She turned to lead him toward the river, but his hand on her arm stopped her short. Her eyes narrowed at him. “What? We have to run.”
“Not until my team takes care of the bad guys.”
“Team? What team?” There were more rescuers out here? Thank God. Unless they got hurt saving her.
Movement to her left caught her attention, and another man, similarly camouflaged, appeared next to the first. With light brown hair, he was about two inches shorter than the redhead, and a little thinner, but definitely in excellent shape. His hazel eyes were sharp on the woods behind her. Unlike his partner, his rifle was in his hands. Neither man answered her question, and Red put a hand to his ear. It took a moment for her to realize he had an earpiece and was listening to whatever was being said over it.
He retrieved his weapon from his back, then grabbing her upper arm, he pulled her past him and propelled her forward. “Gotta move. Unfriendlies are headed this way.”
The other man stayed behind as Mallory was led away, and she was worried about him. It would be four against one. She tried to glance back over her shoulder to see where he was, but Red’s massive body blocked her view. “But we can’t leave him alone.”
“No buts, sweetheart. And don’t worry, Skipper’s not alone. We train for this stuff. It’s the bad guys who should be worried. Now let’s get you hidden.”
After a few dozen yards, he tucked her behind a boulder surrounded by thick bushes. Taking a tactical position next to her, he eyed the area they’d just come from, then glanced at her and frowned. He reached over and flipped the hem of her coat over. “Take it off and turn it inside out. That red is like a neon sign. At least the underside is mostly black.”
Damn, why hadn’t she thought about that? Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. She quickly unbuttoned it and took it off, pulling the sleeves through themselves. He was right. Even though the collar, placket, and hem were red, the rest was all black. She donned the inside-out coat and looked at him.
Once again, he reached over and, this time, tucked the collar down into the coat, then nodded. “Better.”
“Thanks. So, do you have a name or should I just call you Rambo?” She probably shouldn’t even be whispering, but since he was, it must be okay. She always jabbered when she was nervous.
The corners of his mouth ticked up as he kept watch of their surroundings. “Darius Knight, but my teammates call me Batman.”
An unexpected grin spread across her face. The fact that he was military and not just someone from search and rescue unit finally sank in. His weapon wasn’t a hunting rifle, but instead, was a military grade assault rifle. Maybe the bad guys were the ones who should be worried about what they were heading into. “Cool call sign. My dad’s a retired Marine. What branch are you?”
“Navy. SEAL to be exact, but I’m out now and in the private sector. My team and I were dropped in by helicopter for a training mission. We received word yesterday to keep an eye out for you.”
He paused, his hand going to his ear. His smile dropped, and he brought his finger to his lips before motioning for her to get low behind the rock and shrubs. Mallory’s heart pounded in her chest while a shiver coursed through her body. And, damn it, now was not the time to really need to pee.
CHAPTER 8
With McCabe on his six, Logan Reese melted into the woods. As had been the norm for the past few months working cases and missions with Trident, he couldn’t help the anxiousness from building within him. He still had no idea why Ian and Devon Sawyer had taken a risk by hiring him. And, yes, it was a huge risk. Having been a prisoner of war in Afghanistan for a week, almost two years ago, and listening to his team being brutalized and then slaughtered still weighed heavily on his mind and soul. Only one other of his fellow Marines, out of seven captives, had been alive when another team of Marines, joined by some Navy SEALs, had swooped in to rescue them. Logan had been just hours away from being the next man cruelly murdered.
Again, he had no idea why the Sawyer brothers had taken a chance on him, but he knew if he fucked up just once, he’d be gone—if he didn’t end up dead first. If that happened, he prayed none of his teammates lost their lives too.
Upon hiring him, Ian had added several non-negotiable stipulations to his job contract. One was that he saw a psychologist trained in treating people with PTSD three times a week when he wasn’t away on an assignment. The second mandatory requirement was sitting down with his team and recounting his horror story. If he was going to be their backup, they had every right to know all about the man covering their six. While he’d understood the reasoning behind it, doing it had been very difficult.
I eyed my new team as they sat around the conference table waiting to find out what this meeting was all about. The door was closed and the only other people in the room besides Omega Team were Lindsey, who was splitting her time being the sniper for both teams, and Ian and Devon. The two bosses knew everything I was about to say, and it made things a little easier to have them there for support.
Ian leaned forward on his elbows at the far end of the table. “We waited to have this meeting until you had a few months training together and getting to know each other. As you know, we hand-picked all of you based on your experience, leadership abilities, integrity, and ability to get the damn job done no matter what. You’ve all proven yourselves to be the best of the best among your peers and that’s why you’re here. But everyone in our world has had bad experiences in one form or another. Unless you’re a wet-behind-the-ears FNG, you’ve seen and lived through some really bad shit at one point or another. Agreed?” FNG was military lingo for the fucking new guy, and if you had that tag, you had to wait for your team to come up with a call sign for you.
Everyone in the room nodded. I’d heard the stories of some of the shit my teammates had gone through during either their time in the military or their jobs in law enforcement or both. But as far as I knew, not one of them had been held prisoner by the enemy for seven fucking days and listened as their teammates were murdered while wondering which one of them was next.
Screams from long ago resonated in my head, and I forced them into a mental box and slammed the lid shut. I’d deal with them later; right now I had to come clean to my team and pray they still wanted to work with me, because it was highly unlikely anyone else would want to hire me with my baggage.
It took a moment for me to realize that silence hung in the room and everyone was staring at me. My gaze found Ian’s and the boss nodded at me. It was time.
Clearing my dry throat, I leaned forward. “Um …” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “What I’m about to say is probably going to shock the shit out of you—”
Mancini snorted. “If you’re going to tell us you’re really a woman, it doesn’t matter. Costello’s already broken us in.”
Chuckles filled the air and a little tension left my body … but not enough. “Yeah, that’s not it. I … uh … I was a POW for a week in the sandbox. While I can’t tell you about what my team and I were doing before we were ambushed, or where exactly we were, I’ll tell you what I can.”
Any levity in the room vanished. I kept my gaze on Ian. For some reason, talking to my normally sarcastic and sometimes acerbic boss was making it easier to recount my horror story for everyone else. “It was a little over two years ago. Like I said, we walked into an ambush. Not sure if it was bad intel or bad timing—either way, it didn’t matter. We were outnumbered—about a hundred against twelve. We lost five men in the initial attack. With no way out, we surrendered, hoping an opportunity to escape would present itself or a rescue would come. Neither happened. At least not for seven days. We were moved around over the first twenty-four hours before we ended up in a camp. We were shackled and thrown into cells.”
A chill went down my spine. I was no longer in the conference room. Instead I was back in the rustic building, searching for a way to get out, and wondering if I’d ever see my family again. “We were there maybe an hour or two. Couldn’t
be sure since they took everything except our pants. Moonshine was the first one to be dragged back outside.” I couldn’t even tell my new team the real names of my murdered teammates. They were classified, so all I could use to refer to them was their call signs. “He got a few good punches in when they were taking him from his cell, but one of the bastards cracked his skull with a piece of wood. I’d like to say that was the worst of it, but it wasn’t. We had to listen to him get whipped for what seemed like fucking hours. I’ll never forget how he tried not to scream, but soon it was probably involuntary.”
A few muttered curses came from the Omega team. At some point Lindsey, who was sitting to my right, placed a reassuring hand on my arm. She gave it a light squeeze as I found the courage to continue. “Again, I wish that was the worst part. When the sound of the whip and the screams stopped, the rest of us just looked at each other, trying to figure out what the fuck was happening. The door swung open, and we expected them to bring Moonshine back in.” I swallowed hard and couldn’t contain the quiver that developed in my voice. “All they brought back in was his head.”
Gasps and curses, which were no longer muttered, filled the room. Ian stood, grabbed a bottle of water from a small fridge, and handed it to me. Opening it, I guzzled three-quarters of it, before wiping away the tears I hadn’t realized were rolling down my cheeks.
“I still have flashbacks to being in that fucking cell, hearing the crack of a whip over and over again, mixed in with my teammates yelling in pain, as one by one they were fucking tortured. I can still hear those fucking pricks taunting us, even though I didn’t understand most of what they were saying. But the worst was when the cries of agony faded and then disappeared altogether. Then the fucking celebration would start. Shouts to Allah and guns being fired in the air were followed by those fucking bastards carrying one of my buddies’ detached head by the hair into the cell area for the rest of us to see what they’d done to him. Chained like fucking dogs, we had no chance to escape. The second day we were there, one of my guys managed to get loose, but before he could free the rest of us, two guards walked in and sprayed his legs with bullets from an assault rifle. He was still alive but unable to walk, and they fucking dragged him outside. Two hours later …” From the expressions on my current team’s faces as they sat around the conference table, they already knew why I couldn’t finish that sentence. I was too choked up to repeat what had happened to my friend Danny Coleman, and the last memory I had of him was just his head.
“How many of you made it back?” Morrison asked quietly.
“Only one of my buddies and I were still alive when a joint rescue team managed to come in and get us. There wasn’t a fucking tango left alive in the camp by the time it was over, and we managed to recover the bodies of my teammates and bring them home.” I wiped the salty tears from my eyes again. “Look, I know this is far from what you expected to hear, and I know you’ve got to be wondering what the hell I’m doing on this team and will I be able to cover your six. I do have flashbacks, but since I’ve been on US soil, they’ve only come when I’m sleeping. I’ve been seeing a shrink several times a week since I’ve been back and it’s going well. I honestly was shocked when Ian and Dev offered me the job, but I’ll tell you this … I’ll be damned if I ever have to bury another teammate—especially if it’s because I’m the weakest link. I’ve got your six no matter what. But if you’re not comfortable with that, tell me now, and I’ll resign.” It was the last thing I wanted to do. Working for Trident had given me a purpose in life again—a reason to get up every morning. If I was sitting in a recliner watching TV for the rest of my life, that would probably send me to a rubber room long before my PTSD did.
I stood. “Unless you have any more questions, I’ll wait outside while you talk this over with each other. Whatever you all decide is best for the team, I’ll understand.”
Shutting the door behind me, I made a beeline to the men’s room at the end of the hall. Splashing water onto my face, I washed away the evidence of my tears. I stared at my reflection. Long gone was the eighteen-year-old kid I’d been when I’d enlisted in the Marines. Missing was the cocky twenty-two-year-old man going through the Individual Training Course (ITC)—the intense, seven-month course to become one of the elite Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command Critical Skills Operators (MARSOC CSO). Vanished was the man who’d never experienced the worst that another human could inflict on his fellow man in the name of Allah, God, or whoever they worshiped.
Gathering my composure again, I strode back out and stood in the hall, waiting for the team’s decision. It was about ten minutes before the door opened and Devon gestured for me to come back in. As I took my seat again, I tried to read the expressions on my teammates’ faces, but no one was giving me any indication on how the vote had gone.
McCabe crossed his arms over his massive chest. “I have to admit, I was a little pissed at the bosses here for not dropping this bomb on the team earlier. That being said, I do understand their rationalization. Each one of us has been on a few cases and missions with you over the past, what? eight or nine months, and none of us have seen anything that had us worried about you watching our six. You’ve proven yourself, that’s for sure. The vote was unanimous for you to stay on the team on one condition.”
Relief shot through me. I’d do anything to stay on the team. “What’s that?”
“If you ever feel like you can’t do a mission or if you feel like your PTSD is going to rear its fucking ugly head during one, you’ve got to let one of us know, man. We can’t read minds. But if you tell us, we can work around it. Don’t make any of us regret our decision. Understood?”
I nodded and glanced at each of my teammates, making sure I didn’t see any reluctance or, God forbid, pity in their expressions. But neither emotion showed. All I saw was understanding and acceptance. “Understood. I won’t let you down.”
Grinning, Lindsey said, “And we won’t let you down, Cowboy.”
A twig cracking had him silently swiveling his head to the right—no one on his team would have made a mistake like that. Using a large pine as cover, he hung his rifle across his back, and pulled his Sig Sauer out of his holster. Thank God they were armed as if this had been a real mission. In close quarters, the rifle could be snatched out of his hand easier than a pistol.
As a lone, camouflaged figure crept into view, Logan shifted so he wouldn’t be spotted until it was too late. This was one of the many maneuvers that had been ingrained in him over years of training and active missions. It was muscle memory, and he did it without conscious thought.
Two more steps and Logan would be in position to surprise the man with a 9mm to the temple. But the bastard suddenly stopped. He was listening for trouble, maybe even sensed the danger he was walking into.
The thump of a stone landing to the man’s left had him spinning around and that was all Logan needed to take him off-guard. “Unless you want your brains to be squirrel food, drop the weapon and link your fingers behind your head.”
The guy had frozen in place as soon as the first few threatening words had been spoken and the barrel of the Sig had touched the back of his head. But by the time Logan had finished giving the orders, he’d followed them to a “T.”
Over the man’s shoulder, Logan saw McCabe morph from the surrounding foliage with a grin on his face and his own pistol in his hand. In a low voice, the team leader commented, “Always amazes me how idiots fall for a rock thrown past them. You got zips on you?”
“Yeah.” Holstering his weapon again, he retrieved a plastic zip tie from one of his cargo pants pockets. With practiced precision, he restrained the man’s wrists at his lower back, then removed several weapons from various places on his body. “Where’re your buddies?”
“Fuck you, asshole. You’ll be dead as soon as they find you.”
“Yeah, I highly doubt that, fucktard.”
McCabe spoke into his comms. “One tango secured. Where’s the second one?”
“Keep watch. Shades and Romeo, send down the packs, then come join the party.”
The two men acknowledged the order, then Knight’s voice came over the airwaves and gave them the intel he’d gotten moments before. “Costello, according to our asset, there are three more tangos including the one you had eyes on. Rifles, side arms, and knives, so watch your sixes.”
“Copy that,” Lindsey responded. “Scanning for them, but there’s a lot of cover for them down there.”
Hitching a thumb to the east, McCabe said, “Lock him down with Batman and guard the girl. I’ll meet up with Skipper, and we’ll go hunting once Shades and Romeo have boots on the ground. Once they’re down, retrieve the packs and see if you can raise Boss-man on the SAT phone.”
“Copy that.” Logan shoved their restrained prisoner in the direction of where Knight had said he had the girl secured. “Keep your mouth shut and move it, fucktard, and I don’t advise making me shoot your ass; I’ll enjoy it too fucking much.”
CHAPTER 9
A hand trailed up Ian’s naked leg, and he smiled without opening his eyes. Cuddling his wife closer to his side, he asked, “Still feeling frisky, Angel?”
“Yes, Sir. Very frisky.”
He let her close her hand around his growing cock and play for a bit. His brother had told him how horny Kristen had gotten during her pregnancy, and it appeared Angie was going to be the same way—thank God.
After waking up about an hour and a half ago, just before sunrise, he’d quietly stepped out of the room and checked in with the Sheriff’s Department before passing on the intel to his team that Mallory Hart was still missing. The snowstorm they’d been worried about had decided to throw a wrench into the search. Ian wasn’t worried about his team—dealing with the unexpected was part of their training—but the poor girl’s chances of survival were dissipating. The helicopters would be grounded soon, but the search on foot, ATVs, and horseback would continue as long as possible. Ian planned on rejoining the search and rescue—he’d been out with the sheriff yesterday on ATVs for a few hours—but Angie was making it very difficult for him to leave her.
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