The Protector

by Cristin Harber

  Contents

  THE PROTECTOR

  DEDICATION

  A NOTE TO READERS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  EPILOGUE

  THE SURVIVOR

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  COPYRIGHT

  THE PROTECTOR

  The Aces Series, Book #2

  New York Times Bestselling Author

  Cristin Harber

  DEDICATION

  She’s got a little sass and is totally badass.

  This book is dedicated to Aunt Courtney.

  A NOTE TO READERS

  Thank you for joining me on Chance and Jane’s high-stakes adventure and love story.

  If you are familiar with my books, you may notice familiar names or locations as you read The Protector. The Aces series takes place before the Titan and Delta books. You do not need to have read my other books to thoroughly enjoy this series!

  If you have read my other books, you may see passing events from a new perspective. A new team comes together. Titan builds the Abu Dhabi headquarter. The younger version of characters you know. I hope this is as much fun for you to read as it was for me to write.

  Hugs and Happy Reading,

  Cristin Harber

  CHAPTER ONE

  Peering out of the tiny oval window onto a field of dark clouds below her, Jane Singleton took a deep breath and let it out as slowly as her churning stomach would let her. She chewed the stick of gum she’d popped in her mouth an hour ago, trying to keep her insides from doing the same gymnastics routine their single-engine plane seemed to be performing in the sky somewhere over western Asia.

  Next to her, over the roar of the engine, Teddy Thane’s little voice rang out, “Your turn, Janie.”

  She smiled over at the tiny, well-groomed boy and peeled her fingers from the armrest. The last thing she wanted to do was give her young charge the impression she was nervous—even though she really, really was.

  Never mind where they were headed. As soon as they’d boarded an hour ago, Jane had gotten the creeping feeling that the pilot was out to kill them, even before they touched down in no-man’s-land. Shrugging off the thought, she took one of her pins and put it in the corner slot of the tic-tac-toe board, leaving the middle open for him, so he would win.

  Twenty-three games in, the two of them were still the most alert people aboard. Jane never could sleep on planes, but the photojournalist, Joe something, obviously had no trouble, from the snores emanating from the seat behind her. He’d been hired by the Thanes to document their trip and make it look as fabulous and glamorous as possible—despite the despair that awaited them when their group landed.

  Jane snorted, deciding it was fine for him to take a catnap now. Pictures of them crammed into a smelly prop plane while getting their internal organs tossed around like beanbags by a suicidal pilot probably wouldn’t make a great Twitter post anyway.

  Truthfully, Jane was shocked that Teddy’s mom, Gigi Thane, would even step foot in this flying tin-can. Not only had Gigi boarded, she’d promptly zoned out, likely a result of the wine-spritzer-and-Xanax combo she’d gulped while they waited for their plane at the airport in Amman, Jordan.

  Yeah, Gigi Thane—an odd mix of Marilyn Monroe and Martha Stewart, who’d built her home-furnishing empire from almost nothing—was totally blitzed. Teddy’s dad, Dax Thane, a ball of energy, jiggled his knee impatiently as his wife rested on his shoulder while his nose was, as usual, buried in his phone. Could he even get a cell signal wherever they were?

  Jane shifted in her seat as Teddy finally put the peg in the middle square. The thirteen-hour flight to Amman in the Thanes’ Lear jet was enough to make her restless, but this was more than just restlessness.

  Syria wasn’t exactly a hotspot for family vacations. But no one could tell that to Dax Thane, the brilliant and unconventional CEO of Thane Insurance. The idea for this trip was his brainchild: deliver a bit of Western goodwill while proving to his client base just how far Thane would go to cover their insane exploits. Once Dax got a stunt in his head, especially a thrilling idea for drumming up viral online attention, sanity need not interfere.

  Nothing about Dax and Gigi Thane screamed “Parents of the Year,” that was for sure.

  Jane studied the handsome man in the plaid button-down and cargo pants. His face was as recognizable as Jeff Bezos’s or Mark Zuckerberg’s. Little had Jane known when she’d signed up to be a “nanny” to his busy four-year-old that partaking in those wild flights of fancy would become a part of her job description.

  Jane ruffled the little boy’s hair and placed another pin as she watched the pilot out of the corner of her eye. He’d been speaking into his headset in another language—Arabic? Kurdish? Aramaic?—in a way that sounded indignant. She wished she’d spent more time learning about the Middle East and Asia in school. But while she’d dreamed of traveling when she was growing up, solidly middle-class in the Florida panhandle, never once had she imagined traveling to Syria.

  The pilot rubbed his nose with the side of his hand and barked into his headset again in a way that made her skin crawl. Was he disagreeing with someone? Hashing out an evil plan to take over the world? An alarm bell went off in her head, and Jane reached for Teddy and tightened his seatbelt.

  Jane couldn’t place her mistrust with the pilot. At first, he had seemed annoyed—here was a stupid American family, exercising their privilege in a stunt designed to profit off of another culture’s tragedy. But the more time they’d spent in the airplane, the more Jane was certain the pilot wasn’t disgusted by their opportunistic sightsee
ing.

  In her job as the Thanes’ nanny, she’d learned to watch for signs of chaos within the family. To anticipate the dangers that she associated with Dax Thane. Her neck prickled. There were too many red flags. Too many risks. She didn’t like it, but that could be said as much for everything she did with this family.

  This was a dangerous trip, but she had to stop overthinking. Disaster didn’t always lurk. You’ve been awake for twenty hours, and now you’re letting your mind run away with you.

  But, hello, overthinking was her job. That was how she could best protect Teddy, and if her uncle had taught her anything in her self-defense classes, it was to stay sharp, keep her eyes open, and never ignore the tingling feelings that crawled up and down her spine.

  “We should be there soon,” Dax said absently, not looking up as he thumbed furiously on his phone. Gigi’s head lolled, and her long eyelashes fluttered. She had a pretty face, albeit a billionaire’s-wife face, with too much make-up for the occasion and just the right amount of plastic surgery to shave a few years off her advancing age.

  Without warning, the plane hit turbulence. They jumped and jerked, and Jane’s stomach somersaulted. She gripped the armrest again, feigning calm as Teddy shrieked in excitement.

  “Fun,” she muttered, swallowing the acidic taste in her mouth.

  The pilot growled as they went through a series of smaller bumps. Seriously, was he trying to put them through the worst turbulence possible?

  Every time the plane lurched, Jane closed her eyes and said a little prayer.

  Dax leaned over and smacked Teddy on the foot. “Cool, huh, buddy? Rockin’ and rollin’!”

  Teddy nodded gleefully, as he usually did when he received some slight acknowledgement from his dad.

  Now that his face was out of his phone, Jane hoped her employer would say something to reassure them. Something smart like, “Let’s go home.” After all, she’d been there when his sister, Courtney, had said a big hell no to this family-vacation-slash-social-media stunt on the grounds that it wasn’t safe. Her exact words: “I’d rather wear a meat necklace in a cage of rabid wolves.”

  That was Courtney. Blunt. Practical. If only Jane could’ve been so forward. But she was staff, not family. And during the nine months Jane had been on Dax Thane’s payroll, she’d learned to never expect the expected. Most insurance companies were about mitigating risk, but not Thane. He pushed the limits, broke through boundaries. Thane Insurance made insurance Insta-cool. Thus their literally asinine slogan, with the donkey mascot in the football helmet: Risk it all. We’ll cover your ass.

  So, as the prop plane started to rattle around them, Jane went over the reasons why she’d agreed to this job. One: Teddy was adorable, with those big brown puppy-dog eyes. Something about him had told Jane that he needed saving. Now, he was dearer to her than her own limbs.

  Two: Gigi was desperate. Despite being a shrewd businesswoman in her own right, she had initially come off as having a deer-in-headlights thing going for her when it came to raising the kid. Not that Jane was any better, since the most experience she’d had was babysitting her cousins. But Gigi had assured her that was fine, because their family marched to the beat of a different drummer. Not to mention how Gigi treated Teddy as though he were a fashion accessory.

  Oh, and three: Jane needed the money. The Thanes paid well, but with high reward came high risk. Sure, she didn’t shy away from risky situations. Jane had certainly taken a risk when she’d prevented Gigi and Teddy from being kidnapped from thugs on the streets of DC earlier that year. The altercation had been a chance encounter and her first introduction to the billionaire Thane family. But she wasn’t sure if she needed the money enough to risk her life.

  She swept her long blond hair up into a ponytail and peered out the window as the plane descended below the clouds. Oh goodie. They were landing.

  Teddy placed the last pin and won the game again.

  “Hooray, cutie!” She gave him a high five. “You won that one.”

  “I’ve won all of them,” he sweetly corrected as the plane lurched again and sent the game board tumbling off Teddy’s knee and onto his dad’s foot.

  Dax, once again consumed by his phone, didn’t notice, so Jane reached across and picked it up, once again finding reason to watch the spastic pilot.

  Is it me, or is he unusually nervous? It was stuffy inside the airplane cabin, but sweat glistened at his temples.

  Her warning tingle became worse than before. She stuffed the game into the pocket of Teddy’s Pokémon backpack and smiled at him as the plane sank lower.

  “I think we’re landing,” she said in a low whisper, as if they were having some great adventure. Or crashing. But that wouldn’t do well to share with Teddy, and she willed herself not to think about dying in a fiery crash.

  His cherubic smile pulled at her heartstrings. She bit at her lip. We shouldn’t be here. I should have prevented this. His safety was her job, after all. Then again, his aunt had threatened and yelled, firing everything she had at her brother Dax to keep Teddy safe at home with her. It didn’t work. The Thanes didn’t even take their security detail. Big surprise… They never did.

  Jane looked at Gigi, somewhat awakened by turbulence. Her head lolled again, her eyes fluttering, heavy—then Gigi was out again. Jane gritted her teeth and lambasted herself for not saying something before they left. Anything along the lines of “Let’s avoid war zones” would have worked.

  Teddy tugged on her arm. “Look.”

  Jane glanced out the window. She could see the ground in the distance. The plane rattled in her ears as she watched the dark nothingness morph into brownish ground cover. Finally, she could make out where bushes dotted the landscape, and the outline of distant buildings became visible.

  “Almost there,” Dax announced like they were heading to an amusement park.

  Jane searched for what could make him so excited but saw a whole lot of nothing. The only difference was that they were much closer to the ground.

  The distant buildings became clearer, though they looked more like ruins than modern day structures. Jane squinted and watched for the refugee camps she hadn’t read enough about.

  The nose of the plane abruptly tilted toward the ground, and Jane held her breath and gripped her necklace. Finally, up ahead, she saw what could pass as a landing strip awaiting them. It was more like a cleared straight area cut through the dusty, brush-covered sand and rocks. Awesome—they were landing in the middle of nowhere.

  Approaching a runway should’ve been a reason to rejoice, but no. Her sixth sense buzzed with worry, and her body, from tits to toes, screamed out a warning. Dax rubbed his hands together. Jane glared at him.

  He grinned. “Isn’t this great?”

  Not really. They descended at a nauseating angle. Teddy put his chubby hand in hers. Panic sloshed in her stomach. Gigi groaned. Alarm choked in Jane’s throat. The pilot jerked the nose upright before she cried out. They touched down and bounced. Joe-the-photojournalist choked on his final snore and woke, cursing loudly. His equipment clattered to the ground as the metal frame of the plane rattled, finally touching down.

  The harsh landing smacked Jane’s teeth together. They jostled from side to side. The airplane jumped and jerked on the rutted airstrip. Brown dust billowed up around them as the pilot fought to slow down.

  “Like a roller coaster,” Dax shouted.

  Motion sickness rolled over Jane as she ducked Teddy under her arm. The aircraft bumped along the pocked strip and coasted to a stop.

  “Thank God,” she whispered.

  Dax popped his phone into the front pocket of his linen shirt and rubbed his hands together. “Now the adventure begins.”

  What had that plane ride been? A walk through the freakin’ park? Jane leaned close to the window. As the dust settled, she took in a total wasteland. Scrubby, patchy bushes, and sand upon more sand. This didn’t look like an airport, but more like someone had flattened a landing strip amid a few s
tone buildings. Other than that, there was nothing nearby.

  Her throat felt thick. Why couldn’t Dax Thane be more like other billionaires and take his family to Hawaii for the month?

  She glanced out the other side. Men in kaftans with their heads and faces covered with dark fabric stood astride old motorbikes. Massive assault rifles were strapped over their shoulders.

  The click, click, click of Joe’s camera broke through Jane’s concern. He was acting like they were on safari and the armed men were a tourist attraction. She elbowed him, muttering, “Stop that.”

  “Taking in the scenery.” Though, grumbling, he scooted back into his seat.

  The faces of the armed men were testaments to a lifetime of humanitarian crisis and war. Their experiences were weathered into their skin and hardened into their gaze. They’d been victims and aggressors, exploited and persecuted. She could see that in a glance as much as she could tell their group was unwelcome.

  One of them motioned to the others, and they started to march toward their plane. The pilot made quick work of abandoning his helm. He escaped out of the hatch door, mostly ignored by the approaching group.

  “Don’t be alarmed,” Dax announced. “They’re used to receiving our kind. This is where NATO and your Red Cross outfits come in and drop supplies to help with refugee camps.”

  “Huh,” Gigi managed. She groggily rubbed her hands across her face. “Not exactly what I expected.”

  Dax grinned. “They’ll be friendly.”

  Jane pulled Teddy close to her side and wrapped an arm around him. She didn’t care what her employer said. The men approaching the plane were not a Syrian hospitality committee.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The hot sun beat down on Jane’s shoulders. Their group shuffled down an uneven, sand-baked path, surrounded by their arguing captors. At least she thought they were arguing. Maybe they were just hot and angry like she was.

  She didn’t know where they were going, but they had to get there soon. Dax had already spoken to the leader of the armed group, an impossibly tall man in a long, dark tunic, and agreed to pay a ransom. Rescue or arrangements home should come at any time.