Protecting the Future (SEAL of Protection Book 8) by Susan Stoker Page A

skin Penelope had ever seen on anyone before. They’d been teased by the other soldiers, since Thomas’s last name was Black and Henry’s last name was White, and they were complete opposites of their names. But the men were close friends. They’d bonded the first time they met and had done everything together since they’d arrived in the Middle East. They made an oddly striking pair, but friendship knew no color in the Army. The third man, Robert Wilson, Penelope didn’t know very well, but he’d been friendly enough to her and she worried about him just as much as Thomas and Henry.
    She figured they were all probably dead, and that pissed her off even more. These ISIS assholes didn’t have the right to kill anyone, not when they were the ones terrorizing the poor people all around them and kidnapping innocent soldiers like her and her friends who were just trying to help the refugees.
    Penelope had volunteered to come over to Turkey to help people and provide some much needed help at the camps. Her Reserve unit, stationed out of Fort Hood, Texas, had sent a company of soldiers, around one hundred and twenty people, to help provide security at the camp. From the second they’d landed, it’d been obvious the major in charge of the troops at the refugee camp wasn’t a very good leader. Even though the captains and lieutenants tried to explain how dangerous the security patrols could be, they were still ordered to scout in small groups which could be easily overwhelmed.
    She, White, Black, and Wilson had been ordered to patrol the west side of the camp one day, and when she’d protested, claiming it was too dangerous to send them in alone, she’d been reprimanded publically and told to suck it up.
    She knew it was because she was a woman and actually had the guts to speak up. If she’d been a man, maybe they would’ve taken her more seriously. But they’d been sent off with the proverbial pat on the head and look what had happened. Penelope was fucking right and she’d been stuck in this hellhole for who knew how long.
    Penelope had wanted to escape long before now, but the assholes who’d kidnapped her weren’t actually as idiotic as she’d hoped, or as they’d seemed at first. They moved her almost every night to a different tent. They only allowed her outside whatever tent they were keeping her in if she was covered from head to toe in the flowing robes and garments the women in the region wore.
    Penelope knew her blonde hair would give her away if she dared take off the covering. She’d thought about it more than once, simply whipping the material off her head and running screaming through the camp, but she’d seen how the men around her were. She’d either be shot dead immediately, or she’d suffer horribly and wish she was dead long before they were done with her. So far, she hadn’t been raped, tortured, burned alive, or had her head cut off, and she took all of that as a win.
    So she was in limbo. Waiting for something to happen.
    One good thing—Penelope always tried to find good in every situation—was that the everyday thugs in the camp were scared of ISIS. She didn’t have to worry about them on top of everything else she worried about.
    So she waited. Day in and day out, pretending to be meek and scared, while silently seething inside and on the lookout for something, anything, that would get her out of there. If she made it home, and could hug her brother, she’d never step foot outside Texas again.
    The sounds of the camp faded around her. They never really quieted all the way, but they did settle down as night fell. Penelope figured most people were scared to walk around when the sun dipped below the horizon, as well they should be.
    The door to the tent opened and Penelope quickly looked down, trying not to make eye contact with whoever it was who’d entered her tent. She’d learned the hard way that looking one of the terrorists in the eye only set them off.
    “Up,” he