by Casey Hagen
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Epilogue
Text copyright ©2018 by the Author.
This work was made possible by a special license through the Kindle Worlds publishing program and has not necessarily been reviewed by Stoker Aces Production, LLC. All characters, scenes, events, plots and related elements appearing in the original Special Forces: Operation Alpha remain the exclusive copyrighted and/or trademarked property of Stoker Aces Production, LLC, or their affiliates or licensors.
For more information on Kindle Worlds: http://www.amazon.com/kindleworlds
Table of Contents
Shielding Nebraska
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Epilogue
Shielding Harlow
A Fierce Protectors Novella
Casey Hagen
Hagen Novels, LLC
KENNEBUNK, MAINE
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Dylan North, retired SEAL, finally found his stride after putting together the perfect team of private investigators and personal security agents available. His company, Fierce, allows him the ability to help civilians in precarious situations utilizing his SEAL skills, without having to traipse all over the globe for seemingly endless missions in hostile environments. Now, with no more excuses, he’s ready to devote effort to his personal life. At thirty-four, his parents and sister never fail to remind him that he’s lagging in the relationship and reproduction department. However, before he can figure out where to start with dating to find love rather than a roll in the hay, the woman he’s never managed to forget pops into his life, in desperate need of his help and harboring a secret so harsh it threatens to rock his world.
Harlow Cassidy gave up every dream she ever had to raise her daughter, Ashton. With years of hard work, she’s built a comfortable life for them both—until her brother’s criminal ways spill over into her world, threatening the security she’s built for her and her daughter. With time running out, she turns to the one man she can count on to do anything it takes to save her daughter, even it means ripping open his heart.
Secrets are revealed as two hearts are torn apart by fifteen years of deception and a burning flame that never died. In the most crucial mission Dylan will ever face, can he trust Harlow to do what it takes to not only save what she holds dear, but mend a union denied by a misguided sense of duty as well?
Chapter 1
Dylan North spun the Post-It note between his fingers and studied where the thin paper curled at the sticky edge. The number penned on the yellow paper glared at him like the beady eyes of a cobra.
It had been fifteen years since his encounter with Harlow Cassidy.
One hot night.
No strings.
Both heading for opposite ends of the earth.
He’d headed for The Great Lakes Naval Training Center the very next day to join the Navy, and she had boarded a plane and headed to Ghana to work in an orphanage for a year in the travel abroad program with the University of Southern California.
He never saw her again.
Other than in his every fantasy since, that is.
Consumed with memories he thought he’d easily forget, he’d searched for her face everywhere, and in every woman’s eyes over the years. Hell, he’d even looked for her in his missions with the SEALs. No amount of SEAL training could get that woman out of his head.
But now, with her number dancing between his fingertips, he hesitated. Isn’t this what he had wanted all this time? To see her silky, golden hair shining in the sun? To have those aquamarine eyes meet his one more time?
To finally have a chance to see if they were more than just a flash in the pan?
She had big plans to save the world, and she had every intention of rolling up her sleeves and changing it with her own two hands.
How did she find him? His personal protection and private investigation business wasn’t advertised. His clients came to him by word of mouth. They traveled in such different circles, even all those years ago; he couldn’t imagine their worlds colliding for anything more than that one random night.
And why now?
There was only one way to find out.
He slapped the slip of sticky paper on his desk and picked up the phone.
He listened to the ringing on the other end. As the fourth began he pulled the phone from his ear, ready to hang up. Normally he’d wait for voice mail, so he could leave a message. But part of him, as much as she had made an impression on him that he couldn’t shake, didn’t want the reality of Harlow now to ruin the fantasy he’d indulged in for the last fifteen years.
“Hello?” Her voice slid over him, so much the same with its smooth, melodic lilt. But also tinged with something else… something he often heard in the line of his work.
Fear.
“Harlow?” he said. He hadn’t said her name since that night and now, so many years later, it rode a wave of gritty wariness from his throat.
“Dylan?”
“Yes, I—”
“I need your help,” she interrupted.
He sat up straighter and scratched his jaw. “I’m listening.”
“They took my daughter. I need help getting her back. I have three days,” she said.
So, she had married and had a family. Of course, she had. After all, he was the one who insisted on no strings. At the time, he had every intention of becoming a SEAL—they had an astronomically bad success rate in relationships and marriage.
With the knowledge that she’d moved on, he resolved to bury all thoughts of their time together. Dylan was a lot of things, but he sure as hell didn’t poach another man’s woman.
He grabbed a legal pad and pen and prepared to get down to work. “Have you called the police yet?”
“No!” she cried out.
“Easy there, we’ll take care of—”
“No police. Promise me, Dylan.”
“Listen, if your daughter has been kidnapped, every second counts. The authorities can be working on their end while I work mine.”
“They made me promise. I have to give them what they want, and they’ll give her back.”
“I don’t like the sound of this, Harlow.”
“And you think I do? Look, I feel eyes on me. Meet me at Modica’s Deli on the corner of Linden and East Ocean in an hour.”
“Harlow—” he began, but before he could say another word the line had gone dead.
He glanced at his cell phone; he had an hour to get to Modica’s, and rush hour was almost over. He figured he had about twenty minutes to give Evan and Cole, two of his partners in Fierce, a heads up that they had a case coming in. He’d let them get in touch with Slyder, th
e newest member of the team, and see if he had the availability to jump in on this one.
He rounded his desk to head to the waiting area of their office, where Evan and Cole’s doors stood open. Their modest office space sat tucked between a coffee house and an attorney’s office. They’d opted to forgo signage, and instead relied on referrals and contacts from his old SEAL brothers with whom he’d served in one capacity or another in the past: Wolf, Hunter, Mozart, Benny, and Tex. They all still operated in the thick of it at times, taking on huge missions, but Dylan was over that shit.
He did his time cold, hungry, injured, in survival mode, to the point where he contemplated whether he really needed to risk a bullet or worse to do something as basic as take a piss.
He liked his assignments short and on domestic soil.
Most of the time they worked within the limits of the law… until the situation called for them to skirt rules and regulations all together. When that happened he reached out to his contacts, calling in favors in the form of cleaning up his messes. Not that it happened often, but a SEAL never went into a mission without considering every outcome and making sure he had the tools to handle the unexpected.
Well, unless the unexpected came in the form of a golden-haired, silky-skinned beauty who had rocked his world with her graceful curves and hunger to change the world.
A part of him hated the son of a bitch who’d managed to lure her into a forever arrangement.
He knocked on Evan’s door jamb, and then Cole’s. “I need a minute,” he said before he took to pacing in the modest waiting room.
The guys joined him and took their seats on separate black leather couches. “What’s up?” Evan asked.
Dylan stopped and dropped his hands to his hips. “We’ve got a case coming in. A kidnapping. I have to meet the client in just under an hour,” he said.
Evan and Cole both pulled out their cell phones and prepped to document the information. “When was the kidnapping?” Cole asked.
“I don’t know,” Dylan said.
“How old is the victim?” Evan asked.
“I don’t know,” Dylan said again.
Both men stopped what they were doing, and their gazes snapped up to his.
“How about you tell us what you do know,” Cole said, his eyebrow raised.
Heat crept up Dylan’s neck, and he knew without a doubt his skin was flushed. The telltale rush of blood prickling under the skin along his jaw was a sure sign.
Son of a bitch.
“The mother is Harlow Cassidy. Her daughter was kidnapped, and she needs help getting her back. She claims she has three days,” Dylan said.
“That’s it?” Cole asked.
“Yeah,” Dylan said.
“Three days until what?” Evan asked.
“I don’t know,” Dylan said with a frustrated sigh.
“Wow, I guess I should just jump right on that mountain of details you collected there, Dylan. Jesus. What do you expect me to do with just a name?” Cole asked.
Dylan rubbed the back of his neck and the knot that formed there almost instantly under Evan and Cole’s close scrutiny. “I know. Shit. She hung up before I could get any more information. I was stunned she even called after all this time, and I probably missed an opportunity to get more out of her, but then she said she felt eyes on her and she had to go,” Dylan rushed out while he paced once again.
“Wait, you know this woman?” Evan said.
“One night. We had one night fifteen years ago. I don’t know how she found out about me, about our company, but the one thing I do know is the sound of fear, and she had that in spades.”
“Whoa,” Cole said.
“Yeah, look. I’m going to meet her at Modica’s. I need one of you to start digging up information about Harlow. She’s thirty-three now. Traveled abroad to Ghana after high school. She’s from Long Beach. That’s all I know.”
“Well, other than the daughter thing. She married?” Evan said.
Dylan assumed so, but now that he thought about it he couldn’t know for sure. “I’d think so. That or divorced.”
It was possible, but he wouldn’t bank on it. Only an idiot would let Harlow go if he had any other choice.
“Doesn’t matter—find her and the rest of the details will come.” Dylan glanced at his phone. “Shit, I have to go. Cole, I need you to scope out the area while I meet her. Look for anyone who seems way too interested in what’s going on. Anything suspicious, get the details down for us to run later.”
“I’m on it,” Cole said as he stood and fished his keys out of his pocket.
“I’ll gather every detail I can and have it ready,” Evan said, his eyes cool as he shot a look at Cole.
“Something you want to say?” Dylan asked.
“Look, just do us all a favor and let us know if you get in over your head with this one. If you can’t stay impartial, it’s best to turn it over to one of us,” Evan said.
“No, there’s no way—”
“Yes,” Evan said. “We agreed and I’m holding you to it. I’m not going to try to take it from you, but I’m trusting you, man. If you’re in over your head, be honest.” He reached out a hand.
Dylan eyed him for a couple beats before he took a deep breath, forced his shoulders to relax, and shook Evan’s hand. “You have my word.”
“Good. Now, you two go get me something to work with while I start digging for this needle in a haystack.”
Cole clapped Dylan’s back. “Ready?” he asked before passing Dylan and sailing out the door.
Good fucking question.
***
Dylan rolled down East Ocean Avenue, his eyes constantly scanning his surroundings as he got closer to Modica’s. He pulled onto Linden Avenue and rolled into a space on the corner.
Glancing in his rearview he caught sight of Cole as he passed the deli, presumably to turn around and take a spot on the other side of East Ocean Avenue, which would give him the best view of the eatery and the side streets surrounding it.
Dylan searched for the blonde hair he so fondly remembered in the sea of people crowding the area. It was unseasonably warm for March, the temperature climbing into the eighties at the height of the day, which brought the locals out in droves to get some beach time.
It also meant more blonde heads to sift through.
If she even had the same hair color.
Dylan slid out of his Land Rover and headed down the sidewalk to the corner. He spotted Cole parked on the other side of the street, his window down, and his favorite Oakleys shielding his eyes. He gave Dylan a quick nod, letting him know he was situated.
Dylan nodded back and wrapped his hand around the door handle of Modica’s, took a deep breath, and headed inside.
The scent of Pastrami, rich pizza sauce, and fresh-baked bread wafted through the air, making his stomach rumble. He scanned the dining area, looking for Harlow’s face, wondering what she looked like after all these years.
Would he even recognize her now?
A family of four stood at the counter, placing an order to go. A cluster of beach-goers who looked to be in their teens or early twenties had pushed two tables together in the center of the dining area and laughed while scarfing down three pizzas lining the tables on metal stands. A couple families sat along the windows. A girl in a black hoodie stood with her back to the room, looking at the art on the walls.
There was no sign of her anywhere. He scanned again, his gaze roaming over the families, the mothers, but nothing. He turned back to watch the people approaching from the sidewalk but, again, nothing.
He clicked on his phone… she was five minutes late.
He froze. Something niggled at him.
The hoodie.
He spun back to the girl and narrowed his eyes. She stepped over and kept her gaze on the wall. The vent in the ceiling kicked up and a wisp of that golden hair blew out from under the hood.
He approached her, his gut churning, torn between the urgency of getting
the details of her daughter’s kidnapping and working the case, the worry that their meeting would taint his fond memories, and the excitement of seeing her again, even if he couldn’t have her.
He stood next to her, keeping his eyes on the wall. “Harlow,” he said, his voice gruff.
“Dylan,” she murmured. “Were you followed?”
“Only by one of the good guys. He’s out there watching the situation now.”
“One of the good guys?” she asked, her voice rising an octave and laced with confusion.
“You’re the one who called to hire me to find your daughter. You thought I worked alone?”
“I didn’t know this is what you did for work.”
He turned to her then, took her elbow, and spun her to face him. He glanced at the table next to them. Uncomfortable with the proximity, he led her to the empty high-top in the corner, several tables away from the rest of the diners.
Her face had barely changed. A few fine lines had cropped up here and there around her eyes and a couple around her kissable, soft mouth and, as much as she probably hated the signs of age on her face, he found them charming.
She had lived life, seen amazing parts of the world most likely, and had a child or children. No doubt, had they tried to make a relationship work, she might not have done any of those things and the lines around her face would have held an edge of sorrow and regret.
Those piercing eyes of hers, clear aquamarine as if they were carved from the purest of gemstones, roamed over him. A hint of a smile twitched at the corners of her mouth, but quickly disappeared on a wave of anguish that had her fair skin turning translucent and her eyes reflecting pain.
“I don’t get it. If you didn’t know I did this for a living, why did you call me? And at my office no less.”
She kneaded her hands on the table and blew out a breath. “Because you’re her father.”
Chapter 2
Harlow didn’t turn away from Dylan’s hard, angry glare. Oh, she wanted to shy away from the train wreck she’d created as Dylan’s stare went from concern, to shock, and finally to anger. She clasped her hands to keep them from shaking.
