Cold Light of Day

by Anderson, Toni

  “No.” His eyes shot between her and Josef. “They are scared that if the snow leopards are dead, you will blame them and they will lose their clinic.”

  The Trust not only had an anti-poaching scheme, they also vaccinated local livestock once a year against common diseases, gratis. The program promoted healthier livestock and reduced the losses herders suffered to sickness, which in turn compensated for the occasional snow leopard kill. So far the scheme was working, except now they had two missing, possibly dead leopards and two tiny cubs unaccounted for.

  The weight of responsibility sat like an elephant on her chest.

  “Josef, run over and reassure them while Anji and I finish loading.” She held his gaze when he looked like he’d argue. The village elders sometimes struggled to deal with a woman. She didn’t mind because she loathed politics. “Be quick. We don’t have time for tea—you’ll have to make your excuses.”

  It wasn’t how things were done here and she didn’t want to offend these people, but the survival of a species trumped social niceties today. Ten more minutes and they were finished packing. Anji tied the spare gasoline canisters onto the roof and made sure both big gas tanks were full. They honked and Josef jogged over and jumped into the van.

  “Everything be okay.” Lines creased Anji’s leathery skin. “Inshallah.”

  God willing, indeed.

  She and Josef exchanged a look as Anji gunned the engine over the rough road marked only by a line of pale stones. Dust flew, stirred up by the tires, the land still soft from the thaw. They bounced over rivers, ruts and alluvial fans. Axelle craned her neck to stare at the imposing mountains.

  “If the collars are working”—Josef spoke from the backseat—“there could be some crackpot in these hills picking off critically endangered animals for money. Anyone that desperate isn’t going to care if a couple of foreigners end up as collateral damage.”

  They’d left some weapons with their other belongings last fall. Her father had insisted she have some sort of protection when he’d heard she was conducting her research in Afghanistan. Now she was grateful.

  She glanced at Josef sharply. “Do you want to go home?”

  “I’m just saying this could be dangerous.” His hands gripped the back of the seat as they bounced over a rickety bridge.

  “If you want to go back you should say so now. The pilot can fly you out in the morning.” She kept her voice soft. They were almost the same age but he was her responsibility and she had no right to place him in danger. “I don’t want you thinking you don’t have a choice. I can handle this.” He had a life. He had a future. She only had her passion for saving things that needed saving.

  “Ya, I run away and leave you alone in the wilderness.” Josef sat back and crossed his arms, muttering angrily.

  She held back an instinctive retort. She didn’t care about being alone in the wilderness, but with this amount of ground to cover, she needed all the help she could get. “I have Anji,” she said instead. “We can get more men from the village.”

  The Wakhi man grinned a gap-toothed smile, his eyes dancing. After generations of war and decades of being ignored by the government in Kabul, a few missing teeth were the least of anyone’s problems. A few dead leopards might not rank high in the concerns of government either, not with the resurgence of the Taliban, not with the constant threat of assassination, insurgents and death.

  “If we find sign of a poacher we will gather men from the village and hunt him down,” the smaller man said.

  Axelle nodded, but she was worried. This would be Anji’s responsibility when he finished training and was appointed the wildlife officer for this region. He needed to be confident enough to take charge of dangerous situations like this. She bit her lip. He was such a sweet little guy she didn’t know how he’d confront armed poachers. The idea of him hurt didn’t sit well. He had a family. People who cared.

  Isolation pressed down on her shoulders. All she had was an estranged father and a grandfather she hadn’t visited in two long years.

  Energetic clouds boiled over the top of the mountains. A spring storm was building, but it was nothing to the growing sense of unease that filled her when she thought of someone lining up her cats in the crosshairs of a hunting scope.

  Read the first chapter of New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author Kaylea Cross’s Hostage Rescue Team Series, Targeted!

  Targeted

  (Hostage Rescue Team Series #2).

  by Kaylea Cross

  Copyright © 2014

  ISBN: 9781928044062

  They were partners once

  After an attack on the job that nearly killed her, Special Agent Celida Morales is determined to salvage her reputation in the FBI and get back to the career she loves. Domestic terrorism has left its mark on her—literally—and now she’s more determined than ever to leave her mark on it. But when a hostage situation takes an unexpected turn she’s confronted with the realization that she may not only lose the hostages, but also the only man she’s lost her heart to.

  To be together now, this time they’ll have to risk it all

  Hostage Rescue Team assault team leader Brad Tucker has always wanted Celida but professional conduct and her unwillingness to commit stood in the way. For more than a year he’s been juggling the increasing demands of his job and personal life, but after Celida was almost killed, none of those reasons matter anymore. Tuck knows it’s time to claim her and he’s ready to lay it all on the line. Then an op turns deadly and it’s a race to bring down a well-trained enemy bent on settling an old score, a man who doesn’t care how many innocent people get in his way.

  Chapter One

  Present Day

  Of all the challenges she’d faced throughout her life, she had a feeling this was the one that would either make her or break her.

  Special Agent Celida Morales took a deep breath and squared her shoulders as she paused before the door that led into the FBI’s Domestic Terror Division offices in Baltimore. The name held a wealth of new meaning now, because for her, the job had become personal.

  Very personal.

  In the glass panel set into the top of the steel door she could see her reflection in the bright fluorescent lights above. Other than the deep pink, two inch long scar on her right cheek from where a bullet had grazed her two months ago, she looked normal enough on the outside. But inside, that day had changed her forever.

  Domestic terror had left its mark on her a few short weeks ago. Now more than ever, she was determined to leave her mark on it.

  She pushed the metal release bar and strode down the brightly lit hallway, her footsteps muffled by the carpeting. It felt strange to be back here after all this time off. At the second office from the end on the left, she opened the door and switched on the light. Her office was exactly as she’d left it.

  The desk was clear except for a framed photo of her and her mom, and one of her and her best friend. Zoe had stayed with her for the first few weeks after the attack and was due back in town tonight for another visit. She was the sister Celida had always wanted, and it didn’t matter that they weren’t related by blood. Though the family bond Zoe did share with the man who’d introduced them proved to be an ongoing complication for Celida.

  She wasn’t going to think about him right now though.

  In her top desk drawer she found the files she’d been working on before her forced leave of absence. She pulled them out, her fingers pausing on the top manila folder marked Xang Xu. The man responsible for what had happened to her. He was currently behind bars in between trials and looking at a life sentence rather than the death penalty because he’d agreed to a plea bargain.

  Now he was helping officials with their investigation into the radical Islamic sleeper cell activated here on command from its leaders back in mainland China. Xinxiang province, to be precise, where the ethnic and mostly Muslim Uyghur people were engaged in a struggle for independence from China’s unyielding response to religious
groups within its borders, made worse by the recent terror activity there by Islamic extremists.

  She flipped open the file and looked at Xang’s picture, the first time she’d seen it since the day she’d been wounded. Her body didn’t react. No elevation in her heart rate, and none of the fear she’d braced for came. But then, Xang had merely ordered the attack and hadn’t been one of the men who’d come to kill her that day.

  She should have died in that hotel room. She knew that. She’d let her guard down too far, hadn’t anticipated that the cell members knew of Rachel Granger’s location. If not for Rachel, they’d have put a bullet through Celida’s brain while she lay helpless on the floor, bleeding and concussed and immobile, praying for the backup that had arrived too late.

  Pushing those thoughts aside, she booted up her computer and entered in the last of the information into the case file, officially closing her part of it. Even though the case had been in full swing for some time and she’d already given her reports and testimony, she might still be asked to help out or confer on certain aspects of the case. But unless new activity occurred with the Xinxiang terror cell or more members were discovered here in the U.S., she would be moved onto a different case.

  She turned when someone knocked on her partly open door. Her boss, Special Agent in Charge Greg Travers, stood in the doorway, his six-foot and muscular frame filling the space. A handsome and well-built man in his mid-forties with a healthy dose of gray sprinkled in his chocolate brown hair and dressed in his standard uniform of slacks and a button down, he gave her a smile. “Welcome back.”

  “Thanks. Good to be here.” She’d seen him a handful of times since the attack, had spoken to him plenty over the phone early on but it felt good to be back here in an official capacity again. All that time off had driven her nuts and given her way too much time alone in her head. The concussion and other injuries had healed up within the first few weeks. After that she’d been forced to stay sidelined at the recommendation of the agency shrink she’d been assigned to. Thankfully her appointments with him were few and far between now.

  Without waiting for an invitation Travers came in and shut the door behind him. He took a seat in the chair opposite her desk, leaned back and put his hands behind his head, apparently getting comfy because he intended to stay for a while. “You get the flowers I sent last week?”

  She smiled. “I got them. Thanks.” He’d been a regular visitor for those first few days after the attack when she’d still been in the hospital, had called to check up on her every so often after that to make sure she was doing okay.

  His sharp, pale blue eyes studied her. “How’s your head?”

  Travers walked the fine line between blunt and tactless, and she wasn’t sure which side the question landed on. If he meant her mental state, she wasn’t telling him shit. The agency shrink and medical personnel had cleared her mentally and physically for duty, and all anyone needed to know was that she was ready to get back to work.

  No one but her needed to know the intimate details of the lingering effects the attack had wrought.

  She gave a decisive nod. “Good. Barely get headaches anymore.” Night terrors, insomnia and depression? Yep. Self doubt? Oh yeah. Physically, however, she was good to go.

  “I talked to Rachel Granger the other day. She said you met her and Evers for dinner last week.” Jake Evers, another member of the HRT and Tuck’s former roommate, also known as “farmboy”. Tuck had given him the nickname because of his Iowa roots. He and Rachel had been college friends, and when she’d realized she might be in danger she’d contacted Evers. They’d been together ever since and now shared a luxury condo in D.C.

  “Yeah, it was good to catch up with them.” They’d talked a bit about Tuck during dinner and they’d both seemed surprised that he hadn’t been in contact with her much lately. “So, what do you have for me to work on?”

  Travers’s mouth twitched in amusement, the corners of his dark eyes crinkling. “Ready to dive back in, are you?”

  “Damn straight. Got anything substantial for me?” She wanted to sink her teeth into something meaty, something with plenty of investigative work to do.

  “Just so happens I do.” He removed his hands from behind his head and leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. “Got a suspect in custody who’s linked to the Xinxiang cell. He’s being held down at Quantico. So are the two assholes who attacked you.”

  He measured her with his stare and she didn’t outwardly react to his words. Inside, anger and determination boiled in her gut. Every day she’d waited to hear that they’d finally been captured. Now they had been. “We’ve got some new intel that should help us round up more sleeper cell members here in the D.C. area. You wanna sit in on the interrogation?”

  Celida kept her expression impassive even as her heart rate punched upward and her fingers clenched in her lap. She’d thought about how she would react to seeing them in person. The natural reaction of fear was there, yes, but so was the need for justice. They’d nearly killed her. Had kidnapped Rachel and would have killed her and her brother had the agency not gotten a break in the case and the Hostage Rescue Team not gone in to extract them both.

  There was only one answer she could give him. “Hell yeah.”

  He nodded once in satisfaction, the side of his mouth curving up. “Figured you would. First meeting’s in just over an hour. Wanna drive down with me?”

  Well she didn’t have anything else to do here. “Sure, but I’ll take my own car. Have to pick up a friend at the airport at five.” She stood, picked up her purse and briefcase and rounded the desk. “How long have they been in custody?”

  Travers waited for her by the door. “Since last night.”

  She cut him a sharp glance. “Was it us, or the cops?”

  “Us. We got a good tip. HRT went in and served the warrants, brought them in. Tuck’s team.”

  Tuck.

  A myriad of emotions flitted through her at the mention of her sexy former partner’s name. All so complicated she didn’t know how to make sense of them anymore. She had no idea what his schedule was these days but he might be on shift right now. Quantico was a big place, but she definitely didn’t want to run into him while on base. Not when he posed the biggest threat to the emotional shields she’d managed to erect around herself over the past few weeks.

  “I want to see them,” she said.

  Travers nodded and held open the door for her. “After you.”

  She followed him during the hour long drive back to Quantico while he filled her in on the investigation over the phone via her car’s hands free device. Apparently Xang had given up everything he knew soon after capture and was going to testify against the men who had attacked her and Rachel.

  The agency was closing in on other sleeper cell members here in the States, and they had several leads to investigate in China if government officials there cooperated. The Chinese had already executed several raids that had netted them some of the main players in the cell, mostly in Xinxiang and Beijing. Pinning everything on the men bankrolling the cell was proving harder than originally thought.

  Fifty-two minutes later they arrived at Marine Corps Base Quantico. Having served in the Corps for five years before entering the FBI, coming back on base always felt a little bit like coming home for her. She parked in front of the detention center and followed Travers inside. Two uniformed Marines escorted them to the interrogation room at the back of the building. More FBI agents stood outside the room, waiting for them.

  Travers kept his voice low enough that no one would be able to overhear as they approached. “Ready?” he asked her.

  “Yes,” she answered, ignoring the heavy thud of her pulse. She needed to see the men again, needed to know they were behind bars and would pay for what they’d done. Closure and all that shit.

  When they reached the long, rectangular window set into the wall, she stopped in front of it. Travers nodded at one of the other agents and the man hit a switch
that erased the digital frosting on the glass, giving them a clear view of those inside while the prisoners would only see a mirror from their side.

  Celida folded her arms across her chest and forced herself to breathe slow and deep when the men came into view. They were seated on the far side of the table in the center of the room with their lawyer, facing the window. Eurasian features. Short, stocky, muscular builds. They wore orange prison jumpsuits and their hands were cuffed in front of them on the table. She knew their ankles would be chained as well.

  The sight of them in chains soothed her, but didn’t take the vivid memories away. She struggled to keep them at bay as Travers entered the room with an interpreter and took his seat across the table from the two men.

  Images flashed through her brain. The bullets tearing through the door. Slicing into her arm and face. Her falling. Blindly returning fire. Screaming at Rachel to hide. The door slamming open, smashing into the side of her head.

  She blinked, forced herself to focus on what was being said inside the other room. Travers was talking about the attack. The men confirmed that Xang had recruited them for it by offering extra money. She listened as Travers got the details out of them. It all sounded so remote and clinical. Made it sound as if what they were describing had happened to some random, nameless victims out there.

  Not even close. A surge of raw fury shot through her as she listened to the translation of their story.

  It happened to me, assholes.

  When Travers finished questioning them, he exited the room and met her gaze as the door shut behind him. The locking mechanism slipped into place with a solid thunk. It took a moment for her to realize her fingers were digging into her upper arms and that she was holding her breath.

  “You want a turn?” he asked her, pale eyes steady on hers.

  She shook her head. “You were thorough.” She didn’t want them to see her. Not because she was afraid, but because she didn’t think she could control her reaction if one of them did something stupid like smirk at her. Or worse, laugh at the damage they’d done to her face. The scar didn’t make her self-conscious per se, but the thought of having those men see it bothered her. She was hanging onto her composure so far but didn’t want to push it here in front of her boss and coworkers.