Delivering Diana (Team Darkwater Book 4) by Annabelle Winters

Author:Annabelle Winters [Winters, Annabelle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Winterswept
Published: 2022-02-27T16:00:00+00:00

15

FIVE HOURS LATER

MOGADISHU, SOMALIA

“You lost, Benson?”

Benson raised a middle finger above his head as he walked briskly down a filthy side-street near the south side of the docks. There were two cargo ships alongside, silent cranes bent over their hatches in slumber. The water was calm beyond the ships all the way to the breakwater. The sea was black as oil. It was a moonless night. There were no clouds, but the smog from the city made the stars look dull and distant.

In the distance a boat’s horn sounded. Dogg glanced out past the anchored ships beyond the breakwater. He couldn’t see the island in the dark night. It was a few miles off the coast. All black granite rock. A few small rock hills. Caves.

And tunnels, Dogg guessed.

He hoped.

He prayed.

“Pull up a topographic map,” Dogg had asked Benson on the cramped flight from the little airfield by the Nile to Mogadishu.

They’d taken a battered white four-seater Cessna that had a line of patched-up bulletholes along the left wing. The skinny Egyptian pilot looked like he’d taken a few bullets in his life too. He was also half blind, which made Dogg reasonably comfortable that Diana wouldn’t be recognized. Still, he’d ordered her to pull the bottom of her head covering over her mouth and nose like a proper hijab. She looked like a shiny blue ninja, he thought.

With a fine butt.

Big and perfect.

Just perfect for his big hands.

On the flight Dogg had pondered Benson’s borderline-crazy words. It lined up with the woo-woo bullshit Cody and Ax and Bruiser were spewing these days after a few drinks. Dogg’s SEAL brothers had been pulled onto the Benson bandwagon. His damn rainbow chariot drawn by grinning unicorns.

It annoyed the hell out of Dogg, but he grudgingly admitted that maybe part of that was because he felt left out. Like he was the only dumb-ass who didn’t get the joke. See the secret.

But secretly Dogg suspected Benson was onto something. He’d noticed that both attacks had happened at exactly the wrong time.

And both times Dogg had second-guessed himself.

Told himself that he was drawn to protect Diana and nothing more.

Warned himself that he couldn’t keep her safe if he was groaning and grunting and seeing double from the way she made him feel.

Promised himself that he could never let down his guard.

Not with Diana.

Never with Diana.

Is that why I stayed away from her all these years, Dogg had wondered as the small plane’s loud engines drowned out any chance of conversation. Was I being torn apart by needs that I thought could never coexist? That if I allowed myself to admit what I wanted, I’d fail again at my duty?

“Here’s your map,” Benson had said at exactly that moment, interrupting his thoughts and making Dogg wonder if it was coincidence or just Benson being a wily old prankster.

He snatched the phone from Benson. Looked at the contour map of the island.

It was shaped vaguely like an eye. Oval, about a mile across lengthwise, a few hundred yards broad.

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