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CHAPTER 1
Sierra needed help.She tried not to limp into the Shield Security facility where she worked. Hefting her black, nylon weapons bag over her left shoulder, she headed straight for the basement where the men’s and women’s locker rooms were located. Damn, but her right calf ached like a sonofabitch. Every bone in her body was stiff.
The flight out of Nairobi, Africa, had been long, and she’d slept most of the way back, until the landing gear thudding into place had awoken her on the approach into Reagan International Airport, Washington D.C. She had slept deeply, thankful that Shield always paid for business class tickets for their security contractors. If she’d been stuffed back in the cattle car of coach, she probably would have needed a pry bar to get her out of the seat with her leg in its current condition.
It was late afternoon at Shield Security. She passed by a couple of contractors she knew as she walked to the stairs leading to the basement.
“Hey, Chastain, good to see you back,” one man called, lifting his hand in hello to her. “Good hunting?”
Sierra wearily raised her own hand back. “Yeah, we nailed that bastard in Somalia. Hey, is Alex Kazak around? Have you seen him?”
“Yeah, he’s in a brief with Jack Driscoll on an upcoming mission to South America. Want me to send him down to the women’s locker room?” and he grinned.
“Yeah, do that,” she said in all seriousness. Gripping the oak rail on one side of the wide stairs that led down into the well-lit locker area, all Sierra wanted to do was get her weapons to the Weapons Room armorer down there. The sniper rifle she’d used, an XP, had handled the sand, heat and wind that Somalia was infamous for. Damn, her leg hurt.
Sierra dropped off her weapons bag to the woman manning the Armory. Freed of the seventy-pound load, her calf felt better. She wanted to get out of her civilian clothes and yearned for a long, hot, hot shower. She’d been able to clean up at a top-secret SEAL facility across the Somali border, in Kenya, and throw on her scruffy jeans, a red long-sleeved tee, plus a denim jacket for the trip home to the headquarters of Shield Security here in Alexandria, Virginia. Outside, it was snowing, building into a blizzard, late December as it was.
Halting at her locker, she shed her clothes, not looking too closely at her handiwork on her wounded right calf. She’d adhered the six-inch-long knife cut back together with green duct tape. It was an old SEAL fix for any wound when one didn’t have the time to tend to it properly. Grimacing, she decided to leave the tape on while showering. Quickly unbraiding her black hair, feeling the sand and grit on her scalp, she yearned for real shampoo and conditioner. Hobbling into the shower area, Sierra hoped by the time she was done, that Alex would come down and help her.
Alex Kazak stuck his head around the corner of the women’s entry point to their locker area, knocking on the wooden frame. “Sierra?” he called, his low voice echoing through the utility. He knew better than to enter unannounced. Half of Shield’s security contractors were women, and he had no wish to run into a naked one of them by accident. The door was as far as he’d go.
“Yeah! Alex?”
“It’s me. You need my medical services, Sierra?”
“I do,” she hollered back. “Hold on one sec…”
Alex stepped away from the door, holding it open. He saw tall, curvy Sierra, her long black hair damp around her proud shoulders, come limping out. She was wearing a long red t-shirt that hung to her knees. Instantly, his gaze moved to her right leg. “What happened?” he demanded, pointing toward it.
Mouth quirking, Sierra limped out of the bathroom utility and pulled the white towel around her shoulders. “Last-minute knife fight with some Somalis who were a little pissed we shot their leader.” She grinned up at the tall Ukrainian ex-Spetsnaz operator. “Let’s go to the dispensary?” and she pointed to the right.
“Yes,” he murmured, worried. “You wrapped it in duct tape?”
Scrubbing her damp hair with the towel as they walked down the tiled hall toward the medical facility, she said, “Yeah. Old SEAL trick.”
“You were with SEALs?”
“This time around, yes.” She smiled up at the broad-shouldered Ukrainian, huge in comparison to her. Sierra was five foot ten inches tall and weighed one-hundred and sixty pounds. She came from medium-boned stock via her Eastern Cherokee mother and was not a little thing at all. But, against Alex, she looked it. The big Ukrainian had married Lauren Parker, Chief Sniper Instructor at Shield. It had been a beautiful Autumn wedding. Sierra counted herself lucky to have been able to attend their small but warm ceremony before leaving for her sniper assignment in Somalia.
“Did you get the HVT?” Alex asked, opening the dispensary door for her. Inside, there was a small waiting room and reception desk. Alex was one of two combat medics at Shield and, whenever he was on duty, he handled minor medical issues for the contractors. If it was serious, they were taken to the nearby hospital for treatment. Motioning toward the opened door on the left side of reception, he said, “Take room number one. No one is around. It is near quitting time on a Friday night.” He smiled down at her. “You know how everyone leaves early on Friday afternoon?”
Sierra pushed room number one’s door open. Inside was a gurney covered with paper and a medical room filled with everything that Alex would need to sew her up. “Yes. And there’s a blizzard coming in.”
“First of the season, they say,” Alex said. He quietly closed the door behind him and set his medical bag on the counter. Going over to the examination table, he pulled out the bottom ramp for her. “Why don’t you lay on your left side and expose that wounded right leg for me?” He helped Sierra up the step. She was fully capable of doing so herself, of course, but in Alex’s eyes and world, she was a woman and therefore deserved respect. He watched Sierra closely, careful that she wasn’t putting too much weight on her wounded calf. Releasing her elbow, he went to the cabinet and pulled out two warm light-blue blankets. Once she’d gotten settled and had tugged the hem of her nightie t-shirt down to her knees, he made sure she was comfy, and covered her with the blankets so that only the leg with the green duct tape on it was available to him from beneath them.
Pulling on a pair of latex gloves, he took a pair of blunt-nosed scissors and then gently felt around the wound with them. “Tell me about this?” he asked. He saw Sierra snuggle into the pillow, knowing she was exhausted. Her skin was golden-colored because she was half-Cherokee and half-Caucasian. Her black hair was still slightly damp and lay around her head and shoulders.
“Not much to tell,” she murmured, closing her eyes. “I nailed the HVT and we were on the roof of a building across from where the tangos were at. They were like a hive of angry hornets and they came boiling out of every damned entrance of that building afterward.”
Alex gently pushed and prodded here and there, watching her expression. “You had egress points? Yes?”
“Of course. It’s just that it took a few seconds for me to break down my XP, get it in its sheath, and strap it onto my ruck before ex-filling.” She let out a huff of air. “By that time, the tangos had spotted us on the roof and came over to say hello.”
Alex grinned. “Okay, I am going to cut this tape off your calf. You know it will hurt.”
“I know,” Sierra muttered, steeling herself. Duct tape was great to stop bleeding, close a wound, and give it support, but it was hell peeling it off the skin around the wound later.
Alex carefully cut away the tape. As he did, blood leaked out all over his gloved hands and onto the paper beneath her leg. “When did this happen?”
