Beneath the Surface

by Meredith Fletcher

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Epilogue

  Athena Force

  Beneath the Surface

  Years ago, Shannon Connor's family sent her off to the prestigious Athena Academy. The school's ultimate bad girl, Shannon finally had to pay the price for her actions. Branded as a traitor, Shannon's very name inspires contempt. Academy history remembers her as the only girl to ever be expelled from the Athena Academy. Fifteen years ago, Shannon swore revenge on all those responsible. Now Shannon's past has come back in ways no one ever expected possible.

  A top notch reporter in Washington, D.C., Shannon's lead Vincent Drago lures her to a seedy bar. Over and over again, Shannon has broken stories about politicians and other leaders. Every time, someone has resigned or otherwise lost their position. Athena graduate Allison Gracelyn can't help but notice that Shannon's key stories all have some connection to the Athena Academy. With the finest computer networks at her disposal, Allison plans to hunt down the answers behind Shannon's stories. Who is the mysterious source trying to bring down the Athena Academy? Has Shannon allied herself with the Academy's enemies and upped her bad girl status?

  Shannon's new story places her at more risk than she has ever known before. Shannon's chase for the truth places her in the line of sight of mysterious figures who will stop at nothing and a sexy, rugged government agent now on her trail. With her life and heart at risk, will Shannon finally get her revenge on Allison? Will she join the fight to protect the Academy against this new evil or has she found a story that must be told whatever the consequences?

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-1706-9

  Copyright © 2008 by Harlequin Books S.A.

  From: Delphi@oracle.org

  To: C_Evans@athena.edu

  Re: news reporter, Shannon Connor

  Christine,

  You know we’ve had our troubles with Shannon Connor. From the moment she was expelled from Athena Academy she’s been nothing but a thorn in the sides of the students and grads of our beloved school. I’ve been following her closely for years, and this time she’s gone too far.

  Turns out, the news reports that made her a superstar were based on leads she received from an anonymous source. That source, I’ve discovered, was Arachne. Could Shannon have been so devious as to partner with our enemy? I’m not sure, but I intend to find out.

  Arachne’s death two months ago stopped the flow of information, but it seems it didn’t stop her evil. She has at least one protégé who has reestablished contact with Shannon. I have a man shadowing our wily reporter. Whether Shannon knows it or not, she’s going to help us finish this thing, once and for all.

  D.

  Dear Reader,

  Every family has its black sheep and outlaws—even those wonderful women of Athena Academy. It’s my pleasure to tell Shannon Connor’s story, and to finally get all the details straight about everything that happened to her and how she came to attempt framing Josie all those years ago!

  As you’ve seen throughout this series, Shannon is nobody’s fool and isn’t a pushover. She’s been tracking Allison and the Athena women in the field, working the kidnappings and trying to find Marion Gracelyn’s archenemy, Arachne. She’s closing in on the truth, and this book deals with the price Shannon is prepared to pay to find out what’s really going on. Even though she’s not usually on Athena’s side, Shannon has remained powerful and unwavering in the face of danger—just like all the Athena women she went to school with. Shannon hasn’t strayed far from her roots, though she has at times used her powers for not-good!

  In Beneath the Surface, Shannon meets hunky Rafe Santorini, a former CIA agent and friend to Allison Gracelyn, who’s recovering from a year’s incarceration behind enemy lines in North Korea. After being betrayed, Rafe isn’t ready to give his heart away—but there’s nothing as attractive as an Athena woman who has her eyes on the prize! He’s never going to know what hit him.

  Enjoy,

  Meredith Fletcher

  This book is dedicated to Alice Clary and Katie McNeil, who have reached for and captured dreams of their own.

  And to Natashya Wilson and Stacy Boyd, who made it all happen.

  Prologue

  Athena Academy

  Outside Glendale/Phoenix, Arizona

  Fifteen years ago

  “S hannon, you need to get up.”

  “Inaminute,” Shannon mumbled automatically. There was something disturbing about the voice. It had a mom quality to it, but it definitely wasn’t her mom. Now isn’t that interesting.

  Not that she was getting up. Nope, that wasn’t going to happen. This was Saturday. At least she was pretty sure it was Saturday. She always slept late on Saturdays unless the academy had a field day or exercise scheduled.

  “Shannon.”

  Instead of responding, Shannon curled up more tightly into her bed. She reached up and pulled her blanket over her head. The light was on in her room. That bothered her even more than the voice.

  Who would turn on the light? Or had she left it on? She wasn’t sure. She’d been too excited after her “special mission” last night to go to sleep immediately. Instead she’d stayed on the Internet, shopping for new clothes and a new way to do her hair. Her hair she could deal with, but new clothes were going to be impossible until—

  Someone yanked the blanket off Shannon. And that was the last straw. Back home, when she’d been living with her older sister and younger brother, people had learned to give her space.

  Usually finding space at home wasn’t a problem because she was largely ignored. She wasn’t as helpful around the house or as precious—whatever that meant, though Shannon had come to believe it meant passive—as her older sister and she wasn’t Daddy’s only son. They’d gotten all the attention, and Shannon had gotten all the space she’d cared for. In fact, sending her to the Athena Academy after she qualified had seemed an easy way for her parents to get her out from underfoot.

  Thoroughly irritated now, Shannon cracked open her eyes. She glanced at the room’s only window above her computer desk and saw that it was still dark outside. She might be awake in the middle of the night, but she didn’t get up then.

  “Hey,” she protested. “What gives? This isn’t one of those stupid fire drills, is it?”

  “No. It’s not a fire drill.” The voice was losing some of its patient quality. The momness was coming through even stronger.

  If Shannon had still been at home, the yelling would have started by now, and her mother would be telling her father how impossible Shannon was to deal with. And she would have been blamed by everyone in the family for whatever went wrong for the rest of the day.

  “Get up, Shannon. We need to talk.”

  That voice—the one so carefully measured it sounded like a military cadence—finally woke Shannon. That voice said she was in trouble.

  Shannon hated being in trouble. Well, mostly she hated being in trouble. Sometimes trouble me
ant that she was getting the only attention she was going to get.

  She twisted, shaded her eyes against the light and looked up at Christine Evans, the principal of Athena Academy. Principal Evans was almost fifty years old—at least that’s what the rumors around the school claimed—and an ex-Army officer.

  She’d lost her left eye in some kind of accident—everyone in school insisted it had happened in a military engagement and Principal Evans had killed a whole platoon of bad guys—and been appointed as principal of the academy by Senator Marion Gracelyn, the founding mother behind the special finishing school for girls. The principal and the senator had been friends for a long time.

  Principal Evans was stocky from a lifetime of military work and a dedication to staying in shape rather than staying thin. Her short-cut gray hair offered more testimony to the fact that she didn’t try to hide things.

  Principal Evans wasn’t hiding anything now. She was irritated. Big-time.

  Okay. Chill. Buy some time. Shannon levered her legs over the side of the bed to show that she was willing to comply with the request but was too tired to do so immediately. She yawned. She stretched. She rubbed her eyes.

  Then she noticed that Tory Patton was standing in the back of the room, near the door. Tory was naturally beautiful. She’d never had to work at it. Gifted with black hair, an olive complexion and green eyes, she turned the heads of boys everywhere she went. And she didn’t even seem to care. It was enough to make Shannon gag.

  Great. Tory Patton, one of my rivals. In my room. And I have probably the worst case of bed-head since bed-head was invented.

  “What’s she doing here?” Shannon demanded.

  Principal Evans ignored the question. “Get dressed,” she ordered. “You’ve got five minutes. Otherwise you’re going in your robe.”

  “My robe?”

  “Five minutes,” Principal Evans repeated.

  “Going where?”

  “Start dressing or we can go now.”

  Witch, Shannon thought. But that was more a knee-jerk reflex to being awakened in the middle of the night. Normally Shannon got along with Principal Evans all right. Except for a few incidents involving hazing students new to the academy.

  She bolted up from bed and dived at her chest of drawers. She wasn’t going to be caught walking around the academy halls in a robe. As usual, she’d worn only a football jersey to bed. She’d told everyone her boyfriend had given her the jersey, but she’d actually stolen it from her little brother.

  Tory wore boys’ pajama pants, an academy T-shirt and was barefooted. Somehow on her it looked like an ensemble and a statement. Even underdressed, Tory still looked beautiful.

  It’s just not fair, Shannon thought again. Tory hardly had to do anything to look great in the television broadcasting class they were taking together. Shannon, while she was beautiful, still had to work to make it happen.

  Arms filled with clothing, Shannon sprinted for the bathroom. Her roommate slept through the whole thing.

  Minutes later, dressed in capris, good shoes and a crop top, Shannon walked at Principal Evans’s side. Shannon had her arms crossed to show her displeasure but also because it was cold this time of year up in the White Tank Mountains, where the school was located.

  Years ago the campus had been a mental-health and rehabilitation facility for movie stars who’d fallen off the wagon or gotten involved in drugs. Wealthy families had stashed their black sheep there.

  The girls at the academy even told stories about serial killers and murderers that had been held in the older sections of the school. That made for some exciting walks late at night. Especially for the younger girls who were brought there for the first time. Shannon had enjoyed hazing the newbies with the stories of murderers loose on the grounds.

  Many of the first-timers came there at age ten or eleven. The academy recognized potential prospects and sent letters early. The school was so prestigious that hardly anyone ever turned them down. The fact that the tuition was waived made the academy even more enticing.

  On Friday and Saturday nights, after the fall semester started, the newbies usually got the full treatment from some of the other girls. Frightened squeals echoed throughout those older sections. Shannon had particularly enjoyed those times. She loved role-play and she was one of the best because she could always tell what would scare a new girl the most. It was almost as though she had a psychic ability to get inside an audience’s head.

  Principal Evans and her staff turned out to be real buzz-kills. They penalized everyone involved in hazing of that nature. Shannon didn’t mind. The trade-off—a few days of detention for delicious moments of seeing a newbie totally wigging out—was worth it. The event was all theater, getting the complete, rapt attention of her victims, then being in the eye of the storm that swept out of administration.

  “You still haven’t told me what’s going on,” Shannon accused.

  “You’ll know soon enough,” Principal Evans said.

  Okay, Shannon thought as they crossed the grounds to the school’s administration building, so you’ve got me beat when it comes to scary-quiet attitude. That’s fine. I’ll let you have that one. There were other ways to deal with adults.

  Shannon called tears to her eyes. She could cry on cue. It was one of her best skills, and that little trick had earned her a lot of attention at home until her parents had either figured it out or just stopped caring. She still wasn’t sure which it had been.

  She swallowed hard, made her voice tremulous and looked at Principal Evans. “It’s my parents, isn’t it? Something’s happened to my parents?”

  Shannon was so good that she almost scared herself. Even though she was convinced that her parents didn’t much care for her, she still loved them. She didn’t want anything to happen to them.

  Principal Evans was quiet longer than she would have normally been. Shannon wondered if she’d played the tear card once too often. But Principal Evans went for it anyway.

  “No,” the woman said. “Nothing’s happened to your parents. As far as I know, they’re both fine.”

  Shannon almost grinned in triumph. Not only had she created some sympathy in Principal Evans, but she’d also learned that her parents hadn’t been called. Whatever trouble she was in—and she honestly couldn’t think of what that trouble might be—it couldn’t be that bad.

  However, the trouble was bad. It had to be bad if Marion Gracelyn was there.

  The senator had been waiting in Principal Evans’s office. Marion Gracelyn was often at the school, but she’d never been there in the middle of the night, not that Shannon knew.

  Marion Gracelyn was a beautiful woman. Her brown hair was shoulder-length and carefully coiffed, and her business suit was immaculate. Her brown eyes were intense, much more scary, actually, than Principal Evans’s. Whatever was going on, the senator was taking it way too personally.

  In that moment Shannon was pretty sure what the trouble was going to be about. Somehow Principal Evans had found out what Shannon was doing to Josie Lockworth.

  Without a word, Principal Evans waved Shannon and Tory into chairs in front of the desk. Then she sat in the big chair on the other side and tapped her computer keyboard.

  Senator Marion Gracelyn remained standing.

  Seated there in Principal Evans’s way-too-neat office and surrounded by proof that the woman had no life outside of what happened at the school, Shannon knew she was in more trouble than she’d ever been in. For the first time in a long time, she was scared.

  The three of them—Shannon, Principal Evans, and Tory—watched the computer monitor on the desk. On-screen, Shannon broke into Josie Lockworth’s gym locker. Lock-picking, not usually found on a high school curricula, was only one of the specialized skills taught at the academy. Shannon had turned out to be quite good at it.

  The personal DVD player was plainly visible in Shannon’s hand as she shoved it into Josie’s locker. Then Shannon closed the locker and hurried off.

&nbs
p; “As you know, Josie has been accused of stealing things around campus,” Principal Evans said in her no-nonsense voice.

  Shannon did know that. Everything Josie had been accused of stealing, Shannon had actually stolen and put in Josie’s locker or room. Those things had been found during subsequent investigations.

  Josie Lockworth had been intentionally targeted by Shannon’s team the Graces. Upon arrival at the school, each new student was put with a team. Those teams weren’t designed to be cliques. They were intended to be a small support system within the school.

  The Cassandras—Josie’s team—were led by Lorraine Miller. Everyone called her Rainy. She was Allison Gracelyn’s strongest competition at the school, and everyone took the competition seriously. Way too seriously, in Shannon’s view. But Shannon had gotten attention within Allison’s group, the Graces.

  “How could you do something so reprehensible?” Marion Gracelyn demanded.

  Shannon tried to speak and couldn’t at first. She’d never imagined getting caught. Josie had been chosen because she’d been the weakest link among the Cassandras. Her mother had been some kind of engineer for the Air Force. A spy plane she’d designed had failed during a test and killed several men.

  Josie lived under that cloud and carried her mother’s guilt around with her. Shannon figured that Josie would have cracked under the social stigma of being thought of as a thief. The last week that the “thefts”—Shannon didn’t think of her borrowing other people’s property as theft because everyone had gotten their things back once it was discovered Josie had them—had taken place, Josie had shown obvious signs of distress. She’d gotten more withdrawn than normal and couldn’t seem to concentrate on her work. Not even math and physics, which were two of her most enjoyed subjects.

  If you could take away the sheer love of math from Josie Lockworth, Shannon knew she was doing something. Still, part of her had felt bad for Josie. The other girl had never done anything to her. Under different circumstances, if she hadn’t been part of Rainy’s group and Allison hadn’t been so jealous of Rainy, they might even have been friends.