DRAGON SECURITY: Volume 2: The Complete 6 Books Series

by Glenna Sinclair

  “Believe what you want to believe, Hayden,” she said softly. “All I know is that it’s been a long fucking night and I’m exhausted. And I’m sure you are, too.”

  I was. Just her saying the words made the burden of it all fall heavily on my own shoulders.

  She came to me, her eyes bright with unshed tears. She touched my arms where they were still crossed over my chest, tugging at them until I let them fall to my sides. Then she surprised me by moving up against my body, her slight body warm and soft against mine. I couldn’t help but wrap my arms around her waist.

  “I love you,” she said softly. “I know that’s the last thing you want to hear. I know you don’t love me, that you’ll never love me, and that you will never trust me. But we’re stuck here together in this crazy situation for the unforeseeable future. There’s no reason we can’t take what comfort we can offer each other until it’s over.”

  “Waverly …”

  “Please, Hayden,” she whispered in a voice dripping in tears. “Help me forget what happened tonight.”

  What was I supposed to say to that?

  I gave in to the instincts I’d been fighting all night. I picked her up and carried her into the master bedroom, laying her gently on the massive king sized bed that was the centerpiece of the room. There was a little fear in her eyes as I pulled back, but it disappeared as I carefully began to undress her. Shoes first, then socks.

  Her jeans moved easily over her narrow hips, but I had to get her to sit up slightly so that I could remove her shirt. There were fresh scratches on her belly and around her ribs that would be painful in the morning. And bruises were beginning to make themselves known on her wrists, her upper arms, and her lower chest. I ran my fingers over each, listening to the story they told of the assault she’d suffered last night.

  “I’m sorry,” I said softly.

  She sat up again, her hand sliding over the side of my face, her fingers dancing in my facial hair. When she kissed me, it was the sweetest kiss I’d tasted in a very long time. Exhaustion tearing down the last of my walls, I lifted her and pushed her over, crawling onto the bed beside her. She nestled against my chest and we both quickly gave in to sleep, drawing what we needed from one another in the silence of this warm, safe home.

  There was nothing we could ask in that moment.

  Chapter 9

  Megan

  “Is everyone here?” I asked Vincent as we rode the elevator down to the conference room.

  “Everyone.”

  I took a deep breath before walking into the room. I had to pause when I looked around, surprised by the number of faces I saw there. I’d asked Vincent to call in the available operatives and his investigative team. I didn’t expect to find not only our current operatives, all of them amazingly available, but some of our former ones, too.

  “Amelia?” I asked as I approached her. “What are you doing here? I thought you were on your way to Ireland.”

  “That was Rowan’s plan. I wanted to be here. For Hayden.”

  I frowned a little, remembering the crush Amelia had had on Hayden before meeting our client, Rowan McGregor, a little more than a week ago. Was she still convincing herself she was in love with Hayden? Because I was pretty sure Hayden was falling very quickly and very deeply for Waverly.

  “Don’t worry,” Amelia said, apparently reading my mind. “Rowan and I are going strong. I just … Hayden’s always been there for me. I wanted to give a little of that back.”

  I touched her shoulder, squeezing lightly. “Just make sure you take care of yourself.”

  “Not a problem with Rowan around.”

  I smiled as I moved around her toward the small group that consisted of both my brothers—even though Cole hadn’t worked for Dragon in years—Dominic, Hayden’s second in command, and Marcus, an operative who had worked with us early in our existence, but who left years ago to have babies with his beautiful wife, Cadence.

  “Hey, everyone’s here, huh?”

  “Hi, Megan,” Marcus said, moving close to give me a brotherly hug.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Come to help out.”

  I looked him over with an appreciative smile. “Teaching must be treating you well. You look good.”

  Marcus beamed. He’d become a high school English teacher in an inner school in Dallas. It fit his personality, I thought. He was quiet, but kind. Generous.

  I was happy for him.

  “Everyone wanted to help when I told them it was about Hayden,” Vincent said as he came up behind me to lead me to the head of the table.

  “Generous of them.”

  “Hayden saved each one of these peoples’ lives at one time or another in one way or another. They all feel like they owe him.”

  I stood and surveyed the room, studying the familiar faces around me. Vincent was right. Hayden had saved all these lives, some on more than one occasion. Before Sam, he was diligent at his job, not always by the book, but dedicated. Determined. After Sam … he had put his heart and soul in this firm, building it into what it was now. Our doors probably wouldn’t be open now if not for Hayden.

  We all owed him this.

  “I’m sure Vincent informed most of you as to what happened tonight. However, for those of you who do not know … we had an operative attacked in a hotel room tonight. Three people forced their way into the room. Two were apprehended after our operative and her companion managed to overpower them. Both suspects were taken to a local hospital to be treated for injuries sustained in a fight and a gunshot wound to the shoulder.”

  “All right, Amelia!” Kasey said, offering Amelia a high five, smiling brightly until he caught my harsh glare. “Sorry,” he muttered, forcing himself to focus.

  “Several hours later, two people broke into Waverly Cooper’s house. One attacked her while the other searched her personal computer and desk.”

  “Waverly?” Dominic asked. “What does she have to do with this? She was let go some time ago.”

  A murmur rose up in the room. I held up my hand to quiet the room.

  “Waverly was attacked by a man fitting the description of one of our operative’s attackers, the man who was shot in the shoulder.”

  Amelia met my eye with a profound sadness that only someone who’d been attacked and survived would understand. Generously, she stood.

  “For clarity’s sake, I was the operative Megan is talking about. The man I shot was holding my …” She hesitated for a moment, like she didn’t know what to call Rowan. “He was holding back Rowan McGregor while his companion attacked me. I managed to get out from under my attacker and shot the other man so that he would let Rowan go. That man never spoke or did anything other than hold Rowan back.”

  “The police informed Vincent that this same suspect escaped police custody while at the hospital for treatment. Vincent saw him at the hospital and believes, from Waverly’s description, that he is the same man.”

  “That means all of this is connected.” Marcus sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. “Why?”

  “Because of Hayden.”

  I let the words sink in around the room. There were a few glances at Amelia and a few snickers and whispers from which I caught Waverly’s name a few times. I cleared my throat and—like a well-behaved class of eager students—they quieted.

  “Thirty years ago, Hayden was witness to a double homicide. He testified in court against the two perpetrators. One made threats against him in open court and continued to threaten him throughout his time in prison, saying that Hayden was mistaken. When this perpetrator was released from a New York prison, he sought out Hayden and attempted to shoot him on a public street. The man missed and killed Hayden’s fiancée instead.”

  My heart jumped into my throat, swelling with grief as the words boomeranged around in my head. I couldn’t talk about Sam so casually and not expect it to hurt. She was my best friend since high school, my confidant and my conscience, my better half in so many ways. I miss
ed her with a fire that would never go out. It killed me just thinking about that day, remembering how broken Hayden was for so long afterward.

  Luke, standing at the back of the room, acted as though he wanted to come to me, but he stopped, watching closely but giving me the space he knew I’d ask for to be a strong, independent woman—in front of my employees, anyway.

  “Not long after the shooting, the perpetrator was arrested and sent to jail here in Houston. He died in police custody.”

  “Good riddance,” I heard someone say.

  Peter. He’d loved Sam almost as much as me.

  He wasn’t the only one with that reaction. I could see grief on other faces, people who had known and loved Sam. And I saw compassion on the faces of people who hadn’t known her, but had heard stories.

  “Several months ago there was a double homicide in a relatively small town in Louisiana. Its similarities to the murders of Hayden’s parents caused it to stick out to him, especially since it happened in the same town where his father grew up. A few months after that, another double homicide took place in another Louisiana town. This one was a town where Hayden and his grandparents moved to escape the notoriety of the original murders.”

  Again, murmurs moved around the room. I waited a moment to let it all sink in.

  “Last month, Kasey Thomasson was sent to California to locate a Houston woman who’d gone missing from her family home. The sister hired Dragon. After an extensive investigation, the client’s sister was found murdered in the woods near the town where she’d been staying. Kasey followed a lead to Coronado, outside of San Diego. While he was there, another double murder took place on the island. This, as many of you know, is where Navy SEALs like Hayden are trained.”

  Another round of murmurs.

  “Hayden was working with Waverly, investigating these murders. Together, they were able to find an alias they believe was used by the killer to rent the home where police think Rosalie Matthias—the single murder victim—was held and tattooed in preparation for her murder. This alias has also been linked to the locations of the other murders. However, we do not, at this time, know how Rosalie Matthias is connected to these copycat murders.”

  “If Waverly wasn’t able to uncover anything, what makes you think the new tech team will?” Kevin, another of our former operatives who had quit to help run his fiancée’s ranch, asked.

  I shook my head. “Whoever is doing this is very good. As most of you know, we’ve had a couple of safe houses compromised over the past few months. We’ve come to believe that this happened because someone put a virus on Hayden’s phone that allowed them to use it as a listening device. We think someone was using it to find ways to discredit Hayden.”

  No one liked that idea. Someone even blurted out what we were all thinking:

  “Impossible.”

  “Our tech team is at Waverly’s as we speak, collecting her hard drive and anything else they think might be helpful in figuring this out. What we need to concentrate on is investigating these murders. We need to contact the various law enforcement agencies and find out what they have. We need to inform them that we believe the murders are connected. And we need to figure out who Rosalie Matthias is and why the killer felt the need to include her in this plot even though her death did not fit the pattern.”

  “Why do we think Rosalie Matthias is connected to all this?” Kasey asked.

  “Because the tattoos the killer left all over her body were the emblem from the hotel where the first murder took place.”

  The room erupted with chatter then. I let them talk because I was essentially done with my presentation and talk was a good way to establish a plan of action. Luke crossed the room and moved up behind me, his hand sliding over my hip.

  “You okay?”

  I shook my head even as I stepped away from him.

  “We need to get started. I want the investigative team helping out tech with everything they’re bringing in from Waverly’s. There will be printouts on the evidence she was able to gather. Go over it, learn it backwards and forward, and find a path forward.”

  I looked around the room, focusing on Dominic and Marcus. “I want you guys, with Cole and Peter, to check into Rosalie Matthias. There has to be a connection to Hayden, and I think once we find it, it will give us a clue to the copycat’s identity. The rest of you, I want you to offer support wherever necessary.” I stopped, looking around the room.

  “And it goes without saying that this person has attacked two people who are, or who were, connected to Dragon and to Hayden in particular. That means that anyone in this room could be a potential target to this killer. Please, please, be careful. And work in teams as often as you can.”

  Nods moved around the room, some eyes focused on Amelia instead of me. Then they gathered their things and headed out the door.

  “The tech team just checked in. They’re on their way.”

  I nodded to Vincent. “Keep me informed.”

  “Of course.”

  The moment the room was empty, Luke grabbed me around the waist and pulled me hard against his chest.

  “You need to take a minute and regroup,” he said.

  “I need to find out who’s trying to kill my operatives.” But despite the urgency burning in my chest, I gave in to his touch, resting my head against his chest for a long moment, breathing in his familiar scent. I’d survived two years without this man in my life. I didn’t want to have to survive that again. “You should go home. Hang out with the kids.”

  “I’d rather be here with you, babe.”

  “I know. But one of us should be there to tuck them into bed tonight.”

  “One of us will be. Preferably both of us. But that’s hours away.”

  I looked up at him and he smiled, his dark eyes filled with affection. We’d known each other all our lives, practically. Luke’s mother—God bless her soul—was my family’s housekeeper. She brought Luke to work with her every day and he attended the same public high school where my father insisted his children attend over the private the school he decided would teach us the wrong moral lessons about life.

  We played together as children, dated in high school, and made promises to one another as young adults. I knew his face better than my own, even now, even after the plastic surgery he had when he thought he needed to change his appearance to protect me. But you can’t change what’s underneath. Somehow, it always shines through no matter what you do to your appearance.

  He kissed me and it was almost like the first time. Almost. But there was something so familiar about the curve of his lips, the taste of his skin. I wrapped my arms around his neck and tugged him closer, sliding my hands through his hair. He sighed, tugging me as close as he could get me to his hard, fantastically hot body.

  He was still so hot, even after all these years.

  “Megan?”

  I groaned, refusing to break the kiss for a long second. But then reality slowly began to seep back in.

  “I think I need to get to work,” I said regretfully against Luke’s lips.

  “I’ll be here when you need me.”

  I smiled. “I’m relying on it.”

  I walked away, wondering how things were going for Hayden and Waverly. I certainly hoped they weren’t killing each other as we spoke. It would do Hayden some good if he would let himself love that woman. She was good for him.

  Sam would approve. I had no doubt about that.

  Chapter 10

  Waverly

  It was late in the afternoon, but my stomach was growling for food. We’d slept much deeper and much longer than I would have thought possible, Hayden finally waking me when he tried—unsuccessfully—to slip out from under me when he woke. I watched him walk around the room, gathering the things he needed for a quick shower, a part of me trying to remember to hold on to every second of this memory because I probably wouldn’t see the movement of his muscles and the long, sleek physique of his broad body much longer.

  How did
other women do it? How could a woman share the most intimate parts of herself with a man she knew couldn’t—or wouldn’t—offer anything more than a few stolen moments?

  I knew I’d be broken when this was over. But it was like watching an accident about to happen and having no power to stop it.

  Now he was moving around the kitchen, humming a little under his breath—some popular song that I didn’t even know he knew—gathering ingredients for what seemed to be turning into a complicated meal.

  “I’d be perfectly happy with just an omelet, or something.”

  He glanced back at me. “We have all these wonderful fruits and vegetables, and you want eggs?”

  “Whatever you say.”

  I poured myself a glass of wine from the bottle he’d opened a few minutes ago. It was a sweet wine, a red that burst with flavor on the tip of tongue. I drank the first glass faster than I probably should have on an empty stomach, pouring another as he returned to the counter beside me.

  “Anything I can do?”

  “Just sit there and keep me company.”

  I could do that.

  I watched him wield a knife like a pro, chopping up vegetables in half the time it would have taken me. I liked cooking and watched competition shows on the Food Network. But I didn’t have the skills Hayden did, nor the creativity to come up with a recipe seemingly off the top of my head. When I was set to cook, I had my iPad open on the counter to some recipe that I’d been meaning to try for months.

  “Who taught you how to cook?”

  “I taught myself.”

  “Yeah? Why?”

  He glanced at me. “I cooked for Sam a few times and it was horrible.” He smiled at the memory. “After she was gone, I had all this time on my hands. I just thought it would be a good skill for a confirmed bachelor to have. Couldn’t eat fast food for the rest of my life.”

  I tried to imagine what it would be like to be committed to being alone for the rest of your life. No matter what happened here, I couldn’t believe that I would never find someone else I’d want to have a family with. That person might not be everything that I knew Hayden could be if he gave us a chance, but I wouldn’t be alone.