Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 96284 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96284 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
It hadn’t been my intention to look stiff as a board; I was just soaking things up.
I took a deep breath and let the music work its way through me. I could admit, the song was beautiful. Hundreds of people around us held up their phones with their flashlights on, a sight that gave me goose bumps. Or maybe it was Jake again. Jesus Christ. He was living in the moment, eyes closed here and there, singing along. He knew every word. I wished I could hear him, but the music was louder.
Perhaps the song was personal to him. The singer sang of stepping up, of being there, of being a riser. A get-off-the-ground-don’t-be-a-hider, a survivor, a get-out-aliver, and, when push came to shove, a fighter.
They said falling in love was effortless, but to me, it’d been several years of desperately trying to cushion the blow, to climb a foot or two back up toward sanity, because the love I felt for Jake was fucking insane. But it just wasn’t working. I couldn’t get a grip. I couldn’t slow down the descent.
Completely seduced by the beat, I noticed the second Jake went still, and I frowned and glanced at him.
He’d pulled out his phone, and I happened to see the moment it stopped ringing, which revealed notifications of three missed calls and a couple texts. Had he ignored the first alerts and then wondered what was going on? Because that was usually what I did when I was in the middle of something.
The missed calls were from Seth, and the texts were from “USCG Joel.”
The fuck did he want? Were they texting each other? Why?
A new text popped up, and Jake opened it.
Work emergency. Call when you can.
It was from Seth. Jake looked at me, and I nodded. Emergencies were almost always related to filming, and we only had Martina in the field right now. Jake and I hurried out of our row and jogged up the stairs toward the exit.
On the way, I got out my phone too, and sure enough, Seth had tried to reach me. Fucking hell. I hadn’t felt it vibrating.
As soon as we reached a spot where the music didn’t drown out our voices, Jake called Seth back, and I moved close to listen in.
“Sorry to interrupt your concert, but I think you wanna know this,” Seth said, skipping past greetings. “Hayward’s XO with the Coast Guard called and said they’ve received an anonymous tip about something happening tomorrow—and given it’s a standard operation, you and Roe are approved to join. Basically, you don’t have to spend a month on board in April and wait for possible action to go down. Now we know something is happening. But you have to be at the air station in San Diego by five AM tomorrow morning.”
I met Jake’s gaze and dove straight into work mode. It was a no-brainer, wasn’t it? The look of concentration in Jake’s eyes was all the answer I needed. He was already working out logistics in his head. Lord knew Sandra would be happy. She’d complained about me being gone for a whole month.
“We ride,” Jake said firmly.
I nodded once and put together a quick mental to-do list. Call Sandra on the way to the office, pack up the truck, drive south. Easy, yeah? Fuck me, the equipment—we’d be up all night. We had to sort through memory cards, which cameras to bring—because the Coast Guard had a long list of restrictions. Add grips, mounts, mics, chargers, batteries, and the fact that we had to take up minimal space.
I was fairly sure I had enough clothes at the Condor Chicks house to get me through a week on the road.
“I figured,” Seth replied. “It’s a two-hour drive to San Diego. Buy Red Bulls. I’ll confirm your arrival and call you back with further information.”
“Copy that, we’ll head to the office,” Jake answered, then ended the call.
We stared at each other, and I bet he felt the exact same excitement pouring in. This was what we did. What we loved. Sometimes, I didn’t mind throwing away a carefully planned schedule, because taking off on short notice was fun.
When I grinned, so did he.
“I’ll call Sandra. You call Nikki,” I said.
He nodded. “Let’s go.”
We got approximately two hours of sleep that night, and we crashed at his place where I took the couch in the living room.
By two-thirty, we were on the road with two to-go mugs filled with strong coffee.
I sat in the passenger’s seat and dug through Jake’s camera bag, just double-checking we’d gotten everything. I guessed the problem with the Coast Guard’s restrictions wasn’t so much the items we couldn’t bring, but the lack of space. That was why we couldn’t use the setups we preferred.
We were sharing the helicopter with a TACLET team, basically the guys who were trained to board smuggling boats and get the situation under control. Both the TACLET team and Joel’s HITRON team were essential during these operations. Joel was the first to arrive on scene—by air. As the sniper, he halted the chase by killing the engines—literally—if the smugglers didn’t stop on command. Then they lingered in the air until TACLET arrived on two fast-going, smaller boats.