by Billi Jean
Table of Contents
Legal Page
Title Page
Book Description
Dedication
Trademarks Acknowledgement
Prologue
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
New Excerpt
About the Author
Publisher Page
A Totally Bound Publication
Trusting Love
ISBN # 978-1-78430-019-7
©Copyright Billi Jean 2014
Cover Art by Posh Gosh ©Copyright April 2014
Edited by Sue Meadows
Totally Bound Publishing
This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Totally Bound Publishing.
Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Totally Bound Publishing. Unauthorised or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.
The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.
Published in 2014 by Totally Bound Publishing, Newland House, The Point, Weaver Road, Lincoln, LN6 3QN
Warning:
This book contains sexually explicit content which is only suitable for mature readers. This story has a heat rating of Totally Burning and a Sexometer of 2.
Love’s Command
TRUSTING LOVE
Billi Jean
Book three in the Love’s Command series
Robert McNeil survived in a world filled with death and very little more until…
Kristen Sawyer wanted nothing more than to forget everyone and everything after the death of her daughter. The last thing she ever expected was to find the one man she’d never been able to have or forget—falling at her feet.
When Robert woke up and discovered that he’d passed out from his wounds at Kristen Sawyer’s home, he knew he’d found the way to hold on—and to begin again. Now, all he had to do was eliminate the men trying to keep them apart, destroy the toxic drug in his system, and somehow make her want to trust in love.
Dedication
What can I say? I have to thank everyone who’s ever given me a chance.
Most of all I need to thank Totally Bound for believing in me.
Sue, I’m working on the up, over, down, okay?
E—angst is good, say it with me now!
Tommy—reach for the sky.
Cay—you’re beautiful.
Trademarks Acknowledgement
The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:
Walmart: Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
Abercrombie & Fitch: Abercrombie & Fitch
Hardy Boy: Stratemeyer Syndicate
Folgers: The J.M. Smucker Company
Ford: Ford Motor Company
Sauer: J.P. Sauer und Sohn GmbH
Corona: Cerveceria Modelo
Jack Daniel’s: Brown-Forman Corporation
Jeep: Chrysler Group, LLC
Mustang: Ford Motor Company
Band-Aid: Johnson & Johnson’s
Carhartt: Carhartt, Inc.
Ironman: Marvel Worldwide, Inc.
Match.Com: InterActiveCorp.
Walther: Carl Walther GmbH Sportwaffen
Gmail: Google Inc.
Yahoo: Yahoo Inc.
Robocop: Orion Pictures
Wolverine: Marvel Worldwide Inc.
Leatherman: Leatherman Tool Group
Martini: Martini & Rossi
Prologue
Robert McNeil stood, watching as the men he’d known most of his adult life headed off. They’d all forced him to make promises, but he knew he couldn’t keep them.
Two weeks from now and his baby sister would walk down the aisle starting a new life with Mac, a man he already called brother.
Two weeks.
That’s how long they’d all given him to fight the effects of the drug changing him in ways even he was just beginning to understand.
Two weeks, they’d said, or they’d come after him.
He wasn’t going to make that deadline or keep that promise.
Daren Scott, a member of his old team, paused at the top of the stairs of the plane and gave him a grin and wave, his woman, Kylie, smiling beside him. They’d both tried to help and for that, he was grateful. But Kylie Chung, once a scientist on the team that had created the N-2-8—otherwise known as the Superman drug to the Sentinels—knew what she’d done to help him was too little, too late.
Oh, she claimed the side effects were reversible and he’d give it a shot as soon as he could, but he couldn’t chance it now. Not when he was this close to erasing every file ever created on the N-2-8.
After all this, sis, I’ll be there for you.
After he found the original formula and destroyed all traces of its existence. Once that was done he’d start his life over again. Explain everything to his sister, and do his damnedest to be a part of her life. Maybe even have a life. All his buddies were creating new lives with women who understood and loved them. Maybe he could do the same.
Kylie and her father had done their part. They’d found and deleted file after file, but the original formula was missing. Until he found the location of that formula, he couldn’t chance quitting the team, starting a new life, or cutting his dosage.
Dare waved once more from the plane, and with Kylie under his arm, ducked inside. Seconds later the door shut.
Besides, alone was sometimes better.
The higher-ups in the new unit still calling themselves the Sentinels had demanded that he pick a few men, but he didn’t trust the organisation or most of the men working within it. At one time, perhaps the Sentinels were a covert operation set up as a way for the United States to protect its citizens—and the world—from global war—but now, with their involvement in feeding good men and women this drug, Robert didn’t trust them. Who would? They’d pumped chemicals into individuals without the knowledge of the scientist who had created them.
Dr Chung had been a man with a vision to someday cure cancer. He’d ended up creating soldiers who could withstand harmful conditions and survive. But the government had been too impatient and had used what Dr Chung had developed too soon without any regard to the men and women given the drug. Not only could the drug enhance a person’s ability to survive fatal wounds, but it took away the body’s natural warning signals. So much so that one man walked himself to death after a gunshot wound unaware that he was losing blood. If he’d bound his wound, he could have survived.
Carson, a good man and at one time a SEAL, had stepped in to clean up the operation and for him, Robert would c
all in a few men to go on this hunt, but only a few, and none of them could really be trusted. Not with the kind of money N-2-8 could potentially make for someone with the right connections.
No one outside of Robert’s friends on that plane could be trusted. The only way the original formula could be missing was with the help of an insider. Kylie and her father were clear on that. Dr Chung had kept his notes on the newer, improved, but still flawed drugs separate, fearing that his work would be used by someone else before he’d tested it enough.
The problem Robert now faced wasn’t controlling the new formula. That formula had been shredded. It was the older one.
The only location of the original formula had been on one computer, deep in the confines of the most secure building in DC. That computer had been breached, the formula taken and the computer—minus the hard drive—burnt beyond repair. But one thing was certain. The older, more destructive formula was right now out there in the hands of someone willing to kill to get it to the streets.
The new group calling themselves the Sentinels had given him the mission to retrieve it.
His personal mission was to destroy it before it could be used on anyone else.
Chapter One
“Tazz, the intel has six men in the house,” Jansen said through their com link. “Two set up as guards outside, two inside. Senator DeRoy is inside with the hacker and the flash drive. The buyer is still unknown, but the possibility of this being the meet and exchange is high.”
Robert settled more firmly on his stomach in the snow and scanned the house below with his night vision scope. The two guards outside barely walked the perimeter of the ranch, depending on the acres of wilderness, Robert assumed, to keep them all safe. The ranch was high up in a valley, secluded but not as remote as the lack of security seemed to indicate. His gut said this was it.
“More than high,” he responded. “This is it. DeRoy is there, what we came for is here and the verification that its original is here. The hacker will have to prove something to the buyer. The players are in place,” Robert reminded the team. “Copy that?”
The com link in his ear clicked and his men on the ridge above them sent an affirmative.
“Copy that. We’ll nail them this time, sir,” Bryson added from his location in the woods opposite them.
“Good. This is all we have, boys, don’t blow it.” Robert scanned the snowy canopy of forest again, got up off his stomach, and settled his rifle over his shoulder.
It’d been four days of travel to reach this spot. If he could end this now, he might just make his sister’s wedding. Amazing as that sounded, he just might do this. End it, and go on with life without the endless battles. Do I even know how? No more war and death. The thought filled his head more than it should.
The com link crackled, breaking his concentration away from the future. “The sooner we get this done, the sooner we can stop freezing our balls off out here in the snow, too, boys,” Walters said.
“Yes, sir. We’re on it,” Bryson replied.
“Silence from this point on. We play this like we have no idea it’s a US senator in there. I’ll transfer a pic, just as we discussed. We name him and force his cooperation. If the buyers are set to arrive I want both of you down off high ground and ready to engage,” Robert ordered. “If things go to shit, we meet back at the nest in two hours. Make sure not to leave any tracks. Wait there until you either hear from me or central picks you up.”
“Tracks won’t be an issue,” Walters muttered beside him.
Rob shot him a frown. He’d chosen the man over the other two because of the three that came forward at his call, he trusted the surfer playboy the least. “Better to have a man you don’t trust near you, rather than in an outer perimeter with a scope ready to take a silent shot,” his commander used to say
“The storm will cover everything for weeks,” Walters added with a gesture at the darkening sky.
The clouds were heavy. If they dropped the amount of snow predicted, he and his men might be snowed in for days, possibly longer. Already the trees looked like they’d been dipped in the powdered sugar that his mom used to put on gingerbread houses when he was a kid. A foot or more lay on the ground, crusted over and frozen just enough to break under their feet when they stepped through the newer, softer snow on top.
“True. Let’s use that to our advantage if things go wrong. Silence from my count,” Robert called softly, his breath steaming in the freezing air.
He moved his focus off Walters and the snow and on to the mission and all the components involved. He predicted a sixty per cent success rate because too many factors were unknown. They still had no intelligence on the hacker and they knew nothing about his connection to DeRoy.
DeRoy was easier to place. The greedy bastard would sell his wife to make an extra million. But they didn’t know if he actually had the files with him, or somewhere else. They were reaching, but sometimes a gamble proved worth the risk.
One more scan of the silent woods, mountains and sky, then he held up his fist for silence. The two men flashed the red lights on their scopes and Walters nodded his understanding.
They were all dressed in winter camouflage gear with their street clothes underneath in case they needed both. They had the best technology available at their disposal but Robert would have given his left nut for a simple hunting shotgun and some alone time with the senator in the extravagant house below him. Instead he was guiding a team, with men he didn’t fully trust, into a situation that made his gut clench His instincts were on full alert, not because he didn’t fully trust the men he’d brought in on this mission, but because if the formula was down there, he was close to ending something that had occupied his life for years. And this, the mission to stop the spread of the DNA modifying drug from hitting the market, was too easy, way too easy.
Life never gave easy breaks.
Maybe it does now. Maybe this time things will work out the way I want them to.
Robert kept that in mind as he headed down the barely visible trail, concentrating on not making a sound in the dense underbrush while his mind played out the way this mission would go.
The senator was a lazy man, relaxed in his home like he was some rich rancher without a care in the world. He had two guards posted outside a set of patio doors that led to parts of the house where no one lived. Robert assumed it was so that if the guards were out there, they’d not distract from whatever the senator had going on inside.
Whatever the reason, Walters would take one down and he’d deal with the other. Both of his men on the ridge also had the guards in their sights and would fire if necessary.
Rob had been specific—no casualties unless absolutely necessary. Or the senator looked to be as guilty as hell, Robert thought. If the man was that corrupt, Robert wouldn’t hesitate to take him down. He’d done enough soul searching over the past few years of living in the hell the DNA drugs had put him through to know he wasn’t playing God, he was taking care of things his country needed him to do.
It was what the Sentinels had been designed to do. And one reason he thought that disbanding them was the only option. One man or two man teams shouldn’t decide the lives of others. A system of justice should do that. But when it came to a man like DeRoy those lines became grey. Very, very grey.
Commander Carson’s orders had been clear, though. If DeRoy was trying to sell the formula, bring him in. If he fought and died, well, that was so much the better.
They reached the bottom of the slope opposite DeRoy’s house, nearest to the open window without a hitch. The window had bothered Robert when his men had spotted it. At first. Then he’d realised it was the kid’s window left open so he could smoke weed. That detail had eased his worry about a possible trap.
As soon as he caught his breath, he checked on Walters, who gave him the thumbs-up. He waited to the count of sixty then motioned to the left of the house where guard number one slouched against a wall, looking bored and freezing. Walters immediat
ely veered off to his target.
Robert had the second one in his sights. Both guards were sloppy, as if stealing top secret government information was a cake walk. Walters’ guard was texting, probably a woman. Robert’s was playing solitaire on an upside down bucket. Neither looked like the kind of professional agents assigned to a senator. That made sense, Robert thought. An agency man would not tolerate DeRoy’s betrayal.
When the guard pulled another card from the deck, Robert got in close and struck him with a sharp jab of his rifle butt to the head. The guy went down without a sound. Two seconds later Walters came back into view. They didn’t speak but Robert didn’t need to hear that Walters had taken care of his for him to know it. Together, they circled the house, heading in on the ground floor through the bathroom window the hacker had left open. Not intelligent, but smarts didn’t often combine with common sense, Robert had found.
They quietly headed down the hallway lined with closed doors until they reached an open kitchen slash living room area. Off it there was a closed door that led to a den or office of sorts. The room was large, though, big enough to hold the kind of dinner parties the senator was used to throwing. Of all the senator’s properties, this one hadn’t come up until they’d done some digging into his secretary’s finances. The senator, although wealthy and obviously used to getting what he wanted, wasn’t as smart as he should be when it came to hiding his properties. He also pinched his pennies because if he’d purchased a higher quality security system and better guards, Robert and Walters wouldn’t have been able to breech the house so easily.
Walters grinned when Robert met his eyes. No doubt the other man also saw the irony of the situation. DeRoy was beyond a millionaire and he’d shopped at Walmart for men to protect him. Walters mouthed ‘dumbass’ and shook his head.