Главная страница | Современная зарубежная литература | One Tough Marine

One Tough Marine
Paula Graves


Threatened by masked men making an impossible demand of her, Abby Chandler runs to Luke Cooper for help. She knows it's been three years since he vanished after their blazing one-night stand…and that she might be forced to reveal the secret that he's her little boy's father.Abby has no idea that the former marine has also been keeping a painful secret–that his disappearance was the only way to keep her alive. Luke knows Abby came to him for protection, but earning her trust isn't going to be easy. Nor will keeping his hands off her. But admitting their once-forbidden attraction still exists could be risky. And deadly.









“You need a bodyguard. If not for you, then for your son.”


“I can protect him myself.” God, she sounded foolish.

“Drive by here on your way out and I’ll see if I can spot anybody tailing you,” Luke suggested as he walked her to the door. “I’ll be right behind you, I promise.”

She slanted a look at him, wondering if he realized just how hollow his promises sounded after what happened between them three years ago. Although he hadn’t really made her any promises that night, had he? There hadn’t been many words at all, just kisses and touches and a raging fire she’d thrown herself into without a second thought.

For him, it might have been nothing more than a few hours of shared grief and release.

But that night with Luke Cooper had changed her world.




One Tough Marine

Paula Graves







www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


For Ashlee, my Psych viewing buddy.

Bum-bum-bum…muffins!




ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Alabama native Paula Graves wrote her first book, a mystery starring herself and her neighborhood friends, at the age of six. A voracious reader, Paula loves books that pair tantalizing mystery with compelling romance. When she’s not reading or writing, she works as a creative director for a Birmingham advertising agency and spends time with her family and friends. She is a member of Southern Magic Romance Writers, Heart of Dixie Romance Writers and Romance Writers of America.

Paula invites readers to visit her Web site, www.paulagraves.com.




CAST OF CHARACTERS


Abby Chandler —When masked men threaten to hurt her son if the marine widow can’t give them what they want, Abby turns to Luke Cooper, her late husband’s best friend—and the unwitting father of her son.

Luke Cooper —Retired from the Marine Corps, Luke lives in self-exile to protect the ones he loves from a ruthless drug lord’s vow of vengeance.

Stevie Chandler —The two-year-old has become a pawn in a deadly game of extortion.

Eladio Cordero —When Luke killed the South American drug kingpin’s only son, Cordero vowed to make him pay by going after the people who mean the most to Luke.

Los Tiburones —Cordero’s hired enforcers have caught Luke’s scent, dogging his trail, leaving death and destruction in their wake.

Barton Reid —His job high in the U.S. State Department has given him access to a great deal of power and volatile information. He’ll go to any lengths to protect his secrets.

Demetrius “Damon” Miles —An operative in Barton Reid’s private army, Damon has his own hidden agenda.

Sam Cooper —Luke’s older brother is the only Cooper who knows the truth about Luke’s self-imposed exile. Can Sam help Luke and Abby reach safety before the bad guys catch up?




Contents


Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen




Chapter One


Abby Chandler shifted the grocery bag to her left arm and fumbled in her pocket for her keys. Arriving home later than she’d planned, thanks to a pileup on I-5, she had to hurry and put away the groceries so she could pick up Stevie by six. After six Mrs. Tamburello charged time and a half, and the budget this month couldn’t take the strain.

She unlocked her apartment and pushed the door open with her foot, stumbling as her toe caught on the rubber welcome mat inside. Muttering a curse, she kicked the door shut behind her and took a half step forward before she realized what she was seeing in the dim afternoon light filtering into her apartment.

Sofa cushions, ripped apart and tossed on the floor. Paintings torn from the wall and dismantled. Her coffee table upended in the middle of the room.

Her heartbeat barely had time to notch upward when a voice, inches from her ear, sent it hurtling into hyperdrive.

“You’re late, Mrs. Chandler.”

At the sound of the deep male voice, her body jerked into one jangling nerve. Her keys dropped with a clatter from her numb fingers while her mind flew haphazardly through her options. Run? No, the man with the deep voice stood between her and the door. Try to outrace him to the kitchen for the knife block by the refrigerator? Not a chance.

“Sorry for the mess. We became bored waiting for you.” A second voice, not quite as deep as the first, spoke to her right. She heard more than a hint of Boston Brahmin in that accent.

“What do you want?” She felt her grip on the grocery bag slipping and tucked it to her side to keep from dropping it.

“Please don’t move, Mrs. Chandler,” the man behind her said. “We don’t want things here to escalate.”

Escalate to what—unadulterated terror? Too late, buster.

The second man moved into her field of vision—tall, well built, dressed in black from his soft-soled shoes to his knit ski mask. Clear blue eyes, direct and confident, gazed out from the eyeholes. He was light-skinned, with a hint of freckles, she noted for future reference.

Assuming there’d be a future in which to reference.

“Are you going to tell me what you want?” She tried not to give in to the panic buzzing like wasps in her brain. Her muscles were already beginning to ache from tension. If someone didn’t start talking, she might just snap in half.

The freckled man took the grocery bag from her trembling arms and set it on the floor. “Your husband took something that didn’t belong to him. We’re here to retrieve it.”

The man behind her pushed something cold and hard against the back of her neck. It took no imagination to guess it was the barrel of a pistol.

“My husband’s been dead for three years. Most of his stuff has been sold or given away.” Her answer had the benefit of being the truth. Matt hadn’t collected much in the way of personal belongings during his foreshortened life. Most of what he possessed had been government issue, from uniforms to gear to weapons. “If you’ve been through the trunk at the foot of my bed, you’ve seen all I have left of him.”

The Brahmin, as she thought of him, made a low tsk-tsk sound. “Perhaps you are mistaken. Did your husband have a safe-deposit box? A storage unit located elsewhere?”

“I don’t know,” she answered, and again it was the truth. “He was a soldier. There was a lot about his life I don’t know. Can you at least tell me what this is about? Maybe I could help you find what you’re looking for if you told me what it was.”

The Brahmin hesitated a moment. She caught a slight flicker in his eyes and realized he wasn’t sure how to answer.

Oh, God, they don’t even know what they’re looking for.

“We’re not at liberty to reveal that to you if you don’t already know what we’re talking about,” the man behind her said, and she almost laughed at the absurdity. They’d broken in and trashed her apartment on a hunch that maybe, possibly, her husband had hidden—what? A million dollars? A stash of gold?

“We’re looking for files.” The Brahmin’s accent slipped, she noticed. He might be playing the role of the upper-crust Bostonian, but for just a moment he sounded more like a South Boston street punk. His Brahmin accent clicked back into place almost immediately. “Of a sensitive nature. Your husband took them from an associate of ours who wants them back immediately.”

“Paper files? Digital?” The growing discomfort of her captors had begun to ease her own sense of terror. If they didn’t know what, precisely, they were looking for, maybe she could buy time to get herself out of this mess. “My husband’s personal notebook computer is in the closet. It stopped booting up a year ago, but maybe you could get something off of it.”

“We have it. We’ll certainly examine it,” the Brahmin said. “But what we’re looking for won’t be on a computer. Your husband was too smart to keep it in such an obvious place.”

He was right, of course. Matt had been the king of secret-keepers. It had come with his career in Marine Corps Intelligence. God knew, she’d had to get used to being out of the loop when it came to the biggest part of his life.

“If you knew my husband at all, you’d know he didn’t share his work with me.” By the end, there’d been little they’d shared besides a house and a few good memories.

“That’s unfortunate,” the Brahmin said. Behind her, the man with the gun pushed the barrel more firmly against her neck.

The unnatural calm that had briefly settled over her shattered. When she spoke again, her voice shook. “I don’t know what you want from me.”

“I suggest you find out,” the Brahmin said. “Assuming you enjoy your life with your adorable little boy.”

The mention of Stevie made her heart skip. “What do you mean by that?”

“Mrs. Tamburello is getting along in years, wouldn’t you say? Accidents can happen so easily.”

“Where’s Stevie?” Ignoring the man with the gun behind her, she rushed forward and grabbed the Brahmin’s arm. “If you’ve done anything to him, I’ll—”

“Rage impotently?” the Brahmin said dismissively.

“You son of a bitch!”

“Your son is well. Mrs. Tamburello is well.” The Brahmin motioned with his head, and the man behind her grabbed her arm.

She wheeled around to face him and found another masked man, slightly shorter than the Brahmin. African-American, judging by the café au lait skin visible through the eyeholes, along with intelligent brown eyes that met hers with surprising gentleness. Nevertheless, he held her gaze unflinchingly, slowly lifting the pistol he held in his right hand as if to remind her who was in charge. A Colt M1991, stainless with a black grip, .45 caliber. Nasty piece of work.

She ought to be panicking instead of noticing the details of a pistol, but the fact that she was still alive after this much time alone with two masked men suggested she might not be dying today. It was in her best interest to remember as much about these two men as she could.

The Brahmin tapped her shoulder, making her jump. She whipped around to face him. “Here is what we’re going to do, Mrs. Chandler. You are going to go into your bedroom and close the door behind you. My associate and I will take the items we’ve collected and leave. When you hear the door close behind us, you may come out of the room.”

“Then what?” she asked, knowing it couldn’t be that simple.

“Then you will collect your thoughts and memories until you come up with an answer to a very important question. Where would your husband hide sensitive material to keep it out of the hands of his employers as well as any other interested parties?”

Her heart dropped. “And if I come up empty-handed?”

“You will lose your son in a dreadful accident.”

She clenched her fists so hard her fingernails bit into her palms. “If you think I’m going to let anyone hurt my son—”

The Brahmin took a leisurely step toward her. “Do you not understand you really have no choices here? A call to the police, an attempt to leave San Diego—any of those things will be met with punishment. You have one simple task. Find what your husband hid. Deliver it to us by the end of the week and we will leave you and your son alone.”

“Liar.”

“On the contrary. I’ve spoken only the truth today.” The Brahmin reached out and touched a strand of hair that had slipped from her ponytail. “If you trust nothing else, trust that. I will do what I promised, either way. The outcome is entirely up to you.”

Behind her, the man with the Colt nudged her neck with the barrel. “Get into the bedroom.”

Swallowing the anger rising in her throat, she walked slowly through the upended living room and entered her tiny bedroom, dismay settling over her like a cloud as she took in the shredded mattress and ransacked drawers. Behind her, the door closed, shutting her in.

She leaned against the bedroom door, tears leaking from her eyes as she waited for the sound of the front door closing. A few seconds later, she heard the door click shut.

But she didn’t move right away. Her shaking knees wouldn’t hold her weight.

Damn you, Matt. Damn your secrets and lies.

After a couple of seconds, the need to see her son overcame her shattered nerves. She left the bedroom and located her keys on the floor near the front door, where she’d dropped them. To her surprise, the men had set her bag of groceries on the dining-nook table before they left. Polite bastards.

As she raced up the steps to the second floor, where Mrs. Tamburello lived, she tried to make sense of what had just happened. Who were those men? From the look and sound of them, she’d say ex-military. The posture was always a giveaway. The Colt M1991 was also a military style of pistol. They’d taken her under control with ease, also suggesting armed-forces training.

So—mercenaries? Private security operatives? If they were working in an official capacity, they wouldn’t have had to sneak around. They’d have simply taken her into custody.

Abby paused at Mrs. Tamburello’s door, taking a moment to slow her rapid breathing. She didn’t want to scare Stevie. It was going to be bad enough taking him back to their trashed apartment. She knocked on the door and stepped back, smoothing her hair and praying she looked calmer than she felt.

Mrs. Tamburello opened the door with a harried smile. “I was about to call you to see where you’d gotten to,” she said, waving Abby inside the warm apartment.

“Mama!” Stevie met her before she’d made it two feet inside, wrapping his little arms around her knees. She swung him up into her arms, squeezing him tightly, her pulse pounding in her head. He smelled like peanut butter and chocolate milk. She fought the urge to cry again.

“Traffic was crazy,” she murmured against his silky hair, smiling apologetically at Mrs. Tamburello. “Was he a handful?”

“Not at all.” Mrs. Tamburello flashed Stevie an affectionate smile. “You’re a good boy, aren’t you, Stephen?”

Stevie nodded, his gray eyes solemn. “I maded kitty.”

Mrs. Tamburello chuckled and retrieved a piece of paper from the coffee table. It was a scribble of bright colors, vaguely in the shape of…something. The oranges and yellows suggested her two-year-old son had tried his hand at capturing Mrs. Tamburello’s scruffy yellow tabby in crayon.

Abby took the drawing from Mrs. Tamburello and shifted Stevie to her left hip. “Thank you, Mrs. Tamburello. I’m taking the next couple of days off, so you’ll have an extra-long weekend.” Remembering the words of her captors, she added, “Maybe you should drive up to see your sister in Temecula.”

Mrs. Tamburello smiled, obviously pleased that Abby had remembered that detail about her family. “Perhaps I will. She has a brand-new grandbaby, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” Abby said, hoping she’d take the suggestion. The two men in her apartment meant business. Abby didn’t doubt they’d hurt Mrs. Tamburello to make their point.

She dug in her pocket for Mrs. Tamburello’s salary for the week, adding an extra ten. Guilt money for putting the woman in danger, she supposed grimly as she made her way back down the stairs with Stevie clinging to her back like a little monkey.

He eyed the mess in the living room for half a second before tugging at her hair from behind. “I hungwy.”

She swung him over her shoulders into her arms, looking into his big gray eyes. The quizzical look on his sweet face brought back a rush of poignant memories.

Large, gentle hands, cradling her face. A deep, warm voice, still lightly graced with the liquid drawl of his native South, whispering words of comfort and passion.

Realization washed over her, producing relief and dread in equal parts. Luke. Of course. If anyone had known Matt Chandler’s secrets, it had been his best friend, Luke Cooper. But was Luke even in San Diego anymore? The last she’d heard, almost a year ago, he’d resigned his commission from the Marine Corps shortly after he returned from overseas. Maybe one of her old friends from her Marine wife days would know where to find him.

“Tell you what, scooter,” she said to Stevie, her voice settling into the familiar Texas twang of her youth, “how about we go to McDonald’s for dinner?” While Mama makes an important phone call, she added silently.

Stevie patted her face with delight. “McDonald’s! McDonald’s!”

Promising herself to buy him yogurt instead of fries, she lowered him to the floor and led him outside to her car.



MALKIN SECURITY International was one of San Diego’s most prestigious security firms, with a reputation for complete discretion and a track record of successful security operations in over fifty global hot spots. Their proximity to four Southern California military bases was no coincidence; they recruited heavily from the Marine and Naval bases and air stations in the area when they were looking for new employees.

Luke Cooper had worked at MSI for almost a year now, ever since he hung up his combat boots for life as a civilian. It wasn’t nearly as exciting as the recruiting brochure had made it out to be, but if he’d wanted a nonstop adrenaline rush, he’d have stuck with the Marine Corps.

And working at Malkin also afforded him a certain level of personal security he couldn’t afford to do without these days.

His current assignment had come to an end late that afternoon, when he had turned over all of his investigative materials to the police department in Rancho Santa Fe. They’d taken into custody a relentless stalker who’d been terrorizing a banker’s nineteen-year-old daughter, and Luke had earned MSI—and himself—a hefty bonus for providing actionable evidence for the legal proceedings.

The girl had been nice enough, if pampered within an inch of her life, and the stalker had been escalating well past annoying into dangerous territory. Plus, Luke had been able to spend a lot of time at the banker’s ranch, escorting the daughter on rambling horseback rides. As far as security jobs went, he’d seen worse.

At least nobody was shooting at him this time.

He filed the last of his paperwork around 7:00 p.m. and took a moment to scan the newspaper he’d bought that afternoon on the way into the office. For the past week and a half, there’d been rumblings that federal investigators were close to an indictment against a U.S.-based nongovernmental organization for illegal arms trading.

The articles had yet to identify the NGO by name, but Luke had a pretty good idea. The investigation of Voices for Villages had been the last thing he’d been working on before his retirement from the Marine Corps.

Still nothing official, he noted, folding the paper and tossing it in the trash. As he took the employee exit stairs down to the parking deck, he wondered what the snag was in making the case against Voices for Villages. People had died getting the evidence that implicated the NGO in a deadly drugs-for-arms racket.

He reached his car, a gunmetal-gray Ford Mustang, unlocked it and slid behind the wheel. It ran like a dream and turned more than a few female—and male—heads when he drove down the streets of San Diego, but recently he’d been thinking about buying a truck. Most of his brothers drove trucks back home in Chickasaw County, Alabama, he remembered, smiling. He guessed his kid sister, Hannah, did, too, now that she’d married a cowboy.

Guilt tugged at him, erasing his smile. He’d missed Hannah’s wedding last year, although his mother had made sure to send him a couple of flash drives full of pictures from the event. He’d told his sister he was too involved in a case to leave San Diego even for a few days, but it had been a lie. There wasn’t a case in the world that could’ve kept him from watching his baby sister get married.

Only Eladio Cordero could do that.

He shoved away the thought of Cordero with brutal determination. There wasn’t anything he could do about Cordero’s threat until the South American drug lord finally decided to make his move. If U.S. law enforcement or the Sanselmo authorities could have located the elusive thug, he’d be dead already. Worrying about it only kept him from focusing on the things he had to deal with day to day.

Like finding a better way to fill his long, lonely hours away from the job. Because it wasn’t Eladio Cordero who haunted him in the still of the night, when sleep wouldn’t come fast enough.

That honor belonged to Abby.

She would visit him tonight. She always did. He’d never been able to get drunk enough to escape her, and she always followed him into his dreams. Lately, he’d given up trying not to think about her and started looking forward to the nights he spent wrapped up in his memories of her. It was as close as he could ever let himself get, these days.

But it hadn’t always been that way.

He exited the interstate on Genesee Avenue, heading south into University City, where he rented a one-story stucco with a two-car garage that was almost as large as the house itself. It wasn’t much of a home, but the rent was reasonable, the neighbors quiet and the commute to work manageable.

These days, if he could live life with a minimum of fuss, he counted it as a win.

A beeping noise broke the silence inside the Mustang. Luke’s breath hitched as he pulled his cell phone from his pocket. Red letters flashed on the black display. INTRUDER.

In the span of a heartbeat, Luke’s body went on high alert. He pulled the Glock from his hip holster and checked the clip. He was only a couple of minutes from home—should he call in backup? He wasn’t sure he could trust anyone anymore. Not here in San Diego, anyway.

He was better off on his own.

Daylight lingered outside as he reached his house and parked by the curb in front. Scanning the street, he noticed a strange car parked a few houses away. Possibly a friend of the teenagers who lived down the street. But maybe not.

His garage provided cover from the street to the house. He stayed close to the building, moving as quietly as possible across the rocky ground to the side entrance of the house. The curtains in the kitchen window were closed, he noted. He always left them open.

Someone was definitely in the house.

He hunkered down at the side door and examined the lock. No sign of any tool marks on the dead bolt, but he knew there were other ways in. He hadn’t tried to turn his house into a fortress once he became aware of Eladio Cordero’s threats. He didn’t want to live his life in a prison of his own making, for one thing. Hell, he was at a point now where he welcomed an attempt on his life, just to get it over with. He couldn’t even risk a quick trip home to his family, thanks to the danger.

Cordero’s vow of vengeance had been hanging over him long enough. He’d had all he could stand.

Quietly, he let himself inside the kitchen and stood still a moment, listening. He saw nothing out of place in the kitchen, nor did he hear anything beyond the normal hum of electrical appliances inside and faint traffic noise outside. But he caught a whiff of a strange scent—sweet, a little powdery. There was also a heaviness in the air, as if whoever lurked inside the dark recesses of the tiny bungalow was waiting just as he was, still and breathless, for another sound.

He tightened his grip on the Glock, slid off his shoes as quietly as possible and padded in sock-clad silence into the hallway, where he paused to listen.

To his left, where an open doorway led into the living room, he heard a faint snuffling sound. But before he could turn to enter, a ball of pure energy slammed into him from the bedroom, knocking him into the wall.

He caught a glimpse of wavy brown hair disappearing around the corner into the living room. Scrambling up, he took chase, catching up halfway to the narrow sofa against the wall. He took in a slim waist and nicely rounded backside before he whirled the intruder around to face him.

Cornflower-blue eyes met his, wide and scared. A smattering of coppery freckles dotted her peaches-and-cream complexion. Soft coral lips, as tempting as they’d ever been, parted to release a soft, shaky breath.

“Abby?” he breathed, his whole body tingling with surprise and a darker, richer sensation he’d thought he’d buried three years ago, never to be exhumed.

Had he lost his mind? Had he conjured her up from the fabric of his memories and his longing?

Her gaze softened at the sound of his voice. A hint of guilt flashed in her eyes, then disappeared as desperation took hold of her expression, even as she plastered on a bright, brittle smile.

“Hi, Luke,” she said. “Long time, no see.”




Chapter Two


Abby gazed into Luke Cooper’s familiar face, fighting tears. Despite the disastrous end to their once-close relationship, Luke Cooper had been her best friend once.

And on one bleak, emotional night, he’d become her lover.

She tamped down her sentimental thoughts with ruthless efficiency. Her world had changed since they’d last spoken. And Luke had been nowhere around when she’d needed him the most.

She’d be a fool to forget that fact.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Luke lowered the Glock he’d pulled and slipped it into the holster at his hip. “How did you get in?”

“I knocked,” she said in a feeble attempt at a joke. “I might have broken your bathroom window, too.”

A snuffling sound behind her drew Luke’s gaze to the sofa, where she’d left Stevie napping while she searched Luke’s house.

Luke’s gaze darted back to meet hers. “Yours?”

She nodded, holding her breath. Would he figure it out?

And did she want him to?

“What’s his name?”

“Stephen. I call him Stevie.” It had been Matt’s father’s name. After she’d discovered she was pregnant so soon after Matt’s funeral, everyone assumed he was the father. She’d let everyone believe the assumption; it was easier than the truth.

But Luke knew there was another possibility, didn’t he?

Luke frowned. “You brought your kid on a B and E?”

“Thought I might need backup.” She kept her voice light to hide the fact that she was feeling a little bit crazy and a whole lot desperate at the moment.

“What were you looking for?” he asked.

“I’m not sure.” It was stupid to flail around blindly while the clock was ticking on her son’s life. She should have contacted him directly as soon as an old Marine wife friend told her Luke was still living in San Diego, fifteen minutes away. This cloak-and-dagger rot was for the birds.

She just hadn’t been ready to see him again. And judging by the tremors rocking through her at the moment, she still wasn’t ready.

“Abs, what’s wrong? You’re shaking like a drunk in rehab.”

“Matt took something from somebody,” she blurted. “Somebody pretty damned big and powerful.”

Luke’s eyes narrowed. “Took what?”

“I don’t know!” She pressed her hands to her throbbing temples. “I don’t think they know, either. It’s like they’re on some fishing expedition and I’m the bait.”

“You have no idea who they are?”

Behind her, their raised voices had awakened Stevie. He whimpered, unsettled by the unfamiliar setting and the strange man growling at his mother. Abby ignored Luke’s question and hurried to her son. Stevie clung tightly to her, his yogurt-sticky fingers tangling in her hair. “Shh, baby, Mama’s okay.”

“Beautiful kid,” Luke murmured. “Looks like you.”

The tears she’d been fighting spilled down her cheeks. “They threatened him, Luke. If I don’t find whatever it was Matt hid, they’ll kill Stevie.”

Luke’s eyes widened with alarm. “They threatened him?”

“They were waiting for me in my apartment when I got home from work. Two men.” She sat down, no longer trusting her trembling legs to keep her upright. Luke shoved a couple of magazines aside and sat on the heavy wood coffee table in front of her. “They said Matt had stolen something important and they wanted it back. By the end of this week.”

Luke’s expression darkened.

She continued. “One spoke with a Boston Brahmin accent—but it slipped once, so I think he assumed the accent. The other guy came across as educated. A hint of a southern urban accent—probably born in a southern city but lost the accent.”

Luke’s lips curved, and she realized she was rattling on about linguistic cues in the middle of the biggest crisis of her life. “Some things never change,” he murmured.

“Everything changes,” she replied darkly. “I’m pretty sure these guys are ex-military, officer rank. SEALs or Rangers, maybe Special Forces—guys who came from tough neighborhoods but took advantage of the training and education. These aren’t goons. Whatever I’m up against, it’s big.”

Luke muttered a profanity, then shot an apologetic look at Stevie. “How does Matt figure in?” he asked, though he didn’t sound that surprised by what she was saying.

“I was hoping you’d know,” she said. “You know he didn’t tell me anything about his work.”

“This wasn’t work,” Luke said quietly.

Her heart sank. She pressed her face against Stevie’s soft cheek. “Then what?”

“The timing is interesting,” Luke added thoughtfully.

Did Luke know what Matt had hidden or where to find it? “You know something.”

“I don’t know anything.”

“But you have suspicions?”

Luke didn’t meet her eyes when he answered. “He was spending time with people I didn’t trust. People we came in contact with in the field.”

Abby realized what he meant. “A woman.”

Luke looked up sharply.

She smiled without humor. “I know he cheated on me. If that’s what you’re trying to hide—”

“Her name is Janis Meeks. Ran field ops for an organization called Voices for Villages.”

“They fund and supply infrastructure construction in Sanselmo’s poverty-stricken areas, right?”

“She and Matt—” Luke rubbed the back of his neck. “We suspected she was involved in something very bad, so I asked Matt to stay away from her. I guess he didn’t.”

By now, Abby realized, she shouldn’t be surprised at discovering another one of her late-husband’s infidelities. Matt had spent a year in the South American country, his intel unit attached to a peacekeeping unit assigned to the struggling democracy after a coup attempt. Matt hadn’t been the type of man to go a year without sex. In fact, danger would have been an aphrodisiac.

After Sanselmo, he’d begun keeping secrets at every level of their relationship. The beginning of the end.

“Sanselmo was hell,” Luke said bluntly. “Lots of bad things went down after the attempted coup. Marines died.”

“I know,” Abby murmured, distracted by Stevie wriggling in her grasp. She turned him in her lap to face Luke.

Luke smiled at Stevie. “Hi, big guy. My name is Luke. I knew your daddy.”

Abby tried not to flinch. “I haven’t told him much about Matt. He’s not old enough to realize something’s missing.”

Stevie touched a small gold pendant in the shape of a hawk that hung from Luke’s neck. “Bird.”

Luke looked down at the sticky fingers tugging his necklace. “That’s right, it’s a big bird.”

Abby smiled. She’d given the pendant to Luke for his birthday almost six years ago. Hawk was Luke’s unit nickname. It had fit—strong, smart and always watching out for the people he cared for.

“I have to have some clue what he was into, Luke.” She stroked Stevie’s hair, shuddering at the memory of the masked man’s threat. “They told me if I go to the cops, Stevie will suffer. I can’t risk it.”

“Sons of bitches.” Luke’s lips thinned to an angry line. “I think I know who they are, Abs—who they work for. But I swear, I don’t know what they want you to find. If I knew, I’d give it to you.”

“Tell me what you do know, then.” She laid her hand on his arm. “This is what you’d call a need-to-know situation.”

He sighed. “In Sanselmo, we were looking into American involvement in a drugs-for-arms black market. Some Sanselmano national guardsmen were trading government-issue arms and ordnance to El Cambio rebels in exchange for cocaine.”

“Is that how they got so close to pulling off the coup?”

Luke nodded. “El Cambio has controlled the coca production in Sanselmo for decades—only game in town. A lot of money up for grabs. Worse, there were American arms found during raids.”

“No way Matt was involved with trading arms for drugs,” Abby said bluntly.

“Maybe not. But his connection to Janis Meeks—”

Abby winced at the mention of the woman’s name. She’d taken a few body blows over the months after Matt’s death, as one story after another came to light.

Other Marine wives had warned her infidelity was common—part of the fog of war—and assured her that what happened overseas during a long tour of duty didn’t have anything to do with Abby or with Matt’s love for her. But she knew better.

Besides, since Sanselmo, she was pretty sure Matt had been cheating on her stateside, too.

“Matt might not have realized what he was facilitating,” Luke continued. “The timing is interesting because the Feds are on the verge of indictments against Voices for Villages. Maybe Matt had something incriminating on Meeks or her organization that’s coming to light now because of the impending charges.”

“Like what?”

“That’s the question.” His gaze on Stevie’s fingers fumbling with his pendant, Luke changed topics. “Why didn’t you tell me you were pregnant that night after the funeral?”

“Would it have made a difference?”

His expression reflected guilt and regret. “I guess not.”

She looked away, the memory of that night as vivid in her mind now as it had been the very next morning, when she’d awakened to find Luke had gone, leaving her with nothing but a note on the pillow and a little life growing inside her.

What if she’d put a call in to his unit overseas when she’d gotten the results of the pregnancy test? He couldn’t have left Kaziristan to race to her side and play daddy to a baby he never intended to make. And she’d have never wanted him to feel obligated to be with her just because they made a baby together.

But what about now? Didn’t Luke deserve to know that the little boy she was trying so desperately to protect from her husband’s past was his own flesh and blood?

“I don’t know what to do,” she said aloud.

“Where is your car parked?” Luke asked, the question catching her off balance.

“About a block down the street. We walked from there.”

He frowned. “You don’t drive a dark blue Pontiac G-3?”

She shook her head. “Silver Honda Prelude.”

Luke crossed to the front window. Parting the curtains about an inch, he peered outside, where the sun was making a last dying stand against twilight.

“Is someone out there?” Abby asked.

“Not anymore,” he answered tersely. “But we have to assume they’re around here somewhere, just to be safe.”

The urge to cry returned, but she fended it off. She didn’t have time for tears. “What should I do, Luke?”

“Right now, we don’t have a clue what Matt might have taken, or where he’d have hidden it. If he took anything at all.” He let the curtain drop and turned to her. “Right?”

She nodded. “I’m sure he had a dozen places he could stash something he wanted to hide, but he never shared that kind of information with me.”

He came to stand in front of her, capturing her chin with his fingers and giving a little tug to make her look up at him. “I have some thoughts on that, but right now, let’s get you and Little Bit home safely. You two can get a good night’s sleep while I look into some hiding places Matt might have used.”

The thought of returning to her mess of an apartment was almost more than she could bear, but she hid her despair from Luke. She wasn’t about to start leaning on anyone again, no matter how broad and tempting the shoulders.

“I need your address. You’re not staying at your apartment alone tonight,” Luke said.

“Wait—” Panic rose in her gut in greasy waves. No way was she sharing her tiny apartment with Luke Cooper while he played knight in shining armor. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

“You need a bodyguard.” His tone was so reasonable she wanted to punch him. “If not for you, then for Stevie.”

“I can protect him myself.” God, she sounded foolish. Sure, she knew how to use a gun, but she didn’t have one in the house because of Stevie. And while she was physically fit and knew a few self-defense moves that might get her out of trouble if some jerk tried to mug her on the street, she couldn’t outfight two military-trained enforcers armed with Colt .45s.

“It won’t hurt to have backup, right?” Luke crossed to a desk near the entryway and pulled a pen and notepad from one of the drawers. He wrote something, tore out the page and handed it to her. “My cell-phone number. I’ll be a couple of minutes behind you, but call if you need anything.”

“I will.” She gave him her address as she rose, shifting Stevie to her hip. Luke jotted it down on another piece of paper.

“Drive by here on your way out and I’ll see if I can spot anybody tailing you,” Luke suggested as he walked her to the door. “I’ll be right behind you, I promise.”

She slanted a look at him, wondering if he realized just how hollow his promises sounded after what happened between them three years ago. Although he hadn’t really made her any promises that night, had he? There hadn’t been many words at all, just kisses and touches and a raging fire she’d thrown herself into without a second thought.

For him, it might have been nothing more than a few hours of shared grief and release.

But that night with Luke Cooper had changed her world.



“NOTHING UNDER THE NAME Matt Randall, either?” Luke asked the bus-station attendant on the phone, using one of the aliases Matt had used undercover with Marine Corps Intelligence.

“No, sir.”

“Thanks anyway.” Luke rang off and scanned the traffic around him, looking for any sign of a tail. He’d seen no one tailing Abby, but that didn’t mean someone wasn’t watching.

He spotted Abby’s silver Honda a few car lengths ahead and his stomach turned a flip. Even tired, scared and frustrated, Abby Chandler was as beautiful as he’d remembered.

And even more off-limits now than when he first realized he was in love with Matt Chandler’s wife.

Evening traffic was busy. Though he’d called San Diego home for the past seven years, he’d spent much of that time overseas and on assignments out of town. Only life as a civilian had allowed him to really get to know the place. It wasn’t a bad place to live. The zoo was world-famous, Sea World a fun way to spend a lazy Saturday and the place was crawling with military personnel. But now that he was out of the Corps, he found himself thinking of his real home more and more.

He missed the green mountains of Chickasaw County, Alabama, the sparkling waters of Gossamer Lake and his mother’s cooking. Now that his brother Sam was back in Alabama after years away, Luke was the last Cooper in exile.

Even with Eladio Cordero’s threats hanging over him, the call of home was strong these days.

He wondered what Abby would think of Gossamer Ridge, Alabama, with its ten stoplights and one decent grocery store. He squelched that thought ruthlessly, aware how dangerous it was to think of Abby as anything but his old friend’s widow.

He’d made a mistake three years ago, taking advantage of her grief and vulnerability to assuage his own. It didn’t matter that he loved her; Abby had been Matt’s wife. And now, the mother of the only child Matt Chandler would ever have.

And it just might be Luke’s fault that Matt wasn’t there to see his son grow up.

Stevie looked like Abby, from his freckles to his wide, expressive mouth. Not a hint of Matt’s laughing brown eyes or olive complexion. Was it easier for Abby that way, not to have to see Matt in Stevie’s eyes every time she looked at him?

How old was the kid now—two? Two and a half? No more than that; if Abby had been more than three or four months pregnant the night they spent together, he’d have noticed.

His smile faded suddenly.

What if she hadn’t been pregnant that night? He tried to remember how she’d answered his questions about Stevie. Had she ever said, outright, that Matt was Stevie’s father?

A chill washed over him. They hadn’t used protection that night; they were too far gone to think about stopping for something like that. Neither of them had been thinking about pregnancy.

But she’d have told him. Abby wasn’t a secret-keeper like he and Matt had been. She’d been open, sharing her thoughts and feelings with abandon. It had been one of the things about her that had drawn him, that candor.

If their night of comfort sex had left her pregnant, she’d have told him.

When would she have had the chance?

He’d left her still asleep, a hastily jotted note of explanation tucked under her pillow. Sleeping with her—hell, just being around her—had been dangerous. Matt’s sudden death had come too closely on the heels of Cordero’s vow of vengeance. Had Cordero had him killed as part of his vendetta against Luke?

It hadn’t been out of the question. People he cared about automatically became targets.

He’d shipped out that morning for two years in Kaziristan, knowing she’d be hurt by his abandonment, hating every part of what he’d done. But it hadn’t changed his determination to cut himself off from her and everyone he loved.

He’d meant his note to be a cold brush-off. He hadn’t wanted her to try to contact him. If she’d found herself pregnant a few weeks later, he couldn’t blame her for keeping that information to herself.

He almost missed the turn onto Abby’s street. He slowed, made a quick right and reacquired Abby’s silver Honda ahead. She pulled into a parking space in front of the building.

He took an empty spot nearby, hoping the building super wouldn’t have the Mustang towed, and caught up with Abby on the sidewalk in front of the first apartment.

She jumped when he touched her arm. “Sorry,” he said, wondering if he should just go ahead and ask her about Stevie’s paternity. Would she tell him the truth?

Probably not, he realized. If she’d kept it a secret for three years, she wouldn’t spill the beans just because a couple of gunmen had thrown her into Luke’s life again.

He wouldn’t push for now. It was the least he owed her.

“It’s a mess,” she warned him as she set Stevie down on the ground and unlocked the front door of her first-floor apartment.

She wasn’t lying, he realized with dismay a few seconds later, taking in the torn sofa cushions, the books in scattered heaps where the searchers had pulled them from the bookshelf against the wall, the overturned coffee table with the shattered crystal box in shards on the hardwood floor.

“I didn’t stop to clean up,” she explained. “I needed to know if you knew what Matt might be hiding, so I just grabbed Stevie and headed out.”

He picked up a couple of the books and put them back on the shelf. “Is the bedroom as bad?”

“The mattress is ripped open, but I can probably stuff most of the filling back inside and cover it with a sheet—”

“You can’t stay here tonight, Abby. This is unlivable.”

She squared her jaw. “I’ll make it work.”

“You don’t have to make it work. Just grab some clothes, some toys for Little Bit and let’s get the hell out of here. We can regroup and figure out what to do next once we’re settled.”

Her brow creased. “Settled where?”

He looked down at Stevie, who was toddling toward the ruins of the broken crystal box. Picking him up to keep him out of the sharp shards, he settled the wriggly little boy on one hip and met her troubled gaze.

“At my place, of course,” he answered.




Chapter Three


Abby stared at him, her mind racing through a checklist of reasons why moving herself and Stevie into Luke Cooper’s house was a very bad idea. Beyond the tangled history between them, which was reason enough, she’d be putting Luke at risk at a time when he was supposed to be helping her find out what Matt had hidden and where. At least one of them needed to be able to get around San Diego without a team of thugs dogging every step.

“That’s just not a good idea,” she said.

“What’s the alternative—book a room in a motel? Do you think motel security is worth a damn?” Luke shifted Stevie on his hip and met her gaze with a look of calm skepticism. Stevie turned his head toward her and gave her an almost identical look. She didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry.

She couldn’t argue with Luke’s logic, however. She couldn’t afford a few unexpected nights at a motel, and she’d probably be in even greater peril holed up with Stevie alone in a place where nobody knew or cared who they were.

“We don’t have to complicate this,” Luke said. “There’s plenty of room for you and Little Bit there.”

Her lips twitched at the nickname he’d apparently settled on for Stevie. “You don’t owe us anything.”

He started to say something, then narrowed his lips to a tight line. After a moment, he said, “I can put you to work, if it’d make you feel better.”

“Cooking and cleaning?”

He arched an eyebrow. “No. I’ve eaten your cooking.”

She made a face, relieved by the lightness of Luke’s tone. Better than the constant strain of the past hour. “I’ve gotten better. You might be surprised.”

He smiled at her. “You always found ways to surprise me, Abs.” His smile faded and he looked down at Stevie, who had rediscovered the hawk pendant and was twirling it around his sticky little fingers. “What do you say, Stevie? Wanna come stay with your uncle Luke for a few days?”

Abby struggled not to react to Luke’s words, but guilt burned in her chest like acid. She should have told him the truth three years ago, when she realized she was carrying his child inside her. At the time, with Luke in a war-torn country continents away, settling on the easy lie hadn’t seemed so wrong, especially given how abruptly and finally he’d left her bed—and life—after their night together.

But now that he was here in front of her, holding his son without even knowing it, she knew she’d been a coward. And Luke’s bad behavior at the time didn’t change the facts.

He had a son. He had a right to know.

When this was over, and everything had settled back down to normal, she’d tell him, she promised herself. She’d tell Luke he was Stevie’s father, and then they’d figure out how to go on with their separate lives from there.

“Okay,” she said finally. “For a couple of days.”

He gave a quick nod, as if to affirm she was doing the right thing. “Can I help you pack?”

“Just keep Stevie occupied,” she said, heading for the bedroom. Inside, she picked through the mess the intruders had left and found a few days’ worth of clothes for her and for Stevie, which she packed in an empty gym bag she found tossed against the wall under the window. She added toothbrushes, vitamins and a few other things Stevie would need into his diaper bag. His favorite book. The stuffed rabbit he didn’t like to sleep without. Blinking back tears, she headed out to the living room.

She found Stevie sitting quietly in the wooden rocking chair near the corner, watching Luke sweep up the broken crystal box. Luke looked up as Abby entered, a faint frown on his face. “Matt gave you this, didn’t he?”

She followed his gaze to the gold wildcat set into the cut crystal of the box’s top. “For our wedding.” Matt’s nickname had been Wildcat, and at the time he’d given her the box, she’d thought the gesture wildly romantic, as if he were giving himself to her symbolically.

She hadn’t realized that the box was almost all of himself he intended to give to her or any other woman. His first love was intrigue, and he’d have sacrificed anyone and anything for that beguiling temptress.

She took the piece of crystal from Luke’s hand. It was warm, but only from the heat of Luke’s fingers. She dropped it in the trash can by the kitchen nook and retrieved Stevie from the rocker, settling him on one hip. With the gym bag in her other hand, she looked back at Luke. “Let’s go.”

He caught up with her at the door, taking the bag from her hand. “He loved you, the best he knew how,” he murmured as he opened the apartment door for her.

She knew he was right. Matt had loved her in his own way. She’d loved him, as well. For all his faults, he’d been a hard man not to love.

It just hadn’t been enough.



THEY LEFT ABBY’S CAR at her apartment and took his Mustang, transferring Stevie’s car seat before they left. As Luke navigated through light traffic on the way back to University City, he found himself glancing in the rearview mirror now and then to check on the sleepy little boy, who’d fussed a bit when Abby had told him they were going on a trip.

“He’s past his bedtime,” Abby murmured. “He’ll probably be asleep by the time we get there.”

Luke looked at her. “You look pretty worn-out yourself.”

Her lips curved. “Gee, thanks.”

“I’ll call my supervisor tonight and tell him I’m working from home the rest of the week.” It was one of the perks of his job, directing his own schedule, for the most part. Now that the case in Rancho Santa Fe was over, he just had some paperwork to fill out and some loose ends to tie up, most of which he could do over the phone or by e-mail.

“What are you doing now?” she asked, stifling a yawn. “Jobwise, I mean.”

“Security work. Protective detail, investigations. That sort of thing.”

Her chuckle was low and warm, like cello music. He felt a rush of pure male heat flood his veins in response. “So, basically the same kind of work you did in the corps.”

“Basically,” he agreed, proud of how steady his voice emerged, despite the tremors going off low in his abdomen. He tried to concentrate on her question rather than his libido. “Compared to the corps, my job’s a day at the beach. Sometimes literally.” He grinned. “What about you? Where are you working these days?”

“I freelance with a couple of local school systems that don’t have full-time speech therapists. A few nonprofits that need temporary translation services. Some private tutoring.” She turned to look over her shoulder at Stevie. “I do some consulting work for Homeland Security, too. Linguistics stuff relating to wiretaps, that sort of thing. I’m looking to branch out, though. Bring in a little more money so we can afford a real house.”

MSI might be interested in her services, he thought. For a moment, his first thought was to mention her to Dave Malkin to see if he could find her some more freelance work.

But he quickly quashed the notion. The last thing Abby and her son needed was to have Luke in their lives, even hanging around the periphery.

He was dangerous to know.

“Luke, what if we don’t find what Matt took?” A tremble in Abby’s voice belied her calm expression. “What if these people are wrong and he didn’t take anything from them to begin with?”

“We’re going to sort it out, I promise.” He wasn’t yet sure how, but the one thing he knew, as surely as he knew his own name, was that he wasn’t going to let anyone hurt Abby or her son. He’d spent the past three years wishing he could have done things differently with Abby Chandler, and this was all the chance he could expect to make up for his mistakes.

He had no intention of letting her down this time.

He made the turn down his street and scanned the area, looking for anything that seemed out of place. He recognized all the vehicles parked within a block of his bungalow and didn’t see any strange people walking the streets. He lowered the car window as he made a pass down his street once without stopping. He could hear the muted sound of music coming from within a couple of the houses, and here and there dogs barking, but nothing seemed out of sorts.

“Didn’t we just pass your house?” Abby asked.

“Yeah. I wanted to drive around once, just to make sure everything’s calm.” He circled the block, moving neither too fast nor too slow, and kept his ears open. A block over, a beagle was baying frantically at something in the backyard of a small yellow stucco house located directly behind Luke’s own backyard.

Might be a squirrel or an opossum driving him nuts.

Or not.

Luke pulled up the short drive to his garage and reached across to press the door opener. The whir of the door’s machinery seemed deafening to his ears, though he knew from testing the security system that the sound of the garage door opening wasn’t nearly as audible in the house.

But if someone had managed to bypass his silent alarm and made it inside his house, would the faint noise of the garage door opening give them warning that he was on his way?

“Is something wrong?” Abby asked softly.

He met her worried gaze, not surprised that she was able to read his body language so well. She’d always seemed to know what he was thinking and feeling more clearly than he had known himself. “I’m cautious,” he admitted.

“Why don’t you have a security system?”

“I do,” he said with a smile. “It’s a silent one. You tripped it, by the way.”

“I’m an amateur. These people aren’t.”

He forced himself to smile. “So we’ll be cautious. You and Stevie stay here in the garage. I’ll lock the side door from the outside, so nobody should be able to get in. You’ll have the door opener if you need to get out, and I’ll leave the car key here with you.” He removed the Mustang’s ignition key from his key ring and handed it to her. “If you don’t hear anything from me in ten minutes, get out of here and go to the nearest police station. Tell them everything you know.”

He could tell from the look on her face that she had no intention of going to the police. But he wasn’t going to sit out here in the garage all night arguing a hypothetical.

“Once I make sure the house is safe, I’ll come back and get you.” He got out of the car and closed the driver’s door behind him, bending to look back in the open window. “We’re going to figure this all out, Abs. I promise.”

In her eyes he saw her desire to believe doing fierce battle with disillusionment. He wondered how much of that disillusionment was thanks to Matt’s lies and how much was a product of his own grave mistakes.

He slipped out of the garage and locked the door safely behind him, walking the flagstone path to the house with care, knowing that one slip onto the pebbles below would alert anyone lurking inside his darkened house of his approach.

He eyed the side-door lock to see if it had been tampered with. Everything looked just as he’d left it. But he wasn’t so egotistical as to believe there was no way an intruder could get past his security setup.

He closed his hand around the Glock at his belt and slipped it from the holster. Falling back on years of urban combat training, he entered the door fast and low, sweeping the kitchen for any signs of occupation.

It was empty.

He almost let his guard down at that point, listening to the familiar silence of the house. But he hadn’t spent a decade in the Marine Corps just to forget the hard lessons.

He scanned the kitchen once more, looking for any signs of something out of place. The lack of disorder only amped up his tension. Because somewhere in his gut, he sensed he wasn’t alone in the house.

Which meant whoever was waiting somewhere behind a door or around the corner was damned good at his job.

There were times to fight and times to regroup. Deciding which time was which was something he’d learned over almost ten years in uniform. Suicide missions were last-ditch options. Much smarter to beat a strategic retreat, then regroup and make a plan of attack from a more advantageous position.

Especially when you had a two-year-old boy and his mother waiting in the garage to be collateral damage.

He turned quietly and edged toward the back door. He almost made it there before he heard a metallic click a few feet behind him.

“Major Luke Cooper, United States Marine Corps. Retired.” The slick voice behind him ended with a soft clucking sound. “So young for a retiree. Battle fatigue?”

Luke started to turn around.

“I’d appreciate it if you lowered your gun,” the man behind him added in what Luke guessed, from what Abby had told him, must be a Boston Brahmin accent.

“If you think I’m going to put my weapon on the floor and go down without a fight, you don’t know much about the Marines,” Luke said, his voice calmer than the roiling sensation in his gut would have suggested.

“I don’t think either of us needs to use our weapons,” the other man said, his tone slightly amused. “In fact, I think we probably want the same thing, don’t we?”

Luke lowered his Glock to his side but didn’t holster it. He turned around to find the man Abby had described from her earlier encounter—tall, muscular, dressed in black from head to toe. The ski mask fit him snugly, hiding all but a circle of pale skin around his sharp blue eyes and two thin, hard lips. He held a nasty-looking Colt M1991 in his left hand.

“I suppose we want the same thing,” Luke agreed, “but I doubt we’ll agree on what to do with it.”

The thin lips curved into a humorless smile. “Well, I guess we’ll have to deal with that when the time comes. Meanwhile, Mrs. Chandler has told you what my employer wants.”

“Actually, she doesn’t seem very certain what it is we’re looking for,” Luke countered, wondering how many other people were hiding in his house. One more? Two? Three? He’d feel a lot more confident about what he needed to do next if he had some way of knowing what he was up against.

“Captain Chandler took something from my employer. He wants it back.”

“Something? That’s a little vague.”

“You’ll know it if you find it.”

“Also vague.” Luke cocked his head. “Your employer must not think very much of you if he couldn’t even tell you what you’re threatening women and children to find.”

The other man drew a swift breath through his nose, sucking the black knit up tighter against his face. His eyes flashed with hate, but when he spoke, it was in the same slightly bemused tone he’d used all along. “You served with Captain Chandler. You were close friends.”

“Look who knows how to use Google.”

The masked man smiled again. “You served side by side with the captain in Afghanistan four years ago, and again with him in Sanselmo shortly before he died.”

“What did you do, memorize my service jacket?” Luke asked, feigning boredom, although the intruder’s breadth of knowledge about his time in the Marines suggested he had some pretty well-connected sources, probably in the government.

Which meant they were up against an even tougher enemy than he’d anticipated.

The intruder’s smile grew ugly as he saw through Luke’s mask of indifference. “You see, I wasn’t bluffing when I told Mrs. Chandler she really had no choice but to help us find what we’re looking for.”

“She didn’t think you were.”

“We were wondering who she’d run to for help.” There was a hint of innuendo in the man’s tone that made Luke’s skin crawl. “You see, we knew she’d go to the person most likely to know what her husband had been hiding from her.”

“But you didn’t know who that was?”

“We do now.” The masked man chuckled. “Isn’t technology wonderful? A phone call, a text message, and in mere moments, almost everything you need to know is at your fingertips.”

“You should be in a commercial.” Luke made a show of looking around the spotless kitchen. “Should I feel insulted that you didn’t trash my place the way you did Abby’s?”

“You haven’t seen the rest of the house.”

Luke arched one eyebrow. “Say, did you find a dark green sock anywhere? I’ve been looking for it for weeks.”

The man’s smile faded. “Seven days, Major Cooper. Mrs. Chandler clearly believes you can help her find what we’re looking for. If you can, I suggest you do.”

“Or what? You’ll hurt a two-year-old?” Luke sneered. “What a fulfilling job you have.”

The masked man took a swift step forward. Luke’s gun hand twitched upward.

A second man in a black mask stepped around the corner into the kitchen and put a restraining hand on the other man’s arm. He murmured something Luke couldn’t quite make out.

The man with the Brahmin accent visibly took himself under control. “Seven days.”

“Got it. Now get out of my house.”

The second man—African-American, Luke noted, just as Abby had described—nodded toward the back of the house. He went around the corner and out of sight.

The other man stayed where he was, staring Luke down. Luke didn’t drop his gaze, more than happy to wait him out.

“Don’t let me down,” the man said. Then he turned as well, disappearing around the corner on silent feet.

Luke stayed where he was, knowing that trying to stop them was a fool’s game that wouldn’t end well. He tightened his grip on the Glock, waiting for the sound of a window opening in the back of the house.

It came, softer than he’d expected. They’d probably greased the window first to cut down on the creaks. He didn’t hear it close at all, but after a couple of minutes, he decided it was safe to check the rest of the house.

The man in the mask hadn’t been lying. Both bedrooms, both bathrooms and the living room had been trashed in a fast but thorough search. He suspected they’d searched the kitchen as well, though they’d clearly taken more care to hide their tracks there, apparently knowing from their earlier reconnaissance that he customarily entered through the side door. Easier to get the upper hand if they didn’t leave a calling card for him to discover the second he walked through the door.

He was surprised they hadn’t tried the garage.

Or had they?

Unease squirming in his belly, he raced to the garage, unlocked the door and let himself in. The place was just as he’d left it, no sign of a struggle or anything out of place. They’d probably checked here first, he realized, and, as they had with the kitchen, left it as they’d found it in order to cover their tracks.

Inside the car, Abby had shifted to the driver’s side, her pale face staring back at him through the Mustang’s open window.

“Is it safe?” she asked softly.

He thought about the ease with which Abby had broken into his house earlier. It was probably ten times easier for the intruders he’d just encountered in his kitchen. And they’d been able to disable the silent alarm before it sent him a warning. Had they had access to his personal files at MSI? What else might they know about him and his life in San Diego?

“No,” he answered Abby’s question firmly, reaching into the car to unlatch the trunk. He checked the trunk to make sure the duffel bag he kept stashed there for emergency travel was still in place. It was, and a cursory check of the contents reassured him that he had enough extra clothes and supplies inside to get him through the next few days.

Abby had gotten out of the car and come around to stand beside him, her gaze flickering down to the travel bag. “We’re not staying here tonight, are we?”

He shook his head. “No, we’re not.”

“What happened?”

He told her about the intruders, keeping it short and sweet. But even his sanitized account was enough to reignite the terror that had finally started to fade from her blue eyes. She bit her lip and looked back into the car at Stevie, who was sleeping peacefully in his car seat.

Her chin came up, and when she spoke, there was not a hint of shakiness in her voice. “Where are we going?”

Until that moment, he hadn’t thought that far ahead. But clearly, staying in San Diego would only subject them to more surprise visits from their tormentors. Luke wasn’t foolish enough to assume their bark was worse than their bite; nobody played such aggressive mind games unless they were pretty damned sure they had the goods to back up their threats. Whoever their employer was, he had high-powered connections and, Luke assumed, enough firepower to do what he threatened.

Luke might be a well-trained retired Marine who could still hold his own in a fight, but going up against that kind of enemy alone was stupid. He needed backup and he needed to change the playing field to give himself the advantage. And there was only one place he could think of where he’d have the upper hand.

“Right now,” he answered Abby, “we’re going to find a cheap motel where they’ll take cash and ask no questions.”

“And after that?”

He smiled genuinely for the first time in a long time. “Ever been to Alabama?”




Chapter Four


“If they know all about you, won’t they be staking out your family?” Abby broke the tense silence that had hovered between them for almost three hours. Interstate signs signaled that they were nearing the outskirts of Yuma, Arizona. The drive east had taken longer than it should’ve, thanks to Luke’s wandering tour of eastern San Diego before they’d hit I-8 near El Cajon.

The dashboard clock inched toward 11:00 p.m.

“I haven’t been back to Alabama in almost ten years,” Luke answered flatly. “They know that.”

“That long?” She looked up in surprise. He’d always spoken lovingly of his big, boisterous family in Gossamer Ridge. For Abby, an only child whose parents had passed away in a car crash when she was eighteen, Luke’s stories of his wonderful, crazy family had always evoked a sense of envy. “It’s complicated.”

She tamped down an acid rush of bitterness. The job, of course. Military intel—the secrets, the lies, the constant danger all took a toll. Marriages crumbled, friends became enemies, families self-destructed.

She glanced at Stevie, sound asleep in his car seat. He was still young enough that car travel was a surefire sleep aid. At least he could sleep in peace tonight. She’d do anything to spare him even a second of fear or concern.

“We’re stopping in Yuma for the night,” Luke said. She saw his gaze fixed on the rearview mirror. Did he see Stevie in the reflection,? Could he see how Stevie’s square jaw was a carbon copy of his own??

For his first year, Stevie had looked just like her, saving her from awkward questions and convoluted explanations about his origins. But now that she saw glimpses of Luke in her son—the darkening gray eyes, his lopsided smile—she was painfully aware of how selfish she’d been to keep father and son apart just to avoid complications.

Maybe Luke hadn’t wanted her enough to stick around. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t want to know their son.

“You haven’t contacted anyone since we left my house, have you?” Luke asked. “Maybe when we stopped at the ATM?”

“No.” His sudden tension made her stomach hurt. “Why?”

His gaze darted to the rearview mirror. “That car a quarter mile back’s been with us for the last few miles. I slow down, speed up, no matter. He stays the same distance away.”

Over her shoulder, all she saw was a blur of lights. But she trusted him. “What do we do?”

“Take this exit and see what happens.” Luke whipped the Mustang into a narrow gap between a truck and a sedan just in time to take a quick right onto the off-ramp.

“Did it work?” Abby’s heart raced from the daredevil move.

“Can’t tell yet.” At the bottom of the off-ramp, Luke went right and pulled into a well-lit gas station nearby. He cut the engine by one of the pumps, keeping his eyes on the exit ramp. “You pump the gas.” He pulled his wallet from his jacket pocket and handed it to her.

Tamping down fear, Abby took money from the wallet and headed off to prepay the cashier. When she returned, she found Luke rummaging through the trunk.

“Did they follow us?” She unscrewed the cover of the Mustang’s gas tank.

“Not sure.” He closed the trunk. In his left hand, he held a small gray device with red lights at the top. One light was lit up. He showed it to her. “See that light? There’s a GPS tracking device within a twenty-five-foot radius.”

There were no other cars at the gas station, and the road was at least forty feet away. “Does your car have GPS?”

He shook his head. “I never wanted it used against me. Do you have a GPS tag on any of Stevie’s stuff?”

“I don’t let him out of my sight except to take him to Mrs. Tamburello’s while I’m working.” She returned the gas nozzle to the pump, her mind racing. “You know, I don’t know how long those men were in my apartment—”

Luke opened the driver’s door of the Mustang and shoved back the driver’s seat. Hearing Stevie’s soft whimper, she raced around to the passenger door. “What are you doing?” she demanded, glaring at Luke across the backseat.

Luke’s expression of horror was almost comical. “God, I’m sorry—I wasn’t—” He laid his hand on Stevie’s head, stroking his damp curls. “Sorry about wakin’ you up there, Little Bit.”

Stevie’s snuffling subsided. “Firsty.”

“You’re thirsty, huh?” He glanced at Abby.

“I’ll get him an apple juice.” She ran to the food mart, grabbed an apple juice from one of the coolers and added it to the gas purchase. Back at the car, Luke stood by the driver’s side door, Stevie cradled in his arms. Abby faltered, her heart stuttering at the sight of Luke’s big, muscular arms wrapped around their son.

She was going to have to tell him the truth. Soon.

Luke’s gaze locked with hers as she reached the Mustang. He held up a black device a little smaller than a credit card. “Found it inside Mr. Hoppy.” He nodded toward the small animatronic stuffed rabbit sitting on the roof of the car, its ears still wiggling and nose twitching. “Inside the pouch where the batteries are. I guess they put it there when they trashed your house.”

Her heart lurched. “So they know where we are.”

He nodded. “No wonder they didn’t risk a wreck to follow us off the interstate. They can pick us up wherever we go.”

“Throw it away!” The sensation of being watched made her skin crawl.

Luke shook his head. “I have a better idea.”



THE BUDGET ARMS MOTEL was the sort of nondescript, vaguely shabby motel a motorist could find near almost any major interstate exit. Walk-ins were welcome if there were vacancies, and some of the places didn’t even require identification as long as you could pay cash up front for the room. The only amenities would be basic cable and local phone service, if that.

Luke had stayed in worse places.

Abby, apparently, had not, judging by the look of horror on her face when Luke pulled into the motel parking lot.

“This is your better idea?”

“Wait here,” he said, parking in front of the motel office. As Abby started to protest, he leaned toward her, cupping her chin in his palm. “Trust me, Abs. I know what I’m doing.”

He could see the struggle in her blue-eyed gaze, but her expression finally cleared and she gave a little nod.

He handed her the keys before he got out. “Any sign of trouble and you get the hell out of here, understand me? Just go. I’ve got the tracker, so they can’t find you that way.”

She nodded again, worry flooding back into her eyes.

He pocketed the GPS tracker as he got out of the Mustang and headed up the uneven concrete walk to the office. Inside he found a dark-haired man reading a bodybuilding magazine. He looked up with a hint of annoyance as Luke entered.

“I need a room for a couple of nights.” Luke pulled his wallet from his jacket pocket.

The desk clerk handed him a register. “Sign here.”

Luke knew better than to sign his own name. The people following him would smell that kind of trap a mile away. But for his purposes, he needed to pick a name that could, with a little research, be connected to him. He settled on Cal Trimble, the name of his old drill sergeant at Parris Island. Obscure, but not so obscure that people with resources couldn’t connect it to him with a little effort.

It served his purposes for the people who were following them to think they’d finally found them.

Paying the fee for two nights, he pocketed the room key the clerk handed him and headed back outside to a pay phone attached to the office facade. He put coins into the slot to make a call he knew might end up being traced, as well. That was okay, too. It wasn’t as if he didn’t make calls to his family now and then.

His sister answered, her voice groggy. “Yeah?”

“Hey, Hannah, it’s Luke.”

“Hey, stranger.” A smile tinted her sleepy voice, and he heard a low-pitched murmur on the other end of the line. “It’s Luke,” he heard Hannah say in response.

“I need to speak to your husband,” Luke said.

“You need to speak to Riley?” Hannah sounded puzzled. Luke couldn’t blame her; he’d yet to meet her husband, despite the fact that she’d been married to the former Wyoming cop for over a year. A couple of months earlier, she’d given birth to her first child, a little boy they’d named Cody.

He missed her like hell. He’d stayed away from home far too long, let too many milestones go unwitnessed. Hannah’s wedding. Jake’s whirlwind romance with his pretty wife, Mariah. Sam’s return to Gossamer Ridge after years away, and his recent marriage. His niece Cissy’s graduation.

He’d missed all of it because going home had seemed too big a risk. But wasn’t what he was doing now even more dangerous? Cordero or the black-clad thugs—what was the difference?

Was he doing the wrong thing again?

“Is something wrong?” Hannah asked.

He shook off his doubts. He needed help. He knew he could count on his family for backup. End of story. “Let me talk to Riley and then he can explain.”

“Okay.” He heard the reluctance in his sister’s voice as she passed the phone to her husband.

“Hi, Luke.” Riley Patterson’s voice was a low rumble tinged with a Wyoming twang. “Something up?”

A lot was up, but he didn’t have time to do anything but get to the point. “Do your parents still live in Yuma?”



“HAVE YOU EVEN met them before?” Abby resisted the urge to look out the window of the motel. She was pretty sure that whoever had been following them on I-8 had found them by now. Luke had assured her more than once that letting the bad guys find them was all part of his plan.

She wished she could feel quite so confident.

“No, I haven’t met them. I haven’t even met Riley.”

She looked away from the closed curtains. “You haven’t met your brother-in-law? Not even at the wedding?”

A flicker of pain crossed Luke’s face before his features settled into a carefully neutral expression. “I told you, I haven’t been home in ten years.”

Abby shook her head and turned back toward the window. Luke had no idea how lucky he was to have a big family to go home to. “What makes you sure you can trust him?”

“Hannah trusts him. She’s always been a good judge of character. A lot better than any of her hardheaded brothers.”

She smiled a little at the confidence in his voice. For a guy who’d been avoiding home for so long, he clearly loved his family dearly. What in his secret past could have kept him away from them for ten years?

Outside the motel room, a new sound interrupted the faint drone of traffic on the interstate—the low-pitched purr of a car engine. The sound died too suddenly for a passing car. Someone had entered the motel parking lot and shut off the engine. Was it the people they were waiting for?

Abby looked at Luke, her pulse quickening. His expression didn’t change as he crossed calmly to the tiny dressing room vanity and picked up the scuffed plastic ice bucket.

“Showtime,” he said, nodding toward the door near the back of the room. He’d already made quick work of the simple locks separating their room from the empty one next door. He’d stashed their bags and Stevie’s car seat by the front door of the adjoining suite, ready for their quick getaway.

Luke detoured to the bed and picked up Stevie. Abby held her breath, even though she knew Stevie was next to impossible to wake once he was dead asleep. He grumbled softly but didn’t awaken, and Abby exhaled.

Exchanging a quick look with her, Luke tucked Stevie close and joined her at the door to the adjoining room.

“What if they jump you outside?” Abby paused with her hand on the doorknob, fear freezing her insides.

“They won’t go after me when I have Stevie. These people may be ruthless, but they don’t really want to hurt a kid.”

She reached out to stroke her son’s silky hair. Fear crystallized in the pit of her belly. “You hope.”

“I think.” His expression softened, and he started to lift the hand holding the ice bucket. He let it drop again, a little wrinkle of frustration forming between his eyes.

Abby wondered what that aborted gesture meant. Had he been planning to touch her? She was alarmed by how much she craved his touch right now. How gladly she’d have walked into his arms had he spread them open to welcome her.

“I’ll protect him with my life, Abs. Nobody’s going to hurt him on my watch.”

Nobody was better prepared to follow through on the promise he’d just made. But she’d seen their pursuers in action. They were equally skilled, and unlike Luke, they had plenty of resources backing them up.

“I know you’re afraid,” Luke added. “But this is our best chance to go to ground awhile to get them off our trail.”

She met his steady gaze, struggling to draw strength from his confidence. “I’ll be waiting for your knock.”

He smiled briefly as she opened the door and entered the adjoining room. As she locked the door behind her, she heard Luke doing the same thing to the door on their side.

The people after them were as capable of picking locks as Luke—if they’d even bother with stealth. But two locked doors would at least give her a head start on escaping.

She resisted the urge to watch through the narrow gap in the curtains, not wanting to alert their pursuers to her presence in the second room. Instead, she sat on the edge of the bed in the dark, counting every frantic heartbeat to pass the time while she waited for Luke’s signal.



LUKE STAYED CLOSE to the motel facade, keeping to the shadows, not because he thought that such a maneuver would help him evade detection but because he knew it wouldn’t. He was dealing with pros who apparently knew a lot about his background. If he didn’t at least try to avoid being seen, they’d know he was setting a trap.

His plan, long shot that it was, depended on the enemy believing he didn’t have a plan.

Against his shoulder, Stevie stirred as the cold November air slid under the blanket tucked around him. “Mama?”

“Shh,” Luke murmured, tucking him closer. Knowing the little boy’s sleepy whimpers would carry in the crisp night breeze, Luke made a show of trying to quiet him, but he didn’t really mind if anyone heard. Trying to walk a restless child into falling back to sleep created a pretty good reason for him to be outside the room at this time of night. Fortunately, Stevie settled right back to sleep.

He took his time walking to the ice machine near the motel office, keeping his eyes peeled for any sign of movement. He caught the flicker of light coming from inside a dark sedan parked near the end of the parking lot, so faint that almost anyone else might assume he’d just imagined it. But in a glance, Luke assured himself that the parked vehicle was the one that had been following them for miles.

Reaching the corner, he turned, heading down the narrow breezeway to where the ice machine and a couple of drink vending machines filled a small alcove hidden from view of the parking lot. But instead of turning into the alcove, he continued on past the ice machine to the rear of the motel.

A narrow dirt alley ran behind the building, an access point for trash retrieval from the large Dumpster located behind the front office. Luke headed quickly down the alley, rounded the office and edged his way along the side of the building until he had a decent view of the parking lot from the shadows.

He saw a dark figure glide silently across the parking lot and disappear into the gloom under the eaves of the brick building, heading in the direction of Luke’s motel room.

Bold bastards, he thought.

The black-clad man looked shorter and stockier than the two who’d invaded Luke’s house earlier that evening. He’d been right. The people who were after what Matt stole had resources and, apparently, plenty of willing operatives.

This almost had to be about Voices for Villages and Janis Meeks. Had Matt found evidence tying Barton Reid to the arms-for-drugs deals? It was an open secret in foreign policy circles that Reid had a philosophical affinity with El Cambio and their political aims. Had Matt found some sort of evidence to prove that one of the State Department’s top men put his personal leanings over the stated foreign policy of his own government to the point of arming narco-terrorists?




Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.


Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/paula-graves/one-tough-marine/) на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.