Rescuing Josiah (Prey Security: Cyber Team #4)

Chapter 1

Chapter

One

The sound seemed to echo through his body.

For some reason, it hurt the most.

Which was ridiculous given that actual bullets pierced his body.

Tearing through flesh like it was nothing.

But worse even than the thunderous sound of gunfire were the screams.

Barely human howls coming from men he considered family. Men he served with, men he fought alongside, men with whom he’d forged a bond that was supposed to last a lifetime.

Men who now fell around him.

Dying.

Dead.

Gone.

Beneath him, the ground was hard. The sand clung to his damp skin, a rock dug into his back, but he didn't bother to move, though.

He wanted to, damn, did he want to shove to his feet and start firing back at those who had killed his team, but he didn't seem to have the energy to move.

Everything hurt, and he could feel the life spilling out of him.

Dying like the others, only more slowly.

One tiny detail altered their fates.

He was still wearing his body armor. The others had removed theirs because they were supposed to be safe here. Safe on a base even though they were in hostile territory.

Now he didn't even remember the reason he’d left his on when the others didn't.

Shouts sounded around him.

More bullets flew through the air.

Then people were all around him. Well-meaning people, performing first aid, putting pressure on his wounds, and offering words they thought might comfort.

They didn't.

Nothing could comfort him right now.

As his body was jostled, he saw them. Bullet-ridden bodies that had once been living, breathing men. Gone now. Taken out in an ambush that had to have been led by a traitor. That was the only way to explain how they'd been attacked on what was supposed to be a secure military base.

It didn’t matter now. They were gone. All of them. Except him.

He alone had survived.

And he wished he hadn't.

When he began to fight against the hands of the people attempting to save his life, they tried to stop him. They didn't understand that he didn't want to live without his team.

A horrible wail filled the air. A desperate sound made of pure grief-filled agony. It took him far longer than it should have to realize it was coming from him.

“Josiah.”

The soft, sweet voice was out of place. It didn't belong here. Hadn't been there the day he’d lost his entire team.

“Wake up,” that same angel voice insisted.

Panic lashed at him, inflicting the same burning pain a whip would.

No.

She couldn’t be here. It wasn't safe. They'd get her, too. Shoot her, kill her, leave her beautiful body riddled with bullet holes on the hot sand.

He had to get his weapon, he wasn't going to let them have her, too.

Not her.

A hand touched his shoulder, trying to prevent him from getting his weapon, and he snapped out one of his hands to stop them, surprised by the sudden burst of strength he had when just moments ago his body had felt heavy and useless.

She whimpered. A muted, pained sound, and Josiah turned toward her, needing to put a stop to it. That sound hurt worse than everything else combined.

One blink changed everything.

The sand disappeared, replaced by a hard plastic chair, the heat morphed into the dry, cool of AC air, and the bodies littered around him became a couple of people giving him odd looks. Fearful looks.

Beside him stood the woman whose voice had spurred fear unlike any other to flood his system.

Her hand rested lightly on his shoulder, and his much bigger hand circled her wrist in a grip he knew was causing her pain, because the face that looked down at him held a tightness that wasn't usually there.

“It’s okay,” she murmured softly, “it was just a dream. You're safe. I didn't mean to touch you, I know you don’t like that, but …” She trailed off and indicated the few people about them, all looking at him expectantly.

Right.

The wedding.

They were at the courthouse so he and one of his co-workers could get married. Not because they were in love, but because they were going undercover to try to bring down an organ trafficking ring that had been operating for several years now.

Things had taken a personal turn earlier in the year when one of their coworkers had been snatched by the ring.

Ava Hendricks had managed to escape with the help of a Navy SEAL, Nathaniel Trevino.

The two were now happy and in love, and wanted to start their future, but they couldn’t because of the ring.

Fellow teammate and former Delta Force operator, Tobias Ashford, had also fallen in love when he’d gone back into the field for the first time in years to help raid one of the trafficking ring’s clinics.

There, he’d met imprisoned nurse Isabella Baker.

Despite a rocky start, the two had also fallen in love and were expecting a baby.

Then last month, another of his teammates, Teresa Dash, was targeted.

The timing had been good, or bad depending on how you looked at it, because her teenage crush had popped back into her life around the same time.

The two had worked through their issues, and Teresa had decided to give Micah Hart a second chance.

Three teammates, three new relationships.

Three chances of happiness and a life that he would never allow himself to have.

They were why he was here now. Why he’d decided going undercover was their best bet at getting to the elusive head of the trafficking ring.

Desiree Tilly had lost her husband and three of her four children to a rare genetic disorder that caused a protein buildup to affect organs.

Organ failure had occurred, and they had all passed away.

All but a daughter.

One Desiree Tilly refused to let go of.

While they could all understand the desperation that had led her to start up a black-market organ ring, none of them could condone it.

Hundreds of people across the globe had been abducted, killed, their organs stolen, and sold to the highest bidder.

The woman had to be stopped, and he knew he could be the one to do it.

But Chelsea Pierce was not supposed to be part of it.

His plan had been for him to infiltrate the ring alone. Posing as a dying man willing to do whatever it took to live, he was going to get himself an appointment with someone inside the ring, and then work his way up the ladder until he got an appointment with Desiree Tilly herself.

Only he’d been outvoted.

Chelsea had insisted that nobody would believe that a retired SEAL, who had served his country and lost his entire team in combat, would seek out a black-market trafficking ring.

Not for himself anyway. But she’d believed that if the ring thought he was doing it to save someone he loved, it might be more believable.

So here they were. A day later, at the courthouse, getting married. To make this work, they needed everything to be as legitimate as possible, since quite obviously, Chelsea was not in fact dying and in need of a black-market organ to survive.

The justice of the peace who would sign off on the marriage certificate was watching him with suspicious eyes, like he wasn't sure if he should pick up the phone and call the cops.

While Josiah hated the idea of Chelsea being in danger, he didn't hate her specifically. Despite his reputation for hating everyone and everything, the only people he truly hated were the men who had stolen the lives of his teammates and the man who had set them up.

What he did hate was letting anyone get even vaguely close to him.

Including touching him.

It took more effort than he would have expected to slowly uncurl his fingers, one by one, from around Chelsea’s slender wrist. The look of understanding in her gray eyes almost made rage explode out of him.

How dare she understand him.

Why couldn’t she keep her distance like everybody else?

The rest of his team were polite, but they respected his boundaries and didn't try to force friendship that he didn't want onto him.

Not Chelsea, though.

Never her.

She was always trying to engage him in conversation, trying to be nice to him, and get closer to him.

She baked him sweet treats, she gave him a Christmas gift every year, she brought cake and candles, and insisted everybody sing him “Happy Birthday”.

She was everything good and sweet in the world, and everything he wanted to avoid at all costs.

Only now as he stood and faced what was without a doubt the scariest mission of his career, and that had nothing to do with bringing down an organ trafficker, she was everything he couldn’t avoid.

Everything he had to pretend he wanted, because to the outside world, this marriage had to appear real, even if it was going to be annulled the second Desiree Tilly was in custody.

Doing this with anybody else would have been easy to pretend, to fake it, do what had to be done for the greater good.

But Chelsea Pierce was his Achilles heel.

Something he couldn’t allow anyone—especially her—to realize if he wanted to go back to his solitary life once this was over. That life, devoid of as much human contact as he could, was the only thing that kept him sane, kept him breathing.

Keeping people out wasn't just self-preservation, it was the only thing keeping him alive.

May 11th

6:50 P.M.

This was never going to work.

Chelsea Pierce glanced sideways at Josiah as they walked back outside after what had to be the absolute shortest wedding in the entire history of humanity.

Why had she thought this was a good idea again?

At the time, it had seemed so simple. No one would believe that Josiah Fleet, an honorable man who had just about every military medal it was possible to receive, was suddenly going to go seeking out traffickers to save his own life.

That she was absolutely certain of. It wouldn't convince anyone, and if they were going to make contact with the traffickers, they would have to seem legitimate.