Bad Cat Baby Blues (Shifter Squad Six 3)

BAD CAT BABY BLUES

SHIFTER SQUAD SIX

BY

ANYA
NOWLAN
 

A LITTLE TASTE…

Ariadne barely realized the moment when Dutch took the rifle out of her hands completely and set it down on the bunk, forgetting it there. She got the feeling that he had probably never simply
left
his gun like that, or been too preoccupied to pay attention to his equipment.

Her body twisted to face him and her hands wrapped around his neck, practically pulling herself up and closer to him. He growled into the kiss and Ari had to stifle a giggle as his hands cupped her ass and hauled her into his arms. The low sound drove through her like a solid current, making everything shudder in response.

Her legs were around his waist as he slammed her back against the concrete wall, the cool surface chilling against her slick, damp skin. Dutch’s hand was on her chin, dipping it and holding her head still so he could violate her mouth, and she loved every damn second of it. Her nails raked at his strong neck, making him grunt, and she mewled into the crushing, violent kiss, all raw emotion and desire.

“Fucking hell, you’re so hot,” he rasped, his other hand traveling up her side, kneading her tits, making her buck against him.

Copyright © 2016 Anya Nowlan

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Bad Cat Baby Blues

Shifter Squad Six

All rights reserved.

No part of this work may be used, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means by anyone but the purchaser for their own personal use. This book may not be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of
Anya Nowlan
. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material is prohibited without the express written permission of the author.

Cover ©
Jack of Covers

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www.anyanowlan.com
 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

A LITTLE TASTE…

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

EPILOGUE

CATS’ GOT YOUR TONGUE EXCERPT

WANT MORE?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
 

CHAPTER ONE

Dutch

Everything was quiet. The only things disturbing the peacefulness of the thick jungle around Dutch were the sounds of insects chittering and buzzing around in the distance. He scrunched his nose, shifting his weight on his hips a bit as he settled in on his stomach at his post high up in a thick tree.

He’d been there for three hours and it felt like little more than a minute. It was nothing, really. The only reason he chose to move at all was because he could and he figured he might be in for the long haul, depending on how the night played out. The sniper rifle was set up, concealed by branches, and sweat trickled down his neck and back, leaving hot trails in the unbearable heat.

They were somewhere in the middle of a South American jungle in a country that Dutch neither cared about nor remembered to name. After a few years with The Firm, all of these haunts started looking the same. The only difference was the length of the flight and what kind of a nest he’d have to pick, depending on the mission.

Dutch scanned the compound again far below him in the dip of a valley. Small, squat buildings were nestled amongst the thick forest, almost indistinguishable from the greenery surrounding them. There were a few guards posted at the doors, most notably at the longest and the narrowest of the houses. The warehouse, they figured. Lights flickered through holes that doubled as windows, either candles or oil lamps. Nothing looked like it was meant to stay there for very long. The whole camp could be packed up in half a day and moved somewhere else if need be.

Drug dealers. Couldn’t they pick better climates to do their shit in?
Dutch pondered morosely.

Two tours in Afghanistan had given him a strong aversion to heat. Though his jaguar seemed to be purring contentedly, ready to roll as soon as the call came, the human side of the ex-SEAL was not too happy about the wet, sticky warmth. It wasn’t as bad as the dry, suffocating scorch of the desert, but werejaguar or not, he’d come to appreciate more temperate climates recently.

Dutch smirked to himself. If he was on the topic of weather in his internal monologue, the mission must have been dragging on for a while.

He touched a finger to his ear, activating the comm unit. “Cat Three. All clear here. Any update on when we hit?” he asked, trying to cover the mild irritation in his voice with something more akin to eagerness.

“Cat One. Cat Four hit a snag, will keep you posted,” Connor relayed.

Dutch suppressed a groan. Cat Four was Tex, and if he hit a snag, it meant that one or more of the bombs hadn’t been set yet. He and Grim had been slinking around the perimeter of the campsite, setting up small explosive devices on the outermost buildings with the intent to disorient the thugs when they decided to hit.

Taking a deep breath, Dutch reminded himself that he was a patient man. He had to be. It came with the territory of being a sniper. But truth be told, he’d lost a lot of his cool over the last few years and he wasn’t entirely sure how to regain it. Methodically, he pressed his eye to the scope again and rounded through the buildings and the guards one by one, making note of their positions in an effort to keep himself occupied.

Whenever he was on a long stakeout like this one, thoughts started spinning in his head that he didn’t quite need. Memories, flashes, screams, promises… all things he could do without. His nightly scotch habit kept them at bay, along with a rigorous training regime and keeping good company, either his team or women, but when he was all alone up in a nest like this one, time was his worst enemy.

Don’t go there,
he reminded himself when the corners of his vision blurred a bit and he felt his finger itching to hit the trigger.

So he counted. Two guards at the center building. Two at the warehouse door with a third circling around it. Three more in rolling rotation, walking around and looking like they thought they knew what they were doing. Probably a few more hidden by the other buildings, and countless more in the houses, as their recon over the past three days had told Shifter Squad Six.

Taking note of their gear, Dutch felt a familiar feeling of unease. These guys were armed to the teeth, and with good stuff. They weren’t loaded up with discarded AKs and a mishmash of handguns Dutch was used to seeing on drug-running scum, but new stuff. Clean, orderly, well-kept.

The guys wielding them looked like they were doing their best show of slumming it, but a man couldn’t really hide prowess and capability well for too long. These guys were jacked, on edge. Careful. They weren’t regular fumbling muscle, sent out into the jungles to get themselves killed over a deal gone bad.

And yet, when Connor had relayed this to command, they’d gotten a deadpan reply about it being “just a drug cartel” and “the mission is the same—clean out the group.” It had caused a round of eye rolls in the bunker and more than a few uttered obscenities at the guy delivering the news.

Spade. Somehow that motherfucker was always involved when things started to look weird. It came as no surprise to anyone that this was another one of these occasions and that getting information out of him was like pulling teeth at the best of times. After the little debacle with Tex and Thatch and their wife Madeline, Dutch wasn’t the biggest fan of Spade to begin with.

But they did what they were told to do, as always, but perhaps with a bit more caution this time. Which was probably why Connor was not rushing them along, taking several days to stake the place out instead of their usual one and giving Tex plenty of time to set up. All of them wanted to be in and out as cleanly as possible. There’d been too many dirty, unexpected fights lately, and Dutch knew he spoke for everyone when he said that a sensible mission would be most welcome for a change.

So it made him hiss in annoyance when he suddenly saw commotion down in the camp, as one of the guards yelled something and pointed at the darkness around the perimeter.

Shit,
Dutch thought to himself, recognizing the area he was pointing at as one of the locations Tex was to set up an explosive.

Sure enough, a low whine reached his ears, subtle but present. Perimeter guards, laser-tripped. Probably set so low that Tex didn’t know he was close to one before it went off like an air horn.

“Cat Four has been made,” Dutch growled into the comm, taking aim.

“Lock and load,” came the familiar reply, Connor’s voice as tight as Dutch’s.

Everything went to hell in a second. Tex must have hit the remote detonation triggers the same moment that Dutch pulled on the trigger of the gun for the first time, dropping the guy screaming with a clean hit to the head. The four buildings went up in a brilliant display of sparks, flames, and explosions so loud they could make a man deaf at the distance Dutch was located.

Dutch instinctively closed his eyes, the explosions flashing hard even through the protective goggles he was wearing, which were set for low light and quick adaptation between illumination levels. Still, his hands were already adjusting the rifle, the barrel moving only inches in the direction his mind knew the next two guards would possibly be running from.

When he opened his eyes, he grinned to himself as the hair trigger aligned perfectly on a camo-clad beast of a guard running toward the area where Connor and Thatch would enter. The man dropped to his knees a millisecond later, clutching his throat, and then the one behind him went down just as easily.

Dutch reloaded quickly, slamming three bullets into the rifle. His heart was beating fast, adrenaline thrumming in his veins. He hated chaos. Despised it with a passion, to be perfectly honest. Nothing pleased him more than an orderly, well-executed maneuver, and this was far fucking from it.