“Great. Go grab your shit. We gotta hit the road.”
Chapter 21
An hour was a long time to be sitting in an SUV with five irritated men. Well, maybe only four were still annoyed with me. Brooks seemed to have forgiven me for my wishy-washy behavior but, Declan, Max, Kyle, and Thad were all still standoffish. Al Qatif may’ve only been a forty-five-minute drive according to the map, but traffic at the border crossing was a nightmare. We still had at least another half hour before we arrived and I couldn’t take another second of the silence.
“All right, enough. I know why you all are pissed at me, but I can’t take it anymore,” I blurted out. “Will someone please just tell me I was acting like a whiney bitch so we can get on with it?”
“You’re acting like a whiney bitch,” Thad said.
Okay, maybe that stung more than I thought it would.
“You ready to spit out whatever the hell is bothering you?” Kyle asked.
No. I wasn’t ready. I didn’t want to talk about it, but I was the one who opened the door. Maybe silence wasn’t such a bad thing after all.
“Didn’t think so,” he went on after a beat.
“I fucked up the last time I was in Saudi Arabia. I was stupid and rushed and almost died because of my poor decision making. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt because of my stupidity.”
“You can’t be talking about when you were a POW.” Max turned around from the passenger seat to look at me.
“You mean when I got captured because I didn’t listen to all my intel? Yeah, Max, that time.”
“You can’t let that fuck with your head,” Thad advised.
“Kinda hard not to when every time I look in the mirror I’m reminded of what an idiot I was.”
“Get over it,” Declan demanded.
He was driving so he couldn’t see the daggers my glare was shooting in his direction and unfortunately, I didn’t have any Jedi mind tricks perfected. The ones that would make him go up in a plume of smoke.
“Come again?”
“Didn’t stutter, Tatiana.”
“No. You didn’t, but it was kinda a dick thing to say.”
“Seriously? You think you’re the first person to be held against their will and take a few hits?”
Was it possible for someone’s head to spontaneously combust? Because I think mine was going to explode.
“No, you jackass. I know I’m not. All I’m saying is—”
“That you feel sorry for yourself?”
“Watch it, bro…” Brooks’ tone held a whole new meaning of menacing.
I didn’t need him to stick up for me, and the last thing I needed was for the two of them to get into a fight because of me. This was ridiculous.
“I don’t feel sorry for myself. I was just explaining why I no longer trust myself.”
“Which brings me back to my previous advice. Get over it.”
“Okay, Declan. Whatever.”
I was stupid for even starting the conversation. I should’ve known better. All alpha men were the same. Bury it. Lock it down. Don’t think about it. Worry about unpacking the cargo container of feelings later when it’s busting at the seams ready to spew all over the place.
Real healthy.
“Do you trust me to lead this mission?” Declan asked.
“Yes.” If I hadn’t been in a car full of men, I would’ve ignored him.
“Do you trust me to have your back?”
I felt like I was walking into a trap. But I answered anyway, “Yes.”
“By your logic, you shouldn’t. And I should no longer trust myself. You made a bad play and as a result some assholes took you and almost killed you. I fucked up, listened to the wrong person, and got a ten-man platoon captured. Two were murdered before we’d even made it back to the warlord’s compound.”
Shit, fuck, and damn. I knew this story. I was still with the CIA when it happened. The whole situation down in Panama was a clusterfuck. Declan had sent a Ranger platoon in to take out a high-value target but it was a set-up. His intel was bad and the Rangers were ambushed. From the story I’d heard, Declan had called it in to the higher-ups but didn’t wait for backup. He went in alone and saved the remaining eight men. It was a bloody massacre by the time Declan had saved them. The legend went, Dec had single-handedly killed fifteen men. I wasn’t privy to the after-action report, however, I believed the rumors. Eight men did indeed come home alive and Declan had no support during the rescue mission.
“That was different,” I tried.
“The hell it was. We make do with the information we have in the field. We go on gut feelings. Sometimes it pans out, other times it doesn’t. You have to get over it. If you can’t, you’re gonna be working a desk. Sometimes all you have is a split second and instinct. What happened to you was jacked. But guess what? There’s not a man in this vehicle who doesn’t bear the scars of battle. Wear that shit proud. You survived.”
That was easy for him to say, he wasn’t a woman. As sexist as it was, a man bearing the marks of war was acceptable. It made him look tough and manly. Scars on a woman made her undesirable. And when a man fucked up it could be chalked up to a bad day. When a woman did, she was incompetent.
“Not sure our situations were the same.”
“You don’t think I wasn’t where you are? You think I didn’t second-guess myself, almost get more people hurt because I was behaving like a pussy who couldn’t make up his mind? You think I didn’t lie awake at night going over every detail, all the ways I’d screwed up? I beat myself up about it more than anyone else could. Two men went home in a pine box because of me. Two. That’s what I live with. I don’t need marks on my body to remind me. Their deaths are seared into my skin, on my soul. So what? You fucked up, Tatiana. You rushed your op. Learn from it. Reflect on it. Move on from it. That simple.”
It wasn’t as simple as Declan made it sound, but he wasn’t wrong. If I didn’t learn to trust myself again, I’d make more mistakes. Possibly get someone killed. Wasn’t that why I was vacillating to begin with? That and the fact I’d never worked with a real team. I hadn’t forgotten Zane’s warning to me either, these men would give their lives for me, and each other. I needed to sort my shit out, which again, was easier said than done.
“I’m straight,” I told him.
“Are you?”
“Yes.”
“Great. You and Brooks will go scout Nazari’s location when we get to Al Qatif. Max, Thad, you’ll take the known locations and restaurants he frequents. Garrett sent over a list. Kyle, you’ll stay with me and go over the house blueprints. After a little recon we’ll decide the best course of action.”
Four men muttered, ‘copy that,’ and I remained silent thinking about what both Brooks and Declan had told me. Intellectually I knew they were right. But after everything my douchebag ex-husband had drilled into my head, it was hard. Every chance he got he pointed out my inadequacies. Nothing I did was good enough. One time he’d even gone as far as telling me it was a good thing I’d quit the CIA, that I was too weak to be an agent. He’d gone on to say, men were much better suited for field work.
James wasn’t always a dick. When I fell in love with him, he was kind and supportive. He’d valued my opinions and often praised my insight on situations and subjects. But after we got married he changed. And when he got pulled from deployment rotation and was sent to X Division at the SEAL training command, he really changed. He turned into a mean asshole and always had something to complain about.
It was hard to trust yourself after you’d been really wrong about two life-changing situations. Bottom line was, I had to pull my shit together or Declan was right, I was better off behind a desk.
Brooks reached over and picked up my hand, interlacing our fingers. He gave it a squeeze before resting our hands back on the seat between us. I closed my eyes and soaked up all the support and encouragement Brooks was offering. I hadn’t known how much I needed it.
Please God, don’
t let Brooks be my third big mistake.
Chapter 22
“You ever clean your binos?” Tatiana asked, pulling the night vision binoculars away from her face. “There’re smudge marks on the lenses.”
She wasn’t wrong. Whoever had used them last, had put them away dirty.
We’d dropped off the team at the house we were spending the night in and headed to recon Nazari’s location. I was happy to see Tatiana seemed to have snapped out of her funk. Declan as usual hadn’t pulled punches while we were in the car and gave it to her straight. On the best of days, he could come across as harsh if you didn’t know him. He didn’t massage the truth to make it sound pretty. He could and did bullshit with all of us, but when it was time to get serious, he cut right to it. One of the many things I liked about him. He also held his cards close to his vest and showed little emotion. I could appreciate the need for the mask he wore – he may’ve been full of bravado while he was speaking to Tatiana, but I knew that shit that happened in Panama marked him deep. He wasn’t over it, and the more he gave Tatiana advice the more it sounded like he was trying to give himself a mental pep talk.
“Any sign of Nazari?” I asked, ignoring her comment.
“No. Just his two sons are visible,” she said, lifting the NVGs back to her eyes. “Maybe he’s out somewhere with his daughter. We haven’t seen her yet, either. Or he could already be asleep.”
“Either is possible.” I checked my watch and it was nearing ten p.m. “How old is the daughter again?”
“Twenty-three.”
“And she’s not married?”
“Weird, right? Normally a woman her age would’ve been married off.”
It was unusual, especially coming from a respected family.
“I didn’t read anything about his wife, where is she?”
The more I thought about it, the more I realized I needed to comb over the files Garrett had sent over on Nazari and his family.
“Dead. Lots of rumors about cause of death but nothing has ever been confirmed. Someone’s pulling in the gate.”
I shifted my focus from the back area of the house to the front driveway. A light-colored sedan rolled to a stop and Nazari stepped out of the driver’s side door, walked around the hood, and opened the passenger door. A tall, slender woman stepped out of the car. Even through the green tint of my NVGs I could see how dark her long hair was.
“That’s his daughter, Sefa.”
I watched as Nazari pulled her close and nuzzled Sefa’s neck. He took his time, and if I wasn’t mistaken, he’d kissed the skin below her ear.
“Ew. That’s gross.” I could picture Tatiana scrunching her cute nose as she spoke.
Nazari’s head lifted and the woman smiled brightly before she leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth.
“I think someone needs to double-check Sefa Nazari’s birth certificate. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a daughter kiss her father that way. And if she is his kid, I never want to see that shit again,” I grouched.
Just when I thought the scene before us couldn’t get any worse, Nazari deepened the kiss and grabbed the woman’s ass. I hoped to God, someone, somewhere got their wires crossed and their intel wrong because this shit was whacked. He was full on making out with the woman. There was so much wrong with what we were witnessing. First, if he was her dad, he had serious fucking mental issues. The age gap couldn’t be denied, he looked old enough to be her father. He was fifty-nine and looked every bit his years and then some. He was the same height as the woman but where she was thin, he was rounded.
“I can’t watch this shit,” Tatiana complained. “It’s disgusting.”
“There’s no way she’s his daughter. Are you sure that’s Sefa?”
“One-hundred percent. I’ve tailed her, sat a table over while she had lunch with her friends in Bahrain. I’ve also seen surveillance footage of her and Nazari together. Not like this. The images I saw, they looked very much like father and daughter.”
The couple broke apart and Nazari led her toward the house, still holding her hand. They disappeared out of sight for a moment before we picked them back up through the large windows in the back of the house. We had a clear view of the room the sons were sitting in. When Nazari and Sefa entered the room hand in hand, both of the sons looked in their direction but otherwise didn’t move. A few minutes later, Sefa’s hand grazed Nazari’s face before she kissed him again square on the mouth. Neither son seemed to care that their sister was extra friendly with daddy.
“I feel like I’m watching a really bad porn movie,” she muttered.
“Yeah? You watch daddy kink porn often?”
“No!” she huffed.
“Right. So just regular porn then. Got it.”
“I don’t watch any porn.”
“So, how would you know this is bad porn?”
“I’m not even going to answer that. You know what I meant.”
Sefa exited the room, leaving the three men alone. Nazari sat in a chair across from the couch his sons were lounging on and calmly engaged in conversation. A minute later a light turned on upstairs, illuminating a bedroom. From our vantage point we could clearly make out the door leading to the hall, a bed, and bureau. I lost sight of Sefa when she walked to the far end of the room.
“No, I’m not sure what you meant. I think I need to hear more about what type of porn you enjoy.”
“We’re not having this discussion,” she told me.
Sefa come back into view. She’d changed into a long nightgown. If I had to guess I’d say it was satin. She stood next to the bed brushing her hair, smiling to herself. She looked happy. Not like I would expect a daughter to look if her father was forcing her into some kind of sick relationship.
“It looks like they’re going to sleep.” I glanced back into the living area where the men had been sitting. They were now up, turning off lights, and all three were heading toward the stairs. “I don’t think I want to see what happens next.”
Neither did I. If it turned out Nazari was indeed Sefa’s father, the kiss we’d witnessed was all I could take. The older of the two sons stepped into the doorway and Sefa turned but stayed in place. The man walked into the room, shut the door behind him, and did not waste any time moving to her side. His mouth was on hers and he was pulling her nightgown up. Not to be outdone, Sefa pawed at his shirt and got it over his head.
“I’ve seen enough.”
I had to agree. So had I. I moved my binoculars away from the window as the man was yanking the nightgown over Sefa’s head.
“This is some fucked-up shit.”
“Nazari is in his room,” she told me.
“Son number two is in his,” I returned.
“Great. Mission complete. Hurry up, I need a shower after seeing that. Maybe find some sort of voodoo pill to erase the last ten minutes of my life.”
I stood and held out my hand to Tatiana. I was fully prepared for her to bitch about me wanting to help her up. Imagine my surprise when she simply took it and allowed me to pull her to her feet.
“Thanks,” she murmured.
“Come on, I think I have just the thing that will help you forget what you just saw,” I told her, as we made our way down the small embankment leading to the side of Nazari’s house. I noted several points of entry. His security was weak. He didn’t even have a bodyguard with him.
“I don’t think that’s possible.”
“Doll, by the time I’m done with you, you won’t be thinking about anything other than how amazing you feel.”
“Cocky much?”
“Just laying it out for you.”
“Did you miss the part where I said I wanted a shower?”
“Yeah, I heard you. And as I remember, the shower was pretty fucking good. Though I prefer you in a bed where I can—”
“You can stop now.”
We’d made it back to the car and I opened the passenger door for her but stopped her before she could get in.
“Ju
st think about all the delicious things I’m gonna do to your body when we get home.”
Tatiana rocked back and her eyes came to mine. Even in the dark I could see desire swirling. Damn she was sexy.
Chapter 23
“She did what?” Declan asked.
We’d just finished telling the guys about the make-out session we’d witnessed.
“Oh, no, it gets worse,” I told him. “After that, Sefa went upstairs. Her older brother, Kadar, followed. I stopped watching when the two of them started going at it.”
“Last thing I saw was Kadar removing her nightgown,” Brooks added.
“What the fuck?” Thad’s eyes were wide in horror. “There’s no way she’s related to them.”
“For argument’s sake, let’s say she’s not the daughter. Then who is she? And is she there of her own free will? And is there a real daughter?”
“Don’t know. But she was smiling and it didn’t look like she was disgusted or being forced. When Kadar and her started going at it, she was trying to get his clothes off,” I told him.
“So what? She’s some sort of mistress they share? Did the younger one…”
“Tahir,” I provided.
“Did Tahir get any action?” Kyle finished.
“Nope. Just dear ole dad and big brother,” Brooks answered.
“That’s fucked. Don’t even joke about it.” Max shook his head.
“I’ll call this in to Garrett and Tex. Hopefully they can get to the bottom of this.” Declan’s gaze landed on mine and he asked, “Seriously, full on make-out session?”
“Yes. Ass grabbing included. Right in front of the house.”
The whole scene was forever imprinted on my mind. I really hoped the intel was bad and Sefa was not Matek Nazari’s daughter. It wasn’t like it would be all that hard for a man like Nazari to get a forged birth certificate made. If that was the case, the question was, why the hell go through all the trouble? It wasn’t like it would’ve been frowned upon for him to take a new wife after the first one died. The age difference wouldn’t even be an issue. The whole situation was bizarre. And totally gross.
Brooks (Special Forces: Operation Alpha) (Gold Team Book 1) Page 13