What I Fight For: A Bad Boy Military Romance (Easy Team Book 1) (7 page)

Chapter
Seven
Emilia

              “This is a good space for a medical station,” I said, smiling at the town official. “This could definitely work.”

              The old man, who looked to be in his sixties, smiled and nodded. “I’m glad,” he said in halting English. “We are small but this is our biggest building.”

              I shook my head. “No, no, this is plenty big enough for us,” I assured. “Once we work out a schedule, my team can come in and do good work from here.”

              The official nodded and shook my hand. I shook his hand gently as his arm looked to be no bigger than a twig. He wore threadbare clothes and a patched up skullcap.

              He was one of the few town government officials who had stayed after the refugees had come flooding across the border. The town was now a shell of its former self but he and a few others had stood their ground against predatorial gangs and the like to keep the city alive.

              I gave one final look around the long meeting hall before following the official back to his office.

              The town needed medical attention as much as the refugee camp but the advantage a town had was that it had actual buildings. It had electricity. Running water. All of those things made medical care so much easier to provide.

              I had been called upon to visit the city and to check out the area for a suitable place to set up our workstation. Mr. Carew had called me on a sat phone, giving me the information I needed.

              I was about to head over to the large meeting tent to ask one of the men there if they could drive me into town when I saw Cooper walking out from behind a smaller tent.

              Without even thinking, I just instinctually turned on my heel and began walking in the opposite direction. Last night, whatever was said, in the end I had made my move. By admitting I had called him in L.A., I had essentially admitted my interest. It had been a nerve wracking admission but one I had swallowed my fears to make.

              But instead of pleasure or even surprise at this admission, the mercenary had seemed disappointed. He had seemed displeased. He had looked like he had regretted giving me his number at all.

              So regardless of how dangerous a mercenary was or how risky his life was, all I really felt was embarrassment. The same kind of embarrassment a thirteen year old me would’ve felt in passing a note to a boy, only to have it callously rejected.

              “Doc?” I heard him call out behind me. I continued walking. “Hey! Doc!”

              I sighed when I felt his large hand fall on my shoulder. I gave some resistance as he turned me around to face him but I knew it was only a gesture. This man was much stronger than me.

              I looked up at him, giving him my best calm neutral doctor face. “Yes, Captain Hawking?” I said. “Can I help you?”

              Cooper raised a brow at my tone. “Weren’t you just heading towards the command tent?” he asked. “Did you need something?”

              There was no use lying about the mission Mr. Carew had sent me. Eventually the Captain of Easy Team would have to know as well. I told him.

              “So I was going to the tent to see if one of the men could drive me into town,” I said.

              Cooper nodded. “I’ll take you.”

              “No!” I said almost immediately. I could only take so much awkward embarrassment. I cleared my throat and said more calmly, “No, I can ask…err…Lieutenant Bear.”

              Cooper’s lips twitched in amusement. “There’s no need for such formality with Easy Team. We’re all equal. I’m only called Captain to designate a leader but it’s not a rank. And Bear is his call sign. His name is Xander Vaughn, next time you want to chat with him.”

              I gave a curt nod. “Fine,” I said, feeling more embarrassed now that I had misused military titles and names. “I’ll talk with Mr. Vaughn then about driving me.”

              Cooper shook his head. “I’m sorry but he’s out on patrol. I’m afraid your next best option will just have to be me,” he said.

              I was about to argue that I had seen at least half a dozen other men on his team and I would much rather take my chances with them when he put both hands on my shoulders and leaned in.

              “Listen,” he said, pinning me again with those dark eyes that made me feel like I was melting from the inside out. “I know that last night made us both feel a little awkward.”

             
Both?
He looked just as calm and casual as ever. But now that his face was so close to mine, I did notice the faint darkening around some of the lines around his eyes. Perhaps it
was
both.

              “But I said everything I said to spare you more pain,” he said. “I don’t want you to have another risky night of reckless drinking because of me.” I lowered my head, unable any longer to meet his gaze but a finger tucked under my chin, forcing my head up. “But that doesn’t mean I feel like protecting you any less. That doesn’t mean I don’t worry about you any less. So let me do both. Let me worry about you and protect you.”

              A shiver passed through my chest.
You want to worry over me and protect me…but you don’t want to date me.
I know the word itself sounded so stupid and shallow—‘date.’ But what else was there to call it?

              But maybe it was for the best. Maybe he was right. The humiliation, the pain, I had endured after Edward was something I really couldn’t fathom experiencing again so soon. And really, I hardly knew this man. Who knew what kind of heartbreak he could be capable of?

              But left with no choice, I agreed. “Fine,” I said softly. “Let’s go then.”

***

              The office of the official was attached to the large meeting hall. The meeting hall had clearly been used as some kind of town hall assembly when there had been more people. But now it was abandoned and nearly empty of any furniture or people.

              Cooper stood waiting in the office, leaning against the wall near the door. “Things looking like a five star hospital in there?” he said grinning.

              “Just about,” I said, smiling back. “Once we get workstations set up, it’ll be a good space for us to work in.”

              The official beamed. “That’s very good news!” he said genuinely.

              Cooper straightened up and began talking to the man in Qunari. I was yet again amazed by the man. He spoke Pakreshi and now he also spoke Qunari? I watched as Cooper made gestures with his hands. From what I could gather, it seemed like he was already discussing how to call in the city people into the meeting hall for the medical team in an orderly fashion.

              From the moment we had arrived in town, I had been amazed by Cooper’s subtle diplomacy. Having seen him in camo and with a rifle in his hand, it was all too easy for me to understand who he was as a mercenary.

              But clearly, the man wasn’t all brawn. He had learned enough tact to pick up some of the local tongues to better keep the peace. He knew how to direct local officials and authorities without making them feel bossed about.

              I had had to stop myself several times from staring at him outright.

              As the two men talked, I looked out the open door and saw a little girl walking down the side of the street. She was in a ragged dress and her hair was in a messy braid. She had a very round tummy but the sunken cheeks of a malnourished child.

              I was just reviewing in my head what kind of foods we might have brought with us in the truck that I could give her when I saw her squat down near a gutter and pick something out from a muddy puddle. From where I stood, it looked like some kind of dirty soaking bar of some sort.

              Before I could shout, the girl immediately put the dirty dripping bar into her mouth.

              “No!” I cried out as I bolted out the door. “No, no! Don’t put that in your mouth!”

              From behind me, I heard Cooper shout out in surprise, “Hey! What are you doing!”

              But I ignored him and ran straight for the little girl who had frozen in shocked surprise at the screaming white lady.

              Panting, I stopped in front of her. I put a hand on her shoulder lest she tried to run away. Closer now, I could see that it wasn’t some kind of sopping bar or bread; it was literally a piece of iron.

              It was some kind of rusted piece of iron that had been sitting in a dirty mud puddle for god knows how long.

              I plucked the iron from the little girl’s hand. She made a small sound of protest but I shook my head.

              “No,” I said, hoping my gestures and expression would translate. I spoke slowly, shaking my head. “This is not food. This is bad. Don’t eat this.” I shook my head again as I held the piece of rusted iron up. “Not food, okay?”

              The girl looked up at me in confusion, clearly hungry and not sure why a strange white lady wouldn’t just let her eat whatever she wanted.

              I sighed and dug into my pockets. I pulled out a slightly crushed granola bar. I handed it to her. I realized with some dry irony that she took the granola a lot more suspiciously than she had taken the dirty piece of iron.

              She held it like a foreign bomb that might explode in her hands.

              “That’s okay to eat,” I said. I mimed spooning food into my mouth and then pointed to the granola bar to connect the two. “That’s food.”

              The girl looked at the bar and then to me skeptically. I added nutritional aid to my list of things to do for the city. We had boxes of calorie dense nutritional bars at base camp. We had been handing them out to the refugees but I realized the people in the city needed them just as much.

              I was about to see if I could ask the girl her name when a large hand touched the small of my back, making me whirl around.

              Cooper stood behind me. He smiled at the little girl and said something in Qunari to her.

              The little girl looked up at Cooper with a quiet regard before looking suspiciously around the street. Finally she nodded.

              “What did you—?” I started.

              “Why don't you take her inside? The official says that he has some tea and biscuits for her,” Cooper said, gently pressing my back towards the official’s office.

              I gave him an odd look. Where had he suddenly come from? There seemed to be an urgency in his body but his voice and facial expression were calm and collected.

              “Alright,” I said slowly. I was about to usher the little girl along when suddenly I felt a small hand grab my own.

              I looked down and saw the little girl pulling me along towards the official who was waving at us, his expression worried and urgent.

              “What’s going—” I started again, turning around to Cooper but he put an arm around my shoulder and pulled me close to him, preventing me from turning my head around to look behind him.

              “The little girl might also need some attention,” he continued, as if picking up a normal conversation. “You might want to give her a check up in the office as well.”

              And before I could say anything more, the little girl dragged me into the office where the official said something as he quickly pulled us in, shutting the door behind us and barring it.

              I turned around just in time to see a gang of five men, armed and heading straight towards Cooper. But it wasn’t the men or the guns they were ostentatiously carrying on their hips that caught my eye. It was that look of cold, steel confidence in skill and strength that permeated Cooper’s face as he turned around.

              Gone was his normal, teasing smile. And in its place was an icy restraint that said,
I dare you to make a fucking move. I fucking dare you.

              Then the door shut.

Chapter
Eight
Cooper

              I stood by the door, asking the official if any of the town’s militia were still around. We could use as many extra hands as possible if we were going to help the medical team set up another station in the city.

              “I’m sorry,” the official said regretfully, his gray brows knitting together in sorrow. “Any man young enough to fight left months ago. They felt the city was sinking and didn’t want to stay to drown.”

              I put a hand on the old man’s thin shoulder. “It’s not sinking,” I said gently but firmly. “You and I will help it float.”

              The man smiled softly and continued to throw options on how the logistics might work in gathering people to receive medical attention.

              I was listening when suddenly a gust of wind rushed past me. I looked up through the door and saw Emilia running full sprint out into the street.

              “No!” she shouted. “No, no! Don’t put that in your mouth!”

              I took a step towards the door. “Hey! What are you doing!”

              But before I could run out and grab her and read her the literal dictionary definition on ‘protocol,’ I saw her stop in front of a little girl who looked like she had some piece of trash in her hand.

              I watched as Emilia plucked it out of the girl’s hand and shake her head. I couldn’t hear what she was saying but I felt a reluctant grin cross my face as I watched her try her best to lecture the girl through their language barrier.

              This woman was something else. She was smart and capable. But that was obvious. She was a doctor. There was no way she could’ve made it this far as a doctor if she
wasn’t
smart and capable.

              She was more than that. She was compassionate. She was sharp. She was brave.

              I still remembered how she had bluntly told me she had called me in L.A. Her eyes had looked directly into mine, with no girlish coyness. The moonlight had thrown shadows across her long lashes.

              And it made my throat clench to toss her words back to her but I knew what had to be done.

              When I had met her in L.A., I had literally come back from Honduras where I had just finished a job dismantling a small but critical cog of a large drug cartel that the US military was keeping an eye on.

              By the time Easy Team had walked away from the mission, ten cartel men were dead and two of my men were injured. The first shower I had after the mission, I had painted the shower floor red with the blood I had spilled.

              How could I bring a woman whose job was to save lives into a relationship with a man whose job was to end them?

              No, if I had any decent bones left in my body, I would protect Emilia from me the best I could.

              “What a good woman,” the official said, standing next to me and watching as Emilia was pressing what looked to be a granola bar into the little girl’s hand. “She clearly loves children.”

              “Yes, she—” I stopped.

              I could feel the official jerk next to me. He had seen them too.

              From around the corner of a distant building were five men approaching with a confidence and aggression that said they were not from the city. They were one of the gangs that had begun infesting the city once the refugee crisis hit.

              They walked with an aggressive swagger and made a show to display their weapons on their belts. They were normally poorly trained and poorly educated shits who just enjoyed having some semblance of power. But those were exactly the reasons why they were such a menace. They caused terror and destruction without any thought or restraint.

              “I’ll bring them in,” I said lowly, not tearing my eyes off of Emilia for a second. She was still oblivious as she tried to teach the girl about nutrition. “You keep the door bolted and wait for my signal.”

              The official nodded. “Yes,” he rasped nervously. His office walls were riddled in bullet holes from the many gangs that had used terror as their tactic to push all the government officials out of town. And many had succumbed.

              The men crossed the corner. I saw the leader of the group suddenly perk up as he caught sight of Emilia. Even from here, I could see the look of crude lust on his face.

              I stepped out and quickly reached Emilia and the little girl and stood in front of them, blocking their view of the street. I didn’t want to alarm the little girl and I didn’t want to frighten Emilia.

              But as I looked down, I saw the little girl already giving me a serious look. Who was I fooling? This little girl had probably lived through more trauma in her short years than most grown adults would ever see.

              “I want you to take the doctor inside,” I saw calmly to the little girl in Qunari. “You’ll be safe there. I’ll let you know when to come out.”

              She didn’t need to ask questions. She knew danger when it was present. She nodded solemnly and took Emilia’s hand.

“What did you—?” Emilia started, looking confused by the little girl’s gesture and my sudden foreign words.

              “Why don't you take her inside? The official says that he has some tea and biscuits for her,” I said, gently but firmly pressing her towards the official’s office. I could see the confusion in her eyes. There were a million questions she wanted to ask me. But I pushed her on ahead, wanting to make sure she was safely out of the way in case bullets flew.

              I kept myself placed directly in her line of view so she wouldn’t see the gang fast approaching.

              Once I saw the girls cross the doorway, my entire body tightened in readiness. This was something my body was familiar with. Ready for.

              Combat.

              I turned around just as the gang approached our little corner of the street.

              They eyed me suspiciously, seeing my military outfit. I had no rifle but I had my gun holstered on my hip. The men narrowed their eyes at me when they saw my hands were down by my sides, not tensed around my gun, one foot toeing a sizeable rock on the ground.

              “Good afternoon,” I said calmly in Qunari.

              This caught them by surprise. “Since when did American soldiers speak Qunari?” the man in the middle said.

              “Who said I was an American soldier?” I countered.

              The man scoffed and quirked a brow at me. “Did you find your clothes by accident in a dumpster then?”

              The other men laughed.

              “What can I help you with today?” I said, ignoring the jibe. I noticed only two of the five actually had guns. The others carried various sized knives. Guns were a commodity here and hard to get a hold of. It was surprising that a small gang could even afford more than one gun.

              The man in the middle crossed his arms. “I saw that you took away some pretty birds I had my eyes on. That’s quite selfish of you when you know the town is short on women.”

              I snorted then gave the man a disgusted look. He was very serious when he meant he had interest in both the little girl and Emilia. All of Easy Team had heard the countless stories of child rape and abuse since the gangs had come in to town. “I don’t think the ladies were interested in talking with you,” I said.

              The men grumbled in offense at my words.

              The man in the middle narrowed his eyes at me. “A mind reader, huh?” he snarled. “Well can you predict what I’m about to do next?”

             
Why yes, I can.
I had seen what he would do before he had come around the corner.

              I saw him reach for his gun.

              Immediately, I kicked the rock by foot, sending it spinning towards his head. It made direct contact with his forehead, knocking him backwards into the arms of the man behind him.

              “Garg!” he cried out, clutching his bleeding head.

              The others stood by stunned for a moment before regaining their senses, descending on me like locust.

              But they were amateur, unorganized locust. They attacked with anger rather than calculation.

              My fist made perfect impact with one man’s ribs as my foot swiped across another man’s knees, neatly felling him.

              The man with the second gun pulled it out just as I wrapped my arm around his, swinging his arm behind his back. He cried out as I pulled the arm out higher, his shoulder aching as it was about to dislocate.

              He dropped the gun which I kicked far out of the way.

              A man to my left cried out loudly as he revved himself up to charge me. But before he even took one step, I neatly kneed him in the gut, making his roar immediately shrink to a whimper.

              In less than five minutes, I was standing on the sidewalk, surrounded by groaning men, clutching various parts of their bodies in pain.

              “I’m…not finished,” the leader wheezed as he pulled himself up to his feet.

              “Good,” I said, my fists ready. “I’m not either.”

              But before anyone could make a move, there was a static-y screech as a radio on the leader’s belt came into signal.

              “Come to base now,” a voice said in Qunari.

              The leader brought the radio to his mouth. “Sir, there’s a man here whose been causing some troub—”

              “What did I just say?” the voice demanded angrily. “There’s an order I need you to take care of. Get over here now!”

              The leader’s lips tightened in frustration but he obeyed his commander’s orders. “Yes, sir.”

              Before the signal went dead, I heard the voice mumble, “Fucking dipshits.”

              The men all limped to their feet. “This isn’t over,” the leader said as they headed back down the street. “I see you again and you’re dead!”

              I said nothing as they disappeared, too shocked.

              I had thought the voice on the radio had been a Qunari man. He spoke Qunari with a perfect accent.

              But the last two words….

              Before the medical team had arrived, Easy Team were the only Americans in probably a 100 hundred mile radius. We were the only ones that spoke English which made it necessary for us to pick up some Qunari.

              Then the medical team arrived.

              But that still meant that all the English speakers in this region were located on our base camp. I could count the number of people. I knew all of the people who spoke English.

              But those last two words….

The last two words had been spoken by an unknown voice in perfect, absolutely idiomatic English.

              American English.