by Janie Crouch
Someone WAS always watching her…
Everywhere she went, Rosalyn Mellinger had eyes on her. The Watcher followed her everywhere. It seemed hopeless, inescapable…especially when she met Steve Drackett on vacation. Another person to be hurt by her stalker. But Rosalyn didn’t know Steve was part of Omega Sector—there was literally no one better to protect her, if she’d just open up to him. He had years of experience, and while the Watcher preyed upon Rosalyn, Steve would beat him at his own game.
But Rosalyn had a secret even Steve couldn’t see coming: a baby from their vacation romance…
Omega Sector: Critical Response
Steve did something he hadn’t done in twenty years of law enforcement: lowered his weapon in shock.
“Rosalyn?”
She reached up and lowered the hood of her windbreaker as she turned completely around.
It was her. Beautiful black hair, gorgeous blue eyes. Even the splattering of freckles over her nose. Rosalyn was alive.
Which was impossible because he’d just ID’d her dead body a few hours ago. Steve didn’t care. By whatever miracle she was here—and he would get her to explain it all, no doubt—he would take it.
He holstered his weapon and pulled her into his arms. Then yanked her back immediately, looking closer at the rest of her body.
Rosalyn was here. She was alive.
And unless he was very, very wrong, she was definitely pregnant.
BATTLE TESTED
Janie Crouch
Janie Crouch has loved to read romance her whole life. The award-winning author cut her teeth on Harlequin Romance novels as a preteen, then moved on to a passion for romantic suspense as an adult. Janie lives with her husband and four children overseas. She enjoys traveling, long-distance running, movie watching, knitting and adventure/obstacle racing. You can find out more about her at janiecrouch.com.
Books by Janie Crouch
Harlequin Intrigue
Omega Sector: Critical Response
Special Forces Savior
Fully Committed
Armored Attraction
Man of Action
Overwhelming Force
Battle Tested
Omega Sector
Infiltration
Countermeasures
Untraceable
Leverage
Primal Instinct
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CAST OF CHARACTERS
Steve Drackett—Director of Omega Sector’s Critical Response Division.
Rosalyn Mellinger—On the run from a stalker; has been moving from state to state for months trying to get rid of him.
Brandon Han—Brilliant profiler for Omega Sector; engaged to Andrea Gordon.
Liam Goetz—SWAT team member and hostage rescue expert.
Jon Hatton—Profiler and crisis management expert.
Andrea Gordon—Naturally gifted behavioral analyst; engaged to Brandon Han.
Derek Waterman—SWAT team leader; married to Molly Humphries-Waterman.
Lillian Muir—SWAT team member and helicopter pilot.
Molly Humphries-Waterman—Crime lab director at Omega; married to Derek Waterman.
Joe Matarazzo—Billionaire and hostage negotiator for Omega.
Ashton Fitzgerald—SWAT team member and sharpshooter expert.
Donny Showalter—Civilian trapped in a madman’s deadly game.
This book is dedicated to my aunt Donna. You are a blessing
to me and so many others. Thank you for all the times you
brushed my hair (because goodness knows I didn’t do it)
and loved me like a second mother. And for teaching me that
romance books are the best books.
Contents
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
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Excerpt from Stone Cold Texas Ranger by Nicole Helm
Chapter One
Rosalyn Mellinger had reached her breaking point.
She was exhausted, frightened and about to run out of money.
Sitting in a diner in Pensacola, Florida, one she’d chosen because she could see both the front customer door and the rear employee entrance from her corner booth, she huddled around the third cup of coffee she’d had with her meager meal, stretching out her stay here as long as possible.
Although sitting with her back to the wall didn’t help when she had no idea what the person who stalked her looked like. She tensed every time the tiny bell chimed signaling someone new had come through the door, like it had just now.
The couple in their mid-eighties, entering and shuffling slowly to a table, were definitely not the Watcher.
But she knew he was around. She knew because she would get a note later tonight—or an email or a text or a phone call—that would say something about her meal here. About what she’d eaten or the name of her waitress or how she’d used sweetener in her coffee rather than sugar.
Some sort of frightening detail that let her know the Watcher had been nearby. Just like he had been for the last five months. She scanned faces of other patrons to see who might be studying her but couldn’t find anyone who looked like they were paying her any attention.
It always seemed to be that way. But still the Watcher would know details as if he had been sitting here at the booth with Rosalyn. And would mention the details in a message to her, usually a note slid under her door in the middle of the night.
Rosalyn clutched her coffee cup, trying to get her breathing under control.
Or maybe the Watcher wouldn’t say anything about the diner at all. Maybe he wouldn’t contact her for days. That happened sometimes too. Rosalyn never knew what to expect and it kept her on the precipice of hysteria.
All she knew for certain was the constant acid of fear burning in her gut.
Her waitress, Jessie, who couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen years old, wiped the table next to Rosalyn’s, then came to stand by her booth. The kid looked decidedly uncomfortable.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but my manager said I would have to ask you to leave if you’re not going to order anything else. The dinner crowd is coming in.”
The burn in Rosalyn’s belly grew at the thought of leaving the diner, although she didn’t know why. She was no safer from the Watcher in here than she was somewhere else.
He’d found her again last night. Rosalyn had been in Pensacola for four days, staying at a different run-down hotel each night. Three nights had passed with no message, no notes, and she’d let just the slightest bit of hope ente
r her heart that she had lost the Watcher permanently.
Heaven knew she had driven around enough times to get rid of anyone who followed. Hours’ worth of circles and sudden turns around town to lose any tails. Then she had parked at a hotel before sneaking across strip malls and a small park to another hotel about a mile away just in case there was some sort of tracker on her car. It seemed to have worked for three nights.
Rosalyn thought maybe she had figured it out. That the Watcher had been tracking her car and that’s how he always found her. She would gladly leave the car rotting in the wrong hotel parking lot if it meant she could get away from the man who stalked her.
But then last night a note had been slipped under the hotel door as she slept.
When she saw the envelope lying so deceptively innocently on the floor of her hotel by the door as she woke up this morning, she promptly vomited into the trash can by the bed.
She finally found the strength to get up and open the unsealed envelope and read the note. Handwritten, like them all.
Sorry I haven’t been around for a few days. I know you must have missed me. I missed you.
She almost vomited again, but there was nothing left in her stomach.
She took the note and put it in the cardboard box where she kept all the other notes. Then she meticulously put the box back inside her large duffel bag. From her smaller tote bag, the one she always kept with her, she took out her notebook. With shaky hands she logged the date and time she found the note, and its contents.
She’d taken her bags and gone back to her car—a tracker there obviously wasn’t the problem—and driven toward the beach and ended up at this diner. She needed to get on the move again. But she didn’t know how—her savings from when she’d had a decent-paying job as an accountant were gone. And she didn’t know where she would go even if she had had money.
The Watcher found her no matter where she went.
Sometimes she was convinced he was in her head since he seemed to know everything she did and thought. But that would mean she was crazy.
An idea that was becoming more and more acceptable.
Rosalyn rubbed her eyes. Exhaustion weighed every muscle in her body.
“Ma’am?”
None of this was her waitress’s fault. She turned to the girl, who seemed so much younger even though she was probably only five or six years less than Rosalyn’s twenty-four. “Of course. I’m sorry, Jessie. Just let me pay my bill and get my stuff together.”
Jessie shuffled her feet. “No need to pay anything. I already took care of that for you. Pay it forward and all that.”
Rosalyn wanted to argue. Jessie had been working hard the three hours Rosalyn had been in the booth. The girl was probably saving up for college and needed the money.
But the truth was, Rosalyn was down to her last twenty dollars. Not having to pay six dollars for her meal would help a lot.
Being able to live a normal life and return to a regular job would help a lot more, but Jessie’s gesture was still touching.
“Thank you,” Rosalyn whispered to the girl. “I truly appreciate it.”
“I can probably hold my manager off for another thirty minutes if that will help you. I’m sorry I can’t do more.”
“No. I’ll be fine. Thanks.”
The girl nodded and walked away.
Rosalyn wondered if she would read about her conversation with Jessie later tonight in the note the Watcher left her. Or even worse, if Jessie would end up dead. That had happened three months ago with the detective in Shreveport, Louisiana, when she’d passed through. Rosalyn had taken a chance and told him what was happening and found, to her surprise, that he believed her. Detective Johnson was the one who suggested she keep all the notes and take photos of any texts and try to record any phone messages. He was the one who got her the notebook and told her to write down everything that happened.
The relief to find someone who believed her, who didn’t think she was just out for attention like her family had, was overwhelming. Finally the feeling of not being utterly alone.
Unfortunately, Detective Johnson—a healthy fifty-year-old man—suddenly died of a heart attack two days after meeting with Rosalyn. He was found in his bed. Natural causes, the newspaper said. Rosalyn was heartbroken that she’d so unfortunately lost the one person who had listened and believed her.
Until she received an anonymous email the next day with a link to a drug called succinylcholine. A drug that in a large enough dose caused heart attacks but was virtually untraceable in a victim’s system.
Detective Johnson’s death had been no accident.
Neither had the mechanic’s—a man named Shawn who had been super nice and repaired Rosalyn’s car at a deeply discounted rate a month ago in Memphis. She mentioned to him that she was on the run. Didn’t want to say more than that, but he asked. Shawn’s sister had an ex who had turned violent and terrorized her. Shawn recognized some of the same symptoms in Rosalyn. He pressed and Rosalyn gave him some details. Not all of them, but enough. He invited her to his mother’s house for dinner, explaining the importance of not going through something like this alone.
Rosalyn, almost desperate for a friend, agreed. When she came back to the shop that night, she found the place surrounded by cops.
Shawn had been a victim of a “random act of violence” as he was closing up his garage. He was dead.
She still had the newspaper clipping that had been slipped under her door the next morning.
Rosalyn rubbed her stomach against the burn. She hadn’t spoken to a single person about the Watcher since that day. She’d just kept on the run, trying to stay ahead of him.
He’d found her again. Pensacola was the sixth town she’d moved to in five months. He always found her. She wasn’t sure how.
Exhaustion flooded her as she grabbed her tote bag and walked toward the door. Jessie gave her a small wave from behind the servers’ station and Rosalyn smiled as best she could. She was almost to the entrance when she stopped and turned around, walking back to Jessie.
The girl looked concerned. For Rosalyn or because of her, Rosalyn couldn’t tell. Rosalyn took six dollars out of her bag.
“Here.” She handed the money to Jessie. “Paying for my meal was very kind and I’m sure it will get you karma points. But I know you’re working hard, so I’ll pay for my own meal.”
“Are you sure?”
No, she wasn’t sure. All she knew was that she couldn’t take a chance that something would happen to this pretty young woman because she’d spotted Rosalyn six dollars’ worth of salad and chicken.
“Yes.” She pressed the money into Jessie’s hand. “Thanks again, though.”
Rosalyn turned and walked out the door feeling more lonely than she had in...ever.
She couldn’t do this anymore.
What good was it to run if the Watcher was just going to find her again? What good did it do to talk to people if any ties she made were just going to get them hurt?
And at what point would the Watcher stop toying with her and just finish her off? Rosalyn had no doubt her death was his endgame. She just didn’t know when or how.
Maybe she should just save him the trouble and do it herself. At least then she would have some measure of control.
She looked down the block toward the beach. She would go sit there. Think things through. Try to figure out a plan.
Even if that plan meant taking her own life. That had to be better than allowing innocent people to die because of her. Or living in constant fear with no end in sight.
She began walking toward the beach. She would sit on the sand, watch the sunset. Because damn it, if this was going to be her last day on earth—either by her own hand or the Watcher’s—she wanted to feel the sun on her face one last time.
Beyond
that, she had no idea what to do.
Chapter Two
Steve Drackett, director of the Omega Sector Critical Response Division, was doing nothing. He couldn’t remember the last time that had happened.
And even more so, he was doing nothing in a tiki-themed bar on the Florida Panhandle. In flip-flops.
He was damn certain that had never happened.
It was his first real vacation in ten years. After his wife died twelve years ago, there hadn’t been much point in them. Then he’d become director of the Critical Response Division of Omega—an elite law enforcement agency made up of the best agents the country had to offer—and there hadn’t been time.
But here he was on the Florida Panhandle, two days into a weeklong vacation for which his team had pitched in and gotten for him. Celebrating his twenty years of being in law enforcement.
And to provide him with a little R & R after he was almost blown up last month by a psychopath intent on burning everything and everyone around her.
Either way, he’d take it. Home in Colorado Springs could still be pretty cold, even in May. Pensacola was already edging toward hot. Thus the flip-flops.
Steve sat at the far end of the bar, back to the wall, where he had a nice view of both the baseball game on TV and the sunset over the ocean, along with an early-evening thundershower that was coming in, through the windows at the front of the bar. It also gave him direct line of sight of the entrance, probably not necessary here but an occupational hazard nonetheless.
The cold beer in his hands and an order of wings next to him on the bar had Steve just about remembering how to unwind. Nothing here demanded his attention. The bar was beginning to fill up but everyone seemed relaxed for the most part. The hum of voices, laughter, glasses clinking was enjoyable.
As someone whose job on most days was literally saving the world, the tiki bar was a nice change.
Then the woman walked through the door.
He glanced at her—as did just about every pair of male eyes in the bar—when she rushed in trying to get out of the sudden Florida storm. Another couple entered right behind her for the same reason, but Steve paid them little attention.
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