DRAGON SECURITY: Volume 2: The Complete 6 Books Series

by Glenna Sinclair

  “Who the fuck are you?” I demanded. “How do you know him?”

  She laughed. “Ask him, sweetheart. I bet he told you he’s a day trader, that he sits in front of a computer day and night, moving money and stocks around in cyberspace, right? Do you really think a day trader would look like that? Do you think working out in the gym three times a week gives a man a physique like that? Think again, bitch!”

  I grabbed a handful of her hair, twisting it around in my fingers. “Then where did he get it?”

  She just laughed, glancing back at him like I was the most amusing thing she’d seen in a very long time.

  “We have to go,” Richard said, grabbing my arm. “We have to get out of here before someone comes to investigate the gunshots.”

  He was right, but this seemed like such a perfect opportunity to learn something about him. She clearly knew him, clearly knew his real name and what had happened the night of the accident.

  “Did you cut the brakes on his car? Is that what happened that night?”

  “You really think the people we worked for would be satisfied with a simple cut brake line? No, darlin’. I was more thorough than that.” She glanced at him. “He never should have survived.”

  “Come on, Rhett,” he said, grabbing my upper arm harder than I’m sure he intended. “We have to go.”

  So many more questions ran around in my head as I stared down at her, this pretty redheaded woman. But he was right. I could hear shouting out in the corridor. We had to go.

  I turned, thinking ahead enough to grab his duffle and my bag, as we rushed through the two rooms to the door on my side. I paused, looking both ways. The corridor was clear for the moment. I led the way, never checking to make sure he was following because I had faith that he would. I tripped as I rushed down the stairs, a pain shooting up through my thigh. No time to worry about pulled muscles.

  We jumped into the SUV, rushing past the diner as we bounced onto the road. I could see Ingram Porter standing near the booth where we’d been sitting, watching us go. I felt a little bad, leaving without explanation, but I was sure he would have done the same thing if the shoe was on the other foot.

  We were on the interstate in a matter of seconds, speeding north toward Dallas.

  “What the hell?” I asked, glancing at Richard. “What was that? What happened?”

  “She was waiting outside the room when I got there. She pulled the gun and forced me inside before I even realized she was behind me.”

  “What else did she say?”

  He shook his head, clearly trying to wrap his own mind around the whole thing. “She talked about some unnamed they, said we both worked for them, said they threatened me, forced me into service. Said something about a woman named Sabrina, that they threatened her, but that I was always the target.” He shook his head. “I don’t know. She talked like I knew what she was talking about, so she didn’t give a lot of detail.”

  “You called her Rebecca. Did you remember her?”

  “It was just a lucky guess. The nurses at the hospital said I’d asked about a Rebecca when they brought me in.”

  I nodded, my vision suddenly blurring as I guided the SUV around a slow moving car.

  “She kept calling me Xander. Do you think that’s my real name?”

  “Does it feel familiar?”

  He shook his head. “Xander,” he mumbled to himself several times, his hands shaking as he dragged them over the top of his head. He was lost in his own thoughts, running everything that had just happened over in his mind. I glanced at him, adrenaline pulsing through my veins. But then my vision blurred again and my hands began to shake.

  What the fuck?

  Shock, I told myself. The adrenaline was messing with my body, sending my pulse up much higher than it should be, making my heart race. It was just high blood pressure. Excitement. The fight or flight response.

  But I knew it was more than that.

  I looked down at my belly, my thighs, the entire length of my body. It was then that I saw it, the blood pooling under my right thigh.

  I’d been shot.

  Great. Just abso-fucking great.

  Chapter 5

  Megan

  “We should set Hayden up with someone.”

  Luke rolled his eyes at me. “You really think that’s a good idea?”

  “I think it’s been five years since Sam died. He needs to move out of her condo and get on with his life.”

  “That’s up to Hayden.”

  I shook my head even as I dragged a brush through my hair. “If we left it up to Hayden, he’d sit around mourning her for the rest of his life. He’s been through enough. He does so much for other people. It’s time the man had a little happiness in his life.”

  “Maybe misery is his kind of happiness.”

  I threw my brush at him, watching as Luke ducked out of the way.

  “Some best friend you are.”

  “Is that what I am? Hayden’s best friend?”

  “You were. Before.”

  Luke came to the bed and sat behind me, wrapping his arms around my body. “First, you will forever be my first and only best friend. Second, Hayden is still pissed at me for playing you and him when I was Dante. No matter how many times I explain it to him, no matter how many times I try to apologize, he can’t get past it. So, I don’t think we’re best friends now, if we ever were before.”

  “He’s just finding it hard to trust you again. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t consider you his friend.”

  “Maybe.”

  I leaned back into Luke, closing my eyes as I basked in the comfort and familiarity of his touch. There was a time when I physically ached for this touch and thought I’d never experience it again. Luke walked out of my life the night before our wedding, disappearing without explanation for two years. I went through all the stages of grief, convinced I would never see him again. I hated him for leaving, missed him with every fiber of my being, and ached for this, for the simple moments of intimacy.

  He'd done it to protect me. I didn’t like his methods, but I appreciated his motives. It all came back on us anyway, taking my brother away from us for two years, leaving him damaged and lost. It nearly cost one of my operatives his life. It did cost his sister-in-law her life. And all because some madman went rogue and used terror to make himself rich.

  But Luke was back now. Peter was back—even expecting a child. And everything was right in my world. Who could blame me for wanting to spread the joy and help Hayden find the same happiness as me?

  “Sam was the only woman he’d ever trusted and cared enough for to commit to. She was everything to him even if they only had a short time together. She would want him to find happiness again.”

  “Maybe Sam was his one and only, like you’re my one and only.”

  I glanced back at him. “Do you mean that if I died, you wouldn’t get remarried?”

  “No.” He looked me directly in the eye and said it without hesitation. “There’s no one else out there for me.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “What about you? When I was gone, you never sought out anyone else.”

  “I was with Dante.”

  “That’s different. I was Dante, and somehow you knew that.”

  That wasn’t true. Dante had reminded me of Luke—which I now knew was because they were one and the same—but I’d separated them in my head when Dante and I started sleeping together. I didn’t feel the same about Dante as I felt about Luke. And it never would have gone anywhere if I hadn’t discovered the truth—that Luke had had facial reconstruction surgery so that he could be here with me, to protect me from his enemies.

  “Hayden deserves to be happy.”

  Luke pressed his face against my shoulder. “Speaking of Hayden, did you know he took on a new case today involving a guy who claims to have amnesia?”

  “Yeah. He’s concerned the guy might be pulling our legs.”

  “Really?”

  I no
dded. “He got an odd vibe from the guy and I learned a long time ago to trust his vibes. We have Waverly and Vincent checking into him. I’m sure one of them will be able to find something eventually. And Rhett, of course. She’s one of the best investigators we have at Dragon. If anyone can find out anything about this guy, it’ll be her.”

  Luke was quiet for a moment. “And if you find out something bad about him?”

  “We figure that out when the time comes.”

  He kissed my neck. “Do you mind if I review this case? It’s kind of fascinating, the idea of amnesia and all that.”

  “Of course. You know I love it when you help out at the office.”

  “Oh? I thought you preferred me in a suit, getting coffee for your dad and brother at Bradford Telecommunications.”

  “Your job is more important than that. I wish you’d quite running yourself down.”

  He groaned. He’d never wanted to work for my dad, but when Dad made an offer that even the pope would have had a hard time passing up, he couldn’t resist. Not that Luke needed to work. Dragon was doing really well these days, not to mention the fact that he’d married a woman with a sizeable trust fund. But Luke had his pride.

  “You could always come work for me fulltime, you know.”

  “I thought I already did.”

  Luke’s hands slipped under my T-shirt, expertly locating my nipples almost instantly. I closed my eyes, leaning back into him. We’d been together since high school, yet this always felt new and exciting. I’d thought familiarity would breed boredom, but it hadn’t thus far. My bones still turned to molten lava whenever he touched me.

  “I love you,” I mumbled against his lips as I turned and climbed into his lap, guiding him to me, pleased to find him fully aroused and just as ready to go as I was. He wrapped his arms around me and tugged my ass tighter against his hips.

  “You’re my world,” he whispered against my lips. “I will never let anyone or anything hurt you.”

  It seemed like an odd thing for him to say in that moment. But then pleasure rushed over me like a tsunami, knocking all thought out of my head.

  Damn, it felt like heaven!

  Chapter 6

  Xander

  I felt exhilarated! I felt like a child who’d just ridden a roller coaster for the first time. I felt like I’d just completed some impossible task and done it with great style. And to have someone who knew me before, someone who knew who I was, in the same room with me? Xander. My name was Xander.

  It felt right. I knew it was right.

  I was Xander. Xander King.

  It just came to me. And that felt right, too.

  “She knew me, and I think I knew her.” I leaned forward a little. “She seemed familiar. The way she looked, the way she talked. I think I knew her well.”

  I could see her, standing in front of a mirror, undressed, her creamy white shoulders warmed by the sunlight coming in through a nearby window. But then the image disappeared.

  Where were we? Were we lovers?

  It didn’t feel that way, but I wasn’t sure. What I did feel was … irritation. Frustration. Anger. Maybe even a touch of hatred.

  “I think we worked together a long time, but I’m not sure we liked each other.”

  Rhett didn’t respond. I guess she wanted me to just talk it out, to explore what I could drag out from behind the wall of amnesia.

  “There was something different about her hair—it was redder, somehow—but she was familiar. I have this image of her …” I didn’t want to say what the image was. What if we had been lovers? How would that complicate things? “But I know I knew her. And I know she was using my real name. I’m Xander. My name is Xander King.”

  I expected Rhett to be excited to realize that I’d figured something out about my past. A name … that was huge! She could have her computer lady do a search and we’d know who I was by morning. But she didn’t say anything. And then the SUV swerved into the fast lane, nearly sideswiping another car.

  “Hey!”

  I reached over instinctively and grabbed the wheel. Rhett fell forward, her chin slamming into my bicep. I jerked my seatbelt off and slid over, shoving my foot down by the pedals, knocking hers out of the way so that I could get control.

  “Rhett?”

  I couldn’t drive and help her at the same time, but it was pretty clear she was not with me. A calm—I had no idea where it came from—settled over me. I checked the rearview mirror and carefully eased the SUV over to the side of the road, slamming on the brake just a second before it would have careened down into an embankment.

  The car stopped, I put the transmission into park and turned to Rhett, taking her face between my hands. I called her name a time or two, but there was no response. She was pale, her skin clammy. She moaned softly, but she didn’t open her eyes. I pulled back slightly, looking her over. It was then that I realized she was bleeding from the back of her thigh. The blood was dark, like the upholstery of the SUV, making it difficult to see. But when I touched it, my hand came away wet and sticky.

  “Fuck!”

  I had no idea what to do. I started to search for her cellphone, thinking the best thing I could do for her was to call an ambulance. But then I realized calling 911 would just get the police out here and they’d want to know what we’d been up to and they’d find the woman tied up in my motel room. Until we knew better what the hell was going on, I didn’t think that would be a good idea.

  I got out of the SUV and moved her to the back, laying her out in the backseat. I whispered a quiet apology as I tugged her jeans down over her hips—thinking that this was definitely not the situation I had imagined when I’d thought before about removing her jeans—lifting her leg to examine the wound. It was a perfectly round hole in the center of her thigh, just a few inches above her knee, but far enough down that it likely hadn’t hit any major blood vessels.

  The bullet needed to come out and the wound needed to be sewn closed. How I knew that, how I knew any of this, I had no clue. But I knew, just like I knew I needed supplies. And a clean place to work. But I also needed to get us the hell out of there and as far from the woman in my motel room and the man in the dark SUV as possible.

  I ripped a piece of denim off her jeans and wrapped it around her wound, pulling it so tight that she cried out even though she was still unconscious. When I was convinced the bleeding had slowed and she was out of danger for the moment, I belted her to the seat and got the SUV back on the road.

  I got off the interstate as quickly as I could, taking some of the many, many smaller highways that threaded themselves throughout the state, still headed toward Dallas, just in a more roundabout way.

  When I felt like we’d put enough space between us and danger, I pulled over at a gas station. Rhett had a wallet full of cash. I washed up in the bathroom—deciding it wouldn’t be good to walk into the gas station with hands covered in blood—and then I bought as many first aid supplies as I could find in the dinky little place. There was another motel, one not dissimilar to the one we’d just fled, about fifteen miles up the road. I got us a room using cash and pulled the SUV to the back of the place, out of sight of the road and the main office.

  Rhett was moaning as I carried her upstairs, her body drenched in sweat. I knew what it was—once again I didn’t know how I knew, I just knew. She was in shock. I had to get that bullet out and disinfect the wound. And I had to do it fast.

  I took her directly into the bathroom, removing the rest of her clothes before I set her in the bathtub. I’d be in real trouble if she woke now, but there was no time to worry about modesty. I worked quickly, digging in the wound with a pair of tweezers that were woefully inadequate to the task. She moaned as I worked, the color in her face growing paler by the second. But she didn’t wake, and that worried me. She should have woken.

  The bullet eventually popped out, worked out through pressure from my fingers, like a teenager popping a pimple. Blood oozed from the wound, but not an extraordin
arily large amount. That was a good sign. I threaded a needle with heavy duty thread—it was pink, the only color the gas station had—and pulled the edges of the wound together to place the stitches. It took nine. I added a tenth on the corner just to be safe.

  I didn’t want to soak the wound in water because of the risk of infection, but there was blood drying everywhere. I wet a rag and added a little antibacterial soap I’d gotten with the first aid supplies and began to wash her up. I tried to keep the water warm, but she began to shiver after just a few minutes.

  I worked as quickly as I could, cleaning up as much of the blood and debris as possible. Then I wrapped her in a blanket from the bed, lifting her out of the tub and carrying her into the bedroom. Her breathing was a little shallow, but her pulse was strong. I was pretty sure she wasn’t in shock anymore, but it would probably be a while before she woke.

  I cleaned up the mess, tossing the used gauze pads, needle and thread into a trash bag with our bloody clothes. Then I took them out and shoved them into the bottom of a dumpster a few blocks down the street. Back in the motel room, I took a long, hot shower, my thoughts consumed with Rhett, with the wound in her leg, and my apparent knowledge about such wounds.

  How did I know how to sew it? How did I know the bullet had to be removed? How did I manage to handle all that so calmly? Anyone else in my position would likely have panicked, but I didn’t. There didn’t feel like there was anything to panic over. But how did I know she hadn’t hit a major artery? How did I know she wouldn’t die if I didn’t call for an ambulance?

  Was I a doctor? A medic in the military? Did I have some sort of formal training? Or maybe I was a Boy Scout. Did Boy Scouts learn how to remove a bullet from someone’s thigh? Somehow I didn’t think so. The military seemed more likely, but the idea I was a medic didn’t seem right, either. Who else learned how to remove bullets?