by Rhonda Lott
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ELI
Alpha Team Six, Book One
Rhonda Lott
COPYRIGHT
Copyright © August 2017 Rhonda Lott
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the Author.
Author’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
Table of Content
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
EPILOUGE
CHAPTER ONE
"Go talk to him for heaven's sake." Brandy demanded.
Erin lowered her head and gave Brandy the deadly older sister's glare. "Keep your voice down, Lil Pain. Can't you see he's busy? Now, get out of my way."
Brandy chuckled under her breath and slid past Erin on the way to the kitchen area of the diner. "Chicken." She whispered in Erin's ear as she went past. "Don't let me hear you clucking out here."
Erin drew in a deep breath. She glanced over at the man sitting in the back of her diner. He was by far the most handsome man she had ever laid eyes on. Elijah Sessions sat in front of his laptop with earbuds in his ears, silver rimmed glasses perched on his nose and his fingers steadily tapping across his keyboard. He was the perfect mix of naughty professor and brooding gladiator.
Erin pulled her gaze away from the mysterious writer. He'd told her once that he wrote thriller novels. She ran straight home and downloaded his book, "The Night Never Ends". He was an exceptional storyteller. His novel was full of twist and characters that felt like real people. She couldn't put her kindle down. On top of that he'd won awards for that book, prestigious awards, and remained number one on the New York Times best sellers list for months. She couldn't imagine what he was doing in Wayland Georgia.
Her town was a beautiful place, but it was a very tiny dot on the map. Erin loved that about it. She was born and raised here and had no wish to leave home, ever. The cities held no lure for her. Her friends, neighbors and her family fulfilled her and her diner kept her busy.
Erin picked up the coffee carafe and headed in Elijah's direction. This guy was something else. He lived out on the edge of town in a renovated barn. Not a brand new barn, but an old, barely holding on to its foundation barn. He didn't interact with the town folk. He was friendly towards her, but guarded. And never had she seen him crack a smile, not once.
"Would you like a refill?" She asked.
Eli lifted his eyes to her and the storm cloud gray orbs behind his glasses took her breath. Yep, drop dead good looking was Mr. Sessions.
"Thanks Emma." He replied, returning his focus to his laptop screen.
"That’s Erin, once again, my name is Erin. Elijah." She fills his cup, then spun away. He was sexy, but rude as hell. Just as well, she wasn't the type to crush on a guy. Who was she fooling? She was crushing over Eli and he most likely would be out of Wayland before too long.
He grabbed her hand. "I'm sorry, of course, it's Erin. I was in the zone for a second. No disrespect."
Her hand tingled where his fingers wrapped around it. Erin tilted her head and gave his fingers a squeeze. "No problem, I'm sorry to disturb you. Why should you remember my name anyway?"
He removed his glasses and held her gaze a tad bit longer than was comfortable and just long enough to send a zap of electricity between her thighs.
"You are hard to forget even if my mind is dumb struck concentrating. Erin,"
His face was as unmoved, as unreadable as usual, but his eyes traveled her body from head to toe. And there went her body again, responding with puckered nipples, pounding heart and clenching down below.
Unprepared and shaken by Eli's admiration, Erin smiled, at least she prayed it was a smile, and not some gruesome shocked lip twitching sort of thing. On a normal day she could flirt with the best of them, but this man had her hands trembling and her tongue plastered to the roof of her mouth.
Erin mumbled something she sure didn't make a damn lick of sense and retreated back behind the counter putting her back to the room, heart pounding hard against her breastbone. What in the world came over her? She knew how to talk to the men that surrounded her every day, well, they were the boys that she grew up with so that made it easy. Perhaps it was because he was a stranger to her, or more to the point, he was a stranger built like a warrior with eyes that pulled you into their sultry gray depths. Lord, she sounded like a sixteen year old. She was a woman and refused to be fucked in the brain by some sexy as hell guy.
Erin faced the room. A man dressed in a dark suit and ash blond hair was sitting at the table with Eli. By the rigid way Eli held his body and the deep frown cutting across his brow, that strange man was pissing Elijah off.
Eli placed his palms on the table, leaned in and said something to the guy. Whatever Eli said caused the man to point a finger in Eli's face, stand and walked out the door. Her eyes followed the man as he stopped suddenly just outside, his head twisting back towards the street. Suddenly loud pops sounded outside as a car raced down Main Street. The stranger's body jerked hitting the diner's window, bullets and his body broke the glass into a million pieces. Erin screamed and like the rest of her customers hit the ground. Black boots appeared before her face.
"Erin you good?" Eli crouched down. His hand on her shoulder blade, he held her down.
Erin craned her neck and looked up, and nodded.
Eli didn't reply. He gave her one long, sad look, almost as if he was apologizing for what happened, then took off out the back door.
Oh, hell no. That dude was now hanging half in and half out of her shop window and Elijah was hot footing it out the back as if Satan himself was after him. Who was Elijah Sessions and what the hell did he bring to her town?
****
She was amazing. Erin Talley was the most amazing woman. She ran the only diner in town. Everyone spoke highly of her. She was friendly, kind hearted, and had a smile that could guide your soul home through the darkest of nights, but Erin wasn't for him. He was in town to lay low, not to start a relationship with her. He knew she felt the same powerful attraction for him that he felt for her. It was evident in the way her eyes sparkled when they engaged in small talk and the slight breathlessness of her voice. If she could see the boner he got whenever she was near, she'd know quickly the effect she had on him.
Elijah hit the dirt road leading to his home at a break neck speed. Liston was dead. His former teammate had found him and that could mean others were on their way if not already there.
"Some fucking disappearing job I've done." He cursed. He was out of the FBI. His team, Alpha Team Six, was disavowed and disbanded after their last
cluster fuck of a mission. Not that he minded in the least. He was tired of the whole protect the United States from threats domestic and foreign. His vision of being the hero and saving the world was dead. Liston sought him out in Wayland to inform him that one other member of his team, Tim Hartwell, was killed two days ago. A car bomb sent him to his final rest, and now Liston was shot down right before his eyes. His team was down to five remaining members.
Andrew Pope, the former Deputy Director didn't play around. The Director was suspicious of Pope and the people he associated with. So, on the down low, Alpha Team Six investigated him and found that the man was a high ranking member of a far right group, dead set on infiltrating and overthrowing the government. Eli and his team brought Pope down and he was quietly removed from his position. Success was rewarded by his team being disavowed and left out in the cold. Needless to say, Pope had his hands in that. Pope's organization was deeply imbedded in all departments of the government and his team wasn't able to ferret out all of Popes connections or how far up they were before they had gotten the boot.
He had to get out of town, find another hole to hide in and that sucked on many levels. He felt at peace here. Wayland Georgia was a tiny place, beautifully slow paced with kind people and, more than all that, it had Erin.
That woman kept him up at night thinking about how her eyes sparkled when she talked. Erin was a beautiful woman, but that smile of hers lit her up and made Eli want to kiss her while she smiled, to see if it tasted as sweet as it looked. The woman rattled him, and that was saying a lot, when he'd had women from Thailand to Texas. She had midnight black hair that she wore in a thick braid down her back, with bangs that teased him to sweep them aside and gaze into her eyes. Her caramel skin begged to be stroked, and that killer body of hers drove him mad. The most intriguing thing about Erin was that she was happy. The kind of happy that said she knew who she was and loved it. Satisfied and content in her world, small though it was, she was right where she wanted to be. Eli wished he could find that kind of contentment. For a while he thought Wayland was that for him as well, but now he was found out and he had to get the hell out of there.
He parked and got out the truck. His feet hit the ground and a wave of dizziness made his stomach heave. Eli grabbed hold of the truck door to steady himself. His breathing kicked up and dizziness all but had him blacking out. When he looked back in the truck, his headrest and the upper portion of the seat was covered in blood. He touched the back of his head and his hand came back bloody. He'd been grazed and hadn't felt it until now, he was so intent of making sure he got out of the diner before anyone else got hurt, especially Erin.
Eli knew the wound wasn't bad, but he'd lost a lot of blood and felt the effects. He made it to the door on unsteady legs, darkness floating around the corners of his vision. He made it as far as his sofa when darkness claimed him.
CHAPTER TWO
Was she doing this? Was she driving out to that run down barn after a guy who might have a connection with the murder of a man right in front of her business? Leather crackled under her fingers as she tightened her grip on the steering wheel. Her little Honda moved steadily down the two lane highway. This morning a drive that should take only a few minutes felt like it was taking eons. After the police interview, boarding up the diner's front window, a window that was now a sparkling carpet of glass on the floor. She noticed Eli's laptop he'd left behind after his hasty retreat. Erin went back and forth in her mind all night long. Should she take the laptop to him or wait for him to come retrieve it? The way he ran out yesterday, Erin didn't hold hope that he was ever returning to the diner. And did she really want him to. That argument with the dead guy looked pretty heated. Two minutes later, WHAM, a drive by. A drive by killing in Wayland fucking Georgia. This wasn't LA or New York, this was her tiny, sleepy, out of the way home.
Erin turned into Eli's dirt driveway and stopped behind a shiny black truck. That was one hell of a vehicle, she admired the big, black monster of motorized sexy. The ride was flashy, it didn't fit with the quiet book author personality Eli was trying to pull off. Of course she could tell he was far more than he professed, well professed wasn't quite what he was doing. He was hiding, that much she knew. The man he portrayed wasn't who he actually was. Erin could read people at a glance and she could tell that Mr. Elijah Sessions was dripping with secrets.
Erin stepped out of the car into the bright mid-autumn sunlight. There was a cool nip in the air that signaled winter's slow approach. She appraised Eli's home. The barn was a dingy gray color. It apparently had once been white, but neglect and time had taken its toll on the lonely structure. Sturdy, and still sitting solidly on its foundation, but left to decay amidst the towering pines. Erin shuddered a bit. She thought of herself. Would she be like this place, old and worn down, tucked away here in Wayland?
"No, I'm not stuck here, I can leave anytime I want to." Erin mumbled to herself as she headed towards the barn. She simply didn't want to leave her home. Period. Her life was good here. She could see the whole world if she wanted to, that’s what the internet was for.
Dirt kicked up from under her shoes as she took determined steps towards the barn. Her eyes glanced into the truck as she passed. A dark brown splash of color caught her eye, causing her to pause and take a closer look at the interior. Blood, dried blood covered a section of the cream colored head rest and streaked the seat. Erin's heart jumped, Eli had been shot yesterday.
Erin took off running only to come to an abrupt stop at the door of the barn. Breathing heavy, palms wet, Erin set her jaw and pushed at the sliding door. It rolled easily to the side. Fear had closed down her throat and she couldn't gather enough liquid in her parched mouth. Erin prayed she didn't find the beautiful man dead. She quickly scanned the front yard, no other cars. She couldn't just walk away. What if he needed help? Erin had worked as an aide at the senior center for ten years. She'd seen plenty of death. Squaring her shoulders, Erin stepped inside.
Inside the barn was drastically different than the outside. The space was one large room, updated kitchen with gleaming steel appliances, dining area with a large steel and glass table, and a darken loft area above. Erin's eyes darted around looking for Eli. A trail of dried blood droplets leading to the right. A pair of boots stuck out over the side of one of the sofas. Clutching the laptop to her chest, Erin crept forward. Eli lay on his stomach, face pale, body still, so still. Panic gripped Erin. A loud clatter blasted through the quiet as her grip slipped and the laptop hit the floor. Please don’t be dead. She kept up that running mantra in her head.
Erin knelt down and noticed the matted blood caked back of his head. Get your shit together woman. Erin told herself as she placed her hand on Eli's back. Her hand moved up and down slowly, he was breathing.
"Elijah?" She called. No response.
Erin shook his shoulder. "Elijah?" still nothing.
She took his wrist and took his pulse. It was strong and steady. He wasn't responsive, but his breathing was regular, no temperature and his heart rate seemed to be normal. She carefully moved aside his short black hair and checked the head wound. It was a perfect three inch line where a bullet grazed his scalp. The laceration wasn't too terribly deep, but she knew that head wounds tended to bleed profusely.
Erin pulled the blanket that hung on the back of the sofa over Eli, then went in search of a first aid kit or some kind of supplies to care for the gash. Bathroom, people kept first aid kits in their bathrooms, right. Where the hell was the bathroom? She didn't see any doors. There were stairs leading to the loft area and Erin ran up them. The loft area was his bedroom. A stark place with one neatly made bed, one dresser devoid of pictures or trinkets, and one desk facing a window. And, thankfully a bathroom. The kit was under the sink, neatly arranged in a line with other supplies in a tight row. Erin smiled, damn talk about a neat freak.
Eli was still out when she made it back downstairs. After cleaning and bandaging the wound, Erin checked his vital signs once again. Abs
ent-mindedly she stroked his strong jaw, rough with stubble. The ever-present silver rimmed glasses were missing and his short supper dark lashes held her attention for a moment, knowing they covered the most alluring pair of stormy gray eyes that did crazy things to her insides when he set them upon her. What was it about the man that drew her to him? He was sexy and mysterious, but there was more. If he was a criminal running from the law, she'd best to stay clear. He wasn't going to die and she needed to get out of there. Her life was just fine the way it was. Elijah Sessions was interesting to her only because she didn't run across new people very often. At least that's what she would keep telling herself, anyway. He would be gone soon and that would be that.
Erin stood, but the little devil on her shoulder urged her to linger for just one last look. Damn, he was one fine ass man, big and handsome and oh, fuck it. Erin couldn't resist, she leaned back down to place a kiss on his cheek. His hand shot out and caught her by her braid and a gun was pointed at her temple. Erin blinked up into Eli's eyes, they weren’t intriguing or compelling. At that moment, his eyes were tombstone gray and murderous.
****
The ingrained instinct of a solider was a motherfucker. Eli's groggy brain detected the threat to his life before he was fully conscious. Pope and his goons had found him. They were in his home and hadn't killed him yet. Big mistake.
The image of Liston's lifeless, bullet riddled body flashed through his mind. He grabbed hold of the person leaning over him, gun up against the fucker's head.
"Hey, it's me. Move that thing out my face." A female voice screeched.
A female voice, the fog cleared his brain instantly. He knew that voice.
"Erin?" Eli lowered his weapon. "What are you doing here?"
"Lucky for you I am here." Erin stood and slowly backed up. "I was returning your laptop when I found blood everywhere and you passed out."
Eli ran a hand down his face. He remembered the blood and the pain and then nothing. "What day is it?"
