by Kaylea Cross
“Hey, princess. How are you?” Khan said, wrapping her up in a bear hug.
“Good. Dad and I are going to a movie after he’s done here. You wanna come? Uncle Kai can’t, because he’s got a date or something.”
“Is that right?” Khan shot Maka a wry look. “I’d love to go, but I’ve got a date too.”
“With Jaliya?”
She and Khan had eloped over in England back in March. Everyone on the team had been stunned by the suddenness of it, except for Reid. Of all of them, Khan was the most level. He knew what he wanted, and when he’d found Jaliya he hadn’t wasted any time in making her his. Reid had never seen his buddy happier.
“Yes. You like her, right?” Khan asked Autumn.
“Of course! She’s awesome. And I like that she knows how to use a gun.”
Reid’s heart almost burst with pride. “She’s her daddy’s girl,” he murmured, watching her chatter on to Khan.
Maka scratched his chin, watching her. “How long you figure until she starts dating?”
That wiped the smile off Reid’s face. “Dude, she’s only nine.”
Maka shrugged his massive left shoulder, shifting the thick black, tribal tattoos roping down the length of his arm. “Okay, so that gives us, what? Another five years or so until the boys start sniffing around?”
The thought was absolutely terrifying. “Jesus. Five years?” The last nine had already flown by way too fast. And soon he was going to have to worry about horny teenage boys?
Maka nodded. “I was about fourteen, yeah. You?”
Reid scowled. “Yeah.” And unfortunately he knew too well exactly how teenage boys thought.
His buddy clapped him once on the back. Hard. “Don’t worry about it yet, brother. Let’s go get this briefing done so we can spend some quality time with our ladies.”
Reid rescued Khan from getting his ear talked off, and held Autumn’s hand as he escorted her to the kitchen. “I think there are some of those cookies you like. Unless Uncle Kai ate them all. And you can have some milk with them—” He stopped in the doorway to the kitchen when he saw the blond-haired woman sitting alone at the table, her profile to them as she read a newspaper.
What was she doing here?
Agent Dubrovski looked up from the paper, gave him a quick smile before focusing on Autumn. “Hello. Who’s this?”
It had been months since their paths had crossed overseas, and he’d never imagined bumping into her again stateside.
He shook himself and found his voice. “My daughter, Autumn.” Was she here for the briefing or something? That didn’t make sense, since she was a pilot, and the last time he’d seen her had been at the FOB in Afghanistan back in January. What a hell of a night that had been.
“Hi, Autumn. I’m Tess.”
Tess. Reid let his gaze wander over her as she got up and came over to shake Autumn’s hand. He hadn’t been able to get an up-close look at her before, and at the FOB it had been too dark to see her face clearly, but he sure was curious about her. She and her crew had saved his entire team that night.
She was tall for a woman, around five-nine or ten, and maybe in her early thirties. The dark jeans she wore hugged the womanly curves of her hips and thighs, and the deep blue T-shirt emphasized the generous swell of her breasts.
Seeing her in civvies was a hell of a lot different than seeing her in a flight suit and combat boots. Though on her, both were equally hot. She had a lush, ripe body, curvy in all the right places, made to fill a man’s hands. How the hell he’d never noticed her back at Bagram was a mystery.
“Do you work with my dad?” Autumn asked, shaking Tess’s hand politely. Reid noticed Tess wasn’t wearing a ring. Was she single?
“Sort of. We worked together overseas a few months back.” She glanced up at him, a hint of humor in her light green eyes. Faint laugh lines fanned out from the corners and a light scattering of freckles dusted the bridge of her nose and cheekbones. He’d noticed she was quick to smile, her lips full and kissable.
“Are you on the FAST team too?” Autumn asked.
Tess chuckled softly. “No. I’m a pilot.”
Autumn’s eyes widened. “You fly planes?”
“Helicopters. Big ones.”
His daughter grinned. “That’s so cool.”
No, it was downright hot.
“It really is, yeah,” Tess said with another smile, and straightened, a slight dimple appearing in her left cheek. Realizing he was staring, Reid forced his gaze back to his daughter.
“I had to come here with Dad because he’s got a meeting. But after that we have a special date planned.”
Yeah, so special she’d invited Maka and Khan along, Reid thought with a mental snort. “Right, so you can sit over there and have some cookies while you wait,” he told her, and headed for the cupboard, his entire body attuned to the woman standing behind him.
As soon as he opened the cupboard, he bit back a curse. Of the dozen packages of cookies that had been there the last time he’d checked a couple weeks ago, just one remained. And when he pulled it open, there were only two cookies left.
“Maka, you giant pig,” he muttered under his breath, turning back toward the table. “Sorry, there are only a couple left. You want milk with them?” he asked Autumn.
“Can I have some tea?”
He blinked at her. “You drink tea now?”
She shrugged, already in the process of opening her backpack and unloading her things onto the table next to Tess’s seat. “Mom took me out for a tea party a month ago. It was super fun.”
Right. Tea. “Okay, I guess so.” He’d never made tea in his life. He searched the cupboard until he found a teabag, then took down a mug and filled it with water. Plopping the teabag in it, he put it in the microwave to nuke it.
“Eww, Dad, that’s not how you do it.”
Reid cranked his head around. “Why not?”
Autumn rolled her eyes as though he was an uncultured hick. “You’re supposed to boil the water in a kettle first, then pour it over the teabag and let it steep.”
Steep?
Agent Dubrovski walked over and gestured to the microwave door, amusement gleaming in her pretty eyes. “May I?”
He held up a hand and backed away. “Be my guest.”
She gave him a sideways glance as she took the mug out. Damn, she was pretty, in a low-maintenance, fresh-faced way. “Isn’t your meeting starting soon?”
“Yeah, in a minute.”
“I can stay with her if you want. One of the analysts is my ride, so I have to wait here until after the briefing anyway.”
He hesitated. He didn’t even know her. Didn’t seem fair to expect her to hang with Autumn, and he wasn’t sure if his daughter would be comfortable with it. He never even introduced Autumn to the women he dated. Though to be honest, he didn’t date them so much as he hooked up with them over the past two years. Easier that way, and less bullshit to put up with. “You sure?”
“Absolutely. I’ve got three nieces back home.” She shot Autumn a grin that was so genuine, warmth spread through Reid’s chest. “Been a while since I had some genuine girl time.”
Autumn’s eyes lit up. “You like to do crafts?”
“Love doing crafts.”
Reid rubbed the back of his neck, feeling a little out of his depth. Truth be told, even though he was looking forward to spending time with his daughter, he hadn’t been super pumped about the crafting portion of the evening she’d planned for later on. And Autumn sure seemed to like her, so… “Okay with you, Autumn?”
“Yes, for sure. You go on,” she said without looking up from emptying bundles of what looked like yarn and other supplies onto the table. “As you can see, I came prepared.”
Reid didn’t miss the jab. He’d picked her up without bringing anything to amuse her with because he’d planned to let her watch TV here while he was in the meeting. “All right.”
He shifted his attention back to Agent Dubrovski, struck
again by her understated beauty. And combined with that body… Yeah, he must have been fucking blind not to notice her before. “Thanks a lot. Shouldn’t be too long, hopefully.”
She shrugged, the ends of her golden hair brushing her shoulders. A lock clung to the top of her breast, dragging his gaze there like a magnet before he forced his eyes back to her face. “No problem. See you soon.”
Reid made it to the briefing room just as the meeting got underway. All eight of his teammates were already in their chairs facing the front of the room. He took a seat between Khan and Hamilton, the team leader, and listened while their commander gave them a rundown of the latest intel.
“First off, thanks for coming in on your day off,” Taggart began. His dark blond hair was spiked at the top and front and he wore dress slacks and a button-down, all spiffy-looking. Must be taking the wifey out on a hot date after this. “I’m gonna keep this brief, and update you on the latest on the Veneno cartel.”
The current bane of their existence. FAST Bravo’s recent deployment to Afghanistan had been…eventful, but positive. They’d managed to bag a famous smuggling lord known as The Jackal, who worked with the Venenos and turned out to be the head of the Afghan forces that FAST Bravo worked with on ops.
“Our recent deployment to A-stan helped curb the majority of the flow of opium out of there to Mexico, but now the drug runners are just smuggling their shit north over the border into Tajikistan, and from there to China before shipping it into the U.S.”
This came as no surprise to anyone in the room. Seal off one avenue, and the smugglers simply used another. The war on drugs was never ending, and frustrating as hell. Sometimes Reid wondered whether they had any affect at all on diminishing the flow of illicit drugs around the globe.
“As you know, the entire purpose of General Nasar acting as The Jackal was to earn enough cash to pay for a heart transplant for his young son. Even though he didn’t raise the funds and got locked up, someone in the Veneno organization stepped up and made the operation happen. Found a donor on the black market and paid for the procedure personally. All our sources to date have indicated it was El Escorpion.”
The fabled and mysterious head of the Veneno cartel. As far as the DEA knew, no one within the cartel even knew exactly who he was, except for perhaps the top two or three people. Even the top lieutenants had never met the man in person.
“I asked you all in today because we’re gearing up for Emerald Warrior in just over a week.”
A joint training exercise held in the southeast U.S. where FAST trained with other SOF elements like SEAL Team Six, Delta, the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team and others, to increase cross-unit proficiency and streamline things when they worked missions together.
“It’s a happy coincidence that we’ll be working along the Gulf Coast, since the agency is currently searching for Carlos Ruiz, one of El Escorpion’s lieutenants. Some of our agents tangled with him last year. He was wounded, but recovered. So he’s got a grudge against all of us, and he’d love the chance to get even if he can.” Taggart paused, his thick arms folded over his chest as he glanced up at the screen behind him.
One of the analysts brought up a picture and a list of bullet points. Ruiz was a rugged-looking Hispanic man in his mid-thirties maybe, with wavy, coffee-brown hair and hazel-green eyes.
“This asshole is a real piece of work, even by cartel standards,” Taggart continued. “Likes to live the high life, rumored to own a big spread of land in the Sinaloa region, and he’s got a sadistic streak that is right up there with the worst we’ve seen from the Mexican cartels. Word is, he’s responsible for the recent kidnapping of American reporter Victoria Gomez and the killing of her family. The FBI isn’t sure if she’s still alive or not, or if she’s still being held captive by Ruiz and his men.”
Staring up at that picture, burning the image into his mind, Reid hated the human piece of shit on sight. He remembered the reporter’s story, because it had been all over the news when it first happened. She’d disappeared almost two weeks ago after her family had been slaughtered by those sadistic animals in southern Florida, and nobody had heard anything since.
He sat there committing every detail of the bastard’s face to memory while Taggart carried on with his report, giving them all the background info the agency had on him.
“He’s suspected to be operating in southwestern Florida right now, or maybe into Alabama, and he’s our priority target. If we get a lock on him, we’re going after him.” Taggart turned back to face them, his turquoise gaze intense. “Memorize his face and the pertinent details. He’s going to be heavily armed and will likely have a protective detail made up of at least a half dozen Veneno enforcers with him, all hand-picked by him. And if it helps as a point of reference, Dillon Wainright was his head enforcer.”
Everyone glanced at Logan Granger, seated at the end of the row to Reid’s right. Wainright was the asshole who had terrorized Granger’s girl, Taylor, last year. Reid was glad she’d shot the bastard dead that day.
“Ruiz is impatient,” Taggart continued. “He’s abrupt and ruthless, and that goes for dealings with his own men as well as anyone who gets in his way. Or anyone he suspects might get in his way. He’s reputed to have either personally killed or ordered the killings of over a dozen high-ranking rival cartel bosses.” Taggart paused to scan the room, giving his next words added weight. “This guy is marked for death by other cartels, so the fact that he’s stayed alive this long has to tell you how tough a target he is. He’s got money, resources and plenty of contacts to protect him.” He raised his dark blond eyebrows. “When we get the call about him, we need to be ready to go in hard and take him out.”
Hell yeah. Arms folded across his chest, Reid’s hands bunched into fists against his ribs. As far as he and his teammates were concerned, Ruiz and the rest of the Veneno cartel were living on borrowed time.
Chapter Two
“When did you start flying helicopters?” Autumn asked, frowning in concentration as she glued a plastic googly eye on the ball of fluff in her hand.
Half a dozen pom-pom puppies sat perched in a row in the middle of the table amidst a mess of crafting supplies. Tess had no idea how the company had managed to fit it all into the box in the first place.
“I was twenty-two. Just after I finished college.”
Autumn looked up at her from across the table. “You learned to fly there?” She didn’t have an accent like her dad. Her mom must be from up north.
“No, I got my bachelor’s degree in science there. I learned to fly after that, once I was in the army. But my science degree made it a lot easier because of the math, and because I already understood the physics of flight.”
The little girl looked impressed. “Wow, that’s neat.” She went back to placing the puppy’s eye. “I’ve thought about joining the military when I graduate from high school.”
Tess paused in the act of winding yarn into a ball, surprised. “Yeah?”
She nodded. “That way I could get my college paid for, like my dad did. And it would be pretty neat to learn how to fly a Blackhawk. My parents and grandparents told me they’d pay for my school if they can, but that’s a lot of money. I’d feel bad.”
Tess frowned at her, momentarily at a loss for words. “How old are you?”
“Nine. I’ll be ten this December.”
Holy shit. When Tess had been nine, she’d only been interested in My Little Pony and what kinds of candy she could afford to buy with her weekly allowance. Never had it crossed her mind to think about going to college someday, let alone how she was going to pay for it. “Wow, that’s… You’re looking ahead. That’s great.”
Autumn shrugged. “I want to have a nice house and be able to travel when I grow up. So I need to have a good job and earn lots of money.”
Jeez, this kid was starting to give her an inferiority complex. “Where would you like to travel to?”
“Europe, for sure. Maybe Antarctica, because I like penguin
s. Dad and I just went to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter a few weeks ago. It was my Christmas present.”
“Just the two of you?”
“Yeah. My parents are divorced.” Her tone was matter-of-fact.
“Oh.” She squelched the leap of excitement inside her. Divorced didn’t necessarily mean he was single. Or available. “And did you have a good time there?”
Autumn’s face lit up and she stopped working on her pom-pom puppy. “The best. I’m a huge Harry Potter fan. Have you read the books?”
“No.”
Autumn looked scandalized. “None of them?”
Tess bit back a laugh. “Not a single one.”
“But you’ve seen the movies,” she said with a frown. “Or at least some of them.”
“Nope, afraid not.”
Autumn sat back, an expression of disbelief on her little face. “What? I thought you said you have three nieces.”
“I do, but they’re a lot older than you, mostly all grown up now, and into different stuff.” And they sure as hell hadn’t been this mature at age nine. Autumn was scaring her a little.
She gave Tess a dubious look and returned to her crafting. “Well, if you don’t like to read you should at least watch the movies, they’re awesome. Anyway, Dad took me to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.” She sighed, shook her head, her eyes wistful. “It was just like being in the movies.”
“That good, huh?”
“Amazing. Even Dad liked it.”
Tess didn’t know the man, but she thought it was incredibly sweet that Reid had planned the trip and taken his daughter to a place that clearly meant so much to her. “Sounds like fun.”
“Yeah. I don’t get to see him all that much, so it was cool to have a trip with him. He’s a good dad. Even if my mom doesn’t think so,” she added.
Tess’s ears perked up. “She doesn’t?”
“Nah. They don’t get along. My mom’s always mad at him, no matter how hard he tries.”