JASON’S JUSTICE

DELTA FORCE – TEAM PANTHER BOOK 7

ANNABELLA STONE
 JASON’S JUSTICE
DELTA FORCE—TEAM PANTHER BOOK 7

By Annabella Stone
Jason’s Justice
Copyright ©2019 Annabella Stone
All Rights Reserved.
Jason’s Justice is a work of fiction. Names characters businesses organizations places events and
incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual persons living or dead events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover designed by – LK Graphics - Ireland
No part of this book may be reproduced scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form
without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in
violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Any information regarding persons or places has been used with creative literary license so there may
be discrepancies between fiction and reality. The Special Forces missions and personal qualities within
have been created to enhance the story and again may be exaggerated and not coincide with reality. The
author has full respect for the members of the United States Military and thanks them for their
continuing service to making this the world as safe and free as possible.
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I’d like to thank the following people who have been a part of my journey:
Thank you to my guy, for always having my back. You have owned my
heart for more than two decades and you will always be my hero. You and
our amazingly sweet kiddos, Potterhead and Pottermonkey.… you all make
this crazy life worth it.
Thank you to my soul sister, Simona Naldi, without your help in
researching and developing the plots these stories would lack some of the
extra sparkle and glitter you bring to the table. I will never be able to thank
you enough for all you have done and all you continue to do. Love you!!!
Thank you for being my rock and providing the required boot in the ass when
needed.
Thank you to my family who read this story as it was written, answering
all my military questions and helping ensure my information is as factual as
possible, any mistakes I have made are mine. Thank you for the middle of the
night conversations and virtual smacks upside the head that were needed to
keep me on track.
Thank you, Amy… you have kept me sane and laughing throughout this
whole journey. I will never be able to fully express what your belief in my
stories means to me.
I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank the god who discovered that
Coffee is an amazing way keeping my eyelids propped open when the
characters in my head are yelling out their stories at 3AM… Without the aid
of the coffee gods these stories would not exist.
 CONTENTS

Delta Force - Team Panther

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Epilogue
Excerpt of Zenko
Also by Annabella Stone
 DELTA FORCE - TEAM PANTHER

#1 JONAH’S COMPASS

Jonah Montgomery and Matt Garrett had it all: Army careers they loved;
Team Panther, the men they bonded with as brothers, and each other. But
under the shadow of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, everything fell apart when Matt
was captured in Afghanistan.
Now five years later, a terrorist seeking revenge has come for Jonah. Will
Matt take the opportunity a sniper bullet provides? Can Team Panther find
their missing brother in time? Will they stand together or will the love they
still have for each other falter under the weight of revenge?
Does their compass really point to true love?

#2 TIED UP IN STEELE

Steele Givens doesn’t do relationships and he knows better than to fall for a
man he rescued during a CIA Operation; but then he’s never been a ‘follow
the rules’ kinda man. He always swore he’d never drag someone he cared
about into a world of danger. But what do you do, when danger stalks him
anyway?
Kalon Roberts wanted to move on. He’s done with danger and Black Ops
Operators. But when someone is determined to use him to gain his father's
cooperation, the man who comes to save him, is the one who broke his heart.
They should have never met. They should never have been in each other's
orbits. But now that they are, Steele will take out everything and everyone in
his way to make sure that Kalon makes it out alive.

#3 MALIK’S REDEMPTION

Ex- Mossad agent Malik Dahan has lived for years in the shadows, straddling
the very fine line between his own moral code and the missions his assassin
role required. Two years ago, refusing an order from Mossad's Operations
Base near Glilot Junction on the west end of Tel Aviv put him on a collision
course with Team Panther. The time has come for Malik to face his demons
and the secret he has been hiding. A secret that can rip apart the very essence
of everything that is Delta Force – Team Panther.
Zeke Givens seized the chance to escape the mob violence he grew up
with to become a Texas ranch hand. Months later the last man he expected to
see on the ranch is the hottest one night stand he could ever remember. A
man who stole his breath and drew every protective instinct he had to the
fore. Zeke will use every dirty trick and all the skills he learned at his father’s
knee to protect Malik, even if it means losing the only family he has left.
Can a one-night stand turn into a Happy Ever After? Malik just needs to
stop running long enough to realize that Zeke is his redemption and their
happy ever after is right there waiting for them.

#4 MICAH’S PROMISE

Micah Kennedy has lived with PTSD for years. He is an expert at hiding his
struggles behind the quick wit and snark that is very much a part of his
makeup. His need to keep a promise to a dying comrade feeds his nightmares
and invades his dreams—until that promise brings him military K-9 Delta.
Hawk McKinnon has spent most of his life kicking trouble’s ass in every
hotspot around the globe. Now his sniper hasn’t returned from a CIA
sanctioned mission in Pakistan and all bets are off. When Hawk comes
calling looking for help, Micah doesn’t hesitate and jumps at the chance to
repay a debt. A mission that will set him on a path to the one thing he never
knew he was looking for: love!
Creed Erikson cursed the betrayal that caused his capture and vowed
vengeance on those responsible. He knew Hawk was coming for him—he
never doubted it for a second—but Micah Kennedy and Delta? They threw
him for a loop.
Can Micah embrace his destiny, believe in the strengths of the bond of
the triad that the fates have created or will he refuse to believe that he too
deserves a happily ever after?

#5 CHRISTMAS PANTHER STYLE

With booms, kabooms, and bullets flying. Delta Force – Team Panther are on
a mad dash across continents, on a rescue mission, in a plane painted like
Santa’s Sleigh.
Join some friends old and new as they chase the enemy none of them ever
wanted. One of their own.
Find out who is on the Naughty List this year, in Christmas Panther Style.

#6 GRIF’S SALVATION

Do no harm. It’s a mantra former Delta Force Team Panther medic, Griffin
St. Clare, follows to the letter—until someone comes after his family. He’ll
do whatever it takes to keep them safe, even if it puts his own life on the line.
Grif knows the only way he can fix things, including his own broken heart, is
to find his man, bring him home, and open himself to love again, but getting
his family back together is going to be a challenge—especially considering
his guy is AWOL.
Garrett ‘Rock’ Rockwell is used to dealing with trouble, but betrayal is
another matter. After the devastating blow Shar delivered, he thought he
would never want another woman in his bed again, but Allie has awoken
something in him he can’t explain. Rock loves Grif, but they both know
something is missing from their life—a third. Is Allie the right person to fill
the hole left behind, or is getting into something new with a teammate’s sister
a bad idea?
Allie Kennedy has always loved her bosses. She regretted not taking a
chance with them before, but now they are finally free, she is determined to
help her two troubled warriors heal. Grif and Rock may have had their hearts
hurt, but Allie will prove to them that bruised is not broken.
Their path has never been straight or perfect. Many times, it hasn’t even
gone in the right direction, but can Grif and Rock open themselves up to
loving more than each other again? Can Allie get them to trust her enough to
give them all one more shot at happily ever after, or will Grif and Rock refuse
to see what has been right in front of them all along?

#7 JASON’S JUSTICE

Jason LeHar learned his tracking skills as a kid in the Bayous of Louisiana.
Those skills earned him a place on Delta Force Team Panther, and he found
the family he chose for himself. When his best friend’s relationship with one
of their team commanders was exposed. The world he had built fell apart and
he drifted for years, taking one Government sanctioned job after another,
until one man called him home, with a single short sentence, “Panther needs
you.”
James “Frtiz” Blackwell, as a former Delta Force Commander, and leader
of the team who rescued Matt Garrett in Afghanistan. He carries the guilt of
having exposed Jonah and Matt’s relationship, causing their discharge and
the reassignments of all Team Panther members. Now as more secrets are
exposed and bullets start to fly once again, can he convince the stubborn man
he loves that everyone deserves a second chance?
It is one thing to go to war for your country, it's a whole different ball
game when the ones you are fighting for are the ones you love more than life
itself. After years of betrayals, backlash, and battles, everything Delta Force
Team Panther has fought for is at stake, including the ones they love. Jason
and Fritz will need to face the ghosts of their pasts and fight together to have
the happy ever after they both crave but are too stubborn to admit to.
 CHAPTER ONE

COMBAT OUTPOST KALAGUSH, NURISTAN PROVINCE, AFGHANISTAN,

2011

TARFU, Jason thought. Things Are Really Fucked Up… There was never a
good time to drop a bombshell, and his best friend, Jonah, had just taken
dropping bombshells to a whole new level. Jason was pretty fucking sure his
jaw was still on the freaking floor of the MH-60L Blackhawk helicopter.
How the fuck had he missed it?
Idiot.
He and the rest of Delta Force Team Panther now faced a mission
debriefing.
Interrogation, more like.
Fucking hell. He didn’t want to be here. They had found and rescued
Matt, blown a hole the size of the Barringer Crater into the side of the Hindu
Kush, taking out the assholes who had captured and held Matt for two days.
No, sir, Jason had better things to do than sit and go over the ins and outs of a
duck’s ass. He needed to be on a bird heading for the Gulf, where they had
taken Matt, and he needed to be on it, STAT. Jonah and Matt had some
explaining to do.
“Roommates my ass.”
He assumed Jonah was on the medical ship, too, as in his opinion, given
the way Matt had wrapped around him like a freaking monkey, there was no
place else Jonah could be.
“Fuck!”
Jason punched the wall of the shower cubicle hard. The pain jolting from
his bruised knuckles, up his forearm, gave him the focus he needed to keep
from losing his shit.
Good one, dumbass. You pick the only fucking shower with tiled walls in
the COP and then you punch it.
“What?” Steele stepped out of the shower cubicle next to Jason and
grabbed a towel. Wrapping it around his hips, he shook his head, sending
water droplets flying in all directions. “You talking to yourself, Jase?”
“Sometimes I need expert advice.”
“Debatable,” Grif shrugged, “but you are throwing me snark, so I know
you are okay.”
“Thoughts?”
Jeez, elaborate will ya? But Jason figured Steele knew exactly what he
meant. Instead of adding on more words, he watched his team commander.
He twisted the dial in the shower, switching off the water. Giving himself a
quick scrub with a towel, he pulled a T-shirt out of his go bag and gave it a
sniff before pulling it on.
“I’m pissed they didn’t tell me,” Steele muttered, “but it’s none of my
business what they’re doing in their private time—even if it is each other.”
“You think they thought we would give a shit?”
There ya go—almost full sentences. Better.
Why the hell did the sarcastic voice in his head always have to sound like
his father?
Jason eyed Steele with curiosity. It was hard to tell what the man was
thinking—even for him, and he had worked with Steele for years. Just like he
knew exactly where each member of his team would be for every step they
took when in the field, he knew if Steele didn’t feel like telling him he
wouldn’t.
“Fuck knows.” Steele shrugged. “If it was me, I might be more worried
about getting careless. Maybe that’s what is bothering them. You know that
saying: it’s not a secret if someone knows? Maybe it’s also a touch of that
too.”
“Truth,” Jason agreed.
Steele stepped into his combat pants. “Debrief in fifteen.” His voice rose
to ensure the rest of Delta Force Team Panther heard him.
“Yup.”
“There better be coffee.” Grif stuck his head around the shower curtain
before pulling it back and stepping out. “Make sure there is coffee.”
“I’m going to the Mess right now.” Steele finished tying his boots. “Jase,
smack Kennedy on the ass and tell him to hurry it up.”
“Fuckers. I’m washing my hair,” Micah yelled. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
 “He means he’ll be at least another hour,” Jason deadpanned to Steele.
“Limp dick motherfuckers can’t even let a man enjoy a fucking shower in
peace.” Micah switched off the water. He didn’t bother with a towel, just
strode straight to his go bag and started pulling on clothes. “Someone
mentioned coffee?”
“Steele did.” Grif nodded in Steele’s direction as he strapped on the wrist
scabbards he used to hold his blades before picking up his guns.
Jason knew without looking that Steele, Grif, and Micah were also
checking their weapons—just as he was checking his Heckler and Koch
HK416 Assault rifle with Special Forces Modifications. Their hands all
moved with precision, checking bullets, optics, illuminators, sighting devices
and the like. Next, their SIG Sauer P228s were checked. Never once did
anyone look to see what the others were doing. For them, this was routine,
muscle memory learned over years of practice. Within minutes their routines
were complete. They rose as one and headed to the door.
The heat of the Afghani sun rose sweat along Jason’s brow almost as
soon as he stepped out the door. Digging into the pockets on his vest, he
tugged out a bandana. God freaking bless Micah’s momma for sending them
in a care package a couple of years ago.
He folded it and tied it around his brow to keep the sweat from falling
into his eyes, and pulled his ball cap on, peak facing forward to further shade
the shape of his face. A pair of wrap-around shades completed the look.
Once done, they moved as one down the dusty walkways between the
massive shipping containers that had been converted into the combat
outpost’s buildings.
Coffee… need coffee.
Next to him, Jason felt the shift of air and even without seeing it he felt
the hitch in Micah’s step. His senses went on full alert. While they should be
safe enough here on what was essentially US property, it was still
deployment. They were still on foreign soil. He and his brothers wouldn’t
fully relax until they were back in the United States and behind the All-
American gate at Fort Bragg, even then it was questionable.
Jason’s hand went immediately to his gun, his eyes scanning their
surroundings. “Clear.”
“Clear,” Steel responded.
“Clear too,” Grif added.
Micah’s lack of response prompted Jason to turn to his left. Fuck. Micah
stood with his head bowed in front of a flag-draped casket lying in an almost
empty building. No matter how many times Jason saw a fallen comrade
waiting for an Angel Flight home it still dug deep into his soul. Every time it
handed him one hell of a reality check. His team, his brothers… so far, they
had been lucky. This time they had come way too close.
Inwardly, he shored up his defenses. He knew this debrief they were
heading to was going to suck.
“It’s Caldera,” Micah said. It was the only explanation they needed.
Silently, Jason, Steele and Grif moved to stand at Micah’s back, giving
their brother the time to pay his respects to the man who fought and died at
his side in COP Wild-Wolf only a few short days before.
Micah laid his hand on the flag. “I promise I’ll find her and look after
her.”

JAMES ‘FRITZ’ Blackwell poured himself a mug of the sludge that passed
for coffee here. Over and over his mind ran through the events of the last few
days. He resisted the urge to dig his fingers into his eyes and squeeze them
shut in frustration. He refused to show the fucker who was bitching at the
server in the Mess how annoyed he was becoming. Seriously, what the hell
did Colonel Lang expect? This was a fucking Combat Outpost—or a Forward
Operating Base, if you wanted to fancy it up Air Force style—in freaking
Afghanistan, not the damn Ritz. Latte was not fucking happening. Period.
“Colonel, Sir, we are holding up the line.” Fritz kept his voice low,
ensuring it didn’t travel in the small building.
Seriously, how the fuck Colonel Lang got to 06 level and brigade
commander was beyond him. Right now, though, he was more concerned
about why the Colonel hadn’t let him out of his sight since the Black Hawk
carrying Matt Garrett and Jonah Montgomery had taken off for the Gulf.
Damn it.
Fritz could read the writing on the wall. His gut told him this debriefing
was going to be more than the standard “what we did, why we did it, and
what we would do differently.”
“I know that, Major,” Lang snapped, “but I’m going to stand right here
until this Marine moves his ass and finds me milk for my coffee.”
 Fritz felt more than a twinge of sympathy for the young Marine who had
the misfortune to be serving at the counter.
Jeez, Lang, could you be more of an asshole?
“Sir.” Fritz tried really fucking hard to keep the disgust out of his voice
while he attempted to reason with the Colonel. “This outpost is two days
away from restocking flights from Kabul. Milk may not be available until
then.”
“Then I will stand right here and he can go find a damn goat and milk it.”
Colonel Lang’s voice was rising with every word.
Breathe… Do not punch him… Do not punch him.
“How about we go grab a table and…” Fritz snuck a quick look at the
name tag, “Sanchez here can go check the stores? There might be a can of
dried milk.” He winked at Sanchez behind the Colonel’s shoulder.
“I’ll wait while he looks,” Lang insisted.
Asshole.
“Excuse me, Sirs.” The rumbling growly voice laced with a southern
drawl from behind him sent a shiver down Fritz’s spine.
Oh fuck.
Fritz recognized that voice. He had heard it so many times over the last
few days as they searched for the Panthers missing man and every damn time
Fritz sprung a semi.
Almost as if his dick was listening to his inner thoughts it began to push
against his cammies. Fuck.
“Yes, LeHar?”
“Y’all wanna have some of my cow?” Jason held a tin out and shrugged.
“Seeing as it’ll save the Colonel waiting and all.”
“Thank you, LeHar.” Fritz nodded at the man standing behind him.
Fuck, they grow them big in Louisiana.
Jason LeHar was at least a couple of inches above six foot. Brown shaggy
hair and a beard combined with muscles and one hell of a walk should not be
so fucking sexy, but it was.
“You’re welcome.” Jason’s face as he said it didn’t reveal an ounce of the
frustration or annoyance that Fritz was feeling.
He didn’t even bat an eyelid when Lang snatched the can of dried milk
out of his hand and added some to his coffee mug.
Did they know? Fritz wondered. Did Team Panther know about Matt and
Jonah?
 If he had to hazard a guess, based on the stunned silence when Jonah
made the big reveal, he would say no. He knew he was hoping in vain that
Lang had missed it. It was bugging the shit out of him that Lang appeared to
have a hard on for the Panthers. He just wasn’t sure what he could do about
it.
“Um… Colonel Lang, Sir?” Jason’s eyes were lasered onto the Colonel
as he walked away from the Mess counter.
Fritz pulled himself out of his stupor.
Idiot! Stop staring at LeHar and keep your freaking head in the game.
“Colonel Lang, Sir!” Jason’s voice hardened when the other man kept
walking. “Now you added some to your coffee, may I have my milk can
back, please?”
Fritz swore he almost felt Jason’s muscles bunch as he went to walk after
their commanding officer. He side-stepped, blocking Jason from following.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “He’s being a dick.”
“Yup.” Jason’s jaw tightened. “Fucker put it in his pocket.”
“I’ve got a spare, Jase.” Micah shouldered Jason to get his attention. “Let
him keep it.”
“Fine.” Jason nodded to Fritz. “You better get back.” He gestured in the
direction Lang had taken. “Because bless his heart, he looks like someone
pissed in his Wheaties.”
Fritz swallowed back a laugh. Whose bright idea was it to make a Delta
Force team from a bunch of southern boys? They deserved a fucking medal.
“Later.”
“Yes, Sir.”
 CHAPTER TWO

MISSION AFTER-ACTION REVIEW (AAR)

“WHAT’S in the family stays in the family,” Steele muttered. “Say what you
saw and be straight.”
“Copy that.” Jason blew out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding.
The last people he wanted to land in the shit was Jonah or Matt.
He placed his phone and comms equipment into the box on the wall
outside the briefing room door. Once they went in the doors would be locked.
Nobody went in or out until the debriefing was finished.
Jason juggled the two Styrofoam mugs in his hands and opened the door
to the converted shipping container that would serve as their debriefing room.
A blast of heat rushed out of the dimly lit room to meet him.
Someone had done a pretty decent conversion job.
The walls were lined with plywood—no doubt with soundproofing as
well to prevent intel being overheard by any passerby. A massive pull-down
screen took up the left wall and a table made out of planks sat in the center of
the room with upturned crates as chairs.
Okay then, numb asses coming right up.
Jason scanned the room for windows. None. Typical. With the Afghani
sun beating down on the metal they were going to cook like some of Momma
Kennedy’s Sunday roasts.
Someone is going to give me a fan, right?
There was going to be fourteen people in this tiny freaking room for
hours. It was going to get smelly for sure.
“Get your asses in here and sit the fuck down,” Lang ordered. “Shut up.
Time to start.” He gestured to Fritz. “Major Blackwell, take us through the
mission.”
 Fritz got to his feet and cleared his throat. “We were tasked with the
rescue of Staff Sergeant Matt Garrett, captured at COP Wild-Wolf four days
ago.” He moved the mouse next to the laptop, bringing the screen on the wall
to life. “Twenty-four hours after his capture this video appeared online.”
Jason clamped down on the inside of his cheek. If anything was going to
piss them off, it was the sight of their teammate and brother with a gun to the
back of his head and a Taliban slogan plastered across the wall behind him.
The asshole with his face covered demanded the release of several high-
profile prisoners who were currently being held at a black site awaiting
transportation to Guantanamo Bay.
Breathing in through his nose, Jason forcibly kept his hands flat on the
table. He really fucking would have preferred to throw his K-Bar through the
fucker’s face—even if it only was on the screen.
Fritz hit the pause button. “This video was broadcast on YouTube and on
national TV stations. We were contacted by one of our interpreters. His
father, a goatherder, had told him over dinner the previous night he
recognized the rock formation behind Staff Sergeant Garrett.”
“It’s the Hindu Kush,” Lang muttered. “There are damn rocks
everywhere.”
Asshole.
Jesus, what Jason wouldn’t give to have the opportunity to shoot that
asshole off the face of the planet—not only for the bad manners for
interrupting, but also his stupidity. He had refused to take any fucking lead
when they needed one most.
“Corporal Montgomery located the goatherder and we determined the
intel was credible.” Fritz ignored the interruption from Lang and continued
with a rundown of the mission. “We didn’t have enough time and the threat
to Staff Sergeant Garrett was determined to be too high to complete a
thorough TSE.” Fritz pressed the mouse again, bringing up the out of date
drone and satellite footage their teams had relied on. “A hasty Tactical Site
Exploitation was carried out by Panthers’ team tracker. He located the
warlord’s camp. He was buried into some caves. We went in at zero dark
thirty.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the twitch in Steele’s jaw. He knew
his commander was pissed. He was too.
Using the cover the table provided, he pressed his boot down onto
Steele’s instep, reminding him to stay in place and keep his mouth shut for
now.
Fuckballs, since when am I the logical one? Hell has frozen over.
He knew that Steele was pissed Lang had refused to acknowledge the
goatherder may have intel. He was too. Someday that motherfucker was
going to get his ass handed to him. Karma might need a helping hand. When
the time was right, Jason would be only too happy to help her out.
Jason studied Major Fritz Blackwell, Matt and Steele’s counterpart on
Team Lynx, as he flicked over to the camera footage showing the battle
through the warlord’s camp and down the tunnels. The soundtrack of the
camera footage, gunfire, shouting and the screams of dying terrorists echoed
around the room.

Steele: “Contact.”
Lynx team member: “There, you see him.”
Lynx team member 2: “He’s firing.”
Grif: “Fucker’s an idiot.”
Fritz: “Proceed.”
Jason: “RPG.”

Jason stopped himself from ducking as the images shook and onscreen
Fritz dived for cover.

Jason: “Actual fire came from the tunnel entrance itself.”

Fritz pointed to the screen with a laser pointer, highlighting the areas the
tangos were shooting from as the teams pressed forward.

Jonah: “RPG fucker is mine.”

Steele: “Roger that.”

No sooner had Steele given the go ahead when the terrorist holding the
grenade launcher flew backward from the force of a bullet to the face.

Jonah: “Clear.”
 Once again, the teams pressed forward, moving into the tunnels
themselves. Jason wanted to yell at Fritz to just hurry up and get it done.
Ironic, huh? he told himself.
Normally, he was the one at After Action Reports requesting rewinds and
pauses, wanting to know what he had missed, why he missed it and how he
could learn from it going forward.
This time, nope.
He wanted to get this briefing over with. He wanted his boots on the deck
of whatever floating hospital Matt and Jonah were on and he fucking wanted
it, STAT.
Fritz moved on with the rundown of the mission, pointing out items of
interest on the screen when warranted. Jason saw when he, Micah, and a
couple of Team Lynx split off to check down an off shoot. The screen split in
two.
“Guys?” Fritz turned to the room and raised an eyebrow in the direction
of the guys who had cleared that area of the cave system.
“Yes, Sir?” Jason’s answer was echoed by the guys who had been with
him. “Dead end, probably used for storage at some point. But it was empty.”
Fritz nodded. He pressed the mouse changing the screen back to single
view once again and moved on. “We are approaching what looked like a
holding cell.”
Jason felt Steele stiffen beside him as they watched him place a small
amount of C4 on the lock and blast it open. Thank fuck Matt wasn’t directly
behind it.
Fritz went left as they entered and Steele pivoted to the right, clearing the
room. Jonah had point position, clearing the area directly in front of them.
Across the room, Jason could make out the shape of a body. His stomach
revolted knowing that body was Matt. He could still smell the stench of
blood, piss, and shit that had come from Matt on the helo.
He scrubbed his hand down over his face to hide the fact he wanted to
gag.
Jonah: “Fuck.”
On screen Jonah bolted across the space separating him from Matt. Jason
had never seen his commander look so defeated… so broken. Even on screen,
he could see Matt had been tortured.
Jonah reached for Matt and Jason winced when he saw Matt flinch, as if
expecting a blow.
 Jonah: “Let’s go home—”
Steele coughed, covering the next words Jonah said.
“Stop.” Colonel Lang interrupted when Fritz allowed the footage to keep
playing. “Rewind that!” he ordered Fritz. “I want to hear what Montgomery
said.”
“Uh…” Fritz stumbled over his words, but did as ordered and sent the
footage back approximately twenty seconds. He winced as he hit play.
Once again, they watched Jonah skidding to his knees next to Matt and
watched Matt flinch when Jonah reached for him.
Fuck, that sight made Jason’s heart hurt.
Jonah: “Let’s go home, babe. Let’s go home.”
“Stop it,” Lang ordered, “and play it again.”
“Enough, Sir.” Fritz paused the footage. “I believe it was clear.”
“They knew.” Lang spat the words out, his hands waving to take in the
four members of Team Panther seated around the table.
“No, Sir,” Fritz told him. “Look at Givens’ face.” He pointed to the
screen, which was frozen, where he’d paused it.
At any other time, the comical look of shock in Steele’s expression would
have made him the butt of every joke and earned him a shit ton of teasing for
weeks. Now, each man sitting at that table was trying to figure out what the
fuck was happening. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was in the process of being
repealed. The verdict was due any day. Surely this asshole wasn’t going to
make one last example while he fucking could, was he?
“Prepare the paperwork for the Court Martial,” Colonel Lang ordered
Fritz.
Fucker! He was. Lang was really going to do it.
Stunned silence filled the room for a couple of seconds, before the men
all spoke at once. Jason was damn sure he was doing a pretty good imitation
of Steele’s on screen look.
“Sir…”
“But…”
“Now, wait a minute.”
“Shut up,” Lang roared, cutting off all the protests, not only from Panther
but from Lynx members too. “I am the superior officer, and they broke the
rules.”
It was Steele’s turn to step on Jason’s boot, the pressure from his foot
reminding him to keep his mouth shut.
 Rage, fury, anger… call it want you want, it blasted through Jason. It
chapped his ass so fucking bad that all he could do was sit there. Mother of
fucking camel balls almighty, they were so fucked.
Somehow, they got through the rest of the briefing, watching images of
Matt being carried on Jonah’s shoulder as they exited the caves, loading him
onto a bird and flying here to Kalagush.
Swear to fuck if he asks us what we would have done differently, I am
going to shove that can of cow he stole from me earlier so far up his ass he’ll
be spitting milk for a month.
Fritz shut off the video footage as soon as they loaded onto the Black
Hawks. “That’s it.” He hesitated for a split second before he added on the,
“Sir.”
Lang nodded. “Good.” He rubbed his hands together. “Get going with
that paperwork,” he told Fritz. “You four—” He pointed to Steele, Micah,
Grif, and Jason, “—are to go to Bagram. I shall deal with you there.”
Fuck, Bagram? Shit. That could not be freaking good.
Jason forced his face to remain blank. Thank fuck he had years of
practice hiding his emotions. It was easy to pretend this asshole wasn’t
affecting him.
Maybe growing up with his father had been worth it after all—even if it
was only to give him the satisfaction of not allowing Colonel Fuckwad to
know how pissed he was.

FRITZ WATCHED his team and the Panthers file out of the debriefing
room. He hoped his face remained blank.
What the fuck just happened?
Was Lang really going to go ahead with a court martial this close to the
end of DADT? Holy fucking shit. He wracked his brain trying to think of
something he could say or do to fix it.
Nothing… he had nothing…
Fuck!
“Have the transcript of that,” Lang nodded to the screen, “in my inbox
before you go to Bagram.”
What the fuck? “Bagram, Sir?”
 “Yes, Blackwell, Bagram. You will be witness as I file the paperwork.”
Fuck my life. Fritz could do nothing but watch his superior officer walk
out the door. He knew now what the Colonel was doing. He was using him as
a scapegoat while Lang broke up Team Panther.
How the fuck?
Who could he call?
Shit. Shit. Shit.
Fritz gathered paperwork and all the materials they had brought to the
debriefing before sitting at the makeshift table in front of his laptop.
Do your job and follow orders, the selfish part of his brain warned him.
Lang could come after Lynx if you don’t.
The part of him that had been raised to be a straight-talking, hardworking
soldier revolted.
There had to be something he could do.
 CHAPTER THREE

LONDON, 2016

“JASON, MATE, YOUR PHONE IS HOPPING.”

Jason jerked awake and pulled himself out of the dream that had rapidly
been becoming a nightmare. Before he was fully awake, his body kicked into
gear and his weapon was aimed in the direction of the door, the hammer
pulled back ready to fire.
“Mate?”
“What?” Jason yelled.
“Your phone’s been ringing for the last hour.” Alan’s voice through the
door was muffled. His British accent made the words seem garbled in Jason’s
head.
“Yeah.” Jason threw back the covers and swung his legs out of the bed.
He scrubbed his hand over his jaw and picked up the divers watch to peer
at the face, checking the time. Six a.m.
For fuck’s sake, he only got in at four and was supposed to be on
downtime for the next week. The assholes at the Department of Justice better
not be calling to ask him a stupid question about his last report, or heads were
going to fucking roll.
Faintly through the door, he could hear the sound of Junip’s ‘Line of fire’
start playing again.
“Coming,” he yelled at Alan.
He gently released the hammer on the SIG, checked the round in the
chamber, and stuffed it back under his pillow.
Following the sounds of the song, he located his jeans in the bathroom
next to the shower where he had dumped them last night after getting in.
Last night my ass. That was two hours ago.
 He squatted to rummage through his pockets and squinted at the screen.
A Texas number?
What the fuck? Matt, maybe?
Only one way to find out.
He pressed answer, “LeHar.”
“Jason, it’s Major Blackwell,” the voice said. “Do you remember me?”
“Yes, I remember you.”
Remember? Yeah, I am not likely to forget you.
What he couldn’t figure out was why the fuck was Major ‘Hot Ass’
calling him?
“Do you have any fucking idea what time it is here, Major?”
“Shit, I forgot about the time difference,” Fritz said. The words that
followed turned Jason’s insides to ice. “But Panther needs you.”
“I’m on my way.” Jason didn’t hesitate. If his brothers needed him, then
he was going. He didn’t give a flying fuck who the hell was calling to let him
know. “Who?”
“Jonah.”
Jason forgot how to breathe for so long, he gasped when his body
reminded him that he needed air to survive. “Alive?”
“Yes.”
A blast of relief shot through his veins. It made his legs weak and Jason
sat down heavily on the toilet, his ass sinking into the bowl. Shit, now he
knew why women were always bitching about putting the seat down.
“Where am I going?” he demanded.
“You didn’t see the news?” Fritz sounded curious. “It was all over it the
last couple of days.”
“I was OCONUS and dark,” Jason answered absently.
His brain was already figuring out how he was getting to the USA. He
figured it didn’t matter telling Fritz he had been on a job. Fritz was the one
who had recommended him for this role after the shit show in Afghanistan
that was Panthers’ last mission together. It had been five years since he had
seen his best friend. He would take any opportunity given to repair the bonds
that had been broken.
Jason got to his feet and went to look for his laptop. “I’ll book a flight.
Where am I heading?”
As soon as he opened Google, the first heading he saw was about Jonah.
He quickly scanned the article.
 There was a shooter… and he was stabbed? Fuck, it looked like Jonah
was still the trouble magnet he had been since Jason first met him when they
were seven years old.
“I have already booked you on a commercial flight at ten hundred hours
out of Gatwick, heading for Calgary,” Fritz told him. “You’ll meet Micah and
Grif there and fly onto Houston.”
“Wait… what? Houston?” Confusion warred with the relief that Jonah
was still alive inside him. “Jonah is in Texas?”
“Yup.”
There was only one reason for Jonah to be in Texas.
About fucking time.
He needed the confirmation even so. “With Matt?”
“Yeah,” Fritz said.
“Good.”
Jason went back to his bedroom and grabbed a go bag. He hated flying
commercial. It meant he had to leave his weapons here. Damn it after so
many years of being armed he felt naked without his knives and guns.
“You were that sure I would come?”
Why are you still talking to him? You have the flight details.
He shrugged it off. Shit like that didn’t matter right now.
“Idiot,” Fritz muttered. “I am surrounded by idiots. Of course you would
come. Panthers’ bonds may be stretched to the limits, but no matter how
close they are to snapping they never have. Your brothers call, you answer,
period. That’s just the kind of man you are.”
Don’t be too sure about that. I think after all this time, those bonds are
cracked for sure.
“Oh.”
Jason wasn’t sure how he felt about the words Fritz said. They were true,
no doubt about it—at least on his side. The bit he wasn’t sure about was this
man knowing him well enough to say them with such confidence. He’d
thought he kept his shit to himself better than that.
He wasn’t quite sure what he should say, so instead he told Fritz, “I’ll be
on that flight.”
“Good.”
The phone line went dead in his ear. Jason looked at the screen before
clicking the off button to shut it down. He stuffed some gear in his bag,
locked his weapons into the safe in the back of his wardrobe, and headed for
the kitchen. Coffee was going to be needed before he fought with the
morning traffic to make it to Gatwick.

JASON SCANNED the crowds of people waiting at the arrival’s gate. He

winced at the massive display of sparkling pink signs in front of him,
‘Welcome home, brother. We’re out of cereal,’ and ‘Kiss me first.’ He
walked past them, hoping his horror didn’t show on his face. Some poor
bastard was getting one hell of a welcome home.
“Over here.”
“Hey, dude.”
Jase turned around at the sound of Micah and Grif’s voices and he closed
his eyes and concentrated hard before muttering, “Oh, fuck my life. I am
going to murder them.”
When he opened them again the pink glitter was still there. “Assholes.”
He strode toward them and smacked both before hugging them. Hard. “Y’all
are assholes.”
“Yup.”
“Jeez, don’t sound so proud of it, Mic.” Jason hooked his arm around
Micah’s neck and rubbed his knuckles over his head noogie-style until a
nudge on the back of his knee and a grumbling growl had him stepping back.
“What the hell?”
“Jase,” Micah scratched the dog’s ears, “you remember Delta?”
“Caldera’s K9?”
“Yeah.” Micah chewed on his bottom lip. “She was being retired. Now,
she’s mine.”
Thank fuck for that. Maybe having the dog would ease the guilt Micah
felt at not keeping the promise to Caldera. Jason recalled the nightmares and
flashbacks that plagued Micah’s dreams. The dog would be a good thing.
“Hello Girl.” Jason squatted onto his heels and held out a hand. Delta
sniffed his knuckles before huffing and pulling back to lean against Micah’s
knees.
“She’s reserving judgement,” Micah told Jason. “Can’t say that I blame
her. You stink.”
“Yeah, transatlantic in economy sucks.”
 “Ouch.” Grif punched Jason on the shoulder. “You got your gear?”
“Yup.” Jason nodded to the bag he had dropped at his feet. “Dump the
signs and we’ll go get some food.”
Grif looked at his watch. “Yeah, we don’t have time for food. Get your
asses moving. We gotta get our connecting flight.”
“Fuck.” Jason grabbed his go bag and slung it over his shoulder. “I’m
gonna waste away to nothing if I don’t get decent food soon.”
“C’mon, we’ll feed you after we clear security,” Grif promised.
“Yup, lead on.”
Jason was more than ready to get his ass to Texas. Those butterflies in his
stomach at the prospect of seeing Jonah again—that was excitement, right?
Yup, nothing at all to do with seeing the sexy as fuck former Major
Blackwell.
 CHAPTER FOUR

GERMANY 2016

JASON RESTED his arms against the shower tiles allowing the pounding of
the water to soothe his aching muscles. How the heck did things get
complicated so damn fast? He was here to help his Panther teammates, not
question everything he had ever told himself he was—no matter how damn
attractive Major James ‘Fritz’ Blackwell was. A man could look at another
man, say he was damn sexy and not be gay, right?
Even thinking the word made the scars on his back ache. They had been
there for so long, Jason usually didn't even remember them, but tonight, they
served as a reminder of who he was, where he had come from and how he
was never going back to Shreveport, Louisiana. He really hoped Jonah was
moving to Texas with Matt, because if he wasn't then he was dragging him to
London with him—no matter what the guard dog who served as his manager
said.
“Jason, have you drowned in there?” Fritz's voice outside the shower
curtain made him jump.
“Shit,” Jase cursed. Fuck, he forgot Jonah assigned him to share a room
with Fritz.
He pulled back the shower curtain, so he could see around it. Fritz was
shaving at the mirror and Jase couldn't stop his eyes trailing down the man's
shirtless muscular back. Those low-slung denims seriously did amazing
things to that ass.
Holy shitballs, Fritz was built like sin.
“You want to grab some food when you’re done there?”
“Huh?”
Soft laughter made Jase startle and tear his eyes away from the denim
covered view he had been admiring.
Oh, shoot me now!
Meeting Fritz’s laughter filled eyes took effort, and when he had the
audacity to wink at him, Jase wasn’t sure if he wanted to jump him or punch
him.
“Um—sure—give me five minutes.”
Jase quickly finished scrubbing the sand and dust of Afghanistan off his
body and out of his hair before switching off the shower. Stepping over the
flak jacket and filthy clothes he had dumped outside the tub, he quickly
wrapped a towel around his waist and fled.
Yup, he admitted it…
He! Fucking! Fled! Into the bedroom.
He wasn’t worried about Fritz seeing his scars. He’d gotten a pretty good
look at them in Muscat. Nope, that flush rising up the back of his neck wasn’t
because of his scars. It was more because of the interest his dick was taking
in one Major Fritz Blackwell. This crush thing he had going on? It was
freaking him the fuck out, especially as he had worked so fucking hard to
keep himself so far in the closet that he could have dinner in Narnia every
night and nobody would bat an eyelid.
Digging around in his ruck, he dragged out a clean pair of combat pants
and pulled them on under the towel. He didn't bother drying himself. Fuck
no, he needed something sturdier than cotton between his idiot dick and its
crazy thoughts.
As he was pulling a T-shirt on over his head, he heard the bathroom door
open.
“They don't bother me,” Fritz told him.
“What doesn’t?”
“Your scars.” Fritz gestured over his shoulder to his back. “I mean it
pisses me off that they are there, but only because of the pain you went
through to get them, not because I think they are…” Fritz paused and sighed.
“I’m making this worse, aren’t I?”
“Yup.” Jase smirked across at him. “I hope you sharpened that shovel
you’re gonna need to dig yourself out of the hole you’ve been making.”
“Oh, shut up,” Fritz muttered. He dropped the towel he had wrapped
around his own waist after his quick shower and dragged on some boxers,
giving Jase an eyeful as he bent over to step into them.
By the time Fritz had dragged on a clean pair of jeans, Jase’s dick was
rock hard and aching as it pressed against the canvas of his combats. He
swallowed as quietly as he could.
“C’mon, let’s see if this place has food that doesn’t have MRE written on
it.”
Fritz patted Jase’s belly on his way to the door. “Don’t worry, I’ll feed
you, and hopefully we can find a beer or two to go with our meal. This is
Germany. We should be spoiled for choice.”
“Fuck the beer,” Jase whispered under his breath. “I’m gonna need a
bucket of Jack to deal with this.”
“We can do that.”
“Shit.” Jason groaned as Fritz opened the door and waved him on ahead
of him. “I said that out loud?”
“Yup.” Fritz’s low husky laughter did something funny to Jase’s stomach.
Ah, fuck. Those weren’t the warm fuzzy feelings Jonah had warned him
about, were they?

SITTING at a table in the bistro next to the hotel, Fritz sipped his beer. He
wasn’t entirely sure whose idea it had been to have him bunk with Jase again,
but he was pretty damn sure he was going to buy them the biggest, most
expensive case of whiskey or brandy or whatever the hell they wanted for it.
He watched Jase—damn it, Jason. He told you to call him Jason—
fiddling with the cutlery at the side of his plate. Jason was sprawled out on
the chair across from him. Did he make him nervous?
Interesting… very interesting indeed.
Fritz searched his mind for something to fill the slightly uncomfortable
silence between them. “You’ve known Jonah a long time?”
“Yeah, we grew up in the same neighborhood in Shreveport.” Jason
shrugged. “We’ve been best buddies since we were maybe, I don’t know,
seven or so.”
“Kind of odd that you haven’t spoken to him in so long then.”
“Yeah, he has a fucking guard dog these days,” Jason muttered. “Jonah
and I will be having a conversation about her.”
Jason was still trying to figure out if it was Sarah’s actions that had
prevented him from speaking to Jonah for so long. That little niggly voice
inside him told him that as much as he wanted to trust that Jonah was back in
his life for good, it didn’t mean it was true.
Everyone left.
They always did.
“Did you know he and Matt were together back then?” Fritz froze when
Jason’s eyes turned frigid. Shit, what did he say?
“That’s none of your business!”
“Um… sorry, I was just making conversation,” Fritz told him.
How the hell did things go downhill so fast?
“I don't talk about anybody else's business with anyone,” Jason finally
said. “It's not my place to do it, so I don't.” He gestured to the half-empty
beer glass in Fritz’s hand. “Want another?”
“Sure.”
Fritz watched his ass as he swaggered away toward the bar, because there
was no way he just walked. No, sir. Jason LeHar’s natural gait when he
wasn’t in tracking mode was a real honest to God swagger that was hot
enough to make every woman’s—and more than half the men—in the room’s
panties spontaneously combust.
Fritz adjusted himself as discretely as he could. No need for anyone else
to see how much just watching that man walk across the floor turned him on.
Spotting Micah and Grif speaking to the hostess before heading their
way, Fritz scooted his chair in further under the table as there was no damn
way he was letting Micah Kennedy get a whiff of the attraction he had going
on for Jason. That was just giving their resident funny guy enough ammo to
make Fritz the butt of his jokes for at least a week.
“What crawled up his ass?” Micah said by way of greeting when he and
Grif reached the table.
Fritz swung around in time to see Jason knocking back a shot before
picking up a second and doing the same. Jason then picked up the beer he had
ordered for Fritz and the third shot for himself.
“Fuck.”
“Yeah,” Grif told Fritz. “He’s either going to get rotten drunk or going to
be singing on his way back to the hotel if he keeps this up. How many did he
have before we got here?”
“I only saw him have the one,” Fritz told them, “but he’s been at the bar
for at least five minutes.” He shrugged. “Enough time to have thrown back a
couple more that I didn’t see.”
 “Fuck,” Micah whispered under his breath as Jason approached the table.
“Think we can still cut him off like we used to?”
“Nope,” Grif said under his breath. “No Jonah tonight, so we're fucked.”
“Damn, I was afraid of that.”
Fritz lifted an eyebrow at the conversation he was clearly not meant to
overhear. Why the hell would it matter if Jason tied one on?
He cleared his throat, about to ask, when Jason placed a beer in front of
him before swinging another chair around, so he could sit next to Fritz as
Micah and Grif filled the far side of the table.
“So, are we ordering non-MREs or what?” Jason kicked Micah under the
table. “Why don't you go put some of that Georgia charm to good use and see
if you can entice a waitress over here. I'm starving.”
“What's going on, Jason?” Grif plastered a stern look on his face, one that
made all the hangers-on at the MC club in Florida where he was Sergeant at
Arms pee their pants like five-year-olds. Then he scowled even harder when
Jason only laughed at him.
“You do know that look doesn’t work on me, not since you and Steele
tried to tie me to the top of the ramp on the training field, right?”
“Fuck you.” Grif wasn't above bitching. Either they found out what the
hell was going on or he could see a couple of barroom brawls in their very
near future.
If they ripped the town apart, the press would have a field day, and they'd
never be safe again, as they would never know when Jonah was lining them
up in his crosshairs.
“What’s going on Jason?” Grif asked, finally getting to the point.
“Nothin’.”
“No more whiskey,” Micah told him. “Seriously, Jase, I don’t want Jonah
on my ass for you losing your temper because you’ve had a barrel full.”
“I am not that—”
Whatever Jason had been about to say was cut off by the waitress arriving
with Fritz and his meal. She took the orders from the other two before Micah
headed to the restroom and Grif headed to the bar to order a beer for himself
and Micah.
Fritz leaned in, so his mouth was right next to Jason’s ear and he was sure
that neither Grif nor Micah, if they were able to see them, could lip-read what
he was saying, and spoke softly.
“We can grab a bottle of Jack after we’ve finished eating and take it back
to the room.” He waited for Jason’s slight nod. “No reason to have them on
your ass. If you want to drink, then I’ll drink with you.”
Jason bobbed his head in agreement, even though his internal alarm
system had klaxons, sirens, and big red flashing lights going off, telling him
that this was a bad idea. But the five shots of Jack Daniels he had thrown
back in the few minutes they had been waiting for their food meant he didn’t
give enough of a shit to pay that warning system any heed, except to smash
that fucker with a virtual hammer to shut it up.
Micah and Grif arrived back at the table at the same time as their food.
Once they were all situated the silence was filled by the occasional moan or
grunt of happiness as they devoured their dinners.
Jason placed his knife and fork onto the plate and pushed it away from
him. Patting his stomach, he looked at the others. “Why is it the first meal
when we get back always tastes the best?”
“Because MREs suck camel balls,” Grif grunted out as he continued
shoveling food into his mouth.
“I’m going to head back to the hotel,” Fritz told them.
Jason opened his mouth as if to protest. Fritz dropped his hand onto his
thigh and squeezed hard. He hoped to hell that Jason remembered he had
agreed to drink there rather than out in the open.
When Jason’s mouth snapped closed again, Fritz added, “You coming
with me, Jason?”
“Yeah.”
Micah and Grif watched both Fritz and Jason throw some money on the
table to cover their bill and head off toward the door. “What do you think
that’s all about?” Micah asked.
“Don't know,” Grif looked thoughtfully after them, “but Jase is on edge. I
haven't seen him like this since after Wild-Wolf—when Matt was taken.”
“Me neither.” Micah wasn't too worried, though. Jase would talk when he
was ready, and having Jonah back in his life could only be a good thing.
Those two were always as thick as thieves.

“YOU WANNA GRAB a couple of glasses or are we drinking straight from

the bottle?” Fritz asked as he pushed the key card into the slot on the door.
 “Sure, we can pretend to be civilized for a couple of minutes,” Jase
muttered.
“What’s going on, Jason?” Fritz unwrapped the plastic seal from the lid
and opened the bottle of Jack Daniels, pouring a healthy shot into each of the
two glasses Jason held out. “You weren’t this on edge earlier.”
“Being out in the open after a mission… it makes me… I don't know...”
Jason shrugged. “Wary. Usually, I just stay indoors until the need to shoot
anyone who approaches from where I can't see them passes.”
Fritz reached out and smacked him. “You idiot, we could have gotten
room service.” He nodded to the glass in Jason’s hand. “Knock that back and
have a couple more.”
“Might not be a good idea,” Jason told him quietly. “I don't drink a lot
usually. My old man was a mean drunk and my temper is on a short leash at
the best of times. Add in alcohol and I tend to lose it.” He looked at Fritz. “I
refuse to turn into that asshole.”
“You will never be that asshole.”
Fritz sat on the bed and scooted until his back was to the wall with his
feet stretched out in front of him. “You know it’s an issue, so you take steps
to prevent it, even if you sometimes slip. That already makes you a better
man than he ever was.”
Jason shrugged. He didn’t expect Fritz to get it. His family was just one
big line of drunken assholes. The problem was he liked a drink just as much
as the next man. He just had to remember not to do it when his control was
on a knife-edge, like coming back from an op or off deployment.
He sat on the bed beside Fritz and held out his glass all the while cursing
himself in his head for the irony of bitching about an alcoholic father, while
holding out his glass for a refill.
It didn’t take very long for them to work through most of the bottle.
“See?” Fritz turned his head to look at Jason. “You didn’t lose your
temper or get pissed.”
Jason turned his head to look at Fritz. Shit, when did Fritz move closer?
He dropped his line of sight to Fritz's lips and had to bite back a groan when
he saw the tip of Fritz's tongue poke out to catch the drop of whiskey from
his last sip.
“What?”
Fritz’s question had him jerking back. Shit, had he been leaning in closer
to him? Fuck, to what? Kiss him? Damn it.
 “You’re not gay… no son of mine will ever be gay…”
Jason squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. Enough. He didn’t need
his asshole father’s voice in his head telling him what to do now.
“Um, nothing.”
“Jason?” Fritz pressed. “What’s going on?”
Jason stared at him blankly. Clearly, his head was somewhere not so fun.
Well, fuck. If talking wasn’t going to work, he’d have to try to get Jason’s
attention another way.
Fritz wrapped his fingers around Jason’s chin and leaned his face close
enough to rub his cheek off Jason’s, their stubble catching slightly with each
pass. Jason shifted against him. Fritz tilted his head so he could see his face.
His eyes were half-closed and heavy-lidded.
Fuck it, the worst he could do was punch him… right?
Fritz pulled Jason against him and kissed the top of his head.
“What are we doing, Fritz?” Jason whispered against his chest as he
draped an arm around Fritz’s waist and heaved out a heavy sigh, as he buried
his face in the crook of Fritz’s neck.
“Don’t know,” he whispered back, “but I kinda like it.”
“Yeah me too.”
Fritz wasn't sure which of them made the first move. All he knew was
holy fuck—even the taste of whiskey couldn’t block out the flavor of Jason
LeHar on his lips. Somewhere in his head, he knew this probably wasn’t a
very good idea. But that sizzling sound in his skull was his brain cells
shorting out, and he really didn't give a shit that they shouldn’t be doing this.
Nope… he was too busy trying to taste every inch of Jason's mouth to worry
about shouldn’t.
Finally, the need to breathe had Jason pulling back. He nuzzled Fritz’s
cheek and dropped kisses along the firm jaw. He continued the path down to
Fritz’s shoulder. He licked and sucked up a bruise that dragged a ragged
groan from Fritz.
“Fuuuck.” Fritz opened his eyes to see Jason watching him, biting his lip,
his body language wary.
When Jason pulled back, Fritz felt a pang of loss at the lack of contact.
His eyes nearly popped out of his head when Jason pulled his T-shirt over his
head and snapped open the button on his pants.
“What are you waiting for?” Jason ordered him. “Strip!”
Fritz’s hands were moving before his brain caught up with the order. He
kicked off his shoes, not really giving a shit where they landed. He didn’t
stop to think about it, just did what felt right and grabbed Jason to pull him
down on top of him.
“Are you sure?” The question was grunted out as Jason was once again
kissing down his throat, even as he was drawing Fritz’s shirt up, only
separating enough to pull it off over his head.
“Yeah,” Jason muttered back between licks and nips to Fritz’s skin,
“damn sure.”
Fritz groaned as Jason's mouth closed around a nipple and he bit down
with his teeth.
“Urgh.” His dick pushed insistently against his zipper, and he groaned
again when he felt Jason’s hardness pressed firmly against his thigh.
Fritz wrapped his arms around Jason’s back, kneading the hard muscles
he found there, his fingers tracing over the barely-there scars. Fritz ignored
the slight flinch Jason gave at the first touch over the rough spots on his
otherwise smooth skin. He breathed harshly, each inhalation loud in the quiet
of the room.
Jason buried his fingers in Fritz’s short hair, rubbing over his scalp. He
used his grip to tilt Fritz’s head backward, arching his throat.
Fritz’s mouth fell open as Jason pressed hot, open-mouthed kisses to his
neck and throat. He grunted in surprise when Jason bit sharply at his pulse
point. Jason rubbed his body against Fritz’s, pushing him firmly back into the
softness of the mattress. Fritz moaned, a shudder running through his body.
Damn, who would have thought Jason could blow his mind with a couple of
kisses?
The desperate, needy sound Fritz made would have been embarrassing if
he was in any way coherent enough to give a shit.
“Thought I told you to strip,” Jason muttered as he fumbled with Fritz’s
zipper. “Fuck, you better do it before I catch you in the fucking zipper.” He
lifted his hips enough for Fritz to push his hands in between them to rip open
his jeans.
They both groaned at the skin on skin contact when Jason dropped his
weight back down onto Fritz, their hard dicks rubbing together.
“Fuck.” Jason felt Fritz’s hands on his back. One ran upward to wrap
around the back of his neck, the other downward to grab his ass.
Jason was pulled tight against Fritz’s body. He could feel Fritz’s cock
pressed against his,
 “Jeez,” he groaned out, the sound more a rumble in his chest than audible.
His dick was growing harder. He pushed forward into Fritz, grinding
himself against his solid body.
He can see some of your scars from here.
Shut up.
Jason pushed the moment of self-consciousness that tried to sneak in
aside. Right now, he had better things to do, starting with stroking every inch
of Fritz he could reach.
Fritz pulled Jason's head down into another kiss, open-mouthed,
aggressive with plenty of tongue. His senses were on a tilt-a-whirl. He made
an impatient sound into Jason's mouth and that small sound sent a rush of lust
through Jason.
“Lift up,” Fritz ordered. Jason elevated his hips enough so Fritz could
push a hand back in between them to wrap around their dicks making them
both moan, “Ummm—fuck—yeah.”
Fritz groaned into Jason’s mouth, as he squeezed their cocks tightly
together. Silky wet fluid dripped from the heads of both their dicks, providing
enough slickness that his hand easily moved over their skin.
“Damn, that's so good,” Jason whispered, his breath catching in his throat.
The last coherent thought he had was he wanted to kiss Fritz again, so badly.
Sealing their lips back together, Jason let Fritz set the pace. Hell, Fritz’s
mouth should be used as a weapon of war. It stole every rational thought he
had in his head. All he could do was hang on for the ride.
It didn’t take long until they were both grunting and moaning.
“Oh God… harder.” Jason’s moans drove Fritz crazy. That he could
make Jason’s hard exterior crumble and turn him into this moaning sex god
was a massive turn on. All he could think of was grinding and rocking up
against Jason.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Have to make Jason come first.
Fritz ran his thumb over the head of Jason’s dick, dipping into the slit.
Jason ripped his mouth off Fritz’s, his breaths ragged as he dropped his head
onto Fritz’s shoulder, muffling the sound of his harsh groan as he came.
Hot cum splashed over Fritz's fingers and his eyes slammed closed as his
balls drew up tight, every muscle tensed as his own cum soaked into their
joined skin. “Damn!”
“Uh-huh,” Jason mumbled almost incoherently. He lay sprawled across
Fritz as they each steadied their breathing.
He shifted slightly when Fritz slid out from under him and grabbed a
towel to clean them both off.
Fritz went to wash his hands and by the time he got back Jason was
spread out across the bed, snoring softly. He spent a long few minutes
chewing the corner of his lip before he sighed and climbed into the other bed.
When Fritz turned over a couple of hours later, he cracked his eyes open and
took in his surroundings. Once he figured out where he was, his gaze landed
on the bed across from him.
Empty…
Fuck!
 CHAPTER FIVE

TWO YEARS LATER

JASON STRETCHED his neck until it gave a satisfying pop, relieving

pressure. “I’m itching like crazy.”
He rubbed the back of his head. That stupid sensation of ants crawling up
his back was making him nuts. But he’d been a warrior for too long to ignore
the warnings that came to him. He’d never tried to figure them out. That
hinky voodoo sixth sense had saved his team’s asses too many times. The one
time he had ignored it while deployed, shit hit the fan and Matt had been
captured.
“TOC, this is Panther Five,” he called through to Malik and Kalon in their
mobile Tactical Operations Center. “I’m itching like fuck. Is anything
registering on your systems?”
“Panther Five, TOC,” Malik responded immediately in his ear. “That’s a
negative.”
Jason had known it was only a matter of time before Kalon found Michail
Tursynbekov. Now that their mission to capture the bastard was a go and all
the players were in place, he had a very freaking bad feeling about
something.
“TOC, Panther Five,” Jason scrubbed the back of his neck. “This one has
a pucker factor like Wild-Wolf a couple of years ago.”
“Shit.” Malik’s indrawn breath was audible, but then Jason knew Mal
would pick up that he was telling him the itching was enough to cause his ass
to pucker in worry at the sensations climbing up his spine and into his neck.
“Roger that, Panther Five,” Malik said. “All Stations, TOC. Stay frosty.
Panther Five has a pucker factor going on with his six.”
“Roger.”
 “Copy.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Jason silently thanked Malik for leaving the channel open long enough
for him to hear the confirmations, so he knew his team, his brothers, all heard
the warning. They might have given him shit about his warning mechanism,
the one he brought from the Bayous in Louisiana to basic training, but they’d
all stopped laughing after the third time he’d saved their asses in Fallujah.
Jason didn’t know where the skill or sixth sense or whatever the fuck you
wanted to call it came from. He just knew he’d had it since he was a kid.
“You good?” Fritz’s low whisper had the corners of his mouth instantly
curving upward. Jason didn’t trust many people. Jonah Montgomery was one
of them. Fritz Blackwell was right up there on the same level as Jason’s best
friend.
“Yeah,” Jason answered. “I’m too old for crouching in stairwells waiting
for tangos.”
“Preaching to the choir.” Fritz shifted his weight. “You—”
“Ghost One, your target is on his feet.” Whatever he had been about to
ask was cut off by Jonah’s voice through their earpiece. “Fuck, stand clear!”
“Shit,” Jason muttered. He reached for the door and pushed down the
handle. Peering through the gap, he studied the hallway. Nothing was
moving. “Clear,” he told Fritz.
“Fuck, target is down.” Jonah swore. “Who the fuck took that shot?”
“Panther Three, TOC here,” Malik broke through the chatter. “Explain.”
“Someone took out our target, TOC,” Jonah said. “I just watched the
bullet slam through the window and my thermal imaging scope shows he is
flat on the floor.”
“Fuck, Ghost One, breach,” Malik ordered.
“Ghost One, copy,” Rock confirmed.
Without being on the floor below with Rock and Grif, Jason and Fritz
both knew they were opening the door and moving into the room.
“TOC, Panther Three,” Jonah said. “Permission to locate who took that
shot?”
“Negative, Panther Three,” Matt’s voice answered before Malik could.
“Stay in position. That’s an order.”
“Fine.”
Jason smiled at Fritz. Jonah would never have tried to bypass their TOC
before. It gave him all the feels to see his friends so happy, but damn, he still
wanted to kick their asses for keeping their relationship a secret when they
were enlisted. Idiots should have known he wouldn’t give a shit.
“Panther Three,” Malik said. “Give me your best guess on the position of
our rogue sniper. Our alphabet friends are going after him.”
“Best guess is the top of the apartment block behind us,” Jonah told him.
Yup, even though his tone was slightly pissed off that sniper’s brain of
his would have calculated bullet trajectories as soon as the lead went through
the glass.
“You’re covered?”
“Yes, Sir,” Jonah responded to Matt’s question.
“Keep it that way,” Matt ordered. “TOC out,”
The concern in Matt’s tone helped ease the sting that Jonah and he
weren’t as close as they had been. He knew Fritz was concerned he was a
replacement for either Jonah or Micah—especially now both of his former
teammates were in solid relationships. Jason was blue in the face from trying
to set him right, but he supposed his own actions over the progression of
those relationships hadn’t helped.
Especially Micah’s, the nasty fucker in his head reminded him.
Remember that shit show?
Fritz has reason to worry.
Jason shifted the M16 in his hands and pushed all thoughts of the past and
shoulda, woulda, coulda’s back. They had no place here. His team, his
family, deserved all of his attention, even if it looked like someone else had
taken out their target.
“Fuck,” Fritz softly swore.
“Yeah.” Jason knew how he felt. He wanted to be down there in the thick
of things, too.
Although his normal position was a spotter for Jonah, he was more used
to sitting on the side lines than Fritz was. His guy’s role had been commander
of another Delta Force Team. He imagined for Fritz it must suck donkey balls
to be here on floor seven with him.
“Stop it.” Fritz’s stern tone sounded so similar to Matt’s when he spoke to
Jonah a few minutes before, that Jason had to bite his lip to keep back the
grin that wanted to form there. Maybe his Major actually gave a shit after all.
“Panther One to All Stations. Load up we are Returning to Base.”
At Steele’s order both Fritz and Jason headed down the stairs to meet the
rest of Team Panther at their mobile TOC.
 CHAPTER SIX

TWO WEEKS LATER…

Texas
JASON LOUNGED on the bed of Fritz’s truck. Yeah, the movie might be a
silly bit of fun, but they needed this—all of them.
Grif, Rock, and Micah’s baby sister.
Wow… He didn’t see that coming, but somehow it worked. He watched
them laughing and playing, tossing popcorn into each other’s mouths.
Jason had worried about Grif when Rock was gone. He had come close to
searching for Rock himself a few times, but Fritz had persuaded him not to.
The buzzing in his pocket made Fritz frown at him. “That’s meant to be
turned off.”
“Sorry.” Jason pulled out his phone. He’d meant to switch it off, he really
did, but his finger slipped, and the call answered.
“Wait a sec,” he whispered into the phone and jumped down from the
truck.
“Sure,” the voice said on the other side.
Jason walked into the house and opened the fridge. “Okay, who are you
and how did you get this number?”
“You don’t know me.” The voice was mechanical, as if it had been
changed or disguised somehow. “The one you seek is close to you.”
“What?” Jason pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at it.
“I’m sending a file to your email. It will tell you what you need to know.”
“Wait?” What the hell was this dude talking about? “Fuck.”
He’d hung up already.
Jason sighed and looked out the window. He held up the beer bottle to
Fritz when his guy turned around. Fritz nodded and Jason went to pull him
another bottle from the fridge.
Pulling up his email app, he checked for new emails. He clicked on the
mail address he didn’t recognize.
Yeah, Kalon will shoot you for that, idiot.
When the email opened, Jason read through it. Once…
Nope, this can’t be right.
Twice…
I’m seeing things.
A third time…
“You are fucking shitting me.” Jason placed his beer on the counter. He
needed to call the others. They needed to see this shit, STAT.
Instead, he gripped the edge of the island and held onto it. How the fuck
had they not seen it? His mind started racing, putting together puzzle pieces
that hadn’t fit before. His specialty as a tracker had honed the skills he had
learned as a kid, taught him to visualize maps and timelines in his head. Right
now, that reel of horrors was rolling behind his eyelids, similar to Lexi’s
movie on the big screen outside.
“Shit.”

FRITZ PAID little attention to the movie. He was more freaking concerned
that Jason had taken off to the kitchen, to answer his phone no less.
“What the hell?”
Why the fuck was he leaning over the counter with his hands fisted on the
edges as if his grip was the only thing keeping him vertical, well verticalish?
Fritz scooted to the end of the truck bed and jumped down.
“Momma, they is not watching.”
He flinched at Lexi’s voice. That was one kiddo he didn’t want to upset
for anything. He’d rather find out their missing nuke was set to hit his house
in Detroit than upset the cammo pixie that was Grif, Rock and Allie’s
daughter. Poor kid also had an army of uncles wrapped around her baby
finger.
He raised a hand in apology to Grif when the man frowned at him and
pointed to the kitchen where Jason was still propping up the island.
 Fritz blew out a breath when Grif nodded and smirked at him. Fucker
thought they were sneaking off for some time alone. Chance would be a fine
thing.
Fritz didn’t remember the last time there had been anything happening
between the sheets for him and Jason. Life had been kicking their asses
lately, but they would figure it out. They always had before. Right now, he
was going to see what was wrong with his man.
“Jason?” Fritz leaned against the jamb. That Jason hadn’t straightened
when he opened the door worried him. “You good?”
“No.”
“What?” Fritz froze. Shock did that, right? It froze stuff. Had hell frozen
over? Jason LeHar was admitting he was not okay.
“Read that shit.” Jason pushed his cell toward him.
Fritz sighed. “Okay.”
He wasn’t quite sure he wanted to look at this damn cell and whatever
information it would give him. It had either spooked or pissed off Jason so
bad he was the classic example of silent but deadly. Fritz could see Jason’s
face clearly now, and that look in his eyes… that was rage.
Fuck me!
“I really don’t want to look at this, do I?” he asked.
“Nope.” Jason nodded to the beer bottle in Fritz’s hand. “Put that down,
or you’re going to be picking up glass after you throw it at the wall.”
Fritz studied Jason for a couple of seconds before he nodded, dropped the
bottle on the island counter and took the phone Jason held out to him. He
blew out a breath and started reading. When he finished, he read it again.
Bastard, fucking cunt better hope he’s dead before I get to him.
“This is real?” Images flashed through his mind. Various jobs and
missions that had involved their now potential mole—crazy shit that had
gone wrong on patrols that should have been routine.
Fucker!
“It looks that way.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah.” Jason nodded to the window. Outside, all of Delta Force Team
Panther and their families were laughing and joking as they watched Lexi’s
favorite movie at their first ever ‘drive-in movie Panther-style’ night.
“We need to tell them,” Jason added.
“Yeah.” Fritz leaned against Jason’s back and watched the scene outside
over his shoulder. Damn it, had they not dealt with enough shit? Did they not
deserve to have their ‘downtime?’
“Let the kiddo have her night,” he said softly, his breath raising goose
bumps on the skin behind Jason’s ear. “We can tell them when it’s over.
Another hour isn’t going to make a difference.”
Jason leaned his head back, resting it on Fritz’s shoulder and closed his
eyes. “Yeah,” he agreed. “Another hour won’t make a difference.”
 CHAPTER SEVEN

“WANT to tell me what the fuck is going on?”

Jason shrugged his shoulders at Micah’s question. That Mr. Impatient had
waited until Allie, Grif, and Rock had taken Lexi back to their house was a
miracle. It was way past the four-year-old’s bedtime, and she was hyped up
on sugar, popcorn, and excitement after watching the movie.
Jason looked at Fritz. The last thing he wanted to do was to blow apart
the world of the only people who ever gave a shit about him again.
When Fritz nodded it settled something inside him. Jason knew without
the other man voicing the words that Fritz would be right there on his six,
supporting him as he gave the name of their betrayer to his team Panther
brothers.
“Wait until Grif and Rock are here.”
Micah studied him for a couple of heart beats. “On a scale of one to ten,
how pissed are we going to be?”
“We’re hovering somewhere between high thirties and early forties,”
Fritz answered before Jason could.
“Fuck.”
“Yup,” Jason confirmed. “That about sums it up. Someone get the Jack.”
Jonah nodded and headed for the beautiful hand crafted Prohibition era
oak desk in the corner of the living room. One side of it was delicately carved
with swirls and music notes. Jonah went around the desk and sat in the chair.
His weight, combined with his foot pressing a button under the desk,
triggered the mechanism and a panel in the oak slid back to reveal the bottles
of alcohol hidden inside.
“Bring more than one bottle,” Fritz told him.
 Jonah’s eyes widened. The request for more than one bottle alerted him,
even more than Fritz’s late thirties or early forties on the pissed off scale a
couple of seconds before, to the fact that this was not good at all.
“Can we just aggressively ignore it and hope to fuck it goes away?” Jonah
lined up whiskey glasses along the bar and ran the opened bottle down the
line, filling a generous measure into each.
“That’s definitely not going to work,” Jason muttered.
He took the glass Jonah offered and slugged it back.
“Hit me again.” He held out his glass for a refill.
He knew he was already at his limit of one hard liquor shot today, but
what the heck? It was a special occasion, right? Not every day you found out
who the double crossing, shit fucking asswipe was. The one who had caused
so much heartache and obliterated their careers in Delta Force. Jason figured
he would need more than these two shots. Maybe he should ask Jonah to give
him the damn bottle. If he did a little drinking, it might make it easier. He
could start his self-imposed alcohol restriction again tomorrow. Right now,
he was in the mood to make some very bad life choices.
The weight of a hand landing on Jason’s neck was like a jolt of electricity
to his brain. It snapped him out of the spiraling road he had been starting to
go down. Much like snapping that elastic band he kept on his left wrist,
Fritz’s touch grounded him back in reality. Jason knew he had a tendency to
use alcohol as a crutch or maybe as a coping mechanism. Healthy it was not,
but the only ones who really gave a shit were in this room anyway. As long
as he kept it under control, he was good.
Fritz obviously did not agree, because he said, “Clear heads are needed,
Jason.”
His voice was little more than a murmur against his ear, but Jason heard it
anyway and nodded in response. He could feel the others looking at them. He
was sure they were curious as hell about his and Fritz’s relationship. Maybe
someday he would know how to explain it himself. Today was not that day,
though.
Jason forced his muscles to relax one at a time until he slouched back into
the couch, giving the appearance of not having a care in the world. The fact
his Panther brothers weren’t pushing for details was slightly puzzling. He
would think about that one later, too. Right now, even though his body was
pretending to be relaxed, his brain was furiously trying to figure out how the
fuck they had missed it.
 Grif and Rock came in through the door. Rock looked directly at Jason.
“Spill it,” he ordered. “This better be fucking good. We’re missing bath
time.”
Shit, who the fuck sent them a message to let them know there was
something going on? He glanced around the room. Going by the slightly
guilty look on Micah’s face, he was the culprit.
Fucker.
Jason would pay him back for that later.
Jason whispered to Fritz. “Block the door to the war room. The last thing
we need is Matt shutting everything down. If he does that, then the fuckwad
who has been screwing with us, knows we know.”
“Got it.” Fritz stood and moved to block the war room door, his actions
not going unnoticed. They might be in the safety of the compound Matt and
Jonah had created on Garrett Ranch in Texas, but that did not mean the
warriors inside them all would miss the obvious move from Fritz.
“I got a phone call.” Jason flicked his brain into debrief mode. State the
facts, give the intel and if there is a shit show… deal with it when you are
done.
“Okay.” Matt gestured with his hands. “Go on.”
“Then an email.” Jason inhaled and blew the breath out slowly.
“Remember how we were speculating that the mole or the big man in charge
of the organization we are after was military, an Alphabet agency man,” he
paused for the barest of beats, before adding, “or someone close to us.”
Like the split second of time freezing when your truck skidded on a
hairpin twist before aquaplaning toward the one hundred foot drop below, the
atmosphere in the room skidded to a halt and then exploded.
“Report… STAT!” Matt’s voice had a distinct chill to it. “You got
something?”
Jason nodded, but before he could explain what happened, Steele
interrupted. “Where did the intel come from. Who called and sent the email?”
Trust their ever-practical commander not to take anything at face value.
“Shut the fuck up and let him speak.” Fritz dropped his glass onto the
shelf next to the door and widened his stance, giving himself room to move if
he needed to.
Jason nodded at him. Debriefings could only happen if they listened. “I
got a phone call telling me the man calling was sending me intel.”
“Does he always take this long to spit shit out?” Hawk grumbled to
Micah.
“Unless he is tracking something Jase pretty much does things on his own
timeline,” Micah told him, earning a frown from Jason.
Maybe someone is setting him up? You’re very quick to just assume this
intel is correct, Jason’s inner voice cautioned him.
He chewed on the corner of his lip. This person was too damn close for
him not to verify it. And if anyone could verify it fast it was Kalon and
Malik.
Shit, another thought occurred to him. Why the fuck hadn’t he thought of
that two hours ago? Fuck!
“Sweep the house for bugs.”
“What?” Jonah asked, perplexed at the urgency in his voice.
“Sweep the damn house, Jonah, as I know for a fact this person was here
a couple of weeks ago.”
Shit.
Jason hadn’t meant to let that fucking slip, but stupid questions annoyed
him.
“What the fuck?” Hawk’s voice cut like a whip through the uproar of
everyone shouting at once.
Damn, he was fast. Hawk had connected the dots and figured out the
name in that email.
“No fucking way. Show me your damn proof.”
Micah, Creed, and Delta immediately moved closer to Hawk, flanking
him, offering their silent support.
“Not until Kalon clears my phone to send on the email.” Jason stood firm.
“Now, sweep the room at least.”
Jonah pushed his hand in between the couch cushions and pulled out a
black wand… Because, you know, everyone keeps a scanner down the side
of their couch.
Jonah dug into the cushions of an armchair and produced another scanner
and tossed it to Matt.
Jason knew they probably thought he was insane. This compound was
locked up as tightly as Fort Knox.
In his head Jason snorted. After the fiasco of Wolfe coming after Lexi
only a few short weeks ago they had all spent their time upgrading the
security systems, adding motion cameras to all the trails surrounding the
compound.
 He watched as Matt and Jonah meticulously scanned the room.
“Clear,” Matt said as he met Jonah in the middle. Jonah nodded in
agreement. They had found nothing. “Now, spit it out, brother. I want to
know who the fuck I am shooting this week.”
“I got an email from the dude who called me,” Jason said.
“Tell me you did not open that.” Kalon stood from his spot on the far side
of the room. “That’s how you get viruses and shit.”
“Of course I opened it.” Jason knew his tone was slightly defensive.
“How else would I know what it said?”
“I swear…” Kalon reached for the phone, but Jason stretched his arm up,
using his full six-foot-four height to prevent the smaller man from pulling the
phone from his grip. “Give it to me,” Kalon grumbled.
“Hey.” Jason spun around as the phone was snatched out of his hand.
“Fucker, give that back.” He side-stepped Creed to reach for the phone in
Hawk’s hand. “Do not break my fucking phone,” he warned Hawk. “We’ll
need it.”
“What’s the password, LeHar?” Hawk growled.
“Nope, gimme the fucking phone back,” Jason said.
“Should we move this to the war room?” Steele asked.
“No!” Jason knew he was yelling; he just didn’t give a shit.
The last fucking thing they needed was a bunch of pissed off former
Special Ops dudes losing it around all the computers and surveillance
equipment down there. Something would end up broken for sure.
That and the guys have just cleared this room, his inner voice helpfully
supplied.
Yeah, that too.
“Kalon is going to need his equipment to put whatever the fuck you have
on your phone on the screen so we all can see,” Steele said.
Shit, I didn’t think of that. Jason was about to give in. The smug bastard
that was Steele had a point. How the fuck were they going to keep the gear in
one piece?
“Nope, babe, he can Bluetooth it to the TV.” Kalon picked up the remote
and pointed it at the black screen over the fireplace. “Turn on your Bluetooth,
Jason.”
“You got it.” Jason snatched the phone back from Hawk and walked to
Fritz, taking cover behind him in case anyone else tried to grab it as soon as it
was unlocked.
 “Accept the connection,” Kalon told him.
Jason clicked the box that came up on the screen of his cell. Almost
immediately the image of his screen appeared on the TV—a ginger kitty
dressed in a flak jacket similar to the one Delta wore on missions. It was the
same right down to the aerial transmitter situated over the cat’s shoulder
blades.
Fuck. I forgot that was there.
He closed his eyes and blew out a breath.
“Holy fuck, you have a cat?” Malik asked.
“What?” Fritz answered for Jason. “That’s our combat kitty, Trigger.”
“Our?” Micah’s surprise was evident in his tone. “You have a cat
together?”
“Get to the big reveal, shitheads. Enough fucking around,” Matt
grumbled.
“Not relevant right now,” Jason spoke at the same time as Matt.
Brothers or not, the lessons learned as a kid to keep stuff to himself still
overrode every desire he had to tell them everything. He knew Fritz wanted
more, but people like him didn’t deserve good people like Fritz.
Maybe…
But Jase shut down the inner kid inside him who still had a twinge of
hope. Now was not the time. He had shit to do first. Then and only then he
could think about it… maybe.
He clicked through the buttons on his phone until he reached his email
inbox. This was it…
He clicked on the link, opening the mail on the TV screen.
The harsh inhales from the men in the room was sharply contrasted by the
stunned silence that followed as the intel in the email sank into their bones.
“You opened a fucking link from an unknown email address?” Kalon’s
rarely seen temper was about to make an appearance.
It’s ironic that the first to react is the one who was not trained to adapt
and overcome as much shit as was thrown at you as fast as possible.
Jason wanted to grab that bottle of Jack. He could slug it back and maybe
find this was a nightmare brought on by too much booze.
You wish!
“We have a bigger clusterfuck than that to worry about, Kal. Get your ass
to the war room and shut everything down,” Steele told him, cold fury
making his tone gritty and raw. “Now.”
 “Nope,” Fritz countered the order. “We do not want to tip him off. If he’s
already in our systems, then shutting everything down lets him know we
know.”
“The fuck?” Hawk ground out and bunched his fist into Jason’s T-shirt
and leaned in close until they were almost nose to nose. “What kinda sick
fucking soup sandwich is this?”
Jason wrapped his hands around Hawk’s wrists and braced his feet. He
had sparred with Hawk often enough. Being slammed against the wall was
not happening today, thank you very fucking much.
“Not a joke, sick or otherwise,” Jason ground out. He locked his jaw to
prevent from verbalizing the rest of the rant he wanted to spew.
Micah and Creed immediately stepped to either side of them. Creed
placed his hand on Hawk’s cheek, running his fingers along the other man’s
skin.
“Don’t shoot the messenger, big guy,” Creed told Hawk softly. “Not his
fault.”
How the hell were they not losing it, too?
As much as Jase wanted to close his eyes and inhale deeply to calm the
rioting emotions that raced through his veins, he didn’t dare take his eyes off
Hawk.
“You expect me to believe that Speaker is the one behind all this shit
we’ve been going through?” Hawk relaxed his grip on Jason’s shirt, allowing
him to step back.
Micah and Creed immediately crowded into Hawk, as if one of them
saying the name out loud gave them all permission to lose it.
“Speaker?”
A chain reaction started. Within seconds Matt’s knuckles bled. Hardwall,
paint and a newly minted hole in the wall made Jason wince.
That is so going to hurt in the morning.
Malik muttered in what sounded suspiciously like the Hebrew of his
childhood that he lapsed into when his brain couldn’t focus on anything as
mundane as speaking. His fingers squeezed the shot glass in his hand until it
shattered from the force.
“Nope,” Micah told Hawk. “It’s something we need to investigate, and I
know Jason. He wouldn’t be blowing smoke up our asses if there wasn’t a
grain of truth in there somewhere.”
“But…” Hawk stuttered to a stop. “Speaker?”
 “He’s the one who tipped me for the CIA job in Pakistan,” Creed
reminded Hawk.
“If he is involved, he’s the one who blew up our house in Cuba, too,”
Micah muttered, “and ordered Lexi taken.”
“Fuck,” Grif muttered. “Wolfe said Lexi saw the boss. Does she know
Speaker?”
When Rock nodded, he pulled his cell from his ass pocket and typed in a
message: Als, can you ask Lex if she saw Uncle Speaker in Tehran?
He showed the message to Rock. When he nodded, Grif hit send. Within
seconds Allie responded.
What the fudging flamingos are you talking about?
We have intel that Speaker is the head tango. We need to know if Lex
saw him when she was with Shar, Grif replied. You want to bring Lexi
over here once she is done with her bath?
“You think she will?” Grif asked Rock when Allie didn’t immediately
reply. Almost as soon as the words left his mouth his phone beeped.
No, wait until you all calm down over there, her message said. I don’t
want to scare her, because I know you all are going nuts.
Truth. Kiss her for us, ‘kay? Grif replied. We’ll be back as soon as
we’re done here.
Of course. Allie messaged back. Love you both.
Love you too.
Grif clicked out of his messages and grinned at Rock. “She loves us.”
“Of course she does, dumbass. We’re awesome.”
Grif’s phone beeped again.
Do you want me to ask her?
He showed the phone to Rock and waited for him to shake his head
before he responded. No, we can wait until the morning. Let her sleep
without horrors.
Okay, good, Allie replied.
Grif shut off his cell. He knew it was almost story time for Lexi, and she
wasn’t going to be happy Rock wasn’t there to do the princess voices.

JONAH CLOSED his eyes and counted to ten. He would not fucking lose it,
nope, it would not happen.
Oh, who the fuck was he kidding?
He spun around and threw his whiskey glass at the wall. Amber liquid
dripping down the paintwork would annoy him tomorrow, but right now it
gave him some small measure of satisfaction to break something. That
asshole had been in their home, had helped with the search for Matt and
Steele when they were missing.
FUCK.
Was the bastard snot ass behind Matt’s capture in two thousand and
eleven?
“He was at COP Wild-Wolf,” Jonah muttered.
“What?” Matt ignored his bleeding knuckles and fisted his hands into
Jonah’s shirt, pulling him close.
Jonah could see he was keeping a tight rein on his temper. Hole in the
wall aside, this was Matt. He would hold most of his rage in until they were
alone. Then he would lose it if he needed to.
“Speaker was at COP Wild-Wolf,” he told Matt. “Do you not remember?
He was the CIA Operative who bitched when you and Steele started shouting
orders as soon as shit hit the fan.”
Matt shook his head. “Babe, most of that day is still fuzzy. I remember
you singing at the campfire the night before. I can still hear the melody of
‘Whenever you come around’ in my dreams. The last thing I remember, like
it was today, was you yelling at me across the building.”
“I’m craving fucking donuts,” Jonah filled in.
Despite the seriousness of their current shit show, those words still
brought a smile to Jonah’s face. Damn, was it really so long ago they had to
use a code for ‘I love you, don’t die’?
“Me too,” Matt gave the response and kissed Jonah’s forehead as he had
never been able to do when they were enlisted. “If you say Speaker was at
Wild-Wolf then I believe you. I just don’t know that I believe a random email
over someone who has had our sixes for years.”
“Me neither,” Hawk muttered. “Speaker and I have been through some
shit firefights together. I never once had a reason to doubt him.”
Delta pressed herself against the back of Hawk’s knees. Despite being
Micah’s dog, she adored all three of her guys. Her hackles were raised,
feeding off their energy as she muttered and whined under her breath. Jason
could almost hear her thoughts.
 Here we go again. Can my humans not have some peace for five freaking
minutes before a clusterfuck IED detonates?
“Until now,” Malik said.
“Yeah.” Hawk scrubbed his hand over Delta’s head, letting her know that
while he was pissed, he was still mostly okay. “Until now.”
“Then we figure it out,” Kalon said. “To do that I need access to my
laptop.” He gestured at where Fritz and Jason were still guarding the door to
the war room.
“We didn’t want to do this down there.” Jason shrugged. “If someone lost
it and broke your gear that shit is expensive to replace now that we are not
funded by the US Military.”
Shit, he was thinking of taking Matt up on the offer he had made them all
yesterday. Panther was going Mercenary. Matt and Steele wanted the whole
of Delta Force Team Panther involved. Jason hadn’t been sure he wanted to.
As much as he loved his former teammates, he hadn’t discussed it with Fritz
yet. Fuck. Would Fritz really want to live here in Texas where their brother
was killed?
Fuckity, fuck, fuck, fuck.
Fritz’s hand burrowed in under his T-shirt and landed hotly on the skin of
his lower back. Almost immediately Jason’s brain stopped spinning off the
merry-go-round and clicked back into focus.
“We figured at least up here the only thing that would get broken was the
walls or the couch.”
“Thank you.” Kalon’s voice was soft.
Jason knew Steele’s man still sometimes struggled to find his feet around
all their loud personalities.
“You’re welcome.” He smiled at Kalon.
“Now, gimme the email address that intel came from.” Kalon held out his
hand for the phone, and Jason handed it over. “I can’t do anything up here. I
need to get to my computers and run this…” Kalon’s voice trailed off as he
looked at the sender address. “Ummm, Malik, you are going to want to look
at this.”
“What?” Malik pushed Jason out of the way to peer over Kalon’s arm at
the email. His eyes followed the direction of Kalon’s finger and widen when
he realized the significance of what he was reading. “Shit.”
“What?” Steele growled. “Someone better start filling in fucking blanks.”
“The email address is for my Mossad throwaway account.”
 Fritz’s hand stiffened against Jason’s skin. “The intel came from
Mossad?”
“It seems that way.” Malik pushed past Fritz and Jason, making a route
for Kalon to access the war room.
“Scan the room for bugs and shit first, Mal,” Jason advised as he and
Fritz stepped aside.
“Yup.” Malik reached for the two scanners Matt and Jonah held out to
him. “You all stay here until it’s cleared,” he ordered as they disappeared
through the door.
“Roger that.” There was a slight tone of amusement to Matt’s voice, but
Jason figured that came from the bossiness in Malik’s words.
“Tell me about the cat.”
Jason jerked when Jonah spoke, “Why?”
“I didn’t know you had a cat.” The question was clear in Jonah’s tone—
why the fuck didn’t I know you have a cat? “Where is it, and how the hell did
you of all people end up with a cat?”
“Trigger came back with him from London,” Fritz supplied helpfully.
“Shush.” Jase slapped a hand across Fritz’s mouth. “What do you mean
‘me of all people?’”
Jason struggled to keep the hurt from his voice, but he knew his best
friend probably heard it anyway. He and Jonah had grown up together. Jonah
probably knew him better than anyone…
Except Fritz.
Damn it, he was sure the devil who was his inner voice was painted
fucking glittered neon pink and was perfectly visible from where he sat on his
shoulder, shouting out unsolicited advice.
“Wait,” Micah interrupted. “Is that the orange kitten you found on the
Tube in London, when I stayed there before I went to get Delta?” At the
sound of her name, his Belgian Malinois whined, letting Micah know she was
still there.
“Yeah,” Jason admitted. “That’s him.”
“Combat Kitty.” Fritz smirked.
Jason was going to boot him in the ass. Fritz was getting way too much
enjoyment out of this. Why the fuck was he jumping on this now? What the
hell?
“Trigger.” The name was out of his mouth before he could stop himself.
“Where’s Trigger now?” Jonah leaned back on his heels, his back coming
to rest against Matt’s chest. He hadn’t looked or checked to see if Matt was
there before leaning back. He just trusted that his man was right behind him.
Jason was happy for his friend, happy that those two were back together.
When they were enlisted, when Jonah and Matt’s relationship had been
completely under wraps, he had thought they were almost twins in how they
mirrored and worked together. His opinion then had been that they were the
best they ever could be… he had been mistaken. They were continuously
growing stronger and had not yet reached their full potential. Jonah and
Matt’s journey to their happy ever after, made him wistful for what might
have been, but he didn’t deserve what they had, and Fritz sure as fuck didn’t
deserve to end up with an asshole like him.
“Detroit. Trigger is at home.”
Fritz’s jaw dropped open. Holy crap had Jason just given his Panther
brothers information without being tortured for it?
“Yup.” He confirmed Jason’s words when Matt raised an eyebrow in
obvious query at him.
“I didn’t know you had gone to Detroit,” Matt said to Fritz.
It was clear to them all from the slight frown on Matt’s face, that he was
flicking through his brain for all the information, as he tried to fit the pieces
together. For those pieces to make sense in his mind.
“Yeah,” Fritz replied. “It was time.”
He didn’t need to explain to Matt that he had gone to Tom’s house after
he was killed, looking for clues and had never really left. Jason had started
showing up and they had tried to figure shit out.
You fucked a lot, too.
Fritz could feel the heat at the back of his neck, as his favorite memory
flashed behind his eyes and his dick hardened at the internal reminder, but he
forced himself into operator mode. Now was not the time to remember how
Jason’s naked skin looked in front of the fireplace.
“We’re clear down here.” Malik’s voice saved Jason and Fritz from any
more interrogation.
Fritz was grateful, because how the hell did you explain a relationship to
someone else, when you weren’t quite sure how to explain it to yourself? He
followed Jason down the stairs to the war room. He could worry about that
later. Right now, they had to figure out if Speaker was their tango.
Shit, could he call him a tango? A mole?
Whatever the fuck he was, he was a problem they needed to figure out
fast.
“Right now,” Jason whispered, “I don’t know if I want to kiss you or
shove you off a cliff.”
“Can I pick?” Fritz knew Jase didn’t want their relationship out in the
open. Hell, they all fucking knew what was going on. They shared the same
damn house when they stayed on the compound. Did he seriously think they
others didn’t know?
 CHAPTER EIGHT

“I’M RUNNING diagnostics on the main systems,” Kalon’s voice stopped

Fritz’s musings. “For now, I have just one laptop and a couple of burner cells
that are on a backup system.”
“Wait.” Steele held up his hand. “We have a backup system?”
“Of course we have a backup system,” Kalon snarked at him. “What kind
of techie would I be without a backup for my backup. Jeez, and here I
thought you were always prepared.”
“Sorry, babe.”
“Oh man, you pouting like that is so fucking wrong.” Jason smacked the
back of Steele’s head. “Do not traumatize us by trying to look cute enough to
get out of the doghouse with your man.”
“Fuck off,” Steele muttered, but pulled his face back to his normal stern
look. “What can we do?” he asked Kalon.
“I need access to databases.” Kalon gestured to his computers on the
desks behind him. “Those are out of action until we know for sure that
nobody has been in there.”
“I have checked the throwaway email account,” Malik told them. “The
email definitely came from there.”
“Idiot didn’t delete it from the sent folder.” Kalon clicked through the
screens on Jason’s phone until he found the email. He pulled up the header to
find the raw data. “There you are.”
“You got it?”
“Yup,” Kalon said, “and I can tell by looking at the IP that it came from
an iPhone.” He looked at Steele. “What are you waiting for? We’re either
gonna need a warrant to access that database or I need another way to get it,
which means access to the NSA files. Now, I can either hack in, which is
going to take a few hours, or you can call one of your… what do you call
them?” He waved his hand around, clearly trying to think of the word he
wanted. “Alphabet Agencies,” he finally said, “and get me access.”
“Okay then.” Steele blew out a breath and snagged the pre-paid
throwaway cell out of the air when Malik tossed it toward him. He had
contacts all over the world. Using them for this was a no-brainer for Steele.
He just wasn’t entirely sure who he could trust with the intel.
“Did this intel come from your Mossad contact?” Matt asked Malik. “If
not who else has that email address?”
“Only two other people that I know of has access to that email address,”
Malik said. “One of them is the Mossad contact that passes on intel. The
other is my cousin.”
“The bar dude that went to Australia?” Matt frowned.
“Yeah, him,” Malik muttered. He typed furiously on his cell. “He’s not
fucking answering my calls, so I’ll send him a text.”
“Probably because he doesn’t recognize the number,” Creed said. “You
are using a throwaway cell number. I wouldn’t answer a number I didn’t
recognize either.”
“Hey!” Jason already freaking knew he shouldn’t have answered the
number when it called, never mind opened the email. But damn it all to hell,
this intel, even if it was a kick in the balls, was intel they needed to have. He
refused to take shit for that. “It’s a good thing I did fucking open it or we
wouldn’t know we have a fox in the henhouse.”
“Are you calling us a bunch of hens?” Micah did his best to look
offended.
“You are the one who likes six egg omelets,” Jason told him.
“I still say there is no fucking way that’s an omelet.” Steele pulled his cell
from his ear and hit the speaker button. Hold music from the phone made
everyone cringe. “It’s a damn henhouse.”
“See.” Jason smirked at Micah. “Steele agrees.”
“I wish I could take—” Steele started to say, but a voice saying hello on
the phone had him hitting the button and putting it back to his ear.
“Nope,” Jason told him, “you said it, no take-backs.” His middle finger
returned Steele’s one finger salute.
“How do we keep getting into these situations?” Creed watched the
Panthers working the problem in front of them.
 “It’s been so many years,” Hawk leaned his chin onto Creed’s shoulder,
“and I still don’t know. Maybe we are just magnets for a cup of cluster and a
bucket of fuck.”
“Yup, that pretty much sums us all up.” Creed turned his head enough to
press a kiss to Hawk’s lips. “When all this is over, I want my sanity back.”
“What fucking sanity?” Hawk snorted. “A sane person does not put a
Catherine wheel firework next to a bomb.”
“I wanted it to be pretty.” Creed managed to keep a straight face as he
said it. He knew damn well that training days were not meant to be pretty.
“It was supposed to be subtle,” Hawk reminded him dryly.
Creed shrugged. “Pretty worked. I don’t think I have ever seen FBI
agents use a battering ram to get out of a training room before.”
“Agreed.” Hawk snorted. “Me neither.”
“I don’t give a shit, Appelbaum.” Steele’s voice dropped down to a low
growl. Oh crap, when he got quiet like this, shit was going to hit the fan.
“You fucking owe me. I dealt with Tom and his shit and I lost my damn
teams. First Panther and then at the agency,” he growled. “I want fucking
access, because this dude we are after is the one who probably is behind all of
it. Now, either you give it to me, or I go to the Pentagon or the Oval Office,
and it’s not going to be fucking pretty if I have to do that.” Steele paused and
cocked his head to one side, obviously listening to the other man. “You do
that,” he said. “I also want every bit of intel the CIA has from the time
Speaker McCall was born until today. No redacted shit.”
Jason looked at Fritz. “The Oval Office?” he mouthed.
Fritz pushed aside the slight twinge of guilt that it was his brother who
had caused all the trouble for Steele, including kidnapping and trying to kill
Kalon. He shrugged. He didn’t know fully what connections Steele Givens
had. He’d long suspected they went right to the top. Having him threating his
former boss, Appelbaum, the Special Agent in charge at the CIA, told Fritz
how pissed Steele actually was. He watched the other man take the mug of
coffee Matt held out to him and take a sip before continuing his rant. It
amused him that Kalon didn’t bat an eyelid and just kept working, despite the
fact Steele was leaning against the back of his chair as he spoke on the phone.
He figured if Kalon lived with Steele then he had to be used to the other
man’s rough and ready ways.
“I got nothing.” Malik threw the burner phone he had been using onto the
desk. “Nobody is answering my calls at Mossad.”
 “I’m not surprised,” Jonah told him. “Zeke did shoot the head of
Mossad.”
“In the knee,” Malik reminded him.
“Yup,” Jonah agreed, “but that’s enough to get you blacklisted.”
“Ugh.” Malik scowled. “There is one guy that I can hit up.”
“I am trying to figure out something.” Jason’s statement drew the
attention of everyone in the room. “Why me?”
“Why you what?” Fritz frowned at him.
“The email came from Malik’s throwaway email account,” Jason said. “If
this is the guy who sends Malik intel, why not just leave it in the draft folder,
as is their normal procedure. Why send the email to me?”
“And how did he get your email address?” Rock asked. “You been
putting it on stalls in the John again?”
“Nope,” Jason gestured toward Micah, “but dumbass over there did write
a four-star General’s number on the wall of a toilet stall in Thailand once.”
“Dude was a dick,” Micah muttered in response.
“Hey, focus,” Fritz told them. He knew what they were doing. Throwing
down snark and adding humor to keep themselves from getting so pissed they
couldn’t focus on the task at hand. It was a habit learned when they were in
the military. However, the trick was to not let the snark and humor be a
distraction. “Jase, your email.” Fritz brought them back to the task at hand.
“Who has it?”
“Nobody outside the people in this room has that one,” Jason answered
immediately.
He didn’t even need to think about it. He’d only set that email up a month
ago. He changed accounts and providers more often than ranchers changed
watering holes for their stock. He’d started timing his new emails and phone
numbers with Pops’ stock rotations, just to be sure he didn’t have the same
one for too long.
“The only people who have that address are right here in this room and…
shit.”
“What?” Fritz prompted.
“I have an old email forwarded to that account,” Jason told him. “Hey,
Kalon, can you see from looking at that email if it was auto forwarded to that
address from another?”
“Sure.” Kalon picked up Jason’s cell and clicked into the email again.
“Yes… it came from a Gmail account.”
 “Damn.” Jason’s mouth twisted and he squeezed his eyes shut as he tried
to remember who exactly had his Gmail address. “It could have come from
Moran.”
“Moran?” Fritz gaped at Jason. “You mean the dude who was on my
team?”
“Yeah.” Jason shrugged. “He was doing some bomb disposal contract
work in the ‘Stans, when we were looking for Steele. I gave him the Gmail
address in case he heard anything on the ground that would help us find
Steele.”
“You think it came from him?” Creed asked.
“It’s a possibility.” Fritz thought about it for a second. “He’s pretty sharp.
If there was something fishy going on while he was over there, you can be
sure Castello would have picked up on it and investigated. If that intel led to
Speaker, then it’s an easy jump to Jason still being in contact with you all.
Jason worked with Lynx as Overwatch on a few jobs. Castello would want to
pass on intel if he thought it viable.”
“Do you have a number for him?” Matt asked.
Fritz patted his pockets. He had his damn book somewhere… there you
are. He pulled his black notebook out of his ass pocket and flipped through
the pages. “I have a home number for him,” he said, “in Cali.”
“Well, what are you waiting for?” Jonah tossed him a phone. “Call the
dude and see if it’s him.”
“Sure.” Fritz typed the numbers into the cell and waited for the call to
connect. He hoped Moran didn’t think he was insane.
The call clicked from ringing to a mechanical voice. Fuck, voicemail.
“Moran, Major Blackwell here. Call me back on 555-6771-2776 when
you get a sec, will you?” he said. “I want to pick your brain about
something.”
There was no fucking way he was telling Castello Moran’s freaking
answering service what the fuck was going on. He didn’t even know for sure
if Moran still lived in that house.
He pressed end on the call and looked at the others. “As you heard I left a
voicemail, but fuck knows when he will get back to me, or if he will even get
it.”
“There’s not much you all can do right now.” Kalon gestured to Malik.
“We’ll see what we can find to verify the info in that email.”
“In other words,” Steele kissed the top of Kalon’s head, “you all are
making too much noise. Kindly fuck off, so we can work?”
“Umm.” Kalon blushed. “Well, yeah.”
“Move out, asshats,” Steele ordered, “We are more or less done until the
main systems are back up and running. Get some sleep as once we are
operational, we go balls to the wall until we figure this shit out.”
Jason could totally get on board with that. His stomach growled
reminding him he needed to offer it a sacrifice in the form of food too.
“Okay.” He gestured between himself and Fritz, “Call us when we can get to
work?”
“Yeah.” Jonah told him, “we need some chill time too.”
“Let’s go.” Fritz waved Jason out ahead of him, “See ya later.”
“Yup, later.” Jonah answered.
 CHAPTER NINE

JASON WINCED as his ass landed on the steps of the house he and Fritz
used when they stayed here at the compound. “Fuck.”
“Did you hurt your ass?” Fritz smirked at him. “I have a cure for that.”
Jason’s fingers worked at the laces of his combat boots. No matter how
many brands of regular boots he tried, after so many years in the army, his
feet were still most comfortable in the high top desert boots he’d worn since
he was nineteen.
“Fuck me, I’m tired.” He blew out a breath. “Will this shit ever fucking
end?”
“What are you thinking?” Fritz asked.
“I’m too old for this shit,” Jason muttered. “I thought we left the fucking
tangos in the Middle East.”
How the hell did you fight so many battles and trust someone for so long,
only to find out they were the cause of every clusterfuck that dropped on your
head since two thousand and eleven?
Jason finally won the battle with his laces and pulled off his boots.
Wriggling his toes, he sighed in relief. No matter how broken in these boots
were it was still freaking good to take them off.
“If you are too old,” Fritz gripped Jason’s forearm and pulled him to his
feet, “what does that make me?”
“I don’t know, Merlin or something?”
Fritz huffed out a snort. “Right, let me just see where the fuck I parked
my wizard’s hat.” He led the way inside. Unclipping the harness across his
chest, he dropped the holster attached to it, on the coffee table. “Lock the
door, will you? In case Lexi happens to come in before I move that.”
 “Sure.” Jason paused in divesting himself of his knives and locked the
door. Fritz was right. Lexi had a habit of showing up early. “She comes for
the waffles.”
“I know.”
“Softie.” Jason had thought seeing grumpy assed Rock with Lexi was the
sweetest thing.
And yes, it was damn sweet, but then he had watched Fritz dressed in an
apron, flour on his cheek and on his ass, where he had obviously wiped his
hands. He had been reading a recipe to make Lexi the waffles she had
requested. If a female saw that, he was pretty sure there would have been
ovaries exploding all over Texas.
Fritz sank onto the couch and pressed a button on the remote, bringing the
flat screen TV to life.
“Want a beer?”
“Nah.” Fritz leaned one arm on the back of the couch and twisted to look
at Jason. “Throw me a water though.”
“You got it.” Jason rummaged in the fridge for a couple of seconds before
he tossed a bottle of water in the direction of the couch. “You want a
sandwich?”
“We have beef?”
“It’s Texas,” Jason answered. Who the hell didn’t have beef for
sandwiches on a cattle ranch in Texas? “You bet we have beef.”
“Then yeah, I’ll have one.” Fritz turned back toward the TV.
As much as he wanted to stare at Jason’s ass as he bent at the waist to pull
the sandwich fixings out of the fridge, he didn’t. It would give Jase the heebie
jeebies. Two fucking years and he still wasn’t comfortable with Fritz looking
at his back.
I don’t have fucking X-ray vision. Even if I gave a shit, I wouldn’t see the
scars through his T-shirt.
He stared at the screen instead. Having the TV set to a news channel
twenty-four-seven had become more than a habit. Without the chatter of a
reporter in the background, the house would be as quiet as a graveyard in
witching hour, and give him the heebie jeebies.
He snorted in his head. Weren’t they a pair of fucked up dumbasses?
“Here.”
Fritz jerked. Shit, his mind had been wandering and he hadn’t noticed
Jason walking across the room.
 He took the plate Jase held out to him. Twisting off the bottle top, he
waited for Jason to sit before he placed the bottle against the back of the
couch, between them.
Maybe I shouldn’t have made this so huge.
Jason eyed the sandwich stuffed full of beef, potato salad, and tomato.
It will fit.
He stuffed the corner of the sandwich into his mouth. Flavors and
yumminess exploded over his taste buds. Why the hell did a sandwich always
taste better than a plate full of dinner? One would think having lived mostly
on sandwiches until he was about six or seven and Jonah’s momma had
started feeding him that he would never want to look at another one, but
somehow, sandwiches were still one of his favorite foods.
Or maybe it’s that you refuse to allow anything that bastard did have an
effect on your life these days…
“It’s good.”
Fritz’s voice snapped Jason’s brain back into focus. He had no freaking
clue why he settled around Fritz. He couldn’t figure out what it was about
Fritz that made him calm. Even if the whole world was spinning on around
him, he didn’t notice.
He reached out with his finger and wiped the drip of hot sauce from the
corner of Fritz’s mouth. He licked his finger then froze when Fritz groaned.
“Damn.”
Jason knew his eyes had widened. Hello deer in the headlights! “Um,
sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Fritz adjusted his dick and shrugged. “It’s hot.”
“The sauce?”
What the fuck is he talking about?
“No, you.” Fritz cleared his throat. “When you do that it makes me think
of my dick in your mouth.”
Jason coughed. The food in his mouth went down the wrong pipes and he
spluttered to clear his throat.
“Drink this.” Fritz held out the bottle of water.
Jason took a sip, his eyes still watering. “Gag reflex,” he muttered. Shit.
“Uh…”
Fritz barked out a laugh, a tiny bit of cum leaking out of his already hard
dick. A small pre-ejaculate gift from his ever-generous cock.
Jason’s gag reflex made them both crazy, Fritz, because he loved it.
Jason… well he was learning to listen to Fritz and not the damn voices in his
head.
“What do yo—”
Fritz dumped his half empty plate on the floor and cut off Jason’s words
by pulling him against his body. Covering Jason’s mouth with his lips, and
diving deep into a kiss. It almost felt like he was trying to suck Jason’s soul
out through his mouth, dragging it into him. Jason pulled back the tiniest bit.
Fritz didn’t want to let go and was ready to hold on tight, but then Jason
shifted and melted into Fritz, molding their bodies together.
Fritz had always thought the term “melted” was some shit made up and
reserved for books and movies. Before Jason, sex had been rough and ready.
He’d taken it where he found it. Clubs, bars—he hadn’t been fussy. Guys had
grabbed him, slammed into him, or they lay submissive for him and let him
fuck them, but until Jason never had anyone “melted” into him. Nor had they
trusted him to look after them as this one man did, and holy fuck, that did
funny shit to his heart.
For twenty seconds, thirty seconds—Fritz wasn’t exactly paying attention
to time—Jason allowed Fritz to explore his mouth, to coax groans and sighs
from his chest, but then he exploded into action, pushing Fritz back as
Jason’s tongue shoved into his mouth. Fritz had known Jason wouldn’t
remain submissive for long. That he did for him sent a wave of pleasure
shooting through his veins.
The dam he used to keep his feelings locked up tight burst in Jason’s
mind and his dick hardened painfully, pressing against the zipper of his jeans.
When they weren’t touching, he could maintain a distance, remind himself to
keep his hands to himself—even if he needed Fritz’s touch to ground him at
times.
Fritz had no such need. Jase had become an expert at keeping that box in
his brain locked and chained somewhere deep. Until Fritz’s lips reminded
him of how damn good it felt to have them on his. He craved the scrape of
stubble against his bottom lip, ached to have Fritz’s hand sliding up and
down his dick.
Jason could feel Fritz’s dick pressed against his belly, and his hand
dropped to Fritz’s utilities, his hand sliding down until he rubbed along
Fritz’s cock.
“Fuck, Jason.”
Fritz flipped them around. Jason’s back was against the couch and Fritz
slid to the floor on his knees. Pulling down his jeans, Jason’s dick jerked
when he freed it from behind the zipper. It was beautiful. He fucking loved
Jason’s cock. It wasn’t huge, but it was big enough—eight inches with a
gorgeous helmet, and it throbbed with each heartbeat.
“Please.” Jason lifted his hips and groaned before Fritz even touched it.
Fritz wanted to play. Sex was no longer about just getting off. Fritz
wanted to tease Jason, to lead him to the edge. He traced one finger on the
underside of his dick and it almost jerked away from his touch. Damn, he
loved how responsive Jason was. Fritz didn’t give a shit what Jason thought.
There was no fucking way he was too ruined to have a proper relationship.
Maybe if he fucked him enough it would sink into his brain.
Yeah, you’ve had two years of fucking and it hasn’t sunk in yet.
He ran his fingernail lightly down the underside of Jason’s dick again.
Precum spilled freely from the slit. Shit, Jase was going to cum.
Nope, not yet.
Fritz squeezed his balls, applying pressure.
“Oh,” Jason exhaled in a rush of air.
Letting go, Fritz licked the gentlest, tiniest flick right under the head of
Jason’s dick.
Jason’s groan was loud. Normally about now Jase would be reaching for
the lights, switching them off to prevent Fritz seeing more of his scars than
necessary, but Fritz wanted to see them, wanted to lick and kiss every damn
one. That he didn’t, told Fritz the control Jason normally showed, had been
thrown out, beaten into submission by lust.
At least for tonight.
Both of Jason’s hands reached for the side of Fritz’s head, and he let
Jason pull him in close, his beard scraping lightly against the soft skin of
Jason’s erection. Fritz turned his head to give it a long, sloppy lick from
down low to the top. He fucking loved the sounds coming out of Jason’s
mouth as his tongue licked and tasted.
“Mmh.”
He pulled back and caught some precum on the tip of his finger, then
moved back up the couch, offering his finger to Jason.
“Shit, that’s hot.” Fritz groaned. He refused to allow his eyes to close. He
wanted to watch as Jason’s tongue wrapped around his finger, to lick the
precum.
“Suck meee,” Jason pleaded.
 Your wish is my command… tonight.
Fritz engulfed Jason’s dick almost to the root. Jason started to pump, but
Fritz pushed against his hips, trapping his ass onto the couch cushions.
With long, slow bobs of his head, Fritz went up and down his entire eight
inches, closing his mouth tight as he cleared the head, then forcing it back
through his lips, relaxing more as he went down until his nose hit Jason’s
belly. Once Fritz knew Jason would behave and wasn’t pumping, he dropped
one hand to cup his balls, massaging them as he gave him head.
“Yeah, like that.” Jason’s voice rumbled from deep inside him. One of his
hands dropped to the top of Fritz’s head, his fingers rubbing along Fritz’s
scalp, giving him light nudges each time he swallowed Jason’s dick down.
“Ahh.”
Fritz felt Jason stiffen. Shit, I don’t want him to cum yet.
He pulled his mouth off and grabbed the base of Jason’s dick, squeezing
it to stop him from reaching the point of no return.
“Oh, fuck,” Jason half-whispered, half-groaned.
Fritz pushed himself up, licking Jason’s stomach, running his tongue
between Jason’s pecs, up his neck, and to his mouth. He pushed his tongue
into Jason’s mouth, allowing him to taste himself on Fritz’s lips.
“Fritz, fuck,” Jason gasped as he thrust his hips forward, pushing his spit-
wet dick up against Fritz’s still covered cock.
Fritz pulled back from Jason’s mouth. Not only was his swagger as sexy
as sin, but his mouth could make Fritz forget he’d ever had a damn braincell
in his head. He swiped one hand across his mouth, cleaning off the spit and
drool. “You want to pitch or catch?”
“Um…” Jason’s half-closed eyes stared at Fritz.
Damn it, one of these days he would fucking ask for what he wanted.
Fritz would make sure of it. He knew this was not just getting their rocks off
or a release. This was more. It had to be, right?
“Jase?”
Jason swallowed hard and locked his gaze on Fritz. “I just need you.
Doesn’t matter how or where.”
“Fuck,” Fritz growled. “Pick—fucking or fucked?”
“Fucked.”
Fritz leaned all his weight onto Jason and kissed him deep and slow,
making them both crazy before he pulled back and took a shuddering breath.
“Thank you.” Fritz ran his hands down the golden skin of Jason’s sides.
He loved how the muscles moved beneath his palms.
I should have taken my damn pants off. His hands worked the button on
his utility pants.
“Mmh.”
Fritz looked up at Jase. “Holy shit.” He swallowed hard, watching Jason’s
hand lazily stroke his own dick as he waited for Fritz. “Damn, that’s sexy.”
“It’s all yours if you hurry the hell up.”
“Lube?”
Jason’s hand dug down the side of the couch cushions, “Here.” Jason
turned onto his knees, his hands fisting the cushions on the back of the couch.
Fritz fumbled to grab the bottle Jason threw him. Within seconds his
clothes were gone. Fuck knows where they landed. He really didn’t give a
shit, because he was too freaking busy getting turned on watching Jason’s
spine arch in pleasure as his lubed thumbs traced the deep dimples on Jason’s
ass, before sliding down the crease and pressing gently to his hole.
“Ummm—fuck—yeah,” Jason moaned.
The muscles in his ass relaxed and Fritz pushed his thumbs in, rubbing
and tugging, stretching him. He poured more lube down the crack of his
man’s ass and slipped a finger in, probing for the magic spot.
He felt the bump just as Jason moaned, “Oh, fuck me, please. God. Fuck
me.”
“Not yet,” Fritz murmured, and put another finger in, stroking inside the
tight, hot channel. He waited until the moaning was almost continuous,
before pulling his fingers out and pushing the head of his latex-covered dick
inside the entrance, feeling the sphincter open willingly at the pressure.
He slid deep, his fingers digging into the slim hips in front of him, pulling
Jason’s ass closer and higher so that he got exactly the right angle.
Jason whispered faintly, “Oh, fuck, that’s good.”
Fritz started to move, his hips driving forward, his left hand holding Jason
steady with a tight grip, his right-hand snaking around to close on the
dripping head of Jason’s dick. He rubbed the head hard, then used Jase’s own
juices to lubricate the way.
Groaning, he rocked against Jason and licked his way along his neck.
“Oh.”
Ah, there it was—the hot spot that drew that sexy growl from Jason. The
growl that made Fritz weak at the knees every damn time. He scraped gently
with his teeth, then blew air across Jason’s neck.
 “Gonna make me blow, Major,” Jason warned, his fingers flexing on the
back of the couch.
“That’s the plan.”
“Fuck.” Jason’s asshole clenched, hard.
Fritz felt his eyelids flutter closed, but he forced them open. He wanted to
see, to savor that Jason trusted him to be behind him and not be repulsed by
the scars of his childhood.
“Fuck,” Fritz swore at the blaring of a phone ringing from down near his
feet.
“If you answer that, I swear to fuck I will beat you.” Jason slammed his
ass back, pushing Fritz’s dick deeper.
“Not…Ugh…” Fritz gritted his teeth. He was so fucking close. It felt
delicious to have Jason’s ass squeezing his dick like this. It was making him
crazy. His groan filled the air, low and needy, and he couldn’t have stopped it
if he’d tried. “Not stopping.”
Jason began rocking, pushing his ass back every time Fritz slammed
forward. “More, Fritz, need more.”
Fritz’s hips sped up at Jason’s strangled whimper, each push of his dick
more powerful than the last. “You’re going to kill me.”
“But what a way to go,” Jason muttered, his ass clenching hard.
Fritz moved his hand on Jason’s dick in rhythm with their movements. He
added a twist every time he reached the head, dipping his finger into the slit.
Do not come. Do not come, he chanted over and over in his head.
He reminded himself that Jason deserved to see the orgasm fireworks that
were already starting to flash behind his own eyes.
Fritz changed his angle. “Yes!”
Only the fact he needed both hands on Jason stopped him from fist
pumping when Jase stiffened and groaned.
“Shit, shit, shit.”
Fritz ignored the phone, which started blaring again, to enjoy the hot
spurts of cum from Jason’s dick sliding down his fingers, and the death grip
Jase’s ass had on his dick sent molten lava spinning down his spine. He
buried himself deep and came. Hard.
“Jesus.”
“Yeah.” Jason winced at the sting of Fritz’s dick pulling out of his ass.
How the hell could having his ass fucked feel so damn good, but having that
dick pulled out sting like hell?
 He inwardly sighed, when the sound of Fritz’s phone broke through his
after-sex mellow buzz, enough to annoy him. “You gonna answer that?”
“Yeah.” Fritz pulled off the condom and tied it off. So much for dragging
his man off to bed for cuddling. Damn it, he loved freaking cuddling.
 CHAPTER TEN

“BLACKWELL,” Fritz growled into the phone. “This better be fucking

good.”
He didn’t give a shit if he sounded like an asshole. He was pissed. He
knew by the time this phone call was done, Jason’s defenses would be back
up again and any chance he had of talking about a future was gone for
another time.
Bah.
The sound of an indrawn breath was loud enough to draw Jason’s
attention from his spot on the couch next to Fritz. He raised an eyebrow in
question. Fritz ignored the fact that Jason was cleaning up his dick with a T-
shirt and shrugged in response. No, he didn’t know who the fuck it was.
“Um, Major, you left a message on my phone for my dad to call you
back,” the voice said. “My dad is overseas.”
Shit. Fritz scrambled to get his brain working, what the hell was
Castello’s kid’s name…
Oh, yeah…
“Rourke?
“Yeah,” the voice answered. “I figured it was—”
Whatever the kid had been about to say was cut off by a noise that
sounded suspiciously like a battering ram against a door.
“Shit.”
“Rourke?” Fritz snapped in his best Major’s voice. “Rourke, answer me
damn it.” Fritz hit speaker on the phone so Jason could hear too.
“Shush.”
“Wha—” Fritz started to say, but his words were cut off by Jason’s hand
over his mouth.
Shit, his brains really were scrambled. He strained his ears, trying to pick
up any sounds from the phone. He could hear the faint noise of someone’s
ragged breathing, and the sounds of shouting in the background. There was a
slight familiar rhythm to the voices.
Jason nudged him. “Someone is clearing that house,” he mouthed.
Fuck. Reality slammed into Fritz. Had he put a team member’s kid in
danger by placing that damn call?
As he listened to the voices, which sounded suspiciously like Russian,
come through the phone’s speaker, he went through everything he
remembered about Castello’s son. Rourke had been maybe sixteen when Fritz
retired. That would make him twenty-one or twenty-two now, right?
He hoped like hell Castello Moran had been as smart a father as he had
been a Delta Force Operator, and he had taught his kid how to defend
himself.
He and Jason shot each other ‘what the fuck is going on’ looks as they
strained to hear anything through the phone.

ROURKE MORAN LOOKED at the phone. What the hell was Major
Blackwell smoking these days? It sure as hell wasn’t cigars. He’d freaking
left a voice message asking Rourke’s dad for a call back. Rourke had tried to
be helpful and let him know his father was in Iraq with his job. Then all hell
broke loose.
The sound of a loud thump from the next room reminded him if he didn’t
survive the next few minutes, what the Major was or was not smoking
wouldn’t matter a fuck.
Rourke’s laptop bag pressed into his back, the buckle digging in under his
ribs, but he knew he couldn’t move. His knuckles whitened as he gripped the
phone against his chest. He didn’t dare pull it out to see if the call he had
been on was disconnected. The light would shine bright in the darkness of the
cubby hole. He wasn’t quite sure what had made him dive in here at the first
sound of the slam against his kitchen door.
Nope, he wasn’t going to question it either, considering the noises he was
hearing sounded like an Eastern European version of the training sessions, he
had watched at Fort Bragg when his father was Delta Force. Nope, he would
just keep his ass behind this bookshelf, thank you very much.
The movies don’t tell you how hard it is to keep your breath from
laboring and sounding loud.
Yeah, you know what sounds loud, Rourke? Those footsteps on the other
side of the shelving unit.
Rourke held his breath. Oh shit. He could see the man’s boots under the
bottom of the unit. He hadn’t had time to close the sliding door and didn’t
dare do it yet, in case whoever was out there heard it. He hoped swim
practice paid off. If he exhaled now it would be too loud. His chest hurt, his
lungs burned and the black spots in front of his eyes told him he wouldn’t be
able to help himself soon.
Hurry up already.
“Nichego,” the man in the room called in response to a muffled shout
from the hallway.
Crap, I should have taken that Russian class Pop wanted me to. That is
Russian… right?
Nichego… is that what he said? I hope to fuck that means he found
nothing.
“What the fuck do you mean nothing?”
Holy shit, that was English.
“There is no laptop or computer, boss.”
Rourke’s eyes widened, the black spots and lack of oxygen forgotten.
What the fuck did they want a laptop or computer for? This must be
connected to his father somehow.
“Fuck.” The man with the mid-western accent, who was obviously the
boss, sounded as if he too now stood next to the shelving unit in Rourke’s
father’s office. “We need the damn codes on that software download. I can’t
sell a fucking nuke with no damn launch codes.”
Nuke? Oh shit, Pop, what have you done?
Rourke’s lungs were on fire now. He had to exhale. He couldn’t help it.
Burying his face into his shoulder he prayed it would muffle the sound
enough that the gush of air would not be heard. Why the fuck hadn’t he
switched on the TV or something?
If you had, you wouldn’t have had the time to freaking hide, so, stop
bitching.
“He’s a damn kid. It’s not as if it’s the operator we are after,” the first
man said, their voices fading.
Thank fuck they were moving away.
Everything in Rourke’s head screamed to a halt when the significance of
those words hit him. It was him these people where after. What the fuck did
he know about nukes and codes? He hadn’t downloaded any freaking
software on anything.
Yes, you did. You beat the boss on that secret level in ‘Time of War’. Shit,
shit, shit.
Nope, that couldn’t be it. No fucking way.
Rourke strained his ears listening. He carefully shifted, trying to make no
noise as he moved and pressed his ear against the back of the shelving unit.
How long had it been since he heard talking? Shit, he should have been
paying more attention.
One, two…
Rourke started counting in his head, counting to sixty five times while he
listened.
He heard nothing.
Could he take the chance that nobody was in the room? Were they still in
the house? What the heck would his Pop do?
His fingers cramping reminded him that he still held the cell phone in his
hand. Crap, he’d forgotten he had that.
“Major?” he whispered, his voice barely more than a breath. “Are you
still there? If so whisper.”

JASON TOOK the steps to Jonah’s house two at a time and pushed in the
door. Despite his PTSD and hang ups from his capture in two thousand and
eleven, Matt Garrett still didn’t lock his door. Right this second Jason was
freaking grateful that he didn’t.
He paused inside the door and cocked his head to one side, listening. He
could hear the slight melody of guitar notes floating from downstairs.
He headed toward the war room and nodded at Malik and Kalon before
going to the bedroom door and knocking.
“Jonah? Matt?” he called out to let them know he was there.
The entrance to Matt and Jonah’s private space was off the war room.
Jason knew better than to surprise two ex-operators by just barging in.
Besides, Matt had his security feed sent to the bedroom. Without a doubt
Matt and Jonah knew he was there. They were just waiting to see if he
needed them or Malik and Kalon, who were still working at the computers.
“Jase?” The music stopped and Jonah’s voice called out in response.
“We got a situation and need your plane, STAT,” Jason called through
the door.
The door immediately opened, revealing a shirtless Matt. He lowered the
weapon he held in his hand. “Sit-rep,” he ordered.
Like the soldier he was, Jason didn’t wait for any further instructions.
“Castello Moran’s house was broken into tonight,” he told Matt. “Fritz was
on the line with his kid.”
“They take the kid?” Jonah propped his guitar up against the wall, next to
the bed.
“Not so far. We have local law enforcement on the way.” Jason paused.
“Sounded like a battering ram was used for entry.”
“Shit.” Matt picked his cell up and started pressing buttons. “I’ll get G
and Rock. One of them can pilot.”
“Send one to Zeke too.” Jonah grabbed the duffle he used as a go bag.
“He can pull the plane out of the hanger.” When Matt nodded in response, he
gestured to the war room. “Gear up. I’ll send out the alert.”
“Roger that.”
This right here was one of the reasons Jason fucking loved his brothers.
They didn’t need shit loads of intel, they just needed to know that Jase was
asking for their damn plane.
Within seconds they were making it happen and coming along for
backup.

FRITZ KEPT the phone pressed to his ear. What the fuck was going on in
that house? He could barely hear Rourke breathing never mind anything else.
Regardless, no matter how much he wanted to speak to remind the kid he
wasn’t alone, he didn’t do it. Patience was a trait he had forced himself to
learn. Long gone was the impulsiveness he’d had as a teenager.
He chewed on the side of his thumb. Yeah, Jason would bitch at him for it
later, but for now, the bite of pain as he tugged at the already ragged skin
with his teeth reminded him to stay focused.
“Are you there?”
Fritz closed his eyes but didn’t give himself the luxury of savoring the
blast of relief that swept through his veins, on hearing Rourke’s soft whisper.
“Yes, Rourke. I’m still here.”
“I think they have gone.”
“Who is they?”
“I don’t know.”
Fritz could hear the soft sounds of fabric scuffing against something.
“Stay still,” he cautioned. This was one of the sounds his guys would have
been listening for in the field. Did he really want to take a chance that
whoever had been in that house wasn’t a) still there and b) if they were that
they weren’t observant as fuck?
Nope, that was a chance he didn’t want the kid taking.
“Your clothes make noise when they rub off whatever it is you are resting
against, anyone hearing it will know you are close.”
“Shit.” Rourke muttered, “but we are talking, won’t they hear that and
know anyway?”
“The sound of voices travels through air ducts and stuff. Just hearing a
faint whisper doesn’t mean you are in the same room. Not like hearing the
scuff of fabric does.”
“Okay.”
Fritz nodded in satisfaction when the scuff noises immediately stopped.
“You are somewhere safe?” he asked.
“Unless they blow the house, yeah, I think so.”
“Can you stay where you are for a couple of hours?”
“Hours?”
Fritz heard the dismay, or maybe it was disgust, in Rourke’s voice. He
pushed aside the pang of sympathy. “We’re coming to you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, son, we’re coming,” Fritz told him. Jeez, did the kid really think
he would leave one of his guys’ families out swinging in the breeze with no
help? Fuck. “But we’re flying in from Texas, and I need to know if you’re
safe until we get there.”
“I can’t hear anything,” Rourke whispered. “Even if I could they were
mostly speaking what I think was Russian or another Eastern European
language.”
Fuck! Was it Speaker? Fritz blew out a silent breath. There were a lot of
Eastern European languages and a hell of a lot of gangs, with origins in those
countries, based in the US.
“Do you know what they were looking for?”
“Um…” Rourke stumbling over his answer gave Fritz pause. Shit, there
was something there. His eyebrows raised in disbelief when the kid continued
with a hopeful tone, “Maybe it has to do with something my dad was working
on when he was in Delta with you?”
“Rourke, I’ve been out of the military for nearly six years and your father
for four. While anything is possible, it’s highly unlikely we’re getting
blowback for something after all this time.”
“I was afraid of that,” he muttered in response.
“We’ll figure it out, kid.” The door pushed open and Jason dropped a
duffle on the floor. The clang of metal hitting tiles sounded in the room.
“What was that?”
“One of the guys dropped his go bag.” Fritz automatically kept his voice
calm, in direct contrast to the panic he heard from the other end of the line.
“Wheels up in twenty,” Jason told Fritz.
He headed to the bedroom they had been using and returned with Kevlar
vests and dropped them on the floor next to the go bag. While Fritz loved
what Matt and Jonah had done with building up their equipment, he still
preferred his own armor.
Fritz looked at his watch. “Where are you in the house?” he asked
Rourke.
“You’ve been here before?”
Rourke’s question brought a smile to Fritz’s mouth. Castello Moran was
one hell of an operator. That his kid had managed to hide and evade what
sounded like either a hit or similar, meant Moran had taken the time to teach
his son some survival tricks. The younger Moran’s question confirmed it.
“Yeah,” Fritz told him. “I helped build it.”
“Then you know where in Dad’s office I am.”
Yup, definitely an operator’s kid. Aside from the room, he was still not
giving any intel.
“Roger that,” Fritz said. “We will be a couple of hours. You can stay
where you are until we get there?”
“Yeah.”
 “What’s your cell battery at?”
“Damn.” There was a slight pause before Rourke continued. “Thirty four
percent.”
“Okay,” Fritz raised an eyebrow at Jason. His guy was standing at the
door, waiting. “When I hang up, you turn the phone off. Turn it on every hour
and send me a text message confirming you’re okay. Once I respond you turn
it off again, got it?”
“Yeah.”
“Good boy.”
“Fritz, we gotta go, man,” Jason interrupted.
“I gotta go,” Fritz told Rourke. “We’re on our way. Stay where you are.
Try not to move too much and keep that cell off until check-in time.”
“Okay.” Rourke answered. “Um, Major?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you.”
“We’ll be there,” Fritz told him. “Your job is to evade those tangos until
we arrive.”
“Yeah.”
Fritz pressed end on the call. He knew Rourke probably would have
preferred to have a voice on the other end of that cell for however long it took
for him to get there, but with his cell battery at such a low amount it just
wasn’t possible.
“Ready?” Jason asked.
“Yup.” Fritz stuffed his cell into his ass pocket and grabbed his vest off
the floor. “Let’s roll.”
 CHAPTER ELEVEN

JASON PRESSED his back against a tree at the rear of the house and
clicked on comms. “TOC, Panther Five.”
“Go ahead, Panther Five,” Kalon said the moment the line opened.
“TOC, we have no visual on tangos in the area. Can you confirm with
thermal images from the drone?”
“Stand by.”
Jason studied the house in front of them. Set back from the road,
surrounded by trees and open ground, it was the type of location he would
have chosen to raise a family.
He knew Fritz was getting antsy, as he could almost feel the vibrations in
the air around him. Jason kept his body slightly in front of Fritz—not enough
to impede his firearm, but enough to remind him they would follow protocol
and wait for confirmation to proceed from Kalon.
“Panther Five, TOC,” Kalon said. “Confirmation we have only one
human sized heat signature from inside the house. And something that looks
like a couple of squirrels in the attic.”
“Understood. Panther Five out.”
Jason glanced at Steele over the roof of the truck. “Moran has squirrels in
the attic. Try not to shoot them.” His comment drew snickers from the others.
He could see Matt folding his lips together to stop from laughing out loud.
“What?” Fritz snapped out. Seriously, they were in a freaking hurry here.
Rourke was waiting on their arrival.
“We were on a training mission in the Rockies and one of the furry
rodents spent a night raiding Steele’s duffle for his stash of peanuts,” Jason
explained. “He tried to shoot it twice.”
 “Training missions use blanks,” Fritz muttered. “Dumbass didn’t know
you can’t shoot a squirrel with blanks?”
“Nope.” Jason popped the end of the word. “He totally forgot that bit.”
“Shut it,” Steele grumbled. “Is that our primary in there or what?”
“Let’s go and find out,” Matt said.
“Copy,” Jason agreed, it was time to get this show on the road.
“Wait.” Fritz pulled his cell phone from a pouch on his vest. He’d sent a
text message to Rourke every hour. For all but the last message Rourke had
responded immediately.
“Local cops were here. They found the house destroyed.” He pressed the
buttons. Clicking on the message at the top, he hit call and muttered into the
handset, “Rourke, Fritz Blackwell, answer the damn phone.”
Jason studied the exterior of the house. “You see the crime scene tape?”
“I see it,” Fritz muttered, “and I don’t like it.”
“TOC, Panther Seven,” Fritz called Kalon over comms. “LEOs didn’t
find the kid when they were here?”
“Panther Seven, TOC,” Kalon immediately answered. “Nope, the house
is trashed, but their system just updated with a BOLO for Rourke Moran.”
“Damn.” Concern twisted in Fritz’s guts. He squeezed his eyes closed and
blew out a breath.
Despite all his years in the military as an officer and the numerous times
he had been the barer of tragic news from home to the people under his
command, he really didn’t want to have to be the one to send the Red Cross
to Castello Moran with news his kid was missing. That heat signature inside
the house kept the tiny flare of hope alive that he wouldn’t have to do that.
“Copy, TOC. Panther Seven out.”
Please be fucking there, I do not want to tell Castello I failed to keep you
safe.
Fritz checked his firearm, ensuring he had a round in the chamber.
Around him he saw the familiar sights of Team Panther’s hands working in
sync as they also readied themselves for battle, as they had so many times
before. Fritz pushed away the twinge of guilt that tried to get into his head. If
he hadn’t called Castello maybe whoever had come for Rourke wouldn’t
have made the connection.
“Stop,” Jason growled under his breath. “We don’t even know if this is
connected or not.”
“Panther Five, TOC here,” Kalon interrupted, clearly having heard
Jason’s comment over their comms units. “That’s not strictly true. We’re
tracking chatter on the dark web about a kid who won a “prize” by beating a
bonus level on a computer game. The prize is downloaded software. Software
that contains launch codes for a Serb.”
“Fuck.”
“Shit.”
“Ah, crap.”
Fritz ignored the swearing from the men around him. “TOC, Panther
Seven. This connects to our primary how?”
“Panther Seven, TOC Two,” Malik answered for Kalon. “Because I am
looking at a million-dollar bounty for your primary’s capture, and an extra
ten million for the computer with the software.”
“Hello cluster and welcome fuck, we did not miss your presence in the
slightest.” Jonah’s eyes widened comically. Even for him, the shit hot mega
star, the numbers were mind blowing.
“Seriously?” Matt swatted Jonah on the ass. “You couldn’t just say
clusterfuck like a normal person?”
“I keep telling you, babe, I’m a limited edition.” Jonah smirked.
“Listen up, shitheads,” Fritz growled. “That kid in there is important.
He’s Delta family, got it?”
Matt’s face darkened, his eyebrows pulling together in a frown. “Yeah,
man, we got it.”
“Move out,” Fritz ordered. He didn’t care that he was no longer boss and
he didn’t give a shit that Steele and Matt were effectively in command. Damn
it, that kid in there was the son of one of his men. That made Rourke Moran
his responsibility.
“Roger,” Jason immediately responded. He dropped into a crouch and
kept his weapon close to his body, his eyes and gun muzzle moving in sync
as he ran for the side of the house.
The whole team moved as one unit, each man knowing where the other
would be without looking. If they were in the sandbox, movement in any
unexpected location would prompt immediate action to neutralize the threat.
Here, in Northern California, they needed to be more careful. Gunfire in this
suburban area would cause numerous 911 calls. They didn’t have time to
explain why a team of black ops operators were running a rescue on US soil.
Nope. That was a joy they could do without.
“Panther Four, moving,” Micah’s voice over comms confirmed that he,
Hawk, Creed, and Delta were doing a simultaneous approach at the rear of
the property.
“Panther Six, moving.”
Grif and Hawk would approach from the side entrance through the French
doors Fritz knew led into the main lounge.
“Panther Four, launch your fur missile!” Fritz ordered Micah.
“Roger.”
Through his comms unit, Fritz heard Micah give the command in Czech
for Delta to search the house. “Revier.”
They may be in the good old US of A, but old habits died hard. These
men knew the value of a solid military K9. They would not enter any
building until the dog had cleared it. This may be Castello Moran’s house,
but right now it was also a hot zone. Delta would clear the building then they
could proceed.
On the military-grade wrist computer attached to his forearm, Fritz
tracked the dog’s progress through the house, the view from the camera
attached to her vest sending back images as she went from room to room.
When Jason reached the edge of the house, he took up a covert firing
position on the corner, where he was hidden from view of the street. He
dropped to his right knee and Fritz raced over the open ground to take up
position behind him. Jonah, Matt, and Steele swiftly followed on their sixes.
“That’s an alert, boss.”
Micah’s voice had Fritz’s arm whipping upward and he peered at the
screen. “TOC, this is Panther Seven.”
“Go ahead, Panther Seven.”
“Can you confirm that’s our heat signature?” Fritz really hoped it was.
The view from Delta’s camera showed she was sitting in front of a bookcase
in what he remembered to be Castello’s study.
“Confirmed.”
Thank you, sweet freaking baby Jesus. Fritz tapped twice on Jason’s
shoulder. Jase turned, used Fritz as a pivot point and headed for the door.
Fritz followed on Jason’s heels. Behind him, he knew Steele was doing a
one-eighty degree turn to take in their sixes.
As if mother nature knew this moment was a turning point, even the birds
in the trees held their breath and were silent. Traffic from the vehicles in the
neighborhood, that had sounded so loud just a few minutes before, now
seemed more distant and muted.
 Jason reached out with one hand and tried the handle on the door, “No
lock,” he reported. He pressed his ear to the door, listening. “I’m opening the
door,” he said.
Fritz wanted to yell ‘hurry the fuck up’. He wanted to get to that bookcase
two hours ago. He bit down on his cheek and counted backward in his head,
his training, mostly, the only thing that kept him in position.
Jason pushed the door open and his body lowered into a crouch as Fritz
covered over his head. “Going right,” he murmured.
“Going left,” Fritz responded. He could hear the others mirroring their
actions as each team breached the house.
The door opened into the huge kitchen that Fritz remembered from both
previous visits and when he helped build the house. The white tiled floor had
multiple muddy footprints and most of the cupboards had been emptied,
broken crockery and plates smashed all over the floor.
“Fucking hell,” Matt whispered. “Momma B would have a shit fit over
the mess.”
“Yup,” Jonah responded. “She’d be chasing dickheads with her shotgun
for sure.”
“Focus, damn it,” Fritz growled. He wanted to make a bee line for the
study at the end of the hall, but he held position and followed Jason as they
cleared the other rooms.
“Brava, Delts.”
Shit, Mic and the others were there. Hearing Micah praising Delta for her
work had Fritz bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Hurry the fuck up, babes, in
a rush here.”
“Nope.” Jason stopped dead in his tracks, his body not even moving
forward when Fritz stepped on his heels. “We’re not moving another damn
step unless you are thinking straight.”
Shit, how did he know Fritz wasn’t thinking straight? In his head, Fritz
repeated the words he had said to Jason a few minutes before, babes? He had
called Jason ‘babes.’ Oh fuck me with a barbed wire chap stick. Jason was
right, he wasn’t thinking straight. Jeez.
Fritz inhaled a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “I’m good. Keep
going.” He was talking to Jason’s back as his man never took his eyes off
their surroundings.
Fritz had done multiple tours overseas, worked in a lot of sandboxes from
The Congo to Afghanistan and every other war zone in between, but here in
freaking California he was acting like a green recruit just out of basic
training. “I’m good,” he repeated.
Jason nodded and resumed his progress toward the back of the house until
they made it to Castello’s study.

ROURKE JERKED AWAKE. Crap, he hadn’t meant to fall asleep. He

could confirm the adrenaline dump his dad had spoken about was real. Who
freaking knew?
His phone had made it to twenty percent and then betrayed him by dying.
Please turn on and you can avoid an extended visit to the trash can, he
silently told it, pressing his index finger into the on button. How would Major
Blackwell know he was still here? How would he know that Major Blackwell
had arrived?
When the phone continued to give him the black screen of death, he
swallowed past the lump in his throat.
Get it together idiot, you are a Delta Force’s son. Dad would have a shit
attack at you for acting so defeated.
His legs were dead from sitting so still for so long. He ached to move, but
he didn’t dare. When his hand had felt the woobie blanket tucked into the
corner of the cubby hole there hadn’t been tears in his eyes. Nope, not at all,
but he was more than ready to acknowledge that his dad’s military blanket
was as much a security blanket now as it was when he was ten years old.
The ‘liner, wet weather poncho’, as it was officially called, was made of
two layers of nylon filled with polyester, sewn up along the sides and
crosswise ensuring a very tough and durable piece of equipment. What Army
logistics manuals failed to say was that magic spells are cast over poncho
liners when they are made to make them so efficient at trapping heat in and
keeping the cold out.
Rourke rubbed the distinctive three-color camouflage patterned material
between his fingers. This was his dad’s first poncho. It was lined with
recycled camouflaged parachute material left over from World War Two.
Maybe if he rubbed it enough like a genie bottle, some of the grit and
determination from the airborne troops of that era would leak from the liner
into him.
 He snorted in his head.
You are losing it, buddy. You are too old to want a security blanket, even
if it’s called a woobie.
Rourke ignored the voices in his brain. He didn’t give a shit. His
subconscious could bitch all it wanted, but you were never too old to want a
security blanket…right?
The only answer his brain could give him right there and then was a
resounding, “Hell no!”
“Brava, Delts, revier.”
Oh no. They’re back… shit.
A slither of ice slid down his spine. Rourke fisted his hands in the woobie
and squeezed his eyes closed. All the pep talks he had given himself over the
past couple of hours flew right out the window, along with all the courage he
had managed to scrape together.
He folded his lips together to keep the whimper that wanted to escape
contained. Somehow, from somewhere, probably deep down near China, he
found his brains and bit his lip harder until the metallic taste of his own blood
reminded him once more that help was coming. He just had to hold on long
enough. If the people who had broken into his house wanted to find him, he
would not make it freaking easy by making noise.
Rourke strained his ears, listening. What the hell was that weird sound?
Is that snuffling?
Sniffing?
Oh, fuck my life already. I’m so screwed.
They have a dog.
 CHAPTER TWELVE

MICAH WATCHED Hawk’s fingers like a… well, like a Hawk, as three

dropped to two and then to one. When Hawk’s fingers closed into a fist, he
nodded and entered through the door with Hawk almost stepping on his heels.
“Clear left.”
“Clear right,” Creed said, taking a position beside Delta with his weapon
aimed at the floor to ceiling bookcase the dog had been alerting on.
Micah knew without looking that Creed had swung right, while he had
gone left, leaving Hawk to cover the center of the room. He lowered his
weapon, allowing it to hang by the sling he wore attached to his armored
vest. Smiling, he pulled Delta’s sloppy ball from a pouch attached to his belt.
“Brava, Delta, brava.” Then he tossed the ball to his girl to reward her for a
job well done.
“Jeez, where did you get that accent?” Hawk deadpanned. “Sesame
Street?”
“Fucker,” Micah muttered.
Both Hawk and Creed knew military dogs needed the high-pitched,
excited voice to know their job was well done. Even though she was retired,
mostly, Delta was a working dog to her bones. His two assholes could tease
him all they wanted.
“Let me pour you a tall glass of fuck off,” Micah added.
“I’ll get him a straw,” Creed didn’t take his eyes off their target point, “so
he can suck a bag of dicks, babe.”
“I’m not sucking anyone’s dicks but yours,” Hawk grumbled.
“Panther Four, TOC.” Kalon’s voice over comms snapped all three men
back to attention.
 “Go ahead, TOC.”
“We can hear ya’ll. You know that, right?”
“Yup.” Micah snickered. “We totally know.”
“Respectfully, Panther Four,” Kalon muttered, “ya’ll are asshats.”
“Yup.”
“Can it, Four, and give me a sit-rep,” Steele snapped as he, Jason, Fritz
and the others stepped into the room, their weapons at ready position until
they saw the relaxed stances of Micah and his guys.
Steele’s order still had Micah attempting to make his face look somewhat
contrite. Who was he kidding? He lived to make his Delta brothers crazy, but
like the operator he was, he immediately did as his former Commander
ordered.
“There is someone in there.” He nodded to where his men still had their
weapons aimed and shrugged. “Based on Delta’s responses there is no
threat.” He held up the ball. “She would have refused to even look at sloppy
if there were.”
“Good.” Steele nodded to Grif and Rock. “Take perimeter, watch our
sixes. Jonah, Matt go with them.”
“Copy.”
“Anything?” Fritz asked.
“Nope,” Micah answered. “As I told the Commander, Delta doesn’t see a
threat.”
“Can you open it?” Hawk asked Fritz. They knew he had been here when
the house was built.
“That depends on if the owner has changed the mechanism or not.”
Fritz pushed his fingers into the small space between the wall and the
shelf, taking care to ensure his knuckles brushed off the side of the unit, as
his fingers felt the wall for the tiny notch.
“Ah, there you are.”
The bookshelf unit slid silently back, revealing a wall behind it.
“Whoa,” Hawk muttered, his SIG-Sauer P226. Semi-Automatic handgun
in firing position, aimed at the wall. “Neat… But where the fuck is the hiding
place?”
Fritz kicked the skirting board. The click sounded way too close to the
sound of a shotgun hammer being pulled back. Fritz tensed. Damn, he had
forgotten how that sound sent skitters of adrenaline down his spine. Castello
had laughed his ass off the first time he had seen Fritz’s reaction to his lock
mechanism. All the men in that room had been armed and ready to fire by the
time the click had finished echoing in the room. Today was no different.
Hawk, Creed and Micah all had their weapons trained on the wall.
“All Stations, TOC.” Kalon’s voice held a sense of urgency.
Shit, what now?
“Go ahead, TOC,” Creed answered.
“You have local law enforcement en route. Get your asses out of there,
STAT.”
“Roger.” Creed nodded to the door. “Hurry it up, dude.”
Fritz pushed on the section of wall that had been moved back to reveal a
set up similar to a sliding door and pushed it to the left. The moving section
sliding into the wall revealed a narrow space that ran the length of the study.
“Rourke?” He stepped into the space. “It’s Major Blackwell.”
“How do I know you’re him?” The voice was quiet, but steady. Good, he
hadn’t lost it yet, but Fritz would yell at him later for not answering the text
messages.
“You modified the paint gun I bought you for your tenth birthday and you
broke the kitchen window shooting rocks out of it instead of paint.”
“All Stations, TOC,” Kalon once again called them over comms. “You
have about five minutes before LEOs are on site. Move, now.”
“Rourke, we gotta move.” Fritz didn’t want to scare the shit out of the
kid, but he didn’t want to spend the rest of the night explaining the situation
to the police either. He wanted his friend’s kid somewhere safe, yesterday.
“Okay.” The response was followed by the rustling of material. “Coming
out. Don’t shoot.”
“For fuck’s sake! We travelled all the way from freaking Texas and he
thinks we are going to shoot his ass?” Jason grumbled.
His tac light illuminated the shelves stocked with all the gear and
equipment a former operator wouldn’t want on display in his home: guns,
ammo, vests—he was quite sure that was a block of C4 on the top shelf too.
The woobie blanket stuffed under the bottom shelf moved and a body rolled
out from under it.
Jason catalogued the ‘kid’ as about five-ten, slim build, with blond hair.
Kid? He looked to be in his late teens or early twenties, but Jason got why
Fritz called him a kid. This man was the son of one of his former team
members and at close to fifty, everyone must seem like a damn kid to Fritz.
Fuck, they mostly did to Jase too.
 “Let’s move,” Jason pressed, the urgency of the situation allowing for no
time to coddle Castello’s kid.
Fritz scanned Rourke, making sure there was no obvious injuries. He
nodded when nothing jumped out at him. Rourke was dressed in jeans and
sneakers, and if the white in his knuckles as his fingers gripped the strap of
his laptop bag were any indication, he was pretty close to freaking out.
“Fall in behind the big dude,” Fritz commanded, pointing to Hawk.
“They are all freaking mountains,” Rourke muttered, but did as he was
told.
“You listen to him.”
Fritz refused to allow his focus to slip. His job was to have Jason’s back
as his tracker and lead them out of there. This may be a house in suburban
California, but all of them would rely on the muscle memory and actions they
had perfected over the previous years. Hawk and Creed were the most
experienced at hostage recovery. While this was not that exact situation, there
were similarities, therefore, Rourke would be their responsibility until they
made it back to the plane.
“Okaaay.” Rourke dragged out the word, but stepped closer to Hawk,
who smiled at him. Although it was a smile in the loosest sense of the word.
Maybe we should call that smile scary as fuck.
Kudos to the kid for following orders.
Fritz nodded at the others and clicked on his comms. “TOC, this is
Panther, we are RTB.”
“Return to base,” Micah explained to Rourke.
He kept his hands wrapped around the handle of Delta’s harness. He
could feel her body vibrating with excitement. His girl lived for the hunt and
for working, but he still didn’t want her to think this was a tango in
Afghanistan and not a civilian in the US.
“Yup,” Rourke said. “Yeah, let’s do that. Behind a base gate would be
good right now.”
“Move out,” Fritz ordered, then clicked on his comms. “All stations, we
have our primary and are moving.”
“Copy.”
Satisfied that all precautions were in place, Fritz followed Jason out of the
room. It was time to get out of this place and back to somewhere they could
figure out what the fuck was going on.
JASON FLOPPED into his usual seat on the plane, then scooted his ass
over to lean his back against the side. He crossed his boots after planting
them on the seats. Thank you, Jonah, for having a private plane. His ass was
too tired to even think of driving all the way to Matt’s ranch.
Waiting for Micah and Delta to search the plane had been a necessary
evil, but he was pretty sure he was now up to almost forty-eight hours with
no sleep and running on fumes. However, Speaker knew Jonah’s jet. If he
wanted to take out all of them, then a bomb on the plane was a good way to
do it.
Yup, Jason would take the wait while their dog checked the plane over an
explosion at thirty thousand feet.
“Where are we going?” Rourke asked as he took his own seat.
“How old are you, kid?” He ignored Rourke’s question. How the hell was
he the one sitting on their primary? Had the guys forgotten his tendency to
put his size thirteens in his mouth?
“Twenty-two.”
“Good.” Jason got to his feet and went to the small bar at the back of the
plane. He grabbed the bottle of Jack and poured a generous shot into two
glasses. He tossed back his one, before returning to the seat and handing
Rourke the other. “Drink that.”
“I don’t shoot whiskey.”
“No bullets, kid. Knock it back,” Jason told him, then added, “You’ve
had a shitty day.”
“Yeah.” Rourke eyed the glass like it was a snake about to strike. “I also
don’t drink whiskey.”
“Okay.” Jason shrugged. He took the glass back to the bar. Fuck, drink it.
Nope.
Squeezing his eyes shut, he refused to give into the inner demon that told
him to throw caution out onto the runway and have the other shot.
Ow, shit. Fuck.
Jason pinched the inside of his wrist hard. The pain immediately grabbed
his focus and pulled it back into place. He pushed the asshole in his head
aside and got back to business.
Ugh, Mr. sociable I am not.
“Get out of the way, idiot.”
 “Nope, fucker, your big ass is blocking the door.”
“You love my ass.”
“That I do.”
“Seriously, assholes, get on the damn plane.” Matt yelled at the snark of
his team as they boarded the plane. “Rock, get your ass in the fucking pilot
seat and get us in the air. G, your pretty ass better be in the seat next to him,
or I’m shooting it.”
Jason breathed out a sigh of relief. These were his family—the ones he
had chosen for himself when he earned his spot on Delta Force Team
Panther. Having them back… priceless… Their shenanigans and banter
grounded him like nothing else.
That’s not quite true… Fritz grounds you without even saying a word.
Jason silently acknowledged that maybe the asshole in his head wasn’t so
stupid after all. His inner self just needed to realize that he didn’t fucking
deserve to have what the others did, no matter how much he freaking craved
it. Nope. Domestic happy shit—that was not in his wheelhouse. Hell, he was
barely house broken, never mind domesticated.
He watched Rourke. Thank fuck he didn’t seem fazed by all the shit
Panthers were throwing at each other as they loaded up, but then he had
probably been around a similar group a lot as he grew up. Special Forces
were a family. All members of their families, including the kiddos, got to see
the side of the warriors others rarely even got a hint of.
“Don’t mind them,” Jason said softly.
Rourke shrugged. “They are like my dad’s team in a way.”
“It takes a special breed of person to be Delta.” Steele paused on his way
to his seat. “I can see why you would see that.” He glanced over his shoulder.
“Incoming—one grumpy assed Major with a stick up his ass.”
Jason followed his gaze to where Fritz was stomping down the length of
the plane. “Nah, he was just worried.”
“Why the fuck didn’t you answer my messages?” Fritz growled. He
shouldered Steele aside to face Rourke.
“My cell died.” Rourke glared right back at him. “You think I was
ignoring you on purpose?”
“Fucking fabulous.” Fritz ripped his Kevlar helmet off his head and
dropped it on the seat. “You said you had enough battery.”
“It hit twenty percent and died,” Rourke told him. “Not my fault.”
“Give it to me.” Steele held out his hand.
 “What?”
“Give me the phone,” Steele repeated and jerked his thumb over his
shoulder toward where Kalon and Malik had laptops open on a table. “I want
our communications guys to look at it.”
“Good thinking.” Fritz wanted to throw something or maybe hit
something. Now they had Rourke and they knew he was safe he could allow
the worry that had dogged him all the way from Texas to surface. Damn it,
being too late to save a teammate’s family would have haunted him for years.
“You think there is something on my phone?”
“That’s what we are going to find out.” Steele took the cell Rourke held
out.
Ding, dong.
“This is your Captain speaking…” Rock’s voice over the intercom was
laced with humor. “Today we have come through the ‘clusterfuck storm’ and
are now awaiting takeoff on runway ‘I don’t give a fuck’. Destination ‘Casa
del Panther’. If all you fuckers would like to sit your asses in seats and stow
your gear, I can get this bird in the air.”
Yeah, Jase was ready to go home.
Fuck, when did Texas become home? Nope, no, Detroit was now home…
wasn’t it.
Flopping into the seat, he once again scooted over, but this time
automatically left room for Fritz to sit next to him. He didn’t want to admit it,
but the only thing stopping him from taking Jonah and Matt up on their offer
of a place in the mercenary team they had going on was that Fritz lived in
Detroit and may not want to move to Texas.
If that was the case then it wasn’t happening... Right?
Ugh, why the fuck was he so indecisive on this stuff?
Jason pushed it aside. He could figure it out later. Right now, he focused
on the fact they had completed their job, saved the kid—for now anyway—
and they were on their way back to base.
Base… Yes, call it a base. Matt and Jonah’s place is a base, got it? Jason
couldn’t help but fall back on the habits of deployment.
Maybe this could work.
 CHAPTER THIRTEEN

ROCK BARELY HAD time to kick off his boots outside the door of the
house before a monkey landed on his back and small arms wrapped tightly
around his neck.
“Papa, you cames back!”
He winced at the high-pitched squeal in his ear. “I’ll always come back,
Lex.” He twisted his arm, securing Lexi piggyback style to his back.
“Momma said so,” Lexi told him. “Hi, Daddy.” She blew a kiss at Grif.
“Hi, baby.” Grif kissed the top of her head. “Where’s momma?”
“Cooking.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah.”
Rock could feel Lexi’s chin hitting his shoulder as she nodded. If
someone had told him six months ago that he would be batshit crazy about a
daughter, he would have shot them for being a dumbass. Now, somehow,
nothing else seemed to fit just right in his skin. He was Papa and Grif was
Daddy and it was how their world was supposed to turn, end of story. He
knew deep in his gut that Grif would be right there beside him, weapons at
the ready to take out anyone who tried to take this kiddo away from them.
Even someone who they had considered a friend.
Yeah, you proved that when you took out Shar…
“Momma’s mad abouts something.”
“What did you do?” He swung his daughter around, one hand under her
ass and peered into her face.
“I ‘sulted.” Lexi pouted, her tiny bottom lip poking out.
Holy fuck, could a kid be any more adorable? It’s official, we have the
cutest kiddo ever.
“Daddy are you ‘sulted too?” Lexi asked Grif.
“Minx.” Grif dug his fingers into her sides and tickled, causing squeals of
laughter. “No, I am not insulted.”
It took Rock a hot minute before he could speak. “So, if it wasn’t you,
then who annoyed Momma?”
“You.” Lexi told him. “Momma said if she barfs again, she gonna shoot
you both.”
Shit, Allie is sick? What the fuck?
Fear. That ice was not battle calm. It wasn’t the cold that invaded his
veins when he needed to shut down his feelings, so he could concentrate on
the battle in front of him… Nope, this was fear running through him.
Damn it, they had only just pulled their heads out of their asses. Allie
couldn’t get sick now.
“Why don’t you go on up to your room and see what the cuddle minions
are doing?” Sending a kid to their room to play with their toys was good…
right?
“Yeah.” Lexi wriggled to get down. “The fairies were packing AKs, so I
gots to reinforce the minions.” Lexi took off up the stairs toward her room.
“Huh?” Fairies? AKs? What the fuck?
Grif snorted out a laugh. “Wanna bet that she has her cuddly toys doing a
glitter war?”
“Fabulous.” Rock debated if he should go up to check. He was pretty sure
that stuff Betty had bought Lexi last week was freaking Ninja glitter. No
matter how many times they cleaned up, more appeared, but his need to
check on Allie was greater and the gagging sounds coming from the kitchen
made the choice for him.
“Allie?” Rock pushed open the kitchen door, Grif crowding up on his
heels. “You okay?”

“THIS IS YOUR ROOM.” Jonah pushed in the door to one of the guest
bedrooms. Until they had built the other houses, this had been Micah’s room.
“Ah.” Rourke stumbled over his words. Holy fucking shit, this was the
singer dude—the one that had been all over the news a couple of years ago.
“Uh, thank you.” Rourke gripped the strap of his laptop bag where it crossed
his chest. He wasn’t quite sure what he should be thinking or feeling. Stuff
like this happened in the movies, not to him—even if his father was former
Delta Force. People did not just randomly come charging into his house. It
had to be something to do with his father, didn’t it?
“You’ll be safe here,” Jonah told him. “I know it’s the middle of the day,
but get some sleep. I don’t think any of us got much of it last night.
Rourke shrugged. “I dozed on and off.” His stomach chose that moment
to rumble.
Oh, darn it, that’s loud. Shush.
He could feel the red climbing up his face. Embarrassment at its finest.
“Oh shit, I forgot to feed you,” Jonah muttered. “Sorry, we’re not used to
having someone who doesn’t fend for himself in the house. Drop your bag
and I’ll show you the kitchen.”
“Ah, I think I’ll keep it with me.” Rourke might not be sure what the hell
was going on, but the people who had been in his house were looking for a
computer. Yeah, right now he wasn’t letting it out of his sight.
“Suit yourself.” Jonah brushed past him and headed back down the hall.
“You coming?”
Is this freaking the twilight zone? “Yeah, sure.” Rourke blew out a breath.
“I could eat.”
Where the hell is the Major?
He hustled his ass along and caught up to Jonah at the top of the stairs.
“Where’s Major Blackwell?”
“He was going to try and get in touch with your dad, so he’s probably in
the war room.”
“War room?” He followed Jonah down the massive staircase.
“Yeah.” Jonah headed toward the kitchen. “It’s off limits to you until our
tech guys check out your stuff.”
“Huh?”
“A lot of what we deal with is classified,” another voice said, startling
Rourke. “We need to be sure your laptop, phones and even you aren’t
bugged.”
Rourke twisted and took in the man leaning against the counter. He was
Matt, right? That was what he thought he was called. The guy seemed to live
here with Jonah—at least this was the house they both dropped their bags in.
Everyone else had dropped them on the porch.
 “Jeez, babe, scare the shit out of him why don’t ya?” Jonah gave the man
a smile and slid one hand along his back as he reached for the coffee
machine. “Coffee?” he asked Rourke over his shoulder.
“Yeah.” Rourke nodded. “Please.”
Jonah grabbed a handful of pods from the basket next to a machine that
would rival any baristas in southern Cali. “American, Arabian, Colombian,
Italian, latte, cappuccino, caramel or mocha?”
Holy shit! Rourke’s brain stuttered to a halt. Musician my lily-white ass.
He’s really a Southern Cali barista in disguise.
“Babe, I think you fried his brain,” the other man said. “Coffee is coffee.”
“Shut it, Matt,” Jonah grumbled. “Coffee is an experience. Grab some
sandwich stuff, will you? We forgot to feed him.”
Rourke silently congratulated himself on getting it right. Names were not
his strong point. Faces, he would remember… he could remember where and
when he saw or met a person, but names? They were hit and miss.
“Just with milk and sugar is good,” he told Jonah. He figured by Matt’s
wince that he took coffee like Dad did—black and strong enough to strip
paint.
“Forget the sandwich stuff.” Matt started pulling stuff out of the massive
fridge. “Bacon and eggs?”
Rourke willed himself not to blush again when his belly decided to
answer for him. Louder than before, if possible.
“If you start cooking bacon, the smell is going to draw the attention of all
the others,” Jonah warned Matt.
“Yup.” Matt grinned at Jonah. “He’s gonna be here until Castello gets
back. Better he gets used to the horde right off the bat.”
Horde? These guys were crazy. Wait, he mentioned Castello. “You know
my dad too?”
“Yeah.” Jonah handed over a mug filled with coffee. “We were Delta.
Different team, but still…” He allowed his voice to trail off.
Rourke didn’t need him to finish it. Delta looked after their own.
“That’s why you came for me?”
“We came because Jason asked.” Matt laid strips of bacon in the skillet
on top of the huge stove. “But we would have come if Castello had asked us
to go, too.”
“Jason?”
“Brown hair, beard and tats,” Jonah said. “Louisiana drawl, sat across
from you next to Fritz on the plane.”
Rourke filed away that information. Not that it would do much good, but
one could hope right?
“He and the Major are close?” He had watched them interact as he sat
across from them.
“Yeah.” Jonah snorted. “You could say that.”
A door next to the fridge crashed open and made Rourke jump before he
could stop himself. He was almost certain the man who entered with his nose
in the air, sniffing like a hound on the hunt had been on the plane, too.
Although without the grease and war paint it was kind of hard to tell.
“Bacon?” The man asked. He stepped through the door and closed it
behind him, blocking the view of a corridor from Rourke again.
“Yup.” Jonah winked at Rourke, then spoke to Matt’s back. “I told you, if
you cook it, they will come.”
“Did you just paraphrase a movie and quote it at me?”
“Yup.”
Rourke could see the similarities between these guys and his father’s old
team. Delta Force Team Lynx were still like this when they got together.
Speaking of which…
“Where is Major Blackwell?”
“In the cage with Jason.” Steele nodded at the door next to the fridge.
“They’ll be up soon.”

JASON BARELY WAITED for the door of the case to slam behind Steele
before he pushed Fritz against the wall.
“You were fucking teasing me all the way home,” he growled in Fritz’s
ear. “Did you think my dick wouldn’t pay attention when you were stroking
it under the table, where the kid couldn’t see?”
“I know it did.” Fritz turned his head until Jason’s mouth hovered over
his. “In fact, I was counting on it.”
“Were you now?”
Their breaths mingled, Jason inhaling as Fritz exhaled. Damn it, he could
almost taste how fucking good Fritz’s mouth would be without even touching
him. That little hitch in Fritz’s breathing… that sound alone he heard in his
dreams and every damn time he woke up hard and aching.
“Yeah.” Fritz’s response was little more than the rush of air as he
exhaled, the sound almost swallowed by Jason’s inhale.
Jason leaned closer, his lips brushing across Fritz’s once, then twice
before his tongue licked at the corner of his mouth. Tasting. He pressed his
full weight against Fritz’s chest pinning him to the wall, allowing his hands
the freedom to bury under Fritz’s shirt.
“Mmmmh.”
Fritz’s stomach quivered under his hands. Even after all this time it blew
Jason’s mind that he could make Fritz crazy with just a simple touch. His
eyes locked onto Fritz’s mouth, a fine sheen of sweat beaded along his upper
lip. Fuck, he loved kissing him, loved that his lips were firm and his cheeks
slightly rough as they brushed against his.
Jason pulled one hand free of Fritz’s shirt. When his thumb stroked over
the pulse point on Fritz’s neck, he caught the way his heart rate sped up every
time he leaned in close. Oh, yeah. Payback time.
Jason pushed one knee between Fritz’s legs, pressing his thigh against
Fritz’s dick and claimed his lips. Taking his time, he licked and tasted. He
drew Fritz’s tongue into his mouth, sucking it hard, then pushing back into
his mouth, demanding access.
Fritz wrapped his arms around Jason’s back. Jason’s eyes slammed
closed. He didn’t want to see the look in Fritz’s eyes when his hands
skimmed against the scars. He deepened the kiss. Fritz’s hand pushing inside
the waistband of his pants sent fire licking down his spine and need blasting
through him. Jason forgot every damn thing but Fritz. He forgot every lesson
his father beat into him, everything that told him he shouldn’t be doing this.
Every instinct he had both learned and earned since he put that bastard in
prison, told Jason that walking away from Fritz would be the biggest mistake
of his life—he just wasn’t sure how or if he should voice it. Christ,
considering all the languages he spoke, it shouldn’t be so damn hard to find
the words to tell Fritz how he felt.
Jason’s hands tugged at Fritz’s belt. Need… want… it took a couple of
seconds for the significance of the flashing red light on the wall to sink into
his brain.
“Fuck.” He jerked back. “Red Alert. Something is wrong.”
By the time they made it through the door and to the war room, both had
SIG’s in their hands.
 “What’s wrong, Kalon?” Fritz asked.
“Homeland security are at the gate asking for Rourke Moran.” Kalon’s
computer screens were dark, the room mostly silent. The constant buzzing
that normally filled in as background noise was absent.
“You shut down?” Jason studied the screen. He knew that dude, didn’t
he? Fuck, Homeland or DOJ my ass.
“Yeah, Matt’s orders.” Kalon rolled his chair back from the desk.
“Kitchen?”
“Yeah.” Jason headed to the door, Kalon stepping on his heels, with Fritz
on his six.
 CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE BLARING of an alarm made Jonah jerk, the coffee in his mug sloshing
precariously close to the top of his mug. “Who the fuck is at the gate?” He
flipped open what looked like a small hard-backed suitcase, which had been
resting on the table next to a bowl filled with odds and ends, revealing a
laptop. “If it’s more freaking reporters, I swear to fuck I am calling the cops.
Assholes need to figure out that I am not giving any damn interviews.”
Pressing some buttons, the computer flickered to life. On screen, the
electric gates they had driven through earlier to access the compound were
shown. A black sedan faced the gates, a man stood with his finger pressed
against what Rourke assumed was the buzzer.
Matt, pulling the skillet off the stove, swatted at the man—Rourke
thought his name was Steele—when he tried to steal some bacon, and pressed
a button mounted on the wall next to the fridge.
“Take your finger off the damn buzzer before I shoot you.”
Rourke flinched. Shit, Matt was pissed. He never ever wanted that tone of
voice to be directed at him.
“Former Major James Blackwell?” the man asked through the speaker.
Matt and the others exchanged glances. Rourke watched as an unspoken
conversation passed between them, as only former teammates could do.
When none of them answered the dude, he spoke again.
“Agent Wilbur Deckard, Department of Justice.” On the screen they
could see the man pull a notebook out of his pocket and flip through the
pages. “Is this Matt Garrett?”
Matt released the button on the wall. “What do you think, Steele?” he
asked the guy who was busy munching on bacon who was, as Rourke
suspected, called Steele.
“Kind of a coincidence that he’s turned up today, don’t ya think?” Steele
said. “Do we want to know why he is here?”
“Not really,” Matt muttered, “but if he is claiming Department of Justice,
it means we can’t just dispose of him in Pops’ snake pit.”
“I was afraid of that,” Steele grumbled in response.
Who were these people? Disposing of bodies in snake pits? Frying pan
into the Fire, Roo. You are screwed. These are meant to be the good guys.
Rourke swallowed past the lump in his throat. These guys were former
Delta, like his dad. That made them the good guys… right?
He freaking hoped so or he was screwed.
On screen, the man stepped up to the gate and rattled it with both hands,
testing to see if it would slide open.
“Idiot,” Jonah muttered and pressed a command on the laptop. The man
froze for a second then jumped back. It was obvious to Rourke that he was
swearing.
“Just a little shock.” Jonah smirked. “Electrifying the gates keeps the
reporters out.”
The buzzer sounded again, making Matt sigh. “Fucker’s not going away.”
He stepped back to the button on the wall, pressed it and barked out, “What
do you want?”
“We need Rourke Moran to come with us.”
A chill rolled through Rourke.
Matt didn’t seem fazed, though.
“Is he alone?” Steele asked.
“Probably not, they normally travel in pairs,” Matt said. He spoke into the
speaker again, “Tell the others to step out where I can see them.”
Matt then nodded to Steele.
The other man opened the door and yelled, “Kal, hit the alert and shut
down everything.”
“Okay,” a voice yelled back. “We got a problem?”
“Yeah,” Steele called down. “Men in black type shit.”
A red light flashed throughout the kitchen and shutters rolled down to
cover the windows.
“We need Rourke Moran to come with us.” The man repeated his earlier
order. They all knew it wasn’t a request. The tone of this man’s voice told
them all that he wasn’t leaving without Rourke.
 “I don’t know anybody by that name,” Matt said into the speaker.
“It concerns national security.”
“Doesn’t matter what it concerns, I don’t know anyone by that name,”
Matt repeated.
“Mr. Garrett, I am ordering you to open this gate and let us in.”
“With all due respect, Agent Deckard, I don’t have to open my damn
gates for anyone.” Matt growled. “This is Texas, not a military base, and I no
longer take orders from the United States Government.”
At Matt’s growled words, Jonah stuck his hand in under the table and felt
around. His fingers wrapped around the muzzle of a handgun, held in place
by duct tape, and pulled.
“Mr. Garrett, we will place you under arrest if you don’t cooperate.”
Yeah go eat a bag of dicks, dude. “What did I do, Agent Deckard?” Matt
asked as Jason, Kalon and Fritz entered the kitchen. Jason strode across the
room to peer over Jonah’s shoulder.
“It's not you, Mr. Garrett, it’s Rourke Moran we are looking for.”
Jason turned and slashed his hand across his throat at Matt, telling him to
cut the connection.
As soon as Matt released the button, he said, “Did you say Deckard?”
“Yeah?” Matt told him. “Wilbur Deckard.”
“That’s not Deckard.” Jason nodded to the intercom. “May I?”
“Knock yourself out.” Matt moved aside to allow Jason access.
Jason pressed the button, “Who the fuck are you?”
“Who is this? I was speaking with Matt Garrett?”
“You sure about that?”
“I…” The man paused
“Your name isn’t Deckard, unless that’s your spook cover this week,”
Jason said.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
“You’ve worked with me before?”
“That’s not the question now, is it?” Jason asked the man. He released the
button and gestured toward the coffee machine. “Hit me with a jolt of
caffeine, will ya, Fritz?”
“Sure,” Fritz headed to the machine. He filled a mug with black goodness
and doctored it the way Jason preferred it. “Here.”
“Thanks.”
 Jason watched over Jonah’s shoulder on screen. The man moved away
from the gate and put his cell to his ear. He wouldn’t be able to hear what the
person on the other side of that call was saying, but he pressed the button on
the intercom anyway. A one-sided conversation was better than none, but
damn it, the asshole moved too far away to hear anything more than the
murmuring of his voice.
“Matt, get your ass over here and see if you can lip-read for me.” Jason
nodded to the screen on Jonah’s laptop. “You recognize that dude?” he asked
Fritz.
“I got Deckard’s ID card here on screen,” Kalon told them. He turned his
tablet. “It’s the same guy, right?”
Jason looked over his shoulder. “Yeah, that’s him.” He turned to Fritz.
“Recognize him?”
“Maybe.” Fritz frowned as he studied the image on screen. “I want to say
Pakistan or similar?”
“Almost.” Jason told him. “One of the first missions I worked after Wild-
Wolf, as a floating tracker for Delta. Two thousand and twelve. A spook was
taken off the streets of Islamabad, but we met this guy, who is now calling
himself Deckard, in the briefing room in Afghanistan. He was the CIA
Liaison who led the briefing.”
“Shit.” Fritz’s hands were opening and closing into fists. “He wasn’t
Deckard then?”
“Nope, he wasn’t. The name he gave was Agent Black.” Jason sipped his
coffee. “Wanna guess who the missing CIA agent was, and who had
command over the job to get him back?” Jason didn’t give a shit about
classified right now. His family was on the line.
“No fucking way.”
“Yup, way,” Jason told him before he explained to the others, “Our
kidnapped CIA agent was none other than Speaker, and the asshole at the top,
our dead bastard, Colonel Lang.”
On screen, Jonah saw the man at the gate spin around as if something
alerted him to danger, before he took off running across the pasture in the
direction of the main house. Jonah’s eyes widened as he watched the scene
unfolding. “Um, guys, you may want to come take a look at this.”
Jason kept the button on the intercom pressed to ensure they had audio as
well as visual.
“I’m gonna release the dog. Lay down on the ground.”
 “Shit, that’s Mic yelling,” Jason muttered.
On screen, they could see the man looking over his shoulder, even as he
kept running. Hawk and Creed approached the vehicle with their weapons at
the ready. Ripping open the doors, in the top corner of the screen Micah
raced after Delta. The man skidded to a halt and took a shooter’s stance.
“Shit, he’s armed,” Jonah muttered.
All their eyes were glued to the screen as they watched the chase at the
gate unfold.
Before the man could fire, the dark outline of a K9 doing a flying jump
tackled him, bringing him to the ground, her mouth clamping around his arm.
Jonah could see Delta’s body shaking as the man struggled with her.
Within seconds, Micah was there, keeping his gun aimed in the man’s
face.
“Fucking go Delta.” Jonah gave Matt a high five. It was easy to see Delta
was in her element.
“Holy shit.” Rourke was stunned at the speed of the dog. Sure, he had
seen the K9s on Team Lynx in practice mode before, but he had never seen
them take down a real-life problem.
Hawk and Creed were at Micah’s back within seconds, telling them the
man had been alone in the vehicle, despite his efforts to make them think
otherwise earlier.
“Drop your weapon, fuckwad.” Faintly, Hawk’s shout could be heard
over the intercom.
They watched as he dropped his full weight onto the man, both he and
Creed wrestling him for the gun.
Delta’s hold on the man kept one of his hands out of the fight. As soon as
the man’s fingers were pried open, the gun fell, and Micah kicked it away.
“Free.” Micah called Delta off the suspect and Creed flipped him over
onto his stomach and zip tied his hands and feet, effectively hogtying him.
“Why do they get to have all the fun?” Jason bitched.
“Because that’s what they were supposed to do,” Matt told him.
“What?”
“You don’t think we don’t train for this kind of scenario?”
Yeah, that made total sense to Jason, especially after the assholes had
come for Lexi. They would have considered all the possibilities for attack and
trained for how to combat them.
It also made sense that the trio with the dog would be the ones to go
hunting their problem.
Matt reached up to the top of the fridge and felt around with his hand.
Pulling down a comms unit he switched it on. “Bring that fucker to the
hangar.”
On screen they saw Micah put his hand to his shoulder where his comms
unit was located, before his response came loud and clear through the unit
Matt held in his hand.
“Roger that.”

FRITZ LEANED his ass against the wall of the hangar. The man who called
himself Deckard was zip tied to a chair in front of him. That had to hurt like a
bitch.
“What are we waiting for?”
Jason shifted, his shoulder brushing off Fritz’s. “Grif.” He nodded in the
direction of Deckard. “We want intel. Grif is the one to get it.” He paused for
a second. “Are you squeamish?”
“What the fuck?”
“Grif’s methods are more Fallen Eagles than Delta,” Jason told him,
“You remember when that fucker shot Micah out here, when I was in
London?”
“The one who gave the intel on Dom?”
“Yup,” Jason confirmed. “I imagine it was Grif who did the interrogation
then.”
“Yeah.” Fritz couldn’t help the shudder that ran through him. Christ, had
that really been two years ago? He could still hear the man’s screams as if it
had been yesterday.
“Now, add in the possibility that this dude is somehow connected to the
fuckers who kidnapped Lexi and shot Rock in the head...”
“Oh fuck.” Fritz winced. “It’s not going to be pretty.”
“Nope.”
“Will we have anything left of him?”
“Fuck knows,” Jason answered. “We will have intel, though. At the end
of the day, G is too much of an operator not to get the intel before he kills
him.”
 “He can’t kill me,” Deckard spoke for the first time. “I’m Department of
Justice. Someone will notice I am missing. They know I was coming here.”
“You think we give a shit?” Fritz shrugged. “You come after our family;
you pay the price.”
“The DOJ just wants to talk to Rourke Moran.”
“Like he said,” Jason smirked at the prisoner. “You come after our
family; you pay the price.”
“Rourke Moran is nothing to you.” The man was clearly confused. His
tone told them so.
“Rourke Moran is a Delta son, that makes him family.”
The corner of Fritz’s mouth lifted in a slight smile at Jason’s claim that
Rourke was family. Jason and Castello may not have been on the same Delta
team, but Delta was their own family, one forged on the field of war. That
Jason would claim the son of one of Fritz’s men as a member of his family
was one of the reasons that kept him coming back to Jason. It was one of the
many little things that made Jason the man who spoke to his soul.
I am so screwed! Why the fuck am I thinking happily ever after with a
man who doesn’t do commitment unless it’s to his flag and country?
 CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“TAKE THIS,” Grif handed Rock his SIG. “I don’t want to kill the bastard
before we have everything we need.”
He could feel the rage bubbling hot under his skin. The only surprise was
that his body wasn’t a mass of blisters from the heat of it. The prisoner in that
hangar was connected to Shar taking Lexi, and probably to Speaker. He just
needed to help the man tell them everything, so they could connect the dots.
“Ready?” Rock asked.
Grif could see from the grim way Rock’s lips were pressed together and
the tenseness of his shoulders that Rock was pissed, so fucking pissed, but he
also knew that Rock would let him do what he did best—get the job done.
“As I’ll ever be.”
“You want me to take over, you just say the word.” Rock blew out a
breath and dragged Grif close.
Pressing their foreheads together, he offered strength and willpower. He
knew that torturing a man went against everything Grif normally stood for,
but he also knew that Grif would do what he had to in order to get what they
needed.
Grif snorted. “You’re as pissed as I am,” he told Rock. “We want intel,
not dead within five minutes.”
“I’m offended you think so little of my willpower.”
“Babe, you are a damn hot head and we all know it.” He pulled back and
opened the door.
“Now I know I’m insulted for sure.”
Rock’s muttering behind him reminded him so much of their exchange
with Lexi earlier that it made Grif laugh out loud. It didn’t hurt that the first
view their prisoner had of him was his head thrown back, and the evilest
laugh the man had probably ever heard echoing around the hangar.
“Unicorn, Skillet, and the new one are secure?” Steele asked.
“Yup, three uncles and a furry missile,” Rock replied. “They’re solid.”
“Then let’s get to work.” Matt waved to Deckard, “He’s all yours G.”

“DRAG ME THAT TABLE, WILL YA?” Grif dropped the pack he had over
his shoulder. It clanged when it hit the concrete.
Weapons?
Fritz raised his eyebrows in surprise. Torture didn’t seem like something
the men he knew would resort to.
“Keep watching,” Jason whispered in his ear. “It’s all about the
psychological warfare.”
“Got it.”
Once the table was in place, Grif hefted the bag onto it. “Matt, does your
Pops have an elephant fence?”
“Yup.” Matt nodded. “Want me to get it?”
“Please.” Grif shrugged. “Nothing like a couple of shots of electricity to
the balls to get ‘em talking.” He went back to pulling stuff out of his bag. Salt
was the first thing to come out. “We wouldn’t want his wounds to get
infected, now would we?” Grif asked nobody in particular. Next to it he laid
out a bolt cutter. “That finger may get infected. Better we chop it off, so he
can’t sue if he gets gangrene.”
“You are fucking insane.” The man pulled at his bonds, but all he
managed to do was rattle the metal chair he was strapped to.
“Nuh-uh.” Jonah clamped his hands on the back of the chair holding it in
place. “Don’t fall over, dude. I don’t think this place is covered under
insurance.”
“Let me go.”
Grif picked up the salt. “Jeez, they didn’t offer you some water to flush
that out?” he asked Deckard.
“N-no?”
“You don’t sound too sure about that.”
Jason knew by Grif’s tone that he was no more being kindly than a viper
waiting to strike. “We should have brought candy,” he told Fritz. “It’s been a
while since I’ve seen a Grif show.”
“Ow,” Deckard yelled. “What the fuck are you doing? Ouch.”
“Quit being a baby,” Grif told him. “I’m just checking to see if the dog
broke a tooth. It could still be in there if she did.”
“You’re fucking stabbing me.”
“Nope.” Grif poked at the bite wounds on Deckard’s forearms, pulling the
edges apart with medical tweezers, and peering into it with a flashlight. “I’ve
barely freaking touched you.”
“It stings!” Deckard wailed.
“That will be the salt I used to make sure the tweezers are sterile,” Grif
said. “Who sent you?”
“The Department of Justice.”
Grif sank the tweezers deeper into the wound. Blood dripped down
Deckard’s arm, pooling onto the tarp Hawk and Creed had thoughtfully laid
out under the chair. “Lies. We checked that shit. Who sent you?”
“I got the fence.” Matt strode back into the hangar, carrying the box-like
object with two wires emerging from it. “You gotta be quick, though. I took it
off the corral out back, and my Pops will be pissed if the bull escapes like last
time.”
“Is he still bitching about the dude the bull gored?” Rock snickered. “We
were letting him go. It’s not our fault the idiot stumbled into Pops’ runaway
bull.”
“Yeah.” Matt placed the battery-operated fence on the table behind Grif.
“I had to pay for the vet visits. Pops was convinced the bull got an infection
from that one.”
“You are insane.” Deckard tried to pull his arm away from Grif. “Let me
fucking go.”
“Nope.” Grif held the arm steady. “Rock, pour some salt in, will ya?
There’s a maggot or something in here.”
“Whhhatt?” Deckard strained to try and look at his forearm, but the belt
around his chest prevented him turning his shoulders enough to see. “Get it
out.”
“Nah, we’ll kill it with salt,” Grif told him. “You’ll be fine. Rock, pour
away. I’ll hold it open.”
Fritz winced at the piercing scream Deckard let loose. Salt in the wound
had to sting, but seriously?
 “Why are you here?” Grif shouted to be heard over the man. “Tell me and
the salt stops.”
“I told you.” Tears streamed down Deckard’s face. “The DOJ sent me.”
“Who at the DOJ?”
“Agent McCall.”
“Speaker?”
“Yeah.”
“Rock, get me that elephant fence and attach one clamp to his balls and
one to his right nipple.” Grif stood from where he had been crouched behind
Deckard’s chair. “Now I know he’s lying. Speaker’s not DOJ.”
“You got it.” Rock smirked at Deckard. He opened and closed the metal
clamp, clicking it in his face. “Maybe his nose instead of his nipple?” he
asked Grif.
“Noooo.” Deckard struggled in the chair, pulling at the bonds that held
him, but all that achieved was to tighten the zip ties further.
“Nah, his nipple,” Grif told his man. “Some people get a kick out of
shock treatment. We can see if he is one of them.”
“Yup,” Rock agreed. “They do, but I’m not going home to our woman
with the stink of his cum on me.”
“I’ll power hose you,” Grif told him. “Promise.”
Rock ripped open Deckard’s shirt. The force of his struggles as he tried to
kick out at Rock almost sent the chair flying backward. Grif’s hands on his
shoulders prevented it from happening.
“Let’s try a different question.” Grif held the man steady. “Where is
Speaker?”
“On assignment,” Deckard answered immediately.
Grif looked at Steele. He had always been Team Panthers go-to for
identifying truth or fiction, and his time in the CIA had only strengthened his
ability.
“Truth,” Steele answered.
“Where?” Grif asked.
Rock used his k-bar to slice Deckard’s undershirt open. “Answer him.”
He picked up the clamp.
“Russia.”
“Truth,” Steele confirmed.
“Doing what?” Grif asked.
“I—I don’t know.”
 “He’s lying.”
“Clamp him,” Grif ordered.
Rock nodded. He pulled Deckard’s nipple and snapped the clamp
normally used to connect the elephant fence to the pasture wire on it,
allowing the metal teeth to snap closed.
Deckard wailed.
Jason glanced around the room. He wanted to put a hand over his own
chest and rub in sympathy. That had to fucking hurt.
“Next one goes on your balls,” Grif warned him. “What is Speaker doing
in Russia?”
“Looking for someone.”
“Who?”
“LeHar. He was meant to provide intel on a weapons deal, but LeHar
ghosted.”
“What the fuck?” Fury blasted through Jason. Intel on a weapons deal?
Oh, hell no. If that fucking asswad was trying to frame him for this shit, he
would strangle the bastard himself.
“It’s who he said,” Deckard confirmed. He tried to push his thighs
together to protect his balls as much as possible.
“Truth,” Steele said.
“WHAT?” Fritz yelled. “There is no fucking way Jason has anything to
do with fucking weapons deals. He’s been living with me for months. I don’t
miss shit like that.”
“We fucking know,” Grif growled back. “Who is Speaker looking for?”
“LeHar,” Deckard sobbed out. “Please, I am telling the truth. He is
looking for Kamden LeHar.”
Kamden? Nope, no fucking way.
“Fucker is lying,” Jason told them. “My father is serving life without
parole at Pollock Penitentiary in Louisiana.”
Yeah, and evidence provided by me put him there.
“Nope.” Deckard slumped as much as he could back into the chair. “He
was released a couple of years ago after helping Speaker with a case.”
“Truth!” Steele confirmed.
Jason could feel the blood draining from his face. He had the light-
headedness to go with it, too.
Almost two years ago when Jonah was targeted? Fuck.
If Kamden had been released, then it stood to reason that he would come
after the only people Jason had ever cared about… his Team, his Panther
Family, but it wasn’t possible. Life meant life… right?
“Fuck.” Fritz knew at this stage they shouldn’t be surprised by the
curveballs, but this one struck too close to the bone. “You think Kamden’s
the one who sent you the documents on Tom?”
“Yeah.” Jason rubbed his chest.
Why the fuck did it hurt?
He tried to suck in a breath, but when you’ve been kicked by a mule, even
a metaphorical one, your lungs refused to work.
“What papers on Tom?” Jonah laid a hand on Jason’s shoulder.
He was probably wondering why he knew nothing about those papers.
There had been a time when Jonah would have told him everything.
Somehow, somewhere along the way, Fritz had become Jason’s confidant.
“Not now, Jonah,” Fritz told him.
“But—”
“Now is not the time.” Fritz gripped Jason’s arm and pulled him to the
door.
He knew Jason well enough to read the range of emotions flicking across
his face. He would not allow the man they had tied to the chair see him
struggle.
Fritz knew it was only a matter of time before Jason shut down, just as he
knew the Panthers would be on their heels shortly, wanting to know what the
fuck was going on.
“Finish that.” He nodded to Deckard. “We need to know everything.
Then come and find us in the war room when you are done.”
“Roger that, Major.” Grif sounded positively gleeful. “Do we give him
back to the DOJ?”
“Yup,” Fritz said, before he closed the door. “Let him go back and tell
fucking Speaker that we’re coming for him. We treated him like family. He
fucked up. The only way we will stop coming for him is when he’s dead, or
we are.”
Jason could feel the shutters slamming down on his emotions, locking
them away until he had time to pull them out and examine them later, to poke
and prod at them and decide how he felt.
No way… No fucking way!
He shouldn’t be surprised by what his sperm donor was doing. Shouldn’t
be, but considering he assumed the man would never see the outside of a
prison again, he fucking was. What the hell kind of case had Speaker been
working on that brought Kamden into his orbit?
“Jason?” Fritz’s hand reached out to touch Jason’s cheek, making him
jerk as if he was being hit with a jolt of the elephant fence currently in use in
the hangar, if the begging and pleading Fritz could faintly hear was anything
to go by.
Crap, it was obvious to Jason from Fritz’s tone of voice that he had called
his name more than once.
“What?”
“Are you all right?
Am I all right? Jason heard himself snort in his head. What kind of
question is that? Of course I am not fucking alright?
“Yup, I’m fine.”
Fritz’s brows drew together and he glanced at Jason out of the corner of
his eye as they made their way to the trucks. He searched for something to
say that would help, but nope… he had nothing. He normally could think on
his feet. He was a Major, goddamn it, but he was at a loss right now. What
was it about Jason that left him fumbling around in the dark looking for the
fucking light switch?
“Okay.”
Okay? Are you crazy? It’s not freaking okay. He went around to the
passenger side of the truck and opened the door for Jason. That his guy didn’t
mutter and bitch about him doing it worried him. It had kind of been a
running joke between them over the past few months. Fritz would open the
door and Jason would complain that he was treating him like a woman. Fritz
would snark right back that someday Jason would say ‘thank you’.
“Thank you.” Jason slid into the truck.
Thank you and fucking mean it.
“You’re welcome.” Fritz shut the door and went around to the driver’s
side. “War room?”
“Yup.”
These one-word answers were going to get old fast. Fritz knew it was a
symptom of Jason’s agitation and upset. It didn’t make it any easier to take,
though.
He fired up the diesel engine. “Okay then, war room it is.”
 CHAPTER SIXTEEN

JASON JUMPED DOWN, slammed the door of the truck and aimed for
the front door of Matt’s house. Before he had taken two steps, Fritz grabbed
his arm and pulled him back hard.
“What the fuck?”
“Breathe.” Fritz crowded up against him, making him step back until his
ass hit the hood of the truck.
Jason could feel the bull bars digging into his hips and he wrapped his
hands around the chrome, his fingers flexing. He wanted to punch something
so freaking bad. His knuckles ached for the burn he knew a satisfying punch
would give him, for the pain he knew would ground him. Damn it, Kamden
the asshole was free?
And fucking Speaker made it happen?
What the actual fuck.
“Calm the fuck down, Jase.”
“Fuck.” Jason moved to step around Fritz, but he caged him in with a
hand on the hood at either side of his body. Jason knew if he really wanted to
move, he could.
But what if…
Nope, don’t fucking go there. You do not need to drag him into more of
your shit.
“Stop thinking so damn hard.” Fritz pressed against him. Jason’s legs
moved without so much as a by-your-leave, creating a space for Fritz to fit
snuggly against him.
“I—”
“Shut up.”
 “But—”
Fritz caught Jason’s chin in his right hand and kissed him hard and deep,
stealing the air from his lungs. Fritz broke their kiss with a sharp gasp,
turning his face away for a split-second, allowing Jason enough time to draw
a single ragged breath before Fritz’s lips slammed down on his again.
Tension cramped Jason’s gut as Fritz’s lips moved and he deepened the
kiss. He knew what was coming was going to be an absolute fucking mess,
he just knew it, but right this second all that noise faded into the background.
Fritz leaned heavily against Jason and growled a little. One hand dug in
under Jason’s shirt looking for skin, while the other held the back of Jason’s
head. His fingers stroked through his hair as he kept Jason’s head tilted to the
side at an angle that made their mouths line up perfectly.
Finally, Jason could resist no more. His hands gripped Fritz’s waist and
he gave as good as he got, kissing Fritz back with more strength—giving and
taking, desire blasting through him.
Jason bit Fritz’s bottom lip slightly and sucked it between his lips before
letting it go.
“You’re distracting me,” he said as he ran a hand down Fritz’s side. He
could feel how hard Fritz was against him. The hardness in Fritz’s dick was
mirrored by his own.
Fritz hissed with the bite and growled. Jason couldn’t decide if he was
angry at the interruption to finding out the intel they needed, or just really
fucking turned on by the sounds coming out of Fritz’s mouth.
“Fuck. We gotta stop, Fritz.” Jason groaned, but despite his words, their
lips were still touching when he spoke. “We need to find out about Kamden
and Speaker,” he rasped, breathing still difficult as every instinct he had
screamed for more kissing.
“Damn.” Fritz reluctantly pulled back.
Jase was right. He had meant to distract him, to allow him a couple of
minutes to breathe and refocus before he marched into the war room all guns
blazing.
Yup, that kind of backfired didn’t it? Instead, he was the one scrambling
to find where he dropped his common sense, and he was the one having to
tell his dick to fucking behave.
He studied Jason, his eyes following the tip of Jason’s tongue as it peeked
out to lick his bottom lip. Damn, that’s fucking sexy.
“You ready?”
 “Yeah.” Jason stepped away from the car. He moved to step around Fritz,
but paused to press a kiss to the side of his neck. “Thanks.”
“Uh.” Shock stole the words Fritz probably should be saying. Holy
shitballs, Jason was almost… affectionate?
Was that the word he was looking for?
Fritz cleared his throat as Jason started to move away and muttered,
“Um… yeah,” under his breath.
Shit. Move, idiot.
Fritz took off after his guy, his brain struggling to recover from that kiss.
Oh, not the mind-blowing one he had initiated, nope. Fritz Blackwell had
been brought to his damn knees by a single soft neck kiss.

“I NEED you to find everything you can get on my father.” Jason pushed in
the door of the war room so hard it slammed off the wall and bounced back,
almost hitting him in the face.
Malik spun around at the loud bang, his handgun aimed and ready to fire.
He crouched in a defensive stance in front of Kalon.
“If you’re going to shoot me with that, Malik, I suggest you do it fast
before my reflexes kick in.”
“Jesus, don’t shoot him,” Fritz told Malik. “I’d kinda like to keep him
around, ‘kay?”
“Awww, shucks, boss, are you sweet on Jason?” Malik sing-songed.
“Fucker, I am not your boss,” Fritz grumbled. “That’s Matt and Jonah
these days.”
“Old habits—”
“Hey,” Jason cut off what Malik had been about to say. “We’re kind of
on a time crunch here. My father—what can you find on him?”
“What fucking wasp flew out of your ass?” Malik holstered his gun under
his shoulder.
“The dude, Deckard,” Fritz said, “told us Speaker is in Russia looking for
LeHar.”
“Wait, what?” Kalon looked confused. “Then he is looking in the wrong
country as you are standing right in front of us.” He turned back to his
computer and started typing in search parameters.
 “Why?” Malik asked. “Is your asshole—sorry, I mean your father—not in
Pollack?”
Someone caught the injection that was relief and plunged it into Jason’s
skin. He was grateful his former Delta brother didn’t assume he was the
LeHar Speaker was looking for. It eased the roiling in his belly enough that
he could almost take a breath.
“He’s supposed to never see the light of day again,” Jason muttered.
“Seriously, Azrail, this is fucked up.” That Jason reverted to calling Malik by
the name he knew him as first was enough to tell Fritz that Jase had a plateful
of pissed, upset and probably a couple of side dishes of mad on his table right
now.
“Welcome to cluster, and here is your free cup of fuck,” Malik muttered.
“Okay, I have some info.” Kalon pulled up a Federal prison record for
Kamden LeHar, courtesy of the Bureau of Prisons (BOP). “This says he was
released in two thousand sixteen.”
“Yeah, so our good friend Deckard told us.” Jason leaned in over Kalon’s
shoulder to read the file.
“I can put it on the big screen, you know?” Kalon leaned to the side,
almost falling out of his chair to make room for Jason.
Shit, I forgot, he’s not comfortable with people leaning over him, “Sorry,
Kalon. Yes, please, do put it on the screen.”
It took effort, but Jason managed to both insert his apology, and keep his
frustration at the delay, from leaking into his tone. It wasn’t Kalon’s fault.
Yup, and being a dick to your intel guy isn’t a way to get said intel.
The screens taking up one side of the room flickered to life. Jason curled
his lip, clenched the muscles in his jaw and forced himself to step close
enough to the screen to read. There was nothing like a mugshot and prison
record of your deadbeat father to remind you of the trash you had come from.
He could have feigned disinterest. He wanted to so fucking badly. He wanted
to keep everything locked inside him, but that would get them nowhere. They
needed this freaking info. So, he did the only thing he could do—he
embraced the suck and would deal with the fallout later.
“Kamden Lehar, imprisoned in two thousand and three for the murder of
a former Marine.” Malik started the read through the intel on the screen in
front of them.
The buzzing of the gate alarm drew their attention to the security system.
“Pissed off bunch of Panthers incoming,” Kalon warned over his
shoulder. “We should wait until they are here, or we’re going to have to do it
all over again.”
There was little doubt from the tone of Kalon’s voice that he was waiting
for Steele and the others to arrive before he moved any further.
“Yeah.” Jason would take the reprieve.
He could see by the way his brothers moved that they were pissed. Even
though the security feed screen was small, the purposeful strides and scowls
on their faces told him all he needed to know.
Grif punched the door frame, turned, and placed his hands on his hips
with his head bowed. It looked to Jason like he was taking some deep breaths
to calm himself before entering Matt’s house. This was a prime example of
his Panther brothers locking down emotions that would hinder their ability to
do their jobs. He had seen it a million times before, and he understood it.
Airing his family’s dirty laundry was on his list of things to do today… Not!
So fucking not!
He chewed on his lip. Fritz had already told them about the information
that he had received at his flat in London. He needed to tell them all of it and
show them the documents.
“I—umm.” Jason turned to Fritz. “Will you go to my cage and get the
packet out of the front of my spare go bag?” There was no way he was
leaving the war room right now. If he did, he might never come back. He
knew he would use every excuse he could find not to have to discuss his
fuckwad father’s criminal actions.
“Sure.” Fritz grabbed Jason’s hand and squeezed his fingers, silently
letting him know he was there to support him. Jason’s lips curved slightly in
response before Fritz left to get the envelope as requested.
“Is this gonna piss us off more?” Malik asked.
“Oh yeah,” Jason muttered, “about as much as it does me, I think—if not
more.”

FRITZ DUG through the go bag Jason kept in the cage that stored Panthers’
weapons and gear. He pulled out the envelope. Twice now he and Jason had
gone through the information since Jason had received it before they went to
Chechnya to find Steele and Kalon. The US postmark drew his eye. Fuck,
this would not go down well with the guys at all. They were going to be
pissed that Jason hadn’t told them—especially Jonah.
He slammed his fist off the side of the cage before shutting the door and
heading back to the war room. There was little they could do now but deal
with any fall out as it happened.
“Jase?” Fritz ignored the raised eyebrows when he called Jason by the
shortened version of his name—the one usually reserved for Panthers. Fritz
was tired of hiding. They were more than friends with benefits. Two freaking
years was a relationship, even if the fucking word gave Jason hives. “Here.”
He held the envelope out to Jason, who took it like it was a live bomb.
“Thanks.” The smile was tight as he stared at it.
Fritz couldn’t help it. Inside him, a tiny piece of hope flared to life at that
small smile and the fact Jason didn’t bitch about him using ‘Jase’. Maybe,
just maybe, Jason was ready to admit his feelings too.
When he didn’t move to open the envelope, Fritz asked, “Want me to do
it?”
“Yeah.” Jason nodded. “Please.”
“You got it.” Fritz took the envelope back and opened it.

“WAIT.” Jason nudged Fritz with his elbow. There was someone missing.
Most of Team Panther already knew his history, but if he was going to hash
over the horror show that was his childhood, then he wanted them all there.
“I’m gonna call Mic to get his ass over here.” Jason chewed the corner of his
lip. “If we are doing a total dissect Jonah-style, then I am not repeating
myself.”
This room right here, right now, contained most of the people he actually
gave a shit about. He met and held each one of their gazes. This was his team,
the people who chose him to always have their six. Delta Force Team
Panther’s strength lay in their diversity and their power was fueled by their
unity. He should have remembered that.
‘Stronger Together’ was more than a mantra they lived by. It was their
most sacred rule.
Rock turned to Grif. “Call him. I’ll go guard the girls.”
“Can you feed Rourke?” Jonah didn’t look up from the notes he was
scribbling on the pad. “I think we forgot to do it.”
“What the fuck am I, Nanny McPhee?” Rock grumbled.
“You know who Nanny McPhee is?” Matt stared at Rock, a look of mock
shock on his face that somehow even managed to make the corners of Jason’s
lips curve upward.
This right here reinforced the rules Jason had reminded himself of just a
few minutes before. It was why he couldn’t stay away from Jonah, even when
the bulldog, Sarah, refused him every damn time. He had kept calling Jonah,
taken every rejection Sarah had thrown at him, because maybe next time he
might get through. These men right here… they were family.
“Of course I freaking do,” Rock told Matt. “We now have a kid who
loves that stuff. I’m more trying to figure out why you do.”
“I…um…” Matt spluttered in response, clearly trying to think of an
answer that wouldn’t earn him more shit from Rock. “Argh, go guard your
family, you jackass.”
“Yup! Roger that!” Rock winked at Grif. “See ya later.”

FRITZ RESTED his chin on Jason’s shoulder. He forced himself to ignore

the gnawing feeling in his belly. Jason would hate this, hate having all the
details of the past he had worked so hard to overcome ripped apart.
He glanced at Kalon and Malik. The low clicks as their fingers flew over
the keyboards was followed by the changes of the images on screen as they
searched databases, and inserted the long strings of numbers called hashes to
download and pull files from those databases. Malik paused and stabbed the
back-space button a couple of times and growled something too low to make
out.
Fritz knew they were frustrated. If Malik hit the keyboard any harder,
he’d be freaking punching the damn thing, while Kalon’s head leaned to one
side, his mouth sucking hard on the straw as he guzzled Red Bull, his focus
on the screens.
They already had gathered a lot of information over the last two years,
but still they worked, gathering more intel, searching for the one clue they
needed to tie everything together.
He could see the list of the suspects Jonah was working on. That first
name should have been written in red marker, because it almost jumped off
the page, punching into the very depths of his psyche.
Speaker? I can’t believe it! How did I miss it?
Fritz wanted to kick his own ass. The US government spent a fortune on
making every man in this room some of the most highly skilled people in the
world. They were trained to observe…
Goddamn it, how the fuck did they miss the cuckoo in their own freaking
nest?
Fritz could feel the rigid tenseness in Jason’s muscles. Fury and rage
poured off him in waves. He turned his face, nuzzling the side of Jason’s
neck with his nose.
Well, aren’t you the brazen one?
He inhaled deeply, closed his eyes to savor the fresh scent of soap, sweat
and Jason. Public displays of affection were neither his nor Jason’s thing, but
right now, the only thing keeping a tight rein on his desire to take his man
somewhere private, so he could hug him, was knowing Jason needed to ‘get
this shit done,’ so he could focus.
Steele paused mid-step in the pacing he had been doing to gape at them.
Fritz inwardly shrugged. If Jason needed to have him wrapped around him
while he got his thoughts in order, then his brothers could just fucking deal.
Steele opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Grif slapped a hand
over Steele’s lips and shook his head, silently telling him to shut up.
“Ste, what do you think of this?”
God freaking bless you, Matt.
Fritz rolled his neck and shoulders, trying to ease the knots that had taken
up residence there, and threw a small smile in Matt’s direction. He wasn’t
sure if Matt did actually want to show Steele something or if he was pulling
his attention aside to give them a couple more seconds for Jason to take the
support he was obviously getting from being close to him, but either way,
Fritz would take it and was grateful for Matt’s insight.
“I gotta take a leak,” Jason said, but before he could move Micah and
Delta arrived.
Micah scanned the room before his gaze landed on Jason. Jealousy
grumbled to life inside Fritz, and he kinda wanted to beat Micah when he
shot across the room and dragged Jason into a crushing hug, his side kick
Delta immediately pressing herself against both their legs.
Jealous much?
 Fritz didn’t bother telling the voice in his head to shut up. He was fucking
jealous. Jason had told him about the crush he’d had on Micah before.
You’re being a dumbass, he told himself as he watched the tension across
Jason’s shoulders lessen slightly when Micah affectionally rubbed his
knuckles into Jase’s head.

“WE’LL GET THE FUCKER,” Micah told Jason. “Both of them.”

“I know.” Jason shrugged.
Whoa, wait, was that calm voice really coming out of his mouth?
Seriously?
He wouldn’t have been surprised if the voice he used was that of the five-
year-old who watched his mother being snatched off the streets.
He stepped back from Micah, his back colliding with Fritz’s chest.
Almost immediately the jitters he had going on took off for parts unknown.
Good, without them maybe he could get through what was to come. He
nodded to Matt and Steele. “Let’s do this.”
“Kalon,” Steele barked out making his guy jump. “Sorry.” Steele winced.
“I’m pissed.”
“It’s okay.” Kalon sucked hard on his straw, taking the jolt of energy the
Red Bull would give him. “Are you all ready?”
“Yup.” Steele waved in the direction of the screens. “Go ahead, babe.”
Kalon looked at Jason for confirmation he too was good to go, before he
directed his laser pointer at the screens.
“Kamden LeHar has a record as long as both my arms, going back to his
high school days. It is rumored he was on the inside of the Bratva, with links
to this man.”
Malik clicked the screen and brought up a grainy image.
“This is believed to be the man behind the loss of the Soviet Union’s
ballistic missile boomer K-129 that went missing in nineteen sixty-eight.
Rumor on the dark web is that he had planned to send recovery teams down
to get the nuclear war head. Unfortunately for him, he was arrested by the
KGB before that recovery got under way. By the time he escaped Moscow,
the US Navy had already recovered the warhead.”
“Who is he?” Jason turned his head from side to side. There was
something familiar about him. He just couldn’t put his finger on it.
“He’s none other than Michail Tursynbekov senior,” Kalon told him.
“Uncle of the asshole we have already had the pleasure of dealing with.”
“Fucking fabulous,” Matt muttered. “Will these people ever fuck off and
just let us live our lives?”
Kalon flicked the screen, bringing back up the file on Jason’s father.
“Wait.” Jason wanted to look at that image for a few more seconds. It was
right there in his head. “Put it back a sec.” He ignored all the sounds and
focused in on the image of Michail Tursynbekov senior. “I think I may have
met him when I was a kid.” He shrugged. “I can’t be sure, but I always
thought he was the reason my mom was taken. I didn’t find out until later that
she was in witness protection.”
“I was just getting to that.” Kalon clicked back to LeHar senior’s file. “In
nineteen ninety-one, the FBI investigated Kamden for a murder they believed
was carried out at the orders of the Russian Bratva, with ties back to
Tursynbekov. Kamden’s wife was to be their star witness.”
Jason sucked in a breath when a photo he had never seen of his mom
popped up on the screen next to the mug shot of his father. It shouldn’t hurt
after all these years, but pain knew no boundaries and didn’t care how much
time had passed. It put in an appearance whenever it felt like it.
His eyes fixed on the image in front of him. He moved closer to the
screen until his nose was almost pressed against it.
“Jas—” Steele started to speak.
“Shut it, Givens,” Fritz barked out. They could freaking allow Jason the
time he needed to look.
“Sorry.”
“I’ve never seen this photo before,” Jason told them, his fingers reaching
out and tracing the shape of her face. “I was maybe five the last time I saw
her. She was holding my baby brother, watching me cycle down the block
outside our house.” He didn’t need to force himself to remember. It was right
there, front and center in his brain. “A black car pulled up next to her and
dragged her into the car. I just stared like an idiot.” His chin pressed into his
chest. Yeah, he could totally feel the blanket of shame he wore. “I didn’t
move. I couldn’t.” When he looked up and turned around, it was to Fritz he
moved. “I didn’t save my mom.”
“You were five.” Fritz’s heart hurt for him. More than anything he
wanted to take the pain away. “There was nothing you could have done.”
 “I—I should have screamed… something,” Jason told him.
“No.” Jonah stepped close enough to touch Jason. He pushed against
Jason’s back, moving him into Fritz. “You couldn’t do anything. You had
nightmares about it for years after I met you.”
“Shit…” Jason looked over his shoulder at Jonah. “You never said.”
“I knew at seven that it was something that hurt you,” Jonah told him.
“You were my best friend. I didn’t want you to be afraid in the sunlight too.”
“Fuck.” Jason swallowed hard and closed his eyes.
Fritz could see him building up the defenses inside himself. Brick by
brick that wall was plastered together with a cement made of the grit and
determination that Jason LeHar was famous for in the field. He stepped closer
to Jason, silently offering his support, and if his internal self did an inward
fist pump when Jason leaned back against him, then nobody would know,
right?
“I’m good.” Jason opened his eyes. Fuck, even my eyelids freaking hurt.
He refused to let the hurt he felt at one more crack of the whip his father now
wielded even from afar stop him. He could lay his soul bare for his brothers.
He would do it, no matter what it cost him. They may not have proved it yet,
but that tiny link to Speaker told him his father was involved in this
clusterfuck that now was their lives.
I’m coming for you, fucker!
There was no way in hell he was going to allow Kamden to take his
vengeance out on his family. Nope, Jason would have his justice.
“Let’s do this,” he told them. “Kalon, show us what else you got.”
“Okay, Kamden LeHar.” Kalon pointed to his picture on the screen. “I
just gave you the background. He was released in two thousand and sixteen.
Less than two months before the attack on Jonah.”
“He never liked me,” Jonah told them. “Jason spent more time at my
house than he did his own. Even at ten I knew that Kamden didn’t like not
having Jase under his control at home.”
“He was the poster boy for deadbeat dad of the year.” Jason forced a
distance he really didn’t feel into his voice and recited the facts as if he was
in debriefing mode. “Drugs, weapons, money laundering. If the Bratva
wanted it done, good old Dad was their go-to guy.”
Oopsie, his inner self snarked, distance didn’t last long did it?
Jason pulled out the Louisville Slugger he kept in his head for just these
occasions and gave himself a mental wallop with it.
 Snap out of it, LeHar. Focus, damn it.
“Fucker,” Fritz muttered so quietly that if he hadn’t been pressed against
him, Jason wouldn’t have heard the words being spoken at all. As it was, he
more felt the word rumble out of Fritz’s chest than heard it. “Your father was
a bastard.”
“Yup.” Even though it hadn’t been a question, Jason answered anyway.
“Speaker worked a job in South America that led him to a connection
from a cop on the take in Cuba to Kamden,” Kalon told them.
“Everyone is on the take in Cuba,” Matt shrugged, “so no big surprise the
connection came from there.”
“How do we connect them to the weapons?” Jonah studied the screen for
a couple of minutes before he sighed and went to the cabinets across the
room. “I am never going to figure any of this shit out if I don’t write it
down.” He grabbed a pad and pen from a drawer and returned to where the
rest of the Panthers were gathered around the table. He tore a number of
sheets out of the pad and placed them on the top.
Fritz tightened his fingers on Jason’s waist, getting his attention. He
lightly tapped the envelope he still held in his hand. It was time to lay their
information on the table.
Jason nodded in answer.
Fritz cleared his throat. “We’re gonna need this intel too.” He waved the
envelope before he pulled out the paperwork it contained. Inside, there were
legal documents, court transcripts, numerous birth certificates, a marriage
certificate, and some other documents. He flicked through them, pausing now
and again to re-read the information, before handing them over to Jonah.
Fritz knew the Panthers would pass them down the line until they all had read
them.
His heart thumped harder in his chest as he watched the significance of
the papers slowly sink into the men gathered around him. When as last in
line, Micah finished reading and laid them on the table.
“Fuck!” Jonah picked up a certificate and re-read it.
“Yeah,” Jason agreed, “that!”
“How are you taking this so calmly?” Steele eyed Jason and handed the
paper he held in his hand off to Matt.
Fritz was stumped. These guys knew Jason—probably knew him better
than he himself ever would. They should know that Jason would be furious at
this… would be devastated at the stupid quirk of fate that gave him the one
thing he had been searching for all these years, especially when he was going
to take it away just as quickly again.
He studied Jason’s profile. Yeah, he was right. Jason was devastated. He
could see it in the tightness in his jawline and the slight frown lines around
his eyes. Fritz put his hand on the small of Jason’s back and repeated the
words he had said the first time he’d seen those papers. “I—I'm sorry, Jase. If
I had known I would have told you.”
That Jason didn't react again when Fritz called him Jase, told him how
deeply this was affecting the other man. His heart did a little happy dance
when Jason reached around and grabbed his hand, pulling it around his waist.
Fritz squeezed Jason’s fingers lightly, but when he would have pulled his
own hand back, Jason linked his little finger over Fritz’s. That small
movement of acceptance, the acknowledgment that this was something they
had to deal with together, still gave Fritz hope that maybe… just maybe, it
was something they could overcome.
When it came to relationships, Jason was like a skittish horse, always
waiting for that blow to fall or to be left behind. Phone calls, texts, and even a
couple of trips across the Atlantic had been slowly building trust between
them. Now, this bomb dropping in their laps had the potential to ruin
everything. Fritz wanted so fucking badly to rage at the unfairness of it. His
brain was still reeling, even though he had known for over a year. Fuck, Fritz
still couldn’t believe it. He’d always known that Tom was his stepbrother.
His father married Tom’s mother when Fritz was a toddler, but he hadn’t
known the woman he thought of as his mother was in the Witness Protection
Program, and that she was Jason’s mother just blew his mind. What were the
fucking chances? Seriously, could this be any more fucked up?
“I still can't believe that Tom is your brother and your mother married my
father after going into WitSec.”
“Me either,” Jason muttered.
“This is serious soap opera shit.” Grif dropped the death certificate he had
been reading onto the table. “You didn’t know?”
“Nope.” Jason gestured to the documents. “That envelope came to my flat
in the UK just before we were going to Tbilisi to look for Steele and Kalon. I
didn’t open it until we were on the plane.”
“Idiot.” Jonah punched Jason in the arm. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell
me?”
“Because you and Matt were busy,” Jason muttered in response.
 Fritz braced his knees to take the weight of Jason as he leaned back into
him, their hands still linked at Jason’s waist.
“You didn’t tell any of us,” Steele reminded him.
“When would I do that?” Jason asked. “After you blew the shit out of the
house that contained the brother I had just found? Or when you told us that
Tom was the one who took Kalon?” Jason pulled out of Fritz’s hold and
paced over and back, the frustration and annoyance pouring off him, choking
the atmosphere in the room. “Oh, I know, maybe I should have told you after
Fritz killed him to save your ass.”
“Jesus, Jase.” Jonah caught his arm to pull him into a hug, but Jason
shook him off and moved back to Fritz.
Pain stabbed Fritz in the heart at the reminder that yes, it had been his
finger on the trigger. If he closed his eyes, he could still hear the sound of the
shot, could still feel the recoil and still clearly see the blood explode on
Tom’s chest.
Jason rubbed his chin off Fritz’s shoulder before leaving it there, as if he
needed the contact. Fritz was more than happy to provide Jason with
whatever he needed, even if it was just support while he laid all the pieces of
his soul out on the table for the men who were his family to pick over.
“Can we focus on the asshole that is my father,” Jason pointed to the mug
shot on screen, “and deal with the coulda shoulda woulda’s later?”
“Um…” Matt studied Jason for a couple of seconds, before he said,
“Sure.” He nodded to Kalon and Malik. “Tell us what else you’ve got.”
Jason squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed hard. He listened to the
details of his father’s background. Most of the guys knew a lot of it already.
They knew his father had killed the Marine that had taken him and Jonah
under his wing so long ago. They knew too that Jason and Jonah’s testimony
had put his father behind bars. They knew the scars on his back had come
from the asshole when he caught Jason wanking off to a gay porn movie at
fifteen.
He shut out the noise that was Malik and Kalon going through all that
intel. As soon as they got to where Kamden was released then and only then
did he allow himself to look at the screen again. This was new information.
This was intel he could work with to find the fucker.
“We got a surprise hit on our facial recognition program,” Malik said.
“On one of our internal files.”
Wait… what? On their internal files meant it had come from body camera
footage. Fuck. Jason knew that was the only internal footage they kept.
“When?” he barked out. “Where?”
“Muscat,” Kalon told them. “When we went to rescue Steele.”
“Fuck.” Matt leaned over Jonah’s shoulder to look at the image on screen.
He tapped the face of the man next to Kamden in the still shot. “You need to
add this guy to the potential links column.”
“What?” Jonah stuck the pen in the corner of his mouth as he studied his
lists. “Why?”
“You might have been too busy looking for the coffee machine, but that
dude is the one who told us Tom gave him orders to get us permission to land
at Bagram Airbase in Parwan Province, Afghanistan. And arranged for us to
take a couple of stealth modified UH-60 Black Hawks to Outpost Wild-Wolf
in the Kamdesh Valley.”
“Damn.” Red climbed up from under the neck of Jonah’s shirt. Yeah,
coffee was his downfall when it came to distractions for sure. Coffee was
only beaten to poll position by his bomb disposal expert fiancé, Matt.
“McConnell?” Grif shifted from where he had been leaning against the
wall, watching and following all the intel that had been coming down the
line. “I remember him, probably Ex- IRA, possible CIA Informant, but
remember he is also somehow connected to Pops’ Vietnam buddy, Mac.”
“I’ll call Pops.” Matt glanced at the clock. “Um, it’s zero three hundred.
Maybe I’ll wait a couple of hours.”
“You just don’t want Momma B withholding pancakes,” Jonah
whispered.
“Abso-fucking-lutely.” Matt had no shame. His momma, Betty, her
cooking rocked. There was no freaking way he was endangering his supply of
cakes and pies by waking her at zero three hundred hours for something that
could wait until six, when Pops’ day started.
“I need to move.” Jason whispered to Fritz. If he kept standing here, he
was going to fall asleep.
Who freaking knew that ripping apart your childhood and divulging
secrets was more draining than one single day of Delta Force tryouts? But
this was one of the reasons they had trained so hard, one of the reasons
Special Forces teams pushed and kept pushing—to train their members to
move past their comfort zones and keep on going, blasting through barriers,
even the mental ones they had built in their minds.
His fingers had been fidgeting for the last hour, flipping a coin over and
back in his knuckles, but just that slight constant motion wasn’t enough
anymore. His whole body needed to move or the anger he could feel roiling
in his stomach would make him puke. “Has there been any other confirmed
sightings of Kamden?”
“Not so far,” Malik answered. He gestured to the screens. “We’re
searching through airport footage and passport logs.” He shrugged. “But we
all know in that part of the world you don’t need to go through an airport to
get out of the country unseen.”
“You think Tom knew Kamden?” Fritz asked Steele.
“It’s possible,” Steele answered. “If McConnell picked Kamden up at the
airport in Muscat when he landed, we all know he has the connections to get
him across multiple borders without too much trouble.”
Jason had seen the rigid tenseness at the mention of Tom. Steele had been
undercover as Tom’s partner in Oman when he met Kalon. Yeah, Jason
didn’t blame Kalon for being pissy, considering his brother had been the one
who kidnapped him. Not only because of Kalon’s father’s connection to
the…
“Wait!” Jason winced. Shit, he hadn’t meant to shout. “We need to check
if there is a connection between my father and Kalon’s.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry, Kalon.” Jason tossed the coin into the air and caught it again.
“Your father has mob connections. When you were taken, we were working
off the assumption that Lang took you as there was intel they needed from
you. If Kamden is connected to Muscat, then we need to at least investigate if
there is a connection between your father and this shit show. We never
verified it before. It might give us other places to look.”
“Jase is right,” Jonah said. “It’s on my list, too.”
Kalon scrubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “The asshat is in
prison?” he asked Steele.
“Yup,” Steele confirmed. “I double checked as soon as Deckard gave us
Jase’s father’s name.”
“Someone needs to go visit him.” Matt nudged Jonah. “Put that on your
list too.”
“Sure.” Jonah scribbled a note on the bottom corner of one page.
Jason could never figure out how anyone made sense of Jonah’s diagrams
and notes, but they helped him figure shit out and make connections they
might miss. Speaker and Kamden? Those were the curveballs none of them
were expecting.
“What did you do with Deckard?”
“Zeke is watching him.” Matt refilled Jonah’s coffee mug. “As soon as
Steele’s CIA contact shows up, we’ll hand him over.”
“Okay.” It made sense to Jason. “You trust these guys, Steele?”
“Yeah, I trust Agent Kittridge,” Steele answered. “I worked with her out
of Langley. She and her partner, Callaghan, are good people.”
Jason shrugged, as if he didn’t give a shit who came to collect the dude.
He did, he just trusted Steele’s judgement more. Steele might be willing to
trust these two agents, but he was still reeling from the revelations of the day.
With the exception of the people in this compound, he wasn’t sure who he
trusted anymore.
“If Kamden is in Oman, then that’s where I’m heading.”
“Not without back up, you’re not.” Jonah looked up from the notes he
was studying. He glared at Jason.
Oh yeah, he could still read the mutiny on his friend’s face. The last thing
Jason wanted was to put his family in the path of his father.
“No fucking lone ranger shit, Jase. Every time someone goes off on their
own, shit happens.”
“Sure.” Jason shrugged. They could say what they wanted. This was his
mess. He would take them out of it.
“Not without me,” Fritz whispered softly in his ear. “Promise me?”
Shit…
“Sure,” Jason repeated.
“Swear to fuck, I will tie you to the damn bed if you try to leave without
me.”
“Kinky.” Micah interrupted their whispered words.
“Shut up.”
Do not blush, do not blush!
Jason could feel the red darkening his cheeks above his beard.
You’re blushing! Fuck.
A buzzing of a communications call sounded in the war room, drawing
their attention back to the computers
“Um,” Kalon called. “I have an incoming call from Iraq. Want me to put
it on screen?”
 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

MATT SCANNED THE ROOM. “Switch off that screen.” He pointed to the
intel on Kamden and Speaker. “Then yeah.”
“You got it.” Kalon did as asked and clicked connect.
The video image static faded in and out. Kalon dragged his keyboard
toward him to try and help boost the signal on their side.
“It’s still not fucking working, Sage, move your ass higher.”
Fritz blew out a breath of relief he hadn’t known he was holding. “That’s
Castello Moran.”
“Boss, I am up the only damn tree for miles around holding fucking
rabbit ears to try and make the signal stronger.” Another voice could barely
be heard over the static. “I can’t fucking climb any higher. The branches
won’t hold my weight.”
“You shouldn’t eat so many damn jellies then, should you?” Castello’s
voice came again. “Swear to fuck if I have to climb the damn tree with this
fucking laptop, neither of us is going to be very happy.”
“Nope, boss,” a third voice chimed in. “You would drop it and I’m under
the tree with the rest of the comms gear. Sage, climb. Now.”
“Fuckers.”
The screen cleared for a second before going back to static again. “Wait,”
Castello’s voice yelled. “Go back. You had it and it’s gone again.”
“They sound like us,” Steele whispered.
“Pretty much,” Grif agreed.
“Got it.” The screen wobbled a bit before finally coming into full focus.
The man most of the Panthers recognized as Rourke’s father appeared on the
screen. His eyes scanned the people in the war room before stopping at Fritz.
“Blackwell, do you have him?”
“Hey, Castello,” Fritz answered. “Yeah, we got him.”
“Thank fuck.” Even across all the miles, a shit connection and a fuzzy
jumping screen they could see the relief he wore on his face. “What the fuck
happened?”
“How did you know to call us?” Jason knew for a fact that Fritz hadn’t
called him. He was almost as sure that Rourke hadn’t, and if the call had been
made by a Panther, then Matt or Steele would have mentioned it.
“We were at a Red Cross camp near Bāghūz,” Castello told Jason.
“When the alert from law enforcement in my home town came in, the people
there knew how to get in contact with me. The intel I received said the
wellness check request came from you.” He jerked his chin in Fritz’s
direction. “Rourke is okay? We had to find a damn tree tall enough that I
could send my comms guy up it to get a fucking signal.”
“Yup,” Fritz reassured his former second in command. “Viking is
watching him and our other VIPs.”
“McKinnon is with Viking too?” Castello asked, “I see Kennedy next to
LeHar.”
“Yes, and Garret Rockwell.”
“Okay, then he’s safe.” Castello pressed his fingers into his eyes and
sighed. “What the fuck happened, Fritz? The Red Cross would only tell me
that my kid was missing and local cops said the heads up came from you.”
“Castello, your ass needs to get home,” Fritz told him. “Rourke has a
million-dollar bounty out for his capture and an extra ten million for his
computer.”
“What the fuck?”
“You remember the clusterfuck at COP Wild-Wolf?”
Castello’s gaze flicked to Matt and Jonah and he nodded at both, his chin
lifting in acknowledgement. “Yup, but my kid wasn’t there and isn’t
connected to anything military outside of family.”
“He kind of is.” Fritz didn’t want to be the one to burst Moran’s bubble
that his kid was safe in the US, but it had to be done, “He won something on
a computer game and it gave him codes for a nuclear warhead.”
“The fuck you say?”
Oh yes, Fritz understood the confusion on Castello’s face and in his
voice. They had all been in the middle of this shitstorm for years and they
still didn’t understand what the fuck was happening half the time.
 He scrubbed his hand over his face. “I’ll have our comms expert explain
it,” he told Castello and waved in Kalon’s direction. “This is our tech
support.”
“Hi.” Kalon nodded at Castello’s face on the screen. “Long story short,
codes for an R-21 Sark Serb submarine-launched ballistic missile the Navy
recovered from the Russian Sub, after it went missing in nineteen sixty-eight,
were encoded into an online computer game. He found a level he shouldn’t
have been able to find, never mind beat the boss, but he did,” Kalon said. He
appreciated the skill it took to find and beat a boss. He and Malik had looked
at the game briefly when they were waiting for the Panthers to get to
California, and he wasn’t sure he could have done it—especially not in the
timeframe Rourke had. The kid must be shit hot at gaming. “Once he did, the
game sent a link with his ‘prizes’. He downloaded the file. It contained the
codes needed to launch the Serb.”
“Fuck.” Castello’s hand scrubbed over his beard, covering his mouth and
pinching his nose. “Who are you?”
“He’s mine,” Steele growled, his hand landing on Kalon’s shoulder in a
blatant show of possessiveness he never seemed able to curb when it came to
Kalon.
“I wasn’t planning on stealing him, Givens,” Castello grumbled. “I
forgot his name is all.”
“Kalon.”
“Okay, Kalon,” Castello said. “Can they track his computer?”
“Not as long as it remains powered off.”
“That might not be the problem, though,” Fritz warned. “We suspect they
know he is with us.”
“Explain.” Castello pulled the laptop closer, his face filling the screen.
“Now, Fritz.”
“How secure is the line on your side?”
“Jeez, man, it’s Iraq.” Castello ignored the snorts from the former
operators gathered in the war room. “My comms guy is up a freaking tree
with rabbit ears. I have no fucking guarantee that it’s secure, even with all
the mirrors and shit.” He shrugged. “Communication shit is not in my
wheelhouse. It’s why I have a comms specialist.”
“Roger that,” Steele muttered. “We can’t leave him with his ass swinging
out there in the breeze. Tell him.”
The others murmured their agreements and Fritz nodded. He agreed. The
last thing he wanted to do was withhold intel that could get Castello and his
team killed.
“We suspect,” Fritz said, “and for now, it’s not confirmed, that Speaker
McCall may be the head honcho for not only the attack on COP Wild-Wolf,
but also illegal arms dealing, kidnapping and that’s only the beginning.”
“You’re fucking shitting me?” In the background, they could hear a low
whistle. Castello’s team were obviously still in hearing range. “We’re meant
to meet him in Islamabad in three days.”
“Be very fucking careful my friend.” Fritz nudged Jason with his elbow
and nodded to the papers on the table.
Can I tell him your father is involved?
Jason gave a short nod and shrugged.
Sure, go ahead.
Their silent communication raised a few eyebrows among not only the
Panthers, but also from Castello.
“What aren’t you telling me?” Castello asked. He had worked with Fritz
for years, long enough to know when something was off.
“We have reason to believe that Jason’s father is involved,” Fritz said.
“We have a connection between him and Speaker, along with the Russian
arms dealers.
“Jesus, when you step in a pile of shit, you jump in with both boots, don’t
ya?” Castello glanced off to the side. “Hang on a sec, one of my guys is
gonna go ask Sage a question.”
“Sure,” Fritz responded.
The screen went dark as the call was muted. “What do you think?” Jason
asked.
“I think now that they have involved Rourke,” Fritz told him, “that this is
personal for Castello. If we confirm Speaker is the one behind the hit on his
house, Speaker is a dead man walking.” He gestured to Grif. “If you think G
can be cold when he’s getting information out of a tango... They’ve come
after Castello’s kid. He will go on the hunt. If he finds him and can’t keep his
rage under control what he will do to Speaker will make Charles Manson
look like Mother freaking Teresa.”
“That’s what I thought,” Jonah told them. “He was always a protective
bastard.” He twisted in the chair, stretching his back. The sound of his spine
clicking was loud enough to make the others wince. “Remember he did a
mission with us in South America?” He smiled up at Matt. “Remember what
he was like when we rescued those Red Cross nurses?”
“Oh yeah.” Matt rested his hands on Jonah’s shoulders, his thumbs
digging into the knots there. “He took out, what was it? Four or five tangos
with his bare hands?”
“Seven.” Jonah’s chin almost touched his chest. His groan brought a
smile to Matt’s lips. “I had overwatch and saw it all happened through my
scope,” Jonah told them. “His gun jammed and rather than using a blade or
his SIG, he knocked heads together and punched the shit out of them, so he
wouldn’t offend the ladies. He had them all down in four minutes flat. I
didn’t even get a chance to send a bullet down range.”
“I’m no freaking superhero, Montgomery.” Castello’s voice drew their
attention back to the screens.
“Nope.” Jonah popped the end of the word. “You’re Delta.” He shrugged
and grinned at the screen. “We’re better.”
“It’s good to see your ass is still in one piece,” Castello told Jonah. “All
of you.” His gaze took in all the Panthers. “We’ve lost too damn many.”
“Roger that,” Jonah agreed—they had lost too damn many over the years.
Castello obviously shook off whatever had been bothering him. “Sage
says you can send intel to our secure mail.” He rattled off the address. “It’s
the best we can do. If McCall is involved, he might have access. Doesn’t
matter,” Castello grunted, “if he’s the one who came after my kid, his Kevlar
is already sitting on the stock of an M4. The boots will follow shortly.”
“Fucker doesn’t deserve a Battle Cross,” Jason muttered.
No fucking way did the asshole deserve any patriotic tribute the Battle
cross made of Kevlar, boots and a rifle signified.
“You’re meeting him in Islamabad?” Steele asked for confirmation.
“That was the plan.”
“Want some extra team members?”
“You are no longer active.”
“I’ll have clearance from the Pentagon sent to your email, along with the
intel we have,” Steele told him.
“Okay.” Castello nodded. He’d happily take the back up from the Delta
Force team that had been the best of the best until the discovery of Matt and
Jonah’s relationship earned them a discharge under ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’.
“Rourke?”
“He can stay here with my family,” Matt offered. “My Pops is a former
Marine. All the hands on the ranch are veterans.”
 “My kid will be here to,” Grif chimed in, “and you can guaran-damn-tee I
wouldn’t leave her here alone if I didn’t trust them.”
“You have a kid?”
“Yeah,” Grif’s lips curved into a smile. “She’s four.”
“Fuck me sideways.”
“No thanks,” Grif grumbled, “Rock and Allie would shoot you.”
“Wait, I thought your wife’s name was…” Castello’s voice trailed off.
“Umm, ah fuck, I can’t remember, but it wasn’t Allie.”
“It’ll be in the intel,” Matt told him, rescuing Grif from having to explain
the whole saga of his salvation. “I do have a question, though.”
“Shoot.”
“Did you send an email to Jason’s email account?”
“Nope?” Castello looked confused. “What the fuck are you talking
about?”
“The tip off we had came from a Mossad throwaway account and was
sent to an old email Jason had a few years ago,” Matt told him.
“Have your tech guy send it to Sage in the pack,” Castello told Matt.
“We might have a way to check who logged onto that account.”
“You got it.”
“Boss,” the voice they recognized as the communications specialist,
Sage, yelled. “We got incoming from the border. There’s a shit load of dust
trails heading our way.”
“Fuck, gotta go.” Castello reached for the screen, his arm blocking the
Panthers view of the background. “Look after my kid and update me on a
Checkpoint Alpha.”
“Roger th—” Before Fritz could finish speaking the screen went black.
He winked at Jason, then gave his attention back to the room. “We need a
plan. Flying by the seat of our pants isn’t going to work on this one. Thoughts
on where we meet Castello and his guys?”
“They are at Bāghūz?” Jason went to the huge map of the Middle East
that hung on one wall of the war room, “And they’re meant to find Speaker in
Islamabad?”
“Yup.”
“Then I say we put Checkpoint Alpha somewhere in Afghanistan.” Jason
traced his finger along the map from the Syrian border, crossing Iraq, Iran,
Afghanistan, and finally into Pakistan. “Maybe Jalalabad?”
“Hm, Steele, do we have any contacts in Jalalabad that you trust?” Matt
asked. “We can take Jonah’s plane to Germany and catch a C130 or another
transport flight to the ‘Stan.”
Steele scrunched his nose and frowned. “Umm, not sure,” he grinned at
Matt, “but I’ll make some calls.”
Fritz moved next to Jason to look at the map. He chewed on his bottom
lip for a couple of seconds. “Maybe we put Checkpoint Alpha at Darab, in
Fars Province, Iran. I have a safe house there.”
“One Speaker knows about?” Jason asked.
“Nope.” Fritz yawned, his jaw cracking. “One of my former team’s black
sites. There is nothing on record to show it’s ours. I don’t think even I could
find a connection if I looked—and Lynx owns the place.”
“Good enough for me,” Grif told them. “I’m gonna head on home. My
eyeballs are gonna jump out and change bodies just so they can close for a
while.”
“Yeah, I’m fucked too.” Micah ran his fingers over Delta’s head. “I’ll
bring Rourke back here?”
“Yeah.” Matt leaned both hands on the back of Jonah’s chair, resting his
chin on Jonah’s head. “I also vote we get some zee’s. Tomorrow, our asses
are going transatlantic.”
“Yup.” Jason stretched his hands high over his head and twisted his back
to take out the kinks. “I think we’re running on about thirty-six hours of no
sleep. If we’re gonna be tracking Speaker through Pakistan, then we’re gonna
need more sleep than a flight will give us.”
“We gear up in the morning.” Jonah pushed his chair back from the table.
“Wrap it up, Kal, Malik. Get some sleep too.”
“I want to keep running—” Kalon started to say.
“Nope.” Steele cut him off. “Sleep time. Long flight tomorrow and all
that shit. Set them up to run while we sleep.”
“But—”
“Nope.” Steele kissed the top of his head. “Set what you need to run, then
we go home.”
Kalon sighed. “Okay.”
Jason watched his friends. They were all in relationships now. He could
see the marked difference in them. If someone had told him even three years
ago that not only would Panther be back together, but that they would all
have partners they adored he would have fallen over laughing, right after he
punched the idiot for being a dumbass.
 Adored? What the fuck? Who are you and where did the aliens take the
real Jason?
He shook off his inner snark.
Shut it, they adore the other halves of them that they have found.
He was starting to think that maybe, just maybe, he might get a happily
ever after too.
“You ready?”
Fritz’s voice in his ear pulled him from his musings. Yup, who’s got the
partner now dumbass…? You are already in a relationship just like the
others.
Oh, fuckballs all mighty, he was… wasn’t he?
“Yup, ready.”
 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

FRITZ SAT his ass on the edge of the bed. His eyes were stinging like hell,
but he didn’t dare rub them. Vampires totally had red eyes because of lack of
sleep, he was sure of it. Over his years in the military he had gotten used to
running on little to no sleep, but tonight he felt every second that had passed
once he hit the twenty-four-hour mark.
“Fuck, I’m too old to go without seeing our bed at least once a day.”
“Huh?” Jason’s fingers paused in ripping open his laces. “We’re not old.
Just out of practice for pulling all-nighters while planning and chasing
tangos.”
“I never thought I’d see the day we included Speaker in that word,” Fritz
muttered. “Tango. For fuck sake, I always saw him as one of the good guys.”
“You think someone is throwing shade and setting him up?”
“It’s possible.” After toeing off his boots, Fritz settled back into the
pillows. “In our world anything is possible.”
“Yeah.” Jason moved to the bathroom to brush his teeth and take a piss,
his brain working overtime, cataloging everything he and Fritz were doing.
How the hell had he missed it? How had he not seen the routines they had
built up?
He knew that Fritz used the bathroom then sat on the bed to take off his
boots. Fritz liked the left side of the bed and left the right side for him.
Always.
Fritz always placed his weapons on the night stand and knew that Jason
stuffed his under his pillows, which meant he had to watch his fingers when
he pushed his arm in under Jason’s head while they slept.
“You think it’s my father setting Speaker up?” Jason called over the
sound of the toilet flushing.
“No clue, man,” Fritz called back, “but something stinks.”
“Agreed.” Lathering the soap in his hands, he considered the problem. “I
don’t like that the intel that came is so fucking clean.” He grabbed the
toothbrush, ran it under the tap and stuffed it in his mouth.
“Me neither,” In the mirror, Fritz appeared at the bathroom door. He
leaned against it with one shoulder. “I kind of feel shitty that we told Castello
when we haven’t verified all the intel yet.”
Jason spat the toothpaste into the sink. “Me too.” He met Fritz’s gaze in
the glass. “But Rourke is his kid. I’d want to know if he was mine.”
“Yeah.” Fritz straightened and took a few steps forward. Wrapping both
arms around Jason’s waist, he propped his chin on his shoulder. “Is that
something you want?”
“Huh?”
“Kids.”
The toothbrush in Jason’s hand stopped mid scrub. His mouth open, he
could feel his body tensing at the question.
Um, what the fuck? Whoa… I’ve just come to the conclusion that we are
having a relationship and you are jumping to kids?
“My DNA is not something that should be reproduced.”
“I didn’t ask if you wanted to create one.” Fritz nuzzled the side of
Jason’s neck with his nose. “I asked if kids were something you wanted.”
“Um…” Jason struggled to come up with words, any words. How the hell
had they gotten from Speaker to kids?
“Was just a question,” Fritz told him. “Answer it if you want, don’t if you
don’t want to or don’t know.”
Kids? Holy fuck! Jason forced his hand to resume scrubbing, then stuck
his mouth under the tap for water to gargle before he spat again, buying
himself some time. “Not something I ever thought about. Do you?”
“Want kids? I don’t know.”
“So, what made you ask?” Jason kept watching Fritz in the mirror.
Somehow, even with him wrapped around him, it gave him the distance he
needed not to feel crowded or ambushed by the very same question that had
made him end any relationship he’d had with a woman before.
“It just popped into my head.”
“You don’t normally say everything that pops into your head.”
“With you I want to,” Fritz told him.
 “To have kids?” Oh fuck, there it was—the panicky heart racing and
adrenaline shooting through his veins.
“No.” Fritz’s chuckle was so close to his ear he could feel the rush of
breath. “Tell you everything I think.”
“Oh.” That feeling of a thud hitting the bottom of his stomach, that was
relief… right? So why the fuck did it taste of disappointment?
“Come on.” Fritz’s hands encouraged Jason to spin around. “Now that I
have freaked the shit out of you we need to sleep or we’ll both be cranky
tomorrow.
Freaked the shit out of him? Jason wasn’t entirely sure he had, but he
would take the reprieve and think about why he wasn’t as freaked as he
should be.
“Yeah, tomorrow is going to be a long ass day.”
 CHAPTER NINETEEN

DARAB, FARS PROVINCE, IRAN

“FUCK, could you have found somewhere a little more remote?” Jason asked
Fritz. “A grocery store in the middle of the fucking city… really?”
“Yup.”
“And the owners are totally cool with Americans?” Jason knew the
disbelief in his voice was coming through loud and clear. Being here in the
city was giving him hives and making him jumpy. It surprised the hell out of
him that Fritz would not only bring them here… but bring Lynx here too.
Whomever these people were Fritz trusted them a hell of a lot.
“They are with me,” Fritz answered. “We saved their daughter from
human traffickers a couple of years ago. They insisted on giving Lynx the
only thing they had to offer in return.”
“What?”
“A safe haven in this part of the world.” Fritz steered the van down a side
street so narrow the wing mirrors would have hit off the side—if the van had
any.
He pulled to a stop at a large gate and tooted the horn twice, then paused
and tooted it three times.
“Jeez, blowing the fucking horn will draw all the neighbors to the
windows.”
“Nope. No windows.” Fritz gestured outside. He was right, except for one
doorway, solid walls made up the rest of the alley. “And it’s the signal for
deliveries. No one will bat an eyelid. Grocery stores get deliveries all the
time.”
Once the gate was opened, he drove into the small courtyard.
“Amir, my friend.” Fritz jumped out of the van as soon as he stopped it
and gripped the arm of the older Irani man who came to greet him.
“It is good to see you.” The man looked nervously over his shoulder
toward the shop. “Get inside quickly.”
Fritz stilled and looked at his friend. “Problems?”
“We always have problems these days,” Amir told him, “but for now,
Afghan immigrants have been raiding stores. I do not want them to see the
advantage of selling information on your presence.”
“Good thinking. We won’t be here long,” Fritz told him.
Jason and the others got out of the vehicles. “That was as uncomfy as a
freaking Humvee.”
“Yup.” Jonah nudged him out of the way, so he too could get out.
“Your people, they are different.” Amir led the way to a doorway.
“Yeah.” Fritz resisted the urge to close his eyes. “I’m no longer military.”
“I am sorry, my friend,” Amir told Fritz, his voice filled with sympathy.
“Yes,” Fritz agreed. He thought he would be a lifer, but somehow after
the shitshow at COP Wild-Wolf and how Colonel Lang went after Team
Panther, he just didn’t have the stomach for it anymore. He didn’t regret
retiring. He was still Delta. It was in his DNA at this stage, earned through
blood, sweat, and yes, sometimes even tears.
What was that old saying? You could take the man out of the military, but
you could never take the military out of the man. That definitely applied to all
the men who had traveled here with him.
“These are good men too?”
“These are my brothers,” Fritz told him.
“It is good to be with family.”
“I agree.”
Amir gestured up the narrow staircase that led to the apartment over his
shop. “Your home is ready for you.”
“We have another group coming in tonight.” Fritz stepped back to allow
the others to proceed him into the building.
Weapons drawn, Matt and Jonah took point, going first to clear the
building. Amir may be a friend of Fritz’s with a debt he felt he owed, but
their instincts were hard earned on battlefields all over the Middle East for
more than a decade. Clearing a building was habit they, as most other former
military personnel, would never grow out of.
“They shall contact you?” Amir asked. “Or I am having a late delivery?”
“I don’t know yet,” Fritz answered. “They are the ones who know how to
get here.” He knew he was being cryptic, but he also knew that Amir would
understand that he didn’t need to be here, as the people coming knew how to
access the property.
“It’s good.” Amir nodded to Fritz. “My wife has stocked the kitchen. If
there is more that you need let me know. We can take it from my store. If I
don’t have it, I can order it for you.”
“Thank you, my friend.” Fritz winked at Jason as he stepped around him.
“Give my regards to your family. Your daughter? She is well?”
“Yes.” Amir leaned in to whisper to Fritz. “She still says she will marry
only you.”
Jonah stumbled on the bottom step, turning back to where Amir and Fritz
were now standing inside the doorway, he said, “She’s out of luck, he has a…
um… love?”
Amir clapped a hand on Fritz’s shoulder. “My daughter, she will be
disappointed to hear that.”
Fritz shrugged. “The heart wants who it wants and who am I to
disagree?” There was no way Fritz was telling Amir that he had already seen
‘his love’ and that ‘his love’ was the one with the pretty ass at the top of the
stairs next to Jonah, shamelessly listening to their conversation. Being gay in
this part of the world would not be understood, especially in Iran, where
sexual activity between members of the same sex was illegal and was
punishable by death. He would not put his guys or Amir in the difficult
position of discussing it.
“We’ll get settled,” he told Amir instead.
“As you wish, my friend,” Amir said. “Remember, there are cleaners in
my shop until eight p.m. After that, you are free to make noise, as long as it
does not extend outside of these walls.” He lifted one shoulder. “While the
cleaners have worked for me for a long time, I do not know their stance on
Americans. It is better if you are silent while they are here.”
“No problem.”
Yup, Fritz agreed. They would be silent while the cleaners were in the
store below their hidey hole. He did not want to cause any problems for
Amir. He also didn’t want to have to defend himself from Irani police.
“If we disappear before I see you, thank you for everything.”
“It is me who thanks you,” Amir told him. “You brought my daughter
back to me when your commanders wanted to leave her in a Syrian refugee
camp or to make her own way home.”
 “It’s what anyone would have done,” Fritz told him. They went through
this routine every time he had seen Amir since his daughter’s rescue.
When Fritz and his team had rescued two American aid workers in
Northern Syria, they had found Amir’s daughter in the same camp. His orders
were to leave her there. His honor wouldn’t let him, so he and his team had
taken the long way home to drop her off in Iran.
“Either way,” Amir stepped through the door, “my wife and I are
grateful.”
By the time Fritz made it upstairs, all the gear was unpacked. Kalon and
Malik were connecting laptop wires and screens while the others were
cleaning weapons and checking comms units. Good they would be
operational shortly.
“Cleaners will be downstairs from nineteen hundred until twenty
hundred. Keep noise levels to a minimum until at least twenty thirty. Got it?”
“Yup.”
“Roger that.”

JASON SAT Indian style on the floor, cleaning weapons. His eyes weren’t
on his hands, though. He could do this in his sleep or in the dark. Instead, he
looked around the huge open space that was Delta Force Team Lynx’s safe
house. There was nothing here to tell him this place was owned by anyone
other than an Irani national. The floor was covered with Tabriz rugs. He
couldn’t remember why he knew they were Tabriz, he just knew the design
he was looking at was Lachak turanj, based on the pattern in the center of the
carpet being a symbol of the Moon. The pattern formed by lozenges with the
toothed leaves on the edges symbolized the scales of the fish, which legend
said rose to the surface of the water at midnight to admire the Moon’s
reflection. Jason also knew the origin of this design dated back to the ninth or
tenth centuries.
Cushions also lined the walls. Good, those would be handy for sleeping
on later—not that they would get much sleep. This was mission mode. They
were officially at Checkpoint Alpha.
Jason looked at his watch. They were waiting for Lynx team to arrive. It
was almost midnight. The Castello Moran he remembered from the few times
he had worked with him was probably out there, somewhere close, waiting
for his team to clear him for entry.
Jason clicked the pieces of his gun back together and loaded it. As if his
brain conjured the man up, the door to the Tactical Operations Center they
had set up slammed open. His eyes widened when he caught sight of a
massive man filling the open space. Between one heartbeat and the next the
man had a huge range of weapons pointed at him.
“Put your weapons down, you idiots. I’m here by invitation.
“Castello.” Fritz was first to lower his weapons. “You still like to make a
dramatic appearance, I see.”
“What have you got?” Castello asked. “You find Speaker?”
“Not yet,” Fritz admitted. “We are waiting on intel from the CIA.”
“Fuck.” The man took off the Kevlar helmet he wore on his head and
dropped it onto the corner of a table. He reached out and took Fritz’s hand,
pulling him into a bro-hug.
“Malik, get a camera on that entrance,” Steele ordered. “I want to know
who is coming in and out. This time it was that jackass, next time it could be
tangos.”
“Copy that.” Malik rummaged around in the crate containing the comms
gear and left to set up the cameras, with Creed following behind to watch his
six.
“You’re growling like Delta.” Micah’s low whisper had Jason biting
down on his lip.
Fuck, he was growling. Jeez, how long did fucking Castello have to keep
his hands on Fritz for?
Jason’s fingers balled into fists.
“You are not allowed to punch him,” Jonah whispered.
“Why not?” One punch? Just a tiny one?
“Because we need him to grab Speaker.”
“Fuck.” Jason hissed out the side of his mouth.
Mic and Jonah were right. Speaker was expecting to meet with Castello.
He had to let him live.
Jason’s eyes zeroed in on Castello’s hands where they still rested on
Fritz’s shoulder.
He doesn’t need fucking fingers to meet with Speaker.
“Hell has frozen over.” Jonah nudged Jason with his elbow. “You’re
jealous.”
 Yup, I totally am.
“Nope. Not jealous.”
Liar!
“Rourke is okay?” Castello stepped back from Fritz.
Okay, maybe he would let him live another day.
Jason blew out a breath and forced himself to relax, somewhat.
“Yeah.” Fritz waved at Matt. “You remember Matt Garrett?” he asked
Castello.
“Sure do.” Castello raised his hand in salute to the man he had helped
rescue in two thousand and eleven. “You look better than the last time I saw
you in person.”
“Yeah.” Matt held out a phone. “Speed dial four will get you directly
through to the ranch. Rourke is staying with my folks.”
“My guys will be in shortly.” Castello snagged the phone from Matt,
pressed the button and put it to his ear. “Thanks dude.”
“It’s nothing.” Matt waved him off. “How many guys?”
“Five and a K9.” Castello eyed Delta. “Is yours gonna be okay with
another K9?”
“Yeah, Delta is good.” Micah nodded. “She—”
“Hello, my name is Moran.” Castello cut off whatever Micah would have
said, as the call was answered on the other side.
“And how do I know you are who you say you are?” All the Panthers
grinned as they heard the distinctive tone of Betty’s voice.
“Uh, Ma’am.” Castello frowned. “I’m calling, because Matt told me my
son is at your ranch.”
“So you say,” Betty told him. “I’m asking why I should believe you are
that sweet boys daddy.”
“Hold on a second, Ma’am.” Castello inhaled deeply, trying to keep a
tight grip on his temper, and turned, looking for Matt. “Will you tell your
Momma to quit acting like a momma bear and put Rourke on, so I can hear
he is okay?”
“I heard that, young man. There is no need to be snotty,” Betty said.
“Someone should wash your mouth out with soap.”
Matt took the phone and hit the speaker button. Betty was still muttering
and grumbling under her breath.
“Might teach you some common sense.”
“Sorry, Ma’am.” Castello’s eyes widened enough to make more than one
of them swallow down laughter. They had all been on the receiving end of
Bettyisims over the years, but she still managed to catch them off guard at
times.
“Well, bless his heart. That little ray of sunshine thinks an apology is
going to make me change my mind.”
“Will my voice do it, Momma B?” Jonah asked.
“Now, was it the plan for you to tell me he was who he says he was?”
“Ah no?”
“Was that a question?” Betty asked. “I am sure I heard a question mark
at the end of that sentence.”
“No, Momma, no question.” Jonah’s teeth flashed as he smiled. His love
for Betty and her pies only came second to his love for Matt.
“If you weren’t in the plan, then stop hijacking it.” Betty snarked at
Jonah. “Y’all never let me have any fun. So, stop changing the script.”
“Momma B.” Matt couldn’t hold it back anymore. His shoulders were
shaking from the effort not to laugh loud enough that Betty heard him.
“Castello is Rourke’s dad. You’re good to put him on the line.”
“Fine.” Betty sighed. “What’s the code word?”
“Pie,” Jonah said.
“Jonah…”
“Oops. Sorry.”
“Hmm…” Betty snorted. “Careful son-in-law or there will be no pie
when you get back.”
“I’m wounded.”
“Matt?” Betty ignored Jonah’s grumbling. “What’s the code word?”
“Thumbelina.”
“Good.” In the background, they could hear a bell ringing out. “Mr.
Moran, your son is on his way. You boys all look after yourselves.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Your Momma is nuts,” Castello whispered to Matt as they waited for
Rourke to arrive.
“Nah—”
“I can still hear you, you know, Mr. Moran?”
“Fuck.”
“That will be ten dollars for the swear jar.”
“Ten dollars?”
“Yes.” The laughter was clear in Betty’s voice. “I’m saving for a new
shotgun as Matt’s Pops managed to make mine disappear into a snake-pit
and we have children in the house.”
They could hear pots and pans banging and clanging in the background as
Betty made her annoyance at the loss of her shotgun known.
“Dad?” Rourke’s voice sounded down the line.
“Roo?” Castello snatched the phone back from Matt and pressed the
button to take it off speaker, before heading to the opposite side of the room
to talk to his kid.
“Holy shit. His face when Momma B told him he had to pay the jar.”
Micah snickered.
Jason agreed. He had to buy Betty a big bunch of flowers or something
for putting Castello in his place in her own way.
“Someone is coming.” Micah stared at Delta. The dog climbed to her feet
and stood still watching the doorway, all the hackles on the back of her neck
standing to attention.
Steele and Matt were immediately at the door with weapons at the ready
position. The crackle of a comms unit coming online told them this was
probably a friendly. Still, better safe than sorry and all that shit.
“It’s my guys and our dog,” Castello said.
“Delta, heir,” Micah called his girl back to his side and clipped on her
leash. She was good as gold and had proven to be well socialized with other
animals, but he also knew in her mind this was mission mode. They were
here to work.
There was something unique about this part of the world. Something in
the smell of the desert, the smell of the spices and the sounds of Arabic or
Pashto. Maybe it reminded them of deployment, who knew, but the
combination of all those things flipped a switch in their brains. It sent their
alertness into overdrive. While Delta may be feeding off the energy of her
guys, it was also possible that the same factors gave her the extra edginess
she seemed to show when on mission mode.
“Lynx incoming,” a voice called.
“That you Sawyer?” Hawk responded, his eyes widening as he elbowed
Rock out of the way in order to move close to the door.
“Yup,” the voice now laced with humor responded. “My pretty self in the
flesh.”
“You can eat that one, Delta,” Micah told the dog. She flicked an ear in
response, while her focus remained on the doorway. Steele pushed open the
door while Matt covered his rear.
“Malik?” Steele asked.
Malik glanced at the laptop the cameras he had set up a few minutes
before were streaming to. “I recognize two of them.”
Steele nodded at Matt. Ready when you are.
Matt nodded in response. Me too.
Then he pulled open the door, allowing Castello’s team to enter.
First to come in was a German Shepherd wearing a combat vest and all
the gear that went with it.
“Rafe.” Steele nodded at the man as he moved past him to allow the rest
of his team to follow him. “Good to see you, man.”
“Likewise.”
“Zack,” Matt greeted the tall dark-haired man who looked enough like
him that they could be twins.
Jason watched the man Matt had called Zack just nod in response and
step around him. Putting his ass to the wall, Zack immediately scanned the
room until he spotted Castello. He worked his way around the walls until he
was close enough to his boss. Even without knowing much about this guy,
Jason could tell he was an operator. He didn’t know for certain what Castello
was these days, but he knew he was no longer Delta. This dude, Zack? He
reminded Jason of a SEAL he met once while tracking somewhere in Africa,
but without the grease and war paint it was hard to tell if it was the same
man.
Jason scanned him head to toe, while keeping an ear on the happenings at
the door, trying to figure it out.
It was the SEAL. He was almost sure of it.
He nodded to Zack when the other man turned and looked directly at him.
Yup, Jason could confirm this dude had good instincts. He knew without
looking that someone was watching him and could tell the direction it had
come from.
“Do you know him?” Fritz asked softly.
“Think so,” Jason replied just as softly. “I only met him once, if it’s the
same guy.” He nudged Fritz and nodded in Micah’s direction. “Watch Mic.”
“Huh?”
“Sawyer.” Hawk greeted the next one through the door.
“Mic told Delta she could eat that one,” Jason murmured.
“Hawkeye!” Sawyer bounced into the room. “How’s retirement treating
you, old man?”
Hawkeye? Jason folded his lips together.
Do not laugh, do not laugh, ah fuck, I’m gonna laugh, the snicker
escaped, bubbling up from inside him.
“Fucker.” Hawk grabbed Sawyer and pulled him into a bear hug. “Your
momma know you are in the sandbox?”
“Are you insane?” Sawyer pulled back out of Hawk’s arms. “I value my
ass, thank you very much.”
“Where does she think you are this time?”
“On a carrier in the Pacific, I think.” He thought about it for a couple of
seconds. “Nope, that was last time. Alaska, she thinks I’m off grid in
Alaska.”
“Dumbass.”
“Fucker.”
“Bastard.”
“Nope, I know who my daddy is.”
Jason knew his eyebrows had shot up. It took everything he had to keep
his mouth from dropping open. Who the hell was this man?
“Seems like they know each other well,” Jason said under his breath.
“Kind of reminds me of...” Fritz’s voice trailed off as he frowned, trying
to remember who the hell Sawyer reminded him of.
“Who?”
“It will come to me.”
“Sure.” Jason nodded in Micah’s direction, “Mic doesn’t know him.”
“Creed either.” Fritz gestured toward the Viking.
His back was to the room, as he kept watch on the window, studying the
street below. Tension clearly bled through every line of his back. Yeah,
Creed didn’t know Sawyer either.
“I’m Sage.” The fourth man carrying a bunch of comms equipment was
next through the door. He headed directly to Malik and Kalon. “Good, you
found my stash of cables.”
“They’ve used this place since you were here?” Jason asked Fritz.
“Apparently so.”
“Hey, Fritz, good to see you, old boss.”
“Asshole.” Fritz gripped the hand his former comms specialist offered.
“How you doing.”
“Good.”
 “This is Jason,” Fritz told him, “my partner.”
Sage’s eyes widened, “Partner, partner or work partner?”
“Partner, partner,” Jason clarified.
Damn, he fucking loved how the corners of Fritz’s eyes crinkled up when
he smiled like that.
“Yup.”
“All right, old boss!” Sage high fived Fritz. “Good for you.”
“Hey, less of the old,” Fritz grumbled.
“Well, I used to call you boss,” Sage told him. “Now, I call the dumbass
boss, which means you get old boss, so I can keep you straight.”
“He makes a good point.” Jason snickered.
He counted the new arrivals, four. Then double checked the door. Yup,
Steele and Matt had shut it.
“We are missing one.”
“He’s watching us through a scope.” At the second window, Jonah kept
his eye pressed to the scope of his Win Mag.
“Affirmative,” Creed confirmed. “On the roof of the building across the
street from the end of the yard.”
“You put him on the police station roof?” Fritz frowned at Sage.
“Seriously?”
“You know him, old boss.” Sage turned from where he had been
introducing himself to Malik and Kalon. “If it’s not a challenge, Conner isn’t
interested.”
“Will you quit calling me old boss, asshole?” Fritz swatted out at Sage.
“Go play with your computers and behave.”
“Sure, sure.” Sage winked at Jason. “I’m going.”
“Hey, Sage?”
“Yeah, old boss?”
“Who is Sawyer to Hawk?”
“His baby brother!”
“Fuck right off.” Jason turned to study the man they were talking about.
Yeah, he could see the family similarity in the jawline and the shape of the
eyes. Okay then, Mic and Creed were not going to kill him. Although they
might kill Hawk for not telling him he had a brother as well as a sister.
Not your circus, and not your monkeys, he reminded himself. What the
hell did he know about families anyway?
Castello handed the phone to Matt. “Thanks, man. I feel better now.” He
dug into the pocket of his combat pants, pulled out ten dollars and handed it
over too. “Um, Rourke said your mom was serious about the swear jar. Tell
her I paid, will ya?”
“Call Conner.” Fritz snorted back a laugh. “Tell him to get his ass over
here.”
“Sure,” Castello pressed his comms unit. “Lynx Overwatch, this is Lynx
One, report.” He frowned when all he got was static in return.
“He’s not checking comms.” Jonah called from the window.
“Sage?” Castello barked out. “Does overwatch have a comms issue?”
“On it, boss.”
Castello tried again. “Lynx Overwatch, this is Lynx One, report.” Again,
all he received was static. “Damn.”
“He’s still not touching his unit,” Creed confirmed. “His eye is on the
scope directed to here.”
“Boss,” Sage called. “We got nothing. The idiot probably forgot to
change the batteries again.”
“I’ll kill him,” Castello grumbled. “I’ll go get him.”
“Nah,” Fritz interrupted. “I’ll go. You all chow down. There’s food that
isn’t MREs in the kitchen.”
“You have real food?” Sawyer bounced across the room. “As in non-fart
producing, pre-packaged puke ready to eat?”
Fritz stripped off his flak jacket. “It’s better I go as a normal human,
rather than in full combat gear.” He checked his handgun, making sure it was
loaded and ready to fire. Then he double checked the safety and holstered it
under his arm.
“Yes, Sawyer, real food,” He pointed to the kitchen. “Help yourselves,
but leave some for the rest of us.”
“Wear light Kevlar under that shirt.” Jason stood next to Fritz holding out
a slimline version of a bullet proof vest.
“I’m only—”
“Nope.” Jason put a hint of order into his tone. “You are wearing it or
we’re not going.”
“You’re staying here.” Fritz squeezed his eyes shut, then took the Kevlar
and started stripping again.
“Nope.” Jason dropped his own chunky vest onto the floor. “Not
happening,” he told Fritz. “Where you go, I follow. Someone has to make
sure you don’t get dead, and that is most important to me.”
 “It’s across the street—”
“Don’t give a shit if it’s to the fucking toilet,” Jason told him. “If you are
out there, then my ass is on your six.”
He didn’t care that the other’s heads were swinging from looking at Fritz
to looking at him, like watching a tennis match. Nope, Fritz could just get his
ass on board.
“I’m going,” Jason repeated, pulling the straps on his own slim line vest
from back to front. Tightening the vest to minimize the risk of a bullet
sneaking in under his arms.
“He’s just going to follow you the second you leave,” Jonah called.
“Yup,” Micah added. “It’s better to keep him where you know he is than
shooting him when he appears out of nowhere.”
“Micah shot me, last time,” Jason muttered, “Asshole.”
“Yup, it was your ass that I hit, not anything important,” Micah
deadpanned.
“Bastard.”
“Yup, and you love me.” Micah grinned at Jason.
“Okay, okay,” Fritz grumbled. “Jeez, we’ll be here all week at this rate
and Conner will starve.”
“I’m waiting for you.” Jason smirked at Fritz. “Hurry it up a little, will
ya?”
 CHAPTER TWENTY

JASON TURNED SLIGHTLY sideways to go down the narrow staircase. It

gave him freaking hives.
“It’s a damn bottleneck.”
“Yup,” Fritz agreed. “Would be hell to have a fire fight here, but
hopefully it won’t ever come to that.” He paused behind Jason while he
pulled the door open and checked the courtyard.
“Clear.”
“Okay.” Fritz patted Jason on the ass. Anyone else he would have tapped
on the shoulder or even just nodded, but that ass in cammo… well, who could
blame him?
They worked their way around the edge of the wall to the gate.
“He’s got his scope on us.”
“Your neck itching?”
“Yup.” Jason came to a stop at the gates and repeated the clearing
procedure. “Like a motherfucker.” He studied the darkness, his eyes
searching the alleyway until he found the streetlamp. “The lights are out.”
“Maybe Lynx One shut it down.” Fritz clicked his comms. “TOC, this is
Panther Seven. Do you copy?”
“Go ahead, Panther Seven,” Malik responded immediately.
“TOC, ask Lynx One if he shut down the streetlights,” Fritz asked, “Jason
is itching.”
“Copy, hold on.”
Both Fritz and Jason studied the alleyway. The high brick building was
tall enough to block out lights from the main streets at either side.
“I don’t like that section where the dumpster and missing light is,” Jason
whispered.
Yeah, Fritz could totally see why—it was a good place for an ambush.
“Me neither.”
“Panther Seven, TOC.”
“Go ahead, TOC.”
“That’s an affirmative on the streetlights.”
“Copy that.” Fritz nodded to Jason. “Proceed.”
Castello had messed with the lights. They were good to go.
Jason double checked they were still clear. He went through the door first
and swiveled to the right, covering the entrance to the alleyway from that side
while Fritz turned in the direction they needed to go.
“Clear.”
“Clear.”
They worked their way down the alleyway, keeping to the deep shadows
next to the walls, their heads repeatedly moving, watching both in front and
behind them. Jason’s fingers itched to be flat against the barrel of a rifle. He
didn’t like this shit of small arms, but the outline of an M16 would cause
alarm if any civilian happened to catch a glimpse of them—never mind the
police in the building Conner was using as a sniper’s nest. The feeling of fire
ants crawling up his neck intensified the closer they got to the middle of the
alley. He reached out to Fritz. Before his fingers touched Fritz’s shoulder a
‘flop’ echoed around the space. The short and mute sound of a bullet hitting
Kevlar was the only warning he had before pain blasted through him.
“Shit.”
Jason could feel himself falling, he just couldn’t get his hands to work.
They refused to reach for his weapon, refuse to reach out to the wall to brace
himself.
Pain exploded in his head in a blast of sparks and lights behind his eyes as
he hit the corner of the dumpster on his way to the ground and everything
went dark.
The sound of a bullet hitting Kevlar is one any soldier knows. They hear
it in their dreams and nightmares. It’s a sound they never forget or mistake
for something else. Fritz jerked around at the sound of the first ‘flop’.
“Jase—” He dug his fingers into the collar of Jason’s shirt and dragged
him to the dumpster, getting them both behind cover. His body was reacting
while his brain spun out of control.
Not again. No… no… no! I can’t lose him now.
 The second Jason’s legs cleared the side of the dumpster, Fritz’s fingers
were moving, feeling for a pulse. His other hand reached under his jacket for
his gun.
“Ah, ah,” a familiar voice warned as the touch of steel against his throat
froze Fritz in place. “I wouldn’t reach for that.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck, he’s meant to be in Islamabad.
“What do you want, Speaker?”
“I want my fucking codes and you are going to get them for me.”
“Fuck off.”
“Then I put a bullet in his brain right now.” Speaker chuckled. “Will be
déjà vu for you… the cause of death of another one you love.”
Shit, shit, shit.
Fritz carefully moved his body not even an inch at a time. If he could just
reach…
“Do not touch that.” The blade dug into his neck, the resulting stinging
letting Fritz know he was bleeding as Speaker ripped the comms unit from
his shoulder. The SIG he held in his opposite hand slammed off the side of
Fritz’s head as he did so. “Move.”
“Fuck off.”
A pain-filled low groan from Jason sent a blast of relief shooting through
Fritz’s veins.
Thank fuck. Alive.
Fritz winced. Ouch. Fuck. The knife dug deeper into his neck.
“Move. Now,” Speaker growled in his ear, “or lover boy here is dead.”
The click of the safety being switched off reinforced his determination to
have Fritz come with him.
Camel ass sucking fucking bastard!
“Okay, okay.” Fritz forced tension to drain out of his limbs, forced his
body into submission, when all his muscle memory wanted to do was smash
his head back into Speaker’s nose. He insisted it didn’t. He would not risk
Jason.
The pfft of a suppressed bullet smashing off the wall next to Jason’s head
sealed the deal. He would go with the asshole, but once Jase was out of range
then all bets were off.
HOLY MOTHER of God who was the fucking mule that kicked him in the
ribs? He was going to shoot the bastard.
“Jase?”
“Fuck off, Jo.” Jason shifted. He just needed to get his ass off the floor.
What the hell was he doing on the floor anyway?
“Easy.” Grif’s voice was accompanied by his hand on Jason’s shoulder,
keeping him in place. “Stay put until I check you out.”
I’m forgetting something… what the fuck am I forgetting? Unease crept
up his spine. Those freaking fire ants were at it again. “My neck is itching
like fuck.”
“Yup,” Jonah muttered. “Getting shot in the back will do that.”
“Shot?” Jason’s brain scrambled.
Shot? In the back? Fuck.
He opened and closed his fists before instructing his brain to move his
toes.
Thank fuck.
Grateful that his body did as ordered, Jason bunched his muscles,
readying himself to sit upright.
“Yup,” Jonah confirmed.
“Hold still,” Grif told him. “I’m checking for concussion.”
What the fuck? When? How?
Jason swatted at the light in Grif’s hand. Jesus, that made him want to
gouge out his eyeballs and hide them in his pocket, away from the fire
breathing laser beam Grif had somehow acquired.
Think, dumbass, ask the question. Okay, it was official he was insane.
Ask the question. Ask.
“Shut up.”
“What?” Jonah looked at him in confusion. “We didn’t say anything.”
Ask the damn question.
Jason squinted and inhaled a deep breath, trying to ground himself out of
the twilight zone shit he had going on, and immediately moaned in pain.
Oh, fuck. What made you think that was a good idea? Kicked by a mule,
remember. Or maybe it was shot.
Ask the damn question.
“What happened?”
Not that one, idiot.
“You didn’t appear at the end of the alleyway, so we came looking,” Grif
told him.
Didn’t appear… oh, fuck my life… “Where’s Fritz?”
“Gone.”
Jason pushed Grif out of the way and scrambled to his feet. It wasn’t
graceful. It wasn’t the jumping he had wanted it to be either, but he was
vertical—swaying slightly, but vertical. “What the fuck do you mean gone?”
“He’s not here.”
“I fucking see that, Jo.”
“He didn’t come onto the street either,” Grif told him. “The others are
looking. There is a door behind the streetlight. They have to have gone
through there. Come on.” Grif gripped Jason by the arm. “Inside, where I can
check you better.”
“Fuck off.” Jason shook him off. No fucking way was he sitting inside on
his ass when his guy was out there somewhere. “He was in front of me.” He
pointed in the direction of the entrance their vehicles had used to gain access
to the courtyard earlier. “If I was shot in the back, then maybe they came
from that way.”
“Yup.” Jonah nodded. “Mic, Hawk, Creed, and Delta went that way.” He
gestured with his chin to the other end. “Lynx and their dog went that way.
Rock, Matt, and Steele went through the door.”
Jason’s brain attempted to clear the fuzzy it had going on. “If Mic went
that way with Delta, then that’s the way he went.”
“Yup,” Jonah agreed. “She had a scent. We just don’t know if he was
alone or not. Malik and Kalon are searching for security and traffic cameras.”
“He would not have left me unless he had to,” Jason muttered. “Move,
Jonah. I’m going to look.”
“Nope.” Grif finished repacking his medical kit. “Not fucking happening.
You have a concussion at least and one hell of a bruise on your back.”
Inside now,” Jonah agreed. “Don’t make me make it an order.”
“I don’t work for you.” Jason clamped down with his teeth on his bottom
lip. That fucking lip was not going to pout and give away that he knew he
sounded like a toddler saying ‘you’re not the boss of me’.
“TOC to all stations.”
“Go ahead, TOC,” Jonah immediately answered Malik’s call.
“Panther three. We got something.”
That was all he needed to hear. Jason was already moving. His back hurt
like a bitch. Damn it, maybe that bullet cracked a rib. It shouldn’t hurt so
fucking much. Yup, but you are not dead, take it as a win for Kevlar vests.
“What are you waiting for?” he called back to Jonah and Grif. “You
wanted me inside, I’m going.”
“TOC, Panthers Three, Six, and Five are RTB.”
“Roger,” Malik confirmed. “I’ll tell Lynx Three not to shoot you.”
“Appreciate that TOC,” Jonah said. He covered the other two as they
slipped back in the gate to the courtyard, although he was sure their cover
was pretty much blown anyway. That horse was already a couple of miles
down the winding road, with the barn door swinging in the breeze behind it.

JASON TOOK the handful of ranger candy Grif handed him and tossed
them into his mouth, swallowing them dry. Aspirin wasn’t going to do much
for the aches and pains he felt, but he needed his head clear. His brothers
were starting to trickle back into the building. He already knew they didn’t
find Fritz, knew he was gone. Just as he knew the roiling in his stomach had
nothing to do with his concussion and everything to do with knowing that shit
had hit the fan.
If he lost Fritz now…
Do not fucking go there.
“You okay, Jase?”
Okay? What the fuck do you think? I’m about as okay as you were when
Matt was taken from Wild-Wolf.
“Yup, fine.”
“Sorry,” Jonah muttered. “Stupid question.”
“Yup.” Jason grabbed the tatters of sanity he had left, picked them up and
stuffed them in a mental box in his mind. He would not lose it, could not lose
it. He had a man to find and he didn’t have time for injuries or feelings.
“Let’s do this.”
Jason stepped into the main room they were using as a pseudo-war room
and nodded to the others. Rather than take a seat around the table with the
rest of the Panther and Lynx teams, he leaned his ass against the wall.
“Thanks.” He grabbed the paperwork Steele handed to him, but refrained
from opening it. He already knew what the job was. He was here, instead of
out there doing what he did best, because he needed a fucking starting point.
Once he had that, then the hunt was on.
Jonah kicked out the chair next to him and gestured to Jason to take a
seat. He wasn’t going to, however, at that moment the door opened and in
came Castello and another man that had to be the dumbass who forgot to
change his damn comms unit battery. Yup, suddenly sitting next to Jonah was
really freaking important.
Jason’s ass landed in the seat before Castello turned to close the door
behind him.
“Don’t kill him,” Jonah whispered.
“No promises,” Jason muttered in response.
Kill him? If the asshole had done his damn job in the first place they
wouldn’t be in this mess.
Conner and Castello took the only remaining empty chairs at the table.
“Sorry about the delay,” Castello said. “We had some housekeeping to
take care of.”
You better have been fucking kicking his ass.
Jason flexed his hands before folding them into fists.
One little thump wouldn’t go astray, right?
“All right, listen up.” Steele called for their attention in the same manner
he had so many times before.
“Two hours ago, we lost contact with one of our operatives, Fritz
Blackwell.”
Jason turned his head slightly to look at the screen, putting Conner
directly into his line of sight.
Fucking asshole. Jeez.
Shit, he needed something to do with his hands, fast, or he was going to
stand up and choke the bastard who had fucked everything up.
He ignored the photo of Fritz on the screen and scanned the table instead.
There, that will do.
Jason reached across Jonah and picked up the pen, which was lying on
the notepad, next to his elbow, then sat back into his seat and flipped the pen
over and back across his fingers.
“Sage and Kalon managed to find us some satellite footage.” Steele
clicked the remote and brought up a short video.
The room was silent as they watched Fritz walking out of the alleyway, a
man pressed up behind him.
“Pause it,” Matt ordered, “Is that a knife to his throat?”
 “Looks that way,” Sage told them. “We zoomed it in. The quality is shit,
but we are assuming it’s a blade of some sort, based on how it’s pressed
against his jugular. As you can see from the satellite footage, it appears he's
been taken.”
Rage bubbled inside Jason. It ate away at his stomach like acid. Pass the
freaking Tums.
“Can you see who the asshole is?” He knew he was growling, he just
didn’t give a shit.
“No, we tried. Even on the reflection in the car window here, and then
here.” Sage hit play on the video, pointing out both areas he wanted Jason to
look at.
Within seconds Fritz was pushed into the back of a third vehicle, parked
down from the entrance to the alleyway. They watched the car pull away
from the curb and speed off.
“Pakistani plates?” Jason ignored the stabbing pain behind his eyes and
squinted at the screen. “That’s Arabic on the top, right?”
“Looks like it,” Steel agreed. “Alpha, Alpha, Alpha and some numbers. Is
that India, Oscar, Tango below it?”
“India, Charlie, Tango,” Jonah corrected, “and those plates are green.
That makes them Government plates.”
“Islamabad?” Kalon turned his laptop around, showing them a sample
number plate. “Is this it?”
“Looks like it.” Sage frowned at the laptop. “Send it to the main screen,
will ya?”
“Sure.” Kalon added the image to the relevant folder, then clicked on the
link to send it to the screen.
“Okay,” Matt said slowly. “What are we thinking? You think that man
was Speaker himself or a Hawala for a terrorist group?”
“It’s possible it was a Hawala,” Castello spoke for the first time. “We’ve
been in this part of the world for months now. The Financial Action Task
Force has recently voted to keep Pakistan on its ‘gray list’. Pakistan is well
known for cultivating ties with militant proxies. Corruption, porous borders
and little supervision of cash couriers, known as the Hawala, make reforming
that country’s financial system difficult.” He scowled. “Meanwhile, they
allow terrorist organizations to fund their causes within Pakistan’s borders.”
“Ransoms are a huge chunk of a terrorist income,” Steele said. “Drugs,
counterfeiting, money gets laundered, sent back to Islamabad, distributed to
the organizations like ISIS, who use it to bankroll terror ops.”
“Fuckers.”
Jason wasn’t sure which one of Team Lynx made the comment, but he
fully agreed with him.
He studied the video that played on a loop in the background. Pushing all
the background noise to one side, he focused solely on the kidnapper. “How
tall is Speaker?”
“Um…” Jonah flicked through the folder in front of him. “Six-three.”
“Fritz is six-four.” An alarm buzzed in Jason’s head. His gut told him
Speaker would have come for Fritz himself. Sure, the height thing was thin,
very fucking thin, but for now, it was all they had to go on. “Then we can
reasonably assume it is Speaker who has taken Fritz.”
“Nothing was planned, and no routes plotted prior to your arrival here?”
Castello asked.
Jason nodded at Castello, seeing where he was going with this.
“Not that I am aware of no,” Steele told them.
“Is it possible the guys that took him are locals?” Matt held up his hand to
stop the bitching from the others around the room. “I know Speaker is our
most logical guess, but we can’t rule out that it’s someone else.”
“Why do you say that?” Jonah turned to look at Matt.
“There were no routes planned, and there was no reason to believe Fritz
or any of us would leave this building in such small numbers.” Matt nodded
to the screen. “It is possible this is a kidnap and ransom.”
Kalon made a noise of approval and pressed the button on the remote,
bringing up the image loading a sand clock.
“They already made contact?” Steele leaned in over Kalon’s shoulder to
read the email. “Fuck.”
“Yes,” Kalon confirmed.
“Who?”
“Syria’s Khorasan faction.”
“Fuck, ISKP?” Jason asked. “The group who carried out the attack in
Pakistan where eight gunmen raided the Ismaili community’s bus in
Karachi’s Safoora Chowrangi area, leaving forty-six dead?”
“Yes.”
“How much are they looking for?” Jason had a sick feeling in his stomach
about this freaking ransom note. Damn it, hurry up and fucking load.
“They are asking for Rourke Moran in exchange for Fritz,” Kalon
answered. He clicked the remote again, bringing up an email, “and two
hundred grand for his computer.”
“They are not fucking getting my son,” Castello growled.
“We aren’t offering up Rourke.” Steele reached into the bag at his feet
and pulled out a Red Bull. Popping the tab, he handed it to Kalon. “We don’t
put innocents in the line of fire… ever.”
“They’re offering two hundred thousand?” Conner spoke for the first
time. “Don’t kidnappings normally work the other way around?”
Jason frowned as the asshole took a sip of his coffee. Maybe he should
remind the dumbass that if he had changed the damn batteries in his comms
unit, they wouldn’t be in this shit storm.
He hated to admit it, but the idiot had a point. Something was off.
Steele nodded at Castello. “When we went to get Rourke from your
house, Malik and Kalon found chatter on the dark web.” He shifted some
papers on the table in front of him. “A million dollar bounty for Rourke’s
capture and an extra ten million for the computer with the software.”
“An hour ago, a ransom video for Fritz hit the same web chatter forum.”
Grif looked at the paperwork on the table in front of him for the first time.
“Whoever has him doesn’t know who he is?” He nudged Jason with his boot
under the table. “That kind of debunks our Speaker theory.”
Jason blew out a breath. Okay, that could be a good thing.
“No,” Steele confirmed. “Not yet, I think.”
“Thank fuck,” Jason remembered Matt’s feet when they rescued him.
“Because when they do, they're not gonna be making ransom demands.”
“No,” Sawyer, one of Team Lynx said, “they're gonna torture him till
they're confident they know what he knows.”
“Yup,” Jason agreed with the kid. He was right, they would torture him.
“Then they're gonna execute him and put it online.” Fuck, they had to find
Fritz and fast. “Play the satellite footage again.” He forced his brain into the
zone he needed, blocking out all the sounds in the room, watching the video
from the perspective of the people on the ground.
Light flickers on the screen he had put down to flashes off metal or
passerbys’ watches, somehow seemed off. “Can you zoom in on some of the
flashes?” he asked Sage.
“What flashes?”
“The ones that look like the blues and twos of a squad car.” Jason got to
his feet.
 Jonah scooted his chair back to allow him the space to step around the
desk and up to the screen.
“May I?” Jason held out his hand for the laser pointer and remote the man
had been using. “Hit the lights.” He pointed to the switch.
Sage looked at Castello in confusion. Once his boss shrugged and
nodded, he hit the light switch, plunging the room into semi-darkness.
Jason played the footage for a minute, memorizing the times when the
flashes showed before he restarted it once again, this time in slow motion. As
soon as the video hit the time he wanted to show, he paused it, highlighting
the area he wanted the guys to look at with the laser in his hand.
“This apartment window here.” He turned and looked at Jonah. “Tell me
what you see when I play it, okay?”
“You got it.”
Jason hit play, his eyes once again catching the blue light as it flashed.
“What the fuck is that?” Sawyer asked.
“I’m guessing,” Jason said, “and it is a guess, that someone in that
apartment used a laser to try and disrupt the cameras.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Conner said. “That’s not possible, is it?”
Jason crossed his arms over his chest. “It’s commonly seen during
protests in South America and in Japan.” He handed Sage back the laser and
the remote and went back to his seat. “Is there any footage from traffic or
store security cameras? Even Darab has those, right?”
“We’ve been looking,” Sage answered, “but so far it appears there was an
electrical blackout at that time.”
“Nope.” Jason popped the end on the word. He leaned back on his chair
and laced his hands together behind his head.
“We have no way to disprove it,” Conner said. He looked like he was
going to add more, but an elbow nudge from Castello shut him up pretty
quickly.
Seriously? Were you born stupid or do you practice? Jason stopped
himself from asking Conner the question out loud. It took effort, but he did it.
“There was no blackout. The streetlights are on, and the apartment here didn’t
lose power.”
Jonah bit into his fist. He was enjoying Jason putting Conner in his place
a little too much. He clamped his teeth into the base of his palm where it
pressed against his mouth to stop laughing out loud as the younger sniper
spluttered and muttered under his breath. He would learn fast that being part
of a team wasn’t a one man show. Well, he’d either learn it, or he could take
his one-man ass Stateside, as there was no way an operator like Castello
would allow his team to be in the field with a sniper they didn’t trust
watching their backs.
“Can you have your people check the apartment with the second window
from the left on the third floor of that building?” Jason asked Castello.
“Of course.” Castello pulled out a hand-held computer. “What are we
looking for?”
“Whoever was in that apartment when Fritz was taken,” Jason said. “We
find the guy with the laser lights then we have a lead.”
Jason didn’t give a shit that he had more or less highjacked the briefing.
Panther didn’t work that way.
“Have you anything else for us?” he asked Sage and Kalon.
“Yeah.” Sage placed the pad he held in his hand on the table. “The email
sent to your address came from within Mossad headquarters at Glilot
Junction, Tel Aviv.”
“Mossad?” Malik muttered. “I didn’t think I had any allies left there.”
“Apparently you have,” Sage said. “The dude is good. Even with my
hacking skills, I got bounced around the globe twice before I broke it.” He
rubbed his hands together. “The best I can tell you is Mossad.”
“Okay.” Castello nodded.
“Did someone go and see Kalon’s asshat?” Jason asked.
“Yup, Kitteridge went,” Steele told them. “Asshat swears he doesn’t
know Kamden, but we have no way to confirm that.”
Fuck, Jason had hoped they might find something, anything that could
help. FUCK.
“We’ll check out that apartment.” Castello shrugged. “When we return,
we’ll hopefully have more intel.”
Matt nudged the man on the other side of him. “Malik, find me the
records for that building.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Kalon get me everything you found on Speaker, and on Jason’s father.”
“Yup, on it.”
Steele and Matt quickly gave out orders to the other men. They left Jason
for last. Jason’s specialty was tracking in the field, finding routes in and out
of places that would give a goat vertigo. They could see by the way Jason
was still flipping that pen over and back between his fingers that he wasn’t
entirely comfortable being here. They got it, Jason’s guy was out there and
they weren’t entirely sure who had him. They didn’t know for certain why he
was taken and that ransom demand was confusing as fuck.
Jason stood and circled the table looking for the remote. He hit play on
the video again, needing to see another glimpse of Fritz and watching for the
tell tail dark stains that could be blood.
Damn it, so much for watching his six. You went down like a damn
princess with a case of the vapors.
He watched once again as Fritz was stuffed into the car and it took off.
What the fuck was bugging him? Argh.
“Did we try following the dude with satellite footage or see if we could
pick them up further away from where that apartment is?”
“We lost them when they went into a multi-story parking lot about three
blocks from here,” Kalon told him.
“Is there anything Fritz was working on that we should know about?”
Matt asked.
“Nothing that I can connect to this clusterfuck.”
Over and back, they asked questions and sometimes gained answers to
build their profile until they were happy they had checked everything they
could.
But until Castello’s team at the apartment provided them with further
information, they were pretty much at hurry up and wait.
Finally, the call came in.
 CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

“LYNX ONE, THIS IS PANTHER ONE.”

Castello clicked on his comms unit. “Go ahead, Panther One.”
“Our primary is on site.” Steele’s voice came through in his earpiece loud
and clear, even though Castello knew he had probably spoken in little more
than a whisper.
“You sure it’s him?” He winced as he asked the question.
Stupid, stupid, of course he is fucking sure.
“Yes, Lynx One,” Steele responded. “I’m sure it’s him.”
“Roger that.” Castello allowed himself the opportunity to shift his legs.
Freaking Tupac village, close to COP Kalagush—he was pretty sure this
was the last place that Steele and the Panthers wanted to be. Hell did any of
them really want to be freezing their asses off in the Afghani mountains in
winter?
“We’re coming to you,” Castello added.
“Copy.”
Castello signaled to Zack. He knew his second would pass the order back
to the others. They pretty much worked like a well-oiled machine. Every cog
turned in place, with perfect timing to ensure maximum horsepower. Once
they had captured and questioned the apartment owners, and had the required
intel, they handed them off to another taskforce, who were between jobs. The
Australian and the Italian who had taken the man into custody had been very
annoyed with Rock that they hadn’t been allowed to join the recovery
mission. There was a connection there, Castello was sure of it. But it wasn’t
his business so he would keep his nose out of it. Unless or until it affected
him or his guys.
 His own team and the Panthers had made a hasty plan and come here to
Nuristan Province, using Kalagush as a jumping off point for their mission to
retrieve his missing former commander, who was being held in the nearby
village of Tupac. Castello couldn’t help but acknowledge the similarities to
the rescue his team had mounted for Matt Garrett just a few short years ago.
Things had really gone to shit since SEAL Team Six had taken out
Osama bin Laden. The Taliban and ISIS were in a state of reorganization and
tribal warlords were taking matters into their own hands. He had hoped with
the removal of that fucker things on the ground would settle down, but nope,
they weren’t seeing that. Instead, the vacuum caused by his death was being
filled by wannabes with something to prove. ISKR were another fraction that
were rising. It was time to show them the power of the United States.
“Lynx Four, you have point.”
“Copy, Sir.”
Rafe and Balas, their K9, slipped past him. Rafe picked up a handful of
clay and dropped it into the wind to see which way it was blowing, before
pointing Balas in the direction they needed to go to remain downwind of the
village dogs.
The stone mountain paths around here meant they had to move carefully.
It was impossible to see where the earth had been disturbed, where IEDs may
have been located. Sure, they could probably use metal detectors, but the dog
was better.
Balas moved out at the end of the leash, weaving back and forth as he
checked the path in front of them, his tail flagging, showing his excitement at
the work he was bred to do. That dog had saved their asses more times than
he could count.
Their intel pointed to this village, Tupac…
This was where they would find Fritz, and with any bit of Lady Luck’s
favor…Speaker, so they could end the threat to Rourke.

JASON LEANED his ass against the stone and mud hut at the edge of the
village, trying to shut his ears to the screams he could hear. Some poor
bastard was being tortured. Only the knowledge that those screams were not
in Fritz’s voice kept him in place.
 “Panther Five to Panther One,” he whispered.
“Go ahead Panther Five.”
“Can y’all hurry your asses up?” Jason made sure his voice didn’t carry.
He was downwind in the only cover available, yet, he still didn’t want to take
the chance that someone would hear him. “They’re torturing someone.”
“Your man?”
“No,” Jason confirmed. “I still want to help the poor bastard, though.”
“We’re five minutes out,” Steele told him. “Hold your position.”
Jason would have squeezed his eyes shut in frustration at the delay, but he
needed to keep his wits about him. Going in by himself was out of the
question. It would not only tell the tangos they were there, but it could get
them all killed.
Nope, that was not an option.
He would stay put.
“Copy.”
Whoop, whoop, whoop.
“Fuck me, that’s a bird.” Jason scanned the sky in the direction of the
faint whoop of rotors he could hear.
That was definitely a helicopter.
His brothers better get their asses here fucking fast, or he was going in
solo.
A helo swooped in from the south. It’s iconic coaxial main rotor
arrangement and the light utility platform was enough to tell Jason the model
—a Kamov Ka-226 Sergei.
“Fucking Russians.”
He pressed himself into the dirt as the helo hovered just above the ground
on the opposite side of the hut he sheltered against. Then he belly-crawled to
peer around the corner.
“Panther One?”
“Go ahead, Panther Five.”
“There is a helo. If your asses aren’t here in thirty seconds, I’m going in.”
“Keep your ass in position.”
“With all due respect, Panther One, fuck you.” Jason checked his M16,
bunched his muscles and climbed into a crouch.
Every instinct he had overrode all his years of training. If he didn’t get
there now, Fritz was going to be loaded on that bird. He could already hear
the orders and the change in tone from the rotors speeding up.
 “Three, two, one.”
“Panther Five? Panther Five, are you listening to me?”
Jason ignored Steele’s voice through his comms unit.
“Panther Five, hold your position.”
Hold my position, my ass.
“Panther Five, this is Three.” Jonah took over from Steele. “I swear to
fuck… Answer me.”
Jason clicked his comms, unable to resist the call of his best friend’s
voice. “I’m sorry, I gotta try. Panther Five out.”
Jason pushed to his feet and bolted around the corner of the hut into what
passed as the village square. Racing toward the helo, he ignored the dust and
flying stones whipped up by the rotor wash. He wasn’t sure what he could do,
but if Fritz was on that bird swinging around, then his ass was going—
“Fuck!” Jason skidded to a halt out in the open.
Yup, a dumbass move, for sure. He was an open target, should the men
on board the helo choose to fire.
His body froze in place. It just wouldn’t move. Sand and gravel lashed
against him as the helo rose higher. For Jason, knowing the asshole was out
of prison was one thing, seeing his father standing in the helo door, his hand
raised in a mock salute at the son whose existence he hated was a mindfuck
Jason had not being expecting.
“Fucker!” Who the hell is screaming? “Fucking bastard!”
That would be you idiot!
“Jason?”
“Jason!”
Jason jerked at Jonah’s voice. He didn’t know how long he had spent
staring at the sky, watching the helo disappear over the ridge. He shook off
the hand on his shoulder and raced for the hut the screams had come from.
He already knew what he wouldn’t find, what he desperately sought.
He knew Fritz was gone.
Procedure, protocol and all training took a backseat. Twisting slightly to
the side, he hit the door with his shoulder at full run. Wood splintered,
shattered and the door gave under the full power of his weight. What
remained of it slammed with a thud against the wall.
The smell hit him first.
Shit, piss, blood, and death.
“Fuck.” Jason could feel the burn of vomit rising up from his stomach to
the back of his throat. “I’m gonna be sick.”
“Shit.” Jonah pushed Jason forward, moving him further into the room.
The stifling heat only made the smells worse.
“Help me.”
The words were so garbled Jason almost didn’t recognize them as
English. His eyes searched the dimly lit room. Pulling a torch from his vest,
he clicked it on, its high LED beam showing up particles of dust as he swept
it around the room.
“Help me.”
“Over here.” Jason turned to the right, toward Matt’s voice. “Holy shit,
it’s Speaker.”
“Let the bastard die,” Jason muttered, then winced when he got a good
look at the man who should have had their backs, but sold them out for a
weapons deal and a shit load of cash.
Blood from a thousand cuts covered his naked body, from his head to the
soles of his feet, many of them packed with mud to ensure there was no
escaping infections. His face had gone a couple of rounds with a baseball bat
or similar, and his bottom jaw looked completely out of alignment, teeth
missing.
As much as Jason wanted to hate Speaker for betraying them, he couldn’t
help the wince of sympathy at the pain he now suffered.
“Panther Six, this is Two. Get your ass in here, STAT.” Matt crouched
onto his haunches, careful to avoid the mess as much as possible.
“Shoot me.” Speaker’s hand fumbled for Matt’s. “Please.”
“You’re gonna be just fine, asshole.” Matt gripped his hand, then moved
as far to one side as he could, to allow Grif room to work.
“Fuck me.” Grif took one look at the man on the ground and reached for
adrenaline and the special concoction he kept in EpiPen’s. “This is not good.”
“Why?” Jason watched Grif work on Speaker. “Why, Speaker? Why the
fuck did you betray us?”
“Had to.” Speaker coughed. The wet sound made Grif swear some more
and rummage in his supplies for a needle.
Speaker’s one good eye searched the men gathered around him until he
landed on Castello. He tried to inhale, causing another coughing fit and more
blood. “I was to trade your son for mine.”
Only Sawyer’s hand on Castello kept Lynx One from stomping on
Speaker. “The Fuck?” Castello tried to shake Sawyer off.
 “Nope, boss, we need intel.”
Mother fucking son of a bitch. Jason couldn’t believe that even now the
asshole was trying to lie his way out of this.
“Speak, you don’t have a son.” Hawk nudged Jonah to one side to stand
next to Jason.
“Do.” Speaker’s voice was getting lower. “Jase’s father killed his mother,
took him. The price of his return was the nuke codes.” Blood now bubbled at
the corners of his mouth with every exhale. “You raise him, Hawk.”
“Where is he?”
“Your house.”
“Aahhh.” Speaker moaned in pain as another cough and more blood
bubbled on his lips. “I told Kamden I had Castello’s boy. He let my son and
his nanny go, but when I got here with Blackwell, he was pissed.”
Every word was lower and lower.
“I’m losing him,” Grif told them.
“Where did he take Fritz?” Jason knew wanting to shake the information
out of a dying man was illogical, and maybe shitty, but he didn’t care. He
needed to fucking know. “Where?”
“Where Matt was—the Wild-Wolf cave systems.”
The rattling breath blew out once more and then he was silent.
Grif pressed his fingers against the pulse point on Speaker’s neck. “He’s
gone.”
“Damn.” Hawk pressed his fingers into his eyes.
“Did we just gain a kid?” Creed leaned against Hawk, Micah and Delta,
crowding in around him. Hawk had worked closely with Speaker, and he had
struggled the most with his presumed betrayal.
“Yeah… Ah.” Hawk cleared his throat. Why the hell were his eyes
stinging? “I—ah—think we did.”
“TOC.” Steele pressed the button on the side of his comms unit. “TOC,
this is Panther One. Do you copy?”
“Go ahead, Panther One,” Malik immediately responded from his
position in Combat Outpost Kalagush, where they had set up their Tactical
Operating Center under orders from the Department of Defense.
“We need an urgent extraction from our current location. We have one
non-member KIA.”
Malik’s inhale was audible through the comms unit. “Do we have a
positive ID?”
 “Yes,” Steele answered. “One we were looking for, but not the one that
belongs to Panther Five.”
“Okaay.” Malik dragged the word out. All of them knew Malik’s brain
was working overtime, figuring out who was killed. “Oh. The Talker?”
“Affirmative.”
“Any other injuries?”
“Negative.”
“Panther One, a helo is en route, proceed to extraction point one,” Kalon
interrupted, and in spite of the shitty events of the last few minutes, his voice
worked it’s magic and brought a smile to Steele’s lips.
“Roger that,” Steele told Kalon. “Proceeding to extraction point one.”
Steele scanned the room.
Speaker’s body was already in the body bag Grif kept in his med kit.
There was nothing more for them here in this empty hut. They had to follow
the trail to COP Wild-Wolf.
Steele nodded. “Move out.”
 CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

MATT STOOD to the side and watched his brothers climb onto a four-
bladed, twin-engine Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk. Once the bird was loaded,
he turned and saluted the Staff Sergeant before he climbed on board with the
others.
They had been extracted back to the Base to drop off Speaker’s body.
They spent the next hour or so readying for another trip into the Hindu Kush,
evaluating how best to approach COP Wild-Wolf.
Now that their plans were in place, they were ready to head out.
Grif skillfully lifted the bird off the ground, and pointed her east, towards
their target location near the Pakistani Border.
“If you drop our asses on a rock this time, Grif, I swear to fuck I am
going to kick your ass from here to Christmas,” Micah bitched over the
headset he had donned.
“It was love taps, baby. Love taps,” Grif responded. “You say that every
damn time I fly.”
“Fuck you.”
Flying low, Grif and Rock at the controls, they tried not only to keep their
flight path under radar, but also to keep the Black Hawk under the ridge of
the mountains, so they didn’t disclose their travel plans to the local
insurgents.
“I’m having a serious case of déjà vu.” Jason sat strapped into a flight
seat, facing out with his M16 in his hand, keeping watch as the bird flew
onward, steadily climbing in elevation.
Fritz.
Every time his brain tried to remind him what was at stake, whose life
was on the line, he shut that sucker down. He could not afford to think, never
mind to feel.
“Agreed,” Jonah muttered through his headset, “except last time, it was
Steele’s ass we were going to rescue. I never want to see the Kamdesh valley
again. Got it, assholes? No more.”
Yeah, never fucking again. I’m tying Fritz’s ass to the bed and gluing his
boots to the floor. I’m never letting him out of my sight again.
Jason bit down into the side of his cheek to stop himself saying the words
out loud.
Stop it, he reminded himself. Fucking stop thinking.
Swooping down from the ridgeline on their approach to Combat Outpost
Wild-Wolf, it was clear to see the damage wrought by not only the Taliban
fighters in two thousand and eleven, but also from the fire-fight after the
rescue of Steele two years before. More buildings were blackened from the
exploding RPGs that had chased them out of the valley in a hail of shrapnel
and smoke.
Grif set the Black Hawk down on a flat, square area surrounded by
barracks. Waiting for the rotors to stop, Grif ripped off his headset before
unstrapping and turning to the others.
“We cover this with battle netting and it won’t be visible from the air. We
just have to hope that we didn’t cross any observation stations the tangos may
have out there in the mountains overhead, but I saw no fires or smoke as we
were coming in, so I’m hoping we’re okay.”
“You said that last time,” Rock reminded him.
Matt spun around at Rock’s words. “How the fuck do you know he said
that last time?” he frowned at Rock. “You weren’t here.”
“Seriously?” Grif punched Rock on the shoulder. “You fucking followed
us?”
“Nope.” Rock grinned at him. “I knew you were coming here, so
technically you followed me.” He gestured to the secondary route they had
taken to return to Wild-Wolf last time. “I watched you land from up there,”
he said. “Then I followed you.”
“Asshole.
“Yup.” Rock wasn’t one bit sorry he had followed his man. He was going
to war. Rock was going to be on his ass. Period. “And you get to keep me.”
They watched the second Black Hawk carrying Castello and his team
circle before it too settled into as secure a spot as they could find.
 Grif took off toward Castello, with Rock following on his heels, both still
bickering back and forth.
Steele moved away from the helo, taking cover next to the barracks. He
clicked on his comms. “TOC, this is Panther One. Do you copy?”
“Panther One, this is TOC,” Kalon answered. “Go ahead.”
“We’re passing checkpoint Red Riding Hood.”
“Copy, Panther One,” Kalon confirmed. “Panther One, we’ve received a
ransom demand from our primary tango.”
“What does he want?”
“Our VIP guest at home base for his captive.”
“Tell him to go fuck himself,” Castello muttered.
“TOC.” Steele adjusted his Kevlar helmet. If he hadn’t been wearing it,
he would probably have been running his hand over his buzz cut head. “Tell
him we’re willing to negotiate.”
“What the hell?” Castello growled.
“Don’t be an idiot, boss,” Zack told him. “They are no more going to give
up your kid than they would one of their own.”
“I know.”
“This is why we’re here,” Zack told him, “because they bleed honor like
we do.”
“Yup.”
“TOC, Panther One,” Steele said. “Update Lynx Three as soon as
fuckwad responds.”
“You got it, Panther One. Be safe out there.”
“Always,” Steele promised.
Jason could hear the smile in Steele’s voice when he spoke to Kalon. Did
the others hear the same when he spoke to Fritz?
Shut up!
“Only my fucking sperm donor could be asshole enough to want to deal
with the bastards I have spent almost two decades hunting and putting in the
ground,” he muttered under his breath.
“Panther and Lynx proceeding to the yellow brick road,” Steele
confirmed to Kalon.
At any other time, Jason or Micah would have been snickering and
laughing their asses off at the checkpoint names. Whoever thought of these
names was a genius, although he had a sneaking suspicion it may have been
Rock or Grif, considering TV in their house was now dominated by Cartoon
Network and the movie channels for their daughter, Lexi.
Micah is going to be in the same boat shortly when they take on
Speaker’s kid.
Oh, fuck me.” Jason snickered then.
“What?” Jonah handed him a can of dried milk, just like he had done on
so many deployments and missions before.
“You remembered?”
“You always forget the cow.” Jonah shrugged. “My hands automatically
pack it, so even if I don’t think of it, it’s been part of my go bag kit for
years.” He brushed it off as if it was nothing. “What are you laughing at?”
“Mic, Hawk, and Creed with a kid.”
Jonah scanned the area between the helos and the barracks until he found
Micah and his men.
The trio stood in a tight circle, back to back, Delta at Micah’s feet. Even
from this distance Jonah could see the shell-shocked look on their faces as
their lips moved rapidly. They were obviously absorbed in a conversation
while keeping their eyes on their surroundings.
“They are so fucked and they don’t know it.”
“Yeah.” Jason felt kind of guilty that he was mostly tuning out Jonah’s
chatter. He shook his head to remove the memory of a few nights before and
the conversation with Fritz about kids. “They’ll make amazing dads.”
“If they don’t, Momma Kennedy will team up with Betty,” Jonah said.
“Then shit will hit the fan.”
“Yup.”
“Comms check.” Sage’s voice sounded in their ears. The Lynx team
technical expert would be their communications guy for this mission, leaving
all three team leaders free to worry about the fight to come.
Jason knew what Jonah had been doing—checking where his brain was,
that he was okay to move forward. He was no doubt sent by Matt, but that
was okay. Jason understood it, had expected it really.
“Panther Five, check,” he answered in response to Sage’s call when it
was his turn.
Once comms had been confirmed working, Steele gave the order to move
out. They automatically fell back into the rhythms and routines they had used
while they were active duty. “Lynx Five, Panther Five,” Jason spoke into
comms.
“Go ahead, Panther Five.”
 “Make sure your damn batteries are working.”
“They are. I checked.”
“I checked his too,” Castello said.
“And me,” Zack muttered.
“Yup,” Sawyer lifted his hand. “Me too.”
“I didn’t,” Rafe told them, “but Balas likes to piss on Five’s leg, so I
figured it was better to stay away, in case he wets anything vital.”
They worked their way around the fringes of COP Wild-Wolf to the track
between the mortar pit and maintenance shed on the other side of the
compound to where they stashed the Black Hawks. Micah and Rafe had their
dogs ranging out in front and the rest of the men were careful to stay within
the path the dogs had cleared. Jason kept his position behind Micah and Rafe.
They had come down this route after rescuing Steele. It was only two
klicks or so as the crow flies to the entrance to the tunnel systems. They
occasionally stopped to scan the mountain pass with their binos. There was a
huge elevation rise to deal with—over two thousand feet—along with a shit
ton of gullies and crevasses they needed to negotiate, but it was the quickest
route to their destination.
After a couple of hours of traversing the sometimes barely-there track,
heavily pitted with holes and fallen rocks around the ridge of the mountains,
they finally made it up the cliff face to the approach to the caves.
“TOC, Lynx Three,” Sage murmured quietly into comms. “We are
approaching Goldilocks.”
“Copy, Lynx three,” Malik answered. “Proceed as needed.”
Where the hell did the swarm of angry wasps in his stomach come from?
Jason resisted the urge to loosen his Kevlar vest. He’d forgotten how hard a
march in full battle gear with a ninety-pound pack was. For the record, it
sucked.
He watched Micah and Rafe studying their dogs.
“Can we move this shit along? I’m getting twitchy waiting.”
Tracker my ass. You couldn’t stalk a freaking rabbit today, never mind a
terrorist. That the terrorist asshole was his father was irrelevant.
“Shut it, dumbass,” Matt ordered. “You know the rules. We move when
the woofers give the all clear.”
Jason did know it, but his brain was totally not firing on all cylinders
today. It had one objective—find his man. Everything else was immaterial.
Nope, that wasn’t quite right. The second objective was for all of them to
make it out alive.
“Sorry,” he told Matt. “I’m being an asshole.”
“Yup,” Matt whispered. “You are, but we get it.”
Micah smiled over Matt’s shoulder at Creed. “There is nobody here,
boss.”
They were all careful to keep their voices pitched low, and also careful to
avoid disturbing rocks and pebbles that may drop off the sides of the path as
they walked. Their voices would echo, and the falling of a pebble would alert
anyone who may be hiding further down the mountain to their presence.
This valley was home to a number of goatherders trying to eke out a
living in the harsh conditions. These were the heirs and followers of the
Taliban and Al-Qaeda, who had planned and carried out the September
eleven attacks on New York. These people had proven over and over again
that their loyalties lay with the terrorists Jason’s father was looking to arm
with a nuclear warhead. Jesus, the thoughts of ISIS, Al-Qaeda, or the Taliban
with a nuclear bomb didn’t make for pleasant dreams.
“It’s a two-day trek in from the other side,” Jason told them. “Fritz would
not have willingly allowed himself to be dragged up that trail we just used.”
“Agreed.” Matt studied the terrain. “Thoughts?”
“We could send my drone?” Sage offered.
“You have a drone?” Steele didn’t turn around, his attention on the
surroundings, watching for any bush or rock that may have moved since he
last scanned his quadrant, indicating it was human rather than the product of
science fiction and moving under its own steam.
“Yup.” Sage slid the straps of his backpack off his shoulders and the bag
dropped to the floor with a soft plop. “Amazon’s finest.” He grinned. “Me
an’ Sawyer like to race ‘em. He has a backup one in his pack.”
He unzipped the bag and pulled out the box he stored his drone in. “It
doesn’t have much range, but it does have infrared, so we can see heat
signatures.”
Opening the box, he unfolded the legs on the Quadcopter-style drone. “It
has a camera and cost less than three hundred bucks.” Sage lifted one
shoulder as he double checked batteries and set it up to fly. “There’s GPS and
all that shit. The standard model only gives about ten to fifteen minutes flying
time, but I bumped it up to twenty with military grade batteries.”
“We should order some of those,” Grif told Rock. “At the rate we go
through drones...”
 “You lose drones?” Sawyer’s eyes widened at the other men, losing
drones would get his ass kicked.
“Three AeroVironment RQ-11 Ravens last year,” Rock grumbled. “The
brass were all up on my ass about it.”
“Man, those things are about a hundred and seventy grand a pop,” Sawyer
told them. “I’ll bet they were steaming at the ears.”
“Didn’t help that you shot one of them out of the sky yourself,” Grif told
Rock. “At base. In front of two generals.”
“Those assholes aren’t meant to be anywhere near our training areas,”
Rock said. They stepped back as the drone whirred to life. “Told them their
shiny medals sent a glare in my eye and I missed the target on the range.” He
grinned. “They were not impressed.”
Sawyer whistled softly. “You like to live dangerously.”
“You got that right.”
Jason could see he was trying to figure out who exactly Rock was. He
knew Grif was former Delta, but didn’t know that Grif and Rock led Ghost
Team. They had finally got the call two days ago that the investigation into
Lexi’s kidnapping had been completed and Ghost Team were to report to
Oceana in four days’ time. The Ghosts were back on active duty. Only time
would tell how long that would last. Their lives were as fluid and ever
changing as the Pacific.
He did wonder how Grif, Rock and Allie would juggle life with a kid and
being active duty, but that was for them to decide. His role as Grif’s family
was to provide back up and an endless supply of loud crazy assed toys to
make them batshit.
“I got something,” Sage said. “From looking at the GPS it looks to be
along grid-line sixty-two on the ridge leading into this valley.”
“That’s the route we took in here last year,” Matt told them.
“Yup,” Jason agreed. “It is, and I know just the place to ambush them.”
He leaned in over Sage’s shoulder and pointed to an area on the GPS.
“Can you fly the drone over there, see if it’s as I remember it?”
“Sure,” Sage said. “Let me just verify it’s our guy.”
“Yup.” Jason’s stomach was in knots as he watched the trees fly passed
on screen. Finally, he could make sense of the blurry dots at the top.
“I don’t dare fly any closer,” Sage told him. “This drone isn’t exactly
built for stealth.”
“Fritz is fourth in line,” Jason said.
 He’d recognize that build anywhere. He had licked and tasted every inch
of him, head to heels and back again, too many times to count. Yeah, that was
his guy, and he was taking him the fuck back and keeping him.
He watched for a couple more minutes until Sage had the drone in
position over the area he had asked for.
“Can you fly it a little further on?”
“Sure.” Sage pushed the lever forward.
“Stop right there,” Jason said, “where the complex network of paths
emerges and then disappears behind those rocks.”
“Okay.”
“Yup.” This would do perfectly for what he had in mind. “We need to
move. I’ll tell you my idea as we go.”
He looked at Matt and Steele. They had always been his team leaders.
They had worked with him long enough to trust his judgement. Right this
second, he found himself praying to a God he had long forgotten that they
would trust him now, too.
“Copy that,” Steele answered without missing a beat. “Move out.”
Thank you, sweet baby Jesus.
 CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

HURRY UP and wait fucking sucked.

Jason could confirm this was the fucking truth—it did—but what sucked
worse was watching Fritz stumble as he tripped on a rock on his way past the
undergrowth Jason was hunkered down behind. His fingers itched to reach
out and grab Fritz by the arm to halt his fall before he hit the ground. The
only thing that stopped him was the Vityaz-SN Kalashnikov submachine gun
that was pressed to the back of Fritz’s neck. The asshole holding the weapon
kicked Fritz while he was on the ground.
That fucker dies first.
Jason consoled himself with the promise of death he was handing down.
He watched Kamden yell at the man in Russian.
“Da,” the man yelled back in response.
No fucking way are these military.
Jason glanced at Grif who flanked him and made a hand signal from their
Delta days.
Military?
Grif shook his head in response. Nope.
Yeah, I didn’t think so.
The man Kamden had yelled at fisted his hand into the back of Fritz’s
shirt and hauled him back to his feet. Fritz immediately dropped his chin to
his chest before slamming his head back.
That’s my guy.
Jason fucking loved that he was acknowledging the fact pride filled him
at the sight of Fritz still fighting—even if he was an idiot to do it with a
Kalashnikov jammed into his neck.
 The crunch of the asswipe’s nose breaking was louder than the man’s
grunt of pain. Kamden yelled at the man again and then they were moving
passed Jason and Grif.
Grif dropped his little finger onto Jason’s, reminding him to stay in place
as Kamden moved by them, reminding him they needed the last dude to pass
before they closed the net around them.
The final man broke through the cover of the trees into the small clearing.
He yelled something up the line to the others.
“Fuck.” Grif’s word was little more than a breath.
Jason agreed. He wanted to squeeze his eyes shut like a toddler saying
‘you can’t see me, if I can’t see you’. Maybe the asshole would pick the other
side to take a piss.
Nope, Lady Luck was on her own freaking comfort break.
The cammo dressed man stepped to the very bushes Jason and Grif were
using to take cover. He didn’t dare move as two boots came to a stop in front
of him and Grif.
Swear to fuck if this dude pisses on me, I’m chopping his dick off.
The man fumbled with the zipper on his cammo pants before pulling out
his dick. Then, he glanced down and locked eyes with Jason.
Like a wraith, before the man had time to scream, the steel of Grif’s K-
Bar passed Jason’s cheek, threatening the man’s balls and dick. Jason
flattened himself to the ground as he felt Grif move over his back. In seconds,
Grif dragged the man across Jason and further into the undergrowth.
Jason pressed the button on his comms unit giving the signal. Two clicks.
“Go.” Sage’s voice in his ear confirmed the order had been passed down
the line.
“Drop your weapons!” Steele’s voice bounced off the rocks, echoing
around the mountain. “Drop your weapons!”
In Jason’s mind, he heard the mountain inhale and hold its breath, waiting
for the situation to go one way or another. In slow motion, he watched the
fingers of the man closest to him move, saw it wrap around the trigger and
squeeze.
Damn.
Keep your fucking head down and stay out of the line of fire, Jason
silently ordered Fritz in his head—not that he expected his man to hear him,
because that would be weird as fuck.
Chaos and gunfire erupted. A volley of bullets from their M16s slammed
into the rocks all around the Russians and Kamden.
They had hoped for surrender.
They should have known better.
Ricocheting bullets mixed with the screams of injured men along with the
flops of bullets hitting Kevlar once again filled the passes of the Hindu Kush.
Jason’s instincts raged at him, insisted his ass move as fast as possible to
cover his man.
Stick to the plan, stick to the plan.
He had to stay in place. Moving would leave Grif exposed here on their
flank.
Jason and Grif kept firing. Every bullet seemed to take a lifetime to reach
its target.
“Drop your weapons, fuckers,” the voice in his head, the one that gave
him nightmares, yelled out in reality. Jason’s training was the only thing that
kept his weapons in his hands. “I will fucking kill him,” Kamden yelled.
“Cease fire.” Steele’s voice on comms preceded the almost immediate
silence.
The men surrounding Kamden and Fritz finally moved enough that Jason
could see them. The handgun jammed into the side of Fritz’s skull made him
want to squeeze his eyes shut and swallow hard. He didn’t dare. He had
learned long ago that this predator was one you did not take your eyes off.
“Son.” Kamden sneered.
“Asshole.” Shit, shit, what did you say that for?
“You will show me respect.” Kamden jammed the gun against Fritz’s
skull.
Fuck, it was like watching Tom with Steele all over again.
“I show respect to the men who have earned it, and to the flag,” Jason
deadpanned. “You have not earned it. Let. Him. GO!”
“Make me.”
“Okay.”
Jason flicked his wrist, letting the blade he kept strapped there fly. Time
screeched to cartoon slow motion. Jason visualized it going, refused to
consider its track may be off.
The thud of it landing and a scream of pain reached him before what he
was seeing registered in his brain.
Thank fuck.
Kamden’s weapon fell from his hands, Fritz’s boot landing on it. The
weapon discharged as it hit the ground.
“I’m hit.”
Crap, that was a Lynx.
“Drop your weapons,” Jason’s steady voice ordered the remaining men.
How the hell am I not freaking out?
He shrugged when the men shuffled and looked at each other, ignoring
their leaders screams at them to fire on the Americans.
“I just threw my blade into my father. If you think I give any more of a
fuck about if you all live or die, then you are mistaken.”
Something in his voice must have convinced the Russians he was serious,
because one by one their weapons dropped.
“Stop screeching.” Steele jerked Kamden over onto his stomach, pulled
the blade out of his wrist, and cuffed him, all the while Kamden screamed
obscenities at Jason.
“Gag that fucker, will ya?” Fritz asked Steele.
“Yup.” Steele stuffed some material into Kamden’s mouth.
All around them Panther and Lynx teams rounded up the remaining men.
Jason ignored it all. His vision tunneled…
Fritz.
He allowed the bubbles of excitement and relief he felt in his stomach to
shoot through his veins. His legs moved of their own accord. Ten steps might
not seem like much, but those ten steps took a lifetime to take until he was
standing directly in front of Fritz.
Shit, my hands are shaking.
Jason caught the tips of his gloves in his teeth and yanked. He needed to
touch. It had to be skin. Nothing else would do.
“I’m okay,” Fritz whispered. “I’m okay.”
Jason cupped his hand around the back of Fritz’s head, pulling him close
until his mouth hovered over Fritz’s.
“I love you.”
He felt the sharp inhale of breath that Fritz took, felt it draw the air he
himself had exhaled into Fritz’s lungs.
Yes! About time! This is right.
“I love you.” The words were whispered as his mouth closed over Fritz’s
for the kiss he hadn’t known he needed. His other hand, still clutching his
M16, the weapon flush against Fritz’s back, holding him in place. He kissed
him until they were both breathless and needed to pull back to take in air.
 “I love you too,” Fritz said softly, his voice filled with awe, “but pinch
me, so I know I’m not dreaming.”
“Nope,” Jason pressed another fast kiss to Fritz’s lips, “not dreaming.”
“It fucking hurts.” A voice interrupted their bubble of bliss.
Jason turned to scan the clearing. Shit, he had forgotten everything but
Fritz in those few moments in time between throwing his knife through
Kamden’s wrist and right this second. He turned toward the voice. “Holy
fuck, did you get shot in the ass, Conner?”
“Stop whining, ya big baby,” Grif muttered. “It only creased you. A
couple of stitches and you’ll be fine.”
“Sir,” Sage said. “Shall I call for extraction?”
Castello nodded at Steele, who shook his head in response. “Negative,
dumbass, we brought our own birds.”
“We go home?” Fritz asked.
“Yeah.” Jason finally cut the bonds that held Fritz’s hands together.
“How do you feel about moving to Texas?”
“We’re bringing Combat Kitty?” Fritz asked. “Right?”
“Yup.” Jason smiled. “We’re bringing Combat Kitty”
“Then lead on.” Fritz motioned to Jason to go ahead of him. “Now justice
has been served and Kamden is heading probably to Gitmo…Texas is calling
us home.”
“Nope.” Jason nudged Fritz. “From now on we walk side by side.”
“Ten minutes to move to the helos and we evac our asses out of here.”
Jonah smirked at Jason. He inhaled as if he had more to say, but Matt’s hand
over his mouth muffled the sound.
Yeah, Jason liked the sound of it. Evac, then home to Texas with Fritz
and his brothers.
Damn, who knew all he needed was for the ghosts of the past to be put to
rest? He could have easily killed Kamden. He’d wanted to so freaking badly.
Only the fact that a life time in a cage at Gitmo was the best form of justice
he could think for the asshole who was his sperm donor had stayed his hand.
Maybe by the time the interrogators got through with him they would know
the who’s and the whys. Maybe they never would, but once his family, his
brothers, his guy, and even his cat were safe, then in Jason’s mind that was
justice served.
 EPILOGUE

“CHRISTMAS.” Jason settled himself back into the space between Fritz’s
spread knees. “How the hell is it Christmas already?”
Fritz bent forward, his chin rubbing against Jason’s hair. “Yeah, it feels
like yesterday that we were on an evac helo from Nuristan to Bagram with
the asshole.”
“I hope he is enjoying hotel Gitmo.” Jason took a sip of his beer,
watching the sparks and flames from the bonfire.
It would be his turn at the memory tree soon.
“Scratch that. I hope he hates every second knowing I am the reason he
will never again see the light of day.”
“I can’t believe they fucking missed it all along.” Fritz reached over and
plucked Jason’s beer bottle out of his hand, took a sip and handed it back.
“Why did they not know when they put him in jail the first time that he was
head honcho in the Bratva?”
“So far the count is two chiefs of police, one general and two CIA
operatives, all behind bars awaiting trial for terrorism and weapons
trafficking.”
“Yup.” Fritz nodded to the trio on the other side of the bonfire. “They
look good with a kid.”
Hawk carried Speaker’s kid. In two days’ time they would all go to the
court house to adopt Nathan into the Panther family.
“That four-year-old has them wrapped around his baby fingers.” Jason
snorted as he watched the boy hang the dog tags his father had worn on the
tree. “Although I think Rock is going to shit kittens. Lexi has taken him
under her wing. Those two are going to be trouble.”
“Yup, well Rock and Grif have more to worry about now.” Fritz nodded
his head to the right. “I can’t wait to see them when Allie has that baby.”
“She will have them strung up by the balls before she gives birth.” Jason
snorted. “She threatened to borrow Betty’s shotgun if they told her to sit
down and put her feet up one more time.”
“I’m pregnant not sick.” Fritz snickered.
“If you are pregnant then I am calling the reporters back and telling them
I have a bigger story than mine and Matt’s wedding.” Jonah sat on the ground
next to Jason.
“Nope.” Fritz smiled at Jonah. “You’re an old married man now. They
are sure to leave you alone.”
“I freaking hope so.”
“Jason,” Steele yelled. “You’re up.”
“Yeah.” Jason handed Jonah his beer and stood. He turned and pulled
Fritz off the log. “Come with me?”
“Of course.”
Jason inhaled deep, breathing in the scents of their bonfire. The happy
laughter and smiles of his family made this easier to do. Reaching the tree, he
studied the other memory ornaments his brothers had put there, before
reaching into his pocket and pulling out the gift Fritz had given him in bed
this morning.
“My mom.” He hung the handmade Christmas ornament with the picture
Kalon had put on the screen in the war room so many months before.
“Family.” Fritz hung a matching ornament, this one with a collage of
images circling it. Jason, Fritz, Tom, their parents and Panthers. The images
were almost too small to make out, but they were the memories they could
share this night with them.
“Family,” Jason repeated. “I love that.”
He caught Fritz’s hand and led him back to their spot on the other side of
the fire.
Zeke and Malik were up next, then Betty and Pops.
This was their family—the family they had chosen for themselves.
Whatever the future brought, they would face it together.
 Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed getting to know the members of
Delta Force – Team Panthers as much as I have enjoyed writing about them.
 EXCERPT OF ZENKO
BOOK ONE - TAGS OF HONOR

Zenko stirred. A jolting pain streaked through his body, holy freaking shit
moving fucking hurt. He cradled his head in his hands. Holding it steady
didn’t stop the world from spinning around him, though. Sounds came from a
distance. Shit, was he underwater or in a bubble? Swaying where he sat, he
patted down his body: weapon, night vision goggles, mags, his body armor
still in place. Scrubbing the heel of his hand into his eye, he carefully braved
opening his eyelids. “Shit!”
His jaw dropped as he took in the devastation and destruction around him.
The building lay in ruins, rubble, metal and concrete piled up where there had
stood walls and furniture a couple of minutes before. “Ow.”
“Ambra One, report?”
Fuck, was there someone calling him? There was, wasn’t there? That was
definitely not just his imagination. The repeated call of his JSOC Task Force
signature for this mission dragged him back from the blackness that
threatened to call him back under.
“Ambra One?” The worry filled voice reached his ears again. “Swear to
fuck… if you are screwing with me! Report, asshole! How copy?”
Zenko pulled his tongue off the roof of his mouth and tried to answer. He
clicked the comms device on his shoulder. How the hell was that not broken?
“Go ahead TOC.” He cleared his throat and spat out grit and dust, before
taking a sip of water from his pack. Zenko could picture his Task Force
Commander, Noble Bauer, pacing back and forth between the computer
desks of their base command tactical operations center in Turkey. He was
probably cursing Zenko three times as much in his head as he was over their
comms systems.
 “How copy, Ambra One?”
“Solid copy.” The croak was still barely audible, even to his ears, but it
was obviously loud enough, as the cheers and hollers from tactical command
center could be heard in his earpiece, a couple of thousand miles away.
“Target eliminated.”
“The building is eliminated, too, Ambra One, what part of covert did you
misunderstand?” The voice from Tactical Operations Command came
through on Zenko’s ear piece, as clearly as if he was in the next room.
His boss sounded pissed, but Zenko could hear the relief underneath the
grumpy asshole’s bitching. “Now, when have you ever known me to be quiet
about anything, TOC?” Zenko muttered, “I didn’t know the fucker was
wearing a suicide vest!” He pushed at the rubble covering his legs, wincing
as slivers of pulverized rock dug into his palms. How the hell was he missing
his gloves and nothing else? Zenko clicked his comms unit again. “Ambra
Two, report?”
“Ambra Two, clear.” Drax Mitchell, Zenko’s second in command for this
mission reported, probably from his perch on a rooftop of a nearby building.
“Ambra Three, report?” Zenko queried of his other teammate.
“Ambra Three, clear. Get your ass in gear, Ambra One, we’ve got
movement down here, or do you need us to dig your ass out of there?” Reese
Wagner responded immediately and Zenko heaved a sigh of relief he didn’t
know he’d been holding as his teammate who had been closest to the blast
answered.
Now that Zenko had confirmation about both his teammates, he could
concentrate on getting himself out of the rubble. “TOC, Ambra One moving
now!”
“Ambra One, drone footage shows you have tangos incoming on the west
side,” another voice broke into the conversation. “Can you exit from another
direction?”
“TOC, Ambra One, what the hell?” Zenko muttered. “If you are looking
at drone footage, then you can see there isn’t much of a building for me to
exit from. I’m climbing over shit to find a fucking way out! It’s almost like, I
don’t know, someone blew the building to hell and back.” Thank Christ for
knee protectors. Zenko winced and silently cursed as he ripped his hands
open to get himself free of the rubble. “There better not be seventy-two
fucking virgins waiting for that asshole when he gets to the afterlife.”
“Move your ass, Ambra One. Those tangos are less than two minutes
out.” His boss’ order made him wince. He sounded pissed. Damn it, why did
this sort of shit keep happening?
“Sir, yes sir!” Zenko grunted out. Reaching his arm up, he tested a beam
before using it to haul himself free of the rubble field.
“Get your collective asses to the extraction point!” His boss’ order
wasn’t really necessary, but Zenko also knew that keeping an eagle eye on
things was as much to keep Noble sane, because he wasn’t in the field with
the team, as it was to keep things on track as their command center marked
off points on their mission plan.
Zenko smirked to himself. Making things go boom and annoying the boss
all in the same five minutes. Yup it was a pretty good day.
“Ambra One—”
“Jesus, TOC, this is Ambra One. Untwist your fucking panties, I am
fucking moving!” The whispered response was low enough not to carry. His
gut screamed at him to move. He didn’t need the command center telling him
how dire his situation was. He could hear the yelling and shouts of the
oncoming mob on the street. He did not want to get caught here.
He forced himself to hold position until the timing was right. Moving too
soon would get him killed. “In five,” he whispered in the comm system,
knowing that both Drax and Reese would cover his ass as he exited what was
left of the house.
Zenko slipped from the destroyed building and with swift and soundless
steps, crossed the open expanse to the darkened corner of the compound wall.
“Ambra One, this is Two and Three, approaching on your six.”
“Ambra Two, this is One. Go ahead.” Zenko turned his head to watch his
teammates Drax and Reese as, despite their huge sizes, they silently appeared
out of the darkness.
His shoulder ached as he found hand and footholds to scale the compound
wall. He scrambled over the top, slightly less gracefully than he normally
would have, but he made it without help and his boots landed with an almost
silent thud on the other side. Drax and Reese landed lightly beside him within
seconds.
Weapons at ready, they crept along the wall until they reached the
location with the shortest distance to cover. “TOC, this is Ambra One, how
are we looking?”
“Good, if you go now. All heat signatures are surrounding the building
you blew up.”
 “TOC, Ambra One. I didn’t blow the building,” Zenko whispered into
comms. “He was wearing a vest, jeez.” Bunching their muscles, all three
operatives sprinted out of the scant cover offered by the compound wall and
aimed for the darkness provided by the desert night. Their strike team was
well used to using very little cover to conceal themselves, they could blend in
if they had to. But it was always easier to avoid contact if they could.
“Ambra One, TOC, extraction point is ten klicks away, think you all can
make it before dawn?”
“TOC, Ambra One, are you calling us slow?” The three operators found
where they had stashed their gear. Zenko started pulling out the dull fabric to
wrap around his head, along with robes to help him blend in as he navigated
this area of Syria to make it to the extraction point. With his longer than
regulation hair and beard and the tanned skin that came from spending years
in countries where the sun was hotter than hell, he should look native enough
to avoid close scrutiny. Although with his six-foot four frame, he had learned
to slouch to blend in better. Drax and Reese at six-three and six-six had also
found ways to adapt how large they looked, when needed.
Zenko, Drax and Reese silently moved through the night, careful not to
dislodge any rocks or stand on any branches as they placed their feet. The
sound of a breaking branch up here would carry like a gunshot and would
attract the kind of attention his small team didn’t want. Their route was
preplanned along a mountain ridge that stretched out into a long left-hand
dogleg. Their checkpoints were both marked X on a map and GPS. Having
passed the second checkpoint without incident, they paused to scan the area
for movement before moving on again. A glimmer of light caught Zenko’s
attention, “Shit!”
“What do you think?” he whispered to Reese who approached from his
place slightly behind Zenko, to the left.
“Looks like a village fire,” Reese whispered back, “but there isn’t meant
to be any villages up here.”
Zenko looked to Drax, who was scanning the area with his night vision
goggles. “Agreed!” Drax whispered.
“TOC, this is Ambra One.” Clicking his mic, Zenko double checked the
volume was turned down to minimum, as he waited for the Tactical
Operation Center to respond.
“Drone Controller is on air. Go ahead Ambra One.” Max Delgado’s voice
from base command answered Zenko’s summons immediately. Based on
previous experience, Zen knew he had already scooted his wheeled chair
across the operations center to his control desk and was monitoring the
system on the screen in front of him, along with two other drone controllers.
“Is there anything showing on drone footage? We’re seeing lights or
possibly a fire.”
“There is a small goatherder village at your three o’clock, a couple of
huts,” Max answered. “There is a central fire and it looks like there is some
kind of celebration going on, as that area around the fire is full of people.”
Zenko took a quick glance around, before climbing a small rocky outcrop.
Lying on his stomach he pulled out his night vision goggles and turned the
dials until he had a clear view of the village. “TOC, Ambra One, do you
copy?”
“This is TOC, go ahead One.”
“That party they’ve got going on, there are no women attending. It’s all
men and boys. Those huts don’t look like the usual permanent structures
you’d expect to see up here.” Zenko looked at the tents made of animal hide
and rocks. Something was fucking off about that village. “TOC, do we have
past footage from when we planned the mission?”
“Yes, we do,” Max responded immediately. “I’m just pulling it up for a
side by side comparison now.” In his head Zenko silently thanked Noble for
his forward thinking in stealing the computer and comms genius that was
Max from another covert team who had been pushing had to recruit him
when JSOC set up their taskforce.
Zenko kept his attention on the village as he waited for Max to scrutinize
the documents and photos from the mission planning stages.
“Ambra One, this is TOC, do you copy?”
“Go ahead TOC.”
“You’re correct,” Max told him. “That village wasn’t on the very first lot
of images. It was on all three subsequent ones though… there is a note in the
file that intelligence says it’s either a sheep or goat herder village.”
“Damn it,” Zenko answered as, with night vision green, he eyed the
weaponry on display around the campfire, and heard the faint sound of
gunfire as one idiot stood at the edge of the ‘village’ and shot off rounds into
the air. Hoping one would come down and hit the dumbass in the head and
save some soldier dealing with him later is too much to ask for I suppose?
“You don’t need AK’s to herd fucking goats or sheep.” He sighed.
“Orders?”
 “Skirt around it, Ambra One,” Noble’s voice ordered. “Best case
scenario would be, if you can avoid engaging with them at all.”
“Copy,” Zenko replied softly into the mic. “Moving to our secondary
route.”
“Agreed.”
In the background, Zenko could hear Noble telling Max to switch to
extraction point two.
“TOC, Ambra is moving.” Zenko silently scanned the area they had
stopped in and made sure that they hadn’t left any evidence to show that they
had been in the location before signalling to Reese and Drax, then all three
silently faded back into the darkness.

Shaun Jacobsen drew in a ragged, painful breath. He twisted his hands,

feeling for play in the ropes holding his hands tied behind his back. Why the
hell did they feel the need to bind his wrists when he was in a fucking cage
the size of a puppy pen? Did they suspect who he was? Don’t be stupid!! If
they knew who you were you would be dead. His eyes strained in the darkness
of the stone cave that had served as his prison cell for an unknown length of
time. Crouched in this cage, he didn’t have much room to maneuver.
Fuckballs almighty, if he couldn’t get free soon he was screwed. Did his team
even know he was missing?
One thing he did know, he had been here too long. Had someone missed
him when he didn’t check in at the scheduled time? Was anyone looking for
him yet?
Nope, do not go there! Nope! Nope! Nope! Shaun shoved the panic
welling inside behind a mental brick wall. “Breathe!” The word was more
groaned than spoken, his military training ensured it triggered the response he
wanted. He took a deep breath, ignored the ache in his ribs and exhaled. His
pulse slowed, and his panic receded far enough that he could think straight
again.
Of course someone was looking for him. They had to be. He was a Ghost,
with a team of brothers who always had his back. All former Special Forces
from various countries recruited by US Military to form one of the most elite
Black Ops team ever created. The Ghosts would be looking for him, and
Goddammit if he hadn’t managed to free himself before they got here, then
Rock, Grif and the others would blow this shitty mountain cave to hell once
they got him out of this damn cage.
 His captors thought he was someone else, the only thing keeping him
from breaking down and telling them who he was, was training, years and
years of stubbornness and the fact he knew the same second they realized
who and what he was… he was dead.
Oh, who the hell was he kidding. Shaun knew that if he didn’t get himself
free, rescue had to come soon. He was so thirsty his tongue felt swollen. His
lips were cracked and split. Blood he couldn’t afford to lose trickled down his
face from the cut over his eye. The skin of his wrists were ragged and torn
from where he’d struggled to free himself. He knew his captors were
withholding water as the beatings hadn’t worked. Maybe he should just
fucking tell them who he was and get it over with. A quick death was more
acceptable than dying of thirst in this Godforsaken country. But his stubborn
side wouldn’t give up, he didn’t want those assholes to have the satisfaction
of knowing they had broken him. You don’t get to decide when death comes
calling, his inner voice warned him.
“Oh shut up, Shaun.”
Great, now you are answering yourself too. Fantastic! Breathe! He
reminded himself, just keep breathing and your chance to escape will come
or your team will come for you. It is just a matter of which happens first.

“Ambra One?” The crackle of the radio was almost unrecognizable in the
quiet of the night, just loud enough that Zen could hear it without the sound
echoing off the mountains and announcing their presence to anyone in the
location.
Zenko signaled to the others to stop. “TOC, this is Ambra One, go
ahead.” Even though his voice was barely above audible, he knew their
equipment would pick up every word and transmit it to the location Noble
and Max were using as a tactical command center for this mission. He took a
sip of water from his Camelbak while he waited for the intel from TOC.
“We’re seeing two heat signatures just off the trail, about three hundred
yards ahead.”
“Copy.” Max’s information made Zenko curse in his head. More fucking
delays, great! “How do you want us to proceed?”
Noble’s voice over rode any answer Max may have given. “It looks like
they are guarding a cave entrance. Think you can get close enough to hear
what they are talking about?”
“Roger that.” Zenko clicked off the comms and all three carefully
checked their weapons before Zenko signaled to Drax and Reese.
They silently made their way forward, until they were close enough to
smell tobacco and hear the guttural tones of the men standing on watch
outside the cave. Straining his ears, Zenko tried to make out what dialect the
men were speaking.
“I think it’s Kurmanji.” Max’s voice was barely a whisper in his ear. He
listened to the men through the equipment the team wore on their clothes.
“Shit, pull back!” Max instructed Zenko and his team before adding a,
“Sorry, Boss,” which Zenko knew was for Noble, as he paced around the
command center, unable to stand still at such a stage of their extraction.
Zenko didn’t bother to respond. His body camera would show Noble and
Max at the base that they were retreating down the track as commanded.
Once they were far enough away from the cave to be able to have a
conversation, they took cover against a rock, with Drax and Reese keeping
watch as Zen contacted command. “TOC, Ambra One. Do you have that
intel?”
“They have a prisoner,” Max told him. “An American. They were
discussing how if the boss can’t break him within the next week they are
going to execute him.”
“Fuck-a-duck.” Zenko sighed and scrubbed his hand over his face. “How
many heat signatures can you see?”
“Ambra One…”
“TOC, hold on, if there is a US prisoner there we are not walking past the
front door without knocking to see if he wants to come out to play,” Zenko
told them, before adding, “TOC, find as much on him as you can. We need to
know who we have on the line.”
“TOC. Ambra one, what is it you are looking for?”
“Ambra One. TOC, we need to know what’s his background is and what
shape he might be in.” Zenko wanted as much information as possible before
he took his team into a potential death trap.
“The only known missing American is a civilian contractor, who was
based out of Al Asad Air Base in Iraq’s western Anbar Province.” Max gave
the information over comms. “Shaun Jacobsen, a twenty-nine-year-old
Colorado native, six feet tall, dark hair, blue eyes. He was last seen three
weeks ago doing a fuel run to Baghdad. He never returned to base.”
Fuck, Zenko groaned to himself, a civilian… dammit. “TOC, get as much
information from the drone as you can and send it to me,” Zen requested
from Max and Noble. “We’ll get him back.”
Zenko listened to the chatter in his ear and carefully filed away all the
information being passed on. He quickly went over the intel with Drax and
Reese before they cautiously carried their packs as close as they dared before
stashing them out of sight.
Thank fuck Drax was handy with knives, as before a gunshot, even a
suppressed one, had finished echoing up here, the place would be swarming
with tribesmen and natives looking for the source.
Drax pulled two stiletto knives from their scabbards on his wrists. Zenko
watched as Drax palmed them and lightly weighted them in his hands. Drax
threw them one after the other.
Listening for the sickening thuds he knew was coming when they sliced
through muscle and bone into the tangos bodies, Zen watched both guards
bodies fall and waited for the clear command to sound in his ear before
motioning the others to proceed to the cave entrance. “Moving into the cave,”
he whispered into the mic.
“Watch your sixes.” Noble’s reply was cut off as Zen muted the comms
device. He didn’t want to attract any unnecessary attention.
Zen and Reese paused while Drax bent to retrieve his knives and replaced
them in their scabbards. All three moved further into the cave system with
soundless steps, their weapons at the ready, reminiscences carried over from
their time on various SEAL teams. Hopefully, those two were the only tangos
they’d meet.
Stop whining, you big baby. Being outnumbered here just makes it a
target rich environment and you fucking know it. It didn’t matter if they were
outnumbered. Zen knew they would handle any obstacle thrown their way.
This Shaun guy… they would rescue him. Any other outcome was just not
acceptable. This man wasn’t dying on their watch.
If the intel Max and Noble had sent him was correct, Shaun Jacobsen had
been held prisoner for three weeks. There was no telling what kind of shape
he was in. Didn’t matter, though. The motto Zenko lived and breathed by was
‘the only easy day was yesterday’.
Zenko’s jaw clenched when the light from his torch flashed over a small
cage in the corner of the cave. He caught sight of the man crouched in the
confined space and cursed. Ropes tied around his wrists kept his shoulders
locked as his arms were tied behind his back. His head lolled against one side
of the cage, his breathing shallow and labored.
 “Fuck! Target in sight,” he whispered, knowing the body camera on his
clothing would be streaming the images back to base.
Drax and Reese took up positions at either side of the entrance of this
cavern they’d found, further back in the cave system.
Zenko saw the instant the other man became aware he was no longer
alone. The man’s eyes popped open and Zen could see he was gathering his
strength for the questions he assumed was to come. Zen mouthed the word,
“American.” When the man, nope Shaun, Zenko reminded himself… When
Shaun just stared at a point past Zenko’s left shoulder, Zen moved slightly
and lifted his finger to his lips. He mouthed again, “I’m American, shh. Do
you understand me?” Shit when they said he had blue eyes, nobody
mentioned those eyes were brilliant turquoise. Zenko gave himself a mental
kick in the ass. After ten years of fighting for his country, he should know
better than to let himself get distracted by thinking about how gorgeous the
man’s fucking eyes were.
Zenko saw the flash of something in Shaun’s eyes before he managed to
camouflage it behind an assessing stare. A second later, he gave a slight nod
of acknowledgment that he understood Zenko and the others were not a
threat, but there to rescue him.
Thank fuck for that!
Zen pulled bolt cutters from his pack and stepped closer with his K-Bar in
his other hand. “I’m gonna cut the lock and pull you out of there,” he
whispered quietly. “Not going to lie, though, it’s going to hurt like a son of a
bitch.”
Reaching his hand through the wire of the cage, he wrapped his hand
around Shaun’s wrist, he squeezed lightly. “You make a sound and we’re
fucked, got it?”

Shaun nodded, his eyes trained on the bolt cutters as the man wrapped the
jaws around the metal of the lock and squeezed. The snap of the cutter’s jaws
slamming together told of the power the other man had to exert to break the
damn thing. Shaun gasped. His body exploded with pain as he was dragged
out of the confined space. When the knife split the rope, allowing his arms to
drop from behind his back to his waist, he clamped his mouth shut and bit
down on the inside of his cheek. Although he didn’t utter another sound, the
tears tracking down his face told the story of the pain he was in.
“I’m sorry,” his rescuer murmured. “We have to get out of here,” he said
to Shaun who now leaned against him.
The man adjusted his grip and pulled Shaun closer. Shaun tasted the
metallic taste of blood in his mouth, as he struggled to keep silent.
“Can you move under your own steam?”
A nod in answer would just have to do, as Shaun wasn’t entirely sure that
he could open his mouth without yelling out in pain or cursing yet. He didn’t
know who this man was, but he was American—trained too by the way he
and the two men with him moved. They were here and there was no way
Shaun was letting him leave without him, because there was no doubt this
team was heading to an extraction point somewhere. Come hell or high-
water, Shaun was getting on that damn bird with this man and his team.
Shaun tried to speak to his rescuer, but his tongue wouldn’t work. He
sighed gratefully when the man appeared to understand the issue and took a
long sip from the hose, the man offered from the Camelbak hydration pack he
carried on his back. Shaun swished the water around in his mouth, before
spitting out the first mouthful. He ignored the red tinged water, knowing
already from feeling with his tongue that he had some loose teeth. Nothing
before, however, had ever tasted quite as good as that first warm wet sip of
water, sliding down his throat.
“Slowly,” Zenko warned, as he pulled the hose away. He hated to do it.
He could see Shaun was thirsty. Fuck knows when he last had water. “Too
much will make you sick.”
Shaun nodded and took slow even sips, relishing the fact he had a chance
now. He forced his body to remain submissive, tramped down on the urge to
start giving orders. A Ghost was always at the top of the food chain, but right
this second Shaun didn’t give a shit about chain of command or who ruled
what. It was time to get his ass the hell out of here, and to contact Rock,
before he and the team burned Syria to the ground looking for him.
Zenko grasped Shaun’s upper arms and, keeping them aligned with his
body to minimize the pain, helped him to his feet. Shaun sagged a second,
then straightened, indicating for Zenko to lead the way. Zenko steadied
Shaun with a hand on his hip, hoping he wasn’t causing the man any more
pain. “Ready?”
At Shaun’s nod, Zenko put Shaun’s hand on his own waist. “Grab my
belt. No matter what happens, don’t let go.”
Shaun hesitated. “Do you have a backup weapon?” he whispered. He felt
naked with no weapons. The sooner he had one the quicker he could start
pulling the shreds of his control back together.

Zenko squeezed his eyes shut, if they were met by more tangos and this dude
could shoot maybe they would make it out of here in one piece. “Tell me you
know how to shoot?”
“I grew up on a ranch in Colorado.” Shaun’s voice was husky and raw.
He didn’t want to admit it was from a mix of misuse and screaming. “And
my father was a Marine. I could shoot before I started first grade.” Sticking to
his cover story was second nature to him. Even if he had wanted to, he
couldn’t tell this team who he was. If someone looked deep enough they
would find that Shaun Jacobsen died on the bloody streets of Fallujah during
Operation Phantom Fury in two thousand and four.
“Thank fuck for that.” A smile quirked up the corners of Zenko’s lips as
he lifted his leg up and removed the spare sig from its ankle holster. He
handed it to Shaun along with an extra mag. “Try not to shoot me, yeah?”
“Don’t shoot the knight in shining armor,” Shaun muttered so quietly it
appeared to be more to himself than to Zenko. The corners of Zenko’s lips
quirked upward anyway. “Tell me there are more than you three out there
waiting for us?”
“Nope, just us.” Zenko caught Shaun’s hand again and placed it back on
his belt. “Stay right on my six.” He smiled to himself when Shaun didn’t ask
what he meant, but he figured any Marine’s kid would know that he had told
him to stay right on his heels or at his back.
Zenko fell into step behind Reese, who led the way out of the cave. He
counted steps in his head, despite being conscious of the man almost stepping
on his heels as they made their way back through the cave to the opening
with Drax following behind to cover their retreat. As they approached the
mouth of the cave, Zenko clicked back on his comms unit, “TOC, how are we
looking?”
“Clear.” Noble’s voice in his ear was muted and barely audible to even
Zenko himself, but he knew Shaun heard it when he felt the shudder of relief
go through him, from where the other man was pressed up against his back.
“Are you ready to blow this popsicle stand?” Zenko whispered.
“Yeah,” Shaun whispered back, his breath lifting the fine hairs at the back
of Zenko’s neck. “I sure am.”
Zenko reached back with one hand, gripped Shaun’s fingers where they
were wrapped around his belt and squeezed lightly. “Then we’re moving.”
Find out more about Zenko and Shaun here: https://annabellastoneauth8.
wixsite.com/annabella-stone/tags-of-honor
ALSO BY ANNABELLA STONE

Delta Force: Team Panther

Jonah's Compass
Tied Up In Steele
Malik’s Redemption
Micah’s Promise
Christmas - Panther Style
Grif’s Salvation
Jason’s Justice

Tags of Honor
Zenko
Noble
Drax
Roman

Task Force Ambra

Salvation’s Sinner
Redemption’s Rebel
Temptation’s Tango

Ghost Protectors
To Love A Ghost
To Save A Ghost
To Keep A Ghost
To Free A Ghost
 Short Stories
They Won’t Ask If We Don’t Tell (Delta Force Team Panther)
Baubles It’s Christmas (Delta Force Team Panther)
Don’t Let Go (Tags of Honor)