“I’m the pain in the ass? Better than having a stick up my ass—which you have. A giant rod shoved up the ass that’s turned you into a total dick. You could’ve said, hey, Autumn, we’re gonna be parking soon, time to put on that ridiculously hot get-up. I know it sucks you have to sweat half to death but it won’t be for very long.” I watched as his jaw tightened and face turned to granite.
“You think this shit’s a joke? Someone seeing your hair thinking they just hit the motherload. Well, it’s not. There’s not one motherfucking thing funny about me having to kill an army of men when they try to take you from me.”
What the actual hell?
I was right, this had nothing to do with the convoy, him seeing me in my tank top and panties, or anything that had happened yesterday. This was something else entirely, and honestly, I didn’t think it actually had to do with me. Well, it did, but it didn’t. This was about Declan protecting me.
Shit. My heart squeezed.
I was too late.
Declan blamed himself for his wife and daughter dying. A man like Declan, protective through and through, would think he failed. And that failure would eat him up.
So this wasn’t about me. It was about Declan being protective and afraid he’d fail.
And because my heart ached for his loss, for the years of anguish he’d lived through, I found myself doing something I never do—I gave in. If he’d been bossing me and barking for any other reason, I would’ve told him to go fuck himself.
“I’m sorry.”
I reached for the niqab and quickly covered my hair, then pulled on the rest of the clothes and immediately started sweating. But it was mere seconds after I was cloaked in black from head to ankle with no skin showing did Declan finally exhale.
There was no apology on his part, no explanation why he’d behaved like a douche, and I wondered if he even knew why he’d been so angry. He was wound so tightly and buried all of his emotions so I doubted it. Hell, I was the same way. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was feel, therefore when I did, it pissed me off and I lashed out.
“We gotta move to plan B,” Max radioed. “I got no line of sight within distance.”
My excitement started to well. Not that I’d share with Declan I was secretly happy Max couldn’t find high ground within the radius he needed. That meant we were breaching the compound and I’d get Madeleine up close and personal.
“Copy that,” Declan returned.
He said no more because he didn’t need to. Last night we’d gone over plan A, B, and C so many times I’d be dreaming about them for months.
Dec was looking out the windshield scanning the area and I was lost in my head visualizing my place in the lineup. I’d be dead in the middle. Brooks would take point, Kyle, then me, followed by Max, and Declan would take the back. Thad would be overwatch.
“Autumn?”
“Huh?”
“I said,” he huffed impatiently. “You’re gonna have to change again.”
Right. We were no longer staying in the car. Which meant I needed to be free to move and hide weapons.
“Should I do that here or…”
Declan’s eyes squinted at my tone. I tried, I really did, but it was either be sarcastic or punch him in the balls. Just because I understood why he was acting like an ass didn’t mean I liked it, and there was only so much I could take.
“Wait a minute and I’ll find someplace where you can change.”
So, shoot me, I couldn’t help the smile that turned into a smirk when he grunted his latest demand.
What could I say? No one had ever accused me of being mature, or obedient, or nice. I was pretty much bitchy all the time, and my patience had worn thin.
He called it in to the team we were moving, destination unknown, so I could change. I will note, he barked at the guys as well. I guess Declan was an equal opportunity dick when he was pissed. Good to know.
Declan pulled away from the curb, if you could call it that, it was really just piles of broken concrete and rubble that had been cleared away from the buildings. He remained silent, therefore so did I. There was nothing to say, and our fighting wouldn’t do anyone any good. We all needed to work together to complete our mission, then we’d be on our merry way back to the US. After that, I’d contact Ash and see if she had work for me. If she didn’t, I had someone in mind. Early on, I was like my sister, I got close to the men I targeted, used the arm-candy approach. Rich, powerful men loved to collect women, liked new and shiny on their arm when they went to events. They thought it made them look a certain way, like they were real men because they walked into a room with a beautiful woman at their side. But it hadn’t taken long because I’d overplayed that racket, until I just watched them from afar, collected my intel, confirmed what they were doing, then put them down like the beasts they were.
“Jesus!” Declan’s outburst pulled me from my musings.
“What?”
“You’re gonna have to pay attention.”
“What?”
“Pay attention, Autumn. You’re over there daydreaming and we’re in a war zone. You can’t—”
“First, I know where the hell we are. Second, I wasn’t daydreaming, I was thinking about Jason Dunbar.”
“Who the fuck is Jason Dunbar?”
Jeez, touchy, touchy.
“Depending on if the stable of thirty women he’s reported to have are all there under their own free will, or if he has them strung out and has forced them into prostitution, then he may or may not be dead.”
“And if the women are there under their own free will? Is he dead then?”
The way I lived my life I’d learned not to judge. People did all sorts of things I might not agree with but it wasn’t my place to condemn them. The things I did were morally incomprehensible. I was a bad person with good intentions but that didn’t make my actions any less wrong. So, if a woman wanted to sell her body of her own free will, that was not my business, not my place to pass judgment or try to stop her. But if she was forced, stolen from her former life, that was a different story. And if Jason Dunbar’s stable had underage girls, I’d shut him down.
“Not if they’re all of legal age and want to be there.”
“I don’t understand you.”
Welcome to the club. I barely understood myself.
“You don’t need to.”
“No one wants to be in that life.”
I shifted in my seat to get a better look at Declan. He was watching the road so I had him in profile. My eyes dropped to his neck and I stared at the faded scar there.
“How do you know? And who are you to judge them if they do? You and I have no room to question their chosen profession. We kill people for money. How is that ethically different?”
The muscles in Dec’s cheek jumped and he went solid. I understood that reaction. It was the same one I had when I was forced to look in the mirror. When I stopped lying to myself about what I did and who I was. When all the bullshit about the greater good was stripped away—I was a killer. Plain and simple. And when my target was dead, I took their money.
“You ever get tired of it?” he quietly asked.
“Every fucking day.”
“Then why don’t you get out?”
I felt it as it started to happen—my body’s normal response when I was uncomfortable, the tightening of my skin, the sick feeling in my stomach. I tried and failed to stop it. It was no use, I’d trained myself to shut down, to slam my mask down, to turn vulnerability into anger.
“That’s none of your business.”
Declan glanced over at me, then his eyes went back to the road. It was a split-second perusal but I knew he saw too much. We were too much alike. Something I both loved and despised.
“Right,” he mumbled, sounding infinitely annoyed.
“Why don’t you get out?” I inquired, turning the tables.
“Never said I was tired of it.”
“Right,” I repeated. But instead of an
noyed, I made sure he couldn’t miss my mocking tone.
Well, that shut him up.
As the minutes passed and Declan said nothing, my muscles relaxed, my guard started to lower, and I suddenly wanted to tell him why I didn’t walk away. Why I didn’t find some small town in the middle of nowhere and try my hand at being normal. That was, if I could figure out how regular people lived. But as much as I wanted to confess to the one person on earth who would understand, I couldn’t.
Telling him would be too personal, it would make me sound weak.
So I kept my thoughts to myself and so did he. It was better that way. We’d shared too much as it was.
Yeah, idiot, keep telling yourself that.
Chapter 14
Never in my life had I wanted to pound the sass out of a woman. And not with my fists, with my cock. I wanted to fuck the living hell out of Autumn until that attitude fell away. Until the walls she lived behind were obliterated and she couldn’t rebuild. I had no right to feel this way, her secrets were hers the way mine were mine.
But in the hours since she’d shut me out I couldn’t stop myself from stewing. There were so many times I had to stop myself from demanding an answer. I wanted to know why she didn’t walk away after she admitted she was tired of living the type of life we led.
I was desperate to know if her reasons were similar to mine. God knows I wanted nothing more than to go somewhere and retire. A small town where nothing happened, no one knew me or knew my past. There was an expiration date for men like me, and every passing month, I felt mine coming closer. There was only so much a body could handle—physical injuries, near-death experiences—before you were done.
However, I kept quiet and so had she.
The only words that we’d spoken were to the team as we moved into place.
Night had fallen and Autumn and I were making the half-mile walk to the compound Strotherby had locked herself in. The small town was rundown, the house was no better. A far cry from her penthouse in Manhattan, her summer home in Italy, or the countless other multi-million dollar properties she owned. Somehow, it was fitting that Madeleine Strotherby would draw her last breath in a filthy house, in a crumbling town, in a war-torn country, after the hell she’d caused. The misery and despair. All the lives she’d ruined.
Yeah, it was fitting the reigning queen of depravity would die in that shithole of a house.
Autumn’s jerky movements caught my attention and I glanced to the side, taking her in. Black Salomon boots, black 5-11 tactical pants, long-sleeved black shirt, bulletproof vest, holstered sidearm, AR on a sling but pulled in front of her. Her hair was tucked under a baseball cap, and if it wasn’t for her slight size, you wouldn’t know she was a woman.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah.”
“You sure? You—”
“I stumbled on a pothole,” she huffed then snapped straight.
Jesus, what did she think I was going to do, berate her for tripping? It was pitch black and walking with night vision sucked. You had no field of view.
Had I been that big of an asshole to her?
Yes, yes, I had.
“Listen, I’m sorry, I was a dick earlier—”
“Don’t. Let’s get this done.”
“Autumn,” I sighed.
“Seriously. We are who we are. I get it. You get it. There’s nothing to apologize for.”
What the fuck did that mean?
Before I could ask, Thad came over the radio. “Perimeter is clear.”
“Copy,” Max came back.
“Check. We’re two minutes out,” I told the team, then to Autumn, “Turn your mic on and leave it open for the duration.”
Silence. But she followed my directive.
God, I was beginning to hate the silence. Usually, I found solace in the quiet. But with Autumn I found that silence meant she was in her head, in a place I didn’t imagine was all that happy. She got the same hard look on her face that I did when the memories broke through.
We hadn’t made it another ten steps when Autumn’s left hand came off her rifle and halted me. I scanned the area to see what made her stop and quickly found it. A man crouched low, his back to us, peering around the corner of the stone wall. No doubt looking at Brooks, Kyle, and Max.
Fucking hell. I needed to stop thinking about Autumn and get my goddamn head on straight.
Unable to speak, I gave the guys one long squawk on the radio followed by one quick beep to alert them that they’d been spotted. I got confirmation and held my hand up in a tight fist, and hoped like hell Autumn would follow directions and stay put.
She gave me a quick nod in recognition, and on silent feet, I moved in the man’s direction. It was a myth Hollywood perpetuated that a sound suppressor silenced gunfire. It didn’t, it suppressed it. And in the dead of night, with no other noises, a gunshot would bring every fighting-age male out onto the street. Then women and children would follow. Shooting the man was a last resort. And besides that, I didn’t shoot men in the back if I could avoid it. Therefore I needed to subdue him quietly.
Without warning, the man jumped up from his crouch, turned, and came running at me full speed. No weapons in his hand, I let go of my AR. The sling it was attached to kept it from hitting the ground. The man didn’t stop. Like a monkey on crack, he leaped into the air, forcing me to either catch him or allow him to knock me over.
What the fuck?
I caught the man, twisted, and slammed him down. I heard his breath leave his body as the wind was knocked out of him. My forearm went to his throat and the man’s eyes widened in surprise. What the hell did the asshole think was gonna happen?
Then Autumn was there looking down at me. “Turn him over.”
I glanced up to see her holding out a zip tie. I did as she suggested and took the plastic tie from her hand. By the time I was done with his hands, Autumn had his feet restrained. She further shocked the shit out of me when she patted the man down.
“No weapons.” But she had a flip phone in her hands. “No calls or texts, in or out in the last hour.” She closed the phone and shoved it in her pocket. “What do you wanna do with him?”
Autumn’s hand was reaching for her holstered Sig. And for the first time since I’d been a Marine, a Force Recon operator, a chill ran down my spine. Not from fear, not from her question, not from the situation. It was the dead tone in her voice. Loathing built in my gut and threatened to take over. I didn’t want this for her. I didn’t ever want to hear the coldness coming from her again.
I wanted her breathing clean and free.
I pulled a roll of duct tape from my thigh pocket, ripped off a piece, and placed it over the man’s mouth.
Without me asking, she went back to his feet, picked them up, and waited until I had his torso off the ground, then shuffled with me to a grouping of cars. Once the man was hidden I straightened and looked at her. Tinged in green from my NVGs, her face was impassive. Expressionless and ice cold.
Fucking, fucking, shit.
My chest burned with anger.
“You’re clear,” Autumn radioed. “We’re coming around now.”
Christ. I wanted to be impressed, but I wasn’t. I was disgusted she was as good as she was. I hated that she knew what to do and did it with calmness and efficiency. I wanted her to freak out, panic, be afraid she was in the middle of an operation that would end in bloodshed and death. But she wasn’t. This wasn’t new to her.
“Ready?” she asked when I hadn’t moved.
“Ready.”
Then we went back to the deafening silence as we made our way to the team.
What the hell would it take to convince her to leave the game? Persuade her to find a little house somewhere and live out the rest of her days in peace and warmth?
I’d give anything to figure it out.
Chapter 15
My heart was pounding so hard I could feel the pulse in my neck throbbing. When that man turned and ran at Declan I thought I wa
s going to have a stroke. Then it was over and Declan had neutralized the man faster than I knew was possible.
I was drenched in sweat and my hand shook so badly I was surprised I was able to tie his feet and help Declan hide his body.
Now my legs were jelly and I was praying no one noticed. And the closer we got to the door, the sicker I felt. I had a secret, a big one, one I didn’t want any of the guys to know. The reason I worked solo. It would do me no favors if anyone found out. It was a weakness. One I couldn’t afford anyone knowing.
And as afraid I was of the guys finding out, I was still going to be the one who took Madeleine’s life. I had to. Consequences be damned.
I took a deep breath to calm my nerves, inhaling hot, humid air that made it no easier to breathe. To relax and push aside my anxiety.
Max’s hand landed on my shoulder right before his mouth moved close to my ear. “Easy,” he whispered.
I wanted to tell him to fuck off, but instead, I nodded.
“Piece of cake. Just go easy.”
Yeah, Max had my number. Considering he was right behind me there was no doubt he saw me shaking like an idiot.
I wanted to look over my shoulder and see if Declan noticed, too, but I refrained—just barely—and probably the only reason why was because Brooks had stopped at the door and it was go-time.
Thank God. The faster this was over, the better.
Brooks and Kyle went to the left side of the door. Brooks wasted no time affixing the blasting tape along the hinged side and another horizontal piece across the middle. Kyle stood at the ready to charge the door if it opened. Max had stepped in front of me, staying out of the blast zone. Once Brooks was done, both he and Kyle backed up and I felt Declan’s hand dip into the top of my vest and pull me away.
“Ear pro,” he rumbled when he had me a safe distance away.
Shit.
Nothing like looking like a dumbass. The only thing worse would’ve been the permanent hearing loss.
Brooks’ gloved hand raised and he counted down with his fingers. Each finger that dropped brought us closer to breaching and my heart rate ticked up.
Declan (Special Forces: Operation Alpha) (Gold Team Book 5) Page 9