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CHAPTER 1
July 25
Lauren Parker wasgoing to cry. She shut the door to her guest room and stood tensely, fighting the tears burning in her gray eyes. The past had taught her that tears did nothing but make her foster father angry. And they sure as hell didn’t win her a reprieve from him or his ugly, sick, incestual intentions toward her. With a muttered curse under her breath, she took a swipe at her eyes. Her anger was focused on Alex Kazak, an ex-Spetsnaz operator from Ukraine who had joined the Russian army as a combat medic. Damn him! Why couldn’t he just leave her the hell alone? She wanted NOTHING to do with the six-foot-four soldier. He was a common criminal, who had worked in the past for the Russian mafia down in Peru. Why Jack Driscoll, head of Shield Security, the outfit she worked for, had ever even hired the man was beyond her.
Moving around the beautifully appointed bedroom, Lauren thought back on how she had come up here to visit Cal Sinclair and his fiancée’, Sky Lambert. They’d invited her, and unfortunately, Alex Kazak, to share their happy news with. Sky was four months pregnant and they’d just found out it would be a girl. Lauren walked over to the large picture window that overlooked the rocky hill atop which their huge cedar home sat in the Virginia countryside. Shield Security was a ten-mile trip, each way, and Lauren loved the quiet of their home.
Below the bedroom, in the dusk light, she spotted a doe with a new fawn at her side. The fawn had lost its white spots and stepped confidently along at the side of her White Tail deer mother. Lauren placed her hands on her hips, watching the twosome down below. They were probably heading for the oval-shaped meadow that was on the other side of the hill. There was a creek running through the middle of it and, most likely, they were going there for a drink before starting their nightly foraging. This did little to soothe Lauren’s anger toward Kazak. How could it? Who did Alex think he was?
She pushed her red hair off her shoulder, digging into the pocket of the olive-green cargo pants she always wore, and found a rubber band. Quickly gathering her long, slightly wavy red hair up into a pony tail, Lauren let it settle between her shoulder blades. Moving away from the window, she looked around the suite. Cal Sinclair, an ex-Navy SEAL, and someone she worked with at Shield Security, had hand built this incredible two-story cedar home over a seven-year period. It was his way, she supposed, of ramping down from constant deployments into combat in Afghanistan or their eighteen-month cycle of grueling, continuous SEAL training.
The bed was queen sized, a bright quilt across it. Lauren thought it was probably her best friend, Sky, who had brought this splash of vibrant color into the otherwise subdued reddish-gold cedar bedroom. A soft knock came at the door.
Lauren turned, scowling. Who? It was nearly nine p.m. and everyone was retiring for the night. Her lips tightened. It had better not be Kazak. She’d had enough of him for one day. Too bad he worked at Shield Security in Gage Hunter’s Sniper Department. She could never quite escape his presence because she was a sniper instructor at the company.
Opening the door, relief flooded through her. It was Sky. She stood there in her white linen slacks, a soft purple top and white leather sandals. “I wanted to see how you were,” Sky said, giving her a concerned look. “Is it too late? Are you going to bed?”
“No… come on in,” Lauren said, stepping aside. Sky was five foot seven inches tall with sun-streaked blond hair, and the most unearthly blue eyes she’d ever seen. Their bond with one another was tight. At one time, Sky had been an Army Black Hawk Medevac pilot, black ops, and had served in Afghanistan until she was shot at Camp Nichols, a forward operating base near the Pakistan border. Sky had almost died, as Lauren understood it, but had survived. It had been Cal Sinclair, a SEAL, who had saved her life. And now, nearly three years later, they were about to be married.
Closing the door, Sky sat down on the cedar chair near the small desk in the corner. Lauren thought she looked so fragile at four months pregnant. Sky had been through hell. Three weeks ago, Lauren had been part of the Shield Security team that had freed Sky from the captivity of a Russian mafia drug lord who had kept her at his villa in Costa Rica. “Aren’t you tired?” Lauren teased a little, sitting down on the edge of the bed, palms on the firm mattress as she stared across at Sky.
Shrugging, Sky smiled a little. “Too excited to go to bed just yet. Cal’s finishing cleaning up in the kitchen. I just wanted to drop by and see how you were doing.”
“I’m fine,” Lauren deadpanned. She trusted few people, but Sky and Cal were two whom she did. The caring expression on Sky’s delicate features touched her. Lauren allowed few people in behind the walls she put up to protect herself, from men in particular.
“You didn’t look fine late this afternoon,” Sky observed quietly, clasping her hands in her lap. “When Alex called you ‘Little One’, you looked like… well,” and Sky looked up, searching for the right word, “I guess, like you were going to cry. I could tell that what he told you touched you deeply, Lauren. And since then, you’ve been upset. I just wanted to come and see if I could be of help? Maybe an ear to listen?”
Lauren nodded. “He caught me off guard, Sky. What he did, what he said, came out of nowhere. I guess,” and she rubbed the back of her neck, a sign she was upset, “he shocked me.” She saw Sky’s calm face turn sympathetic. Lauren didn’t know how Sky could bounce back so quickly from a month held captive by Yerik Alexandrov. She had been tortured. And she’d survived, Lauren thought, because of the love Cal had for her. Lauren had never seen a love like theirs. Sky was pregnant when captured, had gone through a grueling month of hell, had been broken through torture and, yet, she sat here looking serene. Lauren, Cal and the Shield Security mission team, plus that damnable Ukrainian employee, Alex Kazak, had rescued Sky. It wasn’t as if life had dealt Sky a good hand when Lauren knew it hadn’t. And that is what bound Sky and her so tightly to one another: abusive childhoods.
“Mmm,” Sky said. “I don’t think Alex said it to upset you, Lauren. You’ve known him for what? Three months now since Jack hired him into Shield Security? Cal and I think he really likes you.”
Needled, Lauren growled, “Well, it’s friggin’ one-way, Sky.” The anger leaking out through her husky voice. “He has NO RIGHT to say anything like that to me. Who the hell does he think he is? God’s gift to women? Well, he picked on the wrong woman this time.”
Sky made an unhappy sound and stood up, then came and sat next to Lauren on the bed. “Listen, Alex is a combat medic. He’s getting recertified through Army Delta 18 schooling.”
“Yeah, he’s taking Delta courses right now. But then he has to go through the advance course, for eighteen months. I think because he is ex-Spetsnaz, they’re letting him leapfrog a lot of classes and jump straight to the nitty-gritty of the advanced eighteen-month course.”
“Well,” Sky said wryly, “Alex saved my life down in Peru. I got an up-close and personal look at him as a medic.”
“You had malaria,” Lauren muttered. “If he’s a medic, putting aside him working with the Russian mafia down in Peru, he was charged with caring for you.”
“And he did,” Sky said, holding her gray gaze. “He stopped Vlad Alexandrov from charging into that hut where I was hallucinating with a hundred-and-five-degree fever, and raping me. Alex stood between me and Vlad. I didn’t know it at the time, of course, because I was unconscious. But later, because Vlad had captured me to rape me, Alex turned against his own team and helped me escape.”
“I guess that makes him a good guy,” Lauren muttered. “He’s still a criminal. He worked for the Russians.” She saw Sky give her a sad smile and reach out and touch her slumped shoulder.
“He really is a nice person, Lauren. I know he’s made some bad decisions, and he had reason to. But who hasn’t?”
Snorting, Lauren bit out, “He’s stalking me, Sky. I’m a sniper, dammit, and I can FEEL it. Ever since that meeting where Jack Driscoll, our boss, introduced him to the employees three months ago, he’s had it in for me.” She opened her hands, frustration in her low voice. “I took one look at him and he scared the living bejesus out of me, Sky. When he joined our meeting, Alex lorded over me, and I couldn’t take it. I just spun around on my boot and left the damned room. I didn’t want to shake his hand or be around him.” Her nostrils flared as she bent her head, shaking it. “I didn’t want him hunting me.”
Gently, Sky rubbed her tense shoulder. “He likes you.”
“I want NOTHING to do with him!” They’d been forced to drive up together to visit Sky and Cal. It was the most torturous half hour Lauren had ever spent, with the medic that close, that big, that overwhelming, and pushing every terror-filled button deep within her. And she’d done it because Sky had asked them to come up together for an important announcement. Lauren had bitten the bullet and caved in, and had agreed to ride with him. Because Sky was her closest friend, someone who had a military background like herself, who had worked in black ops, suffered a rotten childhood and somehow survived it, she had driven with Kazak. More than anything, Lauren respected Sky because she was a survivor like herself.
“I guess,” Sky whispered apologetically. “I shouldn’t have begged you to drive up here with Alex, then. It would have gone better for you two to have driven up separately for our news and dinner.” Sky reached out, squeezing Lauren’s hand. “I’m really sorry. I know someone his height and size scares the hell out of you because of your past. I should have thought it through better.”
“Hell,” Lauren muttered, standing up, “don’t blame yourself, Sky. You’re three weeks out of captivity and torture. I don’t blame you for anything. Okay?” and she turned, giving Sky a pleading look. “None of this is your fault…”
Sky watched Lauren pace, her friend’s face tense, her gray eyes stormy with a lot of emotions she had never released and rarely spoke about. “I guess my relationship with Alex is different from yours, Lauren. I just didn’t completely think this meeting through.” She smiled a little. “We were so excited to find out I was carrying a little girl…”
