Senator Cotter would take complete control of JSOC with the General at his side, carrying out his tasks. “You get the feeling the whole wedding was orchestrated by Mr. J?”
Task Force Scorpion’s former CIA liaison turned traitor. Caroline Cotter had been the bait to seal the deal and Celine Latimer had been collateral damage.
Ethan said, “Or it was a deal Mr. J couldn’t afford to allow to go down.”
Aaron paused mid-air. “You think he wanted to stop it?”
Ethan shrugged and racked his bar. “Makes sense, why else kidnap her before the wedding could take place?”
“You talk to the commander about this?”
“Yeah. He said he’d started kinda thinking the same thing. But without proof, the girls or J, we won’t know anything for sure.”
Aaron grabbed his towel and wiped his face. He’d been so focused on his failure he’d never stopped to consider that J wasn’t pulling the strings, but trying to cut them. “It should never have gone down like that.”
“Exactly. The senator vetted his own security. He pulled us in for extra detail, that’s it,” Ethan said.
“It was a cake mission. How hard could it be to pull security at Caroline’s wedding?” He’d gotten complacent. He should never have taken Senator Cotter’s word that he’d fully vetted his own staff. Aaron grabbed the bar, needing the physical exertion to tame the internal battle.
If he’d approached the mission with the same intensity he did all others Celine might still be here.
Up, down. The barbell bowed under the heavyweights stacked onto the ends every time he lifted. He was going to make Celine's kidnapper bend like that, right before he snapped the bastard in half.
“You’re right, we knew better, but we both trusted the Senator. It was his fuck up too, and his daughter that was kidnapped because of it,” Ethan said.
“Not just Caroline. Celine was kidnapped, too. Don’t forget her,” Aaron ground out, jaw clenched under the pressure of holding up the extreme weight and guilt.
“In case I need to remind you, my girlfriend Kate was almost taken. Don’t talk like I don’t understand man. We nearly lost all of them.”
“I’m not, I just- I was the reason Celine was there in the first place,” Aaron said, careful to keep his emotions on the back burner.
“Yeah, so what? You invited her because you’d vetted her and we needed a makeup artist and stylist we could trust.Someone who could be close to Caroline that we wouldn’t have to worry about. You were just doing your job.”
Oh, he did his job alright. He’d fully vetted Celine Latimer, but not as a stylist for the bride. “If you say so.”
He wanted her. He’d wanted her for nearly a year. He’d wanted her so bad he’d forgotten the cardinal rule – no relationships in the special forces. Not that he enjoyed one-night stands, but he wasn’t about to put a girl through the shit of being in a relationship with a man who was never there, or one who may never come home from a mission.
He’d seen the toll it took on his mother. Each and every time his dad left on a mission, Aaron would watch another batch of light in his mother’s eyes dim. Then the painful forced reunions with a man none of them knew anymore. Hell, his father didn’t know his wife and kids either and how could Aaron blame him for just doing his duty. He couldn’t fault his father for signing his life over to the military, but he could sure as hell make sure he never put a woman through that kind of pain. His dad didn’t come back from his last assignment. His mother lost it, broke apart into a million pieces. The one woman Aaron had loved above all others slipped right through his hands and took her own life.
He’d thought about blaming the military – but how could he? He blamed his father for falling in love and committing to a relationship he could never hold. No matter what, Aaron had vowed to never do that to a woman. Either they understood that they came to his bed for one night only or they didn’t come at all.
And that life creed had held him rock steady for his entire career – until Celine Latimer made him want more.
He wasn’t in the mood to talk about it anymore. Aaron dropped the heavy metal bar with a satisfying clank onto the concrete at his feet.
Ethan wiped the sweat from his face and dropped thesoaked hand towel on a nearby metal chair. Their workout facility had the necessities. Water enough so they wouldn’t pass out from dehydration. Weights heavy enough to work off the steam. All the outdoor circulation the desert could provide.
Hell on earth.
They’d been stationed there for two weeks, searching and pulling recon non-stop. They'd tapped all their contacts in the area, searched satellite photographs and even done some door-to-door searches only to come up with nothing. Not even a blip. It was as if the two women had vanished.
“I saw Hoyt and Jared pull in a few seconds ago. Let’s head back out. Who knows, maybe we’ll get a lead,” Ethan said.
Aaron left the barbell on the concrete pad for the next guy who needed to bend some metal. “Five minutes.”
After a quick shower and uniform change, the two checked in with the commander and then headed out on their knock and talk mission, which was a complete waste of time, but it was also their only hope for a lead right now.
“Just got a call from the rest of the team, they'll be here in the next hour. Top has some new intel he wants to show us.” Ethan pulled the Humvee to a stop at the end of Mississippi Street, in Shorawak, a medium sized town near the Afghanistan/Pakistan border. Square built white stone buildings lined the dirt road, some with metal doors and other with burlap covering the opening. Kids kicked soccer balls down the end, but stopped the second they got out of their Humvee.
