Just another day on the job.
Only this job involved a very beautiful woman, and it pissed him off that someone had taken a shot at her, figurative or not. From what he’d gleaned in her letters to her brother and Ryker’s stories about her, she had a huge heart and was completely down to earth, despite her glamorous life as a model.
An image flashed in his mind. A magazine Ryker had proudly produced on that last tour, the one that had effectively ended Swanny’s career in the army, had Eden’s face on the cover. She’d been chosen as the world’s most beautiful woman, and Swanny could see why. She was so beautiful she made his balls ache.
Long, flowing blond hair. Not the bottled kind either. Eyes an unusual shade of aquamarine that glowed brightly against sun-kissed skin. And her smile. Man. Not a fake smile, but a genuine, from-the-heart-looking smile. Her eyes had sparkled with laughter. She hadn’t done one of those serious, sultry poses. There was a hint of mischief shining in those ocean eyes. The kind that told a man he was getting a handful with her.
And those lips. Full, luscious. Just the right amount of plumpness and forming a perfect bow. No lipstick, just a hint of shiny gloss. For that matter, as he gained a firmer image of that picture in his mind, he remembered that she hadn’t worn makeup, or if she had, it was the kind that made it look as though she wore none. She had a natural, all-American-girl look going. The girl next door, only ten times hotter. Men could only dream of the girl next door looking that damn good.
He shook himself from his wayward thoughts and stashed clothing in a duffel bag, took a quick inventory of his knives and the flashbangs he always had on him and then made sure he had sufficient ammo for the two pistols he carried.
He was acting like a goddamn teenager with a crush on the cheerleader. Yeah, he’d had his share of fantasies on those long nights in the cold with only his daydreams to occupy his thoughts. Eden wouldn’t give a man like him a second glance. Or maybe she would, but it would be because she was doing a double take at the hideous scar that marred his face. That thought effectively put a damper on his imaginings and he got back to the task at hand.
He secured the ankle holster before sliding the smaller Sig into place and then put on the shoulder harness and secured the larger Glock. He grabbed the duffel bag carrying his clothes and the case holding the ammo and then carefully shouldered the straps of the two high-powered rifles. One was a semiautomatic, the other his .308 with the high-powered scope he used for sharpshooting. Anything else they needed would be on the plane in the weapons locker.
He wasn’t sure what kind of trouble Eden Sinclair was in, but Ryker had sounded worried, and not much worried the Sinclair family. Their father was a badass in his own right. Raid, the oldest, was a seasoned cop and Ryker worked in private security, a smaller, less military version of KGI. All his jobs were on the up-and-up. Mostly personal security, which made it odd that he was seeking KGI’s help for the trouble his sister was in. Swanny would have thought that if she was in any kind of trouble, the family would close ranks around her and handle it on their own. They were private that way. Which only reaffirmed his belief that the situation was dire. Ryker’s vagueness on the phone bothered Swanny. He had a bad feeling about the whole damn thing. But there was nothing to do until they got there and heard firsthand what was going on.
He hurried back into the living room to see Joe stuffing his bags with clothing and his own personal arsenal, which was similar to Swanny’s own. They all had their personal preferences when it came to guns, but they all adhered to the motto that many was sufficient but more was even better.
If the zombie apocalypse ever occurred, they were definitely prepared. The KGI compound could withstand a fucking war. The sheer number of legal—and illegal—shit that was housed behind the walls of the compound would shock the average citizen. Swanny had his own stash of C-4 and enough grenades to repel a small army.
During his captivity, he’d sworn never again to feel that kind of helplessness and fear. He’d accepted the inevitability of his own death. He’d even embraced it. In his darkest hours, he’d prayed for it. It shamed him now, but at the time, death was the ultimate freedom. Escape from his dismal reality.
Thank God for Shea, Nathan’s now-wife, who’d inexplicably reached out to him across thousands of miles, speaking to him in his mind. Helping him and Swanny escape their captors and certain death. And Grace. Shea’s sister. God, she’d healed him. She’d fucking healed him from injuries that would have slowed his and Nathan’s escape. He’d begged Nathan to leave him. To save himself. And instead Nathan, with Shea’s and Grace’s help, had healed him. Made it possible for him to soldier on, and they’d made it out of those mountains alive. Not unscathed. But alive nonetheless.