“I’ll uh…meet you and the guys in the team room in forty-five minutes.”
Parker replied, “Sounds good,” before spinning on his heel and walking away.
I shut the door and came face-to-face with Xander’s pale, stark white face. “I gotta go.”
Tugging on the rest of my clothes, I leaned in to kiss him again now that we had fully dressed. My heart sank when he pulled away and ducked out the door.
One day, I might learn to deal with the whiplash Xander turning into Alex gave me.
CHAPTER 19
ALEX
Two days after infil,we sat in the hidey-hole, the one we’d been told we couldn’t use to do the exact thing we were doing that we were also told we couldn’t do—wait for the fucker command demanded we scoop up to show his damn face. The mission—the wordsshould you choose to accept itpopped in my head every time a sentence started with the words ‘the mission’—had been to infil, kick in the target’s door, grab the fucker, and hightail our asses, all of us, target included, to the exfil point.
That had been the plan. But plans changed, especially after first contact with the enemy, or not, since we’d seen the motherfucker. He disappeared during our helo in. Instead of turning us around until he surfaced, command ordered us to Charlie Mike and wait him out.
Forty-eight hours with a group of pissed off team guys, stuck waiting for some random guy with, if Daniel had the right of it, held very little intel, and what made the situation worse, planned time on target had us running light, and that meant limited provisions…
“I’m fucking starving,” Josh said.
Case in point. Of course, he was hungry. He never brought enough provisions, and he ate as if we camped out with a personal chef. All that led to where we were, stuck, and let’s be freaking for real, this wasn’t the first time we got sent out and told to fucking sit and spin.
“Josh, shut the hell up,” Parker said. “It’s your own fault, and it’s not like we’ve even been here that long.”
Longer than I wanted to be. Of course, what I got dragged away from was a metric fuckton better than what we were dealing with right now, which was a helluva lot of nothing. At least if we were back at base, I could sneak a blowjob. What I really needed was a good, hard fuck, but who knew when I’d get the opportunity.
“Focus up. We got movement,” Jason, Echo Eight, called out.
We weren’t that lucky.
“You’ve said that how many times?” Chris Houser, Echo Seven, said, echoing my thoughts.
“It’s him,” Jason demanded.
Marcus groaned. “Jesus, y’all act like we’ve not done these fucking logs before. You’d better document that shit right.”
Josh sighed, then said, “Movement noted on target. What appears to be…”
“Fuck, he’s really on the move, we gotta go,” Jason yelled.
“Quit acting like you’re a barely baked sugar cookie. Alex is the new guy; if anyone was going to lose their marbles when shit went sideways, it should be him,” Parker barked at Jason and Josh.
I laughed at them; we all did. Sometimes I think they acted ridiculously to lighten the darkness that loomed overhead. Either way, they’d been SEALs for ages; they knew how this fucking worked, but every damn time the danger switch got flipped, Parker reminded them they weren’t fresh out of BUD/S.
Parker motioned for Jason to move, sitting behind the sniper scope once Jace rolled free. He leaned forward, peered through the scope for a moment, then sat back and keyed his mike.
“Castle, this is Echo One. How copy?”
“You’re Lima Charlie, Echo One.”
“Castle, be advised, target package is identified. We are Charlie Mike on Jackpot.”
“Copy Echo One. You are continuing mission objective. We have you on ISR. QRF is inbound to your location. Castle out.”
“Alrighty, boys, it’s go time. Get your shit together and let’s snatch this fucker,” Parker said. He didn’t shout. He didn’t need to. Echo One moved, and the rest of us followed because that’s how this worked.
And just like that, boredom gave way to chaos, and thoughts of Daniel evaporated. They were still there, locked behind the closet door I kept my true self in.
