In a gesture of interagency cooperation, the Navy had loaned Jesse and Adam to DHS to help design Alpha Command’s intensive sixteen-week training program. They had decided what additional skills Alphas needed, beyond the basic training they had all received as Special Ops soldiers, and had located and hired the best possible people, both military and civilian, to teach them those skills. Nikolai Rostov had been one of those recruited to teach specialized fighting skills, not only SAMBO, the martial arts of the Russian Special Forces, but also the deadly street fighting techniques he’d learned growing up homeless in the mean streets of Odessa. After proving himself an invaluable asset, he had been asked to join Alpha Command. Over the past year, Jesse and Adam had spent more time with Alpha than with SEAL Team Fury, tweaking the program, trying new elements, including stunt driving and parcour, until the members of Alpha Command were as close to unbeatable as it was humanly possible to get.
The cavalry was indeed here.
Chapter Three
As soon as Sarah finished greeting the last man, Jesse moved in behind her, pulling her against his body, her back to his front. He ran his hands up her arms before settling them on her shoulders. At that blatant gesture of possession, all conversation died and six pairs of eyes bored into her. Wow. She was surrounded by eight strong, powerful, confident men. Men who had survived harsh, primitive conditions. Men who had experienced the brutality of combat and undertaken untold numbers of dangerous missions, all to keep America free. Men whose exploits would never be recognized or acknowledged, who were heroes in the truest sense of the word.
Men who gave new meaning to the term sexy, even if they weren’t particularly handsome. There was nothing handsome about Bulldog, for instance. Yet…wow. The sinuous, animalistic grace of his movements and the air of command he exuded were both undeniably sexy. To a man, these Spec Ops soldiers were tanned, fit, confident, powerful…masculine. These men were potent. The testosterone they exuded was so strong it was almost palpable, a living, breathing thing.
Wow.
Nearly overcome by a sudden bout of near-crippling shyness, Sarah stiffened her spine and gave them what she hoped was a confident smile. “It’s lovely to meet you, and I hope you all can stay for dinner, although I’m not sure what we’ll have. We’ve been eating so much take-out lately, there’s nothing in the refrigerator but a bunch of science experiments on the properties of mold.”
“And beer,” Adam piped up. “There’s always plenty of that.”
“Right,” Sarah agreed, tongue-in-cheek. “Science experiments on the properties of yeast.” Her smile faded. “Like I said, you’re all invited to stay for dinner. But why do I get the feeling that this is not a social call? You’re not here for dinner, are you? You’re here because of Ryder Malone.”
“I see we’ve come to the question and answer portion of the evening,” Jesse murmured, squeezing her shoulders gently before dropping a kiss on the top of her head.
“Speaking of beer,” Adam interjected brightly, turning on his heel and moving toward the kitchen, “who wants one?” Everyone except Sarah and Jesse followed him out there. Turning her to face him, he let go of her arms and lifted his right hand to tuck an errant, mink-brown curl behind her ear.
She tilted her chin to look up at him. “This is about a hell of a lot more than just vandalizing my bedroom, isn’t it? What’s going on, Jesse?”
His fingers stilled, warm against her skin, sending a shiver through her. Aware of the undisguised interest on the parts of the men filtering back into the room, beer bottles in hand, they struggled to fight the sudden heat blazing between them. “Don’t worry about dinner, baby,” Jesse said in an effort to divert her attention, “It’s all taken care of. I’ve ordered a Pig-Out Feast for Twelve from Porky’s Bar-B-Q.”
“But”—she spread her hand in confusion—“there’s only nine of us.”
He just chuckled. “Obviously you haven’t seen these guys eat. Anyway, they’ll be deliverin’ it in around”—he glanced at his watch—“half an hour or so, so be on the lookout while we finish up—”
“Finish up what?” she interrupted quietly, refusing to be diverted. “Answer my questions, Jesse, and stop trying to protect me from the big, bad world out there. I know what’s out there, remember? I see it every day in court. So, why are they here? What could Ryder Malone possibly have done to merit a response like this? An entire SEAL team? Really? Don’t you think that’s just a little bit over the top? Like sending a Cruise missile to take down a gnat?”
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, they’re no longer SEALs,” he offered lamely, lifting one shoulder in a slight shrug.
“Oh, well, that’s certainly a relief.”
“Sarah—”
“Who are they, Jesse? Aside from the biggest, scariest, meanest-looking, badass, uber-macho bunch of guys I’ve ever laid eyes on? Some sort of clandestine, super-covert, black-ops commando group that’s so top secret not even the president knows about them?”
Everyone froze. Seven pairs of eyes were suddenly riveted on her. Her mouth dropped open as realization sank in.
“Oh. My. God!”
Her entire body solidified.
“Holy shit,” Bill Payton muttered, his beer bottle halted in mid-air, halfway to his mouth.
“Told you she was smart,” Jesse muttered back.
Sarah just stared up at him, dumbfounded.
Oh.
My.
God!
Omigod!
“Jesse—”
“It’s okay, baby.”
“It’s okay? It’s okay?” Seized with a sudden need to shiver, she crossed her arms over her breasts. “How can this possibly be okay? What, exactly, makes this okay?”
“Well, for one thing, I’m pretty sure the president knows about us,” Jay offered helpfully, patting her shoulder as he passed her on his way to the couch.
“Looks like she’ll be coming to the meeting.” Adam joined them, grinning, holding out a frosty bottle of beer. She just stared at it pointedly until, shrugging, he withdrew it.
“What meeting?” she wanted to know.
“The meetin’ that’s startin’ right now,” Jesse said grimly, grabbing her by the elbow and steering her unresistingly toward the sofas and chairs gathered around the stone fireplace.
“C’mon, sweet pea.” Adam latched onto her other elbow, and they led her to one end of a brown leather sofa where they sat with her tucked snugly between them. The other six men spread out on the other sofa, across from them, and in the two club chairs. Nik Rostov sat on one of the two ottomans. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, the sweating bottle of beer looking like a child’s toy in his enormous hands.
Jesse turned his attention to Bill Payton, who was seated in one of the chairs, his right ankle propped up on his left knee as he held his beer bottle loosely in his fingers.
“Okay, Wildfire, it’s your show,” Jesse said before relaxing back against the cushions himself. He picked up Sarah’s right hand and placed it on top of his left thigh, covering it with his own. On her other side, Adam repeated the motion with her other hand. Conversation died as they all turned their attention to Bill “Wildfire” Payton, who cleared his throat and looked directly at Sarah. “Sorry to bring this to your doorstep, Sarah. But it appears that your boy Malone is one seriously bad dude.” His gaze slid to Jesse’s. “Ranger, are you familiar with the Army of Righteousness?”
Jesse nodded. “White supremacist group outta Georgia?”
“Yeah, except apparently Georgia’s not big enough for them anymore. They’ve expanded their operation to a sleepy little town called Porterfield, just up the road a piece from where we’re sitting.”
Jesse just shook his head, looking annoyed. “Damn it! I knew somethin’ hinky was goin’ on over there.”
Bill sat up straighter. “You’ve been there?”
“Yeah, my deputy and I checked it out a couple of weeks ago, followin’ up on a tip about Malone’s wh
ereabouts. We didn’t find him, but we couldn’t help noticin’ the place had more than its fair share of skinhead types.”
“That’s because the AR just bought a huge property there that was up for public auction.”
“Fuck. The old Harriman place. Fuck!” Jesse let out a sigh of disgust, angry with himself for not having thought of this somehow. The last thing a quiet, law-abiding town like Marshall’s Creek needed was a bunch of hyped-up, paramilitary types camping out thirty miles down the road.
Payton nodded. “Don’t beat yourself up over this, Jesse. You couldn’t have known. It was purchased by a seemingly legitimate group of real estate developers, whose clandestine ties to the Army are just now becoming known to Homeland Security.” Wildfire paused and again Jesse waited, trying to visualize the Harriman property, wondering what there was about it—other than near-total isolation—that would attract the Army of Righteousness, a bunch of angry, skinhead hate-mongers who made the Ku Klux Klan look like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Then he remembered. In addition to an extensive pine forest, abandoned farmland with a ramshackle house and barn, and a large lake, there was also an airstrip.
Shit!
During World War I, old man Harriman had leased a sizeable portion of his land to the United States Postal Service. Porterfield, Virginia had been one of the sorting and refueling stops along the air mail route between Washington, DC and Atlanta. While the buildings were most likely derelict by now, the old concrete runway, as far as Jesse knew, could probably be patched and operational for light aircraft within weeks, if not days.
“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!”
He didn’t realize that he’d uttered the words out loud until he looked up to find everyone staring at him expectantly, waiting for him to elaborate. “They’ve bought themselves an airfield,” he said quietly. And all of a sudden, there was a fuckuva lot more going on here than just a bunch of neo-Nazi, anti-government militia types running around in the woods and getting ready for the upcoming racial war. A sense of dread settled in the pit of his stomach as he looked at the faces of the seven men sitting around him.
“What’re they runnin’?” he asked Bill, “drugs?”
“Cocaine from Colombia. Ninety-three percent pure.”
“Jesus, Bill!” Jesse gave a low whistle.
“And guns. Kalashnikovs, AKs, Bushmasters, Vektors. You name it, they’ve got ’em.”
“How many we talkin’ about, here?”
“We’re not sure. Solo’s on the inside—”
“Solo!” Jesse stared at him in shock. “You sent a Jew into the midst of a gun-runnin’, drug-dealin’ skinhead camp? What, are you crazy?”
Bill just shrugged. “He volunteered.”
Jesse snorted, glancing over at Adam and answering his best friend’s grin with one of his own. Solo. Long, lean, and lanky Theodore “Solo” Solomon. The ARs would shit a brick if they knew a New York Jew had become one of their latest recruits. Although, thanks to his Irish-Catholic mother, no one looked less Jewish than Ted Solomon, definitely a point in his favor on this particular assignment.
“We lost track of him four days ago,” Bill went on. “We left the standard, ‘You’re a new uncle’ birth announcement on his voice mail, but he hasn’t answered and he hasn’t checked in. That’s why we’re here, Ranger. We need your help.”
Jesse tilted his head. “Not sure what I can do over in Porterfield, Bill. It’s out of my jurisdiction. Legally, my hands are tied. And why is this an Alpha op? Why aren’t DEA and ATF handlin’ this?”
“They were—are,” Bill corrected himself, “but there’ve been some problems. Over the past eighteen months, DEA and ATF conducted three joint raids that were all supposed to take this group down. But every time, the warehouse, the semi, or the barn was empty. No signs anyone had ever even been there. On the last raid, they walked right into an ambush. Two members of the ATF team were killed.”
“They have a mole.” Adam stated the obvious, giving Sarah’s hand a comforting squeeze.
“Yeah, but which one?” Jesse demanded, “DEA? Or ATF?”
Bill shrugged. “Not sure. That’s why Alpha One has been called in. We’re acting as a shadow force. Raven’s gone in undercover to replace one of the ATF members who got killed in the last raid.”
Raven. Clay “Raven” Nighthorse. Full-blooded Apache and the best damn tracker Jesse’s SEAL team had ever had. His cunning, grace, and speed, coupled with his ability to shadow his chosen prey with the precision of a stalking tiger, made him extremely lethal. He had an inner core of stillness that allowed him to hear and see things long before anybody else. His skills with a knife were unequaled.
“There’s also some evidence that a few of your citizens might be involved in this as well.”
Well, fuck. This just keeps gettin’ better and better, doesn’t it? “Who?”
“Your esteemed mayor, Colonel Sam Johnson, for one.”
Jesse snorted. “Colonel, my ass. If he’s a Colonel, I’m a pig farmer named Ed. He’s about as much a Colonel as Colonel Sanders. He’s affable, insincere, not too bright, although he’s certainly been smart enough to get himself reelected mayor for the past eight terms. It’s certainly possible.”
“Kendall Malone.”
Jesse’s mouth twisted into a grim line. Kendall Malone. Ryder Malone’s father. Owner of the Lexus dealership on the edge of town—and the only member of the town council to cast a vote against hiring Jesse as the new Chief of Police. “He’s a snake,” Jesse said flatly. “An oily, smarmy, double-dealin’ son of a bitch. He’s never made any attempt to hide his hatred for minorities, so it’s not only possible that he’s mixed up in this, it’s highly likely.” Kendall Malone was also a licensed pilot and had a small Cessna two-seater tied down at Marshall County Airport. That fact alone shot him right to the top of Jesse’s suspect list.
“Pelham Reynolds.”
“Local realtor. Only arrived in town four years ago. Don’t know much about him, but it makes sense. Who more likely to steer those assholes toward exactly what they were lookin’ for than a local real estate agent? Was he part of the consortium that initially purchased the property?” Jesse asked, knowing what the answer would be.
Payton’s nod confirmed it.
“Anyone else?” Jesse asked, stone-faced. He didn’t like this. Not one fuckin’ bit. Marshall’s Creek was a sleepy little law-abiding southern town. Just the thought of any of his citizens aiding and abetting the racist organization moving in down the road had him seeing red.
Wildfire hesitated. Then, seeing the look on Jesse’s face, he grimaced and said, “Matt Wilson.”
“No way.” Jesse shook his head vehemently. “You’re dead wrong, Bill. Matt Wilson would never have anythin’ to do with the Army of Righteousness.”
“We have a photo—”
“Which can be faked by any three-year-old with a computer,” Jesse insisted. “He’s my cousin, for God’s sake. He doesn’t have a prejudiced bone in his body. He would never join a group like this.”
Adam reached his hand out to Bill Payton, who sighed, reached into his pocket, withdrew four photos, and handed them to him. “It’s been eight years since you’ve spent any time with him, Jess,” Adam reminded him gently, studying the photograph. “Eight years can change a man.”
“Not Matt.” Jesse shook his head stubbornly.
He had grown up with his older cousins, Matt and Brian Wilson. So many times he had taken refuge at their home when his father had been stinking drunk and looking for someone to beat up on. Their own father had left when Brian was four, Matt, two. They’d been raised by their mother, Alva Colter Wilson, Harry Colter’s older sister.
Jesse’s aunt Alva had been a sagging, stoop-shouldered woman, sour of disposition, defeated by life, struggling to eke out an impoverished existence on a barmaid’s salary that never quite lasted until the end of the month. She’d died just a few months before Jesse had turned sixteen. Life had simply worn her out. After her f
uneral, Jesse had left his abusive father and moved into a room in the attic of the ramshackle two-story farm house Aunt Alva had left to her two sons. Then it had been in danger of falling down around their ears. Now, it was a showplace, having been repaired and added on to by Brian, who owned his own construction business. He and his wife Lisa Calvert Wilson, one of Sarah’s few friends in high school, lived there.
Brian’s younger brother Matt owned the only garage in Marshall’s Creek. It was a combination biker bar, biker clubhouse, and thriving auto repair and custom motorcycle shop, occupying a veritable compound of warehouse buildings at the edge of town.
As the three cousins had grown to young manhood, they had sometimes extended their closeness to include sharing women sexually. The place for these trysts had always been the farmhouse. The women had usually been Jesse’s. He’d often shared the more adventurous ones with both cousins, although, more often than not, it had just been Jesse and Matt, because for much of the time those last few years, Brian had been seriously dating one woman, Lisa. So Jesse and Matt had wound up having most of Jesse’s women to themselves. And if there was ever a surefire way to get to know someone really, really well, it was when you were both fucking the same woman fore and aft.
Despite his rough, biker appearance, his salty language, and nearly wall-to-wall tattoos, Matt Wilson was sweet, gentle, and caring. He’d always been the one to cuddle the women after their marathon bouts of sex, something Jesse had never been able to bring himself to do. He’d never seen the need to. After all, according to his way of thinking at the time, when you were through, you were through. As soon as the sex was over, he had always been the first to leave, returning to his own room up in the attic and leaving his cousin to see to it that the women got home all right.
Looking back on it now, Jesse realized how sad and sordid his entire life had been up to and including the day he’d left town eight years ago. Because, for the last three years he’d been in Marshall’s Creek, he’d ruthlessly carved Sarah out of his existence. He’d had to in order to keep himself from sullying her. The six-year gap in their ages and the disparity of their backgrounds—she being the descendant of English aristocrats, he being the bastard son of a Native American whore and the town drunk—were just too much to overcome. For three precious years, she’d been the one bright light in his otherwise dismal existence, and even though leaving her eight years ago had ripped his heart from his chest, he’d done it to keep himself from dragging her down into the mire with him. And he had worked hard the entire eight years he’d been in the Navy to become worthy of her. As he took the photo Adam held out to him, he vowed anew that he would make sure she never regretted loving him and Adam or giving them the chance to love her.
Owning Sarah [Sequel to Loving Sarah] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Page 7
