The cops came screaming along the lanes of the quiet cemetery. She tensed as they got out, hands on weapons. Frazer, Rooney, and Matt had their gold shields out and were trying to explain the two dead bodies.
Scarlett couldn’t believe the weight of sadness that had lifted from her chest.
Matt glanced over at her and smiled. Even as grim sadness surrounded them, she knew with sudden clarity that everything was going to work out. She’d asked for one miracle and gotten two.
“How much are sailboats?” she asked Parker, who’d come to stand beside her as the cops tried to figure out jurisdiction.
“One like Lazlo’s? About ten grand.”
Oh, boy. Thankfully she had some savings.
Parker looked over to where Rooney was comforting Angel. “Tell Lazlo he owes me a twenty, by the way. I cracked his password.”
Scarlett huffed out a laugh. “Really? While everything else was going on, you took the time to hack his password?”
“TOEDWY—all uppercase.” His grin made his face come alive.
“TOEDWY? I don’t get it.” Scarlett’s teeth chattered.
“The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday. SEAL motto.” Parker winked, then walked away as a bunch of FBI agents arrived, Ridley Branson amongst them. He stood in front of her, and Matt was suddenly miraculously back at her side.
The chief of counterespionage hung his head. “I don’t know what to say, Dr. Stone. I am beyond shamed by my own personal failures.”
“Don’t say it to me.” All the anger that had kept her going for the last fourteen long years hit her hard again. “Go say it to my father, right now. Today. Beg him for forgiveness. Not me.”
Branson nodded and walked away. Emotions she’d thought she’d controlled started fizzing inside her again.
Matt took her hand and squeezed her fingers. “Did I tell you I loved you, without yelling at you, yet?”
She blinked away all the stupid tears that wanted to come. She wouldn’t let them. “I could get used to you saying that, you know.”
“You better.” He turned so they were face-to-face. “This is it, Scarlett. That whole love at first sight cliché? We’re it. Living proof.” The gold in his hazel eyes glowed. “It’s going to take a while to figure out the mechanics of us being together, but don’t doubt the sentiment. I love you. That isn’t going to stop. Ever.”
“I know.” She looked up at him. Touched his cheek. “I think I’ve been waiting for you my whole life.”
“Promise me one thing.” His eyes scanned her face. She spotted an agent over his shoulder who was obviously waiting to take him in for questioning or debriefing or whatever they called it.
“What?”
“No more taking the law into your own hands.”
“That’s an easy promise to make.” She laughed. “You have to promise me something too.” She rose up on tiptoe and whispered in his ear. “It involves having sex in the shower at every possible opportunity for the next twenty years.”
“Only twenty?” He pulled back.
“I didn’t want to scare you with too long a commitment.”
He narrowed his gaze. “Okay. We can reassess in twenty years.”
The FBI agent stepped closer.
Matt’s eyes got serious. “You should go to your dad, you know. I promise I’ll get there as soon as I can.” He threw a look over his shoulder. “This could take a while.”
Scarlett nodded. “I want you with me.”
“I am with you, Scarlett.” He touched his heart and was finally led away.
She found herself pulled against another male chest offering comfort.
“Come on.” Alex Parker took her hand and led her through the patrol cars and uniformed officers. “It’s almost over. And then the good stuff begins.”
Epilogue
One month later.
Scarlett stood in the living room of her childhood home, waiting for the car to arrive. She’d cleaned the house literally from top to bottom. People crowded the streets outside; the press was camped out ten-deep.
“Relax.” Matt pulled her into his arms for a kiss. She savored the taste, the warmth, the solid reassurance of the man. He was everything she’d imagined when she’d first seen him, and more.
His mother was still in a coma, which had been the only thing that hadn’t changed over the last few weeks. It was heartbreaking, but Scarlett tried to keep him company as much as possible when he went to visit. It was all they could do. Congressman LeMay had stepped down. Scarlett had been to see Angel, and they’d talked for hours about everything that had happened. Angel wasn’t the same person she’d been before the kidnapping, but Scarlett no longer held herself completely responsible—Dorokhov had kidnapped her in an attempt to control Valerie. Angel was getting help. Scarlett would be there if she needed her.
The feds were still trying to figure it all out.
The fact Raminski had been the one to shoot Dorokhov didn’t seem to be in doubt. It had stopped a major incident turning into all-out war. As far as the rest of the investigation went, none of them were really sure what was happening. They’d all been excluded from it; reprimanded for not following protocol on one hand, applauded for solving the case on the other. Frazer had told them it was bureaucracy versus politics, and for once politics was working in their favor.
She’d been back at work for the last two weeks as her father had continued to recover and receive treatment at one of the top hospitals in the country. Today he was finally coming home.
“I have something for you.” Matt held out a jeweler’s box—too big to be for a ring, though her heart sped up at the thought. She chided herself.
Matt had spent three full days being questioned by the FBI. Even Frazer’s clout hadn’t been able to make the wheels turn any faster. They’d missed their first Christmas together.
“What is it?” She grinned, taking it from him. She had a present for him too, but it wouldn’t fit in a box.
He’d met her father and they seemed to like each other. Easier now that her father had been given a public, presidential pardon and his conviction quashed, which Matt had helped make happen.
She opened the box and inside was a key on a silver chain. She frowned. “What’s it for? Did you buy me a Ferrari?”
“It’s for my house.”
“But you don’t have a house.”
“I do now, or rather, we do. In Arlington, assuming you want to, you know…live together?” His confidence slipped as he took in her expression. “Oh, crap. I moved too fast, or too slow, I—”
She caught his hands. “No. No! I just…” She bit her lip. “I had Alex help me find you a boat. We had it delivered to the marina yesterday.”
He grinned. “You were gonna live with me on a boat?”
She nodded tentatively. “Assuming you wanted me to.”
“Of course I’d want you to, but trust me, a house will be easier.” He crushed her lips to his and by the time they came up for air she’d forgotten there were a thousand people outside the door. “I can teach you to sail.” His grin turned wicked. “I can teach you all sorts of things.”
She shivered with anticipation. Then she heard the sound of a car pulling into the drive. Matt heard it too and took a step back.
Scarlett grabbed his hand and opened the door. A motorcade worthy of a president lined up along the driveway and down the street. FBI agents held back the press and crowd as everyone tried to get a look at the man who’d been the victim of a terrible miscarriage of justice. Ridley Branson himself opened the door for her father to climb out of the limousine. Her dad looked pale, but much better than the last time she’d seen him in the hospital a week ago. He’d gained weight and could move around without wincing in pain. Scarlett almost couldn’t believe the sight. Her mother walked around the car and took her husband’s arm. Scarlett noted the tilt of both their chins, high and proud. Ignoring the blinding cameras, she ran down the steps and hugged her father tightly, careful not to knock him ove
r in her enthusiasm. Matt came out too and they stood aside to watch Richard Stone walk back into the house he’d left fourteen years ago, thinking it was just another ordinary day at the office.
“Welcome home, Agent Stone,” Ridley Branson said, loud enough for the crowd to hear.
Her father nodded, graciously in Scarlett’s opinion, and began to climb the steps without anyone’s help. Emotion expanded in her throat until she couldn’t speak. Matt rubbed his hand down her back. “Breathe. You did it, Scarlett. You cleared his name.”
She smiled and kissed him, in front of the entire world. “We did it. We cleared his name. Together.”
Dear Reader
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Keep reading for an excerpt from my book, The Killing Game, and as a special treat, the opening of Kaylea Cross’s book Targeted.
Read the start of Toni Anderson’s Multi-Award Nominated Romantic Suspense/ Spy Thriller…
THE KILLING GAME
©Toni Anderson
It looked and felt like the dominion of Gods.
Special Air Service trooper Ty Dempsey had been catapulted from a rural English market town into the heart of a colossal mountain range full of pristine snow-capped peaks which glowed against a glassy blue sky. Many of the summits in the Hindu Kush were over five miles high. The utter peace and tranquility of this region was an illusion that hid death, danger and uncertainty beneath every elegant precipice. No place on earth was more treacherous or more beautiful than the high mountains.
He was an anomaly here.
Life was an anomaly here.
Thin sharp needles pierced his lungs every time he took a breath. But his prey was as hampered by the landscape as they were, and Ty Dempsey wasn’t going to let a former Russian Special Forces operative-turned-terrorist get the better of an elite modern-day military force. Especially a man who’d shockingly betrayed not only his country, but humanity itself.
They needed to find him. They needed to stop the bastard from killing again.
The only noise in this arena was boots punching through the crust of frozen snow, and the harshness of puny human lungs struggling to draw oxygen out of the fragile atmosphere. The shriek of a golden eagle pierced the vastness overhead, warning the world that there were strangers here and to beware. Dempsey raised his sunglasses to peer back over his shoulder at the snaking trail he and his squad had laid down. Any fool could follow that trail, but only a real fool would track them across the Roof of the World to a place so remote not even war lingered.
But the world was full of fools.
As part of the British SAS’s Sabre Squadron A’s Mountain Troop, Dempsey was familiar with the terrain. He knew the perils of mountains and altitude, understood the raw omnipotent power of nature. This was what he trained for. This was his job. This was his life. He’d climbed Everest and K2, though the latter had nearly killed him. He understood that there were places on earth that were blisteringly hostile, that could obliterate you in a split second, but they held no malice, no evil. Unlike people…
He relaxed his grip on his carbine and adjusted the weight of his bergen. None of the men said a word as they climbed ever higher, one by one disappearing over the crest of the ridge and dropping down into the snowy wilderness beyond. With an icy breath Dempsey followed his men on the next impossible mission. Hunting a ghost.
* * *
The small plane taxied down the runway at Kurut in the Wakhan Corridor, a tiny panhandle of land in the far northeast of Afghanistan. Thankfully the runway was clear of snow—a miracle in itself.
Dr. Axelle Dehn stared out of the plane window and tried to relax her grip on the seat in front of her. She’d been traveling for thirty hours straight, leveraging every contact she’d ever made to get flights and temporary visas for her and her graduate student. Something was going on with her leopards and she was determined to find out what.
Last fall, they’d attached satellite radio collars to ten highly-endangered snow leopards here in the Wakhan. This past week, in the space of a few days, they’d lost one signal completely, and another signal was now coming from a talus-riddled slope where no shelter existed. This latter signal was from a collar that had been attached to a leopard called Sheba, one of only two female snow leopards they’d caught. Just ten days ago, for the first time ever, they’d captured photos from one of their remote camera traps of the same leopard moving two newborn cubs. If Sheba had been killed, the cubs were out there, hungry and defenseless. Emotion tried to crowd her mind but she thrust it aside.
The cats might be fine.
The collar might have malfunctioned and dropped off before it was programmed to. Or maybe she hadn’t fastened it tight enough when they’d trapped Sheba, and the leopard had somehow slipped it off.
But two collars in two days…?
The plane came to a stop and the pilot turned off the propellers. The glacier-fed river gushed silkily down the wide, flat valley. Goats grazed beside a couple of rough adobe houses where smoke drifted through the holes in the roof. Bactrian camels and small, sturdy horses were corralled nearby. A line of yaks packed with supplies waited patiently in a row. Yaks were the backbone of survival in this remote valley, especially once you headed east beyond the so-called road. People used them for everything from milk, food, transportation and even fuel in this frigid treeless moonscape.
It was early spring—the fields were being tilled in preparation to plant barley in the short but vital growing season. A group of children ran toward the plane, the girls dressed in red dresses with pink headscarves, the boys wearing jewel-bright green and blue sweaters over dusty pants. Hospitality was legendary in this savagely poor region, but with the possibility of only a few hundred snow leopards left in Afghanistan’s wilderness, Axelle didn’t have time to squander.
Her assistant, a Dane called Josef Vidler, gathered his things beside her. She adjusted her hat and scarf to cover her hair. The type of Islam practiced here was moderate and respectful.
“Hello, Dr. Dehn,” the children chimed as the pilot opened the door. A mix of different colored irises and features reflected the diverse genetic makeup of this ancient spit of land.
“As-Salaam Alaikum.” She gave them a tired smile. The children’s faces were gaunt but wreathed in happiness. Malnourishment was common in the Wakhan, and after a brutal winter most families were only a goat short of starvation.
Despite the worry for her cats, it humbled her. These people, who struggled with survival every single day, were doing their best to live in harmony with the snow leopard. And a large part of this change in attitude toward one of the region’s top predators was due to the work of the Conservation Trust. It was a privilege to work for them, a privilege she didn’t intend to screw up. She dug into her day pack and pulled out two canisters of children’s multi-vitamins she’d found in Frankfurt Airport. She rattled one of the canisters and they all jumped back in surprise. She pointed to Keeta, a teenage girl whose eyes were as blue as Josef’s and whose English was excellent thanks to some recent schooling. “These are not candy so only eat one a day.” She held up a single finger. Then handed them over and the children chorused a thank you before running back to their homes.
Anji Waheed, their local guide and wildlife ranger-in-training, rattled toward them in their sturdy Russian van.
“As-Salaam Alaikum, Mr. Josef, Doctor Axelle,” Anji called out as he pulled up beside them. T
he relief in the Wakhi man’s deep brown eyes reinforced the seriousness of the situation.
“Wa-Alaikum Salaam.” They could all do with a little peace. The men patted each other on the back, and they began hauling their belongings out of the plane and into the van.
Axelle took a deep breath. “Did you find any sign of the cubs?”
Anji shook his head. “No, but as soon as I heard you were on your way, I took some men up to base camp to set up the yurts, then came back to get you.” Although only a few miles up the side valley, it was two bone-rattling hours of travel on a barely-there gravel road to their encampment. During winter, they did their tracking online from back home at Montana State University. In summer, they took a more hands-on approach.
“Thanks.” Axelle stowed her frustration and smiled her gratitude. From their tracking data she had a good idea where Sheba might have denned up. Barring accidents or breakdowns they might get there before nightfall.
She was praying for a collar malfunction even though that would put their million-dollar project way behind schedule. The alternative meant the cubs and their mother were probably dead. Her instinct told her losing two cats in a couple of days wasn’t coincidence, nor was it a local herder protecting livestock. A professional poacher was going after her animals for their fur and bones to feed China’s ravenous appetite for traditional medicine. It was imperative to find out exactly what was going on, and with the continuing conflict in Afghanistan it wasn’t going to be easy.
“Do the elders know anything about what might be happening?” she asked. Only twelve miles wide in places, the Wakhan Valley was a tiny finger of flat fertile ground separating some of the tallest mountains in the world—the magnificent and treacherous Hindu Kush to the south and the impenetrable Pamir Range to the north. Harsh winters trapped locals inside for seven months of the year. Wildlife was scarce and the region mercilessly inaccessible, but these people knew the land better than a visitor ever could.
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