Page 5 of Clean Slade
His shoulders rose and fell, but he kept his composure.
“That’s none of your business, now is it?”
He made to leave.
“Can I at least get your name?”
He grabbed the door handle and turned his head just enough for me to see his face but not to fully look at me.
“It’s Rex.” He threw the door open, and two large men in suits standing in front of it turned to look at him as if he was their boss.
“Slade,” I shouted after him, but it was too late.
The men pushed people aside and took Rex away, leaving me behind, breathless and intrigued.
TWO
SLADE
Present
My heart pumped louder than it was used to. My entire body felt the burn of my overworked muscles, and my knee?
Well, my knee was just about fucked. I could feel it swelling and it was hot to the touch, even through all the clothing.
“Are you okay, Myers?” one of my teammates asked from behind the wheel.
Joey Fowler. A walking trouble magnet and a literal menace to society—depending on who you asked.
But I loved him anyway.
“Yeah. Just out of practice, I suppose.”
And fuck me if that wasn’t the truth. It had taken me years to recover from my injury. The injury that had crushed my dreams and put me back to square one.
But even that had turned out to be a blessing in disguise because I would have taken the last few years with my family over any day in the desert shooting down terrorists.
“We need to get you back in shape, dude,” he said, and his boyfriend, the reason for my pain, slapped his shoulder.
Although I couldn’t really be mad at Joey’s boyfriend. It was thanks to Santiago that we’d uncovered a whole drug cartel operating on the small island of Mayberry Holm. And thanks to his abduction, we’d snapped at least a branch off it.
Wasn’t that the whole purpose of my move here? To rejoin my retired team and help my old commander get rid of the scum that had set up shop in his hometown during his absence?
“Do you need a hospital? Joey, we should stop at the hospital.” Santiago tapped Joey, pointing left at the intersection.
“I’m fine. It tends to happen when I put too much pressure on it for extended periods,” I told the young man.
Santiago was gorgeous, with a delicate but manly face and kind eyes. I could see why Joey had been taken by him. Why he would go to the ends of the earth to get him back.
No, I’m not jealous. Not jealous at all.
“Okay. If you think you’ll be okay,” he said.
I nodded with a smile.
“I’ve been through worse. Trust me.”
It was a miracle I hadn’t lost my leg, but that didn’t mean I hadn’t spent the better part of my retirement in PT, trying to regain my mobility.
