Storm (Special Forces: Operation Alpha): A Linear Tactical Series Novel Read online

  Storm (Special Forces: Operation Alpha)

  The Linear Tactical Series

  Janie Crouch

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  © 2020 ACES PRESS, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  No part of this work may be used, stored, reproduced or transmitted without written permission from the publisher except for brief quotations for review purposes as permitted by law.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please purchase your own copy.

  Contents

  Foreword

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  The Linear Tactical Series

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Janie Crouch

  About the Author

  More Special Forces: Operation Alpha World Books

  Books by Susan Stoker

  Dear Readers,

  Welcome to the Special Forces: Operation Alpha Fan-Fiction world!

  If you are new to this amazing world, in a nutshell the author wrote a story using one or more of my characters in it. Sometimes that character has a major role in the story, and other times they are only mentioned briefly. This is perfectly legal and allowable because they are going through Aces Press to publish the story.

  This book is entirely the work of the author who wrote it. While I might have assisted with brainstorming and other ideas about which of my characters to use, I didn’t have any part in the process or writing or editing the story.

  I’m proud and excited that so many authors loved my characters enough that they wanted to write them into their own story. Thank you for supporting them, and me!

  READ ON!

  Xoxo

  Susan Stoker

  Dedicated to those whose demons are vicious and don’t want to let you go.

  But you still keep fighting them.

  1

  She crawled one agonizing inch at a time toward the door. There was no way she would make it, but if she stayed, she’d die for sure.

  Dying didn’t seem like such a horrible option.

  “Mommy?”

  Mommy. That was why she couldn’t die. Why she couldn’t stop. She forced her body closer to the door. She knew what would happen next, knew there was no stopping it, but she had to try.

  “Mommy…. Come on.”

  The booted foot caught her in the ribs, sucking all the oxygen from the planet. The force of the blow knocked her to the side and onto the ground in a heap.

  Her system screamed for oxygen—everything graying out in her vision—as a hand grabbed her hair and yanked her head back. “Going somewhere? You’re always so predictable and stupid.”

  She fought to get in enough air just to survive as the hand released her hair and she slumped back to the ground. The foot raised again, and she knew there was no way to shield herself. No way to escape.

  “Come on, Mom…”

  No.

  No.

  “You’ll always belong to me.” The foot slammed down on her wrist. She screamed as agony washed over her.

  “Mommy, it’s moving day!”

  Marilyn Ellis sat up in bed, swallowing the scream beating against the inside of her mind. She sucked in breath after breath, attempting to get the oxygen she’d been lacking.

  She was safe. No broken ribs. No broken wrist. No concussion that had been bad enough to require the hospital staff to put her into a medically induced coma for three days.

  Just two little sets of eyes that were quickly fading from excited to concerned as they watched her from the side of her bed.

  Pull it together, Marilyn.

  “Moving day. Are you kidding me?” She forced the words out. Forced a smile onto her lips. “Why didn’t you guys wake me earlier?”

  She reached over and wrapped her arms around her children, pulling them onto the bed with her. All three of them laughed as they fell back onto the covers, and if Marilyn’s was a little more forced than the kids’, that was okay.

  “Move-in day!” she exclaimed as she tickled them while they snuggled in next to her.

  “We get our own rooms,” Sam said, the smile evident in his seven-year-old voice even without her being able to see it.

  “And we get to decorate,” Eva announced. Again. She’d been saying it every day for the past two weeks as it drew closer to time for them to move into the New Journeys building.

  The kids didn’t understand that their new home was a domestic abuse shelter. They didn’t know it would be a place for other people like them who were in danger from people they should’ve been able to trust the most.

  Many of the women and children who would spend time at New Journeys would be there temporarily, just a few weeks or months until they got back on their feet. Marilyn and the kids had started that way too, but now she’d been hired to run the place.

  A job. The first real job she’d ever had. She was going to be the house manager/den mom. She was in charge of making sure everything ran smoothly and the people staying there had what they needed to feel safe.

  Shouldn’t be hard since she’d also be making sure she and the kids had whatever they needed to feel safe.

  The biggest perk was the small three-bedroom apartment attached to the shelter, which came with the position. She was pretty sure that perk had been built in—literally and figuratively—just for her and the kids. But she’d take it.

  She’d do whatever she could do to make up for her own stupidity and what she’d forced her children to live through.

  “What are you leaning toward today, decorating queen?”

  Eva crossed her arms behind her head and stared up at the ceiling of the hotel room they’d called home for the last couple of weeks. “Butterflies. But still maybe fairies. It’s an important life choice, Mom.”

  Marilyn looked over at Sam and they both smiled. Important life choices, indeed.

  “Well, you’ve still got a few more days. We’ve got to get everything situated before we can actually go buy any stuff.”

  “I know. I just wish I had more time to figure this out.” Eva shook her head.

  Oh, to have the problems of a five-year-old—butterflies or fairies. Important life choices.

  But that was the way it should be. Marilyn kissed the top of Eva’s head.

  “How about you, champ?” She elbowed Sam in the ribs. “Got your decorating plans sorted yet?”

  She’d asked him
this before, but he hadn’t made any commitments. He shrugged again this time, too. “Not sure yet.”

  Her precious boy, always so serious and deliberative. Where Eva seemed not to have been too affected by the violence that had surrounded them for most of their life, the same couldn’t be said for Sam. Marilyn wasn’t sure how aware he was of everything that had happened, only knew it was definitely more than his sister.

  Eva sat up. “Can we go now?”

  “Well, considering it’s six-thirty in the morning, we might ought to wait until a little closer to when everyone else is arriving at nine. I don’t think we can move very much of the furniture ourselves.” Marilyn ruffled her daughter’s hair at her crestfallen look. “But we can get breakfast and get all our stuff together so we’re ready to go as soon as possible.”

  Their stuff consisted of three suitcases full of clothes. So few that if they dumped every single piece out and repacked it all bit by bit, they still wouldn’t need the entire time to get all their belongings back together.

  At twenty-six years old, all she had to her name was ninety-seven dollars, three suitcases, and a myriad of nagging injuries that Dr. Annie said would probably bother her to some degree for the rest of her life.

  The kids jumped up and raced each other to the bathroom to brush their teeth and get dressed for the day. Their laughter and words garbled around toothbrushes floated out to Marilyn.

  Ninety-seven dollars, three suitcases, a bunch of injuries, and two fantastic kids.

  She’d take it.

  Marilyn was able to hold Eva off until eight-thirty, then they drove over to the New Journeys building. The new New Journeys building. The old one had been a house north of town—nice, but only able to allow a total of eight people to live there at a time.

  The new building was much larger—a former office building on the outskirts of town. The renovation wasn’t complete, but it was already able to accommodate more than triple the people as the old house. It would take another year or more before the building could operate at full capacity.

  Plus, the building manager’s living quarters was separate from the rest of the building and wouldn’t take space away from families that needed it.

  Their living quarters. Their own place. Fighting for her life in a hospital four months ago, she’d never dreamed she’d be here now.

  She pulled up at the building, not surprised to see Bree Daniels already there. Bree was one of the main driving forces behind New Journeys. She was a certified computer genius and had become one of Marilyn’s closest friends. She was talking to another woman who was just as important to Marilyn—Annie Griffin, one of the doctors Marilyn had met while in the hospital in Denver.

  Dr. Annie had been the one to put Marilyn in touch with New Journeys and set her on this path. Marilyn would always be grateful to her. She lived in Wyoming with her fiancé Zac, but they both were here today to help with the move. A lot of people were here to help New Journeys get its new start.

  Marilyn’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel as she looked toward the other end of the parking lot. There were four men standing around the truck. They were talking and laughing with each other, but it didn’t take much observation to see that these men were not a regular moving crew.

  The guys looked distinctly different from each other in size, weight, muscle mass, yet they all had some sort of similarity. An awareness. A deadly aura.

  Warriors.

  “You guys stay near me today, okay?” she told the kids as she turned off the engine.

  “Why?” Sam asked immediately, too in tune with her emotional state to not be aware of the tightness in her voice. Damn it.

  She turned and gave him a smile. “There’s going to be a lot going on and I don’t want you two to get squashed under any furniture. It might take me weeks to find you.” Sam relaxed and she winked. “Just stay near me.”

  She glanced over at the men again. She knew Bree wouldn’t allow anyone here who could possibly be of any danger to her or her kids.

  But still.

  “There’s Bree Cheese!” Eva tapped on the window. “Can we go say hi to Star?”

  Marilyn sighed at the nickname. Bree had insisted she didn’t want the kids to call her Ms. Bree, so the three of them had conspired and come up with Bree Cheese before Marilyn could argue otherwise.

  But just as important as Bree Cheese was her puppy, Star, a mixed breed just a few months old. The kids loved being around the pup. Marilyn knew how badly they wanted a dog of their own, but with their circumstances, it hadn’t even been a possibility.

  Now though…

  They got out of the car and walked over to Bree and Annie, the kids immediately dropping down to play with Star.

  Marilyn hugged the two other women, failing to hide a wince as a twist caused pain in her ribs.

  Annie, doctor that she was, noticed immediately. “Doing okay?”

  “Yeah. Same old, same old.”

  Annie nodded. “Ribs can be a monster to heal. They give you no problem for weeks, then a random turn in the wrong direction and you feel like someone’s poking you with a hot iron. I’ve treated enough of Zac and his Linear Tactical buddies’ wounds after some of their missions to know.”

  “Most of the time they don’t bother me.” Her ribs at least. The rest of her seemed to be a myriad of aches and pains. She felt like she was eighty years old rather than in her mid-twenties.

  Annie was well-aware of Marilyn’s injuries. She’d happened to be in Denver for a medical convention and in the ER when Marilyn had been brought in four months ago. Annie hadn’t been Marilyn’s doctor, but had spent a lot of time with her once she’d come out of the coma. She’d helped convince her to move here to Risk Peak.

  Having Annie here as they moved into this new building made a sweet day even sweeter.

  Bree studied her with concern. “We’ve got lots of help today, so no lifting for you, got it? The guys want to prove how macho they are.”

  Marilyn’s eyes fell over to where they were still talking and laughing with each other at the truck. “Um, you know all those men, right?”

  She hated to ask. Hated that her voice got low and breathy and scared. Hated that she couldn’t help but expect the worst from the entire male gender, even though she knew to think that way was not only harmful to herself but completely unfair.

  She hated that, even knowing it, she still couldn’t stop it.

  Bree squeezed her arm. “I don’t know all of them very well personally, but Tanner does.”

  “Okay, that’s good.” Bree’s fiancé, Tanner, one of the town’s sheriff deputies, was around all the time and was a good man. Marilyn liked him, and so did the kids.

  “The super-gorgeous one is my Zac.” Annie winked and pointed to her fiancé. Marilyn had never met him, but she had seen pictures and heard lots of good stories.

  “And then you know Noah, Tanner’s brother.” Bree squeezed her arm again.

  Marilyn’s eyes settled on the big man. Yes, she’d met him a couple of times in the few months they’d lived here in Risk Peak. He had a horse ranch outside of town, so she didn’t see him much. And when she did, he tended to be quiet, not overtly outgoing like Tanner.

  But Noah’s farm was where puppy Star had come from, so yeah, he was nearly famous with her kids.

  Bree was giving names and details of the other two men—ones Noah and Annie’s fiancé Zac had served with in the military—but Marilyn’s eyes didn’t leave Noah. There was a rugged handsomeness about his face—strong chin, carved cheekbones—that bordered on harsh. His hair was still military short, a slightly lighter brown than his brother’s.

  The other guys were laughing and Noah smiled, the gesture seeming a little rusty, like he couldn’t quite remember how to do it correctly. One of the guys punched his arm and he smiled a little wider.

  “They’re all good men,” Annie said. “You don’t have anything to worry about.”

  Marilyn looked down at the ground, embarr
assed that she’d even asked. “I’m sorry, I—”

  “Don’t be sorry,” Bree cut her off. “That’s why we thought you were perfect for the job as New Journeys building facilitator. You think of things we might not think of. See stuff that’s important.”

  Look for danger when there wasn’t any around.

  Bree didn’t say that, but she had to be thinking it. It was nothing less than the truth.

  Marilyn forced a smile. “Okay, well, let’s get to work.”

  Bree nudged Eva with her knee. “I hear Noah even brought Star’s mom and brothers. Maybe you can talk Noah into letting you play with them.”

  Eva’s eyes got big. “Really?” She looked back and forth between Bree and Marilyn, obviously desperate for her mother’s permission.

  “After we get stuff going with the move,” Marilyn warned. “And only if Mr. Noah is comfortable with it.”

  Marilyn hoped that would be the case by the way Eva and Sam’s faces split into grins. She wanted them to have all these little normal pleasures—like playing with dogs—they’d been robbed of.

  “Then let’s get this show on the road so you guys get more pup time.” Bree turned to Marilyn. “The guys will start hauling stuff over from the old house. You tell them where to put everything.”

  “Me? Why me? You’d be much better at this.”

  Bree shook her head. “You’re going to be the one living here, not us. You’re the one with a vision for the flow of the rooms and what will make the women here most comfortable.”