Page 1 of Dirty Justice

ONE

AJ Apollo slammed the lid of the washing machine a little too hard. The noise of metal hitting metal with brute force echoed through the coin laundry.

He glanced around, hoping any of the little old ladies who lived in the apartment building weren’t in here today, and that he hadn’t made one of them leap out of their compression stockings.

As the washer began to fill with water, he turned to lean against it, folding his arms across his chest. Damn, he hated the mundane parts of life. Leaving all that behind was a plus for being in black ops. And not just any black ops—deepblack ops. SEAL Team Blackout was completely off the grid, off the books…and off the fucking planet.

To the world, they were dead, given the riskiest missions the government thought couldn’t be successful. Well, Blackout proved them wrong over and over again. Few men had really been lost on either Alpha or Charlie teams.

AJ was considered one of the lost.

He stared beyond the dust-covered equipment at the cinderblock wall. Someone had chosen to smear a thick yellow paint over it, probably to offset the drudgery of the chore.

It was the most depressing place he could think of being right now. He’d rather be with his teammates, dropping into enemy territory, adrenaline pumping through his system.

Instead, he was sidelined with a damn head injury.

Not even a bad one.

Still, they wouldn’t let him rejoin Charlie until he was cleared fit for duty. Secretly, he knew what the desk jockeys in the Pentagon were doing. They were checking him out, doing a deep dive into his motives for going AWOL and taking an op into his own hands.

They were digging for more about why he’d faked his death that day in a Texas bunker.

He’d explained his reasons for striking out alone—he’d known the only way they’d ever stop the terrorist Mashala Abubakar was to go evendeeper. Into the depths of hell kind of deep. That day in the bunker amidst all the fighting, he saw his chance and couldn’t pass it by.

He was damn sure a few Navy admirals overseeing Blackout from their comfy offices didn’t buy his story, though. The time they were taking to investigate him was keeping him from returning to duty even though he was more than fit for it.

Fucking Tuesdays. He hated doing laundry, or any other number of mundane tasks, so why did he choose to do them all every Tuesday?

Apollo’s phone vibrated, and he pushed off the washing machine to remove it from the pocket of his jeans. They were worn, with a hole in the corner of his back pocket, and his phone snagged on it as he withdrew it.

After the device unlocked using facial recognition, he stared hard at the notification.

He was so accustomed to adrenaline hits that he barely registered the uptick of his heart rate.

This wasn’t a message that the food delivery service he used would be swapping out his romaine lettuce for iceberg.

It was something much, much bigger, dealing with big fucking terrorists with huge rap sheets.

Something was always brewing in the Middle East, but this chatter about part of Abubakar’s cell known to be squatting on US soil wasn’t to be taken lightly. He knew the terrorist in question. If Amaya—one of the side leaders in the terrorist cell—made a move, he’d make it big.

Dammit, he needed to get to his laptop and dig into the matter.

He tossed a look at the washing machine. Nineteen more minutes to go on the setting. He didn’t like leaving his laundry in the machine when someone else might need to use it.

Fuck it—he had time to run back up to his apartment.

Abandoning his post, he strode out of the laundry. The building was old, but secure enough that he might not need to look over his shoulder all the time, but he did so out of habit. His boots pounded old linoleum tile as he rushed to the stairs and took them two at a time to reach his apartment.

After entering his place, he kicked the door shut with a bang, too late giving consideration for the elderly lady who lived below him.

Damn, he really was a bit too keyed up, wasn’t he? Too much energy to expel. A shot of adrenaline he hadn’t experienced in weeks coursing through his system.

He moved to his laptop where it sat on a cheap desk in the corner. As soon as he dropped to the chair in front of it and put fingers to keys, his mind plunged into the world he was used to living in and not this ordinary existence.

The world where he carried weapons and fought his way through foreign cities, hunting for a certain terrorist who was now known withtotalaccuracyto be dead. Team Alpha got him, thanks to the trail Apollo left for them to follow.

His entire reason for faking his death, for going rogue, was to get that motherfucker.

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