Page 16 of Brutal Collateral

CHAPTER FOUR

Hadleigh – Syria – One Year Ago – Age 26

“It’s too fucking dangerous,” I shout into a satellite phone crouched inside an abandoned police station outside Damascus.

“In one hour, you’ll be surrounded by rebel soldiers,” Cherise warns through the line.

Who told the Deputy CIA Director we were in enough trouble for her to call me is something I don’t question when bombs are going off all around me.

“Copy,” I say to my best friend, livid at having to retreat.

We both failed out of BUD/S that year, rang the bell the same night. I tried again. Cherise didn’t. My bestie rose to the rank of a three-star vice admiral before resigning from the Navy to take a job in the CI-Fucking-A.

I left the Navy when my second enlistment was up, and now, I command my own covert ops team as a contract officer working for Cherise’s department. My unit has been assigned to rig abandoned buildings and detonate them as soon as the rebels show up. Then stay to kill off any stragglers the bombs didn’t tear to shreds.

As the leader of my team, I had a one hundred percent success rate. Until the last set of munitions didn’t go off due to faulty wiring.

“Fall back, RAVENs,” I address the team with our code name which stands for Reconnaissance, Assault, Vigilance, and Elite Neutralization.

We’re identified by an all-black Raven tattoo behind our right ear.

We’re a black-op squadron of disenfranchised female soldiers from all military branches and we are the best of the best. It’s just a unit most people don’t know about.

Unlike when we served under male sergeants and commanders, we’re allowed to keep our hair long to take back our femininity. We don’t want tobemen. We want to be strong, badasswomen.

I’ve not really felt like a woman since that Irish security guard fucked the daylights out of me in his motel room all night. I had the perfect cock, the perfect lips in and on my pussy, and the perfect orgasms. I didn’t think it would be possible to match that night. So I never bothered trying.

I keep myself satisfied with toys. And memories.

Of him.

Whose freaking name I never even got. But I didn’t need it.

I kept my promise to Cherise, I didn’t tell the guard what I did to Rand Miller, and my hot date that night never brought him up either. I didn’t even talk about BUD/S at all, just fell into an easy conversation about music, world events, and ammunition of all things. I loved listening to him speak, and I fell under the spell of that Irish accent. Our bodies spoke loudest to the needs we both had.

The things he did to me for those hours still star in my dreams.

Until they turn to nightmares.

During one of our final rounds, I caught sight of the tattoo on his calf that readsicario.The mark of a hitman that Alexander taught me to fear. My mind blanked, and I worried the guard had been sent by Mr. Christou to kill me for disappearing.

Private security must have been his cover. And I fucking fell for it.

It would be typical of a hitman to fuck his target before he finished the job. I tied him up and got the hell out of there, went back to the base, and never saw him again.

Rand Miller never came back either, and no one mentioned him again. I worried he died, and that I killed him. That’s when killing someone sent me into the bathroom vomiting. Now, it’s second nature to me. It’s my duty.

“Castille, do you hear me?” Cherise bellows into my earpiece, knocking me from my thoughts.

“I said,copy,” I yell back into the comm.

“Get to the roof and get your team the fuck out of there.”

“How? A bird can’t fly—”

“This one can. Trust me, Hadleigh.”

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