Page 97 of Men of Fort Dale: The Complete Series

He was being watched.

Years of special forces training had honed his senses, and he trusted them, even if his logical mind told him there was no reason for anyone to be watching him.

Sure, his team leader was dead, his team disbanded, and he’d been thrown back to the States because of ‘disorderly conduct,’ but that didn’t change his training or his instincts.

“Another,” he grunted to the bartender, thumping the bottle on the bar.

He had no idea where they were, which didn’t surprise him. The military was like the damned government. When they wanted to keep a secret, they threw it in a hole and buried it in the dead of night. He wouldn’t know where the remnants of his team were unless he was meant to know.

The bartender’s eyes slid over to him again, grunting. “You from the base?”

“Yep,” Carter said, taking a deep pull from the bottle.

“Don’t get many of you boys around here,” he told him.

Carter shrugged. “I like the quiet.”

And the bar was quiet. Dirty and dimly lit, but it was quiet. Port Dale had more than enough bars to drink his brains out in, and he’d chosen at random. Carter had been told repeatedly by experts and people in charge that he should avoid alcohol at all costs.

It would bring up bad memories, they said.

It would make coping difficult, they said.

It would make the road to recovery difficult, they said.

Carter snorted, taking another deep pull at the thoughts.

Half the people he’d spent the last half a decade with were dead, and the rest were scattered to the winds without any contact with one another.

What did these ‘experts’ know about healing?

Alcohol worked just fine for him. At least it helped him sleep.

The bartender’s eyes flicked over his shoulder. “Well, dunno how you feel about keepin’ that quiet of yours, but uh, you got some fans.”

“I’ve noticed,” Carter told him, not glancing over his shoulder.

“And not the friendly kinda fans either.”

“Noticed that too.”

People didn’t watch you intently in a public place unless you were famous or they were looking for trouble.

Carter wasn’t worried about them, to be honest. If they wanted to start trouble, they would either find the balls to approach him or wait until he left.

Hell, maybe he’d get lucky, and they’d leave him alone to enjoy his night of drinking in peace.

Yeah, right.

The bartender grimaced. “No offense. I don’t mind having you fort boys in here. But we’ve been havin’ a lot of trouble.”

“I’m not causing trouble,” Carter told him easily.

“Not tryin’ to, maybe,” the bartender said, looking over Carter’s shoulder again. “But you seem to be attractin’ it.”

“This your way of telling me to get out before they break up your bar?” Carter asked, looking at the dirty, cracked bar top.

The critique wasn’t missed, as the bartender’s face fell into a frown. “I don’t want any more trouble in here. Had enough of that shit as it is. Don’t need anything else broke.”

Carter snorted. “I wouldn’t worry about your stuff getting broke in here.”

“Hope that wasn’t meant to make me feel better because it didn’t.”

“Trust me, I wasn't trying to.”

But he knew what the bartender would say even before he said it. Carter had been thrown out of bars more than a few times. He could only shrug and drain the rest of his bottle, thumping it onto the bar top with more force than the last time.

“Don’t bother,” Carter told the man as he opened his mouth. “I know how this goes. Let me guess, they’re regulars, and you don’t want to piss them off. Yeah? Yeah. So, why don’t you cash my bill out, and while you’re back there, you can try to find your balls.”

The man’s eyes narrowed, but Carter stared back impassively.

He didn’t give a shit if the man behind the bar had suddenly taken a strong dislike to him.

Carter had grown up with trouble. He was used to it.

It seemed only fitting that he found himself in a career that also allowed him to be in the thick of trouble, until it had been ripped out from under him anyway.

They’d started by calling what they’d done to him leave, but after that hadn’t worked, they’d started calling it probation instead.

Of course, that had been his fault. Thrown from base to base across the States, he’d found himself friendless and without direction or purpose, which meant a lot of drinking and a lot of fighting.

Apparently, the people in charge didn’t like it when their men went off base and started trouble .

Carter hadn’t found any trouble that wasn’t brought to his doorstep, but there was no telling the suits in charge that.

All they saw was a potential weapon that wasn’t obeying orders, which he could sympathize with.

He was far better when he was given a chance to use his skills and training.

Yet, without the safety net of a team or a purpose, he found he was perfectly content to drift and take whatever fight came his way.

Was it self-destructive? Probably, and he knew it, but he couldn’t summon the will to care.

He’d watched as half his team had been torn apart by gunfire and then had to fight with the other half to get back to safety.

Then, they’d been torn apart in a different way, through bureaucracy and choices made by men and women who hadn’t seen the field in years or their entire lives.

So what did he care what he did? He was useless, after all.

He might as well have fun while he was still around.

Carter paid his tab and pushed away from the counter.

The world swam before his eyes, and his legs felt wobbly.

A grin spread over his lips as he effortlessly regained control, allowing the warm fog of alcohol to settle into his brain but keeping his limbs steady.

There was something liberating about the haze, the looseness, and the control he could exert over himself.

Striding out into the night air, he took a deep breath.

The air tasted of gas, oil, and something he couldn’t place.

Carter shrugged the strangeness off, accepting it even as he despised it.

Strange was a part of his life that he had long since learned to incorporate.

Strange places and people had been his life long before he came to Port Dale.

Walking along the sidewalk, he ignored the glances from the few people out and about.

He knew full well what he looked like, and he had no problem using it to avoid dealing with others.

He was strong, and he was tall and his height alone gave him the chance to intimidate others, add in the bulk he’d earned from years in the field, and he was an impressive figure.

With his dark hair still shorn to his skull and the darkness of his hazel eyes, he imagined that in the dim light of the rundown street, he was an intimidating figure.

Not that he was one to hurt anyone unless they started something, that was.

Which was part of his problem. There always seemed to be someone who wanted to start something.

So long as he behaved, maybe he might get more than being shipped all over the country for someone else to deal with.

As he rounded the next corner, he stopped—a trio of laughing guys and one barely conscious woman. At first glance, he might have assumed they were helping her into the car, the woman drunk enough to have a hard time finding her legs.

A more attentive glance, however, showed Carter what he had suspected.

The men’s laughter raised the hair on the back of his neck, and even in the dim streetlight, he could see the smirks and knowing smiles.

The woman might have been too drunk to stand and, from the sounds of it, talk clearly, but he could see she was pushing one of the men trying to get her into the car.

“Not your problem,” Carter muttered, glancing at the other side of the street.

And it would be so easy. Walking away and pretending he’d seen nothing.

The image would be burned into his brain for a few days, and he would wonder, perhaps with a stab of guilt, what had happened to the woman.

Carter also knew he could probably count on his mind eventually shoving it away, leaving him to go through life with no mental glimpses back to the moment.

The human mind was a wonder and could ignore the most horrific scenes.

People did it all the time. Blocking out the horrors and ugliness of the world, keeping their little bubble safe.

There was a lot of talk about confronting the world's evils, but when faced with it, most people bowed their heads and moved on.

And honestly, who would blame him? Putting himself in a position to find trouble again was precisely what he should have avoided.

“Quit,” he heard the woman mutter, voice faint and slurring.

Carter closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Goddammit.”

He spun on his heel, facing them, and called out, “Hey, do you guys need some help?”

One of the guys snorted. “I think we can handle her.”

Carter had no doubt, which was precisely why he stepped closer. “She with you guys?”

One of the three, apparently sober and wary enough to give Carter a look, narrowed his eyes. “She is now.”

“You want in?” the third, arm around the woman’s waist, asked with a huge grin.

If his stomach hadn’t been turning before, it was at those words. There wasn’t much in life that disgusted him, but even he could still be bothered by the evil in the world.

Carter looked at the woman as she slumped, hair falling over her forehead. “She doesn’t look like she’s really in a place to be down for anything.”

“Seems fine to me,” the third said, still giving him an easy grin.

“What’s it matter to you?” the second, still suspicious, asked.

“Call me old-fashioned,” Carter said with a shrug. But I prefer my women, you know, conscious.”

Not strictly true. He hadn’t been with a woman since his fumbling attempts as a teenager, and after his more comfortable experience with a guy from the next town over, hadn’t bothered with the fairer sex since.

Not that they needed to know that. The last thing he needed was to add fuel to a fire he was already helping to create.

“She can talk,” the first informed him.

“Is that what we’re calling it?” Carter asked.

He wasn’t surprised to see the second man’s suspicious gaze turn into a hard glare. “Move on, bud. This ain’t none of your concern.”

“See,” Carter said, wiping his hands on his jeans. “That’s where you’re wrong. To me, it looks like three guys taking advantage of some woman they dragged out of a bar because she was too drunk to put up a fight. That does make it my concern.”

The other two men, drunk as they were, realized there was a problem larger than getting the drunk woman into their backseat.

The man holding her released his hold, letting her slump against the car limply so he could turn.

Now he had all three men’s attention. Carter wondered if there was any chance of getting out of this without someone ending up bloody.

And found he didn’t care all that much, even looked forward to it.

“I think you should fuck off,” the second man told him, voice low and dangerous.

“Funny, I was going to tell you the same thing,” Carter said.

Their advance was slow, but they were moving forward, separating to cover him from three angles. Carter kept his breathing even, feeling the initial hard thump of his heart in anticipation before he also calmed that. Fights were won by the one most intent on winning and the one in the most control.

He wasn’t surprised when they lunged forward, going for the first blow, confident in their numbers.

It wouldn’t be their last mistake of the night.