Page 68 of What I Should Have Done

Grief held only a brief place in my heart. Rage, red hot rage, blazing like the devil himself had arrived in my soul. Whatever motherfucker stood between me and Scottie would meet a cruel fate, worse than the one that was gifted to Jacob.

“What are you saying?” Duncan asked, tipping his head as I tucked Jacob’s dog tags into my own secure pocket.

“Think about it, we’ve had nothing but faulty fucking intel. And Merlin doesn’t show up unless contracted by someone. His goal was to take Scottie. Why, who the fuck knows. But every damn mission has been an absolute nightmare, and this one…” I took a steady step toward Dom. “This one got a man killed.”

Dom slowly nodded, studying me behind his goggles. “You think there’s a mole.”

“Well, shit,” Bernie muttered.

“There’s no way. That’s treason,” Duncan countered.

“Makes sense, though,” Ford added, crossing his arms over his chest.

“I know it’s a wild thought, really out there, but I can’t think of another explanation as to why our entire deployment has gone to hell,” I added. Silence fell around us. I honestly hadn’t even considered the thought until the words tumbled from my own mouth. But there had to be an explanation as to why Jacob was dead. There had to be something else that explained Scottie being kidnapped. Otherwise, I didn’t think that my mind could handle the thought of the other reason being because I fucked up a mission.

There had to be an explanation that came from somewhere outside of me. Outside of this team. Otherwise, the blame landed squarely on us.

And there was no fucking way that the one thing I was good at was the cause of death to my friend and the kidnapping of the woman I cared for. Of a teammate. Of someone who seemed to have bonded to us like magnets of opposite poles. She’d come across prickly, but I wasn’t going to lie, I liked prickly.

We were all a little prickly.

“Alright, let’s go.” Dom let his gaze linger on me briefly and then turned around. “Scottie probably left a trail of something. Blood, or maybe she dropped pieces of her rag she ties around her sniper rifle for camouflage or something else. She’s smart, so we need to continue to trust that she’ll be fine until we can find her. I’ll radio Colonel Duke as we go. And we don’t return to base until we find our teammate.”

Merlin better keep his motherfucking hands to himself, or I’ll cut each finger off and feed them to him.

The world turned red.

I’d heard the jokes about my rather unhinged actions during fights, but they hadn’t seen shit yet.

I wasn’t going to return to base until I felt the crack of Merlin’s bones beneath my own hands. Not until the devil carried his soul to the bottom of the river. And I was the one to deliver him there myself.

Chapter 24

SCOTTIE

Agrunt rumbled in my chest. The leather bounds strapped around my wrists and ankles bit into my skin. They burned. Such a stark contrast to the cold metal table I laid on. I closed my eyes, ignoring the overwhelming stench of sweat and urine that clogged my nostrils. At least right now, I was alone.

It took everything in me to avoid thinking about Thompson. But we’d been outnumbered. He’d not even been able to get a shot off before fifteen men swarmed our little room. I prayed that the team would find the glow stick and shards of the wrapping I’d torn from my sniper rifle just before they hauled me off.

At least the main guy wasn’t left unscathed. I’d managed to clock him in the jaw with my heel at least once before two guys bound me and carried me out. Blood beneath my fingernails was beginning to dry. Scrapes of skin from the back of the men who had tossed me over their shoulders on this journey mixed in with the iron.

We hadn’t gone far. But I’d been gagged and blindfolded, so there was no way of knowing where I was other than the fucking room I was in now. Not a single window existed along the four walls in this rectangular room. One single lightbulb dangled from the ceiling, casting that nasty yellow glow into the corners. Chatter sounded outside the thin wooden door that I knew I’d be able to bust down, if only I could get loose from these cuffs.

My stomach flipped. I wasn’t easily scared. But right now, fear was as abundant as the adrenaline flowing thick through my veins. I wasn’t ready to die. Thompson shouldn’t have died either.

Images of his gruesome murder flashed through my mind, and I tore my eyes open. “WHERE ARE YOU, YOU FUCKING COWARD?” I screamed, thrashing against the restraints.

Where is Mikey?

I couldn’t believe how quickly I flipped from ready to face the man who took me, to desperately wishing Mikey was here. He’d absolutely destroy this man. And somewhere deep within my belly, a smidge of guilt swam amongst everything else. I should have taken up his offer of some training. Maybe I wouldn’t have ended up here.

Maybe Thompson wouldn’t be dead.

I wouldn’t give up. I wouldn’t show them how scared I actually was, for Thompson’s sake.

And Mikey’s.

“SHOW YOURSELF, DAMN IT!” I shouted again.

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