Survive By The Team (Team Fear Book 3)

by Cindy Skaggs

  “You’re also the loneliest person I’ve met since... well, since that teenage me. I know how hard you work as a single mom. I know the sacrifices you’ve made that no one will ever understand, but I also know that you are not alone. There is a group of men out there willing to die to protect you and that little girl. There are women out there who want to befriend you.”

  Hurt and anger flushed through her system. A heated blush climbed her skin. Mandi dried her hands on the towel before laying it flat to dry. “I’m choosing to be alone, is that it?” she snapped.

  “No.” Janet reached over and tucked a stray strand of hair behind Mandi’s ear. “You’re choosing to let one man dictate your life instead of choosing your way.”

  Janet disappeared down the hallway leading to the back stairs.

  Stunned, Mandi stood senseless for a long moment. She didn’t disagree with Janet’s assessment. She was letting a bad situation with a man mess with her life and her esteem, the problem was, she wasn’t sure if it was Maurice or Dean who held that honor.

  Not long after Janet left, the men trooped through in groups. Rose came through carrying Ellie. “I’ll take Little Miss Sassypants up to her room.”

  “Are you sure?” Mandi didn’t want to intrude. These men had other jobs to do. Other priorities.

  Debi smiled at Mandi. “It’s no big deal. Rose has six sisters.”

  “And the baby sister,” he nodded toward Camy, “is too big for me to carry.”

  Camy stuck her tongue out at her brother. “Be nice, bro, or I’ll tell Janet you called me fat.”

  “Janet heard,” came the older woman’s voice from the back stairs.

  The entire room went silent. Janet’s laugh trailed her up the stairs.

  “Jesus,” Rose muttered, “she hears everything.”

  “Try growing up with that,” Fowler said.

  Rose and Debi took Ellie upstairs to her room with Camy at their heels. Mandi hand dried the silverware to have something to do with her hands as the rest of the men stayed behind in the kitchen. All but Stills, she corrected.

  “He’s out back. Brooding,” Fowler said.

  How did he know what she was thinking? She tried to shrug it off like it didn’t mean a thing to her.

  Lauren held Ryder’s hand like they were glued together. With her other hand, she pointed to the glasses drying on the counter. “You didn’t need to do that. There’s a KP schedule around here somewhere.”

  “It helps to keep busy,” Mandi answered. She hadn’t been able to stay after Dean’s story. The pressure had sent her scurrying to be alone. Maybe she was destined for that, because she was starting to feel more comfortable there.

  “Look.” Ryder ran a hand through his hair. He seemed nervous, but determined. “Gault was our brother. Maybe not the same as yours, but he was a brother in a very real sense. We will protect you and Ellie.”

  “Hooah,” Craft and Fowler added.

  “Thank you.” Her throat constricted against more tears. “Do you mean that?”

  “With our lives,” Ryder promised.

  “I’d rather it didn’t come to that.” She glanced around, not wanting to spill her guts in front of everyone. She looked pointedly at Ryder. “Can we talk? Alone?”

  “Sure. Come into my office,” he answered, pointing toward the gathering room.

  Lauren squeezed her hand. “You okay?”

  Mandi nodded. Not a word came out. Although she wanted to thank the other woman, her mouth wouldn’t work. Instead, she followed the badass Ryder into the open space of the gathering room. Ryder dropped into a chair by the fireplace. This one wasn’t lit, but it was still a comfortable place to sit. “What’s on your mind?” he asked.

  Her heart started pounding. He was seriously intense. “I need your help.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Mandi skipped her room and went straight for Ellie’s where the girl was sprawled catty-corner on the bed without covers. Mandi righted her and covered her with the blankets, but Ellie awoke with a moan. “Aunt Manny?”

  “Yes, sweetie. Go back to sleep.”

  “Stay with me.”

  Those words worked on many levels. Mandi wasn’t in the mood to be alone and she honestly had a hard time saying no to her niece when they were both still grieving. Ever since Danny’s death, neither she nor Ellie slept well. She often woke with Ellie crawling into her bed. Tonight, Mandi crawled next to her niece and arranged the covers over them.

  Ellie woke and curled into her aunt. “I like their stories, too.”

  “Remind you of your dad?”

  Ellie nodded, her head bumping Mandi’s chin. “Dean says I have ten uncles now. Used ta be el’ven, but Mad Dog is with Daddy ‘cause they’re not s’posed to be alone.”

  “You like the idea of uncles.”

  It wasn’t a question, but Ellie nodded anyway. “I miss Daddy.”

  She’d heard the same sorrow in Dean’s voice earlier. “Me too.”

  “I miss Daddy, but I like having uncles. They said we’re a team, so we stick together. Like family.”

  The ache in Mandi’s gut grew more painful, more pointed. “How would you like to meet the rest of your uncles?”

  Ellie giggled, her breath brushing Mandi’s neck. “Duh.”

  “Ryder can arrange it.”

  “Maybe they’ll have more Daddy stories.” Ellie hummed with excitement. She repeated Dean’s story from earlier, repeated the Smelly worm story, and then returned to the subject of her new uncles. Eventually, her voice silenced and she went slack. Mandi slipped from the bed and tucked the blankets around the sleeping little girl. She was slight for her age and barely made a bump under the covers. So many surgeries over the years had left her physically frail, but she had a strong spirit, and despite everything, Mandi knew Ellie would be fine. She wasn’t as certain of her personal outcome.

  In the late night stillness, she thought she heard a man scream in agony. Mandi shivered. This place was definitely high on the creepy scale, and that was saying a lot coming from a woman who lived in a funeral home.

  When the cry didn’t repeat, Mandi slipped through the adjoining bathroom to her quiet bedroom next door. The room was just a room. Four walls, a dresser, and a bed. Aged white paint and a window that looked onto a hill of mesquite. The lack of other buildings gave a sense of solitude and remoteness that agitated her feelings of loneliness. There was only a bathroom between her and Ellie, but Mandi noticed that they were at the far end of the hall as far away from the team as they could get. The distance was meant as a kindness, so the men didn’t disturb Ellie when she was asleep, but for Mandi, it was a physical reminder of the isolation she’d experienced for years. More permanent now that Danny was gone. The team loved her brother, but she wasn’t one of them. And she was still alone.

  The situation with Maurice had bruised her some. Her pride took a hit and her confidence had taken a much larger one, and that moment when Dean had said they weren’t together had rubbed those bruises. Seeing Camy with him had aggravated them more, but she’d gotten over that. Misunderstandings aside, she felt something for Dean.

  Who was she kidding? She was in love with him, which was stupid given how little time they had known each other, but she hadn’t raised a child mostly on her own by hiding from the truth, even painful truth. The physical attraction to Dean had been hot and instant. Even in danger, she’d wanted him, but it was the hours they’d talked in the car that had turned lust to more.

  Dean was blunt to a fault, prickly, and he pushed friends away with advanced people-hating skills of a cranky old man who moonlighted as a yard Nazi, but despite his many faults, Dean had never lied to her. He had been there when she needed him. Every time. She loved the charm and the impish delight on his face when he “acquired” things they needed, like the phone and the SUV. She also loved that he’d taken her to a library.

  Her heart rolled in her chest at the memory of sitting there in the library across the table from the sexiest
man in the room. Possibly all of Tucson. Her feelings intensified at the happy satisfaction in his eyes when a plan came together. Or even when it all fell apart. Adventure brought more light to his eyes than anything else, and she loved that about him. Embraced his spontaneous personality. He approached chaos with a great joy for life. He was an honorable man and a good one. He didn’t even realize how open he’d been with her. How honest, until she knew inside him, things he didn’t tell others. Maybe didn’t admit to himself.

  And then there was the fact that he’d killed to protect her. Held her, bloody and naked, and let her cry all over him. Tension had radiated off him—he didn’t know what to do with a crying woman—but he’d stayed to see her through the post-Echo breakdown. Let her cry all over him despite the fact that he was naked and his team was still harassing him.

  The kill shot to her heart was the story he’d told Ellie. He’d bonded with the girl almost instantly and he’d quickly taken Craft’s place as Ellie’s favorite.

  Mandi’s heart hurt. She rubbed a hand over the bruised organ and climbed into bed. By herself. And if she didn’t watch it, she’d have that same melancholy smile as Janet. Maybe it was too late and the melancholy had already overtaken her. Because loving Dean meant accepting all of him, even the stuff he didn’t know about himself.

  Love didn’t matter in the big scheme of things. Not to Dean. If he felt anything, and that wasn’t even likely, but if he did, it wouldn’t matter as evidenced by his treatment of his former girlfriend Shelley. He’d walked away to protect her. Sure, all the men seemed ready to do that. She’d heard Lauren’s story and knew Ryder had left her for months because he was afraid he might hurt her. Mandi appreciated a protector, but while she was more willing to see that Ryder and Lauren were stronger together, Dean was not. He considered emotional attachment a sign of weakness in the fight against Echo.

  He’d already made the choice to sacrifice himself for the team. He didn’t want entanglements because he didn’t see a future. As long as he believed that, there was no hope, and she couldn’t stay at The Manor and wait for the final nail in the coffin.

  She’d gone to Ryder for help. She hadn’t told him why, but he’d guessed and offered to “handle” the situation. Mandi declined. The way these men handled things tended to involve fists, bruises, and cut lips. It wasn’t that Mandi was giving up; she simply recognized a losing hand. The best bet was to fold before she lost even more.

  Stills gritted his teeth in frustration. All he wanted to know was where to go and who to kill. Was that too much to ask? As soldiers, they got orders and followed through with lethal action. Inaction was like stabbing an ice pick into his temple where his early morning headache had turned into a five-alarm fire.

  They weren’t investigators. Their job was to kill or be killed. Tactics and intelligence collection were not his bailiwick. Not even close. In the office chair next to him, Fowler rubbed his eyes as if the computer screen were beginning to blur. Maybe Stills was projecting.

  “What’s up with the prisoner?” he asked.

  “Detox,” Fowler said. “And it’s a bitch. He’s been on the meds for longer than we were. He looks more animal than human at this point. Did you hear him screaming last night?”

  “Heard something. Thought you were interrogating him to be honest.”

  “Not yet. What he’s going through is worse than anything we can devise. Rose sat with him last night, but twenty-four hour a day surveillance is exhausting. I’ll be glad when detox is over and you guys can add guard duty to the rotation.”

  Both Fowler and Rose were medics, so if Echo crashed, they were the only ones who knew what to do. “Is he safe now? Shouldn’t someone be on guard?” Ryder had called for a briefing, but so far, he was engaged in a loud discussion with Craft in the other room.

  “The prisoner is fine, although I would love to get this show on the road.” Fowler scrolled further down the document he was skimming on the computer screen. They were each taking turns reading the few files they’d so far gotten off the lab’s USB drive and so far, they’d come up empty. “He’s strapped down to the same gurney as Rose was when he went through detox.”

  Rose had gotten an injection from Echo that was meant to send him off the rails. He’d gone through days of detox, much like Echo was right now. “Will the gurney hold him?” They were crazy as fuck during detox, and unpredictable.

  “He’s strapped down and locked in a cell. He’ll still be there after the briefing.”

  Voices rose in anger in the briefing room next door, but Stills ignored them in favor of the computer screen.

  “Yo, let’s get this briefing in the bag,” Fowler hollered into the other room. “I need to keep an eye on Echo,” he muttered so only Stills heard the last. Fowler had argued aggressively against bringing the enemy into his domain, but necessity overruled his objections. They’d done everything they could to make sure the prisoner disappeared without a trace. They left Echo’s clothes at a rest stop in New Mexico. They’d checked for any active tracking devices and found none. As long as they kept the asshole on ice, he couldn’t bring trouble bearing down on them.

  “We need to interrogate as soon as he’s lucid,” Stills answered. “He’ll be weak after detox. Easier to debrief.”

  “Already in the plans.” Fowler twisted in his chair, no longer pretending to work. “I’m going to see what’s holding us up.”

  Rose walked into the long, narrow command post carrying a cup of coffee and a smile. With wet hair, he looked like he’d just jumped out of the shower and into his clothes. Except for the smile. Happy wasn’t his go to. Rose was typically focused. Not angry—at least no more than the rest of them—but he wasn’t a warm-fuzzy guy. Until he’d met Debi. She chilled his ass out, but he didn’t have to advertise he was getting regular sex. Only one thing could put a smile on the man’s face this early in the freaking morning.

  “What’s going on in there?” Rose asked.

  “Hell if I know. Ryder and Craft have been arguing over some plan Craft wants to implement.”

  “Let’s go see if we can stir the pot.” Rose led the way into the briefing room.

  Stills closed up the file he was reading and followed at a slower pace. He should have stopped for coffee. Better yet, they ought to move the damn coffee pot into the command post. They spent most of their days here anyway.

  The briefing room had a long, dark table down the center surrounded by office chairs, much like the briefing rooms from their military days. There were a few computer screens, a whiteboard, and a corkboard currently covered in photos of Team Echo members, living and dead. The picture Fowler had crumbled had been replaced by one of the same guy with a giant set of bars over his face. The prison bars had to be Camy’s doing. Girl had a sick sense of humor.

  The women were training with Janet this morning, which gave the team time to brief before they had to spill their guts with the women. Ryder and Craft had squared off across the table from each other. For the moment they were silent, but a twitch in Ryder’s jaw warned that they weren’t finished.

  “Before we get started,” Stills said, “what are the odds we can get a coffee machine in here? Or a caffeine IV?”

  “I’m sure Janet has something we can use.” Fowler made a note on a yellow sticky pad. He was sitting in the chair closest to the door. “I’ll grab it next time we’re over at The Manor.”

  Stills nodded, thankful to get access to coffee. If they had to be over here before the sun, they damn sure ought to have caffeine. He moved to the other end of the room and took a chair at the end of the table.

  “What’s up with you two?” Rose asked the two men still glaring at each other.

  Ryder frowned. “Dumbass here thinks he needs a long-term assignment tailing Allyson, but no one else can do the computer shit like Craft.”

  “Ah, man.” Rose shook his head. He’d taken a seat near Craft. “Don’t feed his ego like that.”

  “No man on this team is indispens
ible.” Craft stabbed a hand toward Ryder. “You taught us that.”

  “That was when we had the full resources of the U.S. Army at our disposal. We don’t now. You’re the one who broke into personnel records and got the goods on Echo.”

  “And Camy can do the same if it becomes necessary while I’m gone.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” Rose demanded. “I don’t want my sister doing illegal crap.”

  “That’s between you and your sister. All I know is she has mad skills and we’re stupid to ignore them.”

  Fowler nodded his agreement. “He’s got a point. Camy’s working a side project for me. We’re pulling together records for everyone involved in the experiments. From Team Alpha to Team Echo. She’s crosschecking with records from their last known address. Finding background reports—”

  “Seeing if anyone has a criminal record?” Craft asked.

  “Or spent time in a psych ward. The main priority is finding current locations on everyone involved.”

  “How does she know how to do that?” Rose demanded.

  Fowler shrugged off Rose’s anger. “She showed up with those skills, so maybe that’s a conversation you need to have with Camy. In the meantime, Craft is right. We’d be stupid to ignore the help of someone more than capable of getting the job done.”

  “As a bonus, computer work keeps her locked down here and not in harms way,” Ryder said. “Fowler, tell us about your side project. Looking for allies?”

  “Or enemies. If we concentrate only on Echo, we may miss something. The man we buried at the cabin wasn’t on our kill wall. That means other actors are involved. I want to know who and where. So far, Camy’s gotten solid results. We’re finding more than our fair share of accident deaths and missing person’s reports.”

  The conversation paused, and Stills spoke up for the first time. “That jives with what my buddy on Delta was saying. Statistically, our death rate is quadruple what it was overseas.”