, slender legs. High cheekbones highlighted an oval a face and a mouth with full lips—a face he knew he’d never forget and lips he could still taste, even after all this time. Aviator shade hid her eyes, but yeah, that was definitely a ponytail hanging from the back of her cap. Luxurious sable hair that he’d run his fingers through. Hair that had drifted over his belly when she—
Stop it!
Would she remember him? The sunglasses might have obscured any expression on her face, but he didn’t miss the way she came to an abrupt halt or the sudden stiffness of her posture. Oh, yeah, she knew who he was and was as shocked. For an endless moment, neither of them spoke.
