Dirty Justice (SEAL Team Blackout), page 1
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Dirty Justice
SEAL Team Blackout
Book 8
Copyright Em Petrova 2023
Ebook Edition
Electronic book publication 2023
Cover Art by Bookin’ It Designs
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SEAL Team Blackout
SHATTERED TIES Bishop’s Story
RUTHLESS PROTECTION Sparrow’s Story
MERCILESS SURVIVAL Ramsey’s Story
SAVAGE PAWN Gunnison’s Story
REBEL MISSION Frost’s Story
WICKED INSTINCT Lachlan’s Story
FINAL TARGET Mustang’s Story
DIRTY JUSTICE Apollo’s Story
SWEET REFUGE Lena and Overstreet’s Story
He’ll do whatever it takes to win her back—even if it means fighting dirty…
When Navy SEAL AJ Apollo vanished, everyone thought he was dead. Even his girlfriend. But now he’s back and ready to pick up where they left off. Too bad a terrorist cell—and the love of his life—have no intention of making it easy for him…
ICE agent Indika Devi let Apollo slip through her defenses, and she’s regretted it ever since. She mourned him for years, and now he thinks he can waltz right back into her life? No way. She’ll help him complete his latest mission, but she will not fall for him. Not again, anyway…
If Apollo wants a second chance at happily ever after, he needs to neutralize the terrorist threat and earn back Indika’s trust—and heart. Shouldn’t be terribly difficult for a man who managed to come back from the dead…right?
Second-chance steamy romance is packing all the emotions in this military action and adventure romance. 1-CLICK your copy of DIRTY JUSTICE and binge-read the entire SEAL Team Blackout series!
Table of Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
DIRTY JUSTICE
BY
Em Petrova
ONE
AJ Apollo slammed the lid of the washing machine a little too hard. The noise of metal hitting metal with brute force echoed through the coin laundry.
He glanced around, hoping any of the little old ladies who lived in the apartment building weren’t in here today, and that he hadn’t made one of them leap out of their compression stockings.
As the washer began to fill with water, he turned to lean against it, folding his arms across his chest. Damn, he hated the mundane parts of life. Leaving all that behind was a plus for being in black ops. And not just any black ops—deep black ops. SEAL Team Blackout was completely off the grid, off the books…and off the fucking planet.
To the world, they were dead, given the riskiest missions the government thought couldn’t be successful. Well, Blackout proved them wrong over and over again. Few men had really been lost on either Alpha or Charlie teams.
AJ was considered one of the lost.
He stared beyond the dust-covered equipment at the cinderblock wall. Someone had chosen to smear a thick yellow paint over it, probably to offset the drudgery of the chore.
It was the most depressing place he could think of being right now. He’d rather be with his teammates, dropping into enemy territory, adrenaline pumping through his system.
Instead, he was sidelined with a damn head injury.
Not even a bad one.
Still, they wouldn’t let him rejoin Charlie until he was cleared fit for duty. Secretly, he knew what the desk jockeys in the Pentagon were doing. They were checking him out, doing a deep dive into his motives for going AWOL and taking an op into his own hands.
They were digging for more about why he’d faked his death that day in a Texas bunker.
He’d explained his reasons for striking out alone—he’d known the only way they’d ever stop the terrorist Mashala Abubakar was to go even deeper. Into the depths of hell kind of deep. That day in the bunker amidst all the fighting, he saw his chance and couldn’t pass it by.
He was damn sure a few Navy admirals overseeing Blackout from their comfy offices didn’t buy his story, though. The time they were taking to investigate him was keeping him from returning to duty even though he was more than fit for it.
Fucking Tuesdays. He hated doing laundry, or any other number of mundane tasks, so why did he choose to do them all every Tuesday?
Apollo’s phone vibrated, and he pushed off the washing machine to remove it from the pocket of his jeans. They were worn, with a hole in the corner of his back pocket, and his phone snagged on it as he withdrew it.
After the device unlocked using facial recognition, he stared hard at the notification.
He was so accustomed to adrenaline hits that he barely registered the uptick of his heart rate.
This wasn’t a message that the food delivery service he used would be swapping out his romaine lettuce for iceberg.
It was something much, much bigger, dealing with big fucking terrorists with huge rap sheets.
Something was always brewing in the Middle East, but this chatter about part of Abubakar’s cell known to be squatting on US soil wasn’t to be taken lightly. He knew the terrorist in question. If Amaya—one of the side leaders in the terrorist cell—made a move, he’d make it big.
Dammit, he needed to get to his laptop and dig into the matter.
He tossed a look at the washing machine. Nineteen more minutes to go on the setting. He didn’t like leaving his laundry in the machine when someone else might need to use it.
Fuck it—he had time to run back up to his apartment.
Abandoning his post, he strode out of the laundry. The building was old, but secure enough that he might not need to look over his shoulder all the time, but he did so out of habit. His boots pounded old linoleum tile as he rushed to the stairs and took them two at a time to reach his apartment.
After entering his place, he kicked the door shut with a bang, too late giving consideration for the elderly lady who lived below him.
Damn, he really was a bit too keyed up, wasn’t he? Too much energy to expel. A shot of adrenaline he hadn’t experienced in weeks coursing through his system.
He moved to his laptop where it sat on a cheap desk in the corner. As soon as he dropped to the chair in front of it and put fingers to keys, his mind plunged into the world he was used to living in and not this ordinary existence.
The world where he carried weapons and fought his way through foreign cities, hunting for a certain terrorist who was now known with total accuracy to be dead. Team Alpha got him, thanks to the trail Apollo left for them to follow.
His entire reason for faking his death, for going rogue, was to get that motherfucker.
And now it looked like trouble was brewing again.
He took out his phone and dialed his commanding officer in Blackout Charlie. Con’s phone rang several times and cut off. No voicemail set up for a dead man to drop a message to another dead man.
This intel was fresh, goddammit. He needed to get it into the hands of somebody who would take action before Abubakar’s cell rose again under a new leader.
He punched in another number. The commanding officer of Blackout Alpha picked up after two rings. His voice sounded tense. Distracted.
“It’s Apollo. I have some intel you need to see.”
“Apollo, you’re on medical leave. You’re supposed to be recovering from a concussion, not feeding me intel. Which leads me to the question—why are you calling me and not Con?”
“I tried. He didn’t answer his phone. Look, there’s—”
Sparrow cut him off. “I know you’re trying to keep us informed, but we already see what’s happening.”
“You see the messages flying between Nigeria and the US?”
“You’d better be on a fucking secured line.” Sparrow’s bark didn’t faze Apollo—he wasn’t so easily cowed, even by a man who could, ultimately, get him thrown out of Blackout forever.
“I am,” he grated out with as much annoyance as Sparrow used with him. “We need to—”
Again, Sparrow cut him off. “We will handle it. You will be lounging on a couch eating grapes and taking naps. Got it?”
He issued a low growl. He started to voice a rebuttal but his good sense kicked in. Rather than argue with a guy who had enough clout to sideline him for good, he snapped his mouth shut.
“Fine,” he bit off through clenched teeth. “When you need me, I’ll be lying on the couch eating grapes.” Without another word, he ended the call.
Leaning back in his chair with enough force to make the wood creak, he sliced his fingers through his too-long hair. Dammit to hell. Would nobody listen to him?
A lightbulb went on in his brain.
Okay, not a lightbulb. A ray of light embodied in a petite powerhouse with enough pull to get things done while tormenting the absolute hell out of him with her curves.
Indika Devi. Only the woman he’d left behind when he “died” wasn’t speaking to him. In fact, she’d told him to stay the hell away from her.
With the decision made to totally ignore her wishes—this was important!—he erased everything on his laptop, then stood and strode to the door again. Indika would be in her office today, and someone needed to take this matter seriously.
Besides, it was a good excuse for him to reach out to her. At one time, he’d been so close to Indika that he didn’t know how to breathe without her.
All that had changed the minute he went missing, presumed dead, and hurt her.
He grabbed his car keys and locked up. Laundry and other boring chores would have to wait. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to sit around popping grapes into his mouth like Sparrow suggested.
Worst case: Indika slapped him. Again.
Best case: She listened to what he had to say…and in working closely together, they rekindled the romance it had gutted him to leave behind.
Traffic in Washington, DC wasn’t bad at this time of day and he reached the ICE office in minutes. When he entered the building, he had to show ID. The fake one he used for government purposes like this worked without issue, and he quickly hurried to the elevator.
Hell, there were memories in Indika’s office. Hot, scorching ones where he’d kissed her against her closed door and left her quaking on the brink of orgasm after he slipped his hand under her skirt.
“Later,” he’d whispered against her lips. “I’ll come to you later.”
Only that hadn’t happened. That night he deployed to Texas and their relationship was buried in regret.
She wasn’t in her office. Checking the time on his watch, he realized she’d be on her lunch break.
Most days she brought her lunch or grabbed something from the cafeteria in the building. If he was lucky, he’d catch her in a more relaxed atmosphere—she couldn’t kick him in the balls if she was surrounded by colleagues.
After he left her office, he rode the elevator back down to the cafeteria. As he passed a wall of windows, he stopped dead in his tracks.
Indika was sitting at a table outside.
With a man.
She was laughing at something he said, her glossy black hair swishing along her spine when she leaned toward him.
Apollo’s gut tightened. Goddammit, he always knew it was possible that Indika would forget about him. He just didn’t think he’d ever witness it with his own two eyes. Even when she told him to stay out of her life, he saw through her and knew it was all a cover for the pain he’d caused her.
Maybe he was kidding himself, thinking that he saw a gleam of love in her deep, expressive brown eyes, but it was all he had left. When he woke with nightmares and a scream on his lips, he recalled that look.
That glimmer made him get out of bed in the morning when he had little to live for and nothing to do with himself besides obsess over when he could return to Blackout.
As he looked on, the man seated opposites Indika reached across the table and brushed his fingers over the back of her hand.
She smiled up into his eyes.
And Apollo…well, his chest felt hot and tight, prickly with annoyance and slithering with a black snake of jealousy.
What now? Did he go on with his plan to share what he learned about the terrorists and hope Indika could place the intel in the right hands? Or should he turn around and leave before she spotted him?
Fuck, what did he have left? No team. No family or friends to fall back on.
No woman.
He stood rooted to the floor, watching her smile and laugh…with another man.
* * * * *
Indika tossed back her head, chuckling at Robert’s comment about working conditions in the ICE office. Only fellow coworkers at the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement could fully understand these inside jokes, and Robert was good company.
She enjoyed his sense of humor. It felt good to let go and be lighthearted again. After three years of loss and heartbreak, she deserved it. These lunches with Robert also broke up her lonely days. He’d asked her out to drinks and dinner a few times, which helped alleviate the even heavier loneliness weighing on her each night.
When he smiled at her, his gray eyes crinkled at the corners. She liked that he was a little older than her and probably had a better handle on life.
It didn’t hurt that the man could fill out a suit. Plenty of the women in the office oohed and ahhed over his broad chest and how his muscular buns looked, especially in the navy-blue trousers he wore today.
Indika had to agree with them. He was nice to look at. He was also nice. For once, she wasn’t dating a bad boy.
Look what that got me.
The image of AJ Apollo popped into her head—unwanted, unbidden and unbelievable.
The SEAL was tall and broad, stacked with muscle in all the ways that made a woman feel safe and protected.
She shook off the image and focused on Robert again. Apollo wasn’t the only man who looked good packing heat. Robert’s weapon was strapped to his hip and she’d seen him wield it a time or two on the job.
They didn’t work together very often, and that was a good thing. She didn’t need a repeat of what went on between her and Apollo.
From her viewpoint, the only drawback to seeing Robert afterhours was the possibility of tension, rumors and a breakup.
Robert cocked a brow expectantly at her, as if waiting for a response to something she missed when she was too occupied with thoughts of Apollo.
Damn that man. Would he never get out of her system? She was over him. The years and years she’d spent mourning Apollo were in the past.
She wished she didn’t mentally compare him to every man she crossed paths with.
It also didn’t help her state of mind that Apollo had actually risen from the dead and popped back into her life.
So what if he was back? She was smarter now. Besides, Robert was a good guy.
He was…solid and safe. He’d never disappear for three years without a word.
“What do you think?” His blue eyes gleamed with the smile his lips echoed. “Dinner at the club and then we’ll take my boat out for an evening sail?”
Her mind snapped back to the question. Boating. Yes, he enjoyed taking his yacht out on the Washington Channel.
“That sounds fantastic.” She offered a nod and a smile. Then she checked the time on her phone.
She’d missed a call from an unknown number. Probably another telemarketer.
“I’d better get back to my desk.”
“Me too. Martino and I are going out on a call this afternoon.”
“Oh?” She knew better than to ask detailed questions about what Robert did for ICE. And he didn’t ask about her job either. Some things shouldn’t be shared, but she had access to sensitive information on undocumented immigrants, focusing on those who posed threats in the US.
On several occasions she was able to offer assistance to SEAL Team Blackout. Few people knew the black ops team even existed. She just happened to be approached by their commander to “get him information.” Which she gladly did. In fact, those projects were far more interesting than busting illegals for not having the right paperwork.
She and Robert stood. They gathered their trash, dumped it in the receptacle and slowly walked toward the door leading inside.
“This was nice.” He paused a few feet from the entrance.
She stopped too and looked up at him with a small smile. “I always enjoy our lunches.”
“Now we have a date to look forward to.” When he leaned toward her, she tipped her face up. The scent of his masculine aftershave washed over her. A handsome man who smelled good and dressed nicely were bonuses to his personality and good manners.
He brushed his lips across her cheek, and she rested a palm on his chest.
“See you later, Indika.” He broke away and walked through the door.
She waited a moment before following. A question whirled in her mind about just how good Robert’s manners were.
