by Hahn, Joni
Agent T3: d’Artagnan
Copyright December 2013, Joni Hahn
Cover by: Najla Qamber Designs
Formatted by: Author’s HQ
Kindle Edition
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be interpreted as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or deceased, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
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Dedication
To my Mom, for believing in me when I didn’t believe in myself, for loving me when I didn’t love myself, and for encouraging me when I had no courage left.
You are the best mother a daughter could ever ask for.
I love you.
Prologue
“We need to get her into radiology for a CT scan.”
She hovered on her back, a brisk, cool breeze washing over her face and arms. Billowy, white clouds floated past her at a leisurely pace, the scent of antiseptic stinging her nose. She fluctuated between severe pain and peace, wincing when the former bombarded her with rugged persistence. Impatience and fear held her nerve endings captive, though why, she didn’t know.
A woman’s voice sounded near her ear. “We’re wait-“
“Doctor Brentwood...”
Another woman’s voice intruded, the swish of her clothing loud in the sudden silence. Her voice held a much higher pitch than the other, marked with a hint of alarm.
“According to the national database, this woman’s name is Jocelyn Chalmers. She was born in nineteen twenty.”
A faint gasp sounded in the room.
Was she Jocelyn Chalmers? Why couldn’t she remember?
Silence ensued.
“Obviously, that can’t be right,” the doctor said, his tone flustered. “Look at her. She’s got to be in her mid-twenties.”
Was she that age? Why didn’t she know?
Agitation shoved its way into the divide of her body, taking over peace altogether.
“Check again.” The man’s request sounded more like an order.
“I confirmed the information three times because I didn’t believe it myself. I even had Zach confirm for me.”
Clothing rustled above her head.
“What does that mean?” the other woman said.
The doctor’s warm breath washed over her face. “I don’t know...”
She heard him step away, his footsteps echoing in the distance. “Take her fingerprints again, just to be sure, then get her over to radiology.”
“Yes, doctor.”
“Regardless of who she is, she needs our care. While you do that, I’m going to make a call.”
Chapter 1
Don’t kid yourself into thinking you’re some kind of good guy. You’ll never be good enough for the likes of D.I.R.E.
d’Artagnan Naylor stormed down the D.I.R.E. Agency corridor toward Mitchell Jacobs’ office. His father’s words reverberated in his head like a broken PA system. Dar wasn’t delusional enough to think he’d ever be a part of The D.I.R.E. Agency. He didn’t have the morals or the credentials to make the elite squad of agents and super agents, and he was pretty sure his status as a prisoner in their Nevada compound would nix the deal.
Robert Naylor had always done his damndest to make Dar and his twin sister, Cassandra, feel incompetent and unimportant. His father used words like he used his PPX handgun or his nicotine poison. They were weapons meant to inflict severe pain in the victim, until they died a slow death.
Dar’s logical mind told him to ignore Robert’s taunts. He had trained under the former Navy SEAL since he was old enough to walk, so he knew he was good.
He wouldn’t have survived his father, otherwise.
Don’t kid yourself, Naylor. You know the words hold a kernel of truth.
He did. There weren’t many good guys that shot their own father.
Dar knocked on the office door. Jacobs headed up D.I.R.E., an elite mercenary agency that had been an enemy of his family’s criminal organization for years. Naylor Interests was now history, thanks to D.I.R.E. and their super-powered agents. Robert temporarily resided in the security wing of the D.I.R.E. compound with his long-lost girlfriend, slash, psycho biatch Kate Monroe.
After no answer, Dar shoved open the door. His half-brother and Mitchell’s son, Tristan, stood at a table touchscreen computer. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Giving Tristan a cocked brow, Dar shut the door behind him. “I have a legitimate reason – a nine o’clock meeting. I think the more pertinent question is, why are you here?”
With a backward nod, Tristan motioned him toward the table.
Coming up beside his brother, Dar stared down at two windows.
Tristan pointed at the screen on the left. “This is video footage from Aidan’s time travel op. Take a look at the woman in the foreground.”
A blonde, middle-aged woman sat at a desk, three-quarters of her face in view.
“Yeah. So?”
He pulled up a still photo. “This is from my personal file.” Glancing at Dar, he said, “This is our mother, Angela Davis.”
Dar stared at the photo, then back at the video. His heart pounded against his ribs.
“Does that look like the same woman to you, Naylor?”
His mind whirled. She didn’t look like the same woman. She was the same woman.
His mother, who he thought had committed suicide, actually lived in nineteen forty-four.
“Looks like the same woman to me.”
With a gritty, succinct curse, Tristan turned away, hands on hips. “Freaking Mitchell. He’s known all along. He lied about her suicide.” He whipped around. “You’re father lied, too.”
Dar shrugged a shoulder. “Maybe, but not likely. If my father knew time travel existed, he’d be all over it. There’s no way he would’ve kept it secret.”
“What do you think you’re doing?”
An unshaven Mitchell Jacobs stood with his hand on the doorknob. His blood-shot gaze took in the table, Tristan’s scowl, and Dar’s lets-see-you-get-out-of-this-one look. He shut the door behind him and approached the table.
“No, the question is, what the hell did you do? You sent our mother to the past?” Tristan said.
Mitchell slumped his shoulders as he trailed a finger over Angela’s cheek. “It was the only way I could keep her alive.”
Dar shared a glance with Tristan before covering her face with his hand. “Was she sick?”
Mitchell whipped around to face him. The man he’d seen before today didn’t stare at him now. This man suffered. Sadness and self-admonishment shone in the deep lines of his scraggly face.
Last night, Tristan and Aidan, his sister’s significant other, had found Mitchell drunk on the roof. He looked like he’d spent the night up there.
“Sick? You could say that, Dar.”
The belligerence they’d received last time they asked for information was nowhere to be found. R
esignation had replaced it with a heavy sense of depression.
Mitchell said, “Where’s your twin, Naylor?”
Tristan shook his head. “I’m not pulling Cassandra in here. She and Aidan need some time alone.”
Dar agreed. With the re-appearance of his sister’s ex, Riordan St. James, came the in-your-face announcement that Robert Naylor wasn’t going to take his children’s desertion lightly. Everyone knew his father was responsible for St. James’ disappearance three years ago, and his arrival on D.I.R.E.’s doorstep yesterday. He’d only called him up from that Mongolian prison because he’d hoped to put distance between Cass and Aidan.
In Dar’s opinion, nothing could put a wedge between those two, lovesick fools. They were both obsessed. With Monroe still recovering from a gunshot wound received on his time travel mission, his sister was the best medicine for him.
“This had better be it, Mitchell,” Dar said. “Any and all secrets you have about our mother, my father, the location of the freaking Holy Grail, had better spill out of your mouth now. This shit is getting old.”
“That’s for damned sure.” Tristan folded his arms over his chest.
Taking a sip of coffee, Mitchell set down his cup on the table by Angela’s head. He cleared his throat.
“After I made C.O., I was gone all the time.”
Tristan nodded. “I remember.”
“As time went on, Angela resented me more and more. I tried to get home when I could, but something always came up, whether I shipped out with the team or had meetings to attend. Pretty soon, she wouldn’t speak to me at all.”
He lowered his chin to his chest. “One day, I walked in the door after a two-week op and found her sitting at the dining room table, staring out at the backyard. She was four-months pregnant.”
Mitchell’s fists clenched on top of the table. “I knew the baby couldn’t be mine. Inside, I wanted to find the sonovabitch and gut him. On the outside, I said nothing because I didn’t want to lose her. I’d take her any way I could get her.”
Dar bugged out his eyes. Oh hell no. He never would’ve allowed her to stay. He would’ve wanted her out yesterday.
“When I didn’t say anything, she screamed at me. ‘Why didn’t I react? Why didn’t I love her anymore?’” He gave a bitter laugh. “The hell of it was, I did.”
Taking a deep breath, he let it out. “The next day, I got a call from the base daycare. Angela hadn’t picked up Tristan.” He glanced at Dar’s brother. “She’d moved out without a word.”
Tristan glared at him. “Did you go after her? Try to reconcile things?”
“At first, I didn’t know where she’d gone. Bobby and I were estranged by that point, so I never considered him. Then, he called to tell me she’d moved in with him and they were expecting twins.” His pained gaze shot to Dar.
He looked away. His father was a damned asshole. Robert Naylor never had been able to take victory at face value. He’d always had to milk it for all it was worth.
A trace of anger laced Mitchell’s words. “When I heard she’d had trouble with the delivery, I went to see her.”
Tristan dropped his arms. “What?”
This guy had been whipped harder than Jacobs and Monroe put together.
Dar said, “You can’t be serious?”
Mitchell gave a shake of his head. “I did. I knew if something happened and I didn’t see her one last time, I’d regret it the rest of my life.”
Damn, the man possessed a masochistic side.
“When I walked in the door, she took one look at me and started crying. She kept telling me she was sorry, that she hated herself for what she’d done to us.”
Dar frowned at the compassion that sneaked into his thoughts. He would not feel sorry for her. No way.
“What did you do?”
Mitchell picked at the paper band around his coffee cup. “I kissed her and told her we’d work it out.”
Disbelief jolted him still. “You’ve got to be freaking kidding me?”
“I loved her, Naylor.”
Yeah, but that sounded like freakish obsession. How could he want to reconcile with a woman when she lay in a hospital bed after giving birth to another man’s children? And not just any man, but the man that hated his guts and slept with her as payback?
Damn, Mitchell had more balls than Titleist.
“Bobby walked in with the babies shortly thereafter. It was all too much for her. She started crying hysterically so I left.”
Tristan’s voice went soft. “How did she end up in the past?”
Mitchell blew out a breath before his phone vibrated at his hip. Pulling it from the holster, he stared at the screen.
“I’ll be right back.” He walked out into the hallway without a backward glance.
Dar paced in front of the table. “I’m not feeling sorry for her, Jacobs.”
Tristan sat on the edge of Mitchell’s desk. “Nope. It takes two to tango. Angela and Robert were both at fault.”
Dar said, “I mean, hell, I’ve done my share of two-timing clients, but I knew I could always depend on my fa-”
He caught himself mid-sentence. He couldn’t depend on his family. His father had proven that.
However, Cass would always be there for him - as long as he lived a straight life. She’d committed herself to Aidan Monroe now, and Monroe was a good guy. Dar could never ask her to go against that or he’d lose her, too.
“You can depend on us, Naylor.” Tristan’s voice intruded in his thoughts. “Rachel and I. There isn’t much to believe in out there but when I found her, I found hope. I found a reason to do what I do.” He released a breath. “You’re our brother, just like Aidan and Cass. We’re a family. And, I’ll be damned if I’ll let our history destroy what we’ve found. I’m tired of the backstabbing bullshit and I refuse to live that way.”
There was no doubt in his mind he could depend on Jacobs and Rachel - he just had to walk the line. He wanted to live it, but he also knew some things were just part of his DNA.
Hell, he hadn’t been a successful criminal for no reason.
He carried the same genes as his father, for cripes sake. How could he just dismiss the part of himself that had sustained his lifestyle for the last twenty-six years?
Mitchell walked back in the room. “That was Dr. Brentwood from Creekmore General. Looks like we found our shooter from last night.”
The time machine incident in Creekmore had almost cost Dar his sister, Cass. However, the two World War II spies that had time traveled to the present to take back Aidan, hadn’t counted on his sister’s devotion to Monroe, or Tristan and Rachel’s determination to keep their family intact. They also hadn’t counted on an undisclosed shooter that had distracted them enough to give Cass and Rachel a chance to get away.
Tristan straightened from the desk. “Who is it?”
“Jocelyn Chalmers. She was found on the side of the road, unconscious. We need to get down there right away.”
Chapter 2
“I thought I’d seen the last of this damned hospital.”
Dar walked beside Tristan in the third floor corridor of Creekmore General. Mitchell had stopped at the nurse’s station to ask of Brentwood’s whereabouts while they went to find Jocelyn Chalmers.
“If Rachel and I have kids down the road, we’ll expect you to be here for the deliveries. Get used to the place.”
“Kids? You mean we’ll have mini-teleporters running around? Babysitting could get interesting if the kids turn invisible at will.”
Laughing, they came up on Jocelyn’s room. Kids. Damn. He couldn’t imagine having children. He’d never met a woman-
Someone blindsided him in the doorway, knocking him into Tristan.
“Help me, please. They’re coming.”
A tiny, petite woman shook him. Her dark, nearly black eyes were wide with fright, her hands shaking where they clutched his biceps. Dark bruises covered the left side of her face and circled her eye, with a mishmash of scrat
ches marring her forehead and nose. She had a split upper lip and a chin scraped and dotted with blood.
The injuries disgusted Dar, anger pumping through his veins like a hydrant. Yet, even disfigured, her beauty stunned him. The woman was freaking hot.
Shoving her behind him, he looked inside the room.
Empty.
Holding his arm in a vice grip, she peeked around him, her breath coming in short spurts. “Are they here?”
Looking over his shoulder, he met her fearful gaze. “No, you’re safe.”
She shook her head vigorously. “No. I’m not. They’re coming.”
“Who? Who’s after you?”
Stilling, her eyes searched his face with frantic movements – before she passed out.
“Shit.”
Catching her, Dar lifted her into his arms. The woman weighed no more than a pillow. He carried her to the hospital bed.
“Jocelyn Chalmers, I assume?”
Tristan followed him inside. “Yes. Damn, that car really did some damage.” He went to the opposite side of the bed.
Dar pulled up the covers to her chin. “She’s terrified of someone, isn’t she?”
“Hell Naylor, we saw them hold a gun to her head that night in the electronics store. When Monroe time traveled to the past, she asked him to bring her back.”
“She rode in that time machine with those bastards?”
Tristan nodded with a cocked brow. “Yeah. Ballsy, huh?”
A fierce, protective streak filled Dar. He wanted Tristan to teleport him back to D.I.R.E. so he could help Mitchell interrogate the spy they’d captured last night. He’d show the guy some freaking fear.
Mitchell strode into the room and motioned for them to step away from the bed.
He lowered his voice. “Brentwood said she has hysterical amnesia. She has no memories before the hospital. She doesn’t even know her own name.”
“Her subconscious remembers,” Dar said. “A minute ago, she tore out of the room, terrified.”
Mitchell stared at her still form. “Other than her concussion, she’s got a boatload of cuts and bruises, and a sprained elbow. She’s a tough cookie.”