She moved back home to the small town in Indiana where her parents, brothers and sister, a dozen aunts and uncles, and three sets of grandparents still lived. Before he’d left on his first overseas deployment, she was already married to an accountant and pregnant.
Some women just aren’t cut out to be military wives.
He felt a little tug on the line. “Come on, baby. You want that little bug. I know you do.” He purposely kept his voice low.
The next tug was a little harder.
He yanked the pole upright to set the hook and started reeling in. The fish tried to swim away but he was no match for Dex. As he pulled it up beside the boat, he grabbed the net and scooped the largemouth bass out of the water. He reached into the side pocket of his cargo shorts for his multi tool and extracted the hook from the fish’s mouth.
Damn. Nice size. Its fillets would make a great supper. He slid the fish into the live tank. A few more like that and he’d be set for weeks.
Dex immediately baited his hook again and checked the fishfinder. He cast almost to the same spot then sat back down in the chair.
His mind wandered to his second wife, a gorgeous brunette he’d met at one of the many team parties on Virginia Beach. A fellow Lieutenant JG’s wife had introduced him to her college roommate, Genevieve. They’d sat on beach chairs and dug their toes into the soft sand, talking for hours about everything from baseball to international politics while drinking beer and cooling-off with dips in the ocean.
She was an electrical engineer for the local government contractor. She was perfect. Intelligent, self-sufficient, excellent social skills, and she didn’t get upset if he was called away suddenly and out of contact for weeks. After about six months of what Dex considered normal dating, he asked her to move into his apartment. Hell, he was only there half the time anyway. They were married before they’d known each other a full year.
The tip of his pole moved an eighth of an inch. He slowly pulled back on it a little to tease the fish, enticing it to take a big bite. He felt the moment the fish latched on and he yanked hard to set the hook.
Damn. He was going to have to be sure to thank the old sailor. The man certainly knew the lake. The fish had his pole bowed over but was still about twenty feet away, when Dex’s phone rang.
Fuck. He certainly wasn’t going to let this fish go just to answer a telemarketer’s call. As he pulled and cranked the reel, the phone quit ringing.
Dex had his prey next to the boat when the ringing started again.
Persistent fuckers. Ignoring his phone, he concentrated on pulling the fish into the boat.
Hot damn. Another largemouth. This one was even bigger than the last. After removing the hook, he tossed the fish into the live well.
It was going to be a good day.
Then his phone rang again.
Dex reached into the brown paper bag for another bug.
Maybe the call was from Alex, checking to see that everything was okay at his fiancée’s family’s house. Or maybe he was calling to let Dex know that he might be getting company. The beautiful home could sleep more than a dozen. He’d been told it was often rented out for family reunions and corporate retreats. With over a hundred feet of waterfront, a large boathouse and dock, not to mention the deck that was twice the size of his apartment, Dex had rambled the huge empty house last night before settling down.
The phone rang incessantly.
He flicked the bug into the water, watched it struggle for a second before the biggest bass Dex had ever seen rose from the water, mouth open. It grabbed the flailing insect before diving back in. Dex grinned at the sight. That sight was better than a pod of whales breaching.
With a sigh, he extracted his phone from a side cargo pocket. Squinting at the caller ID, Dex wondered what he wanted.
“Please tell me you called for a fucking good reason because, honest to God, the big one just got away.”
“No time for small talk, old friend.” Former Lieutenant Commander Silas Branson sounded serious. “Yours isn’t a secure line so I can’t talk—”
Why the hell would Si need a secure line? Dex figured he’d find out in just a moment. “Give me thirty seconds and it can be.” Another advantage of working for Guardian Security. Alex wanted to be able to get in touch with his men on a secure line anytime, anywhere. After pressing a sequence of numbers, a green light came on the screen. “Okay, Crash, we’re now completely secure. What’s up?”
“You probably know that I now work for the Department of Homeland Security.”
“I heard something about that,” Dex confirmed. “I also heard you worked your way pretty far up that ladder.”
“High enough that they’ve allowed me to create a special division, emphasis on the word special.” Crash was obviously fishing for recruits. Maybe he was building something like the CIA’s Special Operations Group. Those were one hundred of the deadliest men in the world.
No. Dex was too old for that shit. SOG was boots on the ground. At this point in his life, he thoroughly enjoyed sleeping in a soft bed every night, eating delicious hot food prepared by somebody else, while coordinating a mission thousands of miles away. Those are jobs for younger men.
He was already part of an awesome team of special operators. He had a really good thing going with Alex. He wasn’t interested in joining anything controlled by the government, least of all for Homeland Security. If those guys got their claws into him, they’d have him by the balls, and he’d be right back taking orders, or giving them.
“Look, Si, I’m really honored that you’d consider me to be on your new te—”
“I know about Venezuela. You’d be the team leader. In complete control. One mission only.” Si was dangling that bait in front of him.
Dex looked at his newfound fishing hole and wondered how soon they would need him.
“What’s the mission?” There were some things that Dex had done, because his country had asked him to, that he just wouldn’t do these days.
“Kidnapping.”
Silas was really tempting him. Dex had been involved in dozens of rescues, and although each one was unique, every mission he’d been on was successful.
“Why aren’t they sending in a SEAL Team?” He hadn’t been gone that long, had he? Could they have moved international kidnapping missions away from SpecOps?
Silas sighed. “They can’t. They were taken on U.S. soil.”
“That sounds like a job for the FBI. Aren’t those guys the experts, at least at home?” Dex reconsidered for a second. “Or are they outside CONUS?” he asked, referring to the continental USA.
“Yes. They were captured in the U.S. Virgin Islands.”
“They?” Damn. There was more than one. That exponentially complicated the entire situation.
“They must be damn important,” Dex noted.
There was a long pause before Silas answered. “Approximately three hours ago, ten teenage girls, their teacher, and three female chaperones were taken on St. John’s Island in the Caribbean.”
“Fuck.” Dex lowered his body into the bow fishing chair while holding the phone to his ear.
“These aren’t just any little girls,” Silas explained. “Their parents are all congressmen and senators...including the daughter of the Speaker of the House.”
As he digested all the information, Silas kept talking, dangling that bait closer and closer to Dex. “I know this is a lot to take in all at once, but the clock is ticking. You’re the right man for this job.”
“Why me?” Dex wondered aloud.
“They were taken by the Boko Haram.” Silas had just set the hook.
He’d dealt with the terrorist organization twice in his career. Five years ago, when they had kidnapped over two hundred and fifty little girls from schools in Nigeria to become unwilling brides to their soldiers. His SEAL teams had helped free dozens of them during the following months. The extremists had freed a few more over the next several years, and some had escaped. All who had
made it to freedom had been badly mistreated, and they told horror stories of rape, starvation, and beatings.
Dex would be thrilled to bring some of the jihadist terrorists to justice...or simply rid the world of their existence.
The man he really wanted in his crosshairs was its leader, Aahil Mohammed Jaja. Twelve years ago, that fucker had masterminded the theft of nearly two million credit card numbers from U.S. citizens and escaped with over four million dollars. No one was sure if he was the computer guru or if someone worked for him. It was a verified fact, though, that Jaja had a genius IQ and a photographic memory.
Working alongside U.S. Secret Service special agents, the young Lieutenant Dex Carson’s SEAL team had gone after Jaja. Although they were able to capture several of Jaja’s highest-ranking men, they had missed the terrorist leader by minutes.
Thoughts of that mission automatically brought along memories of Rayne Yoshida. His night with her ranked in the top five best ever.
The disastrous morning after was definitely the worst day of his life. If he ever saw that little bitch again, he might just kill her. Or maybe he’d strip her naked for a repeat, first.
“Dex, every second counts with these hostages. I need your decision.” Si’s bait was far too tempting.
“I’m in.” Hook. Line. And sinker. “This one mission, only, I want that to be clear,” Dex confirmed. He heard the all-too-familiar distant whomp, whomp of helicopters and automatically looked to the east. Silhouetted by the rising sun was a pair of Black Hawks headed his way.
Dex chuckled. “You knew I was going to say yes, didn’t you?”
“They’ll meet you at your truck. You’d better get that bass boat pointed down the lake. I’ll see you when you get here. Branson out.” The line went dead.
Leaping out of his chair, he quickly pulled up the trolling motor and started the big engines. He slammed the throttle all the way forward, pushing the engine as hard as he dared.
Every second counted. Lives were at stake.
He had the biggest fish of his life to catch.
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Donna Michaels is an award winning, New York Times & USA Today bestselling author of Romaginative fiction. Her hot, humorous, and heartwarming stories include cowboys, men in uniform, and some sexy primal alphas who are equally matched by their heroines. With a husband recently retired from the military, a household of seven and several rescued cats, she never runs out of material. From short to epic, her books entertain readers across a variety of sub-genres, one was even hand-drawn into a Japanese translation...if only she could read it...
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