Special Forces: Operation Alpha: Protecting Beauty (Kindle Worlds Novella) (The Bounty Hunters: The Marino Bros. Book 5) (2 page)

Tex broke his gaze away from the couple on the balcony. “Melody. Not personal. Nothing like that. You’re the only woman I have ever loved. But yes, she was a mission a very long time ago. Before I became a Navy SEAL. . . Actually, she’s why I joined the SEALs. . . . Because I let her down. And I vowed I would never do that again.” Tex’s eyes were fixed on Melody now. Begging her to understand.

Melody heard the pain and the self-loathing in Tex’s voice. And she felt acid rise in her stomach. She didn’t like it, not one bit. This man never let anyone down. She found this incredibly hard to believe. He was a SEAL through and through. They didn’t fail. They didn’t forget, and they never left anyone behind. But the disappointment she heard in Tex’s voice stunned her. Her man was a rock. “Tell me about it,” she demanded. In her heart she knew that Tex’s guilt would eat at him unless he did just that. And it was apparent, that whatever had happened on this mission left its mark on his soul. This was a secret he couldn’t keep to himself any longer.

Tex nodded slowly and looked up at the couple one more time as they made their way into the magnificent home through the double glass doors. “I will. Love. I promise. . .but not now.”

Melody looked up at him with concern wondering how seeing this woman from the past was going to affect him. She was happy to see his eyes light up as he gazed down upon her once more. He would be okay. This woman from his past was in the past. It wouldn’t change him. Not now. She reached up to touch his cheek, already whiskered though he had shaved just yesterday. There were only a few worry lines in the corners of his eyes remaining.

“You sure you don’t want to talk about it now?” She would listen. Hell, she would do whatever it took to keep Tex happy. These next ten days she wanted to be worry free.

“Yes, I’m sure.” Tex pulled the tie fastening the wrap around his wife’s waist until the billowing garment drifted onto the deck and she stood before him in nothing but her bathing suit. He admired her in the black ensemble. The cut outs revealed more of her body than he’d ever seen her dare to wear in public before. And the way the cups pushed up her breasts and provided him with an amazing view of her cleavage had him rock hard in an instant. He pushed his cock into her letting her know what he needed in that moment.

Gone was Catarina Stone from his mind for now. He would search her out later on his computer. Make sure her life had gotten better despite him. But this time belonged to his wife. These next days were for her. There was nothing he could do for the other woman now. That was in the past. It was Melody he needed to focus on. And he wanted to do all he could to make her dreams come true. “Yes, I’m sure,” he growled seductively. “Because right now, I want to make love to my wife. And then I want to take her for a swim in the Gulf of Mexico. Then I want to lick the salt water off her body, and make love to her again. Are you okay with that?” he asked as he began to walk her backwards towards the hatch and to the small room below that had an incredibly soft bed.

Melody just nodded. Speechless. Oh yes. She was more than okay with that.

“Good, then,” he snapped as he turned his wife around. Melody nodded as her suddenly boneless body felt the pressure of his erection pushing up tightly against her.

Tex turned with a small limp, bent to open the hatch as his wife looked on. Then taking his hand, she allowed him to go down the hatch first before he helped her down the few steps to the berth below. All thoughts of anything except what the two of them were about to do fled their minds. Tex’s brown eyes were hungry with desire. And so was she.

A FEW HOURS later, Tex gazed back at the now much more distant island. The two story old style Florida home where he had seen Catarina Stone was just a spec on the horizon now, but he doubted he would be able to get the image of her standing there out of his mind for a very long time.

He began to pull up anchor on the small craft. It was a nice boat. He’d contemplated getting one for himself this past year. He enjoyed boats, always had and had loved his time on the water training to be a SEAL. It reminded him of his childhood growing up in Virginia. His parents loved to sail too and took him out often. The water was in his blood.

But that house and Catarina were now on his mind. Melody was below deck. Sleeping. Enjoying a well-deserved afternoon nap. They had taken that swim, after making love, and then made love again. He would let her sleep for now. But he knew his woman would wake up famished, and she would want to talk. He planned to dock the boat at a little restaurant the rental company had told him about. They claimed it served great seafood right along the water.
The Shoal
, as it was called, had a dock for boaters to pull up and grab a bite while they enjoyed their day on the water. It sounded perfect.

He looked towards the distant shoreline. Seeing Cat after all these years had surprised him. No, shocked him. Hers was a face he’d never expected to see again. She must be close to thirty years old by now, maybe thirty-one. It had been over twelve years since he had seen her.

She had been barely eighteen when he and his team of FBI agents worked her case. He was fresh out of the academy then, twenty-six years old. In fact, it was only the third case he worked on. His first case was a series of bank robberies, and the second case a kidnapping. It had been exhilarating to capture the bad guys, bring them to justice. But her case had been different. It took longer—months and months of gathering Intel, and data, following the money trail, while keeping their eyes and ears open watching all the players in the massive sting operation. Too long, he remorsefully recalled. And the burden of the case ruined him, ruined his desire to keep working for the government in that capacity because the victims suffered hour after hour, day after day, night after night, and he was helpless to do anything to stop it.

He knew then the job had not been the right decision for him, but working for justice was in his blood. His father had been a police officer, and so proud when his only son announced he had been chosen from the other new officers to go to Quantico for special training. His mother had been proud as well. Both of them raised him to love and respect country. His mother’s family came from old Virginia stock, and were proud of their military heritage and service. His father was originally from Texas, and they spent time there in his youth before moving to Virginia. His father had been a Texas Ranger and later a sheriff after moving to Virginia. So, it was in his blood to protect and serve.

Having their son pursue a career in law enforcement, well suffice it to say his parents could not have been prouder of their only child. John and Diana Keegan thought his path was a step in the right direction. Hell, he thought so too. But it had been the wrong career path for him. Working on Cat’s case nearly destroyed him.

Tex watched the looming horizon and the row of buildings from the mainland appear in the distance as he steered the craft toward the direction of the waterfront restaurants and continued to reflect on Cat. How had she ended up here, in Florida, of all places? Last he heard, she had been placed into witness protection after she testified against the Demetrius Makas clan. That was the name of the group smuggling in girls and boys as young as nine into the country who were then thrown into flop houses throughout the D.C. area. The girl had briefly been placed in the foster care system, but was in a group home with counseling during the course of the trial. After that, he lost track of her. He’d only seen her in his dreams and they hadn’t been pleasant ones. And, even though he had only seen her from afar, he knew it was her. He wouldn’t, couldn’t ever forget her. What had happened to that woman over a decade ago never left him. Never would. As he told Melody, she was the reason he became a Navy SEAL. He’d never given her the complete story before now, just that he once worked a case where the victims had to suffer before being rescued. He knew he couldn’t be that patient any more. She understood without him having to go into the minute details. But it seemed like he would have to tell her now.

His brief stint as an FBI agent definitely soured him. It was the waiting around to build a case that had done it. The legalities of inaction had practically destroyed his soul. Waiting for orders to go and save the victims, orders that took forever as they made their way through the courts after his superiors were satisfied they had effectively built a solid case was something he battled every day while working her case. That woman, really just a girl then, and her friends, well, if you could even call them that, had been raped, abused, beaten, and used as sex toys for months while his department sat on the locations of the various brothels in the Maryland and Virginia areas. Being still new, he had to sit on the case, gathering the data, doing surveillance, while his bosses got their ducks in a row in order to hold a Grand Jury Trial and put the criminals away. It had been a lot to ask a young idealistic man with dreams of saving the day.

And the worst part about it for him had been the fact that many of the victims were still kids at the time. Some of them were young teenaged girls, kidnapped from all over the world, being used as sex slaves right in his own backyard in Virginia. In one of the houses there had been a nine year old boy. But because his superiors wanted more than just the men who handled them here in the U.S., more than just Demetrius Makas and his crew, the investigation dragged on while they partnered with the CIA to catch even bigger fish.

It had not been an easy few months for him. He’d questioned his superiors’ orders, something he’d been trained not to do. But while he eavesdropped with high tech equipment in a small apartment across the street, men came in and out of Cat’s location, raping her, raping them, the five others, four girls and one boy, who were in the rented house on Belmont Avenue. His job most nights had been to conduct surveillance, and gather information. Listen to phone calls, check in on the rooms that were bugged, pass any new information on up the chain of command, and then wait.
Wait.
Wait, while someone else decided they had all the evidence they needed, and the paper trail was documented with dotted i’s and crossed t’s in order to take down the entire Greek man’s operation that was connected to the international operation that kidnapped young, vulnerable people to use in the sex slave industry.

It had been a huge operation. Bigger than they had initially suspected when they found the brothels after a tip from a Washington insider. The FBI, realizing the scope, quickly had pulled in the CIA. They traced the ring leaders of the operation to Greece, Syria and Iraq. The man behind the American operation was a real slime ball, a dirty scumbag who not only purchased the women and boys on the black market, but abused his own son, a kid named Spiro who cleaned the homes and did odd jobs in the various locations. His son was treated like dirt because of a slight deformity.

But, the international group was evil as well. It consisted of members of terrorist organizations making a quick buck by kidnapping young homeless kids off the street and selling them into slavery without batting an eye. They poured their ill-gotten gains into their sick twisted operations that wreaked havoc on unsuspecting civilians in nations all over the world that didn’t accept their manifestos. He was more than happy to be a part of cutting their revenue to prevent them from making their dirty bombs, but having these victims go unprotected for so long did not sit well with him.

The greater good. That had been his nightly mantra as he listened in on his surveillance equipment. One of his co-workers, and his immediate superior, had told him that on more than one occasion. His name had been had been Patrick Stoker. He would tell Tex whenever he got down about it, ‘Just remember, what we do is often for the greater good.’ Tex often wondered if he kept repeating that more for himself than anyone else. He saw his face when it was his turn to listen in on the rooms.

The Makas and the international group of kidnappers were monsters. These animals kidnapped these girls, brought them to the United States, and then sold their bodies for an hour’s worth of pleasure at a time up to eight times an evening. And for the girls it hadn’t been that. It hadn’t been pleasure. Those nights had been filled with rutting men, girls, or boys crying out in pain on occasion, but mostly there had been silence from them, or the fake sounds of pleasure some of the men required and needed for them to make in order to get off. And he had heard it all.

Even on his evenings off, without his wire still in his ear, he heard those cries coming from the many rooms in the Virginia and Maryland locations, and those cries never left him. But the silence haunted him too. Cat’s room had been the most silent of them all. Rarely did she cry out. Rarely did she communicate with the men who came and went into her room. And that silence to him had spoken volumes. To him it meant they were too late to save her. Too late to make a difference in her life. The damage had been done. It would scar her forever. Of that he had been sure.

After leaving the FBI, he joined the Navy SEALs. When he had done two tours in Iraq, sometimes the quiet nights there made him think of her. It made him wonder who was being hurt during the quiet times.
Who was being hurt while no one came? Whose silent cries were going unanswered?
It had practically killed him when Melody had gone silent on him on the computer two years ago. He knew more than anyone that silence sometimes meant more pain, more horror than loud noises and wails ever could. And that was because of Cat. Her silence. Even in the rescue, when the orders finally came and they were allowed to go into those building and rescue those girls, even then Cat remained silent. She hadn’t said a word. She’d just willingly gone wordlessly with the men in black suits. He had taken her arm and pulled her along to the waiting van himself. And she hadn’t said a word or cried out as the others had whether in fear or relief. And her silence haunted him when he was overseas, and when he couldn’t sleep at night. Her eyes, when he helped her into the van had been blank, not even a flicker of emotion. Only when he’d told her, “You’re safe now,” had there been a flicker in those big round grey eyes. But quickly she had masked her emotion, or whatever it was he’d seen briefly in them. She’d murmured her thanks, and then looked away into the recesses of the van where the others cried and slumped into each other, holding each other and expressing relief that their long nightmare was finally over. But not her. Her back against the wall, she sat ramrod straight, a mask across her face. He’d shut the door, and tapped on the back letting the driver know it was clear for him to move out. He then approached his own vehicle and followed the van to their next destination.

That memory burned itself into his brain over the next two weeks. Her dead grey eyes never left him. He didn’t know it then, but he knew it now. While following that van with those victims in it, he’d made his choice. It took him two weeks to work up the nerve to tell his parents. Once the trial was over, he’d be moving on. His parents simply nodded their understanding. He’d seen the pride and respect in their eyes. That made the decision much easier. And when the trial concluded he’d given his notice and signed up with the Navy. He hadn’t regretted a decision since. Being a SEAL to him meant action. No more waiting. No letting people down. When you get the mission, you charged in and saved the day. Being a SEAL brought him back from a very dark place. A place where he felt groundless and as though what he did didn’t make a difference anyhow.

How was he going to explain all that to Melody?
His guilt over allowing all those people to be victimized while he listened in like some peeping Tom. It disgusted him still. He pushed his now longish hair out of his eyes. He needed to get it cut, but Melody liked it that way.

The shore was quickly approaching and he eased up on the gas of the boat slowing down the craft and decreasing the wake. He was approaching the no wake zone and he began to steer the boat in the direction of the seaside restaurant. Despite his memories, his stomach was growling. He had worked up an appetite this morning. But he knew even food wouldn’t deter his wife’s questions. And she would have many.
What would he tell her? What should he tell her?

All of it. Of course.
But how?
Seeing Cat again after all this time surely meant something. She had changed his life then. Well . . .the direction of it at least. He knew as soon as he was home again he would be hopping on his computer and doing a little digging. He wanted to know what had become of her life. He tried not to think about that before. He had been so sure she would not do well. Not recover. But seeing her, with a man, pregnant, well, he knew their lives had to cross once more for a reason. And he knew he had to make sure she was no longer a victim. It was the least he could do for her. The good news was she didn’t seem to be, from what he had seen, but he had to know for sure. He owed it to her. Hell, he owed it to himself to know what had become of her.

Twelve years ago, he’d been sure she would never be able to get past her experiences. When he pulled her into the van, her eyes were so incredibly lifeless. The only words she spoke was when he gave her his hand to help her into the van, and as she slipped her cold hand out of his, he heard a clear feminine, “Thank you.” There was no emotion in it. No relief. He followed the van to the hospital where the victims were initially taken. He watched as she climbed out unassisted while listening to the female agent explain what they were doing and where they were. The moment her feet had hit the pavement at the private hospital he watched her as she listened, yet made no eye contact with anyone. Her eyes were still so bleak. He would never forget those eyes as she turned and with the flick of her hand tossed her dark hair over her shoulders and followed the other women into the hospital. That had been the last he’d seen her until her court appearance a few months later. But her eyes still haunted him. She was the one. The one he couldn’t save.