Page 13 of Rescuing Rebecca
“Yeah.” Grant nodded. “One more thing. Nobody on my team knows my real name. I need to keep it that way for operational reasons. Total anonymity on both sides.”
“Holding secrets?”
“It’s the name of the game, JP. Can I trust you with this?”
“I got your back.”
“I know you do, buddy. It’s why I called you first.”
With a last grunt of exertion, Cody pressed the three-hundred-and-fifteen-pound barbell back to max height before dropping it into the rack. Metal clanged against metal as the cast iron weights settled home.
Second set of ten reps completed, his muscles burned, his heart pumped hard, and sweat coated his skin. A swig of water would be nice, but sitting up to get it? Bad idea. The bench press faced the glass-walled yoga studio, and Eve was in there turning herself into a pretzel.
So yeah, potential for dehydration aside, he’d be keeping his spine on the bench and his eyes on the ceiling for the duration of his workout, because he liked his peepers in their sockets. And if Adam ever caught anyone looking at his fiancée with anything but friendly respect. They’d be blind inside of three seconds.
Not that he had any plans to ogle Eve. Or any of the women in the house. Hell no. He held them all in high regard. Respected them and the men they were paired with. Chase and Grace. Adam and Eve. Jamie and Summer. As couples, they made sense, and collectively, they made the JTT a family.
Only a moron messed with family.
But the truth of the matter? Seeing them together reminded him of his own circumstances. Reminded him of the cheating fiancée who’d slept with his best friend, her stepbrother, the night before she and Cody were supposed to walk down the aisle to pledge their love for eternity—in front of every damn person they knew.
Yeah, there’d been no happily-ever-after for him. No ten-day honeymoon in the Cayman Islands. No three-bedroom house in the Austin suburb of Cedar Park. Those things had gone to his best man.
Four years with Ashley, and what did Cody have to show for it? Nothing but an empty cavity behind his rib cage and a bank account that hadn’t started to recover until recently. Fool me once and all that crap. He shook his head back and forth against the narrow bench.
Never again.
In a hurry to get away, he’d hightailed his ass back to the JTT.
They were a newly formed unit back then. A black ops team on the hunt for a terrorist hell-bent on killing Americans. It’d taken them over two years to discover the man they were looking for was none other than their boss, Jonas Johnson.
The whole arms trafficking, domestic terrorism, evil genius thing had been a ruse. A way to get them, and every fucking security intelligence agency out there, looking in the wrong direction. Johnson hadn’t wanted to disrupt the upcoming federal election. He’d wanted to secure it for himself.
And what better way than to scare Americans back to the polls by killing off the competition? Fuck. Cody couldn’t wait to put a bullet in his head. Even though he’d have to get in line.
Right now, Jamie had dibs. Not only had Johnson murdered one hundred and twenty-three people, including Jamie’s pregnant ex-wife, to lure the vice president to Boston so his assassin could take her out, but he’d damn near offed Jamie in the process.
A bullet to the liver and one to the knee, his injuries would’ve sidelined a lesser man, but he had two beautiful girls to fight for. Summer and Halia. The nanny who’d flipped him on his head, and his ex-wife’s daughter, adopted by the entire JTT after her premature birth.
Cutest little thing in a My Daddy Kicks Ass onsie.
They were Jamie’s world now. Crazy how fast and hard he’d fallen. Then again, fast and hard might be the only possible way to fall in the time they had left.
If the JTT failed. If they didn’t rescue Rebecca. If she didn’t have the computer code needed to control Dominion. They were all fucked. And if the virus took over the web and systems crashed, they could forget about getting Takoda Keenan back.
Abducted by Johnson’s men five months prior, Tak was still MIA. They hadn’t heard from their teammate since they’d moved to their new base located in the heart of Montana’s Flathead National Forest.
Although they’d seen him. Once. On a surveillance camera. In Boston. Right before Vice President Nancy Laski-Haines had been killed on the steps of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross. A single high-caliber bullet to the side of her head guaranteeing an election win for Johnson while simultaneously crushing the hopes and dreams of millions of Americans.
An impossible shot, only a handful could’ve made, including the JTT’s missing sniper.
No one wanted to believe Tak would do such a thing. Not voluntarily. But if he’d been chipped. A neural implant embedded in his brain. Well, fuck. It sounded like science fiction to Cody and a nightmare scenario for the host.
Zero control over one’s own will, thoughts, and emotions? Cody shuddered, his skin prickling in the cool air. Jesus. Kill him now. Nobody knew if the neural processor could be removed or what kind of damage it caused, so even if they did get Tak back, chances were good he’d never be the same.
His thoughts spiraling into too dark a place, he shoved them aside. Ever since he’d ditched college to join the Marine Corps, lifting weights to the point of exhaustion had become his coping mechanism.
The outlet for all the crap he’d seen and done in the name of national security on behalf of a government that wanted him, and those he loved, dead. Well, too fucking bad. Those assholes had picked a fight with the wrong people.
