Page 30 of Her Chosen Protector

“When the hell are those damn frogmen going to let us know what the hell is going on?” Carlson groused. He punched repeat on his phone again, trying to get Asher or anybody else on the team to answer. Eden knew it was useless, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to tell him.

“Leland, she needs to walk a little bit. She’s not going to want you to sit her on the toilet,” Eden whispered when he went to pick Suzanne up.

“Then she can stand up when we reach the bathroom door,” he said grimly.

Eden’s lip twitched. The man reminded her of her dad. What the hell, when all hell broke loose, he could carry Suzanne downstairs. That would be much better than trying to help her down the stairs on her own.

She looked over at Carlson’s phone. Eleven minutes.

Asher looked down at his watch. It was seventeen hours since they’d landed in Venezuela, and he was about to execute one of the most bizarre plans known to mankind, let alone a special operations force.

He just thanked God it didn’t include a fucking clown car. He was sure it would have, except it was too small. No, instead, he was stuck with feathers, crepe paper, a giant dragon head, and a metric shit ton of green sateen with gold trim. He worked through the giant cut-out that they’d made in the neck of the dragon so he could work.

Turned out Ezio’s grandma was addicted to Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. As a result, Ezio knew as much about that parade as Cullen knew about Mardi Gras. Between those two things, they came up with the idea on how to hide the explosions that Asher was going to make as he blew out a hole in the back wall. They were like two tweenyboppers talking about the hot boy at school as they figured out how they needed to steal a float and butt it up against the back gate and have Asher hide underneath it.

Then Rafa got into the game, and it became teenager central. Rafa of course knew somebody who knew somebody. Before Asher knew it, they were going to a run-down garage in the back of an auto body shop where a bunch of university students had a float they were willing to sell. All they wanted were a couple of iPhones that Rafa was able to scrape together from another deal that he cut.

Cullen was loving every moment of it. Ezio played his part, too. The girls didn’t recognize one uniform from another, and Ezio was able to get the couple of University girls to swoon over his good looks, which helped the deal to go down easier for Rafa.

All three of them were crazy. Certifiable. Nuts. But they made it happen.

Now here Asher was, sweating like a dyslexic at countdown. The night was hot and humid as fuck. Add in the body armor, being wrapped in neon green material that didn’t breathe, and then like a turd cherry on top, there was the paper mâché dragon’s head that hovered over his head.

“You doing okay?” Ezio asked from behind him.

“Dandy.”

“Come on, haven’t you ever wanted to be in a parade?”

“No.” Asher concentrated on applying the C-4 charges to the exact right pressure points on the steel gate.

Damn, it’s hot.

He would have preferred doing this alone. If something went wrong, he’d like to be the only casualty—not that he intended anything to go wrong. He was damn good at this. But still, it pissed him off that Ezio was anywhere near the charges. But someone needed to help push the float along. Why did this have to be some half-assed parade float that needed two people inside it to get it moving?

Just one more. He wiped the sweat out of his eyes and adjusted the charge. Dammit, he blinked and realized he needed to pull out the fuse and reposition it. Finally, it was right. He blew out a long breath and checked his watch. Adjusting the timer to make sure it coordinated with the time he had supplied Eden, Asher then turned to handle the next bit of fun.

He looked around the inside of the parade float. It wasn’t the sturdiest thing he’d ever seen, but since the charges were set up at the weak spots, they didn’t need as much C-4 as they would other places. The float would be toast when the charges blew, but hopefully, people would just think it was a pyrotechnic display gone wrong.

A dragon. Asher shook his head. And he had thought the damn Eurovision Song Contest was the

craziest mission.

“Let’s move,” Asher said as he pulled at Ezio’s sleeve. Ezio immediately understood and moved.

As soon as they crawled out from beneath the green monstrosity, Asher took a deep breath, then looked up at the tall gate of the bank. He grinned as he saw the food truck thirty meters away. There were Rafa and two of the university girls he’d recruited giving away free plantains and empanadas, keeping civilians away from the blast site. Cullen really was a devious bastard, and Rafa fit right in.

Free food was brilliant.

Meanwhile, he and Ezio slid over to where Raiden and Nic were waiting in a covered truck that they had procured. “Two minutes,” Asher informed them. “Then I’m going in.”

Raiden nodded.

“Max and Kane? Have we heard from them?” Asher asked.

“Not yet. But you know they want to be thorough,” Raiden answered.

“Does Kane really think he can block any kind of communication between Maduro and his men?”