Blaze: A Small Town, Nerdy Girl, Opposites Attract, Protector Romance (Ghost Ops Book 1)

Chapter 47

“Doyou have the faintest idea what the fuck you’re doing?”

Ghost glared at him, arms crossed over his chest, pewter eyes flashing fire.

There was an answering fire in Blaze’s gut. “No, but I know you don’t throw this kind of thing away. Emma is special.”

He’d eaten with her family yesterday, listened to her spill her secrets, and lost himself in sex with her. The best sex of his life.

Because it was with her.

Emma Grace Sutton was an addiction. Not the kind he’d always feared, being the son of an addict, but the best kind.

Still scary, since she could leave him swinging in the wind tomorrow when she realized he wasn’t worthy of her. But the high he got from being with her, being inside her, was gonna be worth the pain.

Or maybe she’d fall for him, he’d marry her, have that kid, and live happily ever after.

Why the fuck not?

Ghost closed his eyes for a split second before glaring again. “No family ties. No serious relationships. Sound familiar? Makes it easier to operate. If we have to disappear, or sacrifice our lives, there’ll be no Medals of Honor, no warrior’s burial. And there’ll be no explanation. You want that for her?”

Blaze swallowed. He didn’t have to answer because Ghost raked a hand through his hair and plowed on.

“Jesus, you’re getting serious with this woman. You had dinner with her family. You live in their building. You gave her a kitten. Not to mention plastering yourself to her on the dance floor in the Dawg Friday night and those lovesick expressions you two wore when I wouldn’t move chairs. Can’t you just stick to fucking her?”

Blaze’s gut tightened with anger. “Prefer you don’t use words like that when talking about my woman. Sir.”

Ghost tipped his head back and widened his arms to the sky as if beseeching the Almighty. “His woman. Holy shit, you hear that? By all means, have sex with her. Nobody cares about that. What I care about is you getting involved. Setting up house with a woman and having to explain things to her and her family, having her observe things. That’s what you aren’t supposed to fucking do!”

Blaze knew the others could hear them. The range was empty except for the six of them. It was Sunday and they typically had shorter hours and a skeleton staff, but Ghost had called all of them in for a meeting.

Then he’d motioned Blaze into the SCIF and told the rest of the guys to wait a minute.

That’s when Blaze knew he was about to get his ass reamed. He didn’t care.

“Respectfully, sir, I don’t see what the difference is between seeing a woman regularly for sex or actually caring for one. Nobody told us we had to be monks. I’d have remembered that.”

“Maybe they should have. Be a helluva lot easier if we could all keep our dicks in our pants.”

“Could be useful having a doctor around, sir.”

Ghost fixed him with a squinty stare. “First, knock it off with the ‘sir’ shit. Second, are you actually suggesting we bring the doc in and tell her we’re in Alabama on a top secret mission to keep this country safe but she can’t tell anybody or we’ll all get in trouble?”

It did sound a little out there when he put it like that.

“Not quite. But hear me out. Emma sewed up Chance. She wasn’t happy about it, but she didn’t tell anyone. If she knew a little more—who we are, that we’re on a mission, that it’s important—then we might have someone who can perform more than field medicine looking after us if something goes wrong. She was an ER doctor.”

“We can’t afford for anything to go wrong. We’re a skeleton crew doing Ghost Ops as it is.” He blew out a breath, his nostrils flaring.

He called for the other guys to join them. They filed in, shooting sympathetic looks at Blaze.

Ghost stood with hands on hips, looking like he could chew nails. “Diana Corbin’s breathing down my neck over these break-ins. She’s pissed as hell her blood tests were inconclusive, by the way. Told you it’d be fine,” he said to Chance as an aside before eyeing them all again. “Here’s how it’s gonna go, fellas. I don’t care who you sleep with. I can’t stop you and I don’t feel like trying. If you sleep with the same woman every night and dance with her at the Dawg, that’s your business. But we aren’t calling it a relationship, you feel me? There’s too much at stake and we can’t risk compromising the mission.”

“What if I want to marry her?” Blaze asked as everything inside him rose in rebellion.

The room went silent.

Ghost blinked. “Do you?”

“I dunno. Maybe.”

“She means that much to you?”

He could deny it, or he could go ahead and admit the truth. To himself and to these men he respected.

“I don’t know what love feels like, but I think this is probably it. I wanna wake up with her every morning, see the smile on her face when I bring her coffee and kiss her. I wanna listen to her laugh at Sassy’s antics and watch her blush when I whisper something naughty in her ear. And I damn sure want to find that asshole who’s terrorizing her and rip his head off. Then I’m gonna make damn sure nobody ever hurts her again.”

“I’m no expert, but sounds like love to me,” Ghost said.

“I don’t want to get you in trouble, but I’ve never… This has never happened to me before.”

Ghost leaned his head back on the chair he’d sank into. “Hell, I’m already in trouble. You think they chose me for this assignment because of my winning personality? No, they chose me to run this because they know I’m the right bastard for the job. I admit this is a curveball I didn’t see coming, but I shoulda known at least one of you assholes would find Southern women irresistible.”

Blaze looked at his teammates. They were all wearing grins.

“I still have a shot,” Chance said. “She called me handsome.”

“Fuck off,” Blaze growled back.

Chance laughed. “Dude, you’re a lucky fucker. I know she prefers you. Just like to see you riled when you think about her going out with me.”

“Any of the rest of you harboring deep feelings for a woman you haven’t told me about?” Ghost asked with a fresh glare.

“Not me,” Seth said, hands in the air.

“Nope,” Ethan chimed in.

Kane snorted and gestured to his body, running his hands up and down in the air. “Not about to shut down this magic ride for one woman. I like the thrill of the new too much.”

“Chance?” Ghost asked.

“Me?” Chance pointed comically at himself. “Of course not, boss. I’m allergic to commitment.”

“Good. One of you in love is enough to deal with. I’m happy for you, Shadow. Really. But I can’t have you distracted. Date the doc. Shack up with her and give her a litter of kittens if you want. But let’s keep weddings and engagements until after we’ve completed this mission successfully, okay? There’s nothing more important.”

Blaze’s throat burned. It wasn’t the freedom he’d wanted, but it was more than he’d expected. “Yes, sir.”

Ghost leaned back in his chair. “Let’s get down to business. I sent the package we lifted to Washington so they could analyze it. On the surface it’s a shipment of microprocessors.

He hesitated. “What I’m about to say, I’m not authorized to reveal. I’m doing it anyway because I think keeping my team in the dark is bullshit. What you’ve been asked to do—to give up—means you deserve to know. Especially now that Blaze here has fallen for the doc.”

A chill slid down Blaze’s spine. He glanced at his friends, knowing they felt the same. That their team leader, a man who’d been a top Army officer and second in command of the Hostile Operations Team, was willing to go against his orders on something this important said volumes.

About his trust in them, about his belief in the mission, and about his willingness to do whatever it took to get the job done.

Blaze already had mad respect for the man. If he could offer to have Ghost’s baby, he’d do it. He was pretty sure everyone in the room felt the same.

Ghost threw down the pen he’d been tapping and looked them in the eye. “We’re here because of a top secret national defense system known as Athena. Satellites with the capability to create what is essentially a protective shield over the continental US. It prevents other nations from launching missile attacks, nuclear or chemical. It’s even designed to prevent an EMP weapon from taking out our grid and sending this country back to the 1800s, which is a threat that grows bigger every day. Everything about how this project works is centered in Huntsville. The researchers, the software engineers, even the rockets that will deploy the satellites. Athena has been one-hundred percent effective in small-scale tests. When it’s operational, nobody can launch ICBMs at us. Not Russia, not North Korea, not a future rogue state. Nobody.”

Kane whistled. “That’s some space-age techno shit right there.”

Ghost nodded. “It’s revolutionary. Considering the instability in the world right now, this system is critical to our national defense. Ideally, we’d deploy the system and the president would inform other heads of state that we have it. But someone leaked the existence of the project, and now it’s in jeopardy. Enemy agents are actively working to sabotage it while also trying to steal the technology for themselves.

“It’s a shitstorm and we’re in the middle of it. If an enemy gets the tech and deploys the system first, they can launch a nuclear strike anywhere in the world while remaining impervious to retaliation. This technology in enemy hands would change the global balance of power in an instant and put our people at risk of annihilation.”

“Good God,” Chance breathed. Blaze was pretty certain they all felt the same.

“Right. That’s why we’re here. The president needs a way to act quickly, without informing Congress or waiting for a consensus from squabbling partisan leadership, and we’re it.”

“Why us though?” Seth asked. “Why not the CIA, FBI, or Homeland Security? They’re bigger and have more resources. And this is a pretty huge fucking deal. The potential impact is enormous.”

“Because we’re ghosts. Because we’re fast, good, and expendable if the shit hits the fan. Easy to deny us, call us rogues, if this mission goes tits up. We’re outside of the normal bounds of operations. We can be made to disappear or made examples of. Something to remember when going home to your pretty doctor every night.”

That hit home in a way Blaze hadn’t expected. Was it right to involve her in his life when the stakes were so high?

“We’re not going to let that happen,” Ghost added. “Because we’re good and we’re gonna get the job done the way we’re meant to. As for the microprocessors, they were intended for the command and control network. And of course they’re programmed with a backdoor that would allow someone to steal information and potentially take control. There’s a real shipment expected in the next few days. Washington speculates this rogue shipment was meant to be switched with the legit processors before being sent onward to Griffin Research Labs. That’s where the command and control software is designed and tested.”

“Where are the processors we tagged?” Seth asked.

“Still at Royal Shipping. The legit processors will come through them as well, which means someone there has to be involved. If not with the actual sabotage of the project, then they’re being paid to make the switch without caring why.”

“What do we do now?”

“We’ll make sure the switch doesn’t happen. We’ve got to go back in and destroy the microprocessors we tagged.”

“Timeline?”

“Washington wants it done yesterday. Which means we gotta plan and execute this thing as soon as possible.”

“Anything else we need to know, boss?” Seth asked.

“Yeah. Make sure the op is foolproof. If Diana Corbin has her way, the FBI’s going to be squatting outside Royal Shipping from now until the cows come home. We’ve got to get in and out fast. And nobody’s getting fucking shot this time, you hear me?”