Wyatt

by Susan May Warren

  Wyatt

  Montana Marshalls

  Susan May Warren

  About Wyatt

  He’s lost her twice…he’s not going to lose her again...

  * * *

  NHL Hockey Goalie Wyatt Marshall has everything--fame, money and a thriving career. But he’s hiding the two things that matter most...a career-ending injury, and his broken heart. He’s been in love with Coco Stanley since she walked into his life at age fourteen, a foster child for the Marshall family. She stole his heart years later, when, after a secret tryst, she returned to her home country of Russia. But she won’t let him back into her life—and he can’t figure out why.

  * * *

  She’s harboring a secret that could cost lives...

  * * *

  Coco Stanley is tired of living her life undercover. Or at least, with an assumed name, always pretending to be someone she’s not. And that’s not the only secret she’s harboring. If Wyatt discovers the real reason she left him, it might just destroy him. She’s resigned herself to loving him from afar...

  * * *

  But when he discovers she’s in danger...

  * * *

  Wyatt is horrified when he learns Coco has been shot and left in Russia, her fate unknown. There is nothing—nothing—that will stop him from finding her. So what if he’s not one of his super-heroic brothers, not a Ranger, not a SEAL...Wyatt is a hockey goalie, a special kind of crazy brave. Except, is he brave enough to face the secret Coco is keeping, or will it destroy everything he’s hoped for?

  * * *

  What will it cost them to save her?

  * * *

  What Wyatt and Coco don’t know is that revenge is stalking her and bringing her home just might cost them their long-awaited happy ending.

  * * *

  Continue the breath-taking Montana Marshalls series!

  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

  What happens next

  About RJ

  A Note from Susie May

  Also by Susan May Warren

  1

  Usually Wyatt, goalie for the Minnesota Blue Ox NHL team, could shrug off his mistakes. Ignore the horn blaring behind his ears, block out the cheering—and occasionally the gloating of the opposing players.

  Not today.

  Wyatt Marshall hadn’t come all the way to Russia only to fail.

  He glanced at the clock overhead, ignoring the sweat coating his body despite the cool breath of the arena, the slap of the puck at the other end of the rink.

  Because if he failed, his entire life could be over in twelve minutes and thirty-two seconds.

  He might be a little melodramatic, but it felt that way.

  Lives were at stake.

  No. One life.

  The life of the woman he couldn’t get out of his head.

  Especially since he’d made promises. To himself. And had, in fact, blurted out to his entire family that he would rescue Coco Stanley. I promise.

  He wasn’t going home without her.

  As long as he kept the Polish team from scoring, he bought himself more time in the Far Eastern town of Khabarovsk, where this international tournament was being held, to track down Coco and rescue her from a country trying to kill her.

  Maybe that was overstated. Not all of Russia was trying to kill Coco. And in fact, it might be only one very determined assassin by the name of Damien Gustov.

  Even that Wyatt wasn’t sure of.

  Just that the woman he loved had been shot.

  Left in Siberia.

  Hadn’t been heard from since.

  She’d even been absent from their messaging forum, the Paulies, an online club just for fans of the Minnesota Blue Ox. He knew that Kittycat1 was Coco, even if she never responded to his private messages. But she occasionally said something about his life before he joined the Blue Ox—something only Coco Stanley from Montana would know. At least she hadn’t complete deleted him from her life after the fiasco in Moscow two years ago. The one he’d like to rewrite. No, erase completely and start over.

  But first he had to get Coco out of the former Communist—now mafia-ridden—country. Which was why he’d finagled a way to get his team into Russia for this international tournament. Every game they won gave him one more day to search for her.

  He was close. Very close.

  Now, going into the third period, one score up, he had exactly twelve minutes and—oops, fourteen seconds—before he won this game and headed back to his hotel to meet a man named York.

  An American. A spy, according to his CIA-analyst sister.

  More importantly, York knew how to find Coco.

  Wyatt banged the pipes of the goal with his stick and settled down as the puck dropped at center ice.

  Now. Stay in the now.

  He settled himself in the center of the crease, eyes on the movement of the first line. He knew these guys so well, he could have almost predicted that after the drop, right wing Deke Stoner would get out of traffic and their center, Crawford, would shoot the puck out to him in the slot, where Deke would take it down for a quick shot on goal.

  The Polish goalie—Warkowski—had kicked it out, and one of their defensemen shot it down the ice.

  A wing on the Polish team—Lutz—wrangled it over the blue line, and now Wyatt stared him down, eyes on the puck.

  The key was to center himself on the puck, to stay loose and let his reflexes kick in. He’d practically lived in the crease since he was thirteen. It was his own private island, his eight-by-six-foot cage.

  It could choke him with the expectations.

  Turn him into a man he either loved or hated.

  The shot came hard, through traffic, and he dropped quick, his legs in a butterfly position, his pads flat against the ice, his arms in close.

  The puck bounced off his leg pads, and he slapped the rebound away with his stick.

  His defenseman, a rookie named Brummer, took it behind the net, and Wyatt caught his breath, his heart a hammer in his chest.

  Breathe. Stay cool.

  Except his hips were practically on fire, and shoot, but he should have iced down better after yesterday’s game.

  If he didn’t stay loose, Kalen would take over, and Wyatt would get bumped to the second line. Wyatt could nearly hear Jace Jacobsen, one of their coaches, in his ear. If you’re not 100 percent in, you can’t be at your best.

  Oh, he was all in.

  His body just didn’t want to agree.

  His head might not be in the game either, because even as the play went deep, back over the center line, into the Polish end of the ice, Wyatt’s brain went to Coco.

  To the words of his sister, Ruby Jane, six weeks ago when Wyatt had met her, of all places, on a billionaire’s yacht in the middle of the Caspian Sea. He’d never felt more in over his head than when he’d jumped on a plane with his former-Ranger brother, Tate, and flew over the Atlantic to the country of Azerbaijan to rescue their sister and a woman whose last spoken words to him were, We have to talk, Wyatt.

  It was a conversation they’d never had, even online.

  He’d gone cold when they tracked down Ruby Jane, nearly human trafficking prey on a Russian freighter and rescued her, only to hear her grim sit-rep. Coco’s been shot.

  Of course there was more—so much more. Namely the fact that RJ had barely escaped Russia with her life after being framed in an assassination attempt of a Ru
ssian general. Along the way, she’d met up with Coco, had dragged her into the chaos, and then left her in some remote hospital in Siberia, the KGB on her tail.

  No. FSB. It was hard to keep up.

  As Wyatt was trying to get his head around that, and more—namely that RJ was some sort of Jack Ryan CIA analyst—he also had to assimilate the fact that Coco was the daughter of said Russian general.

  A fact that she’d left out the entire time she was living in Montana. With his family. Probably for KGB-slash-FSB security reasons, but yeah, that was a Big Omission that now had her hiding.

  Somewhere in Russia.

  Because, you know, bad people wanted to kill the general. And Coco could too easily be a pawn in the Russian game of cat and mouse.

  He’d tried to contact her through their forum and gotten a shutout.

  And in the back of his head, as his defensemen chased the Poles down the ice, as Wyatt dropped to one knee and deflected a shot, kicking it away, he knew he was probably in over his head. Again.

  Another shot, and he caught it in his glove. Dropped it behind the net. Brummer brought it down the ice, passed off to Deke. Shouts from the audience—mostly Russian in this newly built sports complex—thundered through him as the clock ticked down. Eight minutes, twenty-four seconds.

  Wyatt heard Ford’s voice in his head. You don’t have a visa, you don’t speak Russian. You’re a hockey player, for cryin’ out loud.

  Ouch.

  Especially when superhero Ford the SEAL added, I nearly got RJ and Red killed, and I actually know what I’m doing.

  So Wyatt wasn’t a superhero. He wasn’t Tate or Ford or big brother Reuben, who jumped from airplanes to fight fires, or even Knox, who stared down bucking bulls.

  Wyatt merely stopped pucks flying 110 mph straight at his head.

  The Poles had the black and were slapping it down the ice, passing, playing with it. Another shot on goal, and Wyatt hit his knees, slamming them together. He felt the puck hit his chest, bounce down, and he clamped a glove over it.

  Around him, ice chipped into his face. The sounds of sticks on ice always reminded Wyatt of gunshots across the fields—a crazy comparison because he’d barely spent time hunting with his father. That was something Tate and Ford and probably Knox and Reuben had done.

  Wyatt had always been at practice. Or a game. Or on a trip for a tournament.

  But still, shots, sharp and bold, and the crowd was on their feet as he kicked out the puck to the refs for a new drop.

  The puck came out, and Brummer shot it down the ice to Deke, and Wyatt was back at the hotel last night, reading the email from his sister.

  York will meet you after the game in the lobby of the Intourist Hotel. He will connect you with Coco.

  Wyatt felt a little like he might be in a Jack Higgins novel, but he was game—

  The puck flew down the ice, along the boards, and he moved out of the crease into the corner to field it, slap it back to Brummer.

  The hit came hard and fast. One of the Poles, a wing maybe, checked him into the boards.

  Pain exploded through Wyatt’s body as his feet went out from him and he landed on his hip.

  And sure, he was wearing pads, but sometimes he hit just right—he bit back a word, and realized the wing had fallen with him.

  Maybe it was the frustration of the game, maybe the fact that his entire body turned to flame, but Wyatt rolled over and slammed his fist into the Pole’s helmet as he got up.

  He didn’t want a fight. Just a reminder.

  You didn’t check the goalie.

  Except it seemed that the Poles didn’t like his gentle reminder, and suddenly the benches erupted in a brawl. Brummer plowed into a nearby Polish player, and then Deke was there, and the entire second line poured off the bench, and Wyatt went down again.

  He lay like a freakin’ turtle, pushing off attackers, throwing his own punches, and for a second, he was thirteen again.

  Marshall—what are you doing?

  He started it!

  Whistles and shouts and the refs were pulling players away, but helmets spun on the ice, and guys were pulling off their jerseys, and the Russian roar of the crowd seemed to fan the flames.

  Wyatt rolled to his feet, only to have someone jump on him. His helmet and face mask went flying.

  And yeah, he’d had it, so he boxed the guy with his elbow, rolled, and added another punch. This one mattered because the guy’s helmet had also been kicked off, and then there was blood.

  Some of it his.

  His nose was bleeding, and his eye burned, getting fat, and shoot, they might not have anyone left to play after the penalties were assessed.

  The refs finally broke it up and hauled Brummer and Deke to the box, along with the Pole who’d boxed Wyatt.

  Which left the Blue Ox two men down and the Poles on a power play.

  Wyatt shoved cotton up his nose and took the net. He fielded twenty shots before one ricocheted in off his glove.

  Tie game with two minutes left, and Wyatt just tried to breathe.

  Goaltending is mental. You have to be able to handle your emotions.

  This from his juniors’ coach. Or maybe his uncle John. He couldn’t remember. But he hunkered down and tried to pry Coco from his brain as the last two minutes ticked down.

  He couldn’t help her if he was shipped out of the country.

  C’mon, Deke. Deke came over the wall, and dove in, swiping the puck and slapping a quick shot on goal. Warkowski stopped it, but Deke followed with another.

  Another save.

  It was times like this that Wyatt missed Max Sharpe. He’d played forward for Wyatt’s first two years, a champion sidelined by injury— and a cruel disease—just this past year.

  Max had a toughness about him that had rallied the entire team. Wyatt could nearly hear him off the bench. Thin the herd!

  A defender stole the puck and shot it to Lutz. He was still bleeding from the mouth a little, and Wyatt recognized him now.

  C’mon, sweetheart, try me.

  He stared down the guy, watching him handle the puck—nice moves—bringing it down the ice. Traffic tried to catch up to him, but no, it was just one-on-one, and Wyatt had his number.

  Lutz pulled back and bulleted a shot, mid-chest, stick-side.

  Wyatt shot out his glove across his body and nabbed it. Felt the puck hit his glove with a hot thud.

  Yeah. That’s right.

  He held up his glove, shooting a look at the clock. Five seconds—

  Behind him, the siren sounded.

  What—?

  He looked down, behind him.

  Went cold.

  The puck had fallen from his glove and bounced back into the goal.

  He stared at it as the crowd erupted, his heart hammering into his ribs.

  No.

  Brummer skated up and Wyatt looked at him.

  “Sorry, Guns.” Brummer clapped him hard on the shoulder pads.

  Skated away.

  On the other end of the ice, the Polish team was falling apart, sticks littering the ice, the celebrating practically unclothing them.

  His Blue Ox skated around, some of them heading back to the bench, a little bewildered, the others watching the Poles celebrate.

  Wyatt dropped his stick, his gloves, and took off his helmet. Then he pressed his hands to his face, bending over.

  Breathe.

  Tonight. He had to find Coco tonight.

  Because tomorrow, he was getting kicked out of Russia.

  Coco knew it would be dangerous to see Wyatt in the flesh.

  Her brain always went a little haywire when she watched Wyatt play hockey. She only had to get near his vortex for it to peel her heart away from her body and then she’d be running in a full-out sprint for the man she couldn’t forget.

  The man who’d forgotten her.

  Coco folded her arms against her parka, aware that she was probably overclothed, even if she was in an ice arena. The air held a tautness t
o it, the blades on the ice slicing the air, the shouts of the players echoing against the metal girders overhead. Flags of all the participating countries hung on the far end, and in the middle a scoreboard and screen displayed the dismal final score.

  On the ice, Wyatt was quietly losing it.

  She knew because, well, she knew him.

  She knew how hard he worked at not falling apart. At pretending he had everything together. At playing the role of an elite NHL goalie.

  What was he doing in Russia?

  She closed her hand around the USB drive in her pocket and tried not to imagine herself strangling York.

  When York said that his contact, Wyatt Marshall would be in Khabarovsk, that she should meet him at the Intourist Hotel to drop off the evidence that would clear RJ’s name, he should have clued her in on the fact that…

  Well, that…

  So maybe York didn’t know all the painful details of her colorful and heartbreaking past with Wyatt. But he did know she knew him.

  Or maybe York hadn’t been paying attention to that part, what with the bullets flying and escaping the FSB and fighting the mafia and…

  In truth, the man might have his brain focused on tracking down the assassin who killed his girlfriend.

  And who’d tried to kill General Boris Stanislov.

  Aka, Coco’s father, but no one really knew that.

  Except now for York and RJ.

  So much for lying low with her secrets in Russia.

  But Coco couldn’t leave, ever, which meant she had to get the information that could exonerate her foster sister, RJ, to York’s contact.