by Barb Han
Guarding Clara
Brotherhood Protectors World
Barb Han
Contents
Brotherhood Protectors
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
Also by Barb Han
About Barb Han
Brotherhood Protectors
About Elle James
Copyright © 2020, Barb Han
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
© 2020 Twisted Page Press, LLC ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
No part of this book may be used, stored, reproduced or transmitted without written permission from the publisher except for brief quotations for review purposes as permitted by law.
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please purchase your own copy.
Brotherhood Protectors
Original Series by Elle James
Brotherhood Protectors Series
Montana SEAL (#1)
Bride Protector SEAL (#2)
Montana D-Force (#3)
Cowboy D-Force (#4)
Montana Ranger (#5)
Montana Dog Soldier (#6)
Montana SEAL Daddy (#7)
Montana Ranger’s Wedding Vow (#8)
Montana SEAL Undercover Daddy (#9)
Cape Cod SEAL Rescue (#10)
Montana SEAL Friendly Fire (#11)
Montana SEAL’s Mail-Order Bride (#12)
SEAL Justice (#13)
Ranger Creed (#14)
Delta Force Strong (#15)
Montana Rescue (Sleeper SEAL)
Hot SEAL Salty Dog (SEALs in Paradise)
Hot SEAL Hawaiian Nights (SEALs in Paradise)
To Elle James for letting me write in your world and introducing me to your awesome readers—a huge thank you. You already know how much I love you.
Chapter 1
Many more days in Haiti and Daniel Damon was certain he’d be the one doing the wild chanting and voodoo doll toting. Or maybe he’d just walk around muttering unintelligible words, begging for loose change. He was losing it, seeing dead men—men he’d killed in combat—almost everywhere he looked. His mind played tricks on him.
Daniel shook off the melancholy mood, trying not to think about the reality that this place was a hotbed for human trafficking. Or the fact that countless young girls and boys had passed through these lands on their way to some unknown destination to be sex slaves or indentured servants until they were deemed no longer useful. Very much alive in a fate worse than death before they’d disappear forever.
Death was final. Certain. Death ended suffering.
Don’t get him wrong. There were good people here, too. People who needed help. It had become all too easy for Daniel to see the bad side of humanity. The side that plotted, murdered and treated human life like it was worth less than a tank of gasoline.
He caught himself wading into that unproductive cesspool of despair again.
That meant he needed to hear his daughter’s voice to get his feet grounded, to get his bearings.
He stole away for a quick break from Help Haiti Now, the do-gooder organization his wife had signed him up for to get him to stop skulking around the house—he believed those were her exact words—and find a purpose now that he’d left ManTech, a Blackwater-type organization that acted as a special operations unit for the U.S. Government. He’d walked away from ManTech when an operative went rogue, turning on the organization and making the names of its operatives public on the dark Web. The dark cloud that had hung over Daniel’s head all his life had struck again.
Naomi, his wife, picked up on the third ring.
“Is it bad that I’d rather be home right now than here?” Daniel said cheerily, trying to mask the exhaustion and stress in his voice. He should be in Dallas figuring out his next move, trying to save his marriage and clearing his head instead of picking through dirt and finding nothing but animal carcasses.
“This is good for you, for us,” Naomi said quietly. “Another week and you’ll have rebuilt the country anyway,” she added with forced-sounding cheer.
“Hardly feels like we’re making a dent here.” He couldn’t mask his frustration if he’d tried. The horrendous earthquake that had struck rivaled the one that had occurred in 2010.
“You are.”
“Difficult to get much done in a couple of weeks.” His indifferent tone probably irked her to high heaven.
“One man can barely make a dent in two weeks, true. But a hundred and ten men over several months ... now that’s a different story.”
“Is that how many signed up?” There were a lot of Sunday morning bench warmers there. No doubt those men had been forced in the game by their wives same as Daniel. All he could think about was what had gone down at his last job. Several operatives had been murdered on recent operations because of a mole in the organization. Several good men. And proving that God had a wicked sense of irony, He’d let Daniel live.
“Because of you, Daniel. They agreed to do this because of you. You started this,” she continued. This didn’t seem the right time to remind her that she’d been the one to sign him up. If she didn’t have so much damn pride in her voice he’d tell her that he was coming home on the next flight if there was room.
She didn’t miss a beat, “The mayor spoke about the project today in the town square of all places. Ruthie was so proud of her daddy. I might have a picture. I’ll send it after we hang up.”
They both knew this had been Naomi’s pet project and a lame attempt at trying to help him—how’d she put it?—shake the past and get his footing on solid ground again.
An annoying little voice reminded him that he was getting what he deserved. If he hadn’t come home numb to the world, to his family maybe Naomi wouldn’t have felt the need to ship him off again. It was hard for military wives to have a husband home for short periods after having to learn to survive on their own. He’d noticed it on his second morning at home when he walked into the kitchen to get a cup of coffee and found his wife on her back with a wrench fixing the dishwasher.
It had struck him just how alone she’d been while he was away. He could relate to that lost look in her eyes, lost because she didn’t know what to say to him as he stood there in the flesh while she handled whatever needed fixing. Daniel had started off in life alone, orphaned. He’d always been a loner and figured he always would be alone.
As strong as Naomi had become—and he admired her for her strength—she didn’t have a tool in her box capable of fixing him.
“Ruthie’s waiting up. She said you would call tonight,” Naomi said, breaking through the silence.
“Put the little bug on.” His little girl had instincts that could rival a green b
eret. Her blue eyes were too serious for a face so round and angelic.
“This is her favorite part of the day. You know that, right?” Naomi said and her voice was one of the few tethers to reality Daniel had to hold onto. She might not be able to heal him but she always seemed to know the right words to say to make him smile, even after the hell he’d been through overseas before being sent home. Knowing innocent people had been massacred, including children, because his unit had acted on bad intelligence—intelligence from the mole—twisted the knife in his chest again.
His career had gone to hell in a handbasket and fast. Casualties were part of war, he understood that going in. But how could he look in his daughter’s eyes without seeing the ones he’d taken.
Daniel heard a shuffling noise, probably Naomi climbing the stairs, and then came his little angel’s sweet voice, “Daddy!”
“Hey, bug, are you listening to your mom while I’m gone?” Naomi was doing an amazing job with their daughter. His kid was great but it had nothing to do with him. Before joining ManTech two years ago he’d served in the military. There’d been very little leave where he’d been deployed. And then there was the shock of suddenly having Daddy home and him being thrust into a routine Naomi and Ruthie had down pat. One that didn’t include him. His time at ManTech was no different. He’d been on assignment fifty-one weeks out of the year.
And now he was home with no clear direction in life. Or, was home until Naomi hatched the Haiti plan.
In some ways he thought Naomi helped organize the mission trip to get some sense of a normalcy back for her and their daughter. Or maybe that was just his fear talking. There wasn’t much that scared Daniel. He was a highly trained, highly skilled operative who was in the best shape of his life. He was more than capable of handling whatever—and that covered a wide range—was thrown at him.
And yet Ruthie had him in the palm of her hand. He chuckled.
“What’s so funny, Daddy?”
“Nothing, bug.” He smiled. It might not reach his eyes but she couldn’t see that over the phone. “You in bed?”
“Yup.” It was late in Dallas where they’d settled after four moves in five years. Naomi had a cousin who lived nearby, the last of her family. Daniel never had one to begin with. At least, not until Naomi and Ruthie and that might explain why he was so damn bad at it.
The brotherhood he’d experienced serving in the military with men like Jaden Orchard, Gabriel Cooper and the others had been the reason he followed Orchard to ManTech in the first place.
“Good girl. Pull your covers up real high, all the way up to your neck,” he said, imagining those long curly locks and that toothless smile. She’d lost both of her front teeth in the last month and it had made that round angelic-cheeked smile even cuter.
Daniel had been on assignment during her first day of kindergarten, so he’d missed it. He’d missed a lot. Looked like he was going to have plenty of time on his hands to make it up to her once he returned home. Ruthie and Naomi were strong reasons to get his head on straight.
“Okay.” He heard ruffling noises as Ruthie let out a little squeal.
The image of her toothless smile brought a sense of rightness back to the world. He’d seen too much senseless violence, done too many things to other people that had caused re-entry into a normal life and the real world—a world where he had a loving wife and a beautiful daughter—to not come easy. He prayed that he wouldn’t screw it up. Naomi had been distant in the last couple of months. Not her fault. He’d pushed her away so hard she finally caved in just a little. It hurt. Part of him wanted her to keep fighting until he got rid of his demons. That was selfish as hell and he knew it.
A couple of his buddies that he’d known since his military days had come home to empty houses or received Dear Jaden letters as soon as they notified wives and girlfriends that ManTech was being dissolved and they were being sent home.
“Close your eyes now,” he said softly to Ruthie, imagining her bright smile and holding on to the one positive thought, her.
“Already did it.”
“Then put the phone up to your forehead, bug.”
“Okay, Daddy.” The sound of her voice was like bubbles being carried in a breeze. He heard her giggle as he pressed a kiss to the mouthpiece.
“Did you feel it?”
“Yup, Daddy.” She made a kissing noise in response.
“Time for sleep.”
“When are you coming home, Daddy?”
“Soon, bug.”
“Tell Daddy goodnight,” Naomi said, her voice near the phone so that he could tell she sat next to their daughter on the bed.
If divinity existed, they were his proof. God, he wanted to come back to them.
“Love you, Daddy.”
“You too, bug. Have a good sleep.”
“Have a good day tomorrow, Daddy,” she said through a yawn.
A moment later, Naomi’s voice came back on the phone. “Give me just a sec.”
He heard his wife telling their daughter to have sweet dreams and could almost visualize her tiptoeing out of their little bug’s room after turning off the light.
When he heard the bedroom door close, she came back on the line. “So how’d it go today? Really?”
She’d picked up on the edge in his voice. Couldn’t have been difficult in the mood he was in. He noticed the distance in hers.
“Good. Got started at least,” he said. “These people need clean water and more food than we have.”
“Did you eat?”
“Yeah, sure,” he lied. He’d given his protein bar to a little girl who was now an orphan thanks to the earthquake that had buried most of her village. He knew exactly what her future would be. Poor. Angry. Alone. He forced other thoughts out of his mind—thoughts of what it would mean to grow up in a forgotten hell with no one to look out for her. Rage burned in his chest. Daniel shoved the unproductive thoughts aside. Maybe this kid would get luckier than he’d been.
Naomi paused and that pretty much meant she knew he was lying. “You sound...tired.”
“Nah. I’m good. Nothing a good night of sleep won’t cure,” he said, quickly dismissing her worries. Too quickly.
“You can talk to me, you know, about anything,” she said, placing careful emphasis on the last word. Her voice was loaded with tension.
He couldn’t actually, not even if he wanted to. The United States government had stonewalled him into signing legal documents that made it illegal for him to talk about what was really bothering him, even with his wife.
“I know. It’s not that. Don’t worry. I’m just tired. Remind me never to go camping when I get home.” Daniel cleared his throat. “The air here is drier than a lizard fart and there’s no water for showers.”
She forced a chuckle. “Somehow, I bet you’ve been in worse circumstances.”
He ignored that comment. It was true, though. “Didn’t we make a rule? I don’t go anywhere without air conditioning.”
“Me too,” she said and then issued a soft sigh laced with tentativeness. “I’m really proud of you for doing this. Have I told you that?”
He didn’t say anything for a long moment.
“There was so much poverty here before…you know…and now this happens. The people have been through so much that it hardly seems fair.” How many times had he said that fair was an unreasonable goal? “I heard another relief worker talking about how the place is condemned.”
Naomi made a grunt-noise. “The land you’re on, Hispaniola Island, is also called Quisqueya, which means cradle of life. I looked it up. And with a name like that, it can’t possibly be condemned.”
Maybe it was just Daniel that was damned.
“Ruthie is calling for me,” she said before he could respond. “I better go see what she wants.”
Hearing the relief in her voice at the prospect of getting off the phone speared him in the chest.
“I’ll call soon,” he said.
He should’ve sa
id he loved her. He did love her. And when he got home he was going to figure out how to make their relationship right, how to make himself right again.
Chapter 2
Daniel bolted upright, instinctively surveying his surroundings for signs of danger. His KA-BAR was palmed and ready to slice his enemy’s throat. Sweat beaded on his forehead, his hands were fisted and his back teeth clenched so hard he thought one might crack.
He blew out a sharp breath. He’d fallen asleep hard in the tent he shared with Sebastian Elie, a twenty-year-old relief worker from Canada who’d taken leave from university to help dig out survivors of the quake.
Destruction was something Daniel understood. Daniel’s strong suit was blowing things up, not picking through rubble in order to find survivors.
The nightmares were back and so were the headaches. He bent forward and gripped his head with his free hand. He set down the blade.
Pounding his palms against his eye sockets helped.
It took a few minutes for him to shake off the nightmare—the one he could never bring himself talk about and not just because his work at ManTech was a matter of national security. That’s what the legal documents would call that clusterfuck back in South America.
Daniel ran his hand along the edge of his cot, searching for his rucksack. He found it and then pulled a couple of ibuprofen from his pack before dry-swallowing them. There was a bottle of water around there somewhere, a luxury to most in this God-forsaken place.
Sebastian stirred. “Everything all right, man?”
“Yeah. Peachy. Go back to sleep.” Coming to this country wasn’t helping. In Haiti, Daniel felt more disconnected than ever.