Harlequin Romantic Suspense March 2016 Box Set

by Carla Cassidy

  “Lots of people live out here. The ones we’re going to see use this area to do some training.”

  Max made a sound of satisfaction. What was that about? She asked, “What kind of training?”

  “The kind you shouldn’t ask too many questions about.”

  “I expect that you and I are going to have to sign a big pile of federal nondisclosure agreements when we get back to civilization,” Max added.

  “No lie, dat,” Bastien responded. He cut the motor. “Okay, boys and girls. We’re here.”

  Here was the end of a long dock winding away in the darkness.

  “This looks like something out of a horror movie,” she commented as Max helped her up onto the dock overhung by huge old cypress boughs. The two men tied off the boat, and then Bastien led the way forward with one last warning. “Keep your hands away from your bodies and in plain sight until we’ve made contact and they’ve cleared us in.”

  “Where the heck are you taking us? Some sort of armed compound of crazies?” she asked.

  Max chuckled behind her. “I suspect that’s closer to the truth than you might guess.”

  “Sure ’nuff, sweet stuff. They all crazy out heah.”

  “Hey now.”

  Lissa jumped as a deep male voice came out of the trees somewhere ahead of her.

  “Speak for yourself, Catfish.” A man materialized out of the night wearing camo pants and a black T-shirt. He slung a big, scary-looking rifle-thingie over his shoulder as he moved toward them.

  “What brings you out here in our neck of the woods, LeBlanc?”

  “Hollywood!” Bastien exclaimed. The two men traded hugs and back thumps with one another.

  The newcomer, a muscular dark-haired man, startled her by holding a hand out to Max. “Glad to see you’re still in one piece, Kuznetsov. Your sister doesn’t think you’re reporting in often enough. She was about to send me out to check on you.”

  Max rolled his eyes. “I’ve been busy.”

  “Who’s your friend?”

  “This is Lissa Clearmont. Lissa, this is Ashe Konig, my future brother-in-law. Assuming he ever gets off his butt and makes an honest woman out of my sister.”

  Ashe laughed in protest. “Dude. We’ve been a little busy out here, too. Gimme a break. And Hank’s not complaining.”

  Max explained, “Hank is my sister. Her real name is a big, long Russian mouthful, and she usually just goes by her nickname.”

  Lissa got a burst of impressions of a skinny blonde girl, all knees and elbows, sticking her tongue out at Max as he teased her by calling her Hank. “You stuck her with that moniker, didn’t you?” she accused.

  Max swore under his breath. “I can’t hide a thing from you, can I?”

  “Sorry.”

  “I admit it. I was a rotten brother.”

  Another swarm of images leaped into her head of him arguing with Hank, insisting that she stay in college while he dropped out of school instead to care for their ailing mother. “You made her stay in school and sacrificed your education for hers.”

  Max muttered, “You can stop picking stuff out of my brain anytime now.”

  Right. He liked his secrets. “I’m sorry,” she apologized again. “I can’t help it. The images just come to me. Maybe if you weren’t touching me...”

  His arm tightened slightly around her. Willing to risk her seeing his innermost secrets, was he? Her heart beat a little more hopefully.

  “C’mon up to the house,” Ashe said. “Everyone should be up by now.”

  “It’s the middle of the night,” Lissa protested. “We don’t mean to impose—”

  Bastien cut her off, laughing. “Sure we do. I got a project for ya’ll.”

  “Does it involving shooting people and blowing stuff up?” Ashe asked hopefully.

  “Sure does,” Bastien replied jovially.

  “Awesome.”

  The dock turned into a boardwalk under a long alley of huge trees. She spied a sprawling home in front of them, pale and ghostly. It was a beautiful plantation-style home built on tall stilts. A graceful staircase led to a covered porch encircling the structure.

  Dormers in the roof announced that there was a second floor, which meant the place was larger than it looked. As they drew near, she saw that the structure was immaculately restored.

  “The old place is looking good,” Bastien commented.

  Ashe grinned over his shoulder at them. “Turns out it’s good exercise to restore antebellum homes. And we’ve got plenty of cheap labor around here.”

  Bastien and Max grinned at some private joke among the men.

  For her part, she frowned at an image of several women scraping paint in blistering sunshine. “What is this place?” she demanded. “Why are women doing such hard work?”

  Ashe’s eyebrows shot up. “Come in and I’ll introduce you to the ladies. You’ll understand why then.”

  She reached out to grasp the wood stair rail and reeled. She was vaguely aware of Max’s arm supporting her as she stared at pirates and slaves, smugglers and prostitutes. Prosperous times and poor ones, hurricanes, feuds and...a recent violent encounter.

  She muttered, lost in the thrall of a man and a woman fighting off several male intruders. “How long ago was the gun battle?”

  An arm guided her inside a big kitchen. The door closed and the vision faded, closed out of the house.

  She blinked and realized that Bastien and Ashe were staring at her, along with a half-dozen men and women seated at a big table. One of the women rushed forward, and Max released her to hug the woman tightly. That must be his sister. The unfortunately named Hank. Lissa saw the resemblance in their fair coloring, height and general perfection.

  She glanced around at the silent, fit women observing her alertly. No surprise, a rush of images burst into her head. She gasped aloud.

  “What?” Ashe asked sharply. He and everyone else in the room went onto full alert.

  Of course they did. “You’re all soldiers,” she stated in wonder. “Especially...oh, my. It’s about time they had women SEALs.”

  The atmosphere in the room went from pleasant to deadly in a nanosecond. “Who’s your friend, Max?” Ashe asked gently. Hostility dripped in his voice, and Lissa shuddered.

  “She’s psychic. I swear I didn’t say a word to her about any of you. She just knows things. There’s no keeping a secret around her.” He added that last wry observation with a touch of bitterness.

  Lissa squirmed as every eye in the room turned on her.

  “What brings you out here in the middle of the night?” Ashe asked Bastien.

  “The Russian mob is trying to kill Lissa and sent a hit squad after her. I was wondering how ya’ll would feel about running a little bait-and-kill op.”

  A bait and what?

  “How bad do they want to kill her?” one of the women asked.

  Bastien grinned. “They sent four men to her shop. Body armor and assault rifles. I’m thinking twice that number out here.”

  “Hold on,” Lissa interrupted. “There’s no need for a gunfight on my account.”

  “Yes. There is,” Max replied flatly. “These are not good men, Lissa. They’re violent criminals. Murderers. They smuggle drugs and weapons—hell, they ran a sex trafficking ring until Ashe and Hank broke it up last year. They don’t deserve your sympathy. They deserve to die.”

  She might have protested that no one deserved to die, but a wave of agreement flowed from the other people in the room. These were warriors, in the business of ridding the world of violent criminals. They were violent so other people did not have to be. Well, okay, then.

  “I’m the bait, aren’t I?” she accused no one in particular.

  Bastien shrugged.

  “There’s one t
hing I have to do before you can use me to kill anyone.”

  Max looked down at her in surprise. “What’s that?”

  “I have to find my aunt.”

  “The dead one?” Bastien blurted. Everyone jolted at that.

  “She’s close. I can feel her.”

  “How close?” Max asked. No one else seemed to know how to proceed with this strange conversation but him.

  “Within, say, twenty miles.”

  “Can you tell a direction?”

  She closed her eyes and focused on the flood of power from earlier. She pointed to what she thought was the northeast. “That way. In a building. A town of some kind.”

  “Lamarr City is the only town that way within twenty miles,” Bastien remarked.

  “Would somebody please clue me in here?” Ashe asked.

  Max quickly filled in the group on her aunt’s suspicious death and the disappearance of Callista’s body.

  Hank asked, “If you’re sure the Bratya killed her, why does finding her body matter?”

  Lissa shook her head. “I don’t know. But Callista wants to show me something.”

  Everyone but Max flinched at that. Apparently, he’d gotten used to her brand of weird. But these people looked at her as if she needed a white jacket and a nice man with a syringe of tranquilizers.

  “Everybody gear up,” Ashe ordered.

  Lissa looked around in surprise as the room emptied. “Where did they all go?”

  “You heard Ashe. To get their gear,” Max answered.

  “Why?” she asked blankly.

  “We’re leaving for Lamarr City.”

  “Now?”

  He grinned down at her. “Welcome to working with SEALs. They don’t mess around. They get stuff done.”

  “It’s the middle of the night,” she protested.

  “Exactly. Darkness puts them at an advantage over potential hostiles.”

  Everyone adjourned to a big room off the main hall, and a stream of night vision goggles, clips of ammunition, radios, microphones and who knew what else was passed around and donned by men and women alike. In short order, they were armed for World War Three. The group piled into a sleek cigarette boat parked in a boathouse next to the dock and roared off into the night before Lissa hardly knew what was happening.

  They clambered ashore a little while later and climbed into a pair of Land Rovers. As they headed north and east, Max asked her, “So how does this corpse-hunting thing work?”

  “We get close to where I’ve sensed a body, and then I’ll zero in on it.” The Land Rovers pulled into a small town, quiet and deserted at this time of night. She got out and closed her eyes, taking a deep breath.

  Nothing. She swore silently. They were all staring at her, expecting her to pull a rabbit out of her hat. Of all times for her gift to fail and make her look colossally stupid...

  She reached out blindly for Max’s hand. And no sooner had she touched him than a wave of power washed over her. Ahh, yes. There she was. Aunt Callista’s energy was weak but clear, off to Lissa’s right. And close. Very close.

  Lissa took off walking, her eyes still closed. Max steadied her when she stumbled, steering her around unseen obstacles as Lissa closed in on the energy source. She stopped, practically on top of the signal.

  A faint chuckle came from beside her, and she opened her eyes. They stood in front of a funeral home.

  “What better place to hide a body?” she murmured.

  They moved quietly around the back of the building, and one of the women went to work on the door lock. A click, a nod and everyone but Max and her raced inside.

  “Where’d they go?” she whispered.

  “Looking for the alarm to disarm it before it goes off,” Max breathed.

  A quiet female voice came from the darkness inside. “Clear.”

  Max ushered her in. “Any idea where in here to look for your aunt?”

  “That way.” She moved off down a hall to her left. No surprise, she stopped in front of a set of double doors that led to a morgue-like room. Four refrigerator-style doors lined one wall.

  Lissa didn’t hesitate. She went to the last one on the end and pointed at it. The SEALs must have finished clearing the building because most of them piled into the embalming room, minus two who were no doubt standing lookout.

  Max opened the refrigerator door and pulled out a stainless steel table with a body bag on it. She girded herself and nodded as he unzipped the bag to reveal her aunt’s remains. Lissa was grateful for the darkness, because it hid whatever shade of dead her aunt’s corpse might be. She bit back a sob at the sight of the familiar face and long white hair splaying around it.

  Were you murdered, Auntie Cal?

  No speeches were forthcoming, but a series of fuzzy visual images and impressions of feeling flooded through her. Anger. Fear. Outrage at realizing she’d been...poisoned, maybe? Snippets of an argument came to Lissa. Something about Callista telling the police of the dead drops in her store.

  Huh. Was that why her aunt had been killed? Had the mob thought she’d betrayed them?

  Lissa relayed her impressions and conclusions to the others, and Max inhaled sharply beside her. “I’m the reason she was killed. God, I’m so sorry, Lissa.”

  His surveillance setup across the street from the shop. The mob must have found out about it and assumed that Callista had betrayed them to the police. The Bratya had no idea it was one of their own doing the surveillance on the shop.

  She was too numb at the moment to know how to feel about that revelation.

  “Can she tell us any more about who killed her or how?” Max asked gently.

  Lissa closed her eyes, grimaced and reached out to lay her palm on her aunt’s ice-cold forehead. Her aunt’s spirit was faint but present. She preferred to be at the shop in New Orleans and not in this strange, cold place she didn’t know.

  Lissa sent out comforting vibes and silently coaxed the spirit to tell her who’d killed her. But that was clearly not what her aunt’s spirit was fretting over. Confused, Lissa trailed her fingers down her aunt’s cheek to her shoulder and then curled around behind the bones there.

  She looked up at Max. “Help me lift her.”

  Frowning, he turned the body on its side. Lissa pointed. “There. That.”

  Ashe shined a flashlight on something faintly visible on her aunt’s shoulder blade. “A tattoo,” he announced.

  Max bent down to examine the tiny drawing that was maybe an inch across. “A heart. With two sets of initials. C and L. And two Russian letters. A yu and a peh.”

  And just like that, Lissa felt a faint sigh of relief on her cheek. The spirit’s work was done. She could move on to her rest, now. The presence began to slip away.

  All of a sudden, Max dug in his back pants pocket and pulled out a piece of notebook paper. He stabbed at a name with his finger. “Yuri Petrov. That must have been her lover. Which leaves the other five men on this list as the possible spy/ringleader.”

  Lissa held out her hand. “May I see that?”

  Max passed her the paper. She glanced through the names, although she couldn’t read them. They were all written in Cyrillic. “Callista,” she murmured urgently. “I need one more thing from you before you go. Which one of these men is my father?”

  Deep resistance pulsed into her.

  “Please. I have to know,” she said forcefully. “For the man I love. You owe me.”

  If souls could swear under their nonbreath, Callista’s did then.

  “This one, Max,” Lissa declared, pointing at the one that glowed faintly on the paper.

  “Markus Petrov? Yuri’s brother?” Max slapped his palm against his forehead. “Of course. His brother! Callista meant it literally. Her lover called the rapist his brother.
I thought he meant it in the sense of being comrades. Brothers in arms.”

  “Are we supposed to know what you’re talking about?” Bastien asked cautiously.

  “Lissa and her aunt just gave us the identity of the ringleader of the Bratya. The Russian spy.”

  “A spy?” Ashe exclaimed.

  “Long story,” Max bit out. “I need to talk to Jennie Finch. Now that we know who to target, maybe she can drill down into Petrov’s life and find more evidence on him.”

  “Dude,” Bastien said regretfully. “We don’t have any evidence. We just have Lissa pointing at a name on a piece of paper.”

  Max opened his mouth to defend her—which was sweet of him—but she placed a restraining hand on his arm. “I’ve got this,” she said.

  “Did I or did I not find my aunt’s body?” she asked Bastien.

  “You did.”

  “And did I or did I not know your friends were SEALs without being told?”

  Bastien huffed.

  “I’m not asking you to believe in psychic powers. But I am asking you to allow for the possibility that, somehow, I know things from time to time.”

  One of the lookouts swept into the room. “Right now I’m asking you all to leave the building quickly by the back door. Police car just parked down the street. Local cop is making a foot patrol of the area.”

  “ETA?” Ashe asked.

  “Two minutes.”

  In well under half that time, the group had put Callista’s body back where they found it, exited the funeral home and run across the parking lot to hide in the shadows.

  Bastien whispered to Ashe, “If he checks the engines of the vehicles, they’ll still be warm.”

  “He’ll have to call it in. He’s not miked up, so he’ll have to go back to his squad car. We’ll egress then.”

  Ashe called it correctly. The cop felt the hoods of the cars, then moved off at a brisk pace toward his squad car. She and the others piled in the Land Rovers and went cross-country into the brush behind the funeral home parking lot until they hit another street. They were just driving docilely away from Lamarr City when a deputy sheriff’s car flew past them, light bar flashing, ignoring them.