Driving Force (Declan’s Defenders Book 4)

by Elle James

  Margaret appeared beside him. “I’m going with you to the hospital. I have a proposal we need to discuss. Are you going to be conscious enough to listen?”

  Gus closed his eyes for a moment and then nodded, reopening them. “I’m listening. As long as we get to the hospital at the same time as they bring Jane in, I’m all ears.” And as long as he didn’t pass out from loss of blood.

  Margaret climbed into the back of the ambulance after they loaded Gus. They shut the door and pulled out into DC traffic, sirens blaring.

  After the EMT situated Gus’s IV and hooked up a blood pressure cuff, he sat back and nodded to Margaret.

  Margaret leaned close to Gus’s ear and laid out her plan.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” the preacher said as he presided over the memorial service and the scattering of the cremated remains. With a gloved hand, he lifted a small amount of ashes and tossed it into the small hole in the ground where a tree would be planted.

  “Jane would have loved that we chose a red-leaf maple tree for her service,” Charlie said, wiping a tear from her eye. “She was always so tough on the outside, but I truly believe she was soft on the inside. She only wanted to belong somewhere, to find love.”

  “She’s in a much better place,” Declan assured Charlie. “Wouldn’t you agree, Gus?”

  With a gloved hand, Gus scooped ashes from the urn and dropped them into the hole in the ground. “Yes. I’ll miss the black-haired beauty. She taught me a lot about never giving up and always fighting for what you believe in.” He stepped back and brushed the ashes from his hands. “Jane Doe, Kate Sanders, rest in peace. You were a fighter and a beautiful soul.”

  Grace dropped ashes into the hole and murmured, “Rest in peace, Jane.”

  One by one, the other members of Declan’s Defenders all paid their respects to the departed by dropping dirt or ashes into the hole.

  “Need help planting her tree?” Declan asked.

  Gus stared at the slim sapling. “No. I’ve got this.”

  When the last person had gone on to Charlie’s place, Gus settled the maple tree into the hole and filled in dirt all around the roots. Then he patted down the dirt, pressing it in with his boot until the tree stood on its own, small, proud and strong. Like Jane.

  He sighed, turned and walked to the waiting limousine Charlie had offered for the occasion.

  Arnold, Charlie’s butler, stood by the door, his shoulders back, his face expressionless. “Ready?” he asked.

  Gus nodded. “Back to Charlie’s?”

  Arnold nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “Please, don’t call me sir. I work for a living.”

  “Yes, sir,” Arnold said. Was that a twinkle in the older man’s eye?

  He opened the back door of the limousine and waited while Gus slid in. Then he closed the door and took his seat behind the steering wheel.

  As Gus settled back against the seat a hand slid over his leg. “Was that as strange for you as it was for me?” a smoky voice said.

  He turned to the blonde beside him and gathered her into his embrace. “Whatever you do, don’t make me bury you twice. Agreed?”

  She stared up at him with her blue eyes so different than Jane Doe’s dark brown irises and smiled. “I’ll do my best to stay alive.”

  “So, Jasmine, what’s your plan?”

  “I’ve been talking with Grace’s friend, Emily, who teaches Russian at the local university and does interpretive work on the side. I think I might have a chance at working as an interpreter.”

  “Are you afraid it will expose you to the people who might recognize you?”

  “Not since I have the different hair. Charlie said she’d help me get a different face to go along with my new identity.”

  “What if I like your face the way it is?” He bent to kiss the tip of her nose.

  She tipped her face and captured his mouth with hers. “I guess it all depends on how soon Trinity is brought down,” she said.

  “We’re working on it. Now that Charlie knows what her husband was up to, she’s taking it as her challenge to finish what he started.”

  “Sounds like Declan’s Defenders will have their hands full with that task.” She cupped his cheeks between her palms. “You have to be careful, though. Trinity plays for keeps. And they won’t go down easily.”

  “I’ve gathered that. But as long as they’re still in operation, you’ll never be safe, even with your new hair, eye color and identity. The change is only buying time until we can eliminate the organization.” Gus frowned, his jaw tightening. “And we will.”

  “Though I’ll be working as an interpreter by day, you know I’ll help in every way I can. I want them stopped even more than John Halverson. Those kids they are taking deserve a better life. Not what Trinity has in store for them.”

  “Then let’s get this mission started, Jasmine Katherine Newman. Charlie, Declan and the others are waiting for us in the conference room. And when we’re done with the meeting, we have some catching up to do.”

  She wrapped her arms around his neck. “Are you sure your injuries are healed enough?”

  “I don’t care if they are or not. I haven’t held you close since your ‘death’ and your ride to the morgue. Now that the funeral’s over, I plan on catching up on lost time.”

  “Mmm, count me in on that plan. Beats dying any day. And I hope I never to visit another morgue until I am completely dead, not just faking it.” And she kissed him, long and hard.

  As his tongue swept past her teeth to caress hers, Gus vowed to take down Trinity if it was the last thing he did. This woman deserved to live a happy life, free of fear. Preferably with him. He still found it difficult to believe he’d fallen in love with an assassin. More so, that she’d fallen in love with him.

  * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from Cornered at Christmas by Barb Han.

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  Cornered at Christmas

  by Barb Han

  Chapter One

  The weather was warmer than usual for a late fall morning in North Texas, the heavy air loaded with the threat of a thunderstorm. Mitch Kent was gripping the handlebar of the double stroller so tightly as he stalked toward the medical plaza that his knuckles were turning white. Anger roared through him as reality sucker punched him. He’d already lost so much. A father twenty-three months ago. A wife less than that. The possibility of losing Rea, h
is infant daughter, gnawed away what was left of his gut.

  Granted, all signs pointed toward positive news this visit for his younger and smaller twin. Life had taught Mitch how fast it could reverse and how devastating it could be when it took a wrong turn. He felt like he had about as much control as a sailboat in a hurricane. And that made him all kinds of frustrated. Mitch didn’t go the helpless-victim route.

  His cell buzzed in his pocket, breaking the pressure building between his shoulders that was threatening to crack him in half. He fished it out and checked the screen. It was Amber, his sister and the youngest of six Kent siblings.

  “Wish I could be there with you, Mitch.” She skipped over hellos.

  “It’s fine,” he said probably a little too fast.

  “You’re not and you don’t have to be,” she countered, her voice strained. He appreciated the concern, just not the fuss.

  “We talked about it last night when you called. You’re needed at the ranch and I can handle this,” he reassured her. He hoped she didn’t pick up on the emptiness in those words.

  There was a long pause.

  “Are you sure you want to do this by yourself?” she finally asked. He didn’t want to do any of it alone but life had detoured, leaving him to roll with the turns and try not to get sucked into the current.

  “I haven’t had two minutes of privacy since the twins were born,” he said with a half laugh. That part was true enough and he tried to lighten the mood with humor. Anything to keep his thoughts from taking the headfirst dive that always left him wondering how he’d do any of this without Kimberly.

  “You know what I mean.” She was the last of his siblings to call before the twins’ one-year checkup. Each of his brothers—Will, Devin, Nate and Jordan—had done their best to lift Mitch’s mood. During the appointment, he’d learn if his younger twin, the little girl, was in the clear or headed for surgery. The thought of anyone cracking open her tiny body was a hot poker in his chest.

  “I know you’d be here if you could, Amber. The ranch needs you more than I do.” The Kent siblings had inherited their parents’ North Texas cattle ranch nearly two years ago, following their father’s death. Their mother had passed six months prior.

  The one-hour drive into Fort Worth had been smooth and the twins had slept most of the way. But the two were wide-awake now and taking in the scenery as he pushed their stroller onto the center of the medical plaza. A maze of buildings surrounded them and there was a memorial fountain that was catching the twins’ attention in the center of the complex. Mitch stopped in front of the three-story glass-walled structure attached to the hospital in the state-of-the-art building that contained the doctor his wife had handpicked for their babies.

  “She’s going to be okay, Mitch. You know that, right?” Amber said, and he could hear the concern in her voice even though she tried to mask it.

  “There’s every reason to hope based on the last couple of appointments,” he responded. The last eleven months without Kimberly had been hell. Mitch Kent missed his wife. He missed the way her hair smelled like freshly cut lilies when she would curl into the crook of his arm every night in bed. He missed the feel of her warm body pressed to his, long into the night. The easy way they had with each other, talking until the sun came up. And he missed coming home to her smile every night after a long day of working his family’s cattle ranch. Losing her had damn near shattered him.

  First his mother, followed by his father. Then his wife. He’d lost so much.

  Mitch realized he was still tightly gripping the stroller with his left hand. He flexed and released his fingers to get the blood flowing again.

  “Those babies couldn’t have asked for a better father.” With five rough-and-tumble brothers, Amber was the emotional voice of the Kent brood.

  “They need their mother.” There were more times than Mitch could count that he’d wished his wife was still alive. They might have dated only a few months before tying the knot, but he’d fallen hard. When a man met the woman he was supposed to spend the rest of his life with, he knew it. Hers had been cut way too short. “I’m glad they have you.”

  “Good. Because I’m not going anywhere. Call me Super Aunt.” He could tell she was getting emotional based on the change in her tone and the lame attempt at humor.

  “Sounds like a plan.” He went with it.

  “And don’t forget Amy.” She was referring to their cousin. Amber and Amy were close in age, and both were mostly sweet with wild streaks that got them in trouble from time to time. Both had hearts of gold, and he couldn’t have asked for better women to be in his twins’ lives.

  “Call or text the minute you get word.” Amber made him promise.

  “I will,” he said before ending the call.

  Mitch would learn today if his daughter, born two minutes after his son and almost two pounds lighter, was in the clear. In the best-case scenario, the small hole in the wall that separated the two lower chambers of Rea’s heart was still too small to cause any serious damage, like overworking her heart and lungs or sending blood flowing in the wrong direction. Mitch blocked out another possibility. The one that involved a lot of medical jargon, some kind of fabric patch and cracking open the center of his baby girl’s chest.

  The appointment last month had gone off without a hitch. The doctor had said he was encouraged by what he heard when he listened to her chest. All signs were pointing toward good news. But doing any of this without his Kimberly seemed wrong. Then again everything that had happened in the past eleven months since her devastating car crash had been all wrong.

  An all-consuming fist of guilt took another punch at him for not stopping her from walking out the door that day with her car keys in hand. For the sake of his children, he pushed the unproductive emotion aside. Reliving hell didn’t ease the burns.

  His courtship with Kimberly might’ve been a whirlwind but his feelings for his wife were anything but a passing storm. He’d known her barely two months before popping the question, which had surprised him even more than his siblings. They’d gone along with the wedding without protest after meeting Kimberly and seeing the two of them together. And they’d stood by his side on that cold rainy day when he’d first heard about the crash.

  Mitch rubbed the scruff on his chin and blinked his blurry eyes, forcing back the barrage of thoughts racing through him. Letting his mind run wild wouldn’t bring his wife back.

  Exhaustion had thrown him off today. He gave himself a mental slap to shake off the bad mood.

  He needed more caffeine.

  Sleep and twins went together about as well as hot sauce and ice cream, and Mitch was beginning to feel the effects of being up for most of the night with the kiddos. Both were teething, which pretty much meant drippy chins.

  The sounds of his daughter’s babbling floated on top of the heavy fall air. He’d insisted on naming their little girl after her mother, but Kimberly had argued against it. They’d finally agreed on Andrea if she could go by Rea instead—Aaron and Andrea. Of course, he’d take back every disagreement if he could get back that last day with her and tell her to stay home instead of walking her out the door, handing her the car keys and telling her how much she needed a break.

  Rea was growing into a talker. Mitch had no idea what the little tyke was saying, but that didn’t stop his daughter from prattling on and on. Both he and Kimberly were quiet people, so he wasn’t sure how his daughter had gotten the trait. Aaron was the silent one. He’d pick something up and examine it rather than chuck it across the room. Mitch had a babbler and a thinker.

  Mitch thought about the labels he’d picked up in the past two years. Ranch owner. Husband. Father. Widower.

  The worst part about being the latter—aside from the sobering fact that he’d lost the only woman he could ever love—was the cursed feeling that Kimberly was somehow still alive.

  Granted
, her body was never found. But Mitch’s other cousin, Sheriff Zachary McWilliams, had assured him that there was no way she’d survived the accident. The car, her car, had been pulled out of the ravine with barely half a windshield. Based on estimates, she’d shot out of the driver’s side like a cannon and ejected some twenty-five feet across the water before sinking. The official search had lasted six days. Flash floods and more severe storms had complicated the effort, and her body had most likely been swept away. Extra divers had volunteered to work on their days off once word had gotten around that Mitch Kent’s wife had been involved in a terrible accident. But getting a late start because of worsening conditions had meant recovering a body was less likely.

  He’d requested privacy from the media, which was something he was certain his wife would’ve wanted. Zach had also assured him that it would minimize the number of crackpots coming out of the woodwork, trying to get a piece of the Kent fortune. Mostly he’d done it for his wife. She’d insisted on staying out of the spotlight. The family attorney, Harley Durant, had kept the entire story limited to a blurb on the last page of the Fort Worth Star Telegram. Harley knew how to move mountains. He also knew how to keep a secret, and he had enough connections to back it up.

  Since losing Dad and inheriting the cattle ranch with his five siblings two years ago, Mitch had been getting a good feel for running the place, and that was in large part due to Harley. So far Mitch was the only one living on the land full-time, but construction was planned or in process for the others to join him on the property with homes of their own.

  It had been him and his wife living on the ranch up until now. Mitch still half expected her to walk through the front door.

  He’d been told by a well-meaning aunt that he couldn’t expect closure because her body had never been found. The same person had encouraged him to join a support group and find a way to move on. Mitch didn’t especially believe in that mumbo jumbo. It was most likely the fact that Rea’s eyes and thick black hair made her look more like her mother every day. Both twins reminded him of Kimberly. And maybe that was the reason he saw her everywhere.