Special Forces: Operation Alpha: Marking Mariah (Kindle Worlds Novella) Read Free Page B

she knew what was coming next.
    “Why aren’t you staying in L.A.? I mean, not that it’s my business, of course. But this is your real break isn’t it?”
    The woman was patting her arm again. Mariah curled her fingers around the ends of the armrests to keep from batting her hand away. She was getting tired of explaining it. Every time she tried to it sounded lamer and lamer, even to her. But no one understood, least of all the producers of the glorified talent show she’d just won in front of a live studio audience, four celebrity coaches, and millions of rabid fans.
    “I have to go home,” she said, her voice breaking. “I have to go home.”
    Tears fell—as they always did. She glanced down at the magazines stuffed messily into the seat pocket in front of her. One of them, a gossip rag posing as a legit publication, featured her. The words “America’s New Sweetheart—What Is She Hiding From?” were plastered in accusatory red letters across her beaming, overly made-up face. The photo had been from the night she’d been voted the winner, based on votes and song downloads. She’d been so star struck, so proud of herself.
    So naïve.
    When the offers to represent her, to record her, to manage her nascent career started pouring in as early as an hour after she’d been named the winner, she’d allowed herself to think she could do it. That she could actually stay in California, continue avoiding her real life with its real responsibilities like some kind of dilettante.
    That fragile illusion got shattered but good. All it took was one terse phone call from her mother, who’d stayed behind in Louisville, which had allowed Mariah to perpetuate this extreme fantasy of hers.
    “It’s all right, honey,” the woman’s soft Kentucky accent soothed and irritated her in equal measure. “I’m sure you can jump right back into it once you deal with whatever it is back home.” She kept patting. Mariah gritted her teeth as her throat closed up with regret, frustration, anger, and shame.

Chapter Two
     
    The light hit Terry square in the face, forcing him to groan and roll away to escape it, forgetting or perhaps ignoring the fact that if he rolled too far, he’d end up on the floor. Luckily the lumpy mattress had nothing between it and the hardwood beneath, so it was a relatively short trip. He grunted when his nose met the cold, dusty surface. He got up on all fours, attempting to figure out where, exactly, he was at that moment.
    He recalled the smelly dive bar, the one beer he’d bought himself before someone had figured out that he was “a brave serviceman,” and had entire bar buying him brews and shots and God knows what else. He hadn’t even meant to drink that night. He needed to get further away from Texas.
    But he’d pulled off the interstate somewhere between Texarkana and Little Rock, thirsty, his eyes burning, hoping to find a cheap no-tell motel to lie down for a while. Within the span of about two hours, he’d been fed—a kick-ass steak with all the trimmings—and watered by a bar full of rednecks, all eager to prove their patriotism by making him keep his wallet in his jeans pocket and getting him shit-faced drunk.
    Again.
    A sound made him flinch and lurch to his feet. Big mistake. His brain seemed to slam into the front of his skull with a meaty thwack. Stumbling over his own feet, he grabbed the back of a chair to keep from face planting again, ignoring the increasing sounds from behind him, emanating from the disgusting mattress where, apparently, he’d passed an entire twelve hours.
    “Hey, lover boy. Where ya going?” The cigarette-rough voice hit his ears like sledgehammer.
    “My head,” he muttered, staring through the filthy window, hating his own guts so much he had to stop himself from ripping the cheap fabric currently bunched under his palms. His head was pounding. From a stellar hangover, yes, but also from something else. “Bathroom,” he said, letting go of the chair