Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Newsletter and Social Media Links
LOGAN (Steele Protectors 1)
ATTICUS (Steele Protectors 2)
BRYCE (Steele Protectors 3)
ROURKE (Steele Protectors 4)
HADYN (Steele Protectors 5)
About the Author
Other books by Carole Mortimer
Copyright © 2020 Carole Mortimer
Cover Design Copyright © Glass Slipper WebDesign
Editor: Linda Ingmanson
Formatter: Glass Slipper WebDesign
ISBN: 978-1-910597-83-5
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All Rights Reserved.
Created with Vellum
Dedication
My husband, Peter
Chapter One
Twelve hours wasn’t nearly long enough for Lucan to study and assess his latest mission, let alone devise a plan to extract her easily and quickly when or if the need arose.
But he had done his best with what time he had.
That being the case, he was standing across the street from her apartment building, a cup of coffee in his hand, and giving every appearance of reading the daily news on his cell phone when she left the building at her usual time of exactly eight fifteen.
A building that, ironically, had the name Steele Plaza printed on the side of it in huge gold letters. One of the many apartment buildings he and his five brothers owned in the upmarket areas of London.
The two men working on the reception desk in this building, and rotating on an eight-hourly basis with two other teams, were not only on the Steele Protectors payroll but they also knew Lucan personally from the times he had visited Rourke in the penthouse apartment. They hadn’t seen anything or anyone who didn’t fit in the last few days, or hesitated in answering Lucan’s questions on a particular tenant.
From that one conversation, Lucan now knew her routine was to leave for work at eight fifteen Monday to Friday. That she returned on those evenings at five thirty, when she rarely, if ever, left the building again until the following morning. Weekends were slightly different, in that she shopped for food on a Saturday morning but otherwise remained in her apartment until once again leaving for work on Monday morning.
Very occasionally, a female friend would call round on a Sunday, and the two of them would go out for lunch together.
There had never been a male visitor to her apartment.
The other thing Lucan had learned was that she had only moved into the building nine months ago.
Steele Plaza boasted those twenty-four-seven security guards and a high-tech security system, the latter installed and maintained by his brother Haydn, the tech guru of the family. They were two features Lucan knew might have appealed to this woman rather than her choice of this particular apartment building having any other connection.
Except Lucan didn’t believe in coincidences.
Lucan followed at a safe distance as she walked down the street to the tube station. It was early November, and for once, it wasn’t raining. Her long blonde hair was uncovered and secured in a ponytail, but she was wearing a black knee-length coat over a dark knee-length suit and a cream blouse to keep out the winter cold.
Lucan took a moment to admire the long and shapely legs showing beneath that coat and above neat black ankle boots. His quarry was at least five feet ten inches tall, just six inches shorter than his own six feet four inches, and she had the longest legs he had seen that didn’t belong to a model on a catwalk.
He quickly cut off the thought before it took him to how perfectly their bodies would align in bed together. Instead, he cleared his mind as he followed and then got on the same train as she did to her place of work two stops down. Once there, he stood on the sidewalk and watched as she entered through a side door of the museum, where she worked in the art department. Like the other London museums, this one wouldn’t be open to the public until ten o’clock.
When Lucan was sure she was safely inside the building, he put a call through to his brother Logan. “Keeping subject under surveillance, and she has arrived safely at her place of employment,” he provided without preamble.
“Stand down, buddy,” his brother drawled ruefully. “We aren’t in a war zone.”
As far as Lucan was concerned, every day and every location was a war zone. That way, he was always alert. Always looking for danger.
Unfortunately, most of the time, it was there to be found.
“The plan of action we discussed last night is a go,” Logan continued at Lucan’s silence. “Haydn is taking Hailey up to Scotland, to the usual place. If our suspicions prove to be correct, then once Silva is informed where they’re going, he’ll follow them, and we intend to be there waiting for him.”
Even after all this time, Lucan still had to repress a shiver at the mention of the “usual place” in Scotland, knowing Logan meant the family home, on the edge of a lake in the Highlands.
On the outside, it was a beautiful white thatched cottage, but beneath that quaintness, in Lucan’s mind at least, it became a dark and airless prison he couldn’t escape from. Didn’t matter that the underground space was twice as big as the accommodation above, with clean air being pumped in and a generator to provide lighting. The mere thought of going down into that enclosed space in the ground was still enough to send Lucan hurtling blindly in the opposite direction. The last time he’d gone there, that was exactly what had happened, and he’d disappeared off the grid for three months. He hadn’t been back to Scotland since.
“In the meantime, you want me to get Rebecca out of London before she has a chance to call anyone and put herself in danger,” Lucan guessed.
“Pretty sure she doesn’t go under that name anymore. If she ever did. Hailey calls her Becca,” Logan dismissed. “But yes, that’s what we need you to do now.”
“Consider it done.” Lucan ended the call before Logan could give any further instructions.
He was already formulating a plan inside his head as he took the sim card out of his cell phone and broke it in half. He then dropped the casing to the concrete pavement and crushed it beneath his boot, before disposing of both in the litter bin nearby. He could use the burner cell phone in his pocket when or if he needed to contact his brothers again. But they wouldn’t be able to contact him, so consequently, they couldn’t unwittingly give away his whereabouts to any interested third party. He would do the same to Becca’s cell phone at the earliest opportunity.
Lucan knew, better than most, how to protect an asset, and it was too easy to be traced and their whereabouts known through a cell phone.
He also knew how to dispose of someone who wasn’t an asset.
But hopefully that wouldn’t be necessary in this case. He wouldn’t rule it out, though. He hadn’t earned the nickname “the accountant” because of his mathematical skills. No, he balanced the books in whatever way they needed balancing, and currently, this man Silva represented danger to a member of his family as well as Rebecca Snow. Lucan wouldn’t hesitate to eliminate the other man if he had to.
In the meantime, Lucan int
ended to remove Rachel Shaw, aka Rebecca Snow, from danger.
With or without her cooperation.
The man who had been standing across the street all morning was still out there.
Becca had spotted him the moment she left the safety of her apartment building this morning. Not because he did anything to draw attention to himself as he leaned against a building opposite, drinking coffee and looking at the screen of his cell phone, as so many Londoners did this time of the morning.
This man didn’t need to do anything unusual to draw attention to himself.
Probably aged in his midthirties, at least a dozen years older than her own twenty-three, he was well over six feet tall, with short, almost military-style dark hair and muscular shoulders as wide as a tank. He had an equally impressive chest under the black T-shirt he wore beneath a black leather jacket. Faded denims rested low down on muscular hips, kept in place with a thick black leather belt. His thighs were thickly muscled, and he wore black combat boots on his feet. Having observed him, she knew he also moved with the quiet and powerful grace of a predator.
Because he was one?
Becca wasn’t sure what he was yet.
His features were hard and uncompromising: glittering dark eyes, aquiline nose, high cheekbones, chiseled lips above a square and determined jaw.
The dark-rimmed glasses he wore should have but didn’t soften those features in the slightest. Instead, they gave him a superhero look. Not the underpants-worn-over-his-tights type of superhero, but one who, once he removed the glasses, would turn into a cold and effective killing machine. The glitter of those almost-black eyes gave the impression he wouldn’t hesitate in doing so either.
So why was he following her?
Because Becca had no doubt that he was.
Eight years ago, her life had gone to hell in a handbasket, and she had taken on the persona of Rachel Shaw rather than Rebecca Snow. Because of that, she had trained herself to know when something was off. This man’s presence this morning, outside her apartment building, on the train, and now standing nonchalantly across the street all morning from the museum where she worked, was definitely off.
“Everything all right, Rachel?”
She released the strip of Venetian blind she had pulled down slightly to enable her to look outside, before turning to smile at Sheila, the woman she shared the office with. “I was just checking to see if I needed to take my umbrella with me when I go out to get my lunch.”
The other woman grimaced. “I have the early lunch today. It’s started to pour down, and it was so nice earlier that I didn’t bring my overcoat or an umbrella with me today.”
“Take mine,” Rachel offered, already reaching for the raincoat and umbrella from the stand near the door and a plan starting to formulate in her mind. “The coat is waterproof, and it also has a hood.”
“You’re sure?” Sheila smiled her gratitude even as she pulled on the coat and took the matching black umbrella.
Becca nodded. “We’re about the same size, and if you get me a chicken sandwich while you’re out, I won’t need to go out later.”
And if the man outside trailed after Sheila when she left the museum, thinking the woman beneath the hood was Becca, then she would know for certain he really was following her. Not that she had any doubts, but the next step would have too many repercussions on the life she had made for herself if she did turn out to be wrong about him.
If he was following her, then she doubted he would be fooled for long by the ruse, in any case. But maybe it would be long enough for her to call her handler and see what she should do about her unwanted shadow.
Witness Protection.
Until eight years ago, they had merely been words from TV programs, as far as Becca was concerned, usually involving criminals and the people who needed saving from them.
Then circumstances had demanded that, at only fifteen years of age, Rebecca Snow disappear, and she became Rachel Shaw.
The hardest part of that had been moving to England from the US and being separated from her sister. Cassie was two years older than her, and the two of them had always been close. Unfortunately, Cassie had been kidnapped eight years ago, their parents were killed, and Rebecca Snow had needed to be removed from the States for her own safety.
She had always assumed that she and Cassie would be reunited once the trial of her kidnappers was over, and maybe they would have been if Cassie hadn’t been killed in an accident before that became possible.
Completely alone in the world but still in the Witness Protection program, Becca had continued to live in England with her foster parents, Joan and David Reynolds. She had known them a little previously, at least, Joan having been an old school friend of her mother’s. After Cassie died, Becca had remained living in England with them. She finished school, went to university here too, and obtained a degree in art history, before securing her dream job at the museum.
But now, after all this time, all of Becca’s senses were warning her something was wrong.
Off.
“I’ll see you in a few, then,” Sheila told her cheerfully before leaving the office wearing Becca’s black coat.
Becca moved back to the window to again discreetly pull the Venetian blind down a half inch so she could watch as Sheila stepped out of the building. The umbrella was open above her, the hood of the coat pulled over her hair, and hiding the fact the woman beneath it had dark hair rather than Becca’s blonde.
Becca’s attention quickly moved to the man across the street.
Would he be fooled for long enough to follow Sheila, or wouldn’t he?
Becca’s heart pounded wildly as she saw his eyes narrow to dark slits as he watched the woman walking away in the opposite direction to where he was standing.
She breathed a sigh of relief when he finally pushed away from the wall and strolled in the same direction as Sheila. He appeared completely impervious to the heavy rain dampening his hair and dripping down his leather jacket.
Becca only needed him to be gone long enough to talk to her handler and then, if necessary, make her escape from the museum if those were the instructions she received. It was going to break her heart if she was told she had to leave the museum and her apartment and the life she had made here, and start afresh somewhere new.
Why now?
What had happened to change the quid pro quo of the last eight years?
Two of the men who kidnapped Cassie had been shot during her rescue, and the other two were incarcerated in prison and not expected to be released for at least another five years. Bianca, her WP handler, would let her know when they were released, but even then, they were pretty far down the food chain. Becca doubted those two men would have the human resources or money to seek out the younger sister of the young woman they had kidnapped all those years ago, even if she was the only one left to punish for their incarceration.
Ernesto Silva, then?
He hadn’t been involved in Cassie’s kidnapping, but his twin brother, Eduardo, had. Unfortunately, Eduardo had been one of the kidnappers killed during Cassie’s rescue, inciting Ernesto’s wrath and his vow of vengeance, and another of the reasons Becca had been placed in and then kept in Witness Protection.
All those years ago, Ernesto had bided his time, waiting until the end of the year-long trial and sentencing of the remaining two kidnappers, before drawing a gun and attempting to shoot Cassie. He had quickly been disarmed and apprehended, and then held in the system before being given a ten-year prison sentence.
But he could have been released by now if he had behaved himself in prison…
She was wasting time speculating, Becca realized, when she could be asking Bianca for answers to her questions. Besides, the man across the street might be gone for now, but she had no idea how long that would continue.
The quicker she contacted Bianca in the US, the sooner she would know one way or another whether she had to turn her life upside down for a second time.
Chapter
Two
“I advise you not to make that call.”
Becca was so startled by the unexpectedness of that harsh voice that she almost dropped her cell phone.
Before she had the chance to react to the dark-haired man who had followed her earlier and was now standing in the doorway of her office, he had taken the two strides it took to reach her desk and taken the cell phone from her hand before pressing the End Call button. His movements were economic as he then removed the sim card and dropped it and the casing onto the floor before crushing them both beneath one heavy black boot.
Becca half rose to her feet to stare at him as he bent down and picked up the destroyed cell phone and then placed the pieces in the pocket of his leather jacket.
“What the hell…?” She glared accusingly at him. “Who are you, and how dare you destroy my property? More to the point, how did you even get back here?” she attacked. Members of the public weren’t allowed into the offices and store rooms behind the public displays.
There were guards to prevent that happening placed at all the entrances to the offices at the back of the museum, and yet somehow, this man had managed to circumvent all of them.
“My name is Lucan Steele,” he bit out. “And did you really think your little ruse with the other woman wearing your coat would fool me for even a second?”
She frowned. “I saw you follow her—”
“I allowed you to think I followed her,” he corrected. “Then I doubled back to the museum. Just in time, if the call you were making was to Bianca D’Angelo,” he added grimly.
Lucan (Steele Protectors 6) Page 1
