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Colby sat and immediately started into her story. “You know my team was shot down?”
“We do,” I confirmed. “And that you were attacked by Roj’s force in that village. We thought your entire team had been killed.”
“I would have been if it hadn’t been for these three,” she replied. “They pulled me out of the building minutes before it exploded.”
“Why?” Keller asked, looking at Rafe.
All four of them looked uncomfortable and now I knew why.
“They were trying to rescue us,” Colby explained, her eyes meeting mine. I read the guilt there. I had a feeling it had more to do with them wanting to ‘keep’ her, as she’d told me, rather than trying to save the team, but my guys didn’t need to know that. They’d probably do something stupid like try to take her away from the men she loved. Which would start a fight that didn’t need to happen.
“Unfortunately there wasn’t time and they only got me out,” Colby continued. “They brought me back to their camp and nursed me back to health. I’d been injured when the helicopter crashed.”
Rafe sat back, crossing his arms over his chest, content to let Colby tell the story.
“When I woke up, they were speaking Russian—which I don’t know—and I wasn’t sure what was going on. Add onto that the need to go back and search for survivors from my team and I ended up escaping when they left camp for a few hours.”
Rush chuckled and shook his head. “Of course you did.”
“Why were you in Iraq to begin with?” Keller asked, the question directed at the men.
“We’re…independent contractors,” Sig responded, a huge grin spreading over his face.
“Mercenaries,” Alden spat out, looking disgusted.
“Former CIA,” Rafe said, ignoring Alden. His eyes met mine. “We were trained by our governments to work for them. We decided we weren’t really team players and struck out on our own.”
“We’ve never played well with others,” Sig said with a shrug.
“Are your governments looking for you?” Alden asked.
Arsen glared at him. “Not really your business.”
“You agreed to answer our questions,” Alden fired back.
“No. We broke off from them with their blessing,” Rafe answered, cutting the argument off at the knees. “I still have plenty of contacts through them and we pass off intelligence their way when we have no use for it.”
“Hell, sometimestheyhire us to do a job,” Sig piped up. He shut his mouth when Rafe cast a glare at him.
“Anyway,” Colby cut in, directing us back to her story. “I ended up crossing paths with some members of The Holy Order of Qaltala. These guys made it just in time to save my life.”
She continued on telling her story about how they’d found Roj’s hideout, but not in time to stop a dirty bomb that was being carried to Tikrit. They’d raced across the desert and she’d managed to dismantle it before it exploded.
“That’s where Colby got to meet me,” Brandon said with a wide smile, as if that was the most important part of the story.
The guys took over and explained that the four of them had gone back and attacked Roj’s compound. While they’d taken out a lot of his men, Roj had gotten out alive.
“Why didn’t you go along, Brando?” Torque asked with a mischievous smirk. The tone of his voice made it clear he thought Brandon had chickened out.
“Hey, my team had their own mission to complete,” Brandon argued.
“Sure,” Rush teased, picking up on Torque’s original game. The two of them often sided with one another.
“Roj is with The Holy Order,” Colby said, interrupting the three men bickering back and forth about the size of their balls.
“I feared as much,” I admitted. “Any idea where their compound is?”
“Compounds,” Rafe said, leaning forward. “They have two.”
