Gunner
Heather Slade
K19 Security Solutions Book Two
Copyright © 2018 by Heather Slade
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
ISBN 10: 1-942200-46-3
ISBN 13: 978-1-942200-46-8
Also by Heather Slade
K19 SECURITY SOLUTIONS
Book One: Razor
Book Three: Mistletoe
Book Four: Mantis
Book Five: Dutch
Coming Soon!
Book Six: Striker
* * *
MILITARY INTELLIGENCE SECTION 6
Book One: Shiver
Coming Soon!
Book Two: Wilder
* * *
BUTLER RANCH
Available Now!
Book One: Brodie
Book Two: Maddox
Book Three: Naughton
Book Four: Mercer
Book Five: Kade
* * *
COWBOYS OF CRESTED BUTTE
Available Now!
Book One: Fall for Me
Book Two: Dance with Me
Book Three: Kiss Me Cowboy
Book Four: Stay with Me
Book Five: Win Me Over
Contents
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
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Want more?
Mistletoe
About the Author
Also by Heather Slade
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.
Later, he learned that the shot had only grazed Raketa’s scalp, resulting in enough bleeding that Lena had believed she’d successfully offed the woman.
He didn’t remember much about the night they’d spent together, except he knew they’d had sex until he finally passed out. Then, in the morning, she’d sneaked out while he was in the shower.
A few months went by before he heard from Raketa again, and then she wanted to make a deal. She told him she knew who had kidnapped the victims of his then-current op, and where they were being held. In exchange for that information, she wanted his help with an op of her own—leaving the employ of United Russia, or in other words, defecting.
Agreeing to help her was what had landed him in the bowels of hell, otherwise known as Baku, Azerbaijan, trying to find where a Russian black market arms’ dealer was holding her prisoner and, more importantly, why.
—:—
Makar Petrov was a cold-hearted sonuvabitch, but Raketa doubted he’d kill her. If he was going to, he would’ve done it by now.
If it weren’t for Rauf “Topor” Evasov, she would’ve killed Petrov first, but she’d ended up his captive instead.
Raketa still cursed the emotional reaction she’d had when she saw Petrov put a gun to the head of a woman who shared her DNA. Letting her guard down, not pulling the trigger for fear she’d kill the woman rather than the man who was her target, was what had allowed Topor to knock her out and load her onto Petrov’s plane.
The circumstances of her incarceration certainly weren’t what most would consider a hardship
. Instead of keeping her in a cold, dark room, Petrov had ensconced her in an apartment within his compound in Old City Baku. She’d been told she was free to come and go within its ancient walls, which dated back at least to the twelfth century, although some contended they were constructed as long ago as the seventh.
She could probably live out the rest of her life here. Petrov would keep her safe from United Russia, who’d put a price on her head of over a million dollars. However, there were two reasons she couldn’t do that.
First, she’d never work in intelligence again, unless it was for Petrov, and then it would have to be done within the confines of the Old City because she wouldn’t be let out of it in her lifetime, or his.
The other thing was, she’d never see Gunner Godet again. The man likely had no recollection of the last time they were together. It was the same day he’d saved her life, and she’d gone in search of him to offer her thanks.
“You shouldn’t be here. What the fuck are you doing here?” Gunner scowled through what was obviously a drunken haze when she found him sitting in the otherwise empty bar.
“Paps, you’re—”
“Don’t call me that,” he barked back at her.
“Izvini,” she muttered. “I know Lena was—”
In a flash, Gunner stood and grasped her neck with his hand, holding it tightly enough that it was difficult for her to breathe, but not enough that he cut off her air supply entirely. If she wanted to, it would be easy for her to break free. Instead, she absorbed the pain flowing from his fingertips.
“Never say that name again either. Do you understand me?”
She couldn’t nod or speak with his hand on her throat, but her eyes bored into his.
“Never,” he spat again, this time releasing her.
She sat down at his table when he did, and lifted the half-empty bottle of vodka. “May I?”
He grabbed it from her, stood, and stalked over to the bar. When he returned, he slammed a glass on the table in front of her and poured.
She didn’t wait for the toast that typically would be expected. The situation was anything but typical. She threw the shot back and poured herself another. This time she waited for him since his glass was still full.
Her eyes remained focused on his as she kept her hand clasped around the icy-cold vodka.
“Leave,” he said right before he threw the shot back.
Raketa shook her head, watching the only other person in the room, the bartender, follow a command intended for her.
Gunner inched closer, leaning forward enough that she could feel the heat of his breath.
“I want to be left the hell alone,” he seethed.
“No.” She’d been where he was too many times before, but never because she’d killed someone she cared about.
“Then I’ll leave.” Gunner stood, tucking the bottle of vodka in the crook of his arm. He swayed just slightly, but caught himself and backed away before she could touch him.
“No,” she said again.
He slammed the bottle back on the table and grasped her neck, this time from the back.
“You saved my life,” she whispered.
“You would’ve lived.”
If Gunner moved any closer, their lips would touch. Instead of waiting for him to do it, Raketa brushed his mouth with hers.
“Fuck,” he groaned as he wound his arm around her waist, pulled her body flush with his, and slid his tongue between her lips.
When she slipped her arms around his neck and pressed her breasts against his chest, Gunner put his knee between her legs.
“Take what you need, Rocket Girl,” he taunted when she straddled his powerful thigh.
“Not here,” she said as he moved his leg, backed her up against the wall, and put his hands beneath her bottom.
“Put your legs around me,” he demanded.
When she did, he ground himself against her.
“Is this what you want?” he asked before bringing his lips to hers and kissing her in a way that no man ever had or ever would again.
2
When she’d gone looking for him, it had been to thank him. Being with him, close enough to touch, had left her as breathless as it did thoughtless.
He’d ravaged her body most of the night, but in the morning, she’d left without as much as a goodbye when he went to take a shower. Part of her wished she’d stayed to see how he’d handle the morning after, but at the time, she hadn’t been brave enough to do so.
What if he remembered the first time they’d met after he’d sobered up? Worse, what if he didn’t?
Gunner Godet had haunted her since her early twenties. When they first came face-to-face, she should’ve killed him and the American spy the KGB had tasked her with assassinating. She couldn’t, though. Her eyes met Gunner’s, and it was as though a bolt of lightning had struck her motionless. She’d lowered her gun and let the two men escape. If any of her comrades had witnessed what she’d done, she would’ve been executed on the spot.
She told herself that wanting to defect and leave the employ of United Russia had nothing to do with Gunner, but when she decided to finally do it, he’d been the one she’d contacted for help.
She’d had to bargain for his assistance, and even then, he’d reminded her over and over again that he couldn’t guarantee her safety.
Whether he could keep her safe or not, there wasn’t another team in the world who could help her make the break like K19 could. Since they’d formed a tentative alliance with the current president of Russia’s political party and intelligence organization, Raketa had hoped K19 and UR might be able to make a deal to secure her defection.
But Petrov had stripped away her hope for freedom. In fact, now it was worse. While she may not be his hired gun, she was his prisoner.
Gunner would come for Petrov; his intention had always been to assassinate him, but that didn’t mean he’d come for her.
—:—
Gunner had been out of communication with the rest of the team searching for Makar Petrov for almost forty-eight hours, mainly because they weren’t searching for the same person. His priority was finding Raketa Ivashov, and while he knew they were aware of it, it wasn’t something he and the teams on the ground—Onyx and Alegria from K19, Striker, whoever the hell he was with currently, or the MI6 team, headed up by Shiv—ever discussed.
No one knew what he had planned, and he intended to keep it that way. Since even he didn’t understand his connection to the Russian assassin, Gunner couldn’t very well explain it to his teammates.
Maybe it had been seeing her lying in a pool of blood and believing she was dead, or seeing a brief glimpse of her vulnerability when she came to him, asking for help, that hit him hard enough that he’d opened the doors of his heart the thinnest of cracks.
It took balls of steel for someone to even think they could walk away from an organization like United Russia. Doing it was a death wish. He’d admired the tenacity she’d exhibited when he’d told her as much.
He often wondered if Raketa remembered the first time they saw each other. They’d been on opposite sides of an op involving a CIA agent who was on the verge of being burned if Gunner’s team didn’t cross over the border from Kazakhstan into Russia to extract him.
Gunner had been in his mid-twenties, and while he now knew she was only two years younger than him, then, she’d looked barely eighteen.
He’d never forget when their eyes first met. He’d come close to death that day—closer than he had up to that point in his career—and all because he’d hesitated. She could’ve shot him and the man he was assigned to extract, but she didn’t. She’d lowered her gun enough that Gunner knew if she did fire, it would hit the ground.
Her beauty had left him almost breathless. He knew from intelligence photos that Raketa’s long, straight, blonde hair hung past her waist when she left it loose. Piercing blue eyes coupled with the pallor of her skin were striking to the point of being heart-stopping. Raketa was thinn
er than he usually preferred a woman to be. How much thinner would she be now, after being in Petrov’s clutches?
The fact that Petrov hadn’t killed her was as troubling as it was a relief. What reason would he have to take a UR assassin hostage in the first place, particularly given she hadn’t been a direct threat to him when she was captured? Gunner couldn’t come up with any answer that made sense.
His plan for today was to attempt entry into Baku’s Old City. He’d dyed his usually reddish-blond hair black, put dark brown contacts in to mask his green eyes, and the scruff of a beard he’d been letting grow longer was dyed the same color as his hair. Between that and his usual mostly black attire, he fit in well in a country that had as many Armenian citizens as Azerbaijani.
—:—
“He wants to see you,” said Topor after unlocking and opening the door to her apartment without knocking. She was a prisoner; had she really expected privacy?
Raketa stood and folded her arms, waiting for his next directive.
“Come,” he barked, grabbing her arm when she didn’t move quickly enough. If she wasn’t certain that by doing so she’d end up dead, she would’ve taken the bastard down for manhandling her the way he was.
He led her down the same long corridor of rooms she’d passed the other time Petrov summoned her.
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