He flashed her a grin. “They’re like the Little League of the military. They take anyone willin’ to join.”
As if they’d somehow planned it ahead of time, both Digger and Apollo let loose with a unified “Hooyah!” while Beckett went with the Marine’s cry of “Oorah!”
The smile that spread across Evie’s face seemed to light up the entire night sky. An impossibility, Beckett knew. Still, it did his soul good to know whatever those bastards had done, they didn’t break her.
A few minutes passed before she spoke up again.
“If you aren’t active duty military anymore, what are you?”
Normally, they’d work to keep as quiet as possible, but with Shadow serving as overwatch, if there were any heat signals nearby, she’d already have a bead on their location and would’ve given them the heads up.
Since their current threat level was low, and Evie was in the mood to talk, Beckett was more than happy to keep her mind occupied on something other than what she’d been through.
“In a nutshell?” Beckett glanced down at her. “We’re hostage rescue specialists. We work for a company called Tac-Ops. It’s short for Tactical Operations.”
“So you guys just go around saving people who’ve been kidnapped?”
“Pretty much.”
“Wow.” The woman sounded impressed. “That’s sort of…awesome.”
“Hell yeah, it is,” Apollo jumped back in.
Beckett’s chest warmed as he thought of the man his teammate had become. In just a few weeks’ time, the badass operative had gone from grump to groom. And ever since Apollo and Nicki got married, the once-surly man was suddenly more smiles and a lot less snark.
Come to think of it, Falcon was pretty much the same. Though the man was never as moody as Apollo had once been,the former Ranger hadn’t exactly been sunshine and rainbows, either. Not until he met Avery.
And Beckett was happy for both Falcon and Apollo. He really was. Though he had to admit, it was still pretty wild to think that two government-trained killers who still kicked down doors to rid the world of evil had fallen in love amidst danger and mayhem.
But they had.
Despite the circumstances in which they’d come together and the personal baggage each carried to the table, the two couples had somehow even figured out a way to build lives filled with love and happiness around a job as unpredictable—and dangerous—as theirs.
Yes, Falcon and Apollo had done it. They’d achieved the unachievable for guys like them. And if they could do it…
Maybe I can, too.
“I didn’t even know a job like yours existed.”
Evie’s comment dragged him from his sea of wishful thinking.
“There aren’t many companies like ours, but yeah.” Beckett looked over at her. “We exist.”
“Well, thank God, you do!” she exclaimed. “Although, I do have to ask…how did you know where to find us? Or that we’d even been taken?”
“We mostly take on private clients, but we also work the occasional government contract job.”
And by occasional, he meant a fuck ton of off-the-books ops only a very select few—the President of the United States included—would ever even know existed.
“Which one was I?” She asked a few seconds later. “Was I government or…private?”
The question—and her overt curiosity over what he would normally think was moot at this point—gave Beckett pause. Inhis experience, most people knew if their families had the kind of personal safety travel insurance Tac-Ops offered. Policies that guaranteed his team would locate and extract a client if said client found themselves in a hairy situation.
Taken captive was the most obvious, of course. But they also got people out of hot spots or areas where violence unexpectedly erupted. Civil unrest. Riots. Attempts to overthrow foreign governments. That sort of thing.
From the file he’d read on the way here, Evie had no such policy, and neither did her father. Which begged the question…why the question?
Maybe she thought her dad got coverage for her while she was staying in Afghanistan.