Chapter 8

Raegan staredat the imposing men taking up space in various places within Rocky's living room. Seriously questioning her sanity, she looked up at the man who'd somehow convinced her this was her best option.

"Go ahead." His blond head dipped with encouragement. "Tell them what you told me."

With a quick scan of the room, she licked her lips and asked, "Which part?"

"Why don't you start at the beginning?" Christian Hunt stood between the edge of the couch and the front door. Arms crossed at his chest, the Delta Team lead operator turned his assessing glance her way.

Sitting on the cushion nearest him was Brody King. Rocky had introduced the stoic former SEAL as the team's SIC a few minutes before, and from the way he was staring her down, Raegan was fairly certain he'd rather be anywhere else but here.

She took in a deep breath, her shoulders dropping with the heavy exhale as she stood to the side next to Rocky. When her gaze slid back up to his, he gave her another prodding nod.

"It's okay. You can trust them."

Easier said than done, big guy.

"My M.P. unit was sent to Iraq three years ago as part of a classified operation to train a specialized group of Iraqi soldiers."

"They deployed an M.P. unit?" The man who'd been introduced to her as Cade Ellis frowned from the recliner in the corner of the room. "That's kind of unusual, isn't it?"

"It is." She confirmed with a nod. "But ISIS was gaining power in that area of the country, so we were sent on a three-month deployment with the goal of training some of their top field soldiers, so they could then take what they learned back to their people. The hope was to give them a greater chance at holding their ground in the event of an attack."

"I'm going to go out on a limb here, and guess that something happened while you and your people were over there?" Jagger Brooks spoke next.

With an elbow resting casually on Rocky's fireplace mantel, the former Air Force CCT looked more like he should be on the cover of a men's fashion magazine than part of a highly trained group of government killers.

Didn't these guys already read the background check their tech buddy ran on me?

As if reading the question rolling through her mind, Rocky gave a quick but clear explanation. "The team hasn't had a chance to look at all the intel Liam pulled on you."

Ah, yes. Liam Cutler. That would be the man currently sitting on the opposite end of the couch from Brody with a tablet in his hands and an unreadable expression on his handsome, rugged face.

"Right. So anyway, the situation there was becoming increasingly volatile, and there was talk of the U.S. sending troops back in."

A gruff snort came from Brody, who hadn't spoken again since the elite group of badass protectors had arrived minutes before. "Talk about a political nightmare."

"Exactly." Raegan offered the man a nod. "The administration at the time devised a plan. They decided to send a covert group of M.P.s on a three-month deployment. Ninety days to pass along as much knowledge and as many skills as possible with the thought that they'd then take what they learned from us back to their own people."

"How'd you get into the country undetected?" Jagger chimed back in.

"We arrived inside a cargo plane's hull in the middle of the night. Shortly before landing, the members of my unit, me included, hunkered down inside several large, wooden shipping crates. We landed; they dollied us inside the small, covert base they'd set up specifically for the mission."

"Damn." Cade's dark brows rose as if the man was impressed by what she'd just shared. "That's cool. But…how did you have a base full of soldiers in training without being noticed?"

"The base was set up to look like a makeshift medical facility for the locals. The locals knew better, but since what we were doing was in their best interest, they stayed quiet and went along with the ruse."

"How'd you train without catching the attention of the enemy?" Christian's brown eyes remained focused on her.

"When a strong ISIS presence was reported nearby, we'd train at night. When things died down in that region of the country, we'd go back to working days."

"So what happened?" Brody looked as if he was ready to get to the heart of the story.

I feel your pain, trust me.

"One of the soldiers we were training turned out to be an ISIS plant," she shared. The anger that churned deep in her belly felt as fresh as the day it happened. "His name is Samer Nasim Ali." God, just saying the murdering asshole's name made her want to scream out in a fiery rage. "He was arrogant. Rude. Defiant any time I tried to teach him something new or correct something as simple as the way he was holding his weapon." Her teeth clenched together from the memory of him being blatantly spiteful toward her. "It was clear he had an issue with my being a woman, and he made no effort to hide his disdain of Americans."

"Dick."

Raegan looked to Cade. "You have no idea."

"You ever take your concerns to anyone higher up?"

"I spoke to Chief Tupper." She nodded. "He was the Chief Warrant Officer in charge of my unit."

"And?" Jagger asked, seemingly genuinely invested in the story.

"Chief was just as sick of the guy as the rest of us, but since Samer's only issue was his piss-poor attitude, it wasn't worth causing problems that could potentially affect the op."

"So you kept your mouth shut and put up with his bullshit while you counted down the days," Cade surmised.

"Pretty much." A tiny smirk lifted one corner of her mouth before the heartbreaking memories stole it away. "We were exactly seven days from going home when the attack happened. Samer and his men left for the day only to return two hours later. They blew a hole in the side of the base's concrete perimeter." Emotion clogged her throat, but she forged on because, well…did she really have a choice at this point? "Long story short, Samer lead an attack on the base that resulted in the deaths of everyone on my team."

"Holy shit." Cade's eyes grew wide. "You lost your entire unit?"

Yes. Yes, she had.

"A HESH round destroyed most of the building we used for our sleeping quarters." She could still hear the explosions. The screams. And though she knew it was impossible, sometimes Raegan could swear she could still smell the scent of smoke and burning fuel. "I took a round in the thigh trying to get to my people but managed to take cover long enough to get a tourniquet in place. But by the time I made it across the courtyard, I realized I'd have to go around the back of the building to get inside to my people."

"You have anyone watching your six?" Brody rumbled from his place on Rocky's couch.

She met the man's dark, unreadable stare. "Chief Tupper and two others." Grief and guilt left her throat momentarily clogged. "Sgt. FC Valerie Lane and PFC Joseph Mills."

The pain she felt from their loss shouldn't be so strong after all this time…should it?

"I'm sorry," the former SEAL offered sincerely. "We've all experienced our fair share of loss throughout our years of service, but to lose your entire team…" He shook his head as his deep voice trailed.

"Thank you." Raegan gave an appreciative nod, the solemn look they shared based on a tragic common ground.

"You ever make it inside the building?" Christian spoke up again.

"I didn't get the chance." Her residual anger returned. "I started that way, but Samer was there, and we…" Raegan worked a hard swallow. "We ended up in a standoff. The son of a bitch stood there, smirking and laughing like he was fucking God."

The edge of Raegan's fingernails dug into her palms as her fists curled tight at her sides. Telling this story to Rocky had been hard enough. Repeating it for his friends less than an hour later…

You got this, Lieutenant. You're almost there.

With Chief Tupper's encouraging voice in her ear, she finished the rest of the tragic story.

"Air support arrived, and I used the distraction to take my shot. Samer went down, and I ended up passing out from blood loss." A rush of emotion filled a well of unshed tears, but she blinked them away, refusing to let even a single one fall in front of these men. "I learned about my team after I woke up in the hospital the next day."

The room fell silent as Rocky's team soaked in what she'd told them. Jagger broke up the awkward stretch a moment later.

"I think I speak for all of us when I say…that really fucking sucks."

For some reason, the man's comment nearly made her smile. "Yeah." She shared a look of understanding with the man. "It really does."

"Okay, so we can all agree this Samer guy's a piece of shit," Liam acknowledged. "But what does he have to do with tonight's little B and E stint?"

When she brought her gaze up to Rocky's, he simply looked back at her with an unapologetic shrug and a low, "They were going to find out, anyway."

She supposed that was the whole point of this little meeting of the minds. So with that in mind, Raegan ripped off the band aid and told them what she knew to be true.

"Samer is here."

There. She'd said it.

"Here, as in…the United States?" Cade guessed.

"As in Chicago."

The room grew quiet as the six men shared a collective look. She held her breath, waiting for the comments she was sure would follow…

You must be mistaken.

There's no way it could be him.

A known terrorist wouldn't be allowed inside the U.S.

It's just your PTSD and grief messing with your head.

Raegan had heard all those plausible explanations more times than she could count. And every time someone tried to placate her—or worse, offer words of sympathy or pitying stares—she wanted to scream from the top of her lungs for them to listen.

But as she stood in Rocky's living room, waiting for those same, familiar reactions to unfold, she realized they weren't looking at her like she was crazy. And their gazes weren't filled with pity or untrust.

In fact, unless she was mistaken, these guys…this team…almost looked as if…

They believe me.

At the very least, they weren't shaking their heads, rolling their eyes, or looking back at her with the same bless her poor little heart expressions she'd seen time and time again. Instead, they began asking questions.

Good, perfectly understandable questions that didn't undermine or condescend. Things like…

"Where did you see him?"

"At a gas station, believe it or not," she responded to Brody directly. "I'd stopped to fill up on my way home from work, and the bastard was just finishing pumping gas into a newer, white, nondescript panel van two spaces down."

Jagger's shoulders bounced with a huff of a breath. "Kind of makes you think about who's fueling up down the line from you, doesn't it?"

Not giving her a chance to respond to Jagger's rhetorical question, Christian asked, "How can you be so sure it was him?"

That one was easy.

"Are there any tangos from your time in service you've never forgotten?" she asked a question of her own. "Ones whose eyes still keep you up some nights?"

"Pretty sure we all do." Christian looked around the room and nodded.

The others either nodded or muttered their agreements, as well.

"Samer Ali's eyes…" Raegan ignored the painful knot growing at the base of her throat. "I'll never forget them for as long as I live. And believe me, I've tried."

Jagger dropped the arm that had been resting on the fireplace and shoved his hands into his front pockets. "Did he see you?"

"He did, but only for a split second as he passed by my pump on his way out of the station. And I looked away, using my hair as cover to keep him from getting a good look.

A few seconds of silence passed before Liam asked, "What did you do next?"

"I followed him to the house down the street."

Understanding filtered behind the man's brown stare. "That's why you rented the house next door to Rocky."

Score one for the tech genius.

"The day I saw Samer, he drove to that house and went inside. There were a few other men there, too, and they were carrying in boxes and some of those plastic storage tubs."

"What about the cops?" Jagger asked the obvious. "You think maybe they could?—"

"I went to them," she cut him short. "The police and the Army."

"And?" Brody stared back at her expectantly.

Aaaand this was the part where she'd lost the military's interest.

Rocky looked down at her from where he stood by her side. Without a word, he reached down, took her hand in his, and gave it a supportive squeeze.

There was no way for him to know just how much that simple show of support meant. But she curled her hand around his and pulled from his strength to finish the rest of what needed to be said.

"I didn't exactly have a choice when I left the Army." Damn this is hard. "It was more of a…suggestion."

Christian's gaze slid to her and Rocky's joined hands, but rather than comment on that, he asked, "By whom?"

"My shrink, my new unit head…everyone I tried talking to about Samer when I was recovered enough to look into his whereabouts." Raegan let out a humorless chuckle. "The man led a raid that resulted in the loss of multiple American lives, and they acted like it was just another day at the office."

"That's the government for ya." Jagger nodded as if he truly understood. Putting his palms up in a dramatic showing, he acted like a shady politician when he announced, "Nothing to see here, folks. Nothing at all to see."

I think I could be friends with a man like him.

"That kind of comes with the territory when you're working a covert op, though," Brody pointed out.

"I get the need for classified intel and plausible deniability," she quickly explained. "And it wasn't like I was asking them to go against the public story."

When the other men in the room looked to Rocky for more, he asked no one in particular, "You remember the story about the Lockheed C-130 Hercules that crashed somewhere over the South Atlantic a few years back?"

"Hell yes, I do." Cade brought his gaze to hers. "Are you saying that was a cover for what happened to your team?"

"That's exactly what that was." Raegan nodded.

"Not the first time Uncle Sam's pulled the wool over civilian eyes," Jagger drawled. "Sure as hell won't be the last."

Unfortunately the man was right.

"Anyway, after I got out of the hospital, I made it my mission to get justice for my team." My friends. "I wasn't trying to cause trouble, but I also wasn't going to just sit back and keep quiet if they weren't even trying to find Samer. I needed to know they weren't going to let him get away with what he did."

"You can probably guess how they reacted when Raegan started asking questions," Rocky rumbled from beside her.

"That when they started pushing for the separation of service?"

Turning to Jagger, she nodded. "It started with my psychiatrist. Hypervigilance due to obsessive paranoia secondary to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, I believe was the official diagnosis." Or at least, that's what the jerk told the higher ups. "Of course, the Army was all too happy to jump on the crazy train, so…"

"Well, why wouldn't they?" Jagger shot her an incredulous look as he freed his hands from his pockets and crossed his arms at his chest. His tone oozing with sarcasm, the highly trained operative took it a step further with, "Easier to believe a wounded, grieving soldier has lost her marbles than admit they lost at their own game."

Yep. Definitely like this guy.

"You said you went to the cops when you saw Samer—or a guy who looked like him—at the house down the road." Brody brought the conversation back around. "What did they say?"

"I got an eye roll and an offer to fill out a report they'd get to ‘as soon as they could'."

Cade's lips curved into the smallest of smirks. "I'm assuming you didn't waste the ink?"

"Didn't figure it would do any good."

Jumping back in, Christian kept the conversation moving forward.

"So you see this guy and follow him to the house down the street." Delta's leader shifted his stance as his dark gaze met hers. "You see him and the men with him carrying stuff inside, and decide to rent the house next door to Rocky so you can…what? Run your own rogue investigation in hopes of getting photographic proof to take to the authorities?"

Raegan nodded. "That was my first thought, yeah. But it was dark, and I didn't want to spook him, so I never got a shot worth running through facial rec."

"And tonight's B and E?" Brody stared over at her. "What were you hoping to achieve with that?"

"Proof that Samer was there." She blew out a frustrated breath, praying these guys were taking what she was saying to heart. "I know this man. I've seen the evil in his eyes, and I'm telling you, if he's here…if the man I saw really is Samer Nasim Ali, and he really is in the city, it's because he's planning something."

Something very, very bad.

Several seconds passed before Christian asked her point-blank, "How sure are you that it's him?"

With Rocky's supportive hand still holding hers, Raegan locked eyes with his team leader and said, "I'd bet my life on it."

And at this point, that was exactly what she was doing.