“You like football? I think there's a game on.” Buck asked the question as he headed to the living room and flopped onto one end of the couch. He grabbed the remote and flicked on the TV to start the search for a game.
“Yeah. Die-hard Packers fan. They should be playing the Bears tonight.”
Noah took the other end of the couch. At least they had football to fall back on. The game would alleviate the need for unnecessary small talk.
“Packers, huh? You a cheesehead?” Buck teased.
“Yes, sir. Born and bred in Milwaukee. You?”
“Kentucky. Sadly, we have no pro teams. I’m a Saints fan, though,” Buck said. “Mindy says you're a SEAL, too.”
“Been stationed here several years. Jayla says you're one, as well?”
“Yup. Just transferred to the San Diego side. I blow shit up.”
“Ordnance. Cool. I’m SSE. Sensitive Site Exploitation.”
Buck nodded. Noah seemed like a nice enough guy, but the conversation proved painful and tedious. He focused on the game, watching the Packers advance down the field toward the end zone.
On the other end of the couch, Noah coughed suddenly, choking on something, probably his beer.
“You okay, man?” Buck asked, inching to the edge of the sofa in ready-mode.
Noah held up a hand. “I'm good. Thanks.”
They both went back to watching the game.
Buck guzzled some of his beer and wondered about Mindy and Jayla. Despite being polar opposites, they still worked as best friends. From what he’d seen, they loved each other with a fierceness he never saw in male relationships. Sure, his SEAL brothers would defend each other to the death, and never left a man behind. They were loyalty personified. But there was something about the emotional intimacy of female friendships that intrigued him.
Did they share details about their romantic relationships? Did Mindy tell Jayla about their sex? Did Jayla share specifics?
Buck glanced at Noah, then wished he hadn’t when vague images of him and Jayla boinking popped into his head. He didn’t want particulars of other dudes having sex. Guys did the crude locker room bullshit talk about sex, but they never shared play by play, or analyzed technique or anything. He wondered if women did.
Mr. Wiggles sauntered in from the dining room and jumped up onto the couch. He bumped his head on Noah’s arm, and Noah reached over to scratch between his ears. Wiggles climbed into Noah’s lap and curled up.
Noah snorted. “I’m attracting all the wrong kind of pussy today.” Buck turned to look at Noah and cocked a brow. “Oh?”
“First Jayla’s cat, now this one.”
Buck bit back the question he almost asked, which was ‘but not Jayla?’
Wiggles gave Buck some side eye before turning his head and settling in. Buck could hear his purr from across the couch. Stupid cat still held a grudge from earlier. Fine by Buck. He’d shove Wiggles off the bed every day and ten times on Sunday if it meant time with Mindy.
Buck couldn’t focus on the game, and he’d run out of shallow, pointless conversation. It made him miss his Virginia team. Put them in a room with beer and a game and they wouldn’t shut up. Of course, it would all be fairly safe topics. Only after knowing each other for several years did any of them start to share specifics about their lives or relationships.
He didn’t know his new team well enough to talk about anything but work. They were still getting to know each other and hadn’t run any missions together yet. It felt like breaking in a new pair of boots.
Growing up in the middle of six sisters, he had a fairly good sense of how women talked to one another, though usually his sisters had kept their secrets from him and by mutual agreement he’d avoided the information. The last thing he wanted tainting his imagination was his sisters and sex.
Green Bay intercepted the ball and Noah fist pumped. It startled Wiggles who gave his new bestie an indignant look before hopping to the floor. Buck smiled. Served the cat right.
Maybe he and Noah could be friends. It made sense if their girlfriends were best friends that they got to know each other. They’d probably see each other a lot.
But he sucked at making conversation. It was tense and weird to ask another guy questions about himself.
Buck drained his beer, then gestured to Noah. “Want another?”
“Sure.”
As he headed for the kitchen, the doorbell rang. Must be the pizza. He spun on his heel and headed for the door.
The delivery guy stood on the porch holding a couple of pizza boxes. “This is a really small house. I almost missed it,” he said.
“It looks bigger on the inside,” Buck said.
Noah stepped up behind him. “Those smell great.”
The pizza guy looked at Buck, then Noah, then back at Buck before smiling. “The total’s fifty-two dollars.”
Buck took the pizzas when the guy extended them toward him, that silly grin still on his face, and handed the pizzas off to Noah, who opened the lid of the top box and took a long, satisfied whiff.
Buck dug his wallet out of his pocket and gave the guy sixty. “Keep the change.”
“Thanks,” the guy said and turned to leave. At the bottom of the steps he spun and added, “You guys make a cute couple.” He flipped a cheerful wave before heading to his car at the curb.
“That was awkward,” Noah said as Buck shut the door.
Buck laughed. “I guess I can’t blame him. Two guys in a cute little house with no sign of women. Easy to jump to that conclusion.”
Noah tossed his head back and laughed. “Dude, if this ever got back to either of our teams…”
Buck’s heart froze. “Jesus. We’d never live it down.”
Jayla appeared back in the living room, and Melinda rounded the corner from the kitchen just in time. Buck didn’t think either he or Noah could have resisted digging into the pizza for much longer.
“I take it y'all are hungry,” Jayla said, shifting her hands to her hips. “Melinda, we using the fine china tonight?”
Mindy tossed her a package of paper plates from the kitchen. “Of course.”
They all migrated to the dining room. Buck went to the kitchen to fetch the rest of the beer, then sat down and dug in. This time the silence in the air was a result of shoving pizza and beer in their mouths. It didn’t take long, though, before it turned into a total lack of conversation as they sat back satiated from the food
Jayla and Mindy exchanged some weird nonverbals—head tilts, eye contact, narrowed gaze, before Mindy turned to Noah and arranged her face into a smile of interest.
“So, Noah. You're from Wisconsin, right? Do you get back there to see your family much?” Mindy said.
What the heck? Noah’s brows furrowed in confusion. Whatever the girls were up to, Mindy was failing miserably at it.
Jayla's shoulders slumped and she pleaded to Mindy with her eyes, giving her a quick shake of her head. Buck bit back a smile. He’d have thought after they’d been friends for so long they’d be better at this kind of thing.
“Um, Melinda, can I see you in the kitchen?” Jayla started to slide out of her seat, but Noah grabbed her arm.
“It's okay, Jayla. It's not her fault she doesn't know.” He offered Mindy a patient smile, though he didn’t look happy about the turn of the conversation. “Both of my parents have passed away. I was an only child, so I don't have much in the way of family left up there. A few scattered cousins and an aunt or uncle, but none that I'm really close to.”
Mindy squirmed in her chair, obviously embarrassed. “I'm sorry to hear that.”
“Well, maybe Noah and Buck can entertain us with some good stories about missions they've been on?” Jayla folded her hands in her lap and sat up in her chair.
Jayla pinned Buck with an expectant smile. Hell if he’d be the first to share with the class. He shoved a piece of pizza in his mouth and shrugged. He had a hunch this awful train wreck of an evening had something to do with Jayla and Noah’s
relationship. The tension between them was palpable. It made the argument he and Mindy had had earlier in the day seem trivial.
Jayla's shoulders slumped again.
Mindy collected the pizza boxes together and carried them to the kitchen. Buck jumped at the opportunity to get the hell out of the line of fire. He hopped to his feet and followed her, carrying the empty beer bottles.
“What the fuck is going on in there?” he asked, jerking a thumb toward the dining room.
Mindy sighed and shook her head while she folded the pizza boxes to fit into the garbage. “Jayla’s anxious about their relationship.”
“She’s very high strung, isn’t she?”
“No more than any other woman trying to find her way with a new man in her life.”
Buck tucked a finger under Mindy’s chin and lifted her gaze to meet his. “Are you anxious about us?”
She lifted a shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. Panic iced his veins. They’d both been prickly and poking around the edges of how to get along, but anxiety on her part implied second thoughts which hurt. He’d literally dropped his entire life to move all the way across the country to be with her. It pained him that she might have doubts.
Before he could get into it with her, like a fire alarm his and Noah’s phones went off at the exact same time.
Mindy hurried to the dining room, Buck right behind her pulling his phone from his pocket.
Noah already had his in hand. “Shit, I'm being called back to base immediately.” He
looked at Jayla with regret in his eyes. “I've gotta go.”
“You need a ride? I just got the same text,” Buck said, grabbing his keys.
Noah stood, pulled Jayla into his arms and kissed her forehead before looking into her eyes. “I promise I'll call you when I know what's going on.”
Jayla nodded, her eyes glassy with unshed tears. Buck cleared his throat, ready to walk away, but Noah picked Jayla up by the hips, plunked her on the table and crushed his mouth to hers.
Mindy chuckled, and Buck turned his attention to her, a much better view. “I’ll call you after I know something.”
“Okay. And Buck, don’t worry about us. We’ll be fine.”
He’d shifted into work mode and was antsy to get to base and find out why the urgency. At the same time he didn’t want to leave Mindy behind. Looking in her eyes, though, calmed him. “I’m not upset. I’ll miss you while I’m gone.”
It felt vulnerable to say, but at least it was honest. He took her face in his hands and kissed her, gently at first, then harder, as if he could save up for the time he’d be away.
He pulled back and pressed his forehead to hers. “Promise you’ll be careful while I’m gone,” he said.
“I’m always careful.”
Her eyes sparkled with humor that terrified him. But he didn’t have time to chastise her. Not that she’d listen, anyway. So he had to trust her. He reassured himself that Mindy was a nerdy scientist and aside from the recent run-in with Russian mafia, her life consisted of lots of boring hours in a lab. Not much room for danger.
Before they dragged out the goodbyes any longer, he turned to Noah. “You 'bout ready?”
4
The door closed behind the guys at the same time Melinda’s phone chirped with a text message. When she read the message from Claudia Lynch, her heart stopped dead before taking off like a race horse.
Report to Coronado Base asap to join a mission to Siberia as civilian consultant.
“And … we're good here!” Jayla said, waving her hand in the air as she rolled off the table. Apparently sucking face with Noah on Melinda’s dining room table had boosted Jayla’s confidence.
Melinda was about to rain on Jayla’s parade. “So, uh, how's the weather in Siberia this time of year?”
Jayla hitched a shoulder. “Buttass cold with a side of fucking freezing. Why? I'm not going to Siberia. I'm going to Moscow.”
“Because, I am.” Melinda said and showed Jayla the text from Claudia.
“What the hell? Why the fuck would they send you to Siberia?”
“I have no idea.” Melinda said, flinging her hands in the air. As if she could read Claudia’s mind and force the message to make sense.
Jayla crossed her arms, and frowned. “You most certainly are not going. What the hell are they thinking? You’re not a field agent. You’re a chemist who happens to be on their payroll.”
Melinda propped a fist on her hip. “I’m supposed to tell them no? Aren’t there consequences to that? I don’t even know how this shit works.”
She headed for the door and slipped into her shoes, finger-combing her hair with shaking hands.
“So you’re okay with this? Just up and going to Siberia because Claudia said so?” Jayla asked.
The thought of anything Russian had Melinda quaking like a leaf in a hurricane. “Of course not. I don’t want to go anywhere near Russia or anything Russian.” She grabbed her purse and keys. “But the only way I’ll find out what this is all about is go to the base. Maybe it’s a mistake. Maybe I can talk my way out of it. I don’t know.”
As she drove to the base grasping the steering wheel so tight her knuckles blanched, she practiced all the logical reasons why she couldn’t go on a mission to Siberia, not the least of which was she still hadn’t recovered from her last encounter with Russians. Also, she had no training yet. What did they expect her to do?
Nausea gurgled in her belly, threatening to relieve her of the pizza and beer she’d just eaten. The roads, cars, houses, and normal San Diego landscape fell away in her mind to be replaced by guns, Russian accents, and cold fear. The last time she’d dealt with anything Russian, she’d watched three of her colleagues shot dead, and nearly lost Buck, not to mention the whole almost-drowning thing.
She sat up straighter in her seat. “Not again. I’m putting my foot down. I refuse to go to Siberia.”
Buck hurried into the briefing room at the base. He’d run back to his apartment, changed into his fatigues in record time, then raced to base.
Inside the room, the Officer in Charge, Lieutenant Arlen “Tank” Moss, stood at the front fiddling with electronics. The rest of Buck’s team had taken seats, and he recognized Wolf Steele’s team, too.
Buck took a seat a couple of rows back next to Julio “Suave” Pena.
“Any idea what’s going on, yet?” Buck asked.
“Naw. OIC’s been up there fucking around with the computer for a few. Pretty sure we’ll be heading out on a mission, though.”
“About damn time,” Von “Flash” Harris said. He leaned forward to talk around Suave. “I’m sick of sitting around on our thumbs all day.”
“I ain’t been sitting on anything,” Wiley “Coyote” Strickland said. He turned around in front of Buck and hung an arm over the back of his seat. “I work my ass off every day in the gym and maneuvers.”
“We all do,” Ross “Groom” McBride said from the seat next to Coyote. “I think Flash means he’s bored.”
“Hell yes, I am,” Flash said. “I need some action.”
“I hear Buck’s been getting plenty of action,” Cole “Dozer” Burnett said, looking over his shoulder in the row ahead of Buck.
The guys laughed. “You bet your ass,” Buck said, grinning at them all.
“Stow it, men.” Darius “Ice” Bates, the team leader sat in the front row, but turned to hush everyone. Buck didn’t know him well yet, but from their interactions so far, the nickname Ice fit him perfectly. The man was one-hundred percent by the book and cold as fucking ice.
The Lieutenant typed something into the laptop on the table up front and a satellite image appeared on the screen at the front of the room.
“Let’s get started, gentlemen,” Moss said. The room fell silent, and he continued. “We’ve been assigned a covert op in Siberia. A couple of months ago, a scientist working on a top-secret military project was kidnapped by Russian terrorists, likely mafia, from a pharmaceutical company here in San
Diego, for the purposes of stealing the drug she developed, for their own use.”
Buck froze in his seat, a chill of fear skittering down his spine. He was talking about Mindy.
Moss continued. “Petty Officer McCormick was with the scientist when she was kidnapped, and was captured at the same time. He was instrumental in rescuing the scientist and defeating the terrorists.”
Many of the heads in the room turned to look at him. He kept his eyes on Moss, only offering a terse nod as acknowledgment.
“We’ve received new intel from an inside source,” Moss said. “The Russians must have transferred information to their colleagues before the cargo ship sank, and they’ve continued work on duplicating the drug, called Amaranthine. In fact, we’ve seen evidence through a series of recent events that they’ve altered the drug in alarming ways. Doctor Franklin?”
A man Buck hadn’t noticed before peeled away from the wall and met Moss at the front of the room. Tall, thin, and balding, he wore wire-rimmed glasses. Probably worked in intelligence.
“Our intel indicates that Amaranthine, which was originally designed for cognitive enhancement, has been altered so that not only does the drug still enhance cognitive skills, but now it makes users susceptible to suggestion while also repressing inhibitions,” the doctor said.
“Excuse me.”
Buck recognized that female voice, and it took every bit of military training he had not to blurt out ‘what the hell are you doing here, Mindy?’
He, along with the rest of the men in the room, watched Mindy move down the center aisle to the front of the room.
“I’m Dr. Emerson. I’m responsible for creating Amaranthine. Which, by the way, was not a purposeful development. It was a complete accident in the lab.”
Dr. Franklin’s eyes widened behind his glasses, then narrowed in distaste as Mindy corrected him.
“Be that as it may, the Russians have altered it. These,” he pressed some buttons on the keyboard and several pictures of bloody corpses filled the screen. “Are the outcomes of using the altered version of Amaranthine. The short term side effects include heart attack, stroke, bleeding out, and a variety of other ugly deaths. It’s one hundred percent fatal. We’ve seen a drastic increase in these kind of deaths popping up among the Russian underworld. It’s what clued us in to the problem. Apparently they’re experimenting on their own.”
Special Forces: Operation Alpha: Buck the System (Kindle Worlds Novella) (Sealed With A Kiss Book 2) Page 3
