by Cindy Dees
Three men had been organized by a fourth, and raced toward the metal steps leading up to Zane’s position. They moved out of her line of fire and she swore. Leaping to her feet, she jumped over the windowsill and ran toward them, firing in bursts at the men, heedless of her safety.
Nobody was killing her man! Not on her watch!
The trigger clicked and nothing happened. Out of ammo.
She continued running forward, reaching into her belt for a concussion grenade. Designed mostly to create noise and smoke, it would nonetheless have enough punch to knock a grown man off his feet at close range.
Arm raised and screaming like a banshee, she charged toward the last cluster of resisting guards.
* * *
Zane swore as he saw Piper charge out of an office near the far end of the hangar. He saw the moment when muzzle flashes stopped spurting from her weapon and she tossed it aside.
“Turn around! Turn around!” he shouted at her. But she either didn’t hear him or didn’t listen, because she was running straight at Haddad’s personal bodyguards. They were the best-trained of the security types now littering the hangar floor in pools of blood. They’d stayed together, crouched over Haddad’s body, and had dragged Haddad over to the limo in between shooting at him and Piper. They almost had their boss stuffed into the last limo.
It happened in slow motion below him. One of the men saw or heard Piper coming and pulled a sidearm, turning around to shoot her. Zane aimed and fired all in one frantic, blindingly fast motion, and the guy pitched forward. But not before his weapon discharged.
Piper spun to the side, hit.
No-o-o!
Off to Zane’s right, a tremendous explosion rocked the whole platform beneath him. Bastards must have found the trip wire he’d left at the base of the stairs.
He grimly regained visual on Piper, and saw her right herself and alter course to charge the limousine. Zane pointed his weapon at the cluster of men beside the limo and mashed the trigger, emptying every round he had left at the guards.
They had the good sense to duck, which removed them from his line of fire behind the limo. He swore and stood up, coming out of hiding and racing for the stairs, yanking out his own sidearm as he went. Fourteen rounds. That was all his pistol held. And they had better be enough to get him to Piper’s side and save her life. He leaped over the gap and the dead bodies left over from his trip wire trap and sprinted toward the woman who was his whole reason for living.
* * *
Piper felt the round hit the meaty part of her upper left arm, but didn’t register pain. Only a vague burning sensation. A few more steps.
In range now.
She lobbed a grenade at a cluster of men, who were now crouching beside the limousine, unsuccessfully trying to manhandle another man’s limp body into the vehicle.
She had one more grenade. She threw it with all her strength, drawing on everything she’d ever learned in fast-pitch softball in high school, and flinging the grenade through the open door into the black cavern of the limousine’s interior.
The vehicle’s windows lit up as the grenade exploded. The doors opened and the men inside poured out, coughing and doubled over.
She heard the pops of a nearby pistol, but couldn’t see where they were coming from in the thick smoke.
She stumbled over something big and soft. A body. She dropped to her knees and searched the corpse by feel. Bingo. She felt the cold, hard barrel of a weapon. Scooping it up, she spun away from the cloud of smoke now enveloping the hangar.
Out of the fog and shouting and gunfire, a familiar voice merged from the din. “Get out, Piper!”
“You get out, Zane!”
And then she ran, zigzagging back and forth as she headed for the open hangar doors. As she got close to the light outside, she realized that her zigzagging had turned into staggering, first to one side and then the other.
She made out red shapes spilling out of a luggage cart and squinted, confused, as they rushed toward her.
“Get down, Piper!” one of the shapes shouted.
She dropped to the ground, but whether it was voluntary or her legs just gave out from underneath her, she wasn’t sure.
In front of her, the red shapes erupted into flashes of light. She identified it fuzzily. Muzzle fire.
And then everything happened very fast. Someone came up behind her and scooped her off the ground. She bounced like she was on a trampoline. There was a luggage cart for a minute or two, and then the back of a pickup truck. And then they were racing across the airfield toward...the runway?
She didn’t understand.
A male voice nearby murmured a continuous stream of soothing words. Something about hanging on and staying with him.
“Zane?” she mumbled as her eyesight gave out and gray crept across her field of vision. “You’ll never get rid of me. I love you, too...”
Chapter 20
Piper woke up slowly. The room around her was white, and the whole wall beside the bed was made of glass blocks that let in a lot of light but didn’t allow her to see out. She tried to move, but her whole body ached, and she sighed in pain, subsiding.
“There’s my girl. Welcome back.”
She blinked several times, and Zane’s face came into focus, bending down over her.
“Hey.” Her voice was strangely raspy. Her throat felt desert dry.
Zane reached out of her field of view and came back with a glass of water and a bendy straw that he put to her lips. She took a sip and then another. She collapsed back against the pillows.
“Am I in huge trouble for going after Haddad?”
“Torsten was pretty mad, but he had the whole flight back to Switzerland to cool off. By the time we landed here in Geneva, the CIA confirmed that not only did Haddad die in the fight, but a half-dozen other major arms dealers and terrorists, as well. It was a hell of a haul. Since we all made it out alive and mostly in one piece, and he’s being hailed as a genius, I suspect he’ll get over any lingering irritation.”
“Are you okay?” she asked in concern.
“I’m fine. But, darling, what were you thinking, charging out into the middle of a firefight like that?”
She frowned, thinking back. It took a few seconds to retrieve the memory. “I saw those men racing toward the stairs. They were going to kill you.” She shrugged, but it turned into a wince instead. “I wasn’t going to let you die.”
“I was fine. You should have stayed undercover, or better yet, headed for the truck like you said you would, and bugged out of there.”
She snorted, but it came out a weak sound of disgust. “As if I would ever leave you behind in a firefight.”
He stared down at her, the frustration fading slowly from his gaze. “Yeah. I get that,” he finally allowed. “I charged down the stairs into the middle of the battle when I saw you get hit. I guess I can’t expect any less of you than I would of myself.”
She smiled up at him. “Now you’re getting the idea. The Medusas operate just like you would.”
He gently pushed a stray lock of hair back off her forehead. “Well, not just like me. I think your heroic streak may be even more pronounced than mine.” He bent down and brushed his lips very gently across hers. As he started to pull away she tried to reach for his shirt to tug him back down, but frowned when her left arm didn’t budge.
She glanced down at it and was startled to see it encased in a cast. “How bad is it?”
“Not bad. It was a through-and-through shot. Bone got nicked. Your humerus has a hairline fracture. They only casted it to keep you from going crazy with it. Your arm will heal fully. If,” he added significantly, “you behave yourself for a few weeks.”
“Oh, yeah? Who’s gonna make me behave?” she teased lightly.
“That would be me.” The smile slipped off his face, leaving him staring d
own at her seriously. “Would it help if I said I have a project for you that should keep you busy for a few weeks?”
“What’s that, Mr. Cosworth?”
“How would you feel about planning our wedding?”
She stared up at him as the words refused to compute. She heard them, all right. But them? Her? Him?
“A wedding?” she echoed in a small voice.
“I’m fine with going to a justice of the peace’s office if you don’t want the whole wedding thing.” He picked up her left hand and clasped it between his warm ones. “But either way, I’m putting a ring on this hand if you’ll have me.”
“Oh, I’ll have you,” she breathed.
A huge smile broke out across Zane’s handsome features. They kissed, and it was so sweet that tears came to Piper’s eyes. When Zane realized she was crying, he sat up and wiped the tears off her cheeks with his fingertips.
He said reflectively, “Who’d have guessed when I told Mahmoud you were the one in that school office that I was actually right? You really were the one. The one for me.”
Who’d have guessed, indeed? On the very day she’d decided that no man would ever be able to live with her career, a man who not only could live with her career but who shared her work, had blasted into her life and swept her off her feet.
“Zane?”
“Hmm?”
“In case you didn’t hear it when I shouted it to you in the hangar, I love you. To the moon and back.”
Staring deep into her eyes, he leaned down toward her. Their breath mingled as his lips hovered over hers. “I love you, too, Piper. To the stars and beyond.”
And then he kissed her...and took her to the stars with him.
* * *
Be sure to check out the next
Mission Medusa romance,
Special Forces: The Operator,
available next month.
Other books by Cindy Dees:
Navy SEAL Cop
Undercover with a SEAL
Her Secret Spy
Her Mission with a SEAL
Available now from Harlequin Romantic Suspense!
Keep reading for an excerpt from Navy SEAL Bodyguard by Tawny Weber.
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Navy SEAL Bodyguard
by Tawny Weber
Prologue
“Is everything in place?”
“It will be. I’ve got Mia Cade just where I want her. A few more days at the most and she’ll be our conduit to Senator Penz.”
“Perfect. Penz has no idea what’s going to hit him.”
“And Mia? When you murder the senator? What’ll happen to her?”
“Señorita Cade is our—what’s the term? Fall guy? First we use her to lure in Penz. Then we eliminate her in a simple murder-suicide. Loose ends are tidied, our enemies are dead and we are avenged.”
“Poor Mia won’t know what hit her. It just goes to show that it never pays to be a do-gooder.” Laughter rang through the phone line, cold and vicious.
And just a little insane.
Chapter 1
Mia Cade had two goals in life. One, to put as much distance as possible between herself and the manipulation, irritation and, most of all, interference of her family. Two, to help raise millions of dollars for charity.
She figured both goals were a direct product of her upbringing.
She’d spent her formative years as a Navy brat, her family packing up every couple of years to relocate to a new place in the world. With every move, Mia’s older sister, Megan, threw another fit about leaving her friends, and her younger sister developed some new ailment that ensured their mother’s full attention. Leaving Mia to organize and handle the details of unpacking and getting the family settled in their new home.
Their mother toured them through every new city or country, ensuring that they saw the good and the bad. The rich and the poor. Her purpose was to instill appreciation in her children, along with as much culture as possible.
In London, they’d visited Buckingham Palace, watched Macbeth onstage at the Royal Opera House and organized a Fill Your Boots charity campaign, collecting money on base for the Royal National Lifeboat Institute.
In Shanghai, they’d prayed in the Jade Buddha Temple, toured the Shanghai Museum and spent a few hours a week reading to disabled orphans.
Megan had gotten in trouble for shoplifting in London, had a screaming match with their mother in the Louvre and had tried to run away in Tibet. Marley, on the other hand, developed migraines in Virginia, violent allergies in Tokyo and pneumonia in Alaska. And so it went in Honolulu, Bahrain, Venice and New York. Every new station was a sea of unfamiliar faces, cultural education and charitable works, combined with high drama, hospital visits and Mia desperately trying to organize her life into some semblance of sanity.
By the time she’d finished college, she’d seen enough of the world to know she wanted to stay as far away from travel and her family as possible.
She’d chosen San Francisco.
All the way across the country from them.
Too far away for drop-in visits. Yet no distance was too far from nagging phone calls.
“Mia, you should listen to your sister. She warned you about that girl.”
“Jessica is my roommate and she’s twenty-six, Mother. A year older than me. It’s okay to call us women now.”
“Girl. Woman.” Her mother pshawed. “You’ll always be my baby.”
God help her.
“But that isn’t the point. Your sister’s concerns are the point. I told you, she thinks this Jessica girl is mean and nasty and vindictive. She’s a bad influence, a backstabber and someone who surely has it in for you.”
“Because I was crowned homecoming queen instead of her? Mom, that’s ridiculous.”
“Don’t forget that you were valedictorian, too. Marley said this girl holds grudges. There’s no way she forgot that you swept into that school and knocked her right off the pedestal.”
And off she went, in the style only Anne Cade could. Ranting with half facts, high drama and a heaping helping of guilt. Mia let the words roll over her while she went back to searching for a way to fit an extra fifty seats into a dining room for the upcoming charity ball. She’d managed to squeeze in thirty by the time her mother wound down.
“Look, Jessica is fine. She’s nice. She’s safe. She has a good job. She pays rent, helps with the bills. She’s not luring me into bars or doing drugs. No wild parties, no illicit affai
rs, no disreputable men.”
And just like that, her mother turned on a dime.
“You could do with meeting some men, Mia. You’re a good-looking girl, smart and fun, and your table manners are exquisite.”
“Can’t forget those table manners.”
“Speaking of, I know the perfect man for you. He’s good-looking, six foot six and very clever with languages. He fixed my computer last week. Remember the trouble I was having with it? It’s so handy to have a man around who can fix things, don’t you think? And didn’t you say you needed a new computer?”
Not enough to want a man to go with it.
“What’s his rank?”
“Petty officer,” her mother replied, biting off the last word in obvious frustration. “Now don’t be silly, Mia. Your bias against military men is ridiculous. Are you going to throw away the opportunity to meet the perfect man just because he serves his country?”
In a heartbeat.
“I don’t have time for dating, Mother,” Mia sidestepped, knowing her perfectly justified arguments always fell on deaf ears. “I’m super busy with work. And speaking of—”
“Fine, fine. If you want to refuse to meet the perfect man, that’s your choice. That’s not why I called, anyway,” her mother said dismissively. “Your uncle will be in town later this month, meeting with donors and attending a climate change event. I can count on you to be a proper hostess, can’t I? Show him around, keep him company?”
Of course she’d take care of her uncle, US Senator Luis Penz, who’d spent as many years in California as she’d been alive, show him around and keep the poor, bored-with-nothing-to-do man company.
A part of her wanted to offer that sarcastic thought aloud. To point out that she was an independent adult, a professional with a good head on her shoulders, solid social skills and a strong sense of responsibility.
But that wouldn’t stop the nagging interference. It’d only irritate her mother into bringing in backups, usually in the form of Mia’s siblings. Or worse, her father.
