Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 59119 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 296(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59119 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 296(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
Christ, I would never forget the distinct sound of a rocket launcher. And to hear it at my boss’s house…? He’d heard it too. Our eyes had locked, and I was sure his mind had been as fucked as mine. Because that sound belonged in Afghanistan, not his backyard.
Talk about seeing a new side to my boss, though. I mean, I knew he’d been a PMC too. He’d worked with River and Reese—and many others. They were a tight-knit group, even if they only saw one another once a year or whatever. Old grunts stuck together. Partly to keep an eye on one another, which was the sad reality for service members too. I had a few friends I checked in with just to see how they were coping.
Even so, I was used to Elliott Jones, co-owner of JATE Shield, a private security business that only skated the lines of PMC work very occasionally. Most of us employed there were bodyguards, and depending on field experience and education, we could go for higher risk or lower. I usually served as security detail for politicians and higher-ups in the private sector who might have targets on their backs.
Elliott had been my mentor and sort of an uncle since the day Reese had hooked me up with an interview. It was right after my Belize failure. Clearly, I wasn’t cut out to be a private contractor, so he’d sent me to LA.
All things considered, I wasn’t unhappy about that. I loved my job now. The adrenaline junkie in me got his fix because we had plenty of political unrest in our country, and the other part of me who felt better with structure and having a headquarters to return to at the end of the day was happy too. We had briefings and reports and backup. Private contractors rarely did. Out in the field, they were usually on their own.
Maybe that was why the PMCs in my life stuck together too, ’cause they’d been one another’s backup when the circumstances had allowed it. I’d definitely bonded with Toby for that reason. We’d become great friends in such a short period of time when we’d been assigned to the same client. For one month, he and I had escorted a diplomat around the country because he’d had to smooth things over with local minority groups after a protest had escalated in fucking Syria.
The ripple effect was strong in politics and foreign affairs.
When we’d come home, Toby had invited me over for dinner, and the rest was history. His wife Madison worked at JATE too; she was some computer genius—and funny as fuck. She had the darkest sense of humor. I loved her.
Now their unborn kid was gonna grow up without a dad.
And Elliott would have to run JATE without his best friend. I was gonna see Tariq’s burned body in my nightmares for months. That’d been another guy with the best sense of humor. When I’d first started, he’d been all, “Listen to me, Crew. The bar is set very low. You keep that man alive? You’re in. You get an A. Yes? A B+ if he just breaks a leg or something.”
Tariq and Elliott had bought a big cake with an “A” on it after my first assignment.
Despite that I’d only been there a year, it’d felt like a second family. Unless we were in the field, we had breakfast together, lunch, sometimes dinner… Way too much coffee. Particularly the old guys. They inhaled coffee.
It was like, the day you turned forty, coffee became the juice that literally kept you alive. I’d suggested water and more exercise, and senior citizens over forty just didn’t appreciate that.
Speaking of senior citizens, my travel partner was late. I looked around me, thinking maybe he’d sat down somewhere else…
Ryan Quinn was part of the PMC squad too. Sort of. He’d taken gigs here and there that put him next to his brother Darius, who went way back with Elliott and the Tenleys and Dante and… Yeah, all of them. I was still learning, to be honest.
One of those gigs had taken Ryan to Belize last year for no particular reason.
I’d exchanged maybe a couple sentences with Ryan after he’d been part of the rescue op, but he’d emailed me a few weeks later. Just to check in on me. That shit was sweet.
I’d been told Ryan and I had a lot in common, aside from the years we’d served in the Marines. Truth be told, I just hoped he could keep up. ’Cause I knew he was like a year younger than his brother Darius, who was pushing awfully close to fifty. Like, could he run?
Whenever I flew home to visit, I went running or hit the gym with Dad, and… I was gonna leave it at that, because if I pointed something out to him—or my uncles—they would just go, “I was fast enough to pull you and your friend outta Belize, boy. Lemme catch my breath.”