by Dale Mayer
Kano’s Keep
Bullard’s Battle
Book #5
Dale Mayer
Books in This Series:
Ryland’s Reach, Book 1
Cain’s Cross, Book 2
Eton’s Escape, Book 3
Garret’s Gambit, Book 4
Kano’s Keep, Book 5
Fallon’s Flaw, Book 6
Quinn’s Quest, Book 7
Bullard’s Beauty, Book 8
Bullard’s Best, Book 9
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
About This Book
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Epilogue
About Fallon’s Flaw
Excerpt from Damon’s Deal
Author’s Note
Complimentary Download
About the Author
Copyright Page
About This Book
Welcome to a new stand-alone but interconnected series from Dale Mayer. This is Bullard’s story—and that of his team’s. All raw, rough, incredibly capable men who have one goal: to find out who was behind the attack on their leader, before the attacker, or attackers, return to finish the job.
Stay tuned for more nonstop action as the men narrow down their suspects … and find a way to let love back into their own empty lives.
Catherine. DeeDee. Paris. Kano had hoped to never deal with the three again. The woman he loved, her dragon of a mother, and a city to bring the best—and worst—memories to mind. A return trip leads to a conversation with DeeDee, which sheds more light on who is behind Bullard’s murder in that planned plane explosion.
After seeing Catherine again, Kano can’t stop thinking about her. That young woman matured into someone he couldn’t have imagined and now can’t forget. However, he’s afraid her powerful mother is setting him up to die—yet again.
Catherine hadn’t expected to see Kano again, but this time she’s not letting him walk away. And she’s prepared to face off against her snake of a mother to save him. Catherine must plumb the depths of her own soul and that of her family to save Kano—and herself.
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Chapter 1
Kano Stavros drove out of the Channel as he headed toward Paris. He had rented the vehicle just for this trip, and, with Fallon at his side, he was headed to see DeeDee, a powerful woman of mystery Kano knew from years ago. She was one of the top people at Kingdom Securities—one of Bullard’s greatest competitors. Yet Kano had never considered them a competitor at all because Bullard’s team was very different, operating in a unique manner, much closer to that of the US Legendary Security team.
DeeDee had a very competitive vibe, and anything other than top-of-the-line wasn’t good enough for her.
But right now, Kano was on his way to see her and hopefully to tie together some of these issues and to figure out what was going on. They needed to know who was behind the attacks on Bullard and the others, like Garret, Ryland, and Cain. Maybe just one of them had been targeted, but all of them may have been because they were part of Bullard’s team.
What Kano didn’t want were these attacks to continue. He wanted to put a stop to them, and he and his team wanted to return to living their lives without having to watch their backs every minute. In their business, trust and security would always be an issue to some degree, but to know that they were actively being targeted and attacked meant they had to deal with aggressive ongoing concerns.
“Nobody on the team has been directly attacked for a few weeks,” Fallon said quietly, shifting his position in the rented truck they were traveling in. “Feels like our enemies are waiting, but for what? An announcement about Bullard or something else?”
“I know. I’ve been thinking about that,” Kano said, “and I don’t like it.”
“Why not?”
“I think they’re preparing for something much bigger,” he murmured.
“Pretty damn hard to come up with much bigger than the way they started. Speaking of which, still no word on—”
“I know,” Kano said, interrupting Fallon before he could say it, “but it’s never a good idea to make any assumptions in this case.”
“I’m not,” Fallon said, “but the fact that we’ve had no news on Bullard is getting everybody down.”
“I wouldn’t put it past that guy to have survived somehow,” Kano said. “If anybody could, it would be him.”
“I agree, but, at some point in time,” Fallon added quietly, “we all go to the same end.”
But Kano wasn’t ready to talk about such an end. “Not him, not right now. He needs a good life.”
“And that may or may not happen,” Fallon said.
“How is Ice holding up?”
“She’s holding,” Fallon said, “though things are harder for her to juggle with a new baby. She’s staying in touch with Blachard, Bullard’s halfbrother. Both helping each other to stay positive. Terk is always there, looking for Bullard too. He’s in communication with his brother, Merk, as well.”
“Doesn’t that baby just blow you away?” Kano said. “Whoever thought that Ice would have a family?”
“I think it was always something she held dear to her heart,” Fallon said. “Afraid to speak it out loud, to hold out that hope.”
“And yet, of all the people in this world that I would have said weren’t taking such a step, it would have been Ice and Levi,” Kano said.
“Just goes to show you, we don’t know everything, even about the people closest to us,” Fallon murmured.
And, to that, Kano didn’t have an answer.
He pulled into the heavy traffic, coming out of the Channel, and said, “You know what? With all the things that we’ve managed to do as a society, like this bloody tunnel underneath the water and going to the moon,” he said, “you’d think we’d have more accurate ways to track people.”
“You mean, like Bullard?” Fallon asked.
“Like Bullard, like DeeDee. You know? We have satellite, yet it’s not enough,” he said. “All these rules and regulations stop us from doing what we need to do, and that’s frustrating as hell.”
“You just don’t like anybody stopping you from doing something,” Fallon said, with a chuckle.
“Do you blame me?” he asked, giving his buddy a sideways glance.
“Hell no, I don’t blame you. And I understand it because I have the same tendency to want to blast through all the restrictions. But we don’t really have much of an option over here.”
“No, that’s true,” Kano said. “At the same time, we want to keep moving our world forward. And that means playing these games that I don’t like playing,” he snapped.
After that, there was silence for twenty minutes, as they headed toward their destination.
“Did you book a place to stay?” Kano asked.
“I did,” he said. “Just follow the GPS directions.” Fallon nodded to the dash.
“No way I’ll let that viper know anything about us,” Kano said.
“Do you think she’s still that deadly?”
“Yeah, she’s definitely that deadly,” Kano said. “She’s the one giving Kingdom the bad name.”
“And what about her daughter?”
“Her daughter won’t have anything to do with me,” he said quietly.
“So you had a relationship at one time?”
“Maybe, or so I thought,” Kano sai
d, “but you don’t have to look at the mother very long to realize it’s a bad deal all around.”
“You can’t really blame the daughter then, can you?”
“I can, and I did,” Kano said, and he hoped his buddy would lay off. But he didn’t.
“You can’t hide this stuff, man,” he said. “We’re heading into a tough time. It’s important that I know what’s going on.”
“Nothing’s going on,” Kano snapped.
“And yet your tone of voice says otherwise,” he said.
With that, Kano groaned. “Catherine is her own person,” he said, “but she was still very much under her mother’s thumb, and I couldn’t deal with that.”
“How close were you?”
“We were lovers. I thought it was going somewhere,” he said, “but obviously it wasn’t.”
“Any regrets?”
“Sure,” he said. “Obviously I cared. And I wouldn’t still be upset by your questions if I were over it all, but it was many years ago.”
“Has she moved on?”
“I sure as hell hope so,” he said, with a startled look at Fallon. “I’m not still holding a torch for her, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“Good,” he said, “that could get a little awkward.”
“Yeah, more than a little,” he snapped again. “But don’t worry. I will not let somebody like her turn my attention elsewhere.”
Fallon stayed quiet at that point, for which Kano was grateful. He just wasn’t sure where Fallon’s thoughts were going. As they pulled into the hotel, Kano looked at the five-star hotel and asked, “Who booked us such an obvious location?”
“I did,” Fallon said.
Kano looked at him in surprise. “It’s not our usual style,” he murmured.
“No, but no point in hiding here,” he said. “It’s better that we make a more ‘Hey, we’re here. Deal with it,’ statement.”
Kano chuckled at that. “I like that.”
“Good. Because this is the way we’re operating from here on out. We operate in the dark a lot of the time, but sometimes we’re much better off to be out in the bright glare of reality.”
“Interesting twist,” he said. “I still prefer the shadows.”
“Yeah, but no skulking around this time,” Fallon said.
He chuckled. “Says you.”
“Absolutely.”
As they walked in and registered, Kano headed up with the keys to their room. Registration always seemed to take so damn long, but, in this case, most of it had been done ahead of time. Kano unlocked the suite and stepped in. He smiled. “At least if we’re traveling, we’re traveling in style,” he murmured.
“Exactly,” Fallon said, “remember that.”
He shrugged and said, “Hard to forget.” As soon as he tossed his duffel bag on the floor in one of the bedrooms, he said, “I need a meal.”
“Not a problem,” Fallon said, “we’re meeting DeeDee for a bite.”
“Really?” Kano turned in disgust. “Can’t we even have one clean meal without being around her?”
“Is she that bad?”
“Think barracuda,” he said, “but one who doesn’t show her teeth until it’s too late.”
Fallon definitely looked interested, but Kano shook his head at him. “Don’t even bother. She’s poison.”
“You want to give me some examples?”
“She set up her second in command,” he said quietly, “to be killed on a job, so she didn’t have to worry about him taking over her position.”
Fallon’s gaze widened. “Oh, shit,” he said. “A black widow in person.”
“You have no idea. She’s been married twice,” he said. “Both husbands are dead.”
“She killed them?”
“No clue,” he said, “but I know her daughter wondered.”
“Yet she’s still close to her?”
“That was one of the dichotomies I struggled with,” he said, “and, no, I didn’t give her much chance to explain, once I figured out that she was still very much a mommy’s girl. I walked.”
“Yeah, at times, you’re just better off getting out because you’ll never know who to trust.”
“Now you’re getting it,” Kano said, “and this case is definitely one of not knowing who to trust. But DeeDee? She’s poison. Remember that.”
“Hey, I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “I like my ladies a whole lot younger than DeeDee and a whole lot simpler. Besides, I don’t want to worry about not waking up one night because she had designs on my career or my future,” he said.
“Let’s deal with her,” he said. “We don’t have any time to spare.”
“No,” Fallon said. “But I’d feel better if we could find any sign of Bullard.”
“Another reason why we don’t have any time to spare.”
“If she’s involved, maybe she’s already found him.”
At that, Kano turned and sent a horrified glance at Fallon. “Are we really thinking somebody may have picked up Bullard? That he’s being held captive somewhere?”
“What we don’t know is what happened at all,” he said. “We’ve found no sign of him.”
“Which,” Kano said, “isn’t all that unusual, given the location. If he drowned when the plane went down, we’ll never find any proof.”
“That would be very tough for all of us,” Fallon admitted. “But let’s go see if your black widow has any news that we need.”
“Great,” he said. “I would take a shower, but I’ll wait and have one afterward. I’ll really need it then.”
“I can’t wait to meet this woman,” Fallon said.
“Not only can you wait,” he said, “I wish you didn’t even have to.”
*
“Did you say Kano was coming?” Catherine asked over the phone.
“Yes,” her mother said, in that crisp, businesslike voice of hers.
“Why?” And wow. That she’d managed to speak at all said a lot about her years of learning control.
“I don’t know why,” her mother lied.
Of course it was a lie because her mother knew everything. She made a point of not having any appointments that weren’t completely to her benefit. It had taken Catherine a long time to actually see who her mother was. It was a heartbreaking realization, but she was finally there. Just years too late. “And what does it have to do with me?” she asked.
“I just thought I should tell you,” she said.
“You wouldn’t tell me unless you had a reason,” she snapped.
“Touchy, aren’t you? Is it possible that Kano still makes your heart flutter?” she asked in a mocking tone. “Been a long time since anything made that happen.”
“What’s the matter? Have you run out of logical options for husband number what, three, four, five?”
“I have number three, four, and five all laid out,” her mother answered smoothly. “When have you ever known me not to?”
“You haven’t remarried yet, so maybe you’re slowing down a little bit,” she said.
“Not likely, but you can’t do it too quickly. Otherwise they get suspicious.”
“You mean, suspicious that they may not survive to get a divorce?” Catherine caught her breath. That was the closest she’d ever dared come to accusing her mother of having a hand in the deaths of her husbands.
“I didn’t kill them,” her mother said in a harsh voice. “And I won’t tolerate you insinuating anything different.”
“No, you’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
Sounding somewhat mollified, her mother snapped, “And so you should be.”
“Still, don’t you want to have a different kind of relationship next time?”
“You mean, outside of a man who dies early?” her mother asked, bringing up the previous subject on her own.
“I never thought you were very happy with either of them. Were you?”
“What’s happiness?” she said. Catherine could almost see the sh
rug that her mother would have given on her end of the call. “Unless you’re thinking about that fantasy called love.”
“It does occur to me occasionally that something like that would be nice.”
“There isn’t such a thing, so forget it,” she snapped. “God, I can’t believe you’d still be foolish enough to think of that. Surely Kano was enough of a lesson for you.”
“And, if he was, why are you letting me know he’s coming into town?”
“Not just coming to town,” she said. “I’m meeting him for dinner.”
At that, she sucked in her breath. “Why?”
“He wants to meet with me for some reason,” she said. “Maybe he should be husband number four.” And, with that, her mother hung up.
Catherine stared at the phone in her hand, wondering who her mother had in mind for husband number three. “Oh, dear God, Kano. Why are you coming back? Please don’t have anything to do with my mother.”
It didn’t take very long for her to remember just how wise Kano was in dealing with her mother. Because Catherine hadn’t been willing to see the poisonous threads that her mother wove was the reason Catherine and Kano had split up in the first place. Talk about willful blindness. It had been hard for her to see through that, and she’d held off for a long time. But finally she couldn’t keep believing in the innocence of the person she’d always thought of as the best mom, always protecting Catherine.
At some point, once the blinders were off, Catherine realized her mother was there for herself and no one else. She had told Catherine so. Her mother had scoffed at her for being delusional for so long. She’d even said to her, “Grow up. We’re all here for a purpose, and, in my case, it’s to make my life easier.”
Catherine didn’t know what was going on with Kano now that he was asking to see her mother, and Catherine wished she had a way to contact him to find out. As she sat here, the longer she thought about her mother’s upcoming dinner with Kano, the more she worried.
She didn’t have a way to contact him and, at the same time, owed him nothing. Except that he’d been right, and she’d been wrong, and she had never told him so. Though it wasn’t necessary to tell him either. It had been a hard lesson, and obviously he’d been more adept at seeing through her mother than Catherine had been. But still, it wasn’t something she wanted rubbed in her face.
