HOT SEAL Rescue (HOT SEAL Team - Book 3) Read Online Free PDF Page A

to water a lawn out here—and how many people really could?—fake seemed to be the way to go if you wanted greenery.
    Fake lawns. So foreign to her. She’d grown up in rural Alabama where the grass was greener than emeralds and the dirt was red clay. She shuddered as she thought about the dilapidated trailer where she’d lived with her parents and five sisters. Her father was a chain-smoking coal miner who worked long hours and then took out his anger on his wife and kids.
    Her mother was an alcoholic who spent her days hiding the whiskey she drank and pretending she was fine when she really wasn’t. Miranda had known how to shoot a gun by the time she was five. She’d learned how to cook by age six. She’d spent long days outside, wandering wherever she pleased while her mother lay in a stupor inside the dimly lit trailer with the anemic air conditioner turned up full blast. She and her sisters missed more school than they attended. If not for Mark, she’d have never gotten her GED or gone to college.
    A wave of loneliness washed over her at the thought of Mark. She’d loved him. It had been a comfortable love born of familiarity and gratitude, not a deep, romantic love that ate her up from the inside out. He’d been her friend, the one person who knew what she came from and what she refused to go back to.
    And now he was gone. His body had been unidentifiable, and for a long time she’d thought maybe he’d survived the bomb blast, maybe there’d been a mistake.
    But Mark would have contacted her somehow. As the months went by and he didn’t get in touch, she accepted what she’d known was true and gave up on irrational hope. Mark Reed was dead, killed on a mission to infiltrate Conti’s operations and get to the heart of the organization.
    Miranda leaned her head back and closed her eyes. Her heart hurt and she was tired. Cody wasn’t stopping to get her new clothing anytime soon, and she had no way to call Badger just yet. It was two hours since she’d gone to meet with Conti, but Badger wouldn’t be expecting contact for a while because he had no idea anything was wrong.
    He’d warned her when he’d given her this assignment that she’d be alone for much of it, but she’d still jumped at the chance. And now it was over and she’d gotten nothing.
    She didn’t sleep, but she dozed in fits, snapping awake every few minutes or so it seemed. It was dark now, and the road had less traffic than it had earlier. She peered into the blackness. The lack of dwellings told her they were in the desert, and her belly twisted. What if this was all an elaborate setup? What if Cody the SEAL was really something else altogether?
    It took her a moment to disabuse herself of that notion. The man was military, no doubt about it, and he’d said he was with HOT. Yeah, that could be a lie, but how would he have known that she’d ever even heard of HOT, let alone had personal experience with them?
    He wouldn’t—and still didn’t know about the personal experience part.
    “Where are we?” she asked.
    “Almost to the drop point for this vehicle.”
    A few minutes later, he pulled into a gas station. He eased the Explorer over to where a Dodge Ram sat. “That’s our ride,” he said, putting the SUV into park and turning off the ignition.
    Miranda looked longingly at the convenience store attached to the gas station. “I don’t suppose you could go in there and get me a burner?”
    “No need,” Cody said, opening the door and climbing out. “Everything’s in the Ram.”
    Miranda got out of the SUV. She’d put the heels back on since she had nothing else, but she hoped like hell there were some tennis shoes in that Ram. Cody got his bag and they went and climbed into the Dodge. It was a big four-door truck, gray, with comfortable seats and four-wheel drive. In the back seat, there was a shopping bag. Miranda rifled through it, grabbing the package with the phone first.
    She glanced at Cody, hesitating. She