Mistletoe (K19 Security Solutions 3)

For the first time, she looked away from him.

“Talk to me, Aine. What’s on your mind?”

“Nothing,” she answered, shaking her head.

“No. Come on. You promised you’d talk things out with me.”

“It can wait, Griffin.”

“You either tell me what’s bothering you now, or I’ll pull this car over, and we’ll park until you do.”

“I know I’m not supposed to ask, though.”

“You want to know what happened.”

Aine nodded.

“I’ll tell you now, but once we get to my place, we won’t talk about it again. Fair enough?”

“Yes,” she murmured.

“It isn’t exactly a Christmas story.”

“I know that, Griffin.”

“The call I got on Thanksgiving was to inform me that two of the men who were part of my core team at the agency had been kidnapped in Somalia.” He looked over at Aine, who nodded.

“Go ahead,” she murmured.

“The intel indicated that the kidnappers were Somali pirates—who, historically, are unorganized, under-funded, and that’s if they’re funded at all. By the time Mantis and I got to headquarters, the ransom call had come in.”

“To the CIA?”

“Yes, and no. Tackle and Halo were undercover as journalists in Somalia. Th

e ‘newspaper’ the pirates contacted was actually a direct line to the agency.”

“Tackle and Halo?”

“Knox ‘Halo’ Clarkson and Landry ‘Tackle’ Sorenson.”

“Where are they now?”

“With their families, and don’t ask what that cost me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Let’s just say their current supervisor wanted them to hang around for a briefing, and I disagreed.”

“I see. How did you find them?”

Striker scrubbed his face with his hand. “You need to understand that what I do, isn’t always…pretty.”

“If you can’t tell me, I understand.”

He took a deep breath. “Mantis and I tracked the pirates to a remote part of Somalia, but we were seriously outnumbered. Worse, we had no means of communication. We decided that Mantis would go back to Mogadishu to get reinforcements while I continued to stake out the pirates.”

When the Somalis went in the direction from which they came, Striker almost shouted out in happiness. If they were returning to Mogadishu, that meant two things. First, that he’d be able to get in touch with someone back home and get backup. The second thing it meant was he’d reconnect with Mantis, who had probably already called in the cavalry.