Assigned To Love: Heroes N Hearts

By Carissa Marks

I was given an assignment.…they didn't tell me she was opinionated or brave

or cunning or so beautiful, she made me forget everything. 
I almost lost my life, then I almost lost her.

In the end…love won. I will forever be grateful for that assignment.

After a unit buddy is kidnapped, Gabe Avery is assigned to keep her safe. He didn't plan 

on a wild ride from the Florida Keys to North Carolina and back to Texas, or on falling in love 

with the spirited woman. 
Eden Flannigan was used to doing things on her own. She didn't need some bossy man telling her anything,

until she did. 

 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carissa Marks
• Release date: Jan 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393566724

Carissa Marks

Started writing at 8, later in life I have written for newspapers, a military life style magazine, school news paper, and then hit the big time when a story was published in an anthology put out by the University of Edinburgh. I have a masters degree in creative writing multimedia(just got it)and I waited to go back to school until I was 50. Spent 20 plus yrs chasing the military, raising kids and then...you're never to old. I hope to be an inspiration to my girls, all of them.

Book preview

Assigned to Love

1

Sergeant Gabriel Avery stood at the back of the SUV, his feet crossed at the ankles, arms folded over the wide expanse of t-shirt stretched tight over his muscled chest.  Cord Andrews rested against the passenger side, his head thumped off the Durango. We could take him. Gabe glanced over at Cord and shook his head. Their third sat perched on the hood of the black and white Sheriff’s car across from them.

Sounds good to me. Chase Peterson recently joined their unit on his return from a wild goose chase in Afghanistan and came home to be assigned another one.  The radio squawked in the cop car. The message came out garbled in the west Texas winds as sand blew and swirled into the deep purple expanse dotted with too many bright pinpoints of light to count.

What the hell? A yellow-orange glow lit the horizon. The threesome stood in the stifling heat staring at the aura before Gabe started to kick the dirt, one hand on his hip, one running through his coal-black hair. Damn it to hell and back!

Come on man, you’re killing us here. That is the same direction we need to be. Peterson stared him down.

The Sheriff scratched his forehead, his dirty and somewhat battered stetson tipped back on his head. A feral smile crept across his otherwise chiseled face. Get outta here, I’m done with you boys. They dove for the vehicle and peeled out. Andrews held a map and penlight in his hands, the GPS had long since said to take a hike, they were lost. They slid into the dirt yard with tufts of half brown grass that popped through the red dirt here and there. The house was old, part stone and part heavy beam construction. The trio circled the building, one ran for the hose and sprayed water into the gap where the wall started to crumble. Peterson kicked the spot a couple of times, one final mule kick opened the hole enough to scramble through. He snagged the man on the floor and dragged him outside. His body smoldered as the fire truck pulled in. Volunteers grabbed an end to the hose and scurried about, they called back and forth Is it clear? as they sprayed down the house.

Gabe rounded the corner and pulled the other two over. Fire was set. There’s a sprinkler on the barn, and a gas can out front. See what you can get off the crispy one while I go bitch at the badge again. That turned out to be a lost cause. The man wasn’t about to give up anything on the two people they were hunting for. They ran the dirt roads through town searching for the truck the department of motor vehicles showed as registered to her and came up with a goose egg. They pulled into the combo gas and grocery. Andrews pumped gas, Avery headed inside to pay and grab something cold to drink. The kid behind the counter was what he would label a snot-nosed jerk, lanky, bored, belligerent, and from the wild eye movements, probably a closet tweeker.

You guys are a joke. You missed her.

Avery leaned over the counter and growled out. I could leave you in a puddle of blood and broken bones for your old man to find...little boy. The kid swallowed hard, a half dozen times as he fidgeted behind the counter. You have no clue who we are.

Yeah, he pointed to a scanner on a dusty cobweb covered shelf, well, she bagged ass before ten, she knew y’all were coming here. He rocked side to side as he spoke, his left hand swiped down the side of his face.

And how did she know that? Gabe leaned in a bit closer fixing him with a look that emanated his dislike and annoyance like a neon sign.

Her...her brother called. She told the widdah. The widdah called my old man to get some stuff from him. She came along and made sure they got everything on the list.

What. Stuff? Gabe hit the end of his patience two hours ago.

Gas. Avery grabbed the boy by the shirt collar and dragged him over the counter and threw him back against it. Candy and gum scattered across the floor.

Boy, Do not tell me another damn lie, or I will bust your fucking head open.

She did, widdah Summerall stood right here and told my dad she needed gas, crazy girl bugged out cause her brother called and said run.  Gabe let the tweeker go, set three twenty-dollar bills on the counter, and grabbed the bag, he stopped at the door to give the kid one more warning glare before he swung out the door. All the pumps were busy on the truck side of the building.

Something would be hauled out of a hole in the ground late at night and taken away in huge trucks, or hauled in, no one would ever say for sure. The diner was open and the bar’s sign read food and coffee/soda—no beer 

Gabe slid into the driver’s seat and fired up the engine, turned on the air conditioner, and rolled up windows as they pulled out. Shortest way to the interstate.

Peterson and Andrews traded looks, they understood the ‘what the hell’ of a side-eye, and raised eyebrow. Five miles down on the left, take FM one-eighty for about a mile and then hang a right. Peterson ignored Avery’s jaw clench and release for the five miles, once they pulled onto the interstate he gave in to the overwhelming curiosity. So what pissed you off?

That little shit at the store said the target contacted some widow and she came to the store for gas. The fire was definitely set. But the real kicker is, she supposedly ran because her brother called and told her to go. Both of the passengers were left sputtering and swearing as the Durango moved on down the road. Eventually, the other two crashed out, their snores were muffled by Gabe’s iPod. The playlist covered everything from Eminem and Zepplin to Brantley Gilbert and Classical, he kept it set on random, like his thoughts. He spent days with the dossier. Rhett Flannigan had been his friend for several years before he disappeared. Something about the way the scenario went down ate away at him since he found out who had either walked away or was snatched from beside a government-issued truck a mile away from the base. He was positive Flannigan would move heaven and earth if he thought his sister was in trouble.

They ran what little they had on the sister through the proper places and came up with nothing. Six hours later he had run every viable scenario through his mind at least twice. Added to what he discovered in the hell hole called Ivy, Texas, he knew for sure, a major piece was missing and he would lay odds on it being tied to Flannigan’s kid sister. Avery cleared the Texas border, the signs along interstate ten plugged casinos from NOLA to Tunica. One billboard managed to sneak in with a lone motel. He decided that would have to make do. The roadside sign had working lights, which gave the place a one-star rating. No garbage, drunks, homeless people, streetwalkers, pimps, or police tape equaled a raise to two and a half. When the person greeted them with a smile, and directions to the coffee—the inn looked even better. Once they discovered they offered a free breakfast bar, it quickly moved to four of five stars. They made short work of packing away some food before they grabbed keys and headed to their rooms. The clean sheets, cold AC, and blackout curtains made the fifth star a given. After the desert, they weren’t hard to please.

Avery called his sister. His black lab kept trying to take the phone from her until she turned the screen so he could see his most favorite human in the universe. Laughing at his beastie provided a much-needed balm for his soul. With luck, I’ll be home soon buddy. The dog whined as his sister rubbed the one floppy ear as she told him to be safe. Usually, she had more ideas and he could pick her brain, but today had been all about Moose.

He scattered the contents of the file folder across the spare bed. For as much as he prided himself on remembering details, Avery couldn’t remember what about the paperwork rubbed him wrong, but something was off.  The photo of her should have made picking her out of a crowd a no brainer. Bright blue hair with a hot pink strand in her bangs, brown eyes, a beauty mark, and five tiny stars tattooed down the left side of her face. She had a huge tribal tat on her neck. More stars in a teal color sat on the right side of her face. Her nose and lip were pierced, giving her a look he called mug shot.  Facial recognition pulled a zero, which meant she wasn’t in the system. He tossed the picture back onto the stack and looked at the paper with her information. ‘Name: Jade Mauve Flannigan. Age: Twenty four, Height five foot ten.’ The rest of the usual stuff made him grimace until he hit eye color. The paperwork said blue, but in the photo, her eyes were brown. Both hands ran through his hair stopping at the top of his head. Either someone can’t type or we have bogus intel. Just damn ducky." That was it. Avery dropped his boots and peeled clothes, leaving them in a pile on the spare bed before padding across the beige carpet to the bathroom. A hot shower and sleep, then he’d decide what to do with his discovery.

Eden stayed a week with her cousin. She needed the mini-reunion. It was the first Thanksgiving in ten years that she hadn’t felt like an outsider. However, the sooner she made the Keys, the safer she would feel. Mallory judged how far she could safely drive in the beater-mobile, her name for Eden’s truck, and booked a pet-friendly hotel for her.  When she had people around, it became easier to chase away the nightmares, being alone seemed to invite them. Eden settled in with hopes of a quiet night. For the hundredth time at least, she rehashed the night she left home.

The call came out of the blue, Rhett was adamant. Get out. Right then. Run to the Keys house.  Town folks let her know some man asking too many questions, threw her name about a bit too much. She already decided to bug out. Eden didn’t take long to load the plastic totes into the truck, her favorite chair, a rug, and two bookcases, an end table her uncle made her, and the most important part...her animals. Besides the dog and cat, she had a kennel with a rooster and six hens in the back of the truck wedged in next to her grill. Eden didn’t leave enough room for a mosquito to fit in the back.  However, she decided she needed to try to wedge a couple more things in even if it required tying them on. When she went back inside; she shut the front door. The hinges groaned and squawked as the door opened was the give-away. Eden grabbed the sawed-off shotgun from the top of the pale blue dresser that had seen better days before she found it on the side of the road.

She threw an old wool blanket over her head and curled up next to a couple of large black trash bags with a straight shot out the door. Whoever he was, he was broad across the shoulders and stunk of old grease, like a rancid diner fryer, he leveled a huge handgun at her, she made out the shape in the feeble light from the barn through the dirty window panes. The roar of her shotgun made her ears ring for the next day. He came off his feet as she leaped to hers and fired again. Blood bubbled out of his nose as she hurdled his near-dead body and raced for the truck.

Bumpy roads were the norm in Ivy, and the drive to the Widdah’s proved to be a bouncy trek. The widdah, she insisted on using the old Scot spelling, was a fixture in Ivy. No one believed she could find Scotland on a map, but she ruled everything. Average height and medium build belied how physically strong she once was. Back when the town thrived as a railroad town, in its prime, her family owned a fair part of Ivy. But that was before the government shut down the rail and the mines faded away until out of the blue they started digging for something that made everyone close to the mines sick. Before her husband argued with a government man. Mysteriously his car flipped on the road home. Eden remembered the whispered tale of how the widdah came across the accident and dragged him free of the burning vehicle and back to her truck. Loading him in took thirty minutes the townspeople said, but he weighed over a hundred pounds more than her and stood a foot taller. On the way to the health clinic, she was run off the road by a mining truck. Help came too late for her husband. After that, Ivy became close to the old west, until it all stopped and the man in the expensive suit went away and girls stopped going missing and the town turned into a place where a dust storm became a welcome diversion. Then late one night two over-sized trucks pulled into the mines and the next day, a guard shack and an armed man in a blue-gray uniform who thought he was the law of the universe sat at the gate. More than once some kid chunked a rock over the chain-link fence and caught him on the head. The traffic picked up through town, but only for a week, and then the place went back to dullsville.

Eden sighed as she thought about the place she called home as the road disappeared beneath her tires. It all played out in her mind. The somewhat reflective green and white population sign sat outside the town line still read one-hundred thirty-five. In actuality, the population number was more like sixty. Six minutes got her from the stone farmhouse to her savior, that sign and open road, and she would be on her way. It played like an old movie, a little jerky and sometimes the soundtrack didn’t line up. She remembered the widdah running outside to meet her, tucked under Eden’s leg, a crumpled envelope held a key. The key went to a storage unit south of Sarasota, tucked inside the envelope, a thousand dollars in small bills.  Don’t worry, the sheriff and I have this, you get on outta here and don’t let them catch ya before you get to Sarasota now.

Like the proverbial lightning bolt or a light bulb coming on. Eden pulled to the side of the road. She knew...how the bloody hell did she know I intended to head this way? She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and stared at it. How many times did she leave it sitting where the widdah could have gotten it? At least fifty in the last couple of months was the best guess. Up ahead she saw the blue and white sign of some over-hyped box store and took a chance. Ten minutes later she had a new phone and was back in the truck with the replacement plugged into the cigarette lighter as she went about setting the device up and emailing the pictures on the old one to herself.  Eden slowly drove around the back of the store and slid the back off the old phone. It hadn’t taken a degree in rocket science to find the bug. Carefully the plate slid back over the battery, she walked to the edge of the pavement and winged it to a nice spot in the chest-high saw grass. Ha, eat shit and die bitch. I got your number. She could only hope she was out fast enough. Her brother was adamant; go right that minute, so he found out something. Whether or not Rhett planned it, he managed to give her a major piece of information when he called. In the background, she could hear steel drums and the horn on a large ship.

Eden pulled into the extra-large storage unit and traded out her old truck for one much newer with a camper top. Moving everything from one to the other didn’t take long. She briefly dated one of the miners back home; the only useful thing he taught her was how to rig an explosive from nearly nothing. She hit all the fifty-five-gallon drums being used for trash cans and pulled enough scrap metal pieces to do justice to her teacher. It took longer to dig out the black powder and tannerite to power it than to put everything together. Just in case there was any doubt, Eden scrawled a message in permanent marker across the hood, F. U. Widdah. Payback is a bitch. 

With a look both ways, Eden pulled out onto a still nearly deserted road and headed south. A faded circus sign sat on the side of Highway 301, a deer poked its head out of the underbrush and backtracked when her headlights flashed across its face.  Six hours later she crossed the bridge and breathed a sigh of relief. The driveway was crushed shell and wound through the property to the back section. The house had been her maternal grandmother’s and given to her and Rhett. A smile spread across her face as the wide verandah came into view, the caretakers' cottage sat back further, shielded by the Spanish moss hanging from the trees. They always went back to town when either sibling showed up; they said it was amazing how that bit of distance made their children appreciate their time together more. Eden shook her head at the notion; she couldn’t picture anyone nicer than Shirley and Jack. In her eyes, they were like the grandparents she always wished for.

It didn’t take long for them to bring her up to date. When Mallory first made it to having high-end clients, she bought a small bar and grill to help out an old man...Jack. He seemed like the perfect choice to care for her place after he stuck around to teach them the business. She chuckled at that idea, Mallory wanted a tax break, she soon gifted the joint to Eden. Jack’s Landing was still the spot for locals over tourists, which was fine by her. That weekend would be different. Pirates in Paradise meant they would be visited by droves of drunks in pirate garb who couldn’t manage an argh by the end of the night. She waved as they bopped down the road in their custom golf cart, their little mutt dog between them.

Eden moved with her brand of military precision, she unlocked the paddle locks on the electronic gates and closed them. The alarms came next, both the noisy ones installed by the pros and the geese she turned out of their pen.  She grabbed the door handle to the truck and shook a finger at Rusty, Do not eat the goose droppings! He wagged at her and slurped her cheek as he waddled down the plank she set up for him. Eden grabbed the cat carrier and hauled it to the front porch before going back for a second load. The key clunked in the old lock. As the door swung open she breathed in the oil soap used on the ancient cypress floors. Rusty picked out his favorite rug and dropped on it, out of the way for a change. She lugged boxes and the pieces she saved in her crazy dash. When it was all in and she popped the top on a cold beer, she flopped into her favorite chair and took a long swig, burping loud enough to echo across the room.

Eden took a second swig and focused on Rusty. I started to tell the widdah about this place...maybe a dozen times and I didn’t...I didn’t tell her about Jack’s either. She burped again and then resumed her conversation, Now, I am so glad I didn’t. She is a backstabbing bitch. Poor woman has no idea what she did when she crossed me. I may be the poor little orphan sister of the war hero back in Ivy...but there is so much more and they have no idea. Matter of fact, she thinks I went to Sarasota and that must have come from listening to me tell Mallory I needed to go there. Luckily, I never said anything about this place. I wonder if she knew we inherited this house. Well, at any rate, if the whole idea is to throw off the followers, I don’t think they will find that phone too quick, ya know? His scruffy head tipped from one side to the other as he listened to her intently. I think I need to make a run to the market. I’m thinking food would be an idea. Rusty offered a low-pitched woof to that.

Her afternoon was spent running errands. She made a stop at Jack’s and let the manager know she would be in for the weekend.  He voiced concerns about one bartender, so they decided to not tell her Eden was the real boss. The market had undergone a major renovation since she visited last. She picked over the fruits and veggies and moved to the meat counter. The easy conversation in Spanish with the butcher also earned her a little gossip about the people around the city. She could handle a flirt, and he was a major one. Eden would be willing to bet he went to church most Sundays and holidays and still called his folks three times a week. One last stop at the marina to check on the boat she invested in, sight unseen, left her happy. Bones was an excellent judge of watercraft. Sometimes it paid to befriend the oddballs