Scott’s gaze met hers. “My goal is to make you that happy every day of your life.”
She kissed him over and over, lapping at his soft lips until he groaned and held her tighter. “I love you,” she whispered, her body in free fall.
“I love you too.”
“Goal achieved.”
Thank you for reading BLINDSIDED! I hope you enjoyed the adventure with Scott and Valerie.
Are you ready for Kurt Steele to finally meet his match? Then don’t miss the next book in the Men of Steele series, RUNNING BLIND. I think you’ll love watching this wounded warrior get a second chance at a love with kick-ass charter pilot Caitlyn Brevard when he reluctantly agrees to pose as her fiancé to help rescue her sister.
One-click RUNNING BLIND Now
Find out more about Gwen’s books on her website (gwenhernandez.com)
Hard Target
by Pamela Clare
Hard Target
A Cobra Elite novel
A life debt…
Derek Tower has spent his life at war, first as a Green Beret and then as the owner of a private military company, Cobra International Security. When a high-ranking US senator asks Cobra to protect his daughter, a midwife volunteering in Afghanistan, Derek’s gut tells him to turn the senator down. The last thing he wants to do is babysit an aid worker. But Jenna isn’t just another assignment. She’s also the younger sister of his best friend, the man who died taking bullets meant for him. There’s no way Derek can refuse.
An inescapable attraction…
Jenna Hamilton doesn’t need a bodyguard, especially not one hired by her intrusive and controlling father. She knew the risks when she signed on to work in rural Afghanistan, and the hospital already has armed security. She also doesn’t need the distraction of a big, brooding operative skulking about, even if he is her late brother’s best friend—and sexy as hell. As far as she’s concerned, he can pack up his Humvee and drive into the sunset. And, no, nothing her hormones have to say about him will change her mind.
A merciless enemy…
From the moment his boots hit the ground in Afghanistan, Derek does his best to win Jenna over, posing as her brother so the two of them can spend time alone. Except that what he feels for her is anything but brotherly. Stolen moments lead to secret kisses—and an undeniable sexual attraction that shakes them both to the core. But events have been set into motion that they cannot escape. When a ruthless warlord sets his sights on Jenna, Derek will do whatever it takes to keep her safe, even if it costs him his heart—or his life.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Description
Author’s Note
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 Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Epilogue
Want More?
Author’s Note
It’s tricky these days to write about real subject matter. The moment you delve into any substantive topic as an author, you risk offending someone. This book is not a political statement. It’s a story drawn from the real world about one woman’s attempt to ameliorate the suffering of other women half a world away.
I was in the middle of the story when a man with evil in his heart gunned down Muslims at prayer in New Zealand. Like all decent people around the world, I was horrified by this. I attended an interfaith prayer service at our local mosque together with Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and other Christians. The prayer room was packed with people who had come to tell our Muslim neighbors that they are welcome here and that we sympathize with their terrible loss.
It was an amazing experience—more than a thousand people of all faiths praying to God for forgiveness and mercy and vowing to support one another and protect one another from violence and bigotry. Ministers and rabbis shared the microphone with an imam and other Muslim speakers. I was moved to tears as a nephew of one of the men slain in New Zealand spoke of his uncle’s final heroic moments, trying to save others.
One Muslim man spoke eloquently to the tendency of human beings to conflate the actions of extremists with the groups to which they claim to belong.
I have tried not to do that in this story. I’ve made a sincere effort to differentiate between Islam as a world religion and the violent extremism of the Taliban and Daesh/IS. It is not my intention to vilify or misrepresent any group of people or to offend my Muslim readers. I wanted to share just a tiny bit of the tragedy of Afghanistan, a once-thriving nation that has been hurled backward by four decades of brutality and warfare, by focusing on the desperate plight of Afghan women.
Back in 2004 when Jennifer Braun, who inspired this story, began her effort to set up a midwifery school and hospital in Bamyan, Afghanistan had a stillbirth/neonatal mortality rate of roughly one in six. That’s almost unfathomable. Imagine coming from catching babies in the U.S., where stillbirths are rare, to Afghanistan, where they’re a daily occurrence, even at a small rural clinic. I saw a photo of four newly stillborn babies, lying in a row with little handmade string-and-paper tags on their tiny ankles.
It broke my heart.
Though things have improved and Afghanistan is making heroic efforts to improve women’s access to healthcare, most Afghan women still give birth without skilled attendants outside a hospital. Many never receive prenatal care. As a result, Afghan women currently face a one-in-eight lifetime risk of dying from pregnancy- and childbirth-related causes.
One in eight.
That’s the same risk women in the U.S. face when it comes to breast cancer.
But this isn’t a National Geographic article. It’s a love story about a man who has been a part of the war there for most of his adult life and a woman desperate to make change. I hope you enjoy their story.
Peace,
Pamela Clare
April 14, 2019
Chapter One
November 10
Derek Tower strode down the hallway toward Conference Room One, a mug of black coffee in hand, his reflection moving with him along walls of burnished steel. A woman’s silky laughter told him that Holly and Nick Andris were already there. A husband-and-wife team—and two of Cobra’s best operatives—they had just returned from a covert job in Colombia and were here for a debriefing.
This needed to be quick. Derek had a flight to catch.
He was due in Istanbul tomorrow morning. A Cobra operative had infiltrated a ring of IS recruiters, and tomorrow they were going to take that ring down. It was the kind of covert work Cobra did well, the kind that involved perfect coordination, flawless execution, and complete secrecy.
Derek entered the conference room, its glass walls soundproof and equipped with built-in blinds that were already closed. “Morning.”
Andris dragged his gaze off his wife. “Morning.”
“Hey, Derek.” Holly’s lips curved in a smile that turned men into idiots.
Naturally platinum blond with big brown eyes and lethal curves, she could have been a movie star. Instead, she’d put her brains and good looks to work for the CIA, gathering intel through intimate contact with men—and occasionally women—who were deemed a danger to the United States. When she’d been exposed and almost killed, Derek and Javier Corbray, Derek’s business partner, had offered her a job. They’d also taken on Andris, a former Delta Force operator who’d worked as muscle for the CIA.
As far as Derek was concerned, Holly was Cobra’s most valuable asset. Anyone could
be trained to point a gun and shoot, but not many could gather intel while being groped by a drug kingpin, terrorist organizer, or foreign assassin.
“You got him. Good work. How was your flight?” Derek sat and punched a button on the control panel that would turn on the view screen and bring Corbray into their meeting from Washington, D.C.
Andris shared a look with his wife. “We slept most of the way.”
Right.
The two of them were crazy in love. They’d once been caught on camera fucking on the table in Conference Room Two. Derek didn’t understand love, but he understood lust. He would bet his ass they hadn’t slept at all. “Corbray, you there?”
“Great job.” Javier Corbray’s grinning face appeared on the screen.
Corbray, a former Navy SEAL, had worked with Derek to put this company together, lifting Derek from the ashes of his private security firm—Tower Global Security, which had been forced into bankruptcy. Corbray spent a lot of time in D.C., where his wife, Laura Nilsson, worked as a television journalist.
That was fine with Derek. He didn’t miss dealing with the suits in Congress.
Derek glanced at his watch. “I need to get to the airport, so let’s do this.”
Corbray went first. “I had a message from the Attorney General in my inbox this morning. She is elated to have this asshole in custody.”
The asshole in this instance was Christopher David Hansen, a former Coast Guard officer who’d been using his position to help a Colombian cartel run cocaine into San Diego. When he’d realized the DEA was onto him, he’d fled to Colombia and tried to hide in the jungle. The DEA hadn’t been able to get near him. There were too many leaks, too many eyes along the roads, too many people ready to tip off the cartel bosses the moment any gringo asked about him.
But the DEA’s intel had revealed that Hansen liked to beat up hookers and left his lair a few times a month in search of prey. That’s when they had given Cobra a call.
Andris slid his written report across the table. “Based on the intel we received, we set up our operation outside Characa. There’s a little cantina in town where he likes to drink and pick up working girls.”
Holly told them how she’d driven to the outskirts of town, alone but wearing a mic, while Andris and his team had placed themselves strategically out of sight. She’d walked into the cantina pretending to be a tourist whose boyfriend had ditched her and whose car had broken down.
“When no one spoke English, I started crying and asked for a drink and then another. I pretended to get wasted. He sat in the corner with one of the girls, watching. I did a little drunk dancing, and eventually, he took the bait.”
“Of course, he did,” Derek said.
Helpless, drunk, and drop-dead gorgeous—an irresistible combination for a predator like Hansen.
Holly told them how she’d tagged Hansen with a micro GPS transmitter during a hug just in case he didn’t try to pick her up. But then the bastard had offered to let her stay at his place and send a tow truck for her car. She had feigned gratitude, let him buy her another drink, and left the cantina with him—and his two armed sicarios.
Derek had worried about this part of the plan. It had been risky as hell for her to be alone with that fucker and his trained killers.
Then again, Holly was a pro, and managing risk was part of the job.
“He stopped a few miles down the road and had his men take away my phone and passport—for safekeeping, he said.”
“Safekeeping.” Corbray’s tone was sharp with sarcasm. “What a hero.”
If Holly had been an ordinary tourist, her life would have ended that day. Hansen would have destroyed the phone, taken his time raping and beating her, and then blown her head off and tossed her body in a marsh.
Holly finished her part of the story. “He told his guys to get out of the vehicle because he and I were going to have some fun. I waited till his pants were down and then threw up on him. He slapped me, but he lost his erection.”
Andris’ jaw tightened, his expression hard. “The target stepped out of the vehicle to clean himself up and still had his pants around his ankles when we moved on him. We eliminated the two bodyguards, bagged Hansen, shoved him into the back of our vehicle, and headed straight for the airport. It took less than two minutes. I might or might not have punched him square in the face.”
Hansen was lucky Andris hadn’t gelded him on the spot.
“Did you run into any—” Derek was cut off by the persistent buzzing of his cell phone. He glanced at the display. Fuck. “I need to take this.”
“Istanbul?” Corbray asked.
Derek shook his head, got to his feet. “Senator Hamilton.”
Corbray grimaced. “What the fuck does he want?”
“I’m about to find out.”
* * *
Derek bit back a burst of laughter. “You want me to fly into Afghanistan with a team and abduct your daughter? I can’t do that, sir. It’s illegal.”
What a crazy son of a bitch.
“I don’t give a goddamn what’s legal!” Hamilton shouted into his ear. “Jenna won’t listen to reason. She has no business being there. The Taliban kill midwives.”
It was the truth. Talibs deliberately targeted midwives. When they’d attacked the town of Ghazni last summer, they’d made their way to a midwifery school in the city and put a round through a midwife’s head while the student midwives hid in a safe room. They claimed that midwives were violating the rules of Islam by giving women contraception, even though Islam permitted the use of contraception.
The truth was more straightforward than that. Nothing frightened Talibs more than an educated woman. But that wasn’t the issue here.
“Cobra cannot use force to bring a U.S. citizen back to the country without a warrant and the orders of DOJ.”
“Don’t forget what you owe my family.” Hamilton’s voice turned cold. “My son died for you. He—”
Derek knew what Jimmy had done for him, but no way was he putting up with this guilt trip. “Nothing changes the fact that I cannot kidnap a U.S. citizen. Once she’s here, what happens then? After she sues Cobra and wins, she’s free to fly back to Afghanistan—unless you’re willing to lock her up.”
“I would do no such thing.”
Derek wasn’t so sure.
Before Jimmy had joined the Army, his old man had tried to control every aspect of his life—how he wore his hair, where he went to college, the classes he took, the girls he dated, his choice of career, even his diet. If Jenna had gotten the same treatment as her brother, she’d no doubt left the country to get away from her asshole father.
For a moment, Senator Hamilton was silent. When he spoke again, there was an oily tone to his voice. “Jenna is my only living child. Grab your gear, get on a fucking plane, and talk her into coming home.”
“You want me to act as her bodyguard?”
“Jenna is wasting her potential over there. I didn’t raise her and send her to the best schools so that she could help poor people overpopulate the world with kids they can’t feed. She needs to come home, find a husband, and stop trying to fix that place.”
Could the man be any more of an asshole?
Derek knew what it was to be poor. The orphan son of a teen mom who’d overdosed on heroin, he’d been found in an alley and had grown up with nothing, moving from foster home to foster home, being raised by drunks and losers who liked the extra money from the state but didn’t give a damn about him.
“Where is she?”
“At a clinic in a rural area outside of Mazar-e-Sharif.”
Balkh Province.
It was one of the safer parts of Afghanistan. The Taliban controlled about forty-five percent of the country at the moment, but Balkh Province was under the protection of a wealthy warlord-turned-politician who hated Talibs even more than he hated the U.S. As the attack on Ghazni had proven, however, no city was truly safe.
But there were other forces at work in Afghanistan be
sides the Taliban. There were also militias, uncontrolled bands of armed men who roamed the rural parts of the country and thought nothing of inflicting suffering on the civilian population. IS fighters were there, too, hiding out, smuggling supplies, and killing and raping at will.
“Doesn’t she have local muscle guarding the hospital?”
“Yes, yes. She’s got Afghan guards with American weapons, but I don’t trust them. How much do you think it would take for someone to bribe them? What if one of them tells his Talib cousin about the American midwife?”
Okay, so the senator had a point. Still, it wasn’t a simple thing to fly into Afghanistan with weapons and ammo and set up a babysitting operation.
“My presence there could provoke an attack on the hospital.” Did Hamilton not understand this? “By sending me, you could bring about the crisis you hope to avert.”
The local militias and likely the Taliban, too, would know that some American military guy was hanging out around the hospital before Derek’s boots hit the dirt, and that might prove irresistible to someone looking to put another notch in his AK-47.
“I thought you special operators were the best. I thought you could go anywhere unseen, change how you look, disappear into the local population.”
Derek was about to explain that there was a world of difference between a covert military operation and driving up to a hospital in an armored vehicle and standing guard in broad daylight, but Hamilton cut him off.
“If you don’t get your ass on a plane tonight and do your best to bring Jenna home, I will ruin Cobra. I’ll make sure the company is never tasked with a government assignment again.”
It wasn’t an idle threat. Hamilton sat on the Armed Services Committee. Cobra could probably survive without his support, but he could make life rough for a while, especially given the demise of Derek’s company.
Derek’s reputation in the private military field had been rock solid—until the day al-Qaeda had used a new kind of cell phone hack to get the jump on his men, killing his team and kidnapping Laura Nilsson, Corbray’s wife. The attack had happened live during one of Laura’s news broadcasts. Millions had watched terrorists gun down his men and carry Laura, screaming, from the room. The resulting backlash had driven his company into bankruptcy.
Dangerous To Love Page 233
