Colin: McCullough's Jamboree - Erotic Jaguar Shapeshifter Romance (McCullough's Jamboree Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

the army to help personnel in these sort of situations. The president will be calling you this evening. When he does, you are not to tell anyone of your conversation with him, nor do you talk to the press about anything you might see or hear. Understood?”
    “The president of what?” The woman, Agent Carols, told him. “The president of the United States is going to call me? Why?”
    “He is your daughter’s boss, and he is most upset about what has happened to her and her men.” Peter looked at his wife, then back at the agent. “When he calls you, please keep in mind it will be a private call between you and your family. Please do not share anything he might say to you.”
    “We won’t.”
    As she continued with the rules and regulations as to what they should expect when they landed, all Peter could think about was that his daughter knew the president, and that he was upset that she’d been hurt. He wondered how that had happened. And why.
     

Chapter 2
     
    Lauren woke but didn’t move. She had no idea where she was or what the fuck had happened. One minute she’d been trying her damnedest to get out of a building that was supposed to be unoccupied, and the next she hurt everywhere. Ordering her men out…she did remember that, and that…blood, there was a lot of blood. Turning her head slowly, not sure still what had happened to her physically, she could see her dad sitting asleep in the chair and Pete looking out the window. He turned and looked at her, and she wondered what he was doing there too.
    “Mom went to get some tea. Dad hasn’t been sleeping well since we got here.” She said nothing at his whispered explanation. “We’ve been here about two weeks now. I thought you were going to sleep right through it all. And so you know, you look like crap. Warmed over crap, as a matter of fact.”
    “Hurt.” He nodded and moved closer to her. Everything was blurry, and when he got closer, she noticed how tall he’d gotten. “Tall. Grown up.”
    “Yeah, that happens when you leave home for years and years. People around you have to grow up and take your place.” He pulled her hand to his mouth and kissed it. “Do you have any idea how terrified we were when they called us? How no one is telling us anything that happened to you?”
    “Sorry, it’s classified.” Closing her eyes, she let the pain wash over her. It was good, the pain; it meant she could feel and that she wasn’t dead. “Where am I?”
    “A military hospital right outside of New York. If they told us the name, I don’t remember it.” She did and looked at him again. “We’re supposed to tell them if you wake up. They don’t want us to talk to you about anything. I guess you have to be debriefed or something like that.”
    She supposed she would be. It had been…everything about that fated trip had been wrong. So wrong that she’d been on the radio trying to get answers even as the place was blowing up around them. And her men were being shot to shit and dying.
    “Don’t leave.” He said that he wasn’t going anywhere. “My men, do you know anything? Did any of them make it out?”
    “No. Nothing. There is one guy here with you, but I don’t know a lot about him either. They’re keeping everything hush hush.” She could see that. The army was nothing but one big secret. “Do you hurt? Bad?”
    “Yes. Everything.” He didn’t say anything, and she looked at him. He was crying and trying his best not to. “I’m not going to die. I’m too stubborn for that.”
    “That’s what that guy told Dad when we got here. He said if someone told you that you were not going to make it, you’d live just to be right. He said that you were ten kinds of stubborn.” She knew who it was without being told: Tony Phillips. “He’s one scary-assed dude. He said you were scarier.”
    “I am. Don’t forget it either.” The pain was making itself known to her, and she asked Pete what he knew about her injuries. But before he