I’ve never had such a strong reaction to a guy in my life, my body is boiling from the inside-out under his dark insistent eyes.
Who is he?
Why do I feel almost like I know him, like I’ve always known him?
What’s going on with me?
I feel a hand clutch around my forearm and I nearly jump out of my skin.
“What’s gotten you so worked up, all of a sudden, darlin’?” Barry asks, swiftly getting in my space. “Wanna go somewhere private so I can give you something real to pant over? I could teach that little hungry kitten of yours a few tricks.”
My eyes go big in shock and my stomach churns in revulsion. “I can’t believe you said that, you pig! Leave me alone!” I cry, trying to stand up, my voice breaking a little at the end.
His fingers grip me a little harder. “Maybe I will, maybe I won’t,” he says.
I take a huge breath and stomp on his foot with all my strength, mentally thanking God I went ahead and listened to Veronica and put on cork wedge sandals rather than flip-flops, and I manage to scramble away.
I’m in full panic-mode right now and before my brain even catches up to me, I’m running from the lights and the loud music of the party toward the free shore, my phone clutched to my chest and Barry is giving chase.
Prologue Part 2
WYATT
I grimace at the thumping music, my hand tightening around the icy-cold beer bottle, I look at my best friend, Jonny, and he shrugs a little, his face reflecting the same disappointment I’m feeling.
A loud fucking party is not exactly what we came here to Florida for, God knows we’ve gotten plenty of them over the last few weeks since we got back from an extended tour in the Middle East.
The boys have done nothing but party hard for as long as we’ve been back at Fort Benning and, I don’t know, maybe both Jonny and I are growing old for all the shit they like to pull.
It’s not like I don’t understand them, we live a trying, often harsh existence and we barely see the fucking sun for weeks on end sometimes, so it’s normal that once we are on leave they want to let their hair down a bit.
When I was their age I did the same things when I was in R&R: I would get smashed with my army buddies at least once a week, I would go to concerts, party around and get myself some action here and there. Living a life in the fast lane was the only way I had to cope with some of the shit we saw back there. It felt like if I stopped, if I let myself feel, it would become too much sometimes and the weight of it all would fuck me up completely, so I just forged on.
Now things are different, they have been changing steadily for the last five years or so.
I still like to hang out with our boys and grab a beer in our favorite dive in Tahoma, but mostly I just want to stay still, be quiet, put everything out of my mind until I can’t anymore and just recharge in more healthy ways to get ready for the next deployment.
I’ve been enlisted since I turned eighteen and this is my fourteenth year in service, my seventh as a Ranger in the 3rd battalion of the 75th Regiment and my second as a Sgt. 1st Class in our squad.
Rangers rarely stay inactive for long and we haven’t been stationed state-side much since we went on our first tour with the regiment seven years ago. So I’m sure that’s why I’m feeling so jaded over things that were fun once.
I guess when you see the fucked-up shit I’ve seen it just takes some of the light out of you, but I still love what I do and I don’t see myself stopping for a long time, though someday I will.
I sometimes dream of the life I would lead if this was over. I grew up in Arizona and I’ve seen every single fucking desert on this planet one fucking time too many. I’m tired of endless, harsh sands and the unbearable heat, so when I think about the future, I see snow-capped mountains, green, rolling valleys, majestic trees, and lakes as far as the eye can see, so who knows maybe when I retire I’ll move someplace cold and lush and wild and just finally really relax.
But not yet. Our work isn’t done yet.
We need to be back at the base in a week’s time and once there, we will be deployed again, to Syria this time, as part of a hush-hush large-scale special op.
We are still mostly foggy on the specifics, but we know what our main objective will be: do our best and then fucking some to keep the peace amongst the various militias and other factions that have come together under one goal: repelling ISIS. Our other focus will be to seize and destroy one strategic facility sitting at the border between Syria and Kurdistan and hopefully take down as many terrorists as we can in the process.
This mission is too fucking important to fail. That place is a damn powder keg, one spark away from blowing the fuck up and so many lives stand in the balance, not just those of American soldiers and alleys either: there are villages all over the place in the unforgiving environment, civilians are there, children are there. We cannot make mistakes.
Hence the need to rest and recuperate now so we can be sharp once we’re there.
While we were having a drink a few days ago, nursing migraines from the partying crowd around us, Jonny came up with the idea of spending the last week of leave off base doing absolutely no-fucking-thing.
I’m more of a mountain-lover, honestly, but even I could see the appeal of flying for just over an hour from Georgia and get some proper Army-old-timer R&R on a sunny beach here in Florida.
We tossed a coin, picked this small coastal town called Plumeria, and rented rooms in this little bed and breakfast built right on the shore, and we left the next day.
We got here yesterday morning and spent time just shooting the breeze and joking around on the beach, lounging on two recliners, looking like a pair of seventy-year-old snow-birding retirees; me with a John Grisham’s book in hand, and Jonny with his puzzles —the guy’s damn near fucking obsessed with cross-words— and it was just fucking perfect and exactly what we needed after all the obligatory partying, drinking and shit.
And then today it was fucking over, just like that.
In the blink of an eye this afternoon, the place got flooded with people —loud-as-fuck, drunk-ass people— and when we saw them starting to put down a portable dance floor and shit, we knew our quiet holiday was fucking over.
Jonny being Jonny, aka a big jovial motherfucker, said it was nice while it lasted and that maybe this was the universe’s way of telling us thirty-two-years-old is too fucking young to throw in the towel. So after the aforementioned loud-as-fuck, drunk-ass people got their party started, he dragged me here for a bottle of my favorite beer.
‘Just go with the flow’, that’s what he said, and I could even see it until the parade of sloshed skanks throwing themselves at me started. With this fuck-loud music no one can’t hear shit, so there’s no persuading them I’m not interested in what they’re offering in any other way than by stalking away from them and acting the jerk, which I hate honestly, but what else can I do?
Certainly not what Jonny’s doing.
I look over at him and laugh, shaking my head: he’s dancing with four girls.