Tatiana didn’t wait for us to stand before she took her exit. I kind of found that sexy, too.
“Damn, brother, I was having grade school flashbacks.” Kyle chuckled.
“All that was missing was you pulling her hair,” Max threw in.
“Mark this, assholes. If we had more time, I’d be doing more than tugging on Miss Sex Kitten’s curly mane. Holy hell, those legs in those sky-high heels. Hot damn. And that mouth, she can throw some sexy attitude my way anytime,” I told the group.
“Keep your dick in your pants. Recon only,” Declan mumbled.
“Copy that, Boss.”
“Brooks wishes he had time for a quick recon mission.” Thad laughed at his own joke.
We made our way out of the UN annex building, and for once I didn’t feel the need to bitch about the temperature when the heat blasted me in the face. I had better things to think about, like all the ways I could fluster Tatiana Jones.
“What has you laughing?” Max asked.
“Just thinking about how pissed she’s gonna be tomorrow morning when she finds out I’ve already been diving and cleared the area.”
“You gonna tell her?” Kyle joined in.
“Hell, yeah.”
“Please do not fuck this op up. In and out, that’s it,” Declan groaned.
“That’s what he’s hoping for, a quick in and out.” Thad clapped Declan on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, we’ll still be on schedule, he only takes five minutes.”
Declan cracked the smallest of smiles and shook his head. As the newcomer on our team, he’d learn we jack-assed around but when it was go-time, we were on our game and as deadly as we needed to be.
Chapter 2
I’d given Brooks Miller too much headspace over the last twelve-plus hours. I didn’t give a flying rat’s ass what he and his team needed to do in Bahrain. As long as they didn’t interfere with my mission objective, they could frolic in the Gulf all they wanted.
If that was the case, why the hell was I standing on the dock at slip fifteen at four-thirty in the morning instead of in bed sleeping?
Aggravation. That was why. And maybe a little curiosity. I knew the area was clean. I’d cleared it myself, not that I’d told Brooks and his team that. I’d told them more than I should’ve already. I knew they didn’t believe my UN cover story. I didn’t need them to; as long as no one on the naval base next to the fake annex I’d set up started asking questions about my presence.
“Well, well, well.” Brooks’ deep rumble made me shiver, even though it was already nearing ninety degrees. “I didn’t have you pegged for an early riser. Yet here you are, thirty minutes earlier than necessary. And you called me an overachiever.”
“I don’t like to be late, it’s rude.” His long, confident strides stopped a few feet away and he openly checked me out from the shoes I was wearing all the way up to my ponytail pulled tight on top of my head. “You know what else is rude? Staring.”
“You’ll find there are a lot of things I do that polite company would consider rude. You’ll also figure out I don’t give a shit what people think. If you take offense to me verifying you’re wearing proper footwear and clothing for a boat ride, that’s not my problem, Doll.”
Foot, meet mouth. Shit.
“Ready to go?” I asked, instead of apologizing for my incorrect snap judgement.
“I was born ready.”
Yeah, I bet he was. Guys like him were all the same. They had lingo and quick answers for everything. Brooks and his silver-tongue was no different than my ex-husband. All talk. Rules to follow. Commands to bark. Work life and private life separate, never the two shall collide until they do.
“Where’d you go, Doll?”
How’d he get so close? And why the hell was he calling me ‘doll’? I had a damn name, he could use it.
“Nowhere. The boat’s right here.”
Needing the distance more than I cared to admit, I jumped aboard the Bayliner.
“This yours?” Brooks asked.
I wanted to laugh. I lived out of a suitcase. I didn’t own a home anymore, let alone a boat.
“I’m borrowing it,” I answered as he came aboard the twenty-foot vessel, his arms flexing as he maneuvered his heavy dive bag.
“Legally?”
That made me smile. “This time.”
“Damn, a woman after my own heart.”
I didn’t want to touch that statement with a ten-foot pole. So instead I started the engine. Without me having to ask, he untied the lines from the dock and neatly coiled the ropes like the good sailor he once was.
“You know how to operate this thing?”
I didn’t dignify his question with a verbal answer. Instead, I pushed the throttle forward and pulled away from the dock, past the other boats, and out of the harbor.
“You don’t talk much, do you?”
“I do when I’ve got something to say,” I told him.
The crisp breeze off the Gulf and the pink-tinged horizon made me miss home. It felt like a lifetime ago since I’d been in the U.S. And I hadn’t stepped foot back in San Diego since my divorce. Though I still had a storage unit there packed full of shit I didn’t need and didn’t want. Yet, I couldn’t get myself to junk it. Memories of a past life. The end of what I thought was a dream come true but in reality, it was an epic mistake.
The spray of saltwater reminded me how much I used to love to wade out into the cold Pacific surf. Long morning swims before I headed home to an empty apartment with nothing else to do with my day until James Monroe returned home from base and started his daily bitch-fests. God, I didn’t miss that part. Didn’t miss how unproductive I’d been. After I stupidly quit a job I loved to start a family that would never materialize.
“Tatiana?” Brooks pulled me from wayward thoughts.
“Huh?”
“You daydream a lot.”
“Just thinking about home.” Why the hell had I admitted that? With a shake of my head I continued, “Sorry, what did you say?”
“Where’s home?”
That was a good question. But an even better one was, why the hell was I thinking about San Diego in the first place? I’d long ago shoved that particular regret into a box with a big red label that read, “do not revisit—ever.”
“Here. There. Wherever the UN sends me.”
“Right. So we’re back to the bullshit cover story.”
“We’ve never deviated from it. And it’s not bullshit. I do indeed work for the UN.”
I slowed the boat and prepared to drop anchor. We were about one-hundred yards from the King Fahd Causeway Middle Island.
“The work order detailed transoceanic cabling from Middle Island to Umm an Naasan Island. The area is clear. No one has—”
“I know.”
“You know?” I squinted my eyes, the narrowing of my lids had nothing to do with the fast-rising sun. “What does that mean?”
“I decided to take a dip the first day we got here and check things out. I agree with your assessment; it’s clear.”
“Why the fuck are we out here then, Brooks?”
“Beautiful morning for a boat ride?”
“Are you kidding me?” I seethed.
“Nope.”
He strolled leisurely to the open bow and sat on the vinyl bench seat, spreading his arms before resting them on the railing. Just as smug as he could be.
“You’re unbelievable. But I should’ve expected someone like you to pull this bullshit stunt.”
“There you go again with someone like me. Care to expand on that, Doll?”
“No. And stop calling me doll.”
“Would you prefer ‘sweetheart’?”
He was infuriating.
“Absolutely not. I’d prefer you to not call me anything and stop wasting my time.”
“You’re the one who offered to take me out. As a matter of fact, you ordered me to meet you on the dock. I’m simply here at your request.”
Unbelievable. A
rrogant bastard.
I put the boat into gear and gave it more throttle than necessary. The engine whined, the bow raised, and I didn’t hide my smile when Brooks had to grip the rails to prevent himself from falling.
His answering chuckle wasn’t what I’d expected. Not that I could hear over the wind but I could see it. Jerk.
I slowed my speed once I approached the marina. Brooks stood and made his way back to the deck and stopped too close. I could smell his spicy scent over the briny smell of the Gulf. How had I missed that before?
“Do you have a security detail?” he weirdly asked.
“No.”
“You picked up a tail.”
“What?”
“Those two.” He nodded in the direction of an empty slip. “They followed you here from your apartment. You know them?”
“I don’t think so.” Suddenly his statement clicked. “Wait. You followed me here from my apartment?”
“Stop the boat, Tatiana.”
Apparently I hadn’t reacted quickly enough for Brooks. His hand covered mine on the throttle and he jammed it in reverse. The Bayliner jerked into gear and he pulled back hard. The engine sputtered, Brooks turned the wheel, the boat spun left, he slammed the lever forward barely giving the engine time to disengage before he propelled us forward much like I’d done earlier.
“What the hell?”
“Reach in my back-left pocket, take out my cell.”
“Why. What’s—”
My question was cut off when the first bullet whizzed past us. I yanked his phone out of his pocket. He rattled off the number to dial and took the cell phone from me, placing it against his ear.
I turned back to the dock, happy to see we were gaining distance but not nearly enough. I heard him tell whoever he was speaking to that we’d found trouble. But I was more concerned at what I was seeing to pay attention to his conversation.
“Uh, Brooks? I think they have an RPG.”
His head snapped over his shoulder, his cell hit the deck, and the last thing he said to me was, “I hope you can swim.”
His arms wrapped around me and we jumped overboard.
Hitting the water at forty-plus knots was shocking. It was not a graceful dive into a smooth pond. I went in shoulder-first and instead of coming right up, Brooks pulled us farther under. With my arm in his tight grasp, he swam deep. My lungs burned, in desperate need of oxygen. I struggled, trying to get out of his hold. I was a decent swimmer but I wasn’t prepared for a free dive to the deep-blue yonder.
He stopped his descent, pulled me face-to-face with him. Saltwater stung my eyes but I was transfixed. He was so close and looked at ease.
A shockwave sent us tumbling through the water. Brooks’ relentless grip moved to my hands and didn’t budge. The need to inhale overwhelmed me. Time slowed to milliseconds, as each ticked by, I fought the urge to breathe. I was suffocating.
Strong arms wrapped around my useless body and propelled us toward the surface. If I hadn’t known better, I’d swear we were being thrust upward by DPV. Brooks shoved me above water and blessed air filled my lungs. A second later his head popped out of the water and he looked completely unaffected.
“You okay?”
I was heaving too hard to answer and settled for a nod.
“Roll to your back and float. It will be easier to catch your breath.”
I tried and failed to do as he suggested. Finally, Brooks took pity and maneuvered me face side up. I was concentrating on the cloudless sky, counting my breaths when he spoke again. “That’s it. Slow your breathing.”
“What the hell?” I finally panted out.
“You ready to tell me why someone’s trying to kill you?”
If I still didn’t need his hands under me to help me float, I would’ve swam away from him. However, my lungs were still burning and my limbs wouldn’t cooperate.
“Maybe you were the target.”
“Negative.”
“How do you know?”
“I haven’t been in Bahrain long enough to piss anyone off. And the enemies I’ve made over the years wouldn’t be so sloppy.”
What a smug bastard. He even had to outdo me in an assassination attempt. Of course anyone who would possibly come after him would be far more sophisticated than someone trying to kill me. Yet another thing I didn’t miss about my ex-husband. I couldn’t even tell him I needed a jacket because I was chilly without the programmed response of: you don’t know cold until you know Navy SEAL cold.
“Damn, you have a chip on your shoulder.” He chuckled.
Who the hell laughed while treading water after being a hair’s breadth away from being blown up by an RPG?
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to. Your eyes say everything you don’t. Hate to tell you this, Doll, but you can’t hide shit.”
“Were you able to tell your team where to find us?”
“Yep.”
“And?”
“We wait. They’ll be along shortly.”
“Be along shortly? What does that mean?”
“It means just that, we wait. I can’t see the dock from here. Which means I don’t know if someone is waiting there for us. While I could swim back undetected, I don’t think you want me leaving you out here by yourself to float. So, we wait together.”
As much as it pissed me off, he was right. I could swim the almost half-mile back to the dock, but it wouldn’t be any covert maneuver, that was for sure. And while he made treading water look like a walk in the park, there was no way I wanted to find out if I could do it for the length of time it would take him to go to shore and come back.
No, my best bet was to float on my back, with my mouth shut and wait for his team to come.
Fuck. I hated being the damsel in distress, but there was nothing I could do.
Chapter 3
“You need to relax, Doll.”
Even with Tatiana’s lips flattened and her brows drawn, she was a pretty woman. I wished I could smooth the worry lines on her forehead. I could’ve told her this was an easy day, floating out there in the warm water of the Gulf, but I didn’t think she’d appreciate my comment. She didn’t seem to like anything I had to say. Yesterday it’d been fun pushing her buttons, even more when we she stopped to drop anchor, but now it seemed cruel. I may’ve been a lot of things, but malicious wasn’t one of them.
There was something working behind her intelligent eyes, and it looked a lot like pain. Not the physical kind, the emotional aftermath of heartache. It was the only thing that explained why she had the need to hide behind piss and vinegar. I wouldn’t go as far as calling her a bitch, but damn she had snark. It was unfortunate for her, I liked sassy and spirited women. Her demeanor in no way was a deterrent. She was waving the proverbial red flag in front of the bull.
“And you need to stop calling me ‘Doll’.”
Yeah, I liked her spunk. I wanted to call her baby cakes just to see what she’d do but I was too afraid she’d drown.
“Okay, Tatiana. While we’re waiting, why don’t we talk about your job? What does a political affairs officer do?”
If it were possible for her to become stiffer in the water, she did. “What do you want to know?”
“I want to know the real reason you’re in Bahrain, but I doubt you’ll tell me that. So tell me about working for the UN.”
“I analyze security reports and verify information.”
“How do you verify the intel you receive?”
“It depends on the region. Sometimes, I’m strapped to a platoon, normally Army. Other times I’m on my own.” She turned her face from the sky and looked at me. “Aren’t you getting tired?”
“No. I can do this all day.”
“Of course you can. Drownproofing, phase one.”
Her reference to my BUD/s training gave me pause. She’d read my file, knew I was a former SEAL, and Basic Underwater Demolition SEAL school wasn’t top secret, however most people don’t know t
he different phases. Or that there were different phases.
“That and I’ve spent a lot of time in the water. What do you know about the phases, anyway?”
She looked back to the sky and was quiet for so long, I didn’t think she was going to answer. And when she did, she shocked the shit out of me.
“I was married to a SEAL. He was an instructor.”
“No shit. Who?”
“James Monroe.”
“Monroe? Chief Monroe from ST-1?”
“Yep. That’s him.”
Holy shit, that guy was a dick. And it explained so much about her attitude. He was an egomaniac and was dangerous. Monroe was infamous among team guys. During an extraction he’d refused to listen to the four-man SWCC crew, took over the special operation craft and crashed it. His stupidity had almost killed everyone on board. He was sent to BUD/s to be an instructor. The SEAL equivalent of being benched.
“So yesterday when you said you were familiar with men like me, you were comparing me to shit-for-brains Monroe?”
At least she had the decency to wince. “Not exactly him. I was generalizing. I’ve worked with SPECOPS guys before. You’re all pretty much the same. Arrogant alpha males with big egos.”
“I think you’re mixing up arrogance and confidence.”
“All the same.”
“No, Doll. Not even close. An arrogant man will tell you how good he is. A confident one will remain silent. He doesn’t need to tell you what he’s capable of and most of the time, he doesn’t want you to know.” I’d spent years working with the best of best. Not only with the men on my team but men and women from other agencies who would prefer no one knew what their job really was. “You said was married. How long have you been divorced?”
“A few years.”
I heard a faint whine of an engine and scanned the area. We were sitting ducks out here in the water. There was nowhere to hide. Tatiana was finally relaxed on her back floating but I didn’t think she was ready for another sixty-second trip underwater.
“If I tell you to go, you go. Swim deep and as far as you can go in one breath. When you come up, you do so slowly. Turn on your side, only take your mouth out of the water and dip back down. Do not wait for me. Do not try to help me. You leave. Understood?”
Brooks (Special Forces: Operation Alpha) (Gold Team Book 1) Page 2