* * *

Now I’m on a plane heading away from her for the only reason that could’ve gotten me out of her bed. To make sure her future was safe. To put an end to whatever this is and make sure that no one else ever gets near her again.

We still had a lot to talk about, a lot we needed to learn about each other. I feel like I already know her, like she’s lived inside me my whole life, but I can’t wait to know more.

I listened to the others joking around to lighten the mood and closed my eyes, just thinking about her and the amazing day and a half I just had.

My life was changed I know, for the rest of my life she was going to be there. The thought that she was mine, that I was now responsible for her wellbeing was uppermost in my mind.

I was all the way in from the beginning when it came to destroying this asshole Khalil and whoever else he had working with him. But that shit has taken on new meaning.

I’m pretty sure from Thorpe’s cryptic words, that the assholes who’d taken her and the others were at the bottom of the sea or worse by now.

I wasn’t sure what was waiting for us at the end of this shit but I knew I was coming back to her. I was convinced now more than ever, though I never really doubted; that we were going to come out on the right end of this thing.

I peeped my eyes open when I didn’t hear Dev’s voice in the mix. He was sitting alone looking out the window at the dark. Fuck!

I left my seat and moved next to him, but did it in a way that Lo wouldn’t notice. I didn’t say anything, just rested my head back and closed my eyes. He knew I was there, that’s all that mattered.

“Quinn I’m fine.”

“What’re you talking about? I wanted to get some shuteye but Ty the fuck won’t shut the hell up back there.”

“You’re a lying ass.” I smirked but kept my eyes closed and he went back to gazing out the window. If I didn’t know for sure that he was going to be okay, I would be worried about him.

But I know that if someone as undeserving as me could find this happiness then he sure can. It wouldn’t be right otherwise.

He’d faced enough loss and not enough love in his life. Shit, Ty was right, we all become bitch made when we fall in love. What the fuck am I thinking about?

* * *

I should’ve known that my little seat switch hadn’t gone unnoticed. Lo used the others getting ready as cover to corner Dev and I.

“Devon you okay brother?”

“Yep!” Lo looked to me for confirmation and I gave him a silent nod. We both shared a look of understanding before Lo turned and left us alone.

“Quinn what the fuck! what’re you thinking? We’re in the middle of an Op.”

“So? You want the others to rip me a new one if I don’t let them know something’s up?”

“Stop bitching like an old woman and let’s do this shit bro!” He pulled on the last of his gear and headed into the back of the Humvee Mancini had waiting for us.

I think we’d all pretty much given up on trying to figure out how the hell he was able to pull shit out of the hat like that at such short notice. But the fucker did have the best toys.

No one said anything as we headed into the Hollywood hills. At least the two tanks weren’t too out of place here. This town was pretty much known for the unexpected and the quirky.

* * *

* * *

I hate fucking Cali. This shit’s about to fall off the face of the earth and it’s just a weird fucking place. It’s the only place we never hung around too long which is weird because SEALs love the ocean.

It was also a strange fucking place. One minute we were in the middle of the city and the next we were in the hills where everything looked different.

It was pitch black outside and without the night goggles we wouldn’t be able to see shit. We’d left the huge Hollywood sign a few miles back and were headed into some ritzy residential area that the natives seem to think would get stolen if they put up more than one streetlight.

Each house was bigger than the last and I was starting to wonder what kinda serviceman could afford to live in a place like this. The shits had to cost at least ten million and up.

I pulled up the info on the man we were going to see on my handheld. We’d only given him a cursory glance earlier, just to be sure he was on the right side of this thing. It was his son we were most interested in.

Terrence Samson. There was no real connection between him and the CO, other than the fact that his name had been one of the codes, but as for his time in service, there wasn’t really much there.

He did have a high security clearance so that could be the reason for that and until we had the time to do a deep search we wouldn’t find more.

It didn’t take me long to find out how he could afford to live here though. There was a shit load of information on his public persona that had nothing to do with the military.

He was the son of one of the wealthiest families in the country; oil money. He and his son were filthy rich thanks to his old man and the family assets.

Track Samson was a fucking nightmare. The kid was seventeen and had a sheet that one would not expect for a kid from his background.

It was easy to find the reasons for that too. If you knew where to look. It was a cover. Each time he was taken away for one of these supposed infractions, he turned up at the Pentagon.

It didn’t take a stretch of the imagination to figure out what was really going on, since we knew thanks to Mancini that he was a master hacker. It was obvious he was working for the government.

The question still remains, why had he allowed them to catch him? It was obvious that he’d left a trail. Even though he went to great lengths to make it seem like he hadn’t.

It sucks to know that our best isn’t really that good if they let a kid get the drop on them. I mean it didn’t take me long to see the set up.

Or maybe… “Lo tell him to hurry, this kid might be in greater danger than we thought.” With his credentials, if he fell into the wrong hands a lot of people would be fucked.

“What have you found?” Lo asked after telling Mancini’s expert driver to put his foot on the gas.

“I’ve been looking into this kid. It kinda bothered me that the DOD caught on to him so easily when no one knows who these people are or where they are and they’re usually way more careful than this.”

“Go on!” Everyone turned to look at me, and I knew the others in the truck behind us were wired in as well.

“I just went into his file. When he hacked in he left a trail. It was good, but I know we have people on the job who could’ve spotted that as easily as I did. If he’s as good as he seems, why did he let them catch him?”

I let them mull that over. “I think someone knew or had eyes on him. They may not have known that he was part of this Anonymous group, but I think he went digging and someone had a bead on him or was watching him for whatever reason.”

“Kinda like while he was watching them they were watching him?” Ty looked confused.

“Or they knew who his dad was and was watching him. Whatever the reason, I don’t like it. He was just there a few days ago. I don’t like it.”

“Khalil!” Con offered.

“Yeah, and whoever he has on the inside. My money’s on the general. The kid’s good but I don’t know if he’s that good. But that’s not the problem. The question still remains, why did he want in?”

That was the one piece of the puzzle I couldn’t quite put my fingers on. Nowhere in the CO’s notes did it say anything about the kid. If he was the target, I would’ve expected there to be something.

The fact that the offspring of the men who’d served with him in one way or another back then were being targeted was obvious to us now, but we’d had to dig to find that shit.

How did this kid know that someone was after him? Had his dad told him something? And if so, how come the others didn’t know that their kids were in danger?

“We’re still missing a big piece of the puzzle, something’s just not adding up. Taking the girls had an obvious motive, but what was he planning to do with this kid?” It didn’t bear thinking about.

“If he just wanted to kill him he could’ve done that a long time ago, something’s off. Are we sure it’s the kid they’re after? Did we miss something? Is there someone else out there that we overlooked?”

“I would give you that it’s strange. All the others were female and this kid’s hacking into the DOD does raise some questions but we’re not going to have any answers until we talk to him.”

“Well, Kelly said they were heading here next and the only person in the old man’s files that lives in this neck of the woods is this Track’s dad. I don’t see what else it can be.”

“I get that Quinn, but my gut is telling me we’re overlooking something. There were only females in that damn book, so where does this kid fit in?”

“If it’s some kind of vendetta is it such a stretch that he’d go after this kid as well if his dad had any part in whatever the fuck this is?”

“Yeah but Dev’s right. Why didn’t the CO mention this boy in anyway? I can see the females, we know what he was doing there, but why this kid?”

“In all fairness he didn’t mention any of it. If we hadn’t found that book we wouldn’t have put this shit together.”

“I think he didn’t have time. I think he tried to handle the shit on his own and ran into trouble before he had the chance.”

“Lo’s right. Maybe that’s why he was trying to get us to come to him before he died.”

“Not died Con, he was fucking murdered.”

Everything went silent for a hot minute. It was the only thing that we were still having a hard time coming to terms with.

I know for me personally, it was a hard pill to swallow. Outside of my brothers, the old man was the only other human being who’d treated me like I mattered.

Not since my parents’ deaths have I ever felt like I belonged. To know that he’d needed me and I wasn’t there is something I’m never going to get over.

It just solidifies for me the fact that I’m no good. I can’t be depended on. I wasn’t able to save my mother and father and I wasn’t there for the old man.

There’s a part of me that knows that’s stupid, the CO himself would shoot me down for thinking this way, but it wasn’t that easy for me to shake.

I’m always going to feel like a failure when it comes to protecting the ones I love. How can I trust myself with a woman the way my brothers do?

As bad as their childhoods were, none of them had seen the shit I had, or experienced the same level of abuse at the hands of someone who was supposed to love and protect.

I feel like shit thinking this way, especially knowing what they went through. But where most of their abuse had been physical mine had been psychological as well.

When you lived most of your life being told you were tainted from birth. That you were little more than a fucking sin because of the color of your skin. It wasn’t something you could just walk away from.

I’d come to learn over time that my uncle was full of shit. That when he blamed my birth for the death of my parents he was sick in the fucking head.

But it was still something I’d lived with at the worst time in my life. I’d just lost my parents and was scared and alone.

At fourteen I’d been a pretty sheltered kid. My parents were great, but because of the shit they’d faced because they were an interracial couple, they’d gone above and beyond to protect their only son.

I didn’t know much about the real world until they were gone and I ended up in the hands of my uncle. In short the man was a fucking monster. And after years of his bullshit abuse, I’d become hard.

I lost my innocence within the first year after he and his kids had tried to knock the black off my ass. They’d taught me to hate myself, and if not for the great love I bore my parents he would’ve convinced me to hate them too, just for loving each other.

I learned all about hate and distrust in that house, and by the time I signed up I was damn near an animal. There was no love, no light in me; only hate.

I have that shit in me to this day. It took my brothers and the CO to bring me to some semblance of humanity, but that’s where it ended.

It’s easy for the others to believe that I would never harm the woman I love if she does exist, but how can I be sure?

I’m not willing to risk it. I can’t ask anyone, least of all a vulnerable woman to put up with me and the demons that live inside.

It’s not the same with my sisters, I know I would never harm them, or baby Zak. But somehow in my mind it’s not the same.

Mancini’s voice came through the speakers just then shaking me out of my wayward thoughts. I blame Quinn and his shit for my mind even going there. “ETA five minutes, what do you wanna do boys?”

We were already here, there was no time to learn anything new. It’s not like we’ve never gone in with less information than we had now. But this shit had too many tentacles, and too many unknowns for us to slip up.

If Kelly hadn’t overheard those men we wouldn’t have known to look here and we might’ve been too late.

I don’t think any of us would’ve thought his life was in danger, since it was only females being targeted.

We’ve only had this info for less than twenty-four hours and there was no time to dig deeper than we already had.

My gut told me we were missing something but there was no way we were leaving this kid out in the cold.

“We’re going in. We’ll figure shit out after we get the kid outta there.” I answered Mancini just as we turned the corner and the house came into view up ahead.

The place was almost completely dark with nothing but the stars and the sliver of moon for light.

The house was set apart from its neighbors by a good few hundred yards, which would work in our favor.

We drove past the place and did some recon before parking the vehicles on the path behind the structure. There were trees and brush back there and a steep drop off that led to nowhere.

It couldn’t be attacked from behind unless someone wanted to grapple their way up a cliff face and I’m pretty sure there were security measures all around the front and sides.

“Damn, are we all going in there?” There had to be about twelve or more of us.

“No, only the SEALs are going in. The rest of us will surround the place just in case.” Mancini answered Lyon’s question and the rest of them fanned out.

“Quinn?” He was the one in charge of this run so the rest of us will wait on his word.

“You’ve got this one Dev, your gut’s talking, what do you wanna do?”

“Movement in the window, first floor south side. Two hot bodies, one more upstairs moving around, one pliant, might be asleep. Top floor north side.”

Mancini was using one of his toys to see inside. We were armed but no one drew their weapon as we approached.

“We’re clear on the perimeter.” Lo had gone ahead with Con to make sure while Quinn and I headed for the back of the house before making our way around to meet them.

Zak, Ty and Cord were already in position in the shadows and I didn’t see the others as they spread out.

I breathed a little bit easier once it was clear that there was no one else out here with us. But it only raised more questions.

Since we’d botched their plans, and it was obvious from the fly over back at the compound that they knew we were the ones, why hadn’t they sent in another team to take over?

I won’t believe that they were so inept they didn’t have anything else in place. The closer we got to the door the more my gut twisted itself in knots. Some shit was off.

I calmed myself with the fact that they didn’t know Kelly had told us where they were headed, so maybe they thought they had time.

I focused on the door and what laid ahead, putting everything else aside. I had no explanation for the riot going on in my gut, but I stayed on high fucking alert.

We’d decided we were gonna go in easy if there were no impediments, so instead of storming the place, we rang the doorbell; out of respect for the CO and his friendship with the man inside.

One of the shadows in the window moved and a middle aged African American male opened the door a few seconds later.

The smile on his face kinda threw me, until I remembered what Quinn had said earlier about us being expected.

A swift look around the room, showed that there were only two occupants in the room and my body relaxed though my insides remained on high alert.

“I’m guessing from your welcoming look that you know who we are and why we’re here.”

“Come in. I’m guessing there’re more of you out there, tell your friends to come on in.”

Lo whistled and the bushes outside came alive as the guys came out of hiding and headed to the door.