Free Corps Security: The Series by Harper Sloan

seventeen-year-old, stars-in-her-eyes girl I left behind twelve years ago? Sure, she was sad I was taking off for basic training, but she knew I was coming back for her. We had plans, dreams, and a future all mapped out and ready to roll. Why is she acting like the wounded party here? She wasn’t the one who arrived home six months later, tired but elated to finally have his girl in his arms again only to find her gone. And she was gone, vanished into thin fucking air. There was not a single trail to lead me back to my girl.
    I remember the day I rolled back into our hometown of Dale, Georgia. I was so excited to finally get my arms around my girl. Things with the Marines had been intense, but I was home for a little while. I had a new family now, a band of brothers with an unbreakable bond. I couldn’t wait to bring Izzy into that fold, making my family complete.
    Basic training was nothing like I’d expected it to be. I’d known I would be the perfect candidate for the Marines when I signed up; I’d just never imagined excelling at such a rapid rate. Arriving one day, then the next being pulled into a conference room and being handed one hell of a life changer. I was good, damn fucking good, and they wanted me. Only problem was, like with most everything deep within the government, I wasn’t to tell a soul. Top secret to the highest degree. I received my first letter from Izzy the same day, reminding me how hard it was going to be to go dark on my girl; she knew me though, and she knew what this gig meant to me. I wrote her one hell of a hearts-and-flowers letter and mailed it off the same day I left for special training, knowing it would have to see her through until I was home. When I finally got a call home, I had been gone for three long, hard months. I can still feel the shock I felt when the operator informed me that her number had been disconnected. With no one to ask, I just had to pray that my girl knew me and knew our love enough to be there when I came back to her. I couldn’t worry; I had to have my head about me. So with all the hope of a naïve teenage dreamer, I believed everything would be fine.
    Izzy and I, we were what some would call a fairytale, if you believed in that shit. I met her the first day of my sophomore year. She had been a scared little freshman, a fish completely out of the water and terrified out of her mind. But did she let it show? No, not my Izzy. She marched right into Dale High with her shoulders back and her head high. Her pale green eyes were trained right ahead, ready to take on the world. And I had taken one look and knew she would be mine. From that moment on, she was mine and I was hers.
    She came from a great family. Her parents were the kind a kid dreams of, accepting everyone and anyone, regardless of where they came from. They didn’t mind that their only child, their only daughter, had fallen in love with a foster kid from the wrong side of the tracks; she loved me, so they did too. I was shocked when I learned about their deaths. Adam and Holly West were amazing people, and I knew Izzy had to be feeling that deep.
    In my love-soaked mind, I still believed she was waiting; now I just wondered where that was. I knew she had some extended family, but no one seemed to know where they lived. And trust me, I asked. All of her friends just said that she had been devastated; when they had spoken to her at the service for her parents, she’d been silent. They said that she had turned completely into herself, like a zombie. She’d just sat there and looked off into space. That killed me more than anything, knowing she had been hurting and alone.
    I became frantic in my search. I had just a little time before I had to return to training. The only thing I was able to find out was that she was in North Carolina, or South Carolina, living with her mom’s parents. Only problem was, no one knew her mother’s maiden name. With no more answers and my time back home gone, I headed