Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 141281 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 706(@200wpm)___ 565(@250wpm)___ 471(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141281 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 706(@200wpm)___ 565(@250wpm)___ 471(@300wpm)
It won’t be cheap, especially owing Bruce some damages on top of it.
Never thought I’d look forward to hazard pay.
“Tell me you’ve got it out of your system?” he asks once we’re in the meeting room, waiting for the rest of the team to go over logistics.
I look at him and shrug.
Sex grimaces with a sigh. “You know why I’m asking, Triton. If you want to think with your dick on your own time, that’s your business. If it risks tripping you up on the operation...”
He stops and stares at me.
“Sex, I’m solid. It’s one more reason to get this shit over with so I can come home.”
“And what, pray tell, are you coming home to?”
My mouth pulls open, but I can’t find the words.
I’m not sure why he’s so persistent. It’s not like him to crawl up anyone’s ass over something this personal, however dumb it seems.
“Exactly,” he whispers. “Here’s a nickel of free advice—switch off and forget her while you’re in Mexico. Forget about your mother and whatever other problems that’ll still be here staring you in the face when you get back. The stakes are too high to risk having your mind anywhere else.”
“Don’t know if I can,” I admit harshly.
His eyes soften. He looks like he’s about to launch into another fatherly lecture—the kind every man on this crew pretends we can’t stand while we’re actually soaking it in—but his phone goes off loudly in front of him.
He picks it up and must not know it’s on speaker.
“Papa, hi!” a tiny voice chirps over the line.
“Hey, munchkin. Ten bucks says you’re calling about that English homework, huh?”
I smile as that gentle twinkle in his eyes amplifies. He gets up quickly and rushes out of the room, already promising his granddaughter her weight in strawberry ice cream because he can’t be there to help her in person this week.
Sexton Jones never lets anybody see what a softie he is, and maybe that’s the point.
Deep down, I know he’s right.
I need to get Delia out of my head for the next few days, however impossible that seems.
Once this is over, we’ll have a whole lifetime to get our shit sorted.
* * *
The next forty-eight hours are a blur of briefings, restless nights on pull-out beds that are harder than I remember, and a whole lot of nervous jokes with my teammates.
Every man has his own way of bullshitting his nerves away, but as zero hour approaches with a plane waiting for us at a private airport less than an hour away...
It’s already pure torture.
I stow my phone away in my locker long before I need to so I’m not tempted to hit up my princess.
At the ass crack of dawn, we’re split into two teams and loaded on an unofficial cargo flight technically being run by the CIA.
The airspace over Cabo isn’t that far, only a couple hours away. The plane is dead silent with men visualizing the drop.
It’ll be my first airborne assault since Syria, aiming for the skinny strip of land where the compound juts out to sea, and hoping like hell the wind doesn’t blow in the wrong direction.
That’s where my mind should be, but it’s not.
Maybe I’m getting too old for this shit or I’ve seen too much, but I know it’s not that.
I can’t keep my mind off Delia, no matter how many knowing glances I get from the commander.
And even when he’s standing in front of the open hatch screaming, “Go, go, go!” with a lead weight strapped to my back, it’s her on my mind.
Not the dark churning waves and cutting cliffs I barely miss on the way down.
Not the first barking gunfire lighting up the night as the cartel realizes they’ve got company.
Not even the deadly whomp-whomp-whomp of their goddamned contraband military helicopter—an asset we missed in our intelligence.
It’s hovering in the air before I even hit the ground, spraying a cluster of men ahead of me with death. The way their screams choke off instantly tells me some of that hellfire found its mark.
Fuck!
Less than sixty seconds on the ground, and we’re already taking casualties.
The instant I can run, I do, leading my unit—or what’s left of them—toward the break in the outer barbed wire gate we were told about by local informants.
Thank God that part was right.
Everything else is already so FUBARed it makes me shudder, even as I dodge a sweeping searchlight and a new hail of gunfire.
Even as I aim my rifle at a makeshift guard tower and pop the asshole sniper inside.
Even as a few more of my men catch up with me, and I hear Sexton over the radio, roaring louder than the storm overhead.
“Forward, boys! Shake your tails, right over the wall. Do not get bogged down. They’ve got backup moving in fast, about eight miles out.”