Targeted (Firebrand Book 1) Read Free Page A

now they were older, and the lure of missions contracted but not officially recognized by the government no longer seemed as enticing as they once had. Now Firebrand was about to reinvent itself in the form of a state-of-the-art training facility where they would pass on their knowledge to military groups, law enforcement agencies, and security companies who would come to train with them.
    The only question that remained was whether or not he would be a part of this new enterprise. Reese and Colt had been on site overseeing the construction of the facility for the past six months while Ash had languished in Colorado trying to decide if he could work with them at a training center in the North Carolina mountains only a few miles away from his old home. That was another decision causing him sleepless nights.
    He pulled his thoughts away from that subject. Nothing had to be decided tonight. He picked up his cup, but the coffee had grown cold, so he set it back down. The waitress hadn’t been by his table for a while, and he wondered where she was. Not waiting on customers, that was for sure, since he was the only one in the place.        Tonight he sat at the table he occupied every time he came to this diner. When he entered a public place, he always made it a habit to pinpoint where every person in the room was stationed, and it was best to do that from the back of the room. He didn’t have to worry about other customers tonight, but the front door was another matter. You never could tell who might enter, and he’d learned long ago not to let his guard down. Getting caught by surprise was what got men like him killed. He shifted a bit in his seat and felt the comforting pressure of the Sig-Sauer P226 holstered underneath his jacket.   
    Through the window he could see the whirling snow, which appeared to be letting up. He glanced up at the clock over the door that led into the kitchen and frowned. Almost midnight. Nearly two AM. in North Carolina. He shook his head and frowned. Maybe it was time to go home.
    Home? The word conjured up the memory of another place, another time, and the coffee threatened to come up. He didn’t have a home. Richard and Lainey had seen to that. A cabin, that’s all he had. On a mountain road in the middle of nowhere. A place to sleep and eat but nothing else of importance if he had to leave at a moment’s notice.
    The memory of what he’d left behind for Firebrand hadn’t dimmed through the years. And now here he sat at the back table of a deserted dining room wondering if it had been worth it.
    “Want me to warm you up?”
    Startled, he glanced up at the waitress standing next to the table. “What did you say?”
    She held a coffee pot in one hand and gestured toward his cup with the other. “Would you like your coffee warmed up?”
           The jeans she wore were like all the other waitresses he’d seen in this place in the last few months, but none of them wore T-shirts like hers. It might as well have been glued to her body, and the low-cut neck left little to the imagination.
    She had one hand propped on her hip and a coffee pot in the other. He nodded and held out his cup. “Sure.”
    She bent forward to pour the coffee, and the shirt gaped open even farther. He turned his head to look away, but she leaned even closer. He didn’t move until she’d finished pouring the coffee. Then she straightened and smiled. “Would you like anything else?”
    The tone of her words carried an invitation to more than just coffee and eggs. He shook his head. “No, thanks.” He darted a glance toward the kitchen and frowned as a sudden thought struck him. “You didn’t wait on me earlier. What happened to Lisa, the other waitress?”
    She smiled and pointed to her name tag. “I’m Eve. I was helping the boss with some cleaning in the kitchen, and Lisa took the floor for a while. Now we’ve switched places, except she and the boss have stepped outside to catch a quick smoke