LACEY’S FIGHT (SPECIAL FORCES: OPERATION ALPHA)

  PREY SECURITY: ARTEMIS TEAM

  BOOK THREE

  JANE BLYTHE

  CONTENTS

  Foreword

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  About the Author

  Also by Jane Blythe

  About the Author

  More Special Forces: Operation Alpha World Books

  Books by Susan Stoker

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  © 2023 ACES PRESS, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  No part of this work may be used, stored, reproduced or transmitted without written permission from the publisher except for brief quotations for review purposes as permitted by law.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please purchase your own copy.

  Cover designed by Q Designs

  Dear Readers,

  Welcome to the Special Forces: Operation Alpha Fan-Fiction world!

  If you are new to this amazing world, in a nutshell the author wrote a story using one or more of my characters in it. Sometimes that character has a major role in the story, and other times they are only mentioned briefly. This is perfectly legal and allowable because they are going through Aces Press to publish the story.

  This book is entirely the work of the author who wrote it. While I might have assisted with brainstorming and other ideas about which of my characters to use, I didn’t have any part in the process or writing or editing the story.

  I’m proud and excited that so many authors loved my characters enough that they wanted to write them into their own story. Thank you for supporting them, and me!

  READ ON!

  Xoxo

  Susan Stoker

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  Behind her bubbly, flirty smile hides a world of hidden pain.

  Despite her dark childhood Lacey Smith believes in looking for moments of joy wherever you can find them. But when a seriously hot SEAL saves her life and then turns her down when she asks him out she begins to rethink everything. Going undercover with a man who doesn't like her isn't ideal but that doesn't mean that the danger won't have sparks igniting between them.

  Most days Navy SEAL Benjamin Blanchett is so mired in grief and guilt that he doesn't even want to move forward. So when a bubbly, sassy, ball of energy asks him out of course he says no. He thought that was it but now they're going undercover together as husband and wife. Lines are blurred, feelings emerge, but by the time he realizes what he wants it might be too late.

  I’d like to thank everyone who played a part in bringing this story to life. Particularly my mom who is always there to share her thoughts and opinions with me. The wonderful Amy Queau of Q Designs who made the stunning cover. And my lovely editor Lisa Edwards for all her encouragement and for all the hard work she puts into polishing my work.

  CHAPTER ONE

  August 2nd

  6:58 P.M.

  So, this was how she was going to die.

  Chaos.

  What should have been a quick in-and-out rescue had turned into complete and utter chaos.

  All thanks to an unexpected storm.

  With visibility down to a couple of feet, the rumble of thunder competing with the crashing of waves for top volume, and the lashing rain, there was no way she was going to be able to find the boat again.

  Staying on the boat would have been the smart choice. Lacey Smith absolutely acknowledged that. Jumping into the ocean in the middle of a storm wasn’t one of her smartest choices, but then again, no one had ever accused her of making smart choices.

  Loud, flirty, sassy, outgoing, confident, and bubbly, those were words the people in her life—or even people who had just met her—would use to describe her, but never sensible or logical.

  Nope.

  Guess she was the only one of her sisters—okay, so they weren’t sisters by blood, but they’d grown up together and were her family—who hadn’t been blessed with the rational gene.

  But what else was she supposed to do?

  Leave the poor girl to drown alone in the cold, unforgiving ocean?

  Yeah, no.

  Not going to happen.

  Lacey didn’t care if this decision wasn’t the most reasonable she could come to. There was no way she was going to allow this girl to drown, not when she could do something about it.

  Leaving her team on the boat to deal with the group of rich, drunk college boys who had used their parents’ money to buy a couple of women they were keeping on a yacht, Lacey had straightened her arms above her head and dived into the choppy water.

  Immediately it had swallowed her up.

  She and her sisters had had a crazy upbringing, but nothing had quite prepared her for this.

  When she was just a baby, her father and two older siblings had died in a house fire. Her mom had been out that night, and her dad had managed to get her out of the house but gone back in for her older brother and sister.

  Unfortunately, none of them made it out.

  Her mom, unable to deal with the fact that she’d been out visiting the man she was having an affair with at the time of the fire, had committed suicide just two weeks later leaving Lacey an orphan with no one to take her in. Entering the foster care system, her case worker had been dirty and sold her into human trafficking where she’d ended up with a man who called himself The Master.

  The Master trained her and her sisters to be killing machines. She had been training since she was a toddler and knew how to fight, shoot, and wield a knife and a sword. She could withstand torture as well as execute it, knew how to kill with her bare hands, and could withstand any and all conditions.

  Including the ocean.

  Only water had never been her friend.

  There was just something about it that creeped her out.

  Not a bathtub or a pool, they seemed to contain water, tame it. Even ponds and lakes she could deal with if she had to although she didn’t enjoy it.

  But the ocean …

  It was freaky. So powerful that no man could control it. It took what it wanted without a care, and right now what it seemed to want was her very soul.

  Kicking against the current, Lacey broke the surface, sucking in a breath. Rain pounded down against her head, and as she looked from side to side, searching for a glimpse of the girl, she could barely see through the torrent.

  If she didn’t find the girl soon, it could be too late.

  No.

  She wasn’t going to let that happen.

  That girl was completely innocent. All three girls held prisoner on the yacht were in their late teens or early twenties. All had been snatched off their college campuses around the country. They’d been trafficked quickly through a dark website that sold mostly women and young girls, but boys and men as well. They’d been gone for between five weeks and two and had been with this group of six young men for nine days now.

  In that time, they had lived through an horrific ordeal.

  One she could empathize with far too closely.

  Lacey didn’t have to imagine to know how awful it had been for those girls as they’d been passed around and violated by rich, drunk young men who thought they were entitled to do whatever they wanted without consequence.

  Well, they were about to find out all actions had consequences.

  And one thing she knew was that nobody should want consequences rained down upon them by the world-renowned Prey Security. As one of only two all-female teams who worked at Prey, Artemis Team worked almost exclusively with human trafficking victims. Something she and her sisters were all passionate about.

  Her team might not be as big and physically strong as Prey’s other teams, but they were highly trained, skilled, and good at what they did. They also had an edge that the guys didn’t, they were constantly underestimated just because they were women.

  Lacey loved men, particularly loved to flirt with them, and was always up for a one-time romp in bed, but sometimes she did wish that she was taken a little more seriously. Not that any of the men at Prey ever looked down on her or the other women who worked there, but a lot of the men they encountered on missions thought women were nothing.

  Just like those men who had bought these girls for their own amusement.

  Batt
ered by the wind and the rain, Lacey found her strength flagging even though she had been in the water for barely a minute.

  How would she find the girl, keep them both afloat, and get them back to the boat alive?

  At this rate, she wouldn’t even be able to find the boat again.

  The yacht was only a few feet away from her, but the storm had already consumed it like it wasn’t even there at all.

  A huge wave crashed over her, throwing her under the surface and tossing her about like she was nothing. Out here she kind of was nothing.

  If you wanted to feel small and inconsequential then jump into the ocean.

  Kicking with all her might, she broke the surface again and sucked in a couple of breaths of air, knowing that at any second the water could just wash her away.

  While she trod water, Lacey lifted a hand and tried to use it to shield her eyes. How was she supposed to spot the missing girl when the ocean and rain kept tossing water in her face?

  A crack of lightning split through the night, lighting the sky and everything beneath it for a couple of precious seconds.

  Lacey didn’t waste a single one of them.

  There.

  Around ten yards away from her was the girl. Dressed in nothing but a flimsy white satin nightgown, there was no way the teen could survive long in this frigid water.

  Even dressed in the wetsuit beneath her clothes, Lacey could feel the cold seeping into her body. They had to get out of the water quickly or it wouldn’t only be the storm that was a risk to them, it would be hypothermia as well.

  With quick, even strokes, Lacey fought against the waves trying to toss her in the opposite direction. She had to get to the girl.

  Had to.

  Only it felt like she was making zero progress.

  Another bolt of lightning lit up the night, and she caught a glimpse of the teenager. Closer than she had realized. She was making progress after all.

  Blocking out everything else, Lacey focused only on swimming.

  Kicking her feet.

  Cartwheeling her arms.

  Exhaustion tugged at her already. It took almost more strength than she possessed to make any headway against the churning sea.

  A battle she wasn’t sure she was going to win.

  Panic threatened to claw at her.

  She felt trapped out here.

  Despite the ocean’s vastness, she felt like the world was folding in on her.

  The storm was too wild, and she realized far too late that jumping in as soon as she saw the girl get tossed overboard had been a mistake.

  One she couldn’t take back.

  She was out here now and wasn’t even sure if anyone knew that she’d jumped into the water after the teenager.

  That meant she was on her own.

  Whether that poor girl lived or died was on her shoulders.

  The tremendous pressure was enough to keep her panic at bay, and she pushed on, refusing to give up.

  Giving up wasn’t in her DNA.

  So onward she plodded.

  The current was trying to drag her out to sea, the waves wanted to push her down into their murky depths, and the torrential rain pounded on her head like a million tiny hammers.

  It was hell.

  A cold, wet hell.

  One that seemed never-ending.

  Water in all directions, above and below, left and right, before her and behind her.

  Everywhere.

  Consuming her.

  Eating her alive.

  Claiming her.

  Killing her.

  August 2nd

  7:22 P.M.

  Benjamin “Rabbit” Blanchett frowned as he watched the woman jump off the yacht.

  What was she thinking?

  The storm was a bad one, and unless you were the world’s best swimmer there was no way you were making it out of the water alive.

  Not that he thought he was the world’s best swimmer, but Ben was a SEAL, and even he would think twice about throwing himself into the rolling waves that were big enough to crush a boat, let alone a single human.

  Suicide.

  Whatever she’d been thinking was irrelevant. She had pretty much just committed suicide.

  “One overboard,” he announced to his team.

  “Two.”

  He turned to face whoever had shouted the word and found a pretty raven-haired beauty with green eyes. Since he had been briefed on who they were coming to assist he recognized the woman as Pearl Masters. One of the four members of Prey Security’s Artemis team she had recently married a former Delta, former DEA Agent, turned owner of the Imogen Masters’ Hope Center. The charity helped women and children who had been trafficked recover in a safe environment as they learned to readjust to life again. While formed only within the last couple of months, the center had already provided care, support, and counseling to dozens of victims.

  “Two?” he asked, watching the woman warily. While she was no threat to him—she was already married—he made it a point to always keep his distance from the opposite sex. Victims he could handle, they also weren’t a threat to him, but any other woman had the potential to destroy him.

  “There were three women we were sent in to rescue, we only have two. All six targets are secured,” Pearl informed him.

  So, the woman had jumped in after one of the victims Artemis Team had been sent in to rescue.

  Perfect.

  Suicidal he could work with, but a woman with a hero complex who was overly confident in her abilities would be much harder to cope with when he went in after them.

  “She shouldn’t have done that,” Ben said flatly.

  Pearl bristled. “What should she have done then? Just let the poor girl drown? She’s only nineteen, and she’s just been through hell. What would you have done?”

  The question was pointless as well as rhetorical.

  He was a SEAL. This woman while highly trained, was much smaller than him, which meant she had less strength and less stamina. She would also succumb to the cold much quicker than he would have.

  “You knew we were minutes away, she should have waited,” Ben said.

  Even through the power of the storm, the woman’s anger resonated clearly. Pearl turned her back on him and stalked away. He was sure she was muttering insults, but he cared little for what people thought about him.

  This was a job.

  A mission.

  In and out.

  Assist Artemis Team in transporting their three victims and six prisoners back to shore. It was pure luck his team had been close by, close enough to be of use once the storm blew in. Luckier now that there were two women in need of rescuing.

  Since seconds counted in these conditions, Ben took a moment to watch the waves and the direction the water was flowing so he knew where the two women were likely to have been dragged off. He then dived into the raging ocean.

  Storms were his passion for the last few years. He studied them and followed them when he got a chance. Not a storm chaser per se, he was an enthusiast, and he felt the power of the thunderstorm flow through his body as he hit the water.

  Between the waves, the wind, and the rain it was hard going, but he worked with the ocean instead of against it, and a minute or two later he spotted them up ahead.

  Surprise hit him when he saw that the woman had somehow managed to reach the victim, had an arm around her, and was even towing her in the direction of the yacht.

  Respect followed.

  He’d made a mistake in underestimating her. Ben didn’t know which of the other three Artemis team members she was, but it was obvious she was a whole lot stronger and more capable than he had given her credit for.