Guardian Agent by Dana Marton Read Free Book Online

don’t. Not even to Jake.” She watched him for a second. “But I want you to know what kind of men Brent works with.”
    The tone of her voice almost made him wish she didn’t.
    “One of them liked to come down to me while his buddy was sleeping at night. He would pull my shirt up or my pants down…” She swallowed. “He liked to bite me.”
    Human teeth marks, he recognized the scars now and the gruesome images in his head filled him with fury.
    “He got real excited if he drew blood. Sometimes he touched himself.” She looked away.
    He didn’t know what to say. Murderous rage burned through him, impotent rage since he could do nothing about those men at this stage. He wanted to protect her, but he was too late.
    He thought of Brent. Maybe not entirely too late.
    He wanted to take her into his arms again, but she didn’t look like she would welcome anyone’s touch just now. So he simply said, “I’m sorry,” and they went on with their task of trying to help Mandy.
    He carried the girl over to the tub then let Jasmine take it from there. “Call me when you need me to bring her back,” he said before he closed the door behind him.
    Time to finish his talk with Jake.
    “What about the army captain?” was the first question he asked. Jake had killed that man first, before the other two.
    “Eric was the captain of the four-man team I went down to the cistern with. Brian, Greg and the one medic were dead. I figured the other medic was, too, but couldn’t confirm since I didn’t know his name. I figured Eric took the gold and had the others killed. I knew he would come after me, and I knew arranging some friendly fire on the battlefield would be pretty easy for him. So I went AWOL, but left him some leads to follow. I wanted to meet him on my own turf, when I was ready. He came. He didn’t want to leave any witnesses.”
    “So you killed him in self-defense.”
    Jake nodded. “Meanwhile, my unit shipped back to the U.S. I was heading back home, ready to turn myself in over the AWOL thing, but then Jasmine was kidnapped.” His face darkened. “I knew then that the second medic had to be alive and running the show.”
    “Who were the two bastards Brent sent to grab Jasmine?”
    “Hired guns. Brent must have paid them to do his dirty business. I think at the beginning he figured it’d be quick and easy to get me. But I took care of his goons and brought my sisters across the ocean. So Brent stepped up his game, somehow finagling a government contract for his security company to bring me in. That gave him a whole team to order around.”
    A pretty complicated story, but it all made sense in a certain way. Gabe rubbed his hand over his face. He could no longer get around the fact that he believed Jake. “Do you think his team knows about the gold?”
    “I don’t think so. Then he’d either have to share with them or kill them for knowing. He’s just using them as his private commando team. All they know is that they have orders to bring down a rogue soldier.”
    Gabe thought for a second. “So back in Lahedeh… The medics had an ambulance, could transport the gold out and stash it somewhere. Then Brent and Eric took out everyone who knew about the gold, except you. Eric failed there, so Brent has to finish the job.”
    “The way I figure it,” Tekla said, “Brent left the army and joined a private security company so he could get back into Afghanistan with less oversight and more freedom to come and go as he pleased. He couldn’t exactly bring the gold out in his army duffel bag.”
    “Right.” Gabe agreed. Military personnel were tightly controlled and supervised. “But as team leader for a private firm, Brent could tell his team they were transporting arms seized from the Taliban, or whatever. One sealed crate looks pretty much like another.”
    Jake nodded. “Getting the gold into the U.S. would be the next obstacle. How do they get it through customs? Maybe that’s where the high up in