A tall, lean man pushed open the door, and they all focused on him. 2-Stroke closed the sketchbook. Kelly focused on the man, looking puzzled. A man 2-Stroke knew. Shock for the second time in a few days as the people from his past seemed to pile up.
His brother Dean. Was he the result of the fill-in Fast Lane had requested? This was a problem. Normally siblings didn’t work on the same team. But his brother was a legend on the teams and in their close-knit group. Kelly seemed surprised. He glanced at Fast Lane, but his expression told him nothing.
Most people didn’t peg them for brothers, but that was because his older brother had a different mother, his dad’s first and only wife, Flora. Their father, Pierce Teller, had been a godforsaken, brutally twisted alcoholic with violent tendencies. Dean took after him with the same dark hair, midnight-blue eyes, and good looks that had lured unsuspecting women his way. But that was all they had in common—their features. His brother might have been their dad’s golden boy, but he was a damn good SEAL and an even finer man.
2-Stroke’s mom was only seventeen when his dad raped her. But she had never abandoned Neo, not once. Her death from cancer, when he was twelve and she was only twenty-eight, was devastating.
He’d gone to live with his father and the fawning, hard-drinking, hard-riding Flora, his motorcycle mama. She called Neo a “little bastard” all the time, sober or drunk. Dean had been amazing. He protected 2-Stroke and their youngest brother Riley before he had to leave for BUD/S and the Navy. His father had tried to railroad all of them into his violent MC club, but Neo decided he would run away before he became one of those sadistic pricks.
In the end, he took a stand with a gun and made sure his father would never hurt anyone again. But he’d been too late to save his brother.
Fast Lane stood and nodded to Dean. “Lieutenant Ford Nixon,” Fast Lane said, turning to the table. “This is Senior Petty Officer Dean ‘Striker’ Teller. He’s with DEVGRU and is a Tier 1 operator. Striker will be filling in for Petty Officer Graham while he’s on emergency leave.”
“Lieutenant, guys,” Dean said, looking around the room. “Glad to be of help.” Dean nodded and their gazes met. He smiled, wincing slightly, and 2-Stroke smiled back.
“Sir,” 2-Stroke said, standing. “There’s a problem. Dean’s my brother.”
“Really?” Fast Lane looked between them. “We’ll have to deal with it. He was the closest and the most qualified. Will that be a problem?”
“No,” Dean said as 2-Stroke shook his head.
“Good.”
Kelly stared at Fast Lane, her face rigid. “Why wasn’t I informed?” she snapped.
“It happened fast and we’re shorthanded. We’re not incompetent. We can take care of replacing an operator on our own.” Fast Lane’s eyes glittered, the muscles in his face taut.
She took a hard breath, then let it out, smart enough not to argue with Fast Lane in front of them. “Now that the introductions are over, let’s talk about Andrea Bendarik, Angar Said’s financier,” Kelly said stiffly. “Bendarik, his wife, Ada, and their two young children, two-year-old Edita and four-year-old Filip, are closing up their summer compound and preparing to move back to the city. We will be hitting it tonight, so you’ll want to secure the children before going for the parents. We need to minimize any danger to civilians, including the people who work for them. Our field officer, James Lucas, is a cook in the kitchen. He’s provided this intel for us.”
“Security?”
“Plenty,” Kelly said. “There are fences on the perimeter, cameras, and a contingent of roving guards as well as two in the house. James will take care of the cameras and the two guards. The servants sleep in this adjacent structure…” She pointed to a house beside the main building. “…except for their nanny—”
“She’s an au pair,” Chry interrupted. “Her name is Charlotte Mueller, and she’s an eighteen-year-old Austrian.”
2-Stroke was aware that an au pair was a young foreign woman who came to learn or perfect a language in exchange for childcare.
“Right. Au pair,” Kelly said in a clipped tone. Were Chry and Kelly not getting along either? Kelly moved back to the main house and pointed to a room situated at the back of the structure, right in the middle of the two kids’ rooms. “She sleeps in this room to be