Total pages in book: 767
Estimated words: 732023 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 3660(@200wpm)___ 2928(@250wpm)___ 2440(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 732023 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 3660(@200wpm)___ 2928(@250wpm)___ 2440(@300wpm)
The only thing I know for sure is that I want to fuck her so bad it hurts.
Dressing quickly, pulling on a T-shirt and briefs over my wet skin, I head into the bedroom. I’ll have to find her in the house and make sure I haven’t scared her. Except she’s lying in bed where I left her, her dark eyes catching light from the bathroom and throwing it back to me in the dark.
“Are you okay?” I ask, my voice low.
“Yes,” she says. “Why wouldn’t I be okay?”
So she doesn’t want to talk about it. I should tell her to go back to her room. It isn’t appropriate for her to be here. Except that she wasn’t lying about having nightmares. Sometimes she cries out in her sleep. Remembering the night her father died?
Part of me wants to rage at her for leaving. Part of me wants to push her out of the fucking nest, to let her fly or fall, not to catch her on the way down. It isn’t in me to make her leave, so I climb back into bed with her. She curls herself against me, her hair dampened from standing in the bathroom, steam rising from both of our bodies.
LIAM
I’m asleep when the call arrives, but my body is trained to come fully awake at the first sign of trouble. I suppose I would have cultivated that skill in the military if I needed to.
I had it the day I enlisted. That’s what comes of growing up with a man who believed the devil resided in you. My childhood was a study in wild opposites, the intense high of an exuberant, loving father, and then the inevitable turn that came at night. He would charge into my room because of some nightmare he had, a sense that the devil was inside me, determined to drive him away. Anything that had happened during the day, a phrase I had used or an expression on my face, could be caused by the devil. My father would do anything to drive him out—press my hands onto the lit burner of the stove, choke me until I passed out. Throw me into the well so the cold and damp would drive away evil spirits.
The red light blinks on my phone, which means it’s coming in from a secure line. We have servers set up so that teams on deployment can reach us from anywhere without our location, and thus their identity, being compromised. “Hello,” I say, my voice hoarse as if I’ve been shouting in my sleep. I didn’t even realize I still had nightmares about the well until Samantha woke me up. She’s sleeping soundly in bed right now, and I take a few steps away, toward the bathroom, so I don’t wake her up.
A female voice identifies herself using a nine-digit alphanumeric code, her latitude and longitude, and an abbreviation that means she’s not being coerced to make this call. Laney’s mother. That’s a fucking relief. The last thing we need is another orphan around here.
“Sitrep,” I say, already pulling on my jeans. I give Samantha a last glance before I shut the door to my bedroom, keeping her shielded from the darkness in my world. This is one area where I won’t compromise her safety.
“We ran into some trouble during our exfil from the region. A local drug lord and pimp was making an example of one of his girls. The team commander took exception.”
Striding through the hallway, I almost collide with Josh, who’s heading to the office. He got the same notification that I did about the secure line and probably hit the Answer button a millisecond after I did, barely missing the call. He managed to pull on a shirt, which is one step more than I did. His eyes are alert, but he doesn’t say anything, waiting for me to finish the call.
“Where is the team commander?” I ask, flipping on the lights.
“Uncertain. He ordered us to hang back while he scoped out the situation.”
I press two fingers to my brow where a sharp pain slices my skull. There’s a wealth of problems in a handful of words. As the team commander, Elijah’s word would be final on a situation. Team members like Laney’s mother could advise him, but he had the final say—chain of command is crucial to these missions. Of course, sticking to the objective is also crucial.
An objective that has nothing to do with a local drug lord.
“What were his exact orders?”
“He told us to go dark until we met up at the rendezvous point, which would have been this morning. We waited three hours past the mark before retreating.”
“Are any of you injured?”
“Negative.”
Christ. I give the sitrep to Josh, who swears in a long and creative streak.
“He wasn’t going to scope out the situation,” Josh says, biting off the words. “He was going to assassinate the fucker, and probably start an international incident while he’s at it.”