by LENA DIAZ,
* * *
SOMEHOW JAMISON WYATT was almost exactly how Liza remembered. Age had weathered him some, but since he’d always been good-looking, it settled well on him. Lines in the right places, a wariness that made her nerves hum like she was thirteen years old again, watching him as he kept his brothers safe.
That feeling was just the same, which was how she knew, no matter how he blustered or accused her of being associated with his father, he’d help. He’d have to help.
Jamison was the one and only reason she believed in goodness. In the midst of all the bad of their childhoods, when they’d grown up as the direct progeny of some of the worst men in that group, Jamison had still somehow found integrity and honor. By finding it, he’d given it to his brothers and her.
Without him, she never would have seen what the real world looked like outside the Sons of the Badlands. She would have never had hope or love. She never would have known homes could be real and safe, and that stealing and lying and always, always watching your back was not the only way to live.
The last fifteen years back in the Sons had tried to beat that knowledge out of her, but she’d done what Jamison had always done. She’d gone back to protect her own. She’d failed with her sister, but for four years now she’d been determined to find a way to get her half sister out. Just like Jamison had saved his brothers, Liza was going to save Gigi.
Until she did, until Gigi was safe, she’d stay in the Sons. If she didn’t ever get out, she’d always have the satisfaction that she’d worked to help a few other people leave a life that sucked all the good and decent out of them.
She had to find some hope for Gigi and keep it alive. She looked up at the man who still had a good six inches on her, no matter how tall she was for a woman. She didn’t have time for the arguments she’d practiced on her way over, not for reasoning, either. She squeezed his arm. “They’re going to kill Gigi if I can’t find her. If I can’t... She’s just an innocent bystander.”
His jaw worked, his eyes squinting as if trying to hold on to indifference—a familiar move. Years ago she’d run her palm along the hard, chiseled edge of that jaw. She’d been so in awe of him. Too much hero worship and not enough sense.
She couldn’t afford to make those mistakes when a little girl depended on her. She had to be strong on her own—to add her strength with his if she ever hoped to save Gigi. She had to believe that if she had a Wyatt brother on her side, she could do this. Rescue Gigi. It was too late for Carlee, but Gigi was still alive.
I hope.
The wave of dizziness that had been plaguing her today came back in full force. She really needed to eat, to get to a place where she could sleep and take care of herself.
“I can take you to the sheriff’s department,” Jamison said, his voice hard and infused with that cop smugness he’d just been starting to perfect when she’d had to leave the warmth of the Knights’ house. “We can take your statement and—”
“I need you, Jamison. You know the Sons and you know the law. If you’re too busy guarding all this—” she waved a hand to take in the darkened small town, where, at worst, he was taking care of petty crimes “—I’d take the help of one of your brothers. Dev or the twins. They’d know enough. But I need someone who knows Ace and the Sons—enough to be afraid, and how to beat them in spite of that fear.”
Though she didn’t ask herself why she’d come to him first, when she knew that of all the Wyatt brothers with their various law enforcement jobs, Jamison would be the least likely to forgo protocol.
Except he was the one she needed. If there was an Achilles’ heel hidden inside the hard, upstanding man in front of her, it was the desire to save people.
He was silent for far too long. When he spoke, the pain of his words sliced her in two.
“If I could beat Ace, I would have done it already,” he said quietly into the dark. A painful rasp made those words hurt.
She winced again. She’d known this would be thorny, but she’d also known Jamison was truly her only hope. Any other member of the Sons—man or woman—would be too afraid or too uninterested to help. Even a few sympathetic parties could be a liability in the end.
“When was the last time you tried?” she whispered, the hushed words too loud out here in a town that looked most especially lonely at night. Was Jamison just as lonely?
It was his turn to wince, or maybe take the blow she’d just landed.
He opened his mouth, either to answer or tell her to go, when something exploded, loud and close and painful.
For a second, Liza didn’t recognize the sound as that of a gunshot. So much so she was almost surprised when Jamison crashed into her, pushing her underneath him and on to the hardscrabble gravel. His body covered her, warm and heavy.
After a moment—or was it a few moments?—he rolled her on to her back. His hands were on her, she thought, but she couldn’t quite feel them. She could see his lips moving, but his voice was garbled.
It was the concern in his dark eyes that worried her. But she was floating away on a cloud of shock she didn’t understand. Then radiating pain took her completely under.
Copyright © 2020 by Nicole Helm
Keep reading for an excerpt from Heartbreaker by B.J. Daniels.
Heartbreaker
by B.J. Daniels
CHAPTER ONE
Her eyes flew open, her fight or flight response already wide awake. She jerked up in the bed, blinking wildly, terrified and yet unable to believe what she was seeing. Three hulking dark forms appeared out of the shadows of the huge master bedroom. One of the men tripped over her duffel bag on the floor where she’d dropped it. He swore as he kicked it out of the way.
She tried hopelessly to banish the men back into whatever nightmare they’d climbed out of, realizing the stumble must have been what had awakened her.
All she could think rationally was that this couldn’t be happening, because these men being here tonight was so wrong.
But before she could open her mouth to speak—let alone scream—the largest of the three intruders reached her side of the king-size bed. Roughly he pushed her down and clamped a gloved hand over her mouth. This was real.
She finally screamed, but the gloved hand over her mouth muffled the sound. Not that it would have done any good if she had hollered to bloody hell. There was no one else in the house to come to her rescue—let alone anyone nearby. The house was high on the mountainside overlooking Flathead Lake, surrounded by acres of forest and as isolated as money could buy.
Frantically she shook her head as she met the man’s eyes, the only feature not hidden by his black ski mask, and tried to communicate with him that she wasn’t the woman he wanted.
“Don’t fight me,” the man said in a hoarse whisper as he renewed his efforts to hold her down. “We don’t want to hurt you.”
But she did fight because they were making a terrible mistake and they didn’t know it. That realization sent panic rocketing through her system. Her heart banged against her rib cage, her thundering pulse deafening in her ears. She fought to pull the clamp from her mouth.
If she could only explain the error they were making. Failing in her attempts to pull away his gloved hand, she struck out with her fists as her legs kicked wildly to free themselves from the covers. All she’d managed to do was to make things worse. He leaned over her, pressing his body weight against her chest with his forearm, taking away her breath.
“Did you find it?” the man holding her down demanded of the other two. They had produced flashlights, she saw, and were now searching the room. She could hear one of them at the dressing table knocking over bottles of expensive perfume and rejuvenating skin creams.
Moments later, she saw the smaller of the men motion that he’d found something as she tried to breathe. “Got it.” He pocketed what appeared to be a cell phone before the men turned to her.
Hope soared. They’d found whatever they’d come for. Now maybe they would leave the way they’d come in, like phantoms in the night. It wasn’t as if she’d seen their faces.
Her slender thread of hope died as she heard the man holding her down say, “Help me with her.” The words sent a fresh stab of alarm coursing through her. She fought even harder. Kicking free of the covers, she got a leg out and struck the smallest of the men in his masked face as he tried to grab her legs. She felt his nose give under her heel and make a loud pop. He let out a wounded cry as he backed off.
“Damn it,” the first man said. “I need help here.”
The other man intruder, the one who’d been searching the room earlier, climbed on the bed, crawling across the king-size mattress toward her. She caught him in the jaw with her fist before he pinned her arms down as he climbed on top of her.
She struggled to breathe from the weight of him, gagging. What had he eaten tonight? Pizza with anchovies? She tried to turn her head away as she bucked in an attempt to throw him off her, but he was too heavy. All she could do was heave and squirm under him, horrified at what these men now planned to do with her. To her.
“Come here,” ordered the man who still had her mouth covered. The one she’d kicked in the face approached, still holding one of his gloved hands over his bleeding nose. “Cover her mouth.”
She caught the angry glint in the man’s pale eyes before the men made the switch. She tried to tell them about the mistake they were making, but before she could get out more than a word and a breath, the broken-nose man covered her mouth roughly with his bloody glove. She gagged at the smell and feel of the warm, sticky liquid on her lips. But it was the look in his eyes that sent her heart rate off the charts.
He would kill her if he got the chance.
Panic had her inhaling sharply through her nose as she watched in growing terror as the first man pulled a syringe from his coat pocket. She fought with all the strength she had left in her. But even as she did, she knew it was useless. She stood no chance against three men. She felt him jab the needle into her neck as she continued to fight until her body went limp.
As she lay like a ragdoll, helpless on the bed, she heard a sound that turned her blood to ice. Someone was tearing duct tape into strips.
Copyright © 2020 by Barbara Heinlein
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ISBN: 9781488067235
Undercover Rebel
Copyright © 2020 by Lena Diaz
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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