Operation: Endurance (When the Mission Ends)
Read Operation: Endurance (When the Mission Ends) Online
Authors: Christi Snow
When the Mission Ends Book #3
by Christi Snow
Published by Christi Snow
Edited by Mia Downing and Sarah
Negovetich
Cover Design by AM Design Studios
E-book Formatting by AM Design Studios
Copyright © 2013 Christina Snow
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 1484042778
ISBN-13: 978-1484042779
This book is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, events, or incidences come from the author’s imagination and are not meant to portray real persons or events.
Texas Tech University and Lubbock, TX are real places, but again they are used only as settings in this very fictional world. Any similarities are purely coincidental.
This book is for my team.
The release of this series has been a labor of love and it hasn’t been just my labor. I have a huge team who stand behind me and support me. I am so grateful to have every one of you with me.
My beta readers:
These poor girls read these books when they are ROUGH and still love them, even with the flaws. I think these girls love the characters from this series just as much as I do…and I love them for it.
Amy Castellano
Amber
Hight
Anso
Sjostrom
Kim
Muhl
Michele Brown
Missy Roemer
and
Mom
My editing team:
Mia & Sarah
I love you girls, even when I’m cursing you. Especially, when I’m cursing you. You work to make me better and prop me up when I feel like I’m a hack. Thank you, Thank you, THANK YOU!!
My cover designer:
Amanda Matthews from
AMDesignStudios.net
Mande, you know I love you and your sense of style. You make my books look damn good and I’m so grateful to have found you!
My
eBook formatter:
Ann Mauren from
AMDesignStudios.net
I could never do what you do with my e
-files. You’re always so supportive and excited about the books when you send them back to me, formatted.
My proofreader:
Sabrina Roberts
This girl is the last one to see the books before you do and she is invaluable at catching those final little glitches that the rest of us have missed along the way.
Every single one of you make what I do possible.
THANK YOU!!!!
Thank you to every single reader who has sent me a note or email clamoring for Chris & Julie’s story. I love how much you love them.
I’ll also admit that fact terrifies me.
There’s been a lot of pressure to get this story perfect, but it’s not an easy story to tell when you have two wounded characters who are as messed up as these two. I hope you enjoy their story and it lives up to expectations.
I knew it was going to be a tough book to write from the very beginning, but I don’t think I even realized how hard it would become.
First:
These two characters have been through so much. They DESERVE a great Happily Ever After.
Hopefully, you’ll agree I gave them that.
But also:
This is the final book in this series….sob.
Saying goodbye to these characters? NO! This has killed me throughout this book. The final book. All the characters from the last three books are here…being the great friends and lovers that they are within this group of six. Hopefully, the little glimpses you see will show you how happy they are going to be for the next 50-70 years.
BUT… They aren’t going completely away. There’s still one more novella to come (you’ll understand who that involves by the end of this book). And next year, I plan to have a new romantic suspense trilogy featuring those sexy Martin men from the Martin Ranch who were introduced in
Operation: Endeavor
. Keep watching!
When the Mission Ends Trilogy
Book #1: Operation: Endgame
September 2012
Book #2: Operation: Endeavor
January 2013
Book #3: Operation: Endurance
April 2013
Book #.5: Before the Mission Begins
Valentines 2013
Book #3.5: Title Unknown
Fall 2013
Julie panicked as the rough hand ripped the thin fabric of her bikini top. This wasn’t what was supposed to happen. She’d snuck the bikini into her clothes purchases, knowing it showed off her over-developed breasts so she looked much older than her eleven years. But if this is what older got you, well then she changed her mind.
She tried to kick at him, but her small size was no weapon against the much larger fourteen-year-old Bradley pressed up against her. Her eyes watered in fear and pain from the bruising grip he had over her mouth and the legs which pinned her down. She tried to scream, but it came out as a muffled sound from behind his punishing hand. Besides, the only one here to hear her was Rachel, her older sister. Bradley was Rachel’s boyfriend and Julie didn’t want him to hurt her, too.
She twisted her torso under him but that just seemed to excite him more. His eyes were positively gleeful as he looked down at her now exposed breasts. He licked his lips before reaching down and grabbing one of them hard. “You have more than a handful don’t you? And it’s all here for me.” He tightened his grip on her breast with a punishing turn. She couldn’t breathe as he pushed down on her more forcefully.
Julie shut her eyes to get away from the reality of what was happening to her. She should have listened to her mother when she said Julie was too young for a bikini. She tried to ignore the teeth biting at her and retreated further into her mind.
From here on out, she’d do everything her mother said: she’d clean her room, she’d be nice to her younger brother, Owen, she’d eat her asparagus, she wouldn’t complain about ballet class, she’d…
No, no, no! There was a pull at her bikini bottoms and her eyes flew open. She struggled against him again, but it was no use. She couldn’t buck him off. She thrashed and with his distraction with her bottoms, she managed to free a hand. She pummeled at his face and scratched him with her nails.
He redirected his attention to her face as he snarled, “You bitch,” and raised the hand that had been holding her mouth to hit her.
In that moment, she screamed, but it was mere seconds before the hand was back as a fist that punched her face. The pain was immediate and edges of black closed in around her head. She welcomed the coming darkness, anything to escape the reality of what was happening to her.
When Julie came to, the pain was immediate, but the clarity of what was going on was not. She worked to open her eyes, but they didn’t want to cooperate, especially the left one. Someone held her hand and immediately she began to scramble away. But it was Rachel’s voice speaking to her. “
Shh, Julie, it’s going to be okay. He’s gone. You’re safe.”
She finally managed to get her eyes open to look into the worried face of her sister. They were still out by the pool and she frantically looked around, but couldn’t see Bradley anywhere. “What happened?” she managed to croak out.
Rachel was crying when she said, “I hit him with Owen’s bat and he took off. I stopped him before he…” she trailed off as she gestured down at Julie’s groin.
Julie sat up. Rachel had covered her with a towel. She cringed in embarrassment and whispered, “What are we going to do? We can’t tell mom and dad.”
They’d broken the rules. Bradley wasn’t supposed to be over when their parents were gone. Both girls wore skimpy swimsuits their mother strictly forbade. If they told their parents what happened, they’d both be grounded forever.
Rachel shook her head. “We have to tell them. They need to know what happened. Besides they’re going to notice your black eye.”
Julie scrambled up as quickly as her bruised body would allow. She wrapped the towel around her trembling form. Despite the pain it caused, she shook her head. She gestured down to the bat lying on the ground. “We’ll say we were playing around with the baseball and you hit me in the face with it by accident.” She had to convince Rachel to go along with this. No one could ever know what happened here. Rachel was the perfect one. The perfect grades. The perfect beauty. The perfect daughter. Now she just had to convince her to become the perfect liar.
Rachel looked at her skeptically, but she could tell that she was beginning to convince her. “Come on Rachel. I know you don’t want to be grounded for the rest of your life.”
She whispered, “What about Bradley? He was hurt after I hit him with the bat.”
“Good.” Was it wrong to think that? That she wanted him hurt just as much as he’d hurt her?
Rachel’s responding giggle was a little hysterical. “What if he tells someone?”
Julie sighed. Sometimes it was debatable which one of them was the older even though Rachel was three years older than her. “
Rach, he’s not going to tell anyone. If he did, he’d have to admit what he did here.”
A shudder of revulsion spread down her spine. She couldn’t think about it right now. She started making a mental list of how to cover all their bases: convince Rachel to lie, find clothes to cover her bruises, find a baseball so their lie was believable, find a trash bag for the shredded bikini…
