Chapter 15
Qhated leaving Flora at home, but the guys promised their women would help her out.
She had come from such a strange world and was having to face living in the real world alone.
He knew he needed to push the worry away and focus on the job at hand, but he was having a hard time getting over the worry.
“Hey, you okay?” Rider asked as he took a seat next to him.
The flight to Brazil had been long, but now they were on the ground, doing last-minute planning to take out the jerks who were trying to make their lives hell.
“I’m good. I just need to push away the worry.”
“Yeah, you do. I know when Andie came to live with me, it was the first time I ever had to leave someone I cared about at home. I can promise you that Andie and the rest of the women will look after her. She will be fine. They won’t let anything bad happen to her.”
He nodded. “I know. Thank you for coming over and confirming it. I need to keep my head in the game. I swear, I’m going to focus and get past this.”
“Good. Do whatever you need to now because we are about to start, and we don’t have room for your thoughts to be elsewhere.”
“I’m good. Or I will be by the time we go.”
Rider stood and patted him on the shoulder before he walked off.
Q closed his eyes, pushing away the fear as he focused.
Before becoming a SEAL, he hadn’t been into meditation, but he’d learned the value of clearing his mind before a mission.
He needed to push away everything outside work before they got into a hot zone.
Just being in Brazil was dangerous. The Brazilian military was badass, and they could have handled this on their own, but they wanted the US military here to take the jerk running the group out of their country.
If he had been imprisoned in Brazil, he would still have connections in prison.
They needed him gone so he couldn’t call the shots.
When he finished centering his mind, he joined the rest of the group. They were having a last meal before heading out. They had the most up-to-date information on the group’s location and were ready to roll out.
Just as they were about to leave, their contact with the Brazilian military came in. “Hold up. We received word there was a problem.”
“What kind of problem?” Rider asked.
“The compound is on fire.”
“What?” Rider shook his head, and the rest of them groaned.
“What the hell happened?” Trip asked.
Q hated missions like this. He hated it when things went to hell. How the heck could they have screwed up so much? Had anyone known this would happen? Q glanced around, checking their surroundings. “This isn’t an ambush, is it?”
Their contact shook his head. “I can assure you it isn’t an ambush.”
“Shit,” Rider said, and the other guys agreed.
Trip shook his head. “I don’t like this.”
“Nothing to like,” Hop said.
Bud headed back into the room and grabbed a computer. “We need to figure out what went wrong.”
“Yeah, what happened?” Q asked.
Their contact looked worried. “We’re trying to figure it out. We’ll share whatever information we have with you.”
“They heard somehow,” Zip said.
Rider shook his head. “We don’t know that. It could have been anything.”
“Shit, this wasn’t just anything,” Zip said. “This was a place we were planning on raiding going up in flames.”
Q joined Bud with a laptop. “I hate this.”
They would have to figure out what the hell was going on.
They were screwed on this mission. They had to decide if they stayed or left.
If they stayed, they could be here for a long time.
If they headed home, they probably wouldn’t catch this guy for another year or two, giving him a good chance to do something terrible.
He blew out a breath, angry he’d left Flora for this.
None of them knew something like this would happen, but someone had known.
He was tired of leaks. Something needed to change because they were having too many missions that were called off at the last minute.
He just hoped the culprit was caught before they did some real damage.