Page 49 of What I Should Have Done

“Yeah, I got one,” Bernie replied first. “What the hell is the squad doing if we’re taking out the targets?”

Dom’s chuckle entered my ear. “They’ll take care of the combatants in the first and final vehicle.” Glancing behind me at the two soldiers hitching a ride with us, it seemed they were completely oblivious to our conversation.

I pumped the clutch and shifted, drifting around a corner with my palm against the wheel. A nearly inaudible gasp left Scottie’s lips beside me, and I glanced at her, my eyes hidden behind the sunglasses. Was she hurt?

But a thin crack between where her mask ended on her cheeks and her sunglasses began turned a shade of pink, telling me something entirely different. All it took was a little shift and spin of the wheel to get her going?

“So, they’re on-sight backup?” Duncan asked through the radio.

“Shit, we’re becoming bougie as fuck ’cause we’ve never had that before,” I replied, and Bernie’s cackle sent a ringing through my ear.

“I thought we were going to be the backup this time,” Ford replied. He leaned back in his seat, shifting uncomfortably against the two soldiers seated beside him.

“Yes, we are,” Dom replied.

Scottie’s eyes briefly caught mine, and even though her face was hidden from view, there had to be the same level of confusion written upon her features that twisted mine.

“But we’re taking lead?” I asked.

“No. But Bernie is the best at explosives, which means that he got volunteered to dismantle the damn thing. One in our team is going in, so I, as your LT Commander, refuse to let him go in without us having his back. Besides, why would you not want the best of the best?”

“Ah, fucking loopholes,” Ford muttered through the comms.

A chuckle left my chest as I glanced over at Scottie. I really wished that her face was not hidden behind the mask, curiosity roared hot begging to see what she was feeling.

Shit. It hit me like a mortar to a wall. Scottie was consuming my thoughts, and all we’d done was flirt a little. Wait, because she was still trying to settle into the team, not because of the flirting. That’s right. We were headed into this mission and she was assigned to the same task and target as I was—a truck full of weapons.

Whatever strange feelings of desire and warmth that swirled within my veins was going to have to wait. Having our first successful mission as a team on this deployment became top priority, not whatever confusing thoughts Scottie created in me. Keeping our sniper safe needed to be my focus. It was my focus. Everything else faded as quickly as the sun was slipping away in the sky.

“When is the convoy supposed to be making its pass through the canyon?” I asked, realizing that we were quickly encroaching our rendezvous point that the JLTV would be stored at, before the rest of the soldiers made entry on foot.

“The truck of weapons has made their progress slow, so we estimate at 0400 hours. That should give us enough time to get these buggies in place, camouflaged, and out of the way before they even know we’re there,” Dom answered through my radio.

“I’m assuming I’ll be parking and ambushing from the rear?” I questioned, cruising around another corner as we dropped into a small pass between massive dunes. Three klicks ahead should be an old, abandoned outpost where nothing but a few cement barricades remained. That was the intended location to stow away the JLTV until we returned from a completed mission.

“Correct,” Dom replied.

“Is our arrival time calculated with the soldiers on foot included?” Duncan asked.

“Yes, Matrix,” Dom confirmed.

“We’ll still be cutting it close. That only gives us maybe thirty minutes to get in position before the convoy is supposed to come through,” Duncan explained.

Determination and that ever-present desire to do some damage rolled thick, prickling beneath my skin, as I shifted the buggy and we roared through a short tunnel. It spit us out a klick away from the outpost, the cement barricades hazy in the distance.

“That’s why I expect perfection, as usual, even if we are just back up, do you copy?” Dom’s voice turned stern, hardness coating his words.

“Sir, yes, sir!” we replied in unison through the radio.

Chapter 18

MIKEY

The sun had not yet risen. A chill of cold swept down my spine as Scottie waited, seated beside me. Both of us prepared to ambush, the buggy backed between several boulders in this unusually deep ravine. A single winding, make-shift road cleaved into this pass, meaning only one way out with the buggies. A real possibility that only one of the two would make it out of this canyon weighed heavily in the air.

“Scotch,” I whispered to her. She leaned closer, keeping the barrel of her rifle trained on our ambush point. “You sure you don’t want to go up the opposite side of the canyon now? Hole up and wait?”

“Not until you’ve been able to reach the cab of the weapons truck,” she replied in hushed tones and then swung a brief accusatory glare my way. “Do you not trust me, or something?”

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