by Kaylea Cross
Brody might not understand, but she had to do this. She needed to.
Holding Megan’s image in her mind, she strode for the elevator.
Hold on, Megan. I’m coming for you.
Chapter One
So this was what freedom tasted like.
Megan had imagined it for so long, had told herself it would never be as good as she envisioned it. And she’d been right.
It was better.
Perched high in the stirrups, she leaned forward in the saddle over the horse’s neck. She maintained the pressure of her knees against its sides as they galloped along the winding path that cut through the gentle, rolling hills of some of the most gorgeous countryside in England.
Warm summer sunshine filtered through the green canopy of leaves above her, dappling the worn, earthen path with shadow and light. The fresh scent of green, growing things filled her nose, mixing with the sweet, dusty scent of the horse. A gorgeous morning to spend any way she wanted to.
Out here she didn’t have to constantly look over her shoulder, and there was no warning tingle at the back of her neck. Out here there was nothing but two-hundred acres of rolling countryside…and hidden targets to hit.
Her friend Marcus had been out hours earlier, still up before dawn every day despite having been medically retired from the military for the past two years. As was his custom he’d moved the targets around on the course, to test her. She’d found his note on the kitchen table this morning.
Let’s see how you do this time, hotshot.
Megan had never been able to pass up a challenge. One of her many flaws. Here, however, none of her flaws could harm her.
Excitement pumped through her veins at the coming challenge but she automatically quelled it, letting the calm take over as it always did when she was about to fire on a target.
Except these days she shot plywood and straw rather than bad people.
The bay gelding raced along, neck outstretched, enjoying the chance to stretch his legs. He would stay on this path unless Megan turned him, his gait smooth and familiar.
As the scenery flew past, Megan spotted a target set off to the right in the distance, tucked up into the spreading branches of an ancient oak. Balancing her weight on the balls of her feet, she lowered the reins and reached back with her right hand for an arrow from the quiver on her back. She raised the bow in her left hand, knocked the arrow with her right and drew it back until her fingers touched her jaw, her gaze riveted on the target.
Her heart rate slowed. Beating in between the rhythmic thud of the gelding’s hooves on the hard-packed earth. She counted down the seconds along with the calculated distance. Thirty yards. Twenty.
She let her breath out slowly, just as she’d been trained to do when firing a rifle.
Ten yards.
Her body poised motionless to counteract the horse’s gait, Megan loosed the arrow. It sailed through the warm, clear air, striking the edge of the red center bull’s eye.
One down.
Immediately she took up the reins and searched for her next target. Marcus had made it nearly impossible to spot them, the sneaky bastard. God, she loved that about him. How he constantly challenged and supported her, keeping her sharp in case her past caught up with her and she had to go off grid at any moment.
Eighteen targets and arrows later, the test was over. She shifted her weight back into the saddle and drew back on the reins a bit, slowing the gelding to an easy canter.
In the distance up ahead, a familiar figure stood leaning against the old stone wall that marked the end of the course, a brown-and-white Anatolian Shepherd beside him. He straightened as she approached, picking up his cane from the wall to steady himself with it.
“Ay up,” she called out.
“Ay up.” He glanced at his watch, lifted a taunting, dark eyebrow that pulled at the scars on the left side of his face. “Bit slow today, weren’t you?” he asked in his endearing Yorkshire accent. He sounded just like Sean Bean. Short vowels, aitches missing from the start of words, and tees dropped all over the place.
“Nope. And I hit every one of your targets,” she added with a smug grin.
The corners of his lips twitched in the hint of a smile. After what he’d been through, smiles from Marcus were a rare thing indeed. “Aye? Did you, now.” He planted his cane, leaned some of his weight onto it to take the strain off his left leg. The dog, Karas, leaned into him, instinctively bracing him. “’ow many were there?”
“Eighteen.”
He shook his dark head. “Nineteen.”
What? She’d missed one? She stared at him, dismayed, and automatically blurted, “No there wasn’t.”
The tiny quirk of his lips told her he’d been teasing.
She relaxed and shot him a narrow-eyed look. Jerk. She stopped the horse, reached down to pat his neck. “You’re such a good boy, Rollo. So smooth and fast.” Straightening, she focused on Marcus, the person she trusted most in the world.
Theirs was an unlikely friendship. At nearly forty-five he was twelve years her senior, and a reclusive bachelor. He’d served with the Royal Marines, then gone on to spend the majority of his career in the SAS before retiring on medical grounds.
She’d never been in the military. But thanks to her training she had a whole arsenal of skills and could kick serious ass.
Marcus was a quiet, serious bookworm who rarely left the house. She craved action, thrived on challenge, hated being cooped up, and preferred to be outside.
He liked Victorian poetry and classic movies. She liked action flicks and rock music, the more electric guitar the better.
Yet somehow, they clicked. Because they had more in common than anyone might guess. Their shared history had forged an unbreakable bond, so strong that when her life had been in danger and she was forced to go to ground almost two months ago, he’d risked his own neck by having her come here to stay with him in spite of the danger.
“So, what brings you all the way out here in the middle of the day? And don’t say it was to time me,” she added.
His dark-chocolate gaze was level, his expression giving nothing away. It still startled her sometimes, how hard he was to read. Even for her, a master at reading people while hiding her thoughts and emotions, he was an enigma. “We’ve got guests coming.”
She frowned. Was he teasing again? She couldn’t tell. “What kind of guests?”
“The last-minute kind.”
She didn’t like the sound of that. They never had visitors. Other than the occasional curious townsperson or lost tourist, no one ventured out here onto his land except the handful of loyal employees he kept, let alone near the main house. “Who is it?”
“Don’t know them. But the woman knows you. And I already checked them out with a contact.” His gaze was level. “Woman gave ‘er name as Trinity Durant. Says she’s with the NSA. Ring a bell?”
NSA? Honed from a lonely, frightening childhood and refined to a razor-sharp edge over her lifetime, her internal alarm began to blare. But there was no way Marcus would ever endanger her safety, or allow anyone onto the property if they posed a threat. He didn’t seem concerned, so she relaxed a fraction. “No. How long do I have?”
He nodded at Rollo. “Just enough time t’ get him back to the stable and brush him down.”
More curious than worried, she nodded once. “Race you.” She wheeled the gelding around and urged him into a flat-out gallop. When she glanced over her shoulder a moment later, Marcus was almost to his old Land Rover, Karas scampering behind him, white tail wagging.
While Marcus took the private road back, Megan chose another riding path she’d fallen in love with during her time here. She slowed Rollo for the final mile to let him cool down.
At the top of the next hill Megan drew in a deep breath and took a moment to admire the view, every bit as stunning as it had been the first time she’d seen it. The gentle Cotswold hills rolled out around her for miles in every direction like a green patchwork quilt.
Nestle
d between two of them in a small valley stood Laidlaw Hall. Built of the famous honey-toned Cotswold limestone in the early seventeenth century, the grand three-story manor house all but glowed in the morning sunlight.
Marcus’s dark green Rover was already parked out front in the circular driveway, and the mystery guests he’d been so evasive about hadn’t arrived yet. She rode south of the main house and cut across the field to the stable. Marcus employed a small staff that included a stableman but they had to keep to strict schedules to protect her and Marcus’s privacy, so she untacked and groomed Rollo by herself, then let him out into the paddock.
Pea gravel crunched under her riding boots as Megan walked through the formal garden and into the back entrance of the main house. The fresh, tangy scent of lemon oil greeted her, along with the sudden quiet, broken only by the ticking of the grandfather clock in the downstairs hall.
She let the sweet silence envelop her. Let it wrap around her with its comforting embrace. Quiet had been rare in her life. So had friendship and loyalty, and a bond with someone she could count on no matter what. Here, she had all of them.
Because of Marcus.
“We’re back here,” he called out from the direction of the library.
We? Frowning, she set her riding helmet and crop onto an occasional table in the hallway and started for the library, a telltale prickle of dread needling the base of her neck. With every step on the worn stone pavers, her senses became more acute, her body on alert.
The sweet smell of leather bindings and old paper hit her as she entered the open, carved mahogany doorway. A jolt of shock rippled through her when she saw the woman seated in the leather club chair beside the empty fireplace.
More than pretty. Verging on stunning. A bit older than Megan, maybe in her mid-to-late thirties. Fair skin. Shoulder-length black hair. Killer curves. An air of confidence so strong it was palpable. And deep blue eyes that saw right through her.
Megan stopped one step into the room, heart thudding as she stared at their guest. It bothered her that she hadn’t realized anyone else was in the house. That she’d missed the signs. Because in her world, that kind of carelessness could get her killed.
The woman hadn’t said anything, hadn’t even moved, and yet Megan intuitively sensed she was in the presence of a lethal predator. Her subconscious recognized it, the truth of it humming inside her like the high frequency vibration of a tuning fork.
“Hello, Megan,” the woman said softly. American. No hint of a regional accent that might give Megan a clue to where she was from.
Her unease went up another notch. She didn’t move, holding that penetrating stare. “Who are you?” An operator. That much Megan was sure of.
“Trinity Durant.”
The name still meant nothing to her, and her near photographic memory ensured she’d never seen that face before. “What do you want?” Why the hell had Marcus allowed her to come here?
“To talk to you. Alone.”
Not happening. “Anything you have to say, you can say in front of him,” she answered, nodding at Marcus without breaking eye contact with the woman. “Now. How do you know my name, and how the hell did you find me?”
Trinity didn’t even blink. “That’s a long story I’m looking forward to telling you soon. Suffice it to say, it wasn’t easy. And as for the second part, I guess you could say I’ve got friends in high places.”
High? Try highest in the intelligence world. Megan had gone off the grid a while ago. No one should have been able to find her. “I’m not going to ask again.”
The woman’s calm expression never changed, her body language gave nothing away. Not even a flicker of reaction in her eyes. “What I have to say is top secret. I’d rather have this conversation in private.”
“Either Marcus hears it now, or I tell him later. I have no secrets from him.” Behind his desk, Marcus leaned back in his chair with his hands linked across his stomach, his expression almost amused. Karas was curled up on her bed beside his desk.
He was enjoying this. Watching this bizarre scene unfold in his inner sanctum. Because he knew exactly what was happening, even if Megan didn’t yet.
Trinity’s eyebrows went up slightly at her response, the first hint of a reaction so far. “Really? Well, that’s good to know,” she murmured, her gaze far too penetrating. Too knowing. As if she could see inside Megan.
Megan folded her arms, raised her chin. “Well?”
Those sharp, deep blue eyes held hers for a long moment. “Your sisters are under attack. I need you to help me identify and locate the rest of them before they all wind up dead.”
A sliver of cold threaded up her spine. “I don’t have any sisters.”
“Not by blood, maybe.” Trinity uncrossed her shapely legs and stood, all lethal elegance and pinup curves, holding Megan’s gaze the entire time. Without looking away she reached down to simultaneously pull up the side of her cherry-red top with one hand and eased the waistband of her jeans down with the other.
Stunned, Megan masked her disbelief at the small, all too familiar tat on the woman’s left hip.
She flicked her eyes up to Trinity’s, struggling to contain her shock. “Who are you?” she whispered, her heart thrumming in her throat.
Trinity concealed the tat once more, her expression unreadable. “A friend.”
“I don’t have friends.” Except for Marcus, who she trusted with her life. She would do literally anything for him, including kill if necessary. Just as he would do the same for her.
“All right, then, consider me an ally in this war against our kind,” Trinity said.
Our kind…
Megan’s mind raced. It was astonishing to have another Valkyrie standing in front of her. Trinity was older than her, and therefore more experienced. For her to still be alive meant she was one of the deadliest and most skilled women on earth. And based on her physical appearance, Megan could already guess what Valkyrie category the woman fell into.
A seductress. An operative who killed her targets up close and personal—as up close as two people could get. “What did you mean, ‘before they wind up dead’?”
“We’re being hunted. Methodically. Surgically, taken out one by one. We need to find the others and bring them in to stop the bleeding.”
More cold spread through her. “Who’s hunting us?”
“We don’t know. Until recently we thought the Valkyrie Program had been shut down a long time ago. We didn’t know there were others out there, like you.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” Megan asked.
“My team. You’ll meet some of them soon.”
She had to have some idea of who was hunting them, or she wouldn’t be here. “Who else is with you?” Megan demanded, impatient to know what was really going on here.
“Your new partner.”
Her eyes widened, partly in shock and partly in outrage. She let out a humorless laugh. “My what?”
Before Trinity could answer, the pit of Megan’s stomach tingled in silent warning.
Quiet footsteps behind her on the old stone pavers made her whip around. Her spine jerked taut, all her muscles grabbing as the man’s silhouette blocked the light filtering in from the windows at the front of the house.
Tall. Broad-shouldered. Powerfully built.
He came closer, his steps measured and purposeful, and she could feel the energy flowing from him. Patient. Focused.
The breath strangled in her lungs when he stepped into a beam of sunlight and his face came into view.
Chiseled features. Strong jaw. Light brown hair cut short. Slate blue eyes that missed nothing. Eyes she had never forgotten.
No. No, it can’t be.
That familiar gaze wandered over her face for a long moment, almost in a kind of wonder. Then one side of that sexy mouth tipped upward and his deep, smooth voice rolled over her. “Hey, dimples. It’s been a long time.”
Chapter Two
Ty Bergstrom thought he’d been prepared to se
e her again. But the shock that ran through him told him otherwise. And judging by the surprise on her face, the sight of him was just as jarring for her.
He stood his ground, enjoying the disbelief in her hazel eyes. Those eyes were exactly the same as he remembered, intense and intelligent, framed by dark lashes.
The rest of her looked good too. Even better than the intriguing twenty-one-year-old he remembered. Her chestnut-brown hair was long now, falling past her shoulders in thick waves. Even though she’d filled out some too since he’d last seen her, her appearance still made her seem intensely feminine. Harmless.
He knew firsthand exactly how deceptive that last bit was. And from what he’d learned over the past week, the people she’d targeted over the years had no doubt learned that too late, and the hard way.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded, her posture rigid. Defensive.
He didn’t blame her. They hadn’t met under the most ideal circumstances all those years ago. And back then he hadn’t understood what was really happening. “I was asked to help out an old acquaintance.”
She studied him, mistrust clear in her eyes as her gaze bored into him. “An acquaintance? I barely knew you, and it’s been over twelve years.”
He inclined his head. She’d been twenty-one and he’d been a cocky twenty-five-year-old Army Ranger who thought he was The Shit. Looking back, the old him should have been embarrassed by all that he hadn’t known. “I know.” But he’d never forgotten her. Because forgetting someone like her was impossible, even when he hadn’t known what she was.
A weapon. A deadly, secret weapon trained by the government, housed in a deceptively harmless-looking package.
“Meg. Come sit down and listen to what they ‘ave to say,” their host said in his northern English accent from behind the massive mahogany desk in a room that like the rest of this place, looked like it had come straight out of Downton Abbey. Marcus Laidlaw, combat wounded SAS veteran in his mid-forties, now lord of the manor. Ty wasn’t sure how the guy fit into all this yet, but he was going to find out.
