Chapter 2
Doralee Baker
As the only HSI agent on this multi-agency task force, I’m unhappy with the direction my DHS leadership is giving me. I’m here to infiltrate a human trafficking ring that we believe is funded by billionaires and politicians.
Sounds great. I’d love to take down an empire kidnapping and selling men, women, and children for god knows what—especially if it is for what I fear it’s for, which accounts for almost seventy-five percent of all human trafficking.
My immediate supervisor gave me orders that deviate from the FBI agent in charge who demands we keep all intel within the task force until it can be scrubbed and properly debriefed by him as the lead.
To me, it makes sense considering the power and influence the people suspected of funding and profiting from this crime network have—even if the FBI hasn’t deemed me worthy of knowing who they are.
My boss wants me to funnel information back to him every time we make a new discovery, specifically every time we uncover a name, a funding source, or locate a detention facility.
I’m not sure why he wants me to divulge task force information when he knows he’s not cleared for it, but the implications make me uncomfortable.
I know he believes undocumented men, women, or children should be deported—no questions, no exceptions—but I don’t agree, and my moral compass is at odds with my desire to be an obedient little agent who follows the rules like my CIA brother Daniel, who is currently deployed to who knows where doing who knows what.
Rule breakers are the worst. They damage operations and risk the lives of their teammates.
That’s what’s been drilled into me since I was born.
My father and mother were both CIA, an agent and an analyst respectively, who dated on and off for five years before they got pregnant with my brother.
Six years later, I came along. We were both raised to idolize my absentee father, who spent more years deeply embedded in overseas intrigue than home cheering at my soccer or Daniel’s football games.
Our father died when I was twelve, location unknown.
But reportedly he died when one of his teammates bent the rules, exposing and ultimately getting both of them killed.
That only elevated our father to god-like status in our eyes, and if my brother hadn’t already planned on the CIA after college, that solidified it.
It was no different for me.
I was in my freshman year at Georgetown when they found our mother’s brain tumor.
Daniel had been married for six months and his wife had delivered their first child weeks prior.
Like our father, he could only stay home for a short time, which meant I was the one nearby to take care of both our mother and his wife, who was a new mother herself.
My need to be a stable force in my mother’s and my niece’s lives replaced my desire to travel the world as an international woman of intrigue.
Hence why I joined the DHS versus CIA. It was the idea that I could be home within hours if either my mother or my niece needed me. My academy date was set and the paperwork was filled out when my mother died three weeks before my graduation.
Even though I know I need to follow the rules, something about this operation doesn’t sit right with me. At this point, I’m not sure if I’m one of the good guys or bad guys.
And then there is this military group—SpecOps Sierra—who no one knows anything about.
I’m teamed up with one of them, codename Crash, and I can’t figure out what his deal is.
He’s been a moody SOB from the moment we met three days ago, his eyes always on the door as if he’s waiting for the bogeyman to enter or something.
We’re posing as buyers and have scheduled a sit-down with one of the low level dealers who hosts auctions of the human variety, but I’m not sure what we’re supposed to do once we get there. The rest of the team, composed of FBI, ATF, and ICE, don’t seem to have a plan either.
Do they really expect us to walk in, witness crimes being committed, make contact and forge relationships with these assholes, and then walk away?
The entire thing makes me sick.
Angry, but nauseous.
I can’t believe this is the world we live in.
Walking from the warehouse where our sleeping quarters are to a nondescript khaki colored airplane hangar, I slip through the back entrance and walk past rows of metal sea-land containers to a blue one in the middle.
Inside is our command post with a wall of screens, whiteboards, tables of computers and printers, and all the high-tech gadgets available to us.
It’s also where we stash the coffee and donuts, which is my first priority this morning.
“Doralee. You look well rested,” Donnie Rumpert, an ATF dickhead with small balls and an overly inflated ego, says with a smirk on his bronzing lotion face.
He’s been trying to get in my pants since day one, but it’s never going to happen.
“You should stay up late with me. I promise it’ll be worth missing a few hours of beauty sleep. ”
“I seriously doubt that, Rumpert.” I grab my mug and fill it with black coffee, adding my sugar-free flavored creamer before taking a sip.
“Come on. How do you like it? Hard and fast from behind with your face pushed into a pillow to stifle your screams?” He chortles and glances around to see if anyone is listening, hoping they will back him up by egging him on.
Fucking boys’ club bullshit.
Turning to face him, I flash him a smile, but there is nothing friendly about it.
“I like a solid eight and a half inches that can go for an hour, bare minimum. I expect to come three times in that hour before he comes once. And after he comes, he gets fifteen minutes of foreplay before he better be ready to go again. That’s the only man I’m losing sleep for. ”
Rumpert frowns. “Guess you’ll be spending a lot of time alone with your vibrator.”
“My eight and a half-inch vibrator.” I snag a donut and bite down on it, signaling the end of this conversation.
Crash walks up, his eyes narrowed on Rumpert. “Don’t you have someplace to be?”
There’s something about Crash. Sure, he’s an attractive guy, but it’s not that.
He’s a dominant force even when facing men who have been badass agents kicking in doors and taking down scumbags for decades.
It doesn’t matter if he’s younger than them, and I wonder if it’s because of the Special Forces thing?
Maybe they’re such badasses that they aren’t intimidated by anyone?
I asked around about SpecOps Sierra and no one had heard of it. Apparently, it’s a special unit with the Special Forces division that not all operators know about either. You can’t try out for it. You have to be recruited by Colonel Packard, who is another dominant force in a sea of testosterone.
“Are you okay?” Crash grabs a mug and fills it with black coffee.
“What?” I finish my donut and wave my hand in the air. “That asshole? Yeah, I’m fine.”
“If you need me to set him straight, let me know,” he says with an air of casualness, and although I don’t think he’s coming on to me, it bothers me just the same.
Most ops are eighty-five percent testosterone with only fifteen percent of us thinking with the heads above our shoulders.
I kid, kind of, but it’s a joke that started in the female ranks while at the Academy, and it’s something I think about on every mission.
There’s always some man trying to get into your pants by proclaiming he’d rock your world, while another guy tries by getting into your pants by telling you he’s a nice guy that has your back and just wants to be friends.
Whatever. In the end, it’s all machismo posturing.
I bat my lashes. “I know I’m just a tiny little girl, Crash, but I can take care of myself. Thanks.”
“I meant no disrespect, Agent Baker.” He looks at the front door and sets down his mug, walking away before I can respond.
I do anyway, because I can’t let him have the last word. “Sure you didn’t.”
I stare at the front, wondering what got his attention when a near carbon copy of him with longer, wilder hair walks through the door.
The new guy stops, stares into Crash’s eyes, and then all hell breaks loose.
The two of them go at it like two MMA fighters in a cage match.
The new guy leaps over a desk at Crash, destroying a couple of computers in the process.
Chaos ensues, the two of them fighting for their lives, and I swear animalistic growls echo off the metal walls as they go at it.
Colonel Packard walks in not thirty seconds later, and his deep, knee-buckling, commanding tone causes the other SpecOps guy, Pitch, to jump into the fray. He does his best to push his enormous body between Crash and the new guy, but it doesn’t stop them from lunging for each other.
It’s obvious this isn’t some bar brawl.
This is deeply personal and long overdue.
Rumpert and other agents jump in, two restraining Crash, while it takes three to restrain the new guy.
“My office. Now!” Colonel Packard spins on his heels and leaves without waiting to be obeyed. But his three words have the desired effect, because all the agents stop what they are doing and exchange a look, letting Crash and his doppelg?nger go.
Britney, the only other female working this op with me, walks over to the coffee pot to pour herself a mug. “Breakfast and a show.”
“Fucking boys and their bullshit.” I roll my eyes and lift my cup.
She taps hers against mine and leans her hip against the table. “Cheers to that. At least they’re hot. Maybe next time they’ll rip off their shirts and roll around on the floor until they're nice and sweaty.”
Scrunching up my nose, I make a face. “Ewww. No, thank you.”
She’s not wrong—they are hot—but the last thing I’m going to do is sexualize my teammates on an op, especially since fraternization is against the rules. Besides, boys with anger issues are not a problem I need right now, no matter how sexy they are.
All I want is to kill it at this job—my first time taking the lead in an investigation—by saving a bunch of people, helping dismantle an empire, and then head back to DC to accept my accommodation and my promotion, preferably in that order.
Then, maybe look for a new field assignment.
While I love my nieces—yes, now there are two—my sister-in-law has a support network and doesn’t need me to take care of her in lieu of my absentee brother.
She’s encouraged me to travel and have many adventures.
Specifically, she said I need plenty of wet pussy adventures, but that’s because she’s sexually frustrated, and my brother’s been gone for too long on his most recent assignment. I really hate it when she tries to talk to me about sex because it is my brother after all, but I understand her point.
And she’s not wrong. Someday I will meet that eight and a half-inch man with too much stamina and infinite recovery who gives mind blowing orgasms, but until then…
My mind’s on my mission, and my mission’s on my mind.
And that’s just how it has to be as a female in this world.