“Looks like we weren’t expected.”
Ethan snorted. “We were expected, not welcomed.”. Mississippi was one of the safer streets to patrol, and one that they hadn’t covered yet in their door-to-door search for Caroline and Celine.
“OK,” Aaron got out of the Humvee, heading to the firstdoor on the street. He banged hard, waited a sec and knocked again. A man answered, his gaunt face haggard with deprivation and dirt. Aaron held up the headshots of the girls. “You see them?”
“No.” The man slammed the door in his face and Aaron forced himself to back up a step and move down the street.
No had been the standard response from those who had any English vocabulary. Most of the time, they just got angry retorts in Farsi, followed by a door slam.
Ethan trailed behind, guarding Aaron’s back as he stopped at every single door on the street. They questioned twenty households on Mississippi and then moved on to Arkansas Street. When they reached the end of that, about fifty doors of no new news of the girls later, Aaron reached the end of his patience. “I hate not knowing.”
“Me, too, brother. Maybe the new intel will be something we can actually use,” Ethan scanned the now deserted street behind them, keeping his rifle at the ready.
“I’m letting you take the next one.” Aaron knocked on the beaten up green metal door. “I swear, if another asshole slams the door in my face, I’m gonna kick it down.” A man in a white tunic and pants answered, his gaze raking over Aaron a second before the man spit on Aaron’s boot.
Aaron gritted his teeth and held up the worn photos of the girls. His boots had been through worse shit than this. “Have you seen them?”
The man cursed and made to shut the door. Rage rode through Aaron on wings. He slammed a hand to the door and yanked the man out, pinning him to the wall. “You hear me? I asked you a question. Where are the girls?!”
The man threw his hands up, waving in front of his face and shouting back in Farsi, “Man nemefahmam. Man nemefahmam.”
Ethan grabbed Aaron’s shoulder, pulling him off the local.“He doesn’t know. What the hell are you doing?”
The man ran inside and locked the door. Ethan grabbed Aaron and threw him against the wall where the villager had been. “What’s going on, man? I know you, and this isn’t like you. And don’t give me another line of shit about how you feel guilty for screwing up the mission, because we all screwed that one up and you know it. We’ve all failed missions before and moved on. What’s eating you alive over this one?”
What was so different?
Maybe it was the fact that he’d cornered Celine in her bedroom and tried to devour her whole. Or maybe that she’d returned the favor full force in an explosion of passion neither of them had been prepared for. Or maybe, just maybe, it was the fact that Aaron had thrown out his training and experience on pure instinct and lust. He’d known the digs of getting involved with Celine, or at least he’d thought he had. But once he’d had her, the moment he buried himself between her sweet, honey drenched thighs, he’d realized his mistake.
Celine Latimer was his one. The One. He wouldn’t be able to quit her after a one nighter. She was like a drug. Her kisses. Her moans. Her need for him.
And fuck all if he’d ended up killing her like his father killed his mother.
Colonel Grey walking in on them going at it like two teenagers in the back of his father’s car when Aaron should have been on patrol, was just the steel shovel to bury the relationship coffin.
Aaron had tucked tail and turned away from Celine, pointedly ignoring her for the rest of the week despite the wounded expression she shot him whenever they were in each other’s vicinity. “I should have paid better attention. It was my job to protect them.”
“And mine. And the Team. And the Secret Service.”
“But-”
“No buts.” Ethan kept him pinned. “You've been on edge since we got here and I've tried to stay out of it, but I'm not gonna sit back and watch you lose it. You've been taking chances lately; chances you never used to take.”
Celine was at the mercy of a murderer and in a den of monsters who treated women worse than dogs. They wouldn’t hesitate to hurt her. Bile clawed its way up his throat at the thought of another man's hands on her body.
“Just let it out, brother. Get whatever is eating you alive off your chest so we can get to work.” Ethan crossed his arms.
If he'd pushed harder, tried to pick him apart, Aaron might have clamped down, but the obvious concern in Ethan's voice broke through Aaron's wall of anger; straight through to his fear.
“Shit.” Aaron shoved a hand through his thick sweaty hair. “I'm trying, you know. I can't get her out of my mind long enough to concentrate. Every time I think about someone hurting her…” He wanted to punch something. To break something. To kill someone.
“I get it. You know I get it. But you got to find a way back to zero, brother. This edge you’re riding puts us all at risk.”
“I know you understand, but that doesn't stop the fact that Mr. J has them. We know that. He's already tried to murder our team twice. If he can find a way to use the girls against us, you know he will. We have to find them before it comes to that.”
Ethan put a hand on Aaron's shoulder. “We both know what Mr. J is capable of. Just like we both know that if you don't get your center back, Mr. J will win. Again. Your greatest weapon is your training. Take that rage filling up your insides right now and compress it into cold hard hate. You figure out a way to get it under control and we will find Mr. J and Celine. But you keep letting the anger rule your decisions instead of logic and you'll get us all killed.”
Aaron blew out a long sigh, knowing Ethan was right, but at a complete loss as to how to tame the raging beast inside him. “I know that’s what I need to do. I just don't know if I can.”
