Surrender to Temptation (Agent Lovers Series Book 1) by Harper Steen, Lesley Schuldt Read Free Book Online

had closed behind them, Liz was alone with Townsend. They stood across from one another, sizing each other up, each silently looking the other in the eyes for a moment. Suddenly a smile flashed across Townsend’s face, as if a brilliant idea had just occurred to him. He nodded goodbye, turned around and disappeared into the night, but not before saying the words Liz could still hear in her head: “See you later!”
    “See you later?” Hardly,
thought Liz at the time as she took stock of the wrecked, empty bar. With a sigh, she picked up the mop and eliminated the final traces of the brawl.
    Two hours later, Liz locked up the bar, shouldered her backpack and walked to her motorcycle. Just then, an SUV that clearly belonged to the United States Army fleet drove into the parking lot. She didn’t have to read the graphic printed on the side to know whose it was. She paused and waited. The vehicle stopped an arm’s length away and Lt. General Townsend climbed out of the driver’s side door. He walked around the vehicle, opened the passenger door and indicated the interior with a gesture.
    “Please get in, Ms. Gibson. I would like to talk with you for a bit.”
    “Why should I get in your car? I’m not crazy!” Townsend pointed patiently with his right hand to the open door and in a pleasant and almost gentle tone repeated himself, “Please get in.” Liz hesitated, but then complied.
    To this day, Liz still couldn’t say exactly what had induced her to climb into the car. Most likely, she had gotten in simply because she sensed that in doing so, she would be triggering the start of a new chapter in her life, and she was curious about what that chapter would be.
     
    ***
     
    For hours, she spoke with Townsend in a small, windowless room at the nearby Army base. She didn’t have any idea that she had passed a personal aptitude test casually administered during this conversation or that Townsend had already looked into her family background until he told her these things. He even pulled a copy of her college diploma out of a folder and placed it on the table.
    “What exactly are you qualifying me for? Why give me a test?” Liz was bewildered, and when Townsend answered her questions, she found herself speechless for perhaps the first time in her life.
    Townsend offered her a spot on a Special Forces unit that was under his direction and made up only of people he’d hand-picked himself. He explained that for some time now, the unit had included personnel who did not actually possess military expertise. Of course, prospective personnel had to master certain skills during the preliminary stages of the application process. But he said that these would be taught to Liz, if she so chose.
    Liz didn’t learn anything else that morning. Townsend simply told her that there would be a spot for her in his Special Forces unit if she completed all her training and passed the tests.
    The Lt. General told her she had an hour to think about it and left the room. Exactly sixty minutes later, the door opened and Townsend returned. He gave her an expectant look and broke into an easy smile when Liz said, “I’ll do it!”
    She hadn’t had any idea what she was getting herself into with those four little words. The coming weeks, months and years would be pure hell for Liz. After the nine weeks of basic training, which every Army recruit had to work through, the real training began—although “torture” would be a far more accurate description of what Liz went through. Liz shifted from one training camp to another in order to master various unarmed fighting techniques, and she devoted herself so exhaustively to the study of weaponry, that before long she could dismantle, clean and assemble the HK MP7—a sub-machine gun by the German manufacturer
Heckler & Koch—
in her sleep. This was only one of the weapons she studied that would later become part of her standard equipment. Tactics, remote reconnaissance, asymmetric warfare,