Sworn to Secrecy (Special Ops)

by Montgomery, Capri

  “Our pilot. The guy who got us out of the battle zone and here to safety. He’s in the Air Force, but he works for our company when he has downtime.”

  “Are they allowed to do that?”

  Alex shrugged. “Preston has connections in places I don’t even know about yet. He can pretty much get whatever he wants, whenever he wants it. I think there’s more to him than what he lets any of us know about.” He brushed his hand over his short cut hair. “We all have our secrets so none of us push for more details than the other is willing to give. He’s a good guy, which is all I need to know. And his connections help the company too. Julian is really good, and I hope he’ll join the team when he puts in his papers.”

  “You have your own personal pilot then,” she smiled. “Must be nice.”

  “Well the other guys are Air Force too. I’m the only Marine. But as you can imagine it’s not always the best idea, or the most acceptable one, to be responsible for the search and rescue while still trying to be responsible for the plane. We use Julian when we can and Jet’s friend when Julian isn’t available.”

  “Why not just hire Jet’s friend then?”

  “He’s not a military guy. He can handle things, but this really isn’t his scene. He worked for the Texas Rangers until it became too much for him. He’s had his pilot’s license since he was seventeen and he can handle just about any plane you give him. He’s a good guy, but his heart isn’t into this stuff full-time. He let us know that up front. When we have to go and we’re flying solo he jumps in. Otherwise, if two people go on the same mission one is flying, one is rescuing. Those are rare. When two people go it’s generally because two people are needed for the rescue so we typically still need a pilot. It’s case by case.”

  She nodded again. “I see. So is this the standard rescue—getting shot and all?”

  “Sometimes. Sometimes it’s easier. Just a simple in and out—well, simple for us anyway.” Most people probably wouldn’t see it as simple. They didn’t just go into hot zones. Occasionally the call came in for a missing heiress who just had to try out her wild side on top of a snow capped mountain. He and Jet had pulled off a rescue mission on one of those assignments. The chopper had gotten them so far, and then they had to jump out and climb the rest of the way. Thanks to Alex’s physical fitness and Jet’s skills they were able to pull off the rescue. He would say it was one of the more difficult rescue assignments. There weren’t any bad guys with guns but nature could be a cruel mistress and that storm that came through made it really difficult to get down to the pickup point. They could have all died, but none of them did. Somebody would probably find it odd that he thought that was his most difficult mission to date, but it was. All the others had been so close to what he had been trained for that they didn’t feel as if they fell into the category of most difficult missions. Tough? Some of them were, yes, but he knew how to shoot. He knew how to survive gunfire, and a mortal enemy. Surviving a mountain, a winter storm and dense air was something he wouldn’t say he was ready to experience. He had done hiking before, but this wasn’t hiking. This had pushed him beyond his normal level of comforts. He had survived it and that alone made him proud of his ability. Working with these men was teaching him more about himself than he had learned while in the military. He was learning the limits he thought he had were limits he could break.

  “Military men…I never thought I would have a thing for military men.” Her tone was far off as if she were thinking about the situation and hadn’t realized she said those words out loud.

  “Excuse me?” He looked at her. He was sure he had heard her correctly. Was she saying she had a thing for him? Already? He was going to have to go back to the Psych 101 books on this one. It wasn’t that he wanted to be a psychologist, but he found that understanding the mindset of the hostage was just as important as understanding the mindset of the captor. The last thing he needed was to go in for a rescue and have the package turn on him because he or she was now enamored with the captor.

  She laughed. “Normally I go for math geeks. Something about a man who is good with math and science is just so sexy. It’s probably because I suck at both and I think they’re geniuses who can teach me something I don’t already know.”

  “I happen to be good at both.”

  “I knew there was something more to you than that rough, no-nonsense, drag a woman through the jungle exterior.”

  “I was trying to rescue you,” he shook his head. He didn’t know if he should like this woman or hate her right now. He was leaning toward like no matter how infuriating she could be at times.

  “Don’t take it personal. It’s just that I was never the military junkie. Just like I was never the badge bunny. Cops, firefighters, and military men—on average I don’t go for that sort of guy.”

  “Let me guess; you dated the professor.” He teased her.

  “Actually, I did.”

  “That’s against the rules.”

  “I waited until I wasn’t in his class,” she said as if he should have known that already. “The moment he opened his mouth and started talking about the stars and words that sounded a lot like math started coming along with all of that information I fell hard. He was cute—not in the male model way. He was short, and a little pudgy around the middle,” she laughed. “He wore these really big glasses, but it kind of added something to him. He had no style though. I’m a fashion person and he had none. We were opposites, but every class I fell for him more. When the semester was over and I had my grade I had two options. I could sign up for another class just to be near him, or I could tell him how I felt. I opted for telling him how I felt. Taking another one of his classes would have eaten up my electives and I still wanted to take the darkroom photography class.”

  “So how long did it last?”

  “A year. Apparently the good professor liked the thrill of dating students so when I graduated he dropped me. On my twenty-first birthday on top of that.” She shrugged as if that wasn’t important. “Smart is sexy, but it doesn’t always equate to being a nice, stand-up guy.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not. While it lasted it was good, and I really did enjoy being with him. But I wasn’t in love with him and the secrecy of being lovers was just too much after a while. We couldn’t tell anybody, and sneaking around is only fun for a hot minute. After that I’d really like to be courted properly.”

  He laughed. “Did you just say courted?”

  “Shut up,” she hit his leg playfully. That touch on his leg, though brief, had sent an electric volt through his body, one he didn’t need right now. She was sexy. Those lips just begged him to kiss them, and her skin…what he wouldn’t give to be able to lick every inch of her. He shook the x-rated thoughts from his mind. He was on a mission and that mission did not involve bedding Carissa Jones.

  Ever since he and Stacey had ended things, or more like he had ended things because he found her in bed with his friend, he just hadn’t made time for another relationship, or for sex. He took on a lot of missions. The ones that kept him away from downtime long enough not to realize what he was missing were always the ones he tried to pull. He just didn’t want to get involved with anybody again. The only woman he trusted was Natalia and she was already taken. She and Micah were definitely together and in love and he wouldn’t betray either friend by trying to seduce her away from Micah.

  Now he was at a point where he thought it wasn’t going to happen for him; that desire to have a relationship with another woman was gone. Flying solo, he had said. He didn’t need to complicate his life with a woman. Then he saw pictures of Carissa and he knew he was in trouble. Then he met her and for all the trouble she was giving him he thought he was in the clear of actually wanting this woman, but now he knew he wasn’t. The lust he had for her was purely sexual…well, maybe not purely sexual. He was lusting after her and he knew that, but she was a good woman—at least she seemed like one anyway. Anybody who would put country before protecting a tr
aitor that happened to be family had his vote of confidence. He had fought for his country, almost died for it, and to know there were still good people in this world who wouldn’t take the money and run, or justify an illegal action simply because somebody they loved was the one committing the crime, gave him a sense of pride.

  Carissa was twenty-five and had gone far. She had attributed her success to her father and she was probably right. He was the one who gave her the money to start up her company, but in reality she had started it before she even finished high school. She was selling her own designs online long before her senior year. To that she had given her father credit and she had been right to do so. He imagined the admiration she felt for her father made it that much more difficult to see the man he had become—or the man that he always was. Alex could sympathize, but he couldn’t empathize with her position. He was never really close to his parents. If the situation was his and it turned out that his father was the one betraying the country it wouldn’t devastate his world the way this was devastating hers. The relationship she had with her father was a relationship Alex would never know with his. That love, closeness and complete familial love wasn’t something he had been blessed to experience.

  Carissa had heart, spirit and courage. It took a lot of courage to see something wrong and try to make it right. It took a lot of courage to keep fighting to be heard when everybody kept shutting the door in her face. It took a lot of courage to agree to help the Feds after what they’d threatened her with if she didn’t. Carissa struck him as the kind of woman who would have said no simply because they tried to intimidate her, but she had agreed because she knew what her father was doing was wrong. Those characteristics alone had pulled him past sexual attraction and started opening his mind to the possibility of having something a little deeper with this woman. Of course he had to figure out what was going on and how to save her from the situation she was now locked into. OTG was one of the fastest growing “militias” as they liked to call it, or domestic terrorists as the government liked to call them. They were also one of the most deadly. This wasn’t just some backwoods training camp. These men and women were experts in weapons, bombs, security and more. Not to mention the fact that some of the ones on the watch list were sitting very comfortably behind big corporate desks by day. They weren’t what people thought of when they thought of terrorists. They blended, which probably was part of what made them so dangerous. They were the teller at the local bank, the executive at the fortune five hundred company, the doctor at the religious hospital and even the mother breastfeeding her kid by day and making bombs at night.

  He had heard some things about the group, but he wasn’t closely watching the progression of their activity. He had his own job and quite frankly stopping domestic terrorists was an FBI, Homeland Security joint mission effort now and he wasn’t a part of either organization. When the president insisted on creating a special task force Alex had heard about it. He had received a proposition to join and he had refrained. He loved what he was doing and being private sector was a heck of a lot better than going back into government work. He hated the politics of government work and he didn’t want to go back there. The team was still fairly young as a functioning group, only within the last couple years had they been established, but each of the men and women involved in monitoring OTG had been in the trenches of either agency for several years beforehand. They were seasoned, skilled and ready to take the group down whenever they could. Everybody thought that would be swiftly—everybody involved with the team that is. He knew differently. Even if he had joined them and gone in undercover as a decorated Marine tired of the political rat race, there was no way they were going to crack an organization this big and this strong overnight. Anybody who thought they could was seriously delusional.

  He hadn’t had a chance to ask Carissa what she liked to eat before Julian went to get food. He figured he would keep lunch simple with a turkey, asparagus and light cream sauce Panini sandwich along with some fries. If she wanted some other kind of food he would have to see what he could do later in the week. He needed to keep their location a secret and going in the local grocery store was not going to help him with that cause. Julian had bought enough canned and nonperishable items to hold them over for a few weeks just in case they had to stay longer than planned. The other stuff, the perishables, would last about a week and then they were going to have to tough it out with all the other items they had. He was fine with that. He had eaten far worse and far less, but he wasn’t sure how she would take the news.

  “That smells good already,” Carissa hobbled over to a chair in the kitchen and sat down. She wasn’t the type to take long to recover from anything. She liked being busy, and while she was in some pain, sitting was not an option for her.

  “Can you not sit still for even five minutes?”

  She looked at him with a blank stare. Was he serious? How was she supposed to just sit around and do nothing? She didn’t know how to do that. “I wanted to come in here. Do you need some help?”

  “No,” he growled. “You’re supposed to be resting so you can heal. Resting, you know what that is right? If you keep trying to get around on that leg you might rip your stitches.”

  “I’ll be fine,” she assured him. “I broke my toe when I was a little girl and I managed to get around then too. Back then they only used tape and cotton to secure the injury. Do they still do that?”

  He shrugged. “I’m not a doctor.”

  “Alex, I can’t sit still. I need to do something. At least let me sit in here with you and talk with you.” She noticed he wasn’t really thrilled about her being up and moving around, but staying in that bedroom was too depressing. Being alone was depressing too because it gave her too much time with her thoughts. “Tell me about your family.”

  He grunted. Clearly he didn’t want to talk about his family. “Okay, tell me about the people you work with, or tell me about where you live. You’re in Texas I guess, unless my father hired you from out of the state.”

  “I’m in Hill Country, Texas.”

  “Very nice,” she winked at him. “I was going to move up there, but I opted for Austin instead. I thought it would be nice to be close to my business. Gas prices and all,” she nodded. Having money did not mean she wanted to spend it all filling up the car.

  “You don’t have one of those electric cars I take it.”

  “No,” she shook her head. “Those things are really expensive. Maybe if they go down in price. Look, my dad has money. I’m building my empire, but I don’t want to just take advantage of his money. I want to try to make my path and have my own money. I’m doing okay, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to spend a lot of money on expensive gadgets and vehicles. I drive a Ford Mustang and that’s good enough for me. It’s American; it’s the hottest shade of red ever—that was custom, and yes I did splurge on that, but for the most part I think it’s sensible. Don’t you?”

  He nodded. “Sounds like it works for you. You value the made in America stamp huh?”

  “I do. I think a lot of people here need work and if I can buy products that lets the company know I appreciate them giving Americans work then I’ll do it. That doesn’t mean everything I buy is made here, but I try when I can. All of my products are made here.”

  “Really?” He looked utterly shocked.

  “Of course. My company is in America and I make my lingerie here too. It’s more expensive though. I like to pay more than minimum wage. Nobody can make it off of that in this economy. Plus, the equipment and taxes are more here. It would be cheaper to outsource to workers in another country, but then a lot of good people here wouldn’t have jobs. They wouldn’t be able to feed their families. I live here. This country is important to me and I’ll do whatever I can to help.” If he didn’t see that already then he probably never would, but something told her he wasn’t expecting anything less from her.

  “Very noble of you,” he gave her one of those smooth smiles she was starting to s
ee a little more from him.

  “Well I try to do my part. What good is helping out the rest of the world if you can’t keep your own house in order?”

  “I can agree with that. So you’re not rushing to help out the starving children in Africa?”

  “I help out when I can there too,” she shook her head and laughed. “I try to save everybody. That’s my biggest character flaw. But there are plenty of starving people here too. When the economy tanked a lot of people who never had to worry about where their next meal would come from started having to worry. Some of those people go to the local food banks, and that’s where I try to donate food and money. My dad had a charity for the worldwide hunger drive and I used to donate to that and help organize events sometimes at night, but after I found out what he was doing. I started to wonder if I was helping fund something else.” She lowered her voice as she lowered her eyes to look at the table. She didn’t think she could survive knowing her work with the charitable organizations her father supported had actually turned out to be something more sinister.

  “Some of those organizations are legit, Carissa.”

  “I’m hoping that the local food bank and the worldwide hunger drive charities were legit.” She sighed her frustration and desperation evident in that one action. She desperately needed to believe the work she had done, the money she had given to those organizations her father supported had actually been for the good of mankind and not for the bad of mankind.