The corner of my mouth hooked up, knowing she was absolutely right. People usually ate the wholeI wanted to serve my countryshit up, but truthfully, my reasons were my own, and they were none of her damn business.
“Despite running away from your old life, you still own yourfamily estate.” Her eyes twinkled, albeit coldly, like she was sitting on one of those proverbial aces, and I couldn’t freaking wait. “Not to mention you still maintain a foothold in the art world.”
I shrugged. “I have no heir to handle my affairs.”
“One might assume you intended to return to your old life.”
I pressed my lips into a thin line. “I don’t.” Part of me wished I’d left Briar Rose even sooner.With caveats.
“Don’t you? You’ve continued to acquire land.” She tapped the folder on the table. “Half of Briar Rose, to be exact.”
My lips twitched. “Well, I would own the other half, but someone beat me to it.”
“Yes, we know all about Cade Blackthorn.” She hummed even more unamused. “But we’re not talking abouthim—we’re talking aboutyou.”
“Well, you seem to know everything there is to know, so I’m not exactly sure what it is you need from me.” I gave her a lazy smile.
Her face remained impassive. “Some things you can’t know until you look a man in the eye.” I shifted, an odd feeling washing over me. “At present you live quite modestly and here on base, you’ve successfully maintained secrecy about who you are—I’m curious what exactly your motivations are, for your career, for your old life.”
“I’m just here to protect and serve.” I gave her a flat smile.
She scoffed, thumbing through a folder on the table. “You have no surviving family, you indulge in the occasional one-night stand here and there but never with the same person twice.No girlfriend?” She raised a brow, looking at me again.
I smirked. “Who’s asking?”
“That’s above your pay grade,Lieutenant.” She bit out sharply, putting me in my place as she tapped the folder in front of her. “You’re unattached.” It was a statement this time. “You’re driven to be the best. Just impulsive enough to take the necessary risks that are required, and even worse—your risks usually pay off. Today was just another one of those calculated risks,wasn’t it?”
I sat forward, folding my hands on the table. “Risks required for what?”
“We’re recruiting you.” She said simply, and I raised a skeptical brow, waiting as she continued. “To a black ops task force.”
I chuckled and tapped the wings on my flight suit a bit obtusely. “I don’t know if you know this, but this is the Air Force, not the Marines.” She smiled thinly as I continued. “I’m apilot, not a tactical officer.” And that’s precisely the way I wanted to keep it.
She gave me a smile that didn’t meet her eyes. “Exactly.You’re notjustimpulsive, you’re smart, you think strategically—you’re always several moves ahead of your opponents, and your aerial skills are rare,unmatched,actually. This covert task force targets remote locations that areonlyaccessible aerially. For obvious reasons, thesehigh-profileassassinations can’t lead back to us, and we need someone with enough guts to get in, and enough brains to get back out.”
“And you think I’m your guy?” I scoffed, wondering if this was actually a joke. Tatum was going to get a kick out of this.
“I know you are. You’re an excellent pilot, so you should have no problem getting through the airspace unnoticed, and the rest can be trained easily enough.”
I mean, Iwasgood, but I hadn’t been doing this all that long—why they wantedmewas honestly a bit bizarre. I had career plans, and creeping through the night to assassinate God knows who was not part of those very important plans.To say the least.In the air, I did what I had to—there was an agreement though, when you went up into the sky, you knew what you were getting into—any pilot did. On the ground, sneaking up and offing people in their sleep, well, it wasn’t exactly my flavor of justice to say the least, not that this had ever been about that for me anyway. Like I said, all I wanted was to fly fast.That was it.
“Don’t you want someone with more experience?” I shifted uneasily, hating how out of control I felt here on the ground.
“No. I want the best, and lucky for us, that now includesyou.” She hummed, all too authoritatively, reminding me I didn’t really have a say when it came down to it. “This team includes some of the cockiest, riskiest pilots we have. Don’t worry, Lieutenant, I’m sure you’ll fit right in.”
“I’m not tactically trained.” I reminded her.
“Oh, but you have excellent instincts, don’t you?” She placed a knife on the table and snapped her wrist, sending the blade slicing towards me as she murmured, “Let’s see how fast you are on your feet, Lieutenant.” Her eyes shifted behind me, and I lunged.
Knife in hand, I went flying backwards, realizing with horror that I couldn’t breathe as something tight cinched around my throat. My chair hit the ground hard, and then I was up and moving, shoving the shock and panic down.
The next several seconds were pure instinct and survival, and there wasn’t a second to hesitate as I slid the knife around the back of my neck and cut the thin wire around my throat.
I was gasping for air, but avoiding suffocation cost me. My eyes blew wide as a tree trunk of a man rammed into me, tackling me to the ground, and I grunted as we hit the concrete floor, me underneath taking all the impact, because he was a damn tank.
We were a pile of limbs and blades, rolling around, each of us desperately fighting for the upper hand, as I tried to get my head on straight and calculate his next move.
I was already bleeding from somewhere when the woman said, “He’s been instructed to kill you, so I suggest you do it first.”
