Free White Dawn: A Military Romantic Suspense Novel by Tracy Cooper-Posey

nuts with guns thought they
could do a better job, they dragged my father out of the palace by
the scuff of his neck, tossed him onto the earth, then stood back
and took pot shots at him with their hand guns, betting each other
who could hit him and not incapacitate him. He crawled
around on that dirt for two hours until he died from his wounds and
the whole time they jeered and kicked him.” Her voice wobbled and
she stopped, trying to repress the sadness and the fury that always
rose inside her whenever she thought about the report she had found
on Nick’s desk, outlining exactly how her father had died. Where
Nick had got the report from was a mystery. But she didn’t doubt it
was true, because Nick had never shared it with her.
    So she swallowed the sense of
helplessness that swamped her whenever she thought of her father
and looked Garrett in the eye. “Everyone has a story, Garrett. But
you’re not letting yours out to breathe. You’re holding it all in
and brooding on it.”
    Garrett considered her for a long,
silent moment. “ That’s where you get your hatred of the
Insurrectos from.” He reached out and turned the gas lamp off. The
room was washed in pale early morning light from the high window.
“Do you know what a shaped charge is?”
    Carmen narrowed her eyes. Why on earth
was he talking about explosives? “C4 that is molded into a shape,”
she replied. “Why?”
    “Do you know why they shape it?”
    “Because it’s more powerful that way.”
She shrugged.
    “Because the explosion is contained and
directed,” he said. “ That’s why it’s more powerful.” He
stood up. “I don’t let my story out to breathe, because by holding
it in, I’m containing it. Then I can direct it where I need
it.”
    He directs it at the Insurrectos .
Carmen bit her lip. “That’s no way to live,” she said softly.
    “No one picked this life,” Garrett told
her dryly. “They’re doing it because that’s what they need to do to
survive. The survival instinct is strong in people who have no
choices. They understand in their gut what will give them the best
chances of living. They follow me because they know they have a
better chance of surviving with me. You are a rank amateur who
happens to have some talent at war. But no man in this outfit would
agree to follow you to a town picnic because you’re an unknown
quality and you have weaknesses.” He picked up the hem of his tee
shirt. “Get out of my office so I can change, Escobedo. I have a
rendezvous to make.”
    Carmen swallowed. The toxic taste in her
mouth made her want to moan. How could she have felt any sympathy
for him at all? He really was cold, ruthless and calculating. There
wasn’t a human bone in his body. “Sometime I hate your guts,” she
said.
    “Feeling’s mutual,” he said flatly.
    Carmen didn’t bother shutting the door
behind her. He could damn well shut his own door.
* * * * *
    Minnie had said she would only be away
for a few minutes, which was the only reason Téra could sit still
in the chair in the corner and read. The book she was reading was The Once and Future King , in English. Reading English still
challenged her and it kept her mind on the story.
    The office they were in had once been a
bedroom in the big house. Not a very big bedroom, but they had
squeezed in two small desks and filing cabinets. Rubén Rey, the
army’s quarter master and Minnie, who was the civilian
quarter-master, worked together to keep supplies flowing for the
big house and the army quartered on the beach below. They had
laptops hooked together to form a small network and used some sort
of miracle purchasing system that Minnie had invented that saved
oodles of money.
    The bedroom office was tucked away in a
quiet corner of the house and Téra liked to sit and read in the
corner while Rubén and Minnie did their mysterious magic. The pair
of them would make comments to each other every now and again that
had no context at all, because they were