He heard someone screaming her name, and realized when she turned and looked at him that the voice he could hear was his own.
She threw her gun to the ground and bolted in his direction. When their bodies collided, Gunner lifted her into his arms, and she wrapped her legs around him.
“He’s dead,” she repeated several times as he stroked her hair.
Gunner reached into his pocket with his free hand, pulled out a phone, and took a photo of Petrov’s lifeless body.
Finish it, the text read that accompanied the photo he sent.
Roger that, answered Striker.
Epilogue
Zary lay naked in Gunner’s arms in front of the fireplace, the only sound, coming from the crackling wood and the waves hitting the shore of the beach.
Twenty-four hours ago, they’d left Montecito and drove to his house in Cambria. Razor may have done the same with Ava, but Gunner didn’t know for sure or care.
At some point, there’d be a hotwash of the deal that had been finalized with United Russia, as well as the part of the op that had resulted in Petrov’s death. Gunner didn’t care about that either.
Within minutes of arriving at his beach house, he and his Rocket Girl had torn off their clothes and made love the first of many times. Their need for condoms crossed his mind, but he let it go. If Zary got pregnant, it would simply mean they’d be one step closer to building the family both of them wanted.
Neither had spoken much during the two-hour drive other than to profess their love again and again.
Like he’d left Paps behind after he’d killed Lena, Zary told him she was letting Raketa go. She’d always be his Rocket Girl, but she’d never again use the name under which she’d been a Russian assassin.
She was still as badass as ever and would be welcome to join the K19 team if that was what she wanted. But if she wanted to settle into retirement, Gunner would join her.
He closed his eyes, remembering how her steely facade had faded in his arms, last night, as he carried her away from Petrov’s corpse. Everyone else could buy the image of the cold, hard killer that she projected to the world. Only Gunner knew that underneath she was as vulnerable and sensitive as he was.
He felt the chill on her flesh, took her in his arms, and carried her upstairs to the bed that was no longer his. For the rest of their lives, every bed they slept in would be theirs—no matter where it was housed.
Gunner’s phone vibrated several times before he picked it up.
“This better be about a nuclear holocaust,” Gunner told the caller. “Nothing else could warrant your intrusion.”
Shiv laughed. “This will be quick. I wanted to give you an update on Svetlana.”
Gunner walked out of the bedroom and closed the door so he didn’t wake the woman sound asleep in their bed.
“Right,” answered Gunner, knowing that the subject of her mother’s well-being would be on par with World War III for Zary. “How is she?”
“She latched on to Pimm and wouldn’t let go until Topor showed up. They’re keeping her overnight for observation, but you and Raketa can come get her in the morning. Fair warning that you may have to let Topor accompany her.”
“How did his interrogation go?”
“It was brief, but informative. He’s willing to cooperate with whatever we need.”
“Will he name names?”
“Yes, that’s part of his deal.”
“How’s Alegria?”
“Critical, but stable. Mantis hasn’t left her side.”
“Why?” There was no need for security any longer as far as Gunner knew.
Shiver laughed a second time. “Are you really saying you don’t know?”
“For Christ’s sake. Know what?”
Shiver was still laughing. “Mantis and Alegria.”
“Are you saying they’re together?”
“On and off for years,” Shiv told him.
It was one more thing Gunner hadn’t been aware of, just like he hadn’t known anything about Shiv and Kuznetsov. A few days ago, his not knowing would’ve bothered him. Now he didn’t care if he ever got a briefing again, about anything.
“Anything else vital I need to know? And by that I mean, something that pertains only to Zary and me?”
“Not a thing,” answered Shiv. “But, Zary?”
The man’s chuckling was starting to piss Gunner off.
“Later, asshole,” he said, disconnecting the call.
From inside the bedroom, he heard the sweet voice of his woman, calling his name.
“Coming, sweetheart,” he answered, climbing back into bed.
“Who was that?”
“Shiver. We’ll be able to bring your mother home tomorrow.”
“Oh. Um…where?”
“Wherever we are, Zary, she’ll be with us.”
She smiled. “I’d like to take her to your island.”
“Our island, baby.”
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Also by Heather Slade
K19 SECURITY SOLUTIONS
Book One: Razor
Coming Soon!
Book Three: Mantis
New Series Coming Soon!
MILITARY INTELLIGENCE SECTION 6
Book One: Shiver
BUTLER RANCH
Available Now!
Book One: Brodie
Book Two: Maddox
Book Three: Naughton
Book Four: Ainsley
Book Five: Mercer
Book Six: Kade
COWBOYS OF CRESTED BUTTE
Available Now!
Book One: Fall for Me
Book Two: Dance with Me
Book Three: Kiss Me Cowboy
Book Four: Stay with Me
Book Five: Win Me Over
Want more?
Keep reading for a sneak peek
at the next book in the
K19 Security Solutions Series,
Mantis
Mantis
Compared to some of the places he’d been forced to sleep during his career, the hospital recliner was damn comfortable.
Gehring “Mantis” Cassman shifted to his left side, hoping it would relieve some of the pressure on the right where a bullet had struck his hip, requiring pelvic reconstruction surgery. The good news was it hadn’t been life threatening and none of his organs had been compromised. The arthritic pain, however, was unrelenting.
He looked over at the woman lying in the hospital bed, hoping her injuries wouldn’t result in a similar life of pain. No one deserved to live with the kind he had to, but Alegria deserved it less than anyone he’d ever known.
They’d met at the United States Air Force Academy when he was a senior and she was an international student, one year behind him. He remembered the day their Air Officer Commanding, AOC, introduced Manon “Alegria” Mondreau to the squadron. She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Still was.
Her ebony-black hair was pulled back into the tight bun required by Air Force regulations, highlighting her mesmerizing, almond-shaped, gray-blue eyes.
How many times had he kissed her pouty, cherry-colored lips and ran his hands over her seductively sculpted nubile body? Hundreds.
“Any change?” asked Dutch, who’d known both him and Manon since those early days when they were all cadets, anxious to begin pilot training, and get on with their careers.
Mantis shook his head. “Nothing.”
“Why don’t you take a break? I can sit with her for the next couple of hours.”
“Thanks, but I’ll stick around.”
“Mantis—”
He raised his hand. “I have to be here, Dutch. Don’t fight me on this.”
His f
riend nodded and sat in one of the other recliners the hospital staff had agreed to bring into the room.
“She’s out of intensive care. That’s a good sign, right?” Dutch asked.
It was, but they still had no idea whether the damage to Manon’s spinal cord would have lasting effects.
“Has she woken up? Said anything?”
Mantis shook his head.
“Did you two have a chance to talk before…”
“I tried, but no.”
“She’s still pissed at you.”
Yeah, she was. She’d told him she’d never forgive him for taking the undercover assignment she’d asked him not to. He thought she would have been over it by the time he got back, but she hadn’t been, and still wasn’t.
“You volunteer more than anyone else. Why?”
“It’s my duty, Manon. It’s what I signed up for.”
“It’s no longer a duty. You retired. We agreed—”
“No. Stop right there. We didn’t agree to anything. You demanded I quit, and I refused. That’s the way it went down.”
She shook her head and stormed off. There’d been a time he would’ve gone after her, but no more. She’d spent just as much time stateside as she had in France, yet she still lived by her native country’s work ethic. Or lack of it.
It wasn’t that she didn’t like to work, Manon was just able to compartmentalize better than he was. She could say no to assignments without thinking twice. He couldn’t remember ever turning one down.
A few minutes later, she was back. “If you go, we’re finished.”
“I won’t choose you over my country, Manon.”
What had made matters worse, the assignment required him to go deep undercover, and during that time, no one knew whether he was dead or alive, and if he were still breathing, when he might resurface.
He had come back, finally, but Manon was steadfast in her refusal to forgive him for what she considered a betrayal.
Mantis had tried to get in touch with her when he first got back, but she’d refused to answer his calls. He knew from Doc that she was still on the K19 team, but the boss hadn’t encouraged him to get in touch with her.
“Hold back for now,” he’d advised. “She knows you’re back. Let her come to you.”
He’d questioned Doc’s advice, but in the end, he abided by it. What choice did he have? She refused to respond to his calls, texts, or emails.
“Is she with someone else?” he’d asked.
“Not that I’m aware of. However, Mantis, the personal lives of K19 team members are none of my business.”
Mantis almost laughed at Doc’s proclamation given the man had his nose in everyone else’s business about as much as his best friend, Dutch, did.
He stood up and walked over to the bed when Manon groaned. He stroked her forehead, willing her to open her eyes and look at him.
“Mon coeur,” he whispered when she did.
“Où suis-je?”
“L’hôpital.” He was reaching the limit of words he knew in French, besides the obvious ones everyone knew. “You were shot.”
“Petrov?”
Mantis nodded.
“Surgery?”
“Yes.”
She turned her head and looked away from him, noticing for the first time that Dutch was in the room. She reached out her hand for him in the way Mantis would’ve expected her to reach for him.
Mantis met Dutch’s eyes when he stood, and in them, he saw sadness and guilt.
The man who’d been his best friend for twenty years took his time walking the three or four steps it would take him to get to the opposite side of the bed.
Mantis felt his throat close up as his precious Manon clung to Dutch’s hand with her own. He realized that he was the interloper in the room, not Dutch. Not the man who, only minutes before, had asked what had happened between them.
He turned and walked out of the room, cursing himself for being such a fool.
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Mantis
Want more from Heather Slade?
Keep reading for a short excerpt from
Brodie
the first book in
the Butler Ranch Series.
Brodie
She closed the car door and zipped her jacket. The blue sky and bright sun were misleading. This close to the ocean, the wind could be fierce, even on the sunniest days.
From where she stood in the gravel parking lot across the street, she saw a man walking toward her small town’s only supermarket. There was something familiar in the way he held himself. His worn barn jacket was taut across his shoulders, but hung loose over his narrow hips. Although his jeans were more metro than ranch, his boots were all cowboy, and so was his black, felt Stetson.
Peyton took a deep breath. It wasn’t the first time her mind played this particular trick on her. She looked left and right, once she got inside, but didn’t see the man who’d probably been a figment of her imagination anyway.
Growing boys needed milk and orange juice, so before she’d even left the first aisle, her cart was half full. She was reading over her shopping list, on her way to the produce section, when her eyes met a pair of hauntingly familiar deep, blue eyes—eyes of a man she thought she’d never see again. Her disappointment was palpable as she scanned his face. The eyes were familiar, and maybe even the way he held himself had her heart skipping a beat. But the man standing in front of her, whose eyes took in every inch of her in the same way her gaze traveled from his face to his hands, was not who she thought he was.
He raised and lowered his chin, “Hey.”
Peyton nearly closed her eyes. She knew the deep timbre of that voice intimately. “Sorry, you look so much like someone—” What could she say? Someone she used to know?
“Yes,” he murmured.
“Get that a lot?” She tried to laugh, but the pain she felt whenever she allowed herself to think about Kade Butler brought her closer to tears than laughter.
“No, I don’t.”
“I’m sorry, you don’t what?”
“Get that a lot.”
“Oh…uh…well.” Her hands gripped the shopping cart handle, but before she could move it forward, he grasped the wire basket.
“I’ve been looking for you.”
“Excuse me?”
“Name’s Brodie. Brodie Butler.”
Peyton closed her eyes just long enough that the tears she thought she held at bay flooded over her lids and down onto her cheeks.
“I’m sorry, Peyton. I didn’t mean for it to happen this way.”
“But you meant for it to happen?”
“As I said, I’ve been looking for you.”
—:—
It took a minute before Brodie recognized the woman standing in front of him. He’d only seen photos of her, and not very many.
“Find Peyton,” his mother had told him. “We need to give this to her.”
“He’s been gone over a year, Ma, and you haven’t heard a word from her since the funeral.”
“I don’t care. This belongs to her.”
The “this” his mother had referred to was a box of his oldest brother’s belongings that he’d asked their mother to make sure was given to Peyton if anything happened to him.
“I have something for you,” he explained. “From Kade.”
“No,” she whispered. “I’m sorry, but I can’t.” She left him and her grocery cart in the middle of the aisle, and walked out of the store.
Brodie followed her outside and watched as she crossed the street and climbed into a little black BMW. He sat at one of the tables in front of the market and waited to see if she’d drive away. He heard the engine start, but the car didn’t move. He leaned forward and rested his forearms on his knees, weighing whether to stay or leave.
—:—
It wasn’t as though she’d been hiding. She lived in a small house near Moonstone Beach, in Cambria. Right after Kade died, Peyton spent a lot of her time in
the guest house on her parents’ ranch. The boys still stayed there most weekends, when Stave, the tasting room she managed since she’d graduated from college, was open later.
There were few secrets in Green Valley, where many families had owned their ranches and vineyards for generations. If Kade’s family was looking for her, she was easy to find.
She’d heard stories about Brodie, but hadn’t met him until today. She wasn’t aware of his strong resemblance to his oldest brother. There were differences though. Brodie’s chiseled face, while similar to Kade’s, was thinner, more angular, with a dusting of scruffy facial hair. Peyton had never seen Kade without the dark, reddish-brown goatee he kept neatly trimmed.
She looked across the road, where Brodie waited for her. If he thought she would get out of the car and walk back across the street, he was wrong. Whatever he had of Kade’s, he could keep.
No matter where she went, she saw him. That’s why she’d thought her mind was playing tricks on her again today. So often, Peyton thought she saw Kade walking on the beach, or driving past Stave. She’d blink her eyes, and either he’d be gone, or she’d realize the person she thought was him, wasn’t. More memories? More things to remind her of her loss? No, thanks.
She’d come back to the market later, after she picked the boys up from school. Maybe she’d even let them pick out something for dinner they could heat up themselves, since cooking dinner at home was just one more thing that reminded her that the only man who had succeeded in convincing her to give love another try was gone.
—:—
Brodie watched as Peyton backed up the car and drove in the opposite direction, to the back exit of the parking lot. It would’ve been easier to go out the front, but then she’d be facing where he sat.
He knew where she was going, but he wouldn’t follow. It wouldn’t be fair, especially since he’d seen firsthand how close to the surface her pain sat. He went back inside and ordered a pastry and a cup of coffee from the bakery. Rather than sit and watch the cars go up and down the main drag of the village, he drove across the highway, parked alongside Moonstone Beach Road, and watched the waves crash along the shore.
Gunner (K19 Security Solutions Book 2) Page 19