TREVOR REESE 3
HIS PROTECTIVE LOVE
BY
MALLORY MONROE
Copyright©2019 Mallory Monroe
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This novel is a work of fiction. All characters are fictitious. Any similarities to anyone living or dead are completely accidental. The specific mention of known places or venues are not meant to be exact replicas of those places, but are purposely embellished or imagined for the story’s sake.
DISCLAIMER: THE PHOTOS DISPLAYED ON THE COVER OF THIS BOOK ARE THOSE OF MODELS, NOT TRUE TO LIFE REPRESENTATIONS OF ANY OF THE FICTIONAL CHARACTERS DEPICTED IN THIS BOOK.
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TREVOR REESE SERIES
IN ORDER:
TREVOR REESE 1
HIS SECRET LOVE
TREVOR REESE 2
UNDERCOVER LOVE
TREVOR REESE 3
HIS PROTECTIVE LOVE
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
EPILOGUE
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PROLOGUE
Eighteen Years Earlier
Rosarito Beach, Baja California, Mexico
“Ten seconds away.”
Trevor Reese positioned his MK 153 Assault Weapon onto his shoulder and rechecked his aim.
“Seven seconds away.”
Trevor double-checked the scope.
“Five seconds. Four seconds. They should be in your range right . . . about . . . now.”
“Fire!”
There was no time to reposition. No time to look again. It had to be precise, and at that very moment. As soon as Echo 9, his advance man, told him to fire, Trevor did not flinch. He fired his weapon with such force that it propelled his strong, muscle-tight body two steps backwards. Meant to be a bunker-buster, that rocket-propelled thermobaric explosive was launched from the window of an abandoned building, across three blocks of row houses and makeshift souvenir stands, all the way to a highway where a convoy of three vehicles were traveling. All SUVs. All dark in color. All within his bullseye.
His aim was dead-on. His strike was precision. The explosive hit the middle SUV, causing it to buckle, to lose traction, and then to lift up, bursting into flames and busting apart, with big shards of metal tearing away and ripping into the two additional SUVs in the convoy. They buckled, lost traction, and were tossed in the blast wave too.
But the two additional vehicles were collateral damage. They were secondary hits. The intel Trevor had was that their primary target, a murderous dictator on the run from his home country, was in the middle SUV. That was the one Trevor aimed and hit. The other two SUVs contained his security detail. Their demise was optional. That murderous dictator’s was not.
Trevor leaned away from his weapon, and then removed his safety goggles. His violet-blue eyes were wide with intensity. His entire body was sweaty and filled with anxious nervousness. He looked up at the fireball and wreckage that could be seen filling the Mexican sky, and knew he had done his job. There was no surviving that obliteration.
But his job wasn’t finished until he surveyed the entire area. To ensure that there was no further present threat. But when he looked beyond the wreckage, he saw a fourth SUV just behind the three SUVs that had been hit. Questions filled Trevor’s mind.
Was it a part of that convoy too?
Did that murderous thug-dictator have more security with him than Echo 9 knew about?
But then Trevor took a closer look, and he saw that people were getting out of that SUV.
He positioned his weapon again and quickly looked through its’ scope. He saw the people that were piling out of that fourth SUV looked as if they were in an anguished state rather than in any state of fear. They were holding their heads and turning around as if they were hysterical with grief. He could see, even as he couldn’t hear, that the women appeared to be screaming. There were children who had jumped out of that SUV, and they appeared to be crying and screaming too.
What the fuck?
Trevor frowned because he didn’t understand the scene. He knew it was a horrific scene, and he knew they could have been reacting because they were grateful that their SUV was spared. But that kind of emotion was more than gratitude. It was agonizing grief. Why would they be that emotional about strangers? And why weren’t they getting the hell out of harm’s way? It wasn’t a safe place to be, and they had to know that!
Unless . . .
Trevor’s heart began to pound. He took an even closer look through his scope, zooming in at the writing that was plastered across the side on that fourth SUV. The Phillips Family Reunion, was written in black letterings. Which made him frown again. The Phillips what?
A family reunion?
Were his eyes betraying him or was he looking at an SUV carrying an American family in Rosarito Beach for a family reunion?
It was possible. Americans viewed Mexico as a cheap vacation destination and Rosarito Beach was less than an hour’s drive from San Diego. But if it were true, and it was as innocent as those words on the side of that SUV suggested, and if that SUV was a part of that convoy of SUVs he’d just snuffed out, then what Trevor had just done . . .
His heart now racing, he quickly sat his weapon down, grabbed the attached camera beneath the scope, removed the SD card, and then placed it inside the SD slot of his cell phone. He nervously pressed Play.
The video showed nothing in the frame initially, and all that could be heard was Echo 9 counting down. Then the SUVs came into view. Then Echo 9 ordered him to fire. When Trevor saw those vehicles on the video, he zoomed-in with a freeze frame. He had to squint his eyes to see what he was viewing. But it was undeniable once he saw it. Because written on all three of those SUVs just before they were obliterated were the same four words that was on the fourth SUV:
The Phill
ips Family Reunion.
The Phillips Family Reunion.
The Phillips Family Reunion.
Fuck!
As if they were a convoy that didn’t include a murderous dictator and his thug guards, but an innocent family of American tourists on their way to their family reunion: their Mexican vacation.
Trevor’s heart dropped.
They had chased that dictator from Belarus to Jakarta, and all the way across Mexico in his backward, roundabout effort to inch his way toward the States, and they had him within their grasp. All Trevor had to do was take him out. But instead he took out a family in the country for a reunion? He did that?
He couldn’t accept that. He’d be damned if he was going to accept that! He could not believe that his advance man would fuck up that badly. Echo 9, his advance man’s code name, was his superior. The field man relied on the advance man to get it absolutely right. But how could he have gotten it that wrong?
And then again, Trevor thought, it could be a set-up by the dictator. Maybe those words on the side of those SUVs were a front to throw them off, hoping it would give any trained assassin hesitation, and that hesitation would be just enough for that dictator to get away. It was possible. Trevor had seen it happen before.
But that didn’t explain the reaction of the people in that fourth SUV, an SUV that had on its’ side the same writing as on the other three vehicles. If it was a set-up, why did they jump out crying and screaming? If it was a decoy, why weren’t they fleeing the scene?
He stopped running the video and, instead, clicked on the SD card’s photo gallery. It had been designed to capture still images of the hit too. He frantically searched those pictures one by one by one, and saw nothing to indicate anything whatsoever.
Absolutely nothing!
Panicking, he threw aside his phone, hoisted his weapon onto his shoulder, and looked through the scope again. He searched beyond the wreckage and the grieving family. He searched and he searched, street after street after ever-loving street. Show me something, his entire being was inwardly screaming. Show me something!
And that was when he saw it.
Not a convoy of SUVs, but a convoy of Vans. All three vans were four streets beyond the street they targeted, and at that very moment was disappearing around a corner and out of view.
Trevor knew in his heart of hearts it was too late to do anything, but he also knew they had to try. He grabbed his phone and called Echo 9. Perhaps there was backup nearby that could pursue those vans?
But his advance man, his superior, didn’t even respond to his question. He was angry, too, and had a question of his own. “Why are you still on scene?” he yelled into the phone. “Get your ass out of there! Why are you still there, Reese?”
But Trevor was angrier. “Answer my fucking question!” he yelled back. He was a young man in his twenties at the time of that assignment, and he was doing a job the Agency paid him handsomely to do. Who was he to bark out questions? But he barked them out that day. “Do we have backup on scene?” he yelled. “Is the cleanup crew in distance? Answer me!”
And Echo 9, hearing the sheer terror in Trevor’s voice, did respond. “No, we do not have backup on scene,” he said. “And they’re on their way, but they aren’t there yet. Why are you asking? And why are you still there?!”
Trevor placed his fingers against his forehead. “We hit the wrong target,” he said.
“We what? What are you talking about? You didn’t miss. I saw it! And it was the absolute right target!”
“Did you see what happened after that?”
“What are you talking about? When the job is done you get the hell out. You know that, Reese! Didn’t your big brother teach you shit?”
“We hit the wrong target,” Trevor said again, ignoring any reference to his brother, who happened to be the director of the very Agency for which both of them worked. “Parshgova is gone. That dictator’s gone. He wasn’t in those SUVs. Our intel was off, and our targets were wrong. I saw three vans turn a corner four streets beyond our target.”
There was silence on the other end of the phone. “Are you certain it was Parshgova?” Echo 9 finally asked.
“No, I’m not certain,” Trevor said frustratingly. “How can I be certain ten-fucking miles away?!”
The disrespect Trevor showed his superior that day was not tolerated, but the boss understood. If what Trevor said was true, they were fucked.
“Get down there now,” Echo 9 ordered. “Get on scene. Confirm that none of those dead bodies they pull out of that wreckage belongs to Parshgova, or even his goons. Confirm it! I’m coming back into the area, but I need a confirmation.”
“And if it’s confirmed?” Trevor asked.
“Heaven help us,” his advance man said.
It was against all protocol and both men knew it, but Trevor agreed to do as his advance man ordered. He agreed because they had no choice. They had to know if they had just killed one of the most notorious murderers on the planet, or their fellow Americans.
Trevor grabbed his cell phone, did his routine cleanup. He took only the SD card and hid his equipment for a cleanup crew to retrieve later, and took off.
He headed onto the streets of Rosarito Beach and ran, block by block, over to the wreckage. It didn’t look unusual that he was running because many others were running to the scene too.
When Trevor arrived, crowds had already gathered and the authorities were already on scene. The people in the fourth SUV were sitting on the side of the road, with blankets thrown across their shoulders given to them by the locals, and every one of those faces looked as if they’d just seen Death itself. Their shock and disbelief were palpable.
Trevor, in jeans and a t-shirt, placed both hands in his pockets when he saw that family. There was no doubt they were regular Americans. An American family of men, women, and children.
Children, and plenty of them.
Were children also in the three vehicles he destroyed?
It would take several hours for the authorities to clear the wreckage and confirm, in a hastily arranged press conference onsite, that the victims were indeed members of a big American family meeting up with their Mexican relatives to attend a great big family reunion.
And the victims?
Men, women, and children. Plenty of them.
Trevor looked as devastated as those surviving Phillips family members. But unlike that family, he knew he had to walk away. He could barely see in front of him as he slowly, desperately, agonizingly left that scene, and Mexico, altogether.
It would be the last time he ever worked with Echo 9.
It would be the last time he ever allowed anybody else to dictate to him when he fired on a target, and when he did not.
It would be the last time he ever tried to convince himself that what he was doing for his government was on the side of the angels.
It was not.
He was not.
The proof was in his wreckage.
CHAPTER ONE
EIGHTEEN YEARS LATER
The water from the shower felt like needles pricking his rough, thick skin as it poured over his muscular body. He received the call an hour ago, at exactly three a.m. He was ordered to get to Little Rock, and there was no further explanation given, because none was needed. He’d known about the operation months in advance. He knew they were eventually going to call him in to handle the job. He just didn’t think the order would come so soon.
He'd only been married a few weeks, and he had to hit the road again.
He was showering in the downstairs bathroom. Not because he had to, but because he didn’t want to wake his bride. He would eventually have to wake her and tell her that he was leaving again, but he was determined to prolong that always agonizing moment for as long as he possibly could.
When he stepped out of the shower, he caught a glimpse of himself in the full-length mirror. He wasn’t getting any younger, that was for damn sure, he thought, and if he continued the way he was goi
ng, where he was running a major corporation and handling all of those death-defying assignments in addition, it was doubtful if he’d get much older either.
He’d been in the game for well over twenty years and, after the initial excitement of being caught up in that crazy world, hated almost every second of it. He was recruited, by his own brother, at a very young age. Thought he could enjoy the benefits of being an Agency man while he was a kid, get in, get out, and then go on with his life. He soon found out that when you worked for the government, at least when you did the kind of work he had to do for the government, there was no getting in and getting out. You got in. If you were good at your craft, and Trevor absolutely was, you stayed in. They kept you for life. Whether you wanted them to or not.
He dried off, grabbed another towel and wrapped it around his waist, and headed out of the bathroom. But he didn’t immediately go upstairs.
He remained downstairs, and made his way to the full-sized bar in the family room. He stood behind the bar, drank down a stiff one, and then pinched his nose as the fast drain spiked his nostrils. And the guilt of leaving Carly again, of even being with Carly, overwhelmed him.
Why would a bad boy like him ever win a good girl like Carly? Why did he ever allow it to get to a place where he couldn’t let her go? His plan was to fuck her and leave her, the way he’d done so many women before, but his plan went haywire when it came to Carly. He fell in love with her. It was such a foreign concept to Trevor that for a long time he refused to accept it. But that was exactly what had happened. He fell for Carly, and had to keep her under his thumb. Under his protection. Until his dying day.
And then he married her on top of that!
Now she wanted children. Why wouldn’t she? She came from a big family and liked being a part of something noisy and exciting and loving and big. But Trevor came from a tough background. Tougher than Carly could ever imagine. He wasn’t nearly as fond of bringing kids into the kind of world he knew existed.
But to be the father of her child? Of Carly’s kid? Now that would be awesome. That, he thought with a smile, would be something special.
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