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1
Waking up in a cold sweat was nothing new to Gunner. His life was made up of a series of nightmares strung together like a broken strand of lights that his subconscious forced him to relive night after night after night.
Prior to the one day that defined his life more than any other, his dreams had varied, featuring one horrific reenactment after another of harrowing escapes, hostile gunfire, exploding IEDs, and other forms of death and destruction.
Now, the first thing he saw, most nights when he closed his eyes, was the woman he’d been forced to kill, looking him in the eye and saying, “Paps, I thought you loved me.”
She’d never actually uttered those words to him. They were only spoken in his nightmares when her eyes met his at the very moment she realized he’d killed her.
Lena Hess had been under K19 Security Solution’s protection since the day he and his three partners opened for business. Prior to that, her detail had been the responsibility of an elite team comprised of active duty service members and CIA agents, called the Special Activities Division of the agency’s National Clandestine Service, or NCS.
Had he loved her? For a while, he thought maybe he could. In what felt like the briefest of moments, he’d seen the bright light of the woman she’d once been before darkness reigned over her life. In an instant, she was gone again, unable to pull herself out of what they now knew was mental illness.
If only they’d known how to help her…but that didn’t matter now. It was too late. She was dead—and he’d killed her.
“Don’t do this, Lena. If you think I won’t shoot, you’re wrong,” he shouted.
Her eyes darted between him and his business partner—a man like a brother to him whom she’d just shot, and who was on the ground—with his gun still pointed at her.
Gunner watched as she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and tightened her finger on the trigger. Before she could get the shot off, he fired.
He ran toward her, catching her before her head hit the concrete.
There was no question she was dead; he’d hit her square in the chest with a .45. No one could survive a shot like that.
“Goddammit,” he cried, cursing her for forcing his hand.
As he’d watched Lena’s lifeless body being taken away, he’d made two decisions. First, that “Paps,” the code name he’d been given by his special ops teammates, would be buried with her. Second, the man who remained, Gunner Godet, vowed he’d never allow himself to fall for a woman again. His resolve had lasted less than a handful of hours, when the woman he was now risking his life to rescue, wound up in his bed.
Zaryana “Raketa” Ivashov had been undercover on the same op that resulted in Lena’s death, initially posing as her nurse and caregiver after an accident had left Lena blind and amnesic. When the operative was tasked with providing her safe passage to Moscow, Lena had thanked the woman the intelligence world knew as “the Rocket,” by putting a bullet in her brain—or so she’d thought.
“Shit,” Gunner gasped when he saw Raketa’s body lying in a pool of blood.
He ran forward and checked for a pulse, nodding at his teammates when he found one.
That she was still alive meant the bullet had either grazed her skull or was still lodged in her brain. If it was the latter, the chance she’d survive was slim. However, without immediate medical attention, it would be certain.
Raketa’s eyes fluttered open when he whispered her name. She groaned and tried to sit up.
“Stay still,” he whispered, motioning for his teammates to go ahead.
As risky as it was, he called for backup. “Send a medic,” he said into his radio mic.
“Who shot you?” he asked, trying to get her eyes to stay focused on his.
“Lena,” she groaned. “Go. Find her. She’s…”
When she lost consciousness again, Gunner closed his eyes and said a silent prayer, all the while keeping his finger on her still-active pulse.
He knew he had to leave her when the medics arrived, as hard as it was to go.
