The Stealth Commandos Trilogy

by Suzanne Forster

  “Come here, Annie,” he said, holding out his arms.

  Tears blurred her vision as she felt the irresistible tug of his husky voice. She could remember so clearly her prophecy of what would happen if he ever said those words to her. She would go to him. She wouldn’t have any choice. He would own her, body and soul.

  “Oh, God, Chase.” She closed her eyes, unaccountably frightened as she tried to find the means to move. The more she fought the strange paralysis, the more her arms seemed anchored at her sides, her legs weighted down. And suddenly he was there, dragging her into his arms, a harsh groan on his lips. He had come to her.

  She flung her arms around his neck with a sob of relief. Tears stung her eyes as she surrendered to the rough passion of his embrace, thrilling to the way he lifted her off her feet in a fierce hug.

  He settled her back on the ground and brought her head up, his eyes probing her mind, her heart, sinking to the depths of her soul. “Do you still want to be my wife, Annie? Will you marry me? Again?”

  The answer swept into Annie’s mind on a peal of bells so clamorous, it probably reverberated throughout the known universe. But when she opened her mouth to speak, nothing came out except a hoarse squeak of emotion.

  “Was that a yes, Annie? Because, to be honest with you, I don’t have a whole lot to give a woman.” He caught hold of her hand, bringing it up in the traditional style of a man about to put a ring on a woman’s finger. Instead, he drew something from his shirt pocket and settled it gently into her cupped palm. “But I can promise you this. There will always be flowers.”

  Annie looked down at the daisy he’d placed in her hand, a new and perfect flower to replace the one long dead that he’d “picked” for her with his whip. Something unbearably sweet flared through her senses, making it impossible to tell him how much she loved the flower, how terribly she loved him.

  She brought the daisy to her lips, tears in her eyes. “It’s enough,” she said.

  Epilogue

  IT WAS A summer morning too perfect for anything but the quiet celebration of nature, picking wild blackberries on the banks of a lazy mountain river ... or marrying the man you adore alongside it. Annie chose the latter, and she had never looked more lovely. Her wedding gown was a simple white organdy, its sweetheart neckline revealing soft, rounded shoulders and porcelain skin, glowing with excitement. A garland of wild daisies adorned her copper-colored hair.

  Chase wore a chamois jacket with western fringe swinging from the sleeves; a brand-new black Stetson shaded his dark eyes in honor of the occasion. Several of the women in the small assemblage of guests regarded him with frankly admiring glances as he stood before the preacher, waiting for his bride. And Muriel Jensen, who sang the Lord’s Prayer, was overheard referring to the groom as “outlandishly handsome.”

  The crowd hushed as Annie came forward to join Chase. Even the finches’ throaty chirping in the willows overhead went quiet as the bride took her place next to the groom. Anticipation peaked as the couple’s eyes met for one sweet, brief moment before they turned to face the priest. And then someone released a sigh.

  Johnny Starhawk was Chase’s best man, his dark hair tied back, his expression solemn as the nuptials began. Next to Johnny sat Chase’s Border collie, his tail thumping noisily. The melodious rush of the river provided background music for the short ceremony, but as the priest pronounced the couple husband and wife, and they sealed their union with a lingering kiss, an odd rumbling noise could be heard in the distance.

  As Annie and Chase finally turned to the crowd, the ominous sound built, roaring like a fleet of approaching helicopters. The earth seemed to vibrate, and the racket soared to a crescendo as a single streak of black and chrome burst into view. To everyone’s surprise, a huge motorcycle swooped around the bend in the road that led to the river.

  “Who is he?” Voices in the crowd rose anxiously as a lone figure on a massive black Harley shot straight for the ceremony. The rider’s mirrored aviator glasses flashed in the sunlight, and the ties of the black bandanna he wore around his head streamed in the wind.

  The rider looked as menacing as the demon machine he rode as he gunned the bike up onto the grass and wheeled it around, coming to a stop not six feet from the startled crowd. Sunlight glinted off his glasses as he scanned their faces, searching for someone. Unshorn and unshaven, his rich blond hair sun-whitened against the black bandanna, he was a blunt weapon to the senses. A golden mountain lion of a man.

  Both Chase and Johnny seemed to recognize the rider as he dropped the bike’s kickstand and swung off. But it was Annie who said the man’s name. In his marine fatigues, olive-drab T-shirt, and flak vest, Geoff Dias looked exactly as Annie remembered him from five years before. He was a stark and beautiful specter from the past, reminding her of every tragic detail, every shining moment, of the commandos’ last mission.

  She glanced at Chase beside her and realized that he was remembering it, too, every moment, as though time had turned in on itself and rushed backward. Even Johnny Starhawk looked oddly transfixed.

  “Chase Beaudine?” said Geoff, approaching the gathering. “I was told I could find him here.” The crowd inched back as if the stranger really were a mountain lion.

  Chase made a path through the throng, drawing Annie behind him. “Dias! It’s me, Chase.”

  Geoff Dias stared at Chase’s wedding apparel in total confusion. “What’s going on, Beaudine? I got an urgent message. It said your life was in danger.”

  “Sorry, buddy,” Chase informed him, a slow smile breaking. “You’re too late to save me now. I just got married.”

  “Married?” Geoff’s rugged features registered shock as he stared at his old friend. “I don’t believe it. Chase Beaudine married?” Husky laughter erupted, and he shook his head in disbelief. “God, man, I’m really sorry to hear that. Maybe if I’d been here an hour earlier, I could have saved you.”

  “If you’d been here an hour earlier, you could have given away the bride.” The sardonic remark came from Johnny Starhawk as he moved through the crowd to greet the late arrival.

  “Starhawk? What are you doing here?”

  Johnny grinned, his dark eyes glinting as he clasped hands with his former partner. “Part of the conspiracy to get Chase Beaudine out of action.”

  Geoff Dias glanced again at Chase, now wholly sympathetic to the man’s plight. “When you said you were in danger, Beaudine, you meant it!”

  “Maybe you’d like to meet the danger in person.” Chase ushered Annie forward, draping an arm around her shoulder. “This is my beautiful wife. You may remember her as Annie Wells.”

  Recognition slowly crept into Geoff’s emerald green eyes as he searched Annie’s luminous face. “She’s the girl you rescued,” he said finally. “The one they told us was dead.” He turned to Chase with new understanding. “She’s more than beautiful, Beaudine. She’s eerie. No wonder you lost your head.”

  Annie reached out her hand and caught hold of Geoff’s. “Thank you,” she said, her eyes going misty, and very, very blue. A moment later Geoff pulled her into his arms.

  It was a friendly enough welcome, but Chase broke them up anyway, drawing his tiny wife away from Geoff Dias’s bear hug of an embrace. “Find your own woman, Dias,” he said possessively, enfolding Annie in his arms. “This one’s mine.”

  The other two men stepped back, laughing at their old friend’s uncharacteristic behavior.

  “Don’t be so smug, compadres,” Chase warned them both. “It could happen to you.”

  Both Chase and Annie laughed at the men’s vehement denials. But as Annie studied her husband’s former partners, a stirring of intuition warned her that these two men were inveterate loners, and probably as averse to emotional involvement as Chase had been. She didn’t envy the woman who tangled with either of them. As for Geoff Dias, she would not want to be the woman who tried to tame that lion. It would surely take a whip and a chair. Or one very smart lioness.

  And a
s for Johnny Starhawk, he was as quietly dangerous as any jungle cat she’d ever come across, a black panther lying in wait. But for whom? If she could have looked into the future and seen the unsuspecting one who would cross his path, Annie would have warned her to run for her life.

  She gave an involuntary shudder, grateful to be exactly where she was, warm in Chase’s arms. Laughing voices rose and champagne corks began to pop in the background, bringing her back to the celebration at hand—her own wedding! Glancing up at the love in her husband’s dark eyes, at her most secret dream realized, she joined in the joyous laughter. Miracle Number Two, she thought. May there be many more.

  Night of the Panther

  Suzanne Forster

  Contents

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  A SAVAGE WAR CRY shattered the night.

  Out of the blackwashed hills came a phantom on horseback, a rider as naked as his lunging stallion. His spear was tipped with blood, and his dark eyes were wild with triumph. The enemy was vanquished. He had won the fight for his life, for his sovereign soul. The great bear was dead.

  An aura of strange light spilled over him as he raised his weapon to the hunter’s moon and howled like a wolf. A lone white hawk joined the cry, screaming as it swooped overhead. The warrior watched the bird soar and dip, its pale wings flashing silver in the icy moonlight. Struck by the creature’s haunting beauty, the warrior knew he had to have it. The white hawk was a prize that would make him the most powerful among his people.

  He followed the bird’s flight on horseback, mesmerized by its glow as it glided toward the branches of a tree. The limb it settled on overhung a thunderous river. Majestic and solemn, the bird was silent and still as it watched the warrior pull an arrow from his quiver.

  The bow vibrated in the warrior’s grip as he drew back the arrow. The bird’s sad gaze bore down on him, mystifying him. He could almost feel the creature’s mournful plea for forgiveness, its mute acceptance of the inevitable.

  The hawk was sacrificing itself, he realized.

  The warrior’s hand shook. A film of cold sweat coated his body, but the hunting instinct was too strong, too ancient, to be controlled. His muscles worked of their own will, straining for the last ounce of force, inching the arrow back.

  As the missile struck its target, the warrior was stabbed with unbearable pain. His field of vision blurred as the wounded hawk unfurled its wings, creating a magnificent cape of white, then trans formed before his eyes into a hauntingly beautiful woman. The cape fell away, and long golden hair flew around her, exposing her nakedness. A look of anguish clouded her exquisite eyes.

  She was bleeding, he realized. The arrow had pierced her heart, and the life force was ebbing from her in a bright crimson ribbon. She was dying. Heat seared his chest as if the arrow had struck him.

  She tumbled from the branch into the water and disappeared in its turbulent depths. The warrior froze in motion. She had fallen into the river of memory. He couldn’t follow her there without drowning in his own past, in his own rage and despair.

  “Johnny . . . forgive me!”

  The anguished cry rose out of nowhere. It dragged him to the water’s edge where he could see her silvery form in the murky depths. Heedless of the river’s curse, he plunged into the water. . . .

  The old man opened his eyes slowly, the flame of the crackling bonfire reflected in his trancelike gaze. He had been fasting for days, seeking wisdom. The dream had shown him what he must do. He had to find her, the woman with sunlight for hair and rainwater for eyes. The woman who had betrayed Johnny. She was the only one who could bring him back.

  One

  JOHNNY STARHAWK WAS the one they’d all come to see.

  The courtroom was packed to capacity with concerned citizens and curious spectators. Young lawyers squeezed together to catch a glimpse of the “renegade with a cause” in action. Outside, in the halls, the media waited, ready to pounce on the Irish-Apache attorney when the legal proceedings broke. The trial was a hotly contested one, a contract dispute between a small community church and a huge multi national oil company.

  Starhawk was defending the church’s right to lease oil-company land, and he was arguably the most controversial, yet celebrated, attorney in the country at the moment. His recent victories in civil-rights and environmental law had made him a legend at thirty-five. Everyone wanted a piece of him. Nobody really knew him . . . with the exception of a quietly beautiful young woman sitting unnoticed in the back of the spectators’ gallery.

  Honor Bartholomew had taken a seat there, hoping not to be seen. To that end, she had dressed in nondescript gray clothes, and covered with a scarf the long blond hair she’d knotted in a loose coil at the back of her neck. But it was Starhawk’s notice she feared, not the media’s.

  Clutching a small turquoise stone in her hand, she kept a watchful eye on Starhawk, whose back was to her, his exotic black hair spilling over his shoulders as he sat at the defendant’s table and jotted notes. The stone grew warm as Honor worked its smoothness between her fingers.

  Johnny Starhawk had given her the Apache good-luck charm a very long time ago, just days before another trial took place. Only Johnny wasn’t an attorney then; he was the sixteen-year-old defendant, and the trial’s tragic outcome had altered the course of both their young lives. That was eighteen years ago, and Honor hadn’t seen Johnny since . . . until today.

  The question that tormented her now was why she was here, sitting in a courtroom in Washington, D.C., over a thousand miles from home. It had been an impulsive, emotional decision. She’d come at the behest of Johnny’s maternal grandfather, an uncanny old man with rattlesnake eyes who called himself Chy Starhawk. The Apache shaman had shown up in her Scottsdale, Arizona, bookstore a week ago with a bizarre request for help that had truly astonished her.

  “Only you can bring Johnny Starhawk back to the white mountains,” he’d told her, transfixing her with his strange, lidless gaze. “Go to him,” he’d urged her quietly. “He will come back for you.”

  At the mention of Johnny Starhawk’s name after so many years. Honor had been stunned and disbelieving. She’d had no idea what the old man was talking about or why it was so important that Johnny return to his tribe until the shaman began to describe the terrible setbacks on the White Mountain Apache Reservation. The tribe’s livelihood was in jeopardy, he’d explained. Its cattle were sick, dying. Pollution from a nearby uranium mine was fouling the streams and rivers, but the Apache hadn’t been able to get an injunction against the mining company.

  Honor had known immediately that he was talking about her father’s mine. She’d been estranged from Hale Bartholomew for years, but she was well aware of her father’s bottom-line attitude toward environmental concerns. He’d always maintained that saving jobs was more important than saving trees. Even as a child. Honor had seen both sides of the argument, but she’d known better than to clash with her formidable father.

  “What you’re asking is impossible,” she’d told the shaman. “If Johnny remembers me at all, it’s not with goodwill. He must still . . . hate me. Surely you know that.”

  “I know only what the dreams tell me,” the old man had countered. “My grandson vowed never to return when he left the reservation. He won’t come back for me, but he will for you.”

  His certainty had been hypnotic. Honor had found herself being drawn in, swayed by him, especially since she was sympathetic to the tribe’s plight. But somehow she’d resisted Chy Starhawk, even when he’d vividly described his prophetic dreams and his belief that only Johnny could win a lawsuit against the mining company. She’d had to resist him. He’d said nothing to ease her fears about Johnny’s hatred. “I’m not the right pers
on,” she told him.

  “You are.” The old man’s voice was firm, as if there were no doubt of it. “And you will go. Not for me, or even for the White Mountain Apache. You will do it for yourself. It’s the only way you can be free of the past.”

  Honor had recoiled from the cold truth of that statement. It had rocked her to have her past sins thrown up to her so unexpectedly. But in the end she’d known he was right. She had never been free from guilt in the eighteen years since she’d last seen Johnny. She was the reason he’d been sent away. She was the one who had betrayed him. . . .

  “Do you believe in a higher power, Mr. Rutledge?”

  Johnny’s voice brought Honor back to the present. He had risen to cross-examine a witness for the plaintiff, one of the oil company’s executives, but Honor was barely aware of the man’s awkward attempts to answer the question. Her attention was riveted on Johnny. She was hungry for whatever information her senses could give her about him. She needed to know how he might have changed. And she was praying that he hadn’t.

  She’d followed his career through newspaper and magazine accounts, and she was familiar with the media’s fascination with his “pantherish charisma” and his “killer instincts.” They questioned him at press conferences about his predatory style, and interviewed him on issue-oriented talk shows about his views. But whether they agreed or disagreed with his latest cause, they flocked to his trials to watch the panther make his next kill.

  Their references weren’t wasted on him. Honor conceded silently. Defying courtroom tradition, Johnny wore his jet-black hair long and free-flowing, as much a symbol of power as any animal’s mane in the wild. Even his eyes lent themselves to the imagery. They flashed like mercury when the light struck them, reminding her of a cat’s opaque glare. Maturity had given him height and muscularity, she acknowledged silently. It had made him physically powerful, but it had taken nothing away from his lethal grace.