LITMIR.BIZ

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laboratory workers toward the helicopter.

      “All yours, cowboy!” the team leader called to Jake as Jake handed off his prisoner and climbed in the pilot’s seat. “I want us in the air the second the rest of the team gets here.”

      “Roger that,” Jake replied, tugging off the hood and breathing mask of his CBRN suit and checking the helo’s controls. When everything was set, he peered through the windshield, searching the night for his teammates’ vehicle. Under his breath he muttered, “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon. Hurry, guys.”

      “Connelly,” Bruster shouted over the noise of the turbine, “HQ radioed earlier for you. You had an emergency call from the States. You’re supposed to report in as soon as we get back to base.”

      A chill nipped the back of Jake’s neck as he remembered a different emergency call his family received years before. He frowned as he fastened his seat belt. “What kind of emergency?”

      Bruster shrugged one shoulder. “Don’t know. Just delivering the message.”

      Jake jerked a nod and scanned the terrain again for their teammates, but his thoughts dwelled on the worrisome message. An emergency call from the States? That didn’t bode well.

      “There they are!” the team leader shouted, yanking Jake back to the danger at hand. “Let’s go!”

      Jake’s teammates appeared like specters crossing the barren landscape, and Jake had the helo in the air even before the other agents finished clambering aboard.

      “Twelve seconds!” the explosives specialist barked, and the team assumed brace positions while Jake and Bruster goosed the helo to move faster, climb higher, get out of range. Now.

      Jake swung the bird in a wide arc, gaining as much altitude and latitude as quickly as he could.

      “Five seconds,” his teammate called.

      Jake took over the countdown in his head.

      Four. Three. Two.

      He gripped the cyclic tighter. Braced.

      One.

      Below them, a flash of explosives rocked the tiny building above the bunker. A fraction of a second later, the shock wave hit the helicopter, and Jake steadied the bird as it shuddered and pitched.

      Bruster whooped. “How’s that for a kick in the ass?”

      “Nice flying, cowboy,” the team leader shouted from behind Jake. “Now let’s go home.”

      “Roger that, chief.”

      Two hours later, once the nuclear scientist had been secured at the black ops team’s Mideast base and the other lab workers had been detained for debriefing, Jake marched into the communications center. He’d changed out of the CBRN suit into jeans, a T-shirt and his trademark cowboy hat. Scanning the room, he found the officer in charge. “I was told I had an emergency call from the States. What’s up?”

      The chief of communications nodded and directed Jake toward a phone near the center of the room. “Your sister called. She’s standing by at the Dallas office to talk to you. Let me patch you through.”

      Jake’s heart drummed an anxious rhythm as his call was connected via satellite to a secure line in the States. Moments later, he heard his older sister come on the line, her voice rife with emotion. “Thank God they reached you, Jake. I wasn’t sure they’d find you in time.”

      The mission group’s bus was attacked by a militant gang, a long-ago voice echoed in his memory.

      Jake squeezed the phone receiver and furrowed his brow. “What’s wrong, Michelle? They told me there was an emergency.”

      “There is. It’s Dad.”

      Jake’s stomach dropped to his toes, and he held his breath. Not even the shock wave from the bunker explosion had shaken him this hard. “Tell me.”

      “He’s had a massive heart attack, Jake. He’s in intensive care at Northwest Texas Hospital in Amarillo and…” She sighed heavily.

      Jake swallowed hard. “Will he make it?”

      “It’s touch and go. The doctors think…” Michelle paused, clearly struggling to speak. “Jake, you need to come home.”

       Chapter 1

      A brutal winter storm was looming.

      As she crossed the grocery store parking lot, Chelsea Harris cast a worried gaze to the dark clouds rolling in from New Mexico and quickened her step. She still had to stop for gasoline, or her mother’s boat of a car wouldn’t make it all the way back to their rural West Texas ranch house. the gas-guzzling 1985 Cadillac Fleetwood had been her father’s wedding gift to her mother. Despite the worn seats—held together by the always-ready duct tape kept in the glove box—the rusting body and the seemingly monthly repair bills, her mother treasured the car and refused to give it up. Chelsea was babysitting the car, along with her parents’ house, while her folks took a well-deserved and overdue three-week cruise to Hawaii.

      An icy wind buffeted her as she keyed open the driver’s door. Hawaii would be nice right about now.

      Shivering, Chelsea brushed her long, wind-blown hair from her face and huddled deeper into her pullover sweater. This morning she’d raced out of her parents’ ranch house without a coat, because the temperature had been a balmy sixty-five degrees. But since she’d left for work at the blood center, the temperature had plunged as a cold front moved through town. Thank you, fickle West Texas weather.

      Dropping a grocery sack and her purse on the seat beside her, Chelsea cranked the Caddy’s engine, coaxing the car with a muttered, “Come on, Ethyl. I know you hate the cold, but we gotta get home before the storm hits.”

      She breathed a sigh of relief when the engine finally caught, and she backed out of her parking space and headed to the gas station down the block. Her own apartment was only a few blocks from the blood center where she worked as a phlebotomist, so she usually rode her bike to work. But her parents’ home, the ranch house she’d grown up in, was twenty-two miles from town, necessitating pressing Ethyl into service. the cost of gasoline to and from town was eating her paycheck for lunch. But how could she refuse her parents’ ranch-sitting request after all they’d done for her through the years?

      Chelsea pulled up to the gas pump, cut the engine and gritted her teeth, dreading stepping out into the wintery wind again. The sooner you fill up, the sooner you’ll be home in a hot bath with a glass of wine. The promise of unwinding sounded heavenly, so Chelsea shouldered open the car door and stepped out into the cold.

      As she turned toward the gas pump, she almost collided with a disheveled man in orange coveralls who appeared from nowhere. “Oh! I’m sorry. I didn’t see—”

      “Get in the car!” he growled, jamming something hard in her belly.

      She glanced down at the object poking her, and a chill that had nothing to do with the weather raced through her.

      A gun. The man had a gun!

      Chelsea’s throat dried. Her heart rate spiked. “I d-don’t have any money. I—”

      He crowded her, forcing her to step backward, and he opened the driver’s door on the Caddy. “Get in!”

      She jolted when he barked the command at her. He shoved the gun harder into her ribs, and panic flooded Chelsea’s brain. Sheer survival instinct kicked in. With her heart pounding a frantic cadence, she slid back onto the driver’s seat.

      The gunman climbed in the backseat, moving the muzzle of his weapon to the base of her skull, and grated, “Drive.”

      “But—”

      “Drive!” His shouted order brooked no resistance.

      Hands shaking, Chelsea cranked the engine

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