DRAGON SECURITY: The Complete 6 Books Series

by Glenna Sinclair

  That’s when he stumbled onto an IED planted just beyond the fence line.

  I ran over to him, not even fully aware of the other kids running away. He was still alive despite the fact that his legs were gone. And then I felt the pain in my hip.

  They were watching, just waiting for me to go beyond the fence. If not for the fact that one of the guys from my unit was close enough to hear the explosion and the gunfire, I might have been gone. But he came out, firing back. He pulled me out of harm’s way, taking a few bullets to the center of his chest in the process. Thank God he’d had on his flak jacket.

  I, on the other hand, shattered my hip and had to have surgery to repair the damage. In fact, half my hip was plastic now. And because of that, I couldn’t serve my country in the field anymore. It was a huge disappointment because I’d wanted to make the Marines a career. But I hadn’t pictured that career behind a desk.

  I ran my hand over my hip. “They did good work.”

  He came over and ran his hand over the same spot, capturing my hand as he did. “I wanted to say something before. I knew you were self-conscious of it.”

  “Momma sent me to a plastic surgeon who cleaned up the lines a little.”

  “You’re beautiful. You were beautiful before.”

  I turned into him, my lips sliding over his throat. “It wasn’t about being beautiful. It was about removing another reminder from my life.”

  He studied my face for a long moment. “That is one reminder you should be proud of. Not everyone can proudly display the Purple Heart on their wall. And not everyone can boast of their achievements in the Marines.”

  “Yes, well, maybe if the whole thing hadn’t been my fault. I should have sent those kids away the moment I saw them. And I never should have left the perimeter of that fence.”

  “They would have fired at you anyway.”

  “I put another member of my unit in danger because I wasn’t thinking. That was irresponsible.”

  “It was human.”

  I groaned, but he just smiled. “This,” he touched my hip again, “is who you are, Megan.”

  “And what’s that? A fool?”

  “A strong, independent woman with a heart of gold.”

  I smiled. I couldn’t help myself. There was something about his smile that was contagious. And the fact that he thought of me that way warmed something deep inside of me.

  “What would I do without you?”

  “You did fine for two years.”

  I shook my head. “I was a mess without you.”

  “You were strong. You got up, you went to work. You were a sister, a daughter, a friend, a boss. You were everything you needed to be.”

  He kissed me. We stood there for a long time, kissing, touching, and holding each other.

  “I love you,” he whispered again my ear. “I love you more than life.”

  “I love you…”

  ***

  The lights were shining bright through the church windows, a dozen cars parked in the parking lot in the back. I was a little nervous, my heart in my throat. My entire life was inside that church, my friends and my family. If our enemies somehow figured out where we were, it would all be wiped out in a matter of seconds.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Luke said, reaching over to squeeze my hand.

  I just nodded.

  We walked up the church steps. The last time I’d walked these steps, it had been to tell a whole church full of people that the wedding was off. But here I was, holding on to the hand of the man who left me at this very altar.

  “Megan!” my mom cried, grabbing me and pulling me into her arms as we came into the sanctuary. I buried my face against her neck, reassured by the familiar scent of her.

  My dad came up behind me and wrapped his arms around me, too. Then Cole and Amber came over. I hugged them all, even the ones I didn’t know as well as some. Marcus and Vincent, Cadence and Quinn. Dominic and Amy. We were a family. We’d been through too much together to be anything less.

  And Hayden. He was leaning against the back of the front pew, the priest beside him.

  His eyes moved carefully over me, almost as if he was looking for some sort of injury. His eyes were hooded, making it nearly impossible for me to see what he was thinking. But when he pulled me against his chest, I could feel the slight quiver in his touch, the concern in the way his hands moved over my shoulders, my head.

  “You scared the crap out of me,” he said quietly, but firmly.

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “Dante,” I heard Marcus say as he went to him, slapped him on the shoulder and pulled him further into the sanctuary with the rest of us.

  Hayden moved me behind him a little, shielding me as he approached Luke. The last time the two of them had been face to face, that I knew of, was the night after Sam’s funeral. Hayden had beaten the crap out of Dante—Luke—that night.

  “Hayden,” I said cautiously.

  Luke approached Hayden, his own expression unreadable. These two men were friends. They’d gone to basic training and SEAL training together. They’d gone through hell, quite literally, together. It was because of Luke that I’d hired Hayden as the first asset in my business.

  But Hayden didn’t know that.

  They studied each other for a long moment. Then Hayden raised his fist like he was going to punch Dante. My mother gasped, as did a couple of the other women in the crowd. But then Hayden grabbed Dante by the back of his neck and pulled him in for one of those man hugs that was more of a wrestling move than a gesture of affection.

  “Luke,” he said just loud enough for those closest to hear.

  “What’d he say?” Cole asked, moving up behind me.

  Hayden laughed, pulling back to look at Luke a little closer.

  “I should have known, brother! If I’d known—”

  “You weren’t supposed to know.”

  “I should have. What kind of a SEAL am I that I didn’t recognize my best friend?”

  “What’s going on here?” Dominic asked.

  The others were watching, confusion clear on their faces. My parents hadn’t yet met Dante, but they knew Luke. He grew up in their home alongside their own children. My father, his eyes slightly squinted, studied his face.

  “Luke?”

  Luke nodded, accepting his hug, and then a tearful kiss from my mother.

  “How the hell…?” Cole asked.

  I smiled at my brother through a few tears of my own. “It’s a long story.”

  “Condense it.”

  I cleared my throat as I focused fully on him. “He had surgery to change his face so that he could be close to us and watch over us.”

  “Watch over us for what?”

  But Amber knew. She’d been staring oddly at Luke since he began speaking.

  “From whatever it was Peter was involved in. He’s one of my kidnappers.”

  Cole slipped his arm around his pregnant wife, tugging her closer to him. His eyes were dangerous as he studied me.

  “Is that true.”

  “Yes. But it’s not what you think, Cole. Luke’s on our side. He’s always been on our side.”

  “But he took my wife against her will! He held her captive in an abandoned house!”

  Luke heard Cole’s outburst. He came over, his expression still unreadable as he studied my brother’s face.

  “I know it doesn’t seem like it, Cole, but I did it to protect her.”

  “You kidnapped her to protect her?”

  “Yes.”

  Cole took a step toward Luke, looking for all the world like he intended to hit him. I stepped between them at the same time Amber tugged at Cole’s arm, trying to pull him back.

  “Look, it’s a long story. Why don’t you go sit down so that we can tell it to everyone,” I said, pushing against his chest in an attempt to get him to sit.

  Cole stared Luke down, but then he nodded, turned to his wife, and whispered something comforting in her ear. Luke and Hay
den spread the word to everyone else and got them to sit in the pews along the front of the church. The priest disappeared, leaving us to our discussion.

  Luke began with Peter, explaining how my brother had approached him a few weeks before our wedding. He told them how Peter had stumbled onto the use of Bradford Telecommunications’ software to move messages between members of a terrorist cell. Luke explained that he was a member of the CIA team that had used the same group to influence terrorist activity in Europe. Then he told them how he’d contacted his supervisor during that operation to let him know that the cell was still active and that a friend had stumbled onto it.

  “That’s when I was warned by a friend that things weren’t as on the up and up as I thought they were. Peter decided to ignore my warnings and continue investigating. He was convinced there was more to the whole thing than he originally thought there was. And he was right. But it was bigger than just one person could deal with.”

  “We know all that,” Hayden announced as he gestured at Amber. “We learned all that while trying to keep her safe from the idiots trying to hurt her.”

  “My son died because he was putting his nose where it didn’t belong?” my father suddenly asked.

  My heart sank. I’d not discussed all the details with my parents. I’d wanted to protect them from what was happening.

  I couldn’t do that anymore.

  I moved over to the pew where my parents were sitting and took my mom’s hands between my own.

  “Peter stumbled onto something he didn’t fully understand. And he got in the way of some very powerful, very dangerous people.”

  “I knew you thought his car accident wasn’t truly an accident,” my father mumbled, “but I…”

  “I know, Daddy. I’m sorry.”

  “We know all this,” Dominic announced. “Peter stumbled onto a terrorist cell that my partner, Emily, and I were trying to take down in France. There were arrests after our investigation, but they didn’t go far enough. They didn’t go high enough. Emily was trying to figure out why when she came across the truth.”

  “The CIA was actually running the terrorist cell. And they weren’t ready to stop.” All eyes turned to Hayden. He pulled a thumb drive out of his pocket. “And we have the evidence to prove it.”

  There was silence for a long moment.

  “The man behind it all is a man named Gerald Garner. He’s been using this terrorist cell as a way to not only influence terrorist activity in Europe, but for personal gain. And no one knows all this but us.”

  “The CIA are terrorists?” someone asked.

  “Not all of them—just Garner and his people. I’m not even sure how many of his people know what’s really going on. When I worked for him—”

  “You worked for him?” Cole demanded.

  “I did. But I thought it was all on the up and up. I had no idea that he’d gone rogue.”

  “How do we know that? How do we know that you aren’t still on the wrong side of all this?”

  “Come on, Cole,” my dad said, “this is Luke. You grew up with him.”

  “Yeah? He’s also the man who kidnapped my wife.”

  Luke advanced toward Cole, but I got between them.

  “Listen, Cole,” I said, “Luke did that so that he could show this Garner that Amber didn’t know anything about what Peter had been up to. He saved her from the hitmen who’d been sent to kill her. You know that.”

  “I don’t know that.”

  “It all stopped after the kidnapping. And even Amber told us—”

  “He didn’t hurt me, Cole. He argued in my defense.”

  Cole started to shake his head, but then Amber touched his shoulder, her eyes moving slowly over Luke’s face.

  “You were the one who told me to just tell them what they wanted to know.”

  I glanced between the two of them, a little confused. But Luke nodded, his eyes never leaving her face.

  “And you were the one who argued with the guy asking the questions. You were the one who told him that I didn’t know anything and that I hadn’t told Megan anything.”

  “I was.”

  A slow smile touched Amber’s pretty face. She moved close to Luke and kissed his cheek lightly.

  “Thank you.”

  Cole frowned, but then his wife was back at his side, tugging at his arm. He whispered something and she just smiled again.

  “If not for him, I probably wouldn’t be here, Cole.”

  And that was enough for him. He sat down and pulled PJ into his lap, content to just sit there and listen to the rest of the story.

  “No one else knows about what Garner is up to. The only breach in security he ever had was Peter. When Amber came to Megan and told her about the man following her, Garner brought me back and told me to plug the leak. I convinced him that neither Amber nor Megan knew anything. And then I stayed close and watched over them. When Emily Greene died, my friend Edgar informed me of what was happening. I made sure I was there when Garner’s man came after Dominic and Amy.” He gestured to them. “I was there when the hit man forced them off the road.”

  I remembered that night. He was there because he was with me when Hayden called to tell me that the safe house had been breached. That was the first night Dante and I… Had he known that call would come?

  “And I released a computer virus that would corrupt Emily’s files so that you wouldn’t know too much. If you knew everything I’m telling you now, Garner would have taken every one of you out.”

  A heavy silence fell over the church.

  “Then why are you telling us now?” my father asked.

  “Because he knows that Sam somehow managed to clean up the corruption caused by the virus.”

  “How does he know?” Dominic demanded.

  “I told him.”

  A collective gasp went up around the room.

  “You have to understand,” Luke said, “this man thinks I work for him. He thinks the only reason I’m here is to make sure you guys don’t learn too much. He thinks I’m here to protect myself and the interests of the group. So I told him. And then I got Megan out.”

  “You told the devil that we’re souls ready to be reaped.” Cole tugged PJ closer to him. “How could you do that if you were protecting us?”

  “Because he was going to find out anyway. And by doing it this way, I gave us a head start. If he had found out on his own, we never would have seen him coming.”

  “You signed our death warrants.”

  “I gave us a chance.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said, moving between them again. There was such anger coming off Cole that I could almost see it. That was going to have to be handled.

  “What’s the plan?” Hayden asked, moving up beside me.

  Luke stepped back and let me take the floor.

  “We go public with what we know. If we’re no longer the only ones who know, he’ll have no reason to hurt us.”

  “How?” Dominic asked.

  “We release Emily’s notes.”

  Again, silence filled the room. I looked around at the faces of the people I loved most. My parents were aging. I hadn’t noticed until now, but there were wrinkles on their faces where there once weren’t any. My mom’s hair was beginning to thin, the sophisticated strands of white that used to be restricted to her temples were now scattered all through her blond hair. And my dad, his hair had been receding for years, but now there were dark spots on his thinning skin.

  And Cole was a husband and father now. My rebellious younger brother who used to sleep with every girl who crossed his path was now the responsible one, the one living the life I’d imagined for myself.

  Marcus and Vincent sat with their girlfriends—and Olivia, the sweet daughter of Vincent’s girlfriend, Quinn—young men I’d only known for less than a year, but who were an important part of my business and therefore my family. I could see by the attentiveness in their eyes that they were willing to do anything for me. That was a loyalty tha
t people outside of this lifestyle—this constant state of always fighting for what is morally right, even if it isn’t always legal, life built on the tenant of the military—would never understand.

  Dominic was with his beautiful wife, the twin sister of the woman who’d provided us with the notes that were going to save us all. Dominic was the second asset I hired for my business. I trusted him with my life, and I knew he felt the same about me.

  And then there was Hayden. He was more than a friend. He'd been Sam’s lover. He was the man who gave her hope and love in the final days of her life. Not only that, but he was my trusted adviser, my go-to guy, my shoulder to cry on, and my partner in grief.

  I loved these people more than I could put into words.

  “The only way we get ourselves out of this is to show the world who Gerald Garner really is. We have to neutralize him.”

  There were a few nodding heads in the crowd now.

  “I know most of you have heard of WikiExpose.” There were a bunch of nods. “I know the woman who runs it. Her name is Julie Humphry.”

  Hayden crossed his arms over his chest as he studied me closely. But it was Luke who came up behind me and tugged me toward the altar.

  “Is that really a good idea, babe? When you suggested this, I assumed you were talking about going to a reporter. WikiExpose has a reputation—”

  “I know. The government doesn’t think highly of Julie. But when she releases this, she can release the whole thing at once. It wouldn’t be piecemeal or covered up and put on the thirty-ninth page. This would be headlines.”

  “But WikiExpose is being investigated by the FBI and Homeland Security. How are you going to get this information to her?”

  “I’ve already contacted her.”

  He looked a little angry when I said that. He was pulling his phone out of his pocket when I turned back around.