Dangerous Territory: An Alpha Ops novella by Emmy Curtis Read Free Book Online Page A

her.
    “Okay, then. The truth is, I always disappear a couple of days before I deploy. I go somewhere nice, to the best hotel I can find and… just disappear. I hate being with my parents.” He shifted. “I love them, of course, but in the days before I deploy, they become tense, and more and more people phone the house, wanting to say good-bye, just in case they never see me again. And I’m not into that. Sometimes I think they just want to be on television, telling a reporter, “Oh yeah, I spoke to him the day before he left,” just to prove that they knew me really well. I would be pissed if anyone I knew talked about me to anyone like you…” He said the word in the same way a preacher might say the word “devil.” “That’s why I was there. I was flying out of Baltimore.”
    It was the most he’d said to her, ever, in fact. She wondered what it would be like to have so many people care about her, to want to call her before she shipped out. But between her assignments, her cell phone stayed silent for the most part. Something inside her felt restless for someone to care about. A pang of… guilt, maybe? For keeping people out of her life? For considering a lifestyle that she didn’t want to legitimize by thinking about? Whatever it was, it remained in her stomach, pinching and nagging.
    *     *     *
    He’d given her that snippet of information to hold her at bay. It was a reverse interrogation tactic. Tell them something that sounds very personal, something true, something that would percolate in their mind so they wouldn’t notice no other personal information was coming their way. In truth, he used it all the time when he dated. Not that he’d had the time stateside to do that recently. This was his sixth tour in four years. He didn’t mind. This job was a calling more than a career.
    Right now he wanted to keep her talking. In these situations, it was best to do everything possible to prevent the person being rescued from doing too much thinking. Especially in a war zone. It was easy to imagine the worst, and giving a brain time to come up with spiraling scenarios was not a great idea. Panic killed people. And probably him, too. If she talked, he could zone out and formulate a rescue plan.
    “So why were
you
at the Four Seasons that night?” he asked, fully prepared to switch his ears off as soon as she started talking.
    “To forget.” She sighed into the darkness and fell silent.
    Good God, a woman who didn’t ramble on indefinitely? That put a wrench in the works.
    “You were there to forget?”
    “Oh, no. I guess I was at the bar to forget.” She shifted her position a little. “I was at the Four Seasons because, essentially, that’s where I live.”
    “What?” Jesus. How rich was she, anyway? Being a soul-sucking predator paid that well?
    She laughed softly, a sound that filled him with a warmth that he enjoyed for a second and then shook off. “I… don’t really live anywhere, anymore. I’ve been in Afghanistan for four years, embedded with army units. I’m back in D.C. only between deployments, which has been for only one or two weeks at a time. I guess Afghanistan is my home.” She laughed again, but this time without amusement.
    “What were you trying to forget?” Something in his memory of that night floated to the surface. “Wait. It was your friend’s death, right?”
    There was a sudden rush of air as she got up and moved away, farther into darkness. “If I told you, if I even thought about it now, how would that be forgetting?”
    She had a point. He hated that. But still. “Have you spoken to
anyone
about it?”
    She stopped pacing. “What part of the word ‘forgetting’ don’t you understand?” She was beginning to sound irritated, which was much better than fearful or panicked.
    “I understand better than you can imagine. Forgetting isn’t an option here. It never was. What you see at war stays with you, and if you don’t deal with it, it will