by Fiona Quinn
In Praise of Fiona Quinn
DIANE CAPRI, New York Times and USA Today Bestseller
Not since Alias and Sydney Bristow has a young femme fatale been so engagingly human. Lexi is as sharp, clever, and unpredictable as she is deadly. Fast paced action never stops.
KATE KELLY, USA Today Bestselling Author
Hair-raising action was nicely balanced with slower, tender moments. And the author built a community of characters around the heroine that made Lexi more real to me. Ms. Quinn didn’t miss a beat with The Weakest Lynx.
ALLAN LEVERONE, New York Times and USA Today Bestseller
Smart, sexy, and independent, Lexi Sobado is a thriller hero you will never forget…
ANGEL LIMB - WCVE Community Ideas Station PBS NPR
Quinn’s spare yet illuminating first-person storytelling is perfect. . .
JAMIE MASON, THREE GRAVES FULL and MONDAY'S LIE (Simon and Schuster)
WEAKEST LYNX'S heroine, Lexi Sobado, is a rare jolt out of formula. She's sweet and sexy, but it's her background and the skill set she's acquired in a glorious tapestry of unusual experiences that lace this ride with smart adrenaline. Treat yourself to something truly fun and different with Fiona Quinn's WEAKEST LYNX!
ALAN ORLOFF - Agatha Award Finalist
I just finished reading a super-fun book, Fiona Quinn’s WEAKEST LYNX, featuring a kick-ass heroine, Lexi Sobado, with a few special abilities to back up her bravado. Snappy writing, great characters, and best of all: there are more books in the series on their way!
JAMIE LEE SCOTT, USA Today Bestselling Author
Quinn's protagonist, Lexi Sobado, is unique, tenacious, and a breath of fresh air for thriller readers.
The Lynx Series
Weakest Lynx
Missing Lynx
Chain Lynx
Cuff Lynx
~
Also,
Mine, a novella
Chaos Is Come Again, John Dolan and Fiona Quinn
Table of Contents
In praise of Fiona Quinn
Other works by Fiona Quinn
Cover
Dedication
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Forty-One
Forty-Two
Forty-Three
An excerpt from Cuff Lynx, Book 4
Acknowledgements
About the author
Let’s Stay Connected
Copyright
Dedicated to my grandmother,
Anna Louisa,
from whom I inherited the gift of gab, a love of books, and my wanderlust.
Grandma, I see you every time I look in the mirror.
I love and miss you.
One
Death was louder than I expected. I didn’t think there would be any noise at all, only a bright light to guide me. Where were my loved ones who had passed on? Shouldn’t they be here to lead me — to help me transition from the corporeal life to life everlasting? Mom and Dad should be here. My husband, Angel. My dear friend, Snow Bird. . .but I was alone with the sound of thundering wind and yelling.
My body jolted. Liquid fire saturated my skin. I lay smoldering at the edge of a wide abyss. If I slid an inch to my left, I’d fall straight to the Devil’s door. What did I do to find myself at Hell’s Gate? My mind scrambled. I had indeed committed the worst possible of sins. I’d killed four people in my lifetime. Once in self-defense — a psychopath, Travis Wilson, had stalked me and tried to skin me alive. Surely, God would forgive me my will to live.
The other three, were bank robbers. They’d taken twenty-two people hostage. A bullet tore through an elderly lady’s brain. The robber was pressing his Glock to a pregnant woman’s temple, making a show of his ruthlessness for the SWAT team outside. I’d been in the building, armed, on an operation for Iniquus. Protecting innocents was just an extension of my job, and killing those men were not sins in my mind. But they must have been, and this must be the road to Perdition.
Something in my soul clung to the idea of justice. Damnation was not the path I would voluntarily roam for eternity. I sensed the Devil, red-faced and gloating, reaching out his craggy hand, laughing as he tried to drag me over the edge. “No!” my mind screamed as I desperately tried to scuttle away from the chasm, the smell, the heat, and the sound. “God, help me. God, please help me.”
As if on cue, peace quenched the inferno that raged through my veins. With the flames from Hell’s threshold extinguished, I floated away from evil into nothingness.
Time danced inevitably forward. I felt solid again. A bright light assaulted my pupils. Not the light of Heaven’s beauty, but a pen light, checking for dilation.
“She’s coming around,” the man in a lab coat said.
Striker’s face came into view. “Lynx? Lynx, can you hear me?”
I tried to work my jaw muscles to respond. I couldn’t. Something large and hard filled my mouth. The trickle of tears sliding down my cheek was the only signal I could muster. The salt stung my cuts and abrasions and burned my face.
“Lynx, if you can understand me, squeeze my hand.” Striker used his commander voice, even and authoritative.
I was loopy. Heavily drugged. But that much I could do.
“Chica, you’re safe. We’re taking good care of you. I need you to keep fighting. Don’t leave me now.”
Unable to move, unable to speak, I closed my eyes and let myself drift back into the peace of the drugs flowing through my IV.
I knew that minutes and hours slid by. But it was an awareness that sat in an armchair, reading a book, muttering over the pages from time to time – not an awareness that actually held my attention or made me think. I lay stupefied on my bed. Slowly, I realized that Striker was rubbing a finger up and down my arm, trying to rouse me.
“Lynx? I need you to open your eyes. Look at me.”
I worked hard to comply, squinting up at his face through a morphine haze. I felt the sturdiness and strength of his body beside me. I wasn’t hallucinating him. He was real. Real? Yes, solid. Here. The relief I felt rushed through my body like a tidal wave, floated my emotions to the surface, and overwhelmed me. My body shivered under the light cotton blanket.
As I focused on his face, Striker gave me a slightly crooked smile with a hint of dimples. His gaze, steady and warm, held mine, though worry made tire tracks between his green eyes. I breathed in deeply to form a happy sigh, until pain exploded my chest into bright colors, freezing me in place.
Striker’s thumb stroked over my jaw line. As I exhaled, the pain receded into the background.
“They’ve taken out your breathing tube. Can you say something?” He tried to hide the hitch in his voice behind a cough.
I licked my swollen lips. They wer
e crusty and dry under a thick layer of what tasted like Vaseline. It took me a minute and a few false tries to coordinate my tongue and teeth into intelligible words.
“Chest hurts,” I croaked, toad-like.
“I’m sure it does, Chica.” His grip tightened around my hand, pinching my fingers together. “We had to defibrillate you.”
His vowels and consonants leaped like a gymnast doing floor exercises, swirling and spinning. It was hard to form them into understandable words. Defibrillate. I let the word condense into a thought. “I was dead?”
“When we pulled you from the plane wreck, you had no vitals. You must have just gone into cardiac arrest, because we were able to bring you back right away.”
I tried to shift, but my body only moved centimeters. I couldn’t turn my head. I was fastened by some kind of restraint. I let my gaze take in what I could. Plain, green walls. Fluorescent lighting. An IV stand. I wasn’t in the desert anymore. I wasn’t alone anymore.
“We flew you here to Lackland Air Force Base. You’re in their hospital,” Striker said.
“Texas, then. Not Honduras.”
“You’re on US soil.” His eyes hardened into his assessing look. “That was one hell of an escape plan.”
I tried to screw my expression into a wry smile, but my skin wouldn’t oblige. “My face. . . can I see a mirror?” I hadn’t seen my reflection in a mirror since mid-February, when Maria Rodriguez kidnapped me and hid me in a Honduran prison. It was what — sometime in late June? July?
Striker locked down his emotions. His facial muscles froze into combat stoicism. What made him brace? I lifted my hands to my face, where my fingers explored the unfamiliar terrain. Bandages and tape crisscrossed over my forehead and down my nose. Scabs, like chicken pox, dotted my cheeks. Everything felt scaly and tight.
Striker eased my hands away, moving them gently down to rest on my stomach. “Lynx, I’d rather you wait a little while before you look in the mirror. You don’t look like yourself right now.” His combat mask slipped a little, and I saw the shadow of sadness and concern written in his eyes. No pity, thank goodness. Pity made me weak.
“You’ve lost a lot of weight,” he said. “You were just over eighty pounds when we brought you in yesterday. Your skin’s pretty badly sunburned. Those sores you’re feeling are from the toxins trying to get out of your system when you were dehydrated.”
“What else?” My voice cracked. I’d love a sip of water. Some ice chips. I wondered if they’d allow that. Somehow, it felt like too much effort to ask.
“Broken nose. Broken ribs and sternum. Trauma to your head and spinal column. The head trauma is worrisome because it’s your second traumatic brain injury in the same year. The doctors are stabilizing you for surgery. Hopefully that’ll happen in the morning if you continue to improve.”
“Because?” When I squeezed his hand for support, the tubing and tape from the IV pulled at my elbow.
“They need to rebuild your sternum and re-attach your ribs. You’re strapped to a board right now.” He reached out and rapped on the surface beneath me so I could hear its solidity. “But when you wake up, they’re going to have you in traction for your spine and neck.” His words became gruff when he drew my hand to his lips for a kiss. “Chica, it was a near thing.” Emotions under his skin and behind his eyes fought for expression, but Striker’s steely will held out, and he maintained his control. As always.
That didn’t mean I couldn’t feel his distress empathically. His energy entwined with mine until I couldn’t tell us apart or tell his pain from mine. One of the many things I hated about ESP.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” I couldn’t handle the guilt. This whole fiasco was my own damned fault. Poor decisions. Impulsive behavior. Secrecy. I offered Striker the closest thing to a contrite smile as I could form on my inflexible face. I felt like I was treading water - my head lifting just above the black swirl of morphine. It was exhausting to struggle, so I tried to float for a minute. To rest. My words slurred together. “You know, it’s going to feel so good to get home again. We can—”
“No.” Striker’s voice slammed into my thoughts, bringing them to a screeching halt like a brake stopping a barreling car. My eyelids stretched wide.
“You aren’t going home,” He softened his tone. “It isn’t safe. You still have people out there trying to get you.”
Monumentally confused, I played his words over again in my mind. I wanted answers, but the pain had turned into a raging monster, clawing at my chest. I gasped at the shock of it. It pulled all of my attention away from here and now, and my questions of what? Why? And, who in the world? Striker pressed the call button. A nurse appeared next to me. That was all I remembered.
Two
I was dreaming that dream again. I held a balloon on a long string. The sky was a brilliant, dazzling blue. I squinted up past the glistening sunrays to see my balloon, only to discover it was really a small boy, with black hair and huge eyes, floating upwards. I knew I had to hold tightly to the string, or he’d float right up beyond the clouds. This time, a hand reached out to take the string away from me. I wanted to fight for the string, but I was too weak. I knew the little boy; his name was Pablo. I was supposed to protect him. I was supposed to hold on to that string.
“Pablo. Pablo.” I screamed to the clouds, hoping by some miracle to call him back.
“Lynx, baby, wake up. You have to wake up now. You’re dreaming.” The wide expanse of Striker’s muscular shoulders hovered over me. His hands grasped my upper arms, stilling my struggle against the webbing that secured me to my backboard.
“Striker, oh dear God.” I panted for enough breath to continue. Sweat ran across my face, stinging the inner corners of my eyes and my open sores. “It should have been the first word out of my mouth.” I frantically clawed at the sheets, trying to pull myself upright. “There’s a little boy. I promised. I have to get to him. I promised.”
“Lynx, lie still,” Striker commanded.
“You don’t understand.” I slapped angrily at his hands, holding tightly to my shoulders.
“I do understand. We found your letters on the plane. You wrote to me.” Striker sounded so reasonable. So in control. Antithetical to the craziness that spun my sun-bleached thoughts. “You asked me to honor your memory by saving Pablo in the village south of your prison.”
“Yes, I have to get to him.” My eyes felt wild in my head.
“Randy and Axel were already there at the prison, looking for you.” Striker’s words struck a slow, steady cadence, and I could understand them, even through my drug-hazy desperation. “They went to Franco and Elicia’s cottage, and brought the whole family to the States. They’re in Florida.” He loosened his grip on my shoulders and reached for a damp cloth on my bed table and used it to pat the perspiration from my face.
I lay still, wondering if I were hallucinating this conversation.
“Pablo had a fever when Axel and Randy brought him in,” Striker said. “I received a report from Axel two hours ago. The doctors are stabilizing the boy and starting tests.”
Striker’s words were too miraculous to be believed. I didn’t believe them. I must be imagining things again. How did they find my prison? When? My mind was set on replay, trying to comprehend these new ideas. “You found my goodbye letters in the plane?” I asked warily.
“Yesterday morning, when we brought you here, Jack was with the plane. He combed through your letters and contacted Axel. The team moved in immediately.” He picked a strand of hair from my bandage and tucked it behind my ear.
I squeezed Striker’s arms until my fingers felt bloodless. He felt real. But still. . .“Pablo’s in the hospital in the United States?” When they sedated Mom in the hospital, she acted this way. Asking the same questions over and over again. It had taken a lot of patience to get any piece of information across to her. I felt that brain numbness. It was hard to hold onto a solid thought; everything seemed gossamer and just out of my reach.
“At a children’s hospital in Florida,” Striker said.
“The doctors think he’ll be all right? He didn’t die because of me?”
“He’s alive today because of you.”
“Oh, I need to digest that. You can’t imagine.” My panic calmed, giving way to cogent thought. “All those long days trapped by the storm. I knew if I died, Pablo would die, too. I promised his dad. Franco put his life on the line for me. I promised him I’d help.”
“When you’re up to it, I’d like you to tell me how you came to know about Pablo. Why this was so important to you.”
This I could do. My thoughts and words were so much easier to form now than they were with my first few attempts at consciousness. I held Striker’s gaze, wondering where to start.
“Maria Rodriguez came to the prison. She wanted to cut off my fingers and send them to you in a box,” I said.
“What?” An emotion sizzled through Striker like an electrical current. “How could you know that?”
“I knew she was coming – I picked her up with ESP – one of my ‘knowings.’ So I was watching for her. I stole a key and sneaked to the office, where she was talking to the guy who ran the prison.” I scratched my teeth over my top lip and wished for some water. “Maria told him the US government wasn’t willing to trade me for her husband. She thought Iniquus would have broken Julio out of the federal pen by then and made their own trade for me. But since you guys hadn’t, she thought she needed something to spur our team into action. She thought that a present of my fingers with an accompanying DVD of their removal would be just the incentive you guys needed.”
Striker worked his jaw back and forth without a single word.
“I had been working on an escape plan. . .the dogs. . .” So much to tell. All of the words jumbled up together on the tip of my tongue, and I had to wait for them to line up politely to exit one at a time.
Striker sat patiently beside me, his fingers laced with mine.
