Page 35 of Last First Kiss
“Annabelle—” he barked, standing up too. She could tell by his tone, and the red on his face, that he was angry.
“I’ll do it, I’m not scared. But this is bullshit, and you know it. Would you do this to a man on the team? The Gridiron is for getting ready and preparation during off times. You do not take me out of a mission to see if I’m qualified to continue. I was in the United States Army, Joey, for Christ sake. I’ve been to war. I’m capable.”
“You were in a raid, missing for two fucking days, and catatonic for three. I’m still amazed they didn’t relieve you of duty right then and there! I almost lost my goddamn mind when I received the call. You almost killed Ma! I’m not going to let that happen again. I need to know you’re ready! If you can’t show me you can handle this, I’m pulling you from the job!” He slammed his fists on the table. And for the first time in a long time, something became obvious. Ridiculously obvious. It wasn’t that her brother didn’t trust her or her ability.
It was that he was scared.
Terrified.
She had gone through hell and he had been right there alongside of her, unable to do a damn thing about it.
“Joey,” she whispered. Were his eyes a little misty?
He walked around the table and stood right in front of her. “Do you know what it’s like to get a call while you’re in the middle of Iraq to let you know that your baby sister was missing? I have never in my life felt more helpless or scared. I couldn’t take it if something happened to you. I just need to make sure you can handle this. Before Dad died, I promised to take care of you, and I failed him once. I failed you both. I won’t do it again, Annie. I won’t.”
Her shoulders dropped. She could see the weight of this burden on him, the dark purple under his eyes. He was genuinely worried. “Okay, Joey.”
“Thank you.”
Jax stood and put a hand on her shoulder. “Let’s go, kid, the Gridiron waits for no one.”
She stood there looking at her brother for a few minutes, her throat felt tight. That week had been hell. “Hell” was not even the right word. For two days, she’d been deprived of all senses, stuck under rubble, unable to move, barely able to breathe, coming in and out of consciousness. She’d been sure she would die before anyone found her. To top it off, she’d seen the only man she’d ever loved die instantly in the first explosion, and then in her arms, Yagana followed. All hope she had was gone.
By the second day, she’d prayed for death.
If she could survive that, she could survive the Gridiron.
The three of them walked to the back of ICS and opened the heavy rolling garage door that led outside and to another warehouse of equal size. Annie had been inside countless times and had done a few of the less stringent simulation courses. Mostly, however, she came in to use the gym, which took up a small percentage of the square footage of the enormous room.
“You may not believe your dainty little sister is capable, but let’s not forget I probably saw more action than you and Jax combined. I’m not incompetent and I’m not out of shape.”
“No one’s calling you incompetent. I just want to make sure you can handle yourself. See where your head’s at. I read some of the reports from the cops here in the US and from Interpol, and these fanatics aren’t fucking around, Annie.” Joey handed her a bag full of gear she was more than familiar with, including Kevlar.
The entire thing was her brother’s brainchild, but he seemed to have forgotten that she’d helped write the codes. It was a highly sophisticated system that truly mimicked being on the front lines, including rubber bullets and heat sensors.
She had a smile on her face when she stepped out of the changing booth. “Ready.” The adrenaline was already pumping through her veins.
Joey and Jax were behind a wall and Jax gave her the thumbs-up as she took out her weapon and racked it, making sure it was ready.
The enormous warehouse was set up to look like a war zone, complete with mud, trees, broken logs, puddles, and darkness. So when the lights went out and it was pitch-black, she was ready.
It took a moment to get accustomed to the darkness, which was the sensory deprivation part of the training. As expected, the first rubber bullet came at her, but she had already ducked before it was fired, shooting the insurgent right between the eyes in the process. Or so she hoped. She would know when they reviewed her stats afterward, but the fact that the machine shooting at her had stopped was a good sign. She pushed down some heat-sensing goggles and continued to trek farther in the dark. An unexpected far-off scream startled her.
A female.
She was back in Afghanistan. Screams everywhere as the motherfucking suicide bombers walked the street trying to blend in with the civilians.
Trying to focus on the current situation and not the clusterfuck of six years ago, she carefully hid between a tree and some bushes while crawling up the artificial hilly embankment, following the sounds of the screams.
When it was safe to look, she saw a droid resembling a mother holding a child and another, in the shape of a man wearing an explosive vest, twenty feet behind the woman. The man hadn’t seen Annie yet. The robots they’d created could sense heat and were capable of shooting back. Plus, the vest she wore had special sensors, almost like Bluetooth, that connected her to the droids, so they would react as humans when confronted.
That afternoon in Kandahar came rushing back, the only difference being that then, instead of the rural landscape, she had been in the middle of a city, and instead of a screaming mother, it had been a screaming child. On a military crawl, Annabelle tried to ignore the synthetic screams that echoed all around the warehouse, and she continued to move. Deciding to attack from behind, even if it was risky because it would take a little more of the precious time the mother and child robots didn’t have, she went slow and methodically around. She wished the screams would stop but she continued on her forearms, moving forward underneath a plastic, albeit realistic, fallen log, and through a swamp. Her uniform, now wet and muddy, weighed a ton. But the sound of an automatic weapon from afar stunned her into jumping into an upright position. She narrowed her eyes and saw the robotic body of the killer pointing a gun at her. Ducking, she rolled and shot at his leg at the same time as a bullet came flying from behind and grazed her shoulder. She kept moving forward, even though it stung.
A series of clicks resonated around her, confusing her, and two real live humans, who she recognized as ICS recruits, charged at her. This was unexpected and not at all what had been designed into the simulation.
Fucking Joey!
She moved aside, avoiding a fist to the face.
