Driving Force (Declan’s Defenders Book 4)

by Elle James

  With no identity, memory or past...

  She must trust a stranger in order to survive.

  When a woman is caught shadowing the team leader of Declan’s Defenders, she slams right into the man’s protection detail—and a former elite Force Recon marine. Gus Walsh’s instincts tell him she is dangerous in more ways than one. Yet when he discovers that she is a Jane Doe with no memory of who she is or why someone is hunting her, the pair must team up to find answers. But there’s no guarantee they will survive the truth once the dust settles...

  “Brace yourself!” Gus shouted.

  Jane grabbed the armrest and held on. Gus jammed on the brakes, bringing the SUV to a skidding stop. The driver behind him was too late to stop before slamming into the back of their vehicle. Gus hit the accelerator, racing ahead.

  Jane glanced back to see that the other vehicle wasn’t moving. Her heartbeat slowed and she took a breath. She stared across at Gus. “You’ve got a gunshot wound.”

  “I’m fine. It just grazed me.”

  “Grazing doesn’t bleed that much.” She searched for something to stop the flow of blood. When she couldn’t find anything, she pressed her palm against the wound, applying pressure. “Seriously, you’re bleeding like a stuck pig. You should go get some stitches.”

  “When we get to the estate, I’ll ask for a Band-Aid.”

  Jane sighed. “You’re hopeless.”

  He shot her a grin. “And you’re doing great. Most women I’ve known would have fainted at the sight of blood.”

  “I’m not most women,” she grumbled.

  His grin faded, but his look was intense. “No. You’re not...”

  DRIVING FORCE

  New York Times Bestselling Author

  Elle James

  Elle James, a New York Times bestselling author, started writing when her sister challenged her to write a romance novel. She has managed a full-time job and raised three wonderful children, and she and her husband even tried ranching exotic birds (ostriches, emus and rheas). Ask her, and she’ll tell you what it’s like to go toe-to-toe with an angry 350-pound bird! Elle loves to hear from fans at ellejames@earthlink.net or ellejames.com.

  Books by Elle James

  Harlequin Intrigue

  Declan’s Defenders

  Marine Force Recon

  Show of Force

  Full Force

  Driving Force

  Mission: Six

  One Intrepid SEAL

  Two Dauntless Hearts

  Three Courageous Words

  Four Relentless Days

  Five Ways to Surrender

  Six Minutes to Midnight

  Ballistic Cowboys

  Hot Combat

  Hot Target

  Hot Zone

  Hot Velocity

  SEAL of My Own

  Navy SEAL Survival

  Navy SEAL Captive

  Navy SEAL to Die For

  Navy SEAL Six Pack

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com.

  Join Harlequin My Rewards today and earn a FREE ebook!

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  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Augustus “Gus” Walsh—Former Force Recon marine radio operator; good with weapons, electronics and technical equipment.

  Jane Doe—Woman with combat training and amnesia, desperate to reach Charlie Halverson for answers.

  Quincy Phishburn—CEO at Halverson International. Running the business since John Halverson’s death.

  Margaret Rollins—John Halverson’s executive assistant, still working at Halverson International since John’s murder.

  Mack Balkman—Former Force Recon marine, assistant team leader and Declan’s right-hand man. Grew up on a farm and knows hard work won’t kill you—guns will.

  Declan O’Neill—Highly trained Force Recon marine who made a decision that cost him his career in the marine corps. Dishonorably discharged from the military, he’s forging his own path with the help of a wealthy benefactor.

  Charlotte “Charlie” Halverson—Rich widow of a highly prominent billionaire philanthropist. Leading the fight for right by funding Declan’s Defenders.

  Frank “Mustang” Ford—Former Force Recon marine, point man. First into dangerous situations, making him the eyes and ears of the team.

  Cole McCastlain—Former Force Recon marine assistant radio operator. Good with computers.

  Jack Snow—Former Force Recon marine slack man, youngest member of the team, takes all the heavy stuff. Not afraid of hard physical work.

  I dedicate this book to Sweetpea, a good dog who gave me lots of love and companionship for thirteen years. For one so small, you were a big part of my life and heart. I hope you’re running free and eating all the good treats across the rainbow bridge. I will miss you so very much.

  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

  Excerpt from Cornered at Christmas by Barb Han

  Chapter One

  She struggled to surface from the black hole trying to suck her back down. Her head hurt and she could barely open her eyes. Every part of her body ached so badly she began to think death would be a relief. But her heart, buried behind bruised and broken ribs, beat strong, pushing blood through her veins. And with the blood, the desire to live.

  Willing her eyes to open, she blinked and gazed through narrow slits at the dirty mud-and-stick wall in front of her. Why couldn’t she open her eyes more? She raised her hand to her face and felt the puffy, blood-crusted skin around her eyes and mouth. When she tried to move her lips, they cracked and warm liquid oozed out onto her chin.

  Her fingernails were split, some ripped down to the quick and the backs of her knuckles looked like pounded hamburger meat. Bruises, scratches and cuts covered her arms.

  She felt along her torso, wincing when she touched a bruised rib. As she shifted her search lower, her hands shook and she held her breath, feeling for bruises, wondering if she’d been assaulted in other ways. When she felt no tenderness between her legs, she let go of the breath she’d held in a rush of relief.

  She pushed into a sitting position and winced at the pain knifing through her head. Running her hand over her scalp, she felt a couple of goose-egg-sized lumps. One behind her left ear, the other at the base of her skull.

  A glance around the small, cell-like room gave her little information about where she was. The floor was hard-packed dirt and smelled of urine and feces. She wore a torn shirt and the dark pants women wore beneath their burkas.

  Voices outside the rough wooden door made her tense and her body cringe.

  She wasn’t sure why she was there, but those voices inspired an automatic response of drawing deep within, preparing for additional beatings and torture.

  What she had done to deserve it, she couldn’t remember. Everything about her life was a gaping, useless void.

  The door jerked open. A man wearing the camouflage uniform of a Syrian fighter and a black hood covering his
head and face stood in the doorway with a Russian AK-47 slung over his shoulder and a steel pipe in his hand.

  Her body knew that pipe. Every bruise, every broken rib screamed in pain. She bit down hard on her tongue to keep from letting those screams out. Scrambling across the floor, she moved to the farthest corner of the stinking room and crouched, ready to fight back. “What do you want?” she said, her voice husky, her throat dry.

  The man shouted, but strangely, not in Syrian Arabic. He shouted in Russian. “Who are you? Why are you here? Who sent you?”

  Her mind easily switched to the Russian language, though she couldn’t remember how she knew it. In her gut, she knew her native language was English. Where had she learned to understand Russian? “I don’t know,” she responded in that language.

  “Lies!” the man yelled and started toward her, brandishing the steel rod. “You will tell me who you are or die.”

  She bunched her legs beneath her, ready to spring.

  Before he made it halfway across the room an explosion sounded so close, the ground shook, the walls swayed and dust filled the air. Another explosion, even closer, shook the building again.

  The man cursed, spun and ran from the room, slamming the door shut behind him.

  Her strength sapped, she slumped against the wall, willing the explosions to hit dead-on where she stood to put her out of her misery. She didn’t think she would live through another beating, which was sure to come, because she didn’t have the answers the man wanted. No matter how hard she tried to think, she couldn’t remember anything beyond waking up in her tiny cell, lying facedown in the dirt.

  Another explosion split the air. The wall beside her erupted, caving into the room. She was thrown forward, rubble falling on and around her. Dusty light spilled into the room through a huge hole in the wall.

  Pushing the stones, sticks and dirt away from her body, she scrambled to her feet and edged toward the gap. The explosion had destroyed the back of the building in which she’d been incarcerated. No one moved behind it.

  Climbing over the rubble, she stuck her head through the hole and looked right and left at a narrow alley down below.

  At the end of the alley was a dirt street. Men, covered in dust and carrying weapons, ran along the street, yelling. Some carried others who had been injured in the explosions. The sound of gunfire echoed through the alley and the men threw themselves to the ground.

  She ducked back inside the hole, afraid she’d be hit by the bullets. But then she realized she’d rather be shot than take another beating. Instead of waiting around for her attacker to return, she pulled herself through the gap and dropped to the ground. A shout sounded on the street at the other end of the alley. She didn’t wait to find out if the man was shouting at her; she turned the opposite direction and ran.

  At the other end of the alley, a canvas-covered truck stood, the back overflowing with some kind of cut vegetation, dried leaves and stalks. With men shouting and brandishing weapons all around her, she wouldn’t last long out in the open. She dove into the back of the truck and buried herself beneath the stems and leaves.

  A metal door opened and slammed shut, the truck’s engine roared to life and the vehicle rolled along the street. With no way to see where they were headed, she resigned herself to going along for the ride. Anywhere had to be better than where she’d been.

  As she lay beneath the sticks and leaves, she realized they were drying stalks of marijuana, a lucrative crop for Syrian farmers. Where they were taking their crop, she didn’t know. Hopefully, far enough away from the people who’d held her hostage. She touched her wrist where the skin had been rubbed raw, probably from having been tied with abrasive rope. In the meager light penetrating her hiding place, she noticed a tattoo on the underside of her wrist below the raw skin. She pushed the leaves aside to allow more light to shine in on what she recognized as a three-sided Trinity knot. Below the knot were a series of lines and shapes.

  The more she tried to decipher the symbols, the more her head ached, and her eyes blurred. The tattoo wouldn’t rub off. Since it was permanent, she should know what the knot and the symbols stood for. No matter how hard she tried to remember, she couldn’t.

  The rumble of the engine and the rocking motion of the truck lulled her into a fitful sleep, broken up by sudden jolts when the truck encountered a particularly deep pothole.

  What felt like hours later, the vehicle rolled into what appeared to be the edge of a town.

  If she planned on leaving the truck, she needed to do it before they stopped and found her hiding in the marijuana.

  She dug her way out of the sticks and leaves, crawled to the tailgate and peered out between slitted, swollen eyelids.

  The truck had slowed at an intersection in a dirty, dingy area of the town. With a dark alley to either side, this might be her only chance to get out unnoticed.

  As the truck lurched forward, she rolled over the tailgate, dropped to the ground and ducked into a shadowy alley. With her face bruised and bleeding, she wouldn’t get far without attracting attention. But she had to get away from the truck and figure out where to go from there.

  Turning left at the end of a stucco tenement building, she crossed a street and ducked back into a residential area. Between apartment buildings, lines were hung with various items of clothing, including a black abaya cloak. Glancing left, then right, she slowed, then walked up to the clothesline, pulled off the black abaya and walked away as if she owned it.

  A shout behind her made her take off running. She turned at the end of the building and shot a glance over her shoulder. An older woman stood beneath the space where the abaya had been. She wore another abaya and shook her fist.

  “Sorry,” she murmured, but she had to do something. With no money, no identification and a face full of bruises, she couldn’t afford to be seen or stop to ask for help.

  The salty scent of sea air and the cry of gulls gave her hope. If she were at a port town, she might find a way to stow away on a ship. But where should she go? She didn’t know who she was, or where she belonged, but one thing she was very certain about, despite the fact she could understand Syrian Arabic and Russian, was that she was American. If she could get back to America, she’d have a better chance of reconstructing her identity, her health and her life.

  Dressed in the abaya, she pulled the hood well over her head to shadow her battered face and wandered through neighborhoods and markets. Her stomach rumbled, the incessant gnawing reminding her she hadn’t eaten since the last meal the guards had fed her in her little prison two days ago. Moldy flat bread and some kind of mashed chickpeas. She’d eaten what she could, not knowing when her next meal might come. She needed to keep up her strength in the event she could escape. And she had.

  Walking through the thriving markets of a coastal town, everything seemed surreal after having been in a war-damaged village, trapped in a tiny cell with a dirt floor.

  As she walked by a fruit stand in a market, she brushed up against the stand and slipped an orange beneath her black robe. No one noticed. She moved on. When she came to a dried-fruit-and-nuts stand, she palmed some nuts. With her meager fare in her hands, she left the market and found a quiet alley, hunkered down and ate her meal.

  Her broken lips burned from the orange juice, but it slid down her throat, so refreshing and good, she didn’t care. The nuts would give her the protein she needed for energy.

  What she really wanted was a bath.

  Drawn to the water, she walked her way through the town to the coastline, learning as she went that she was in Latakia, Syria, a thriving party town on the eastern Mediterranean Sea. People from all over Syria came to this town to escape the war-torn areas, if only for a few days.

  The markets were full of fresh produce and meats, unlike some of the villages where fighting had devastated homes and businesses.

  Women dressed in a variet
y of ways from abayas that covered everything but the eyes to miniskirts and bikinis. No one noticed her or stopped her to ask why her face was swollen and bruised. She kept her head lowered and didn’t make eye contact with anyone else. When she finally made it to the coastline, she followed the beach until it ran into the shipyards where cargo was unloaded for sale in Syria and loaded for export to other countries.

  By eavesdropping, she was able to ascertain which ship was headed to the US later that night. All she had to do was stow away on board. She wasn’t sure how long it would take to cross the ocean, so she’d need a stash of food to see her through.

  Back out to the markets, she stole a cloth bag and slowly filled it, one item at a time, with fruit, nuts and anything else she could hide beneath her abaya.

  At one fruit stand, the proprietor must have seen her palm a pomegranate. He yelled at her in Arabic and grabbed her shoulder.

  She side-kicked the man, sending him flying back into a display of oranges. The wooden stand collapsed beneath his weight, scattering the fruit into the walkway.

  Not knowing how severe punishment was for stealing in Syria, she ran until she was far enough away, and she was certain no one followed.

  With a small collection of food in her bag, she made her way back to the ship sailing later that evening to the US. Containers were being loaded by huge cranes. She found one that she was able to get inside and thought better of it. She could get in but couldn’t secure the door. And if someone else secured it, she’d be locked in until the outer door was opened at the destination. Some containers weren’t unloaded until they reached their final destinations...months later.

  A container like that wasn’t worth dying in. She’d have to find another way. The gangway onto the ship was her only other choice, and it was out in the open. She would never make it aboard in an abaya.

  Waiting in the shadows of the containers she watched the men going aboard and leaving the ship. Some wore hats to shade their eyes. Others wore uniforms of the ship line or dock workers’ company.