“You thought I’d never leave Alaska?”
She laughed, but it sounded more like nervous energy than amusement. “Sort of. I figured the next time I saw you would be when Desparre thawed out and I could get back up there.”
“It’s not enough,” he told her. “Phone calls for six months.”
She bit her lip and the hand petting Rebel sped up.
“Can I come in?” he asked, not wanting to have this conversation in the hallway.
“Sure. Of course.” She snagged her yoga mat off the ground as she spun, her hand shaking as she held the door for them.
Her apartment was just like he’d expected it to be, with bright, happy colors and—if you angled your head just right—a view of the water. But he didn’t give it much of a look, because he couldn’t take his eyes off Kensie, staring back at him like she was afraid of what he’d come all this way to tell her.
He set his cane against the wall. He hadn’t needed it for weeks. “How’s your sister?”
She looked thrown by the question, probably expecting him to dive right into the question of their relationship. “It hasn’t been easy. She’s still adjusting. But my family feels whole again, Colter.” She clutched her hands together, betraying her nerves as she added, “No matter what, I’ll always be grateful to you for helping bring her home.”
Not wanting to draw out why he’d come and make them both anxious, Colter started at the beginning. “Rebel and I have been traveling across the country for the past few weeks.”
“What?” She sank onto the couch, shaking her head. “I don’t understand. We’ve been talking. You were in Alaska.”
“No. I just didn’t want to tell you about it until I was finished.” He sat on the chair next to her, taking her hands in his as Rebel scooted her way between the couch and the coffee table to lie on Kensie’s feet.
“Rebel and I made a journey to see the families of each of my brothers.”
“Oh, Colter,” Kensie breathed, squeezing his hands tighter.
“It’s something I’ve been meaning to do since that day. Something I haven’t been able to bring myself to do. First, it was the injury and then it was guilt. Guilt over being alive when they were all gone.” His voice cracked, but he forced himself to continue. “I always felt like it wasn’t fair for me to move on when none of them would ever have a chance to do it. But you know what every single one of those families told me?”
“What?” she asked softly, lifting one hand to swipe away the tears he felt on his cheeks.
“I was dishonoring their memories by refusing to live my life.” He took a deep breath, trying to get control of his emotions. “And my life is you, Kensie.”
Her eyes widened even more, the nervousness that had filled them before replaced with hope.
“And then Rebel and I went to see my family.”
Her eyes filled with tears at his words. She knew he hadn’t seen them since he moved to Alaska.
“It was tough. They still don’t understand me, but they love me. And they’re happy about what I’m doing now.”
“What’s that?” Kensie whispered, her eyes still huge.
“I found a nonprofit organization that wants my experience. I’m going to be helping others like me, coming out of the military. Or families who need support after facing loss. It’s downtown.”
She blinked a few times, looking confused. “Desparre has a nonprofit downtown?”
He grinned. “Not in Desparre, Kensie.” He squeezed her hands tighter, hoping he wasn’t moving too fast, springing this on her instead of talking it over first. “Downtown Chicago.”
Her mouth moved a little, like she wanted to speak, but didn’t know what to say, so he rushed on.
“I’m looking at an apartment across town this afternoon.” He’d wanted to be as close to her as possible, but he couldn’t afford anything near the waterfront. Not yet.
“That’s...” She shook her head. “You don’t need to look for one. You can stay with me.”
His heart picked up speed, not from nervousness now, but excitement. “Your place doesn’t allow pets. I pretended Rebel was a service dog to get her up here, but I’m not sure how long that will—”
“No,” Kensie interrupted. “I’ll move. Wherever you want. I mean, I can’t go to Alaska. I would, if things were different. But my sister—”
“I know.” He cut her off, hardly able to believe she was saying yes. That she was going along with his crazy plan—even upping the ante—after knowing him barely more than a month.
“I’m going to keep my cabin in Alaska. I’m hoping we’ll visit. And the city isn’t easy for me. I didn’t just pick Desparre because of the solitude, but also because it helps with my anxiety. I’ll probably need some help adjusting. But I want to,” he added when it looked like she was going to say something. “I want to deserve you.”
She scooted closer to him and Rebel lifted her head off Kensie’s feet, staring up at her as if she knew something important was happening.
“Are you kidding? How could you not deserve me? You brought me back my sister. You saw me for me. You’re here.”
He smiled, so much joy inside him it was hard to breathe. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this way, but he knew it was before that fateful day he thought he’d lost everything.
But she was wrong. He didn’t deserve her. Not yet. He needed to reclaim his life to be the man she deserved in hers. And he wasn’t there yet. But with her help—and her love—he knew he could do it.
Kensie shifted closer still, until she was almost hanging off the edge of the couch. In response, Rebel scooted backward, out from between the couch and table. She ran around the edge of the room, so she could force her way between Colter’s chair and where Kensie sat.
Colter laughed as Rebel rested her head on his arm, her gaze going back and forth between him and Kensie, tail wagging faster and faster.
“I guess we should start apartment hunting,” Kensie said. Her voice was full of wonder and surprise, but it was also filled with love.
In that moment, he knew without a doubt he’d made the right choice.
“It doesn’t matter where we end up,” he told her. “You’re the only home I’ll ever need.”
At his words, she launched herself off the couch and onto his lap, throwing her arms around his neck. “I love you, Colter,” she breathed.
He barely had time to respond before she was kissing him.
Beside them, Rebel barked her approval.
* * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from Show of Force by Elle James.
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Show of Force
by Elle James
Chapter One
Just after four o’clock in the afternoon, Riley Lansing slipped in through the back entrance of the Marriott Marquis hotel in downtown Washington, DC. She wore a stolen employee badge and one of the dresses required of the female waitstaff. With her dark hair tucked beneath a blond wig, she passed for the woman in the fuzzy image sufficiently enough to make it past the security guard.
She carried a large purse and smacked chewing gum. When the guard asked to search her bag, she made certain her less-than-sexy panties and feminine products were on top to discourage him from digging deeper and discovering her second costume of the night.
Her trick worked. The guard waved her past the checkpoint.
Riley sailed through and entered the employee locker room. Instead of ditching her bag, she carried it through to the door on the far side that led deeper into the hotel’s service area.
Riley’s heart pounded against her ears, and her pulse thundered through her veins. She’d trained most of her young life for this. Her mother and father had drilled her daily on her responsibilities and loyalties. But Riley had hoped and prayed she would be forgotten, shuffled into the far regions of some paper file that had never been converted to digital data.
All the years she’d immersed herself in the American life her parents had created for her, with their own false identities and her legitimate birth certificate, were about to be blown wide open. No one she’d come into contact with over her lifetime knew her as anyone but Riley Lansing, daughter of Linda and Robert Lansing. Her parents spoke perfect American English and appeared to be the finest of upstanding citizens of the good old US of A.
Only they weren’t. She wasn’t. Her life had been one big lie, leading up to what she’d been tasked to do that evening.
Why now? Why, after the deaths of her father and mother in an auto accident five years earlier, had they come back to call her to service? Riley had hoped her parents’ handler had forgotten their daughter and her little brother even existed.
She’d pushed her secret life to the back of her consciousness for so long, she almost believed it was all a weird dream made up from a child’s wild imagination.
Until that morning, when she’d received the electronically distorted message from an anonymous voice initiating her call to action. “Baryshnikov has risen.”
At first, she hadn’t recognized the code words. When they sank in from the years her father had repeated them, a chill raised the hairs on the back of her neck and rippled down the length of her spine.
“You will find instructions at the luggage storage area at the Metro in downtown DC.” The voice left an address and locker number. “And to guarantee your compliance, we have a little insurance policy.”
A moment later, little Toby’s voice came through the receiver. “Riley?” he said, the one word catching on a sob. “I’m scared.”
“Oh, Toby. Sweetheart,” she said. “It’s okay. I’m coming for you. I’ll find you and bring you home.”
Her little brother sobbed once more, jerking at Riley’s heartstrings.
“Toby?” Riley cried out.
“Do the job tonight and the boy will be returned to his home,” the voice said. “Fail and you will never see him again.”
Clutching the large bag close to her side, she hurried through the maze of corridors she’d traversed the day before, familiarizing herself with the layout of the kitchen, the staff elevators and the ballroom where the evening’s event would take place. She’d even identified an electronics closet where she could hide until the event began, ensuring she’d be past the security guards who would be posted at every entrance and exit checking identification against invitation lists.
The second worst part of her plan was the two hours she’d have to wait until she could initiate the operation.
The absolute worst part of her plan was the crux of the operation and what she had to accomplish to satisfy her handler and get her little brother back alive.
To succeed at her mission, she had to kill someone she not only knew but admired.
Her hand shook as she slipped a file into the keyhole and jimmied the lock on the door to the electronics closet. It clicked, and she pulled the door open. She’d played with locks from an early age and could open just about anything requiring a key. This skill had come in handy during college when she entered her dorm past curfew and the doors were locked.
Once inside the electronics room, she closed the door and locked it from the inside to keep anyone from randomly walking in looking for something or someone.
For the next two and a half hours, she waited. The security detail would have swept the ballroom and surrounding cubbies, restrooms, hallways and anterooms. Guards would have been positioned at all corners, equipped with radio communications devices and handguns.
Her target would have no fewer than four bodyguards in attendance. Having had an attempt made on her life recently, she wouldn’t take any chances. Not even at a gala with the prime purpose of raising money for sick children.
During the two hours Riley waited, she went through her proposed actions in her mind, the steps she would take and how she would maneuver her victim out of the ballroom and into one of the anterooms or the ladies’ restroom. Once there, Riley would aim her small handgun at the woman and force her to take a small pill. She slipped her hand into the voluminous purse and curled her fingers around the HK .40 caliber handgun that fit snugly in her grip. She knew how to fire it. Knew where to hit her target to ensure a quick and painless death. But she wouldn’t fire the handgun unless absolutely necessary. The poison would do the trick much more quietly. All she had to do was make her take it, and Toby would be set free.
She couldn’t think about the woman she’d been sent to eliminate. Toby was only six years old. He deserved a chance to live. If it meant taking the life of an older woman who’d had her chance at living, so be it. Riley couldn’t let anything happen to her only living relative remaining on earth. As far as she knew, Toby didn’t know what her parents and she herself had been recruited to do.
No one knew, except Riley and her handler. And Riley had no clue who her handler was. When her parents died, she’d taken on guardianship of her little brother. She should have known hiding him in the Virginia countryside with a paid nanny wouldn’t be enough to keep him safe. When her parents had passed away, she should have moved as far away from DC as she could get. At least then the Russians wouldn’t have been able to find Toby and use him as collateral to collect on their investment.
As the time neared, her breathing became more erratic and her pulse raced. In less than an hour, she’d have to put her skills as an assassin to use on an innocent woman who had gone out of her way, spent her money and engaged her employees to help Riley. She’d betray the woman’s trust and the trust of her new assistant, Riley’s best friend and roommate, Grace Lawrence.
Riley swallowed hard on the bile rising up her throat. She’d never asked for this assignment. She’d spent her life training with the misguided belief she’d never have to use that training. If asked to do something she didn’t like, she’d always imagined herself refusing.
Until they’d kidnapped Toby. Toby was her Achilles’ heel. She’d do anything for her little brother.
Even kill?
The alarm on her watch vibrated, letting her know the time had come. She had to get ready and make an appearance at the gala. Her target would recognize her and welcome her with open arms. She might even wonder how Riley could have afforded the plate price to get in. Riley had a lame excuse to cover long enough to get her quarry alone. She’d take her someplace where she could be assured they would
n’t be followed by the woman’s bodyguards. There, she would do what she’d come to do.
Riley removed the blond wig, slipped the maid’s dress over her head, released the clasps on her bra and slid the straps down her arms. Naked but for a pair of silky black panties, she wrapped a small amount of C-4 explosive to her inner calf with an Ace bandage and tucked the detonator affixed to a hair clip into her long dark hair, pulling it back behind her right ear and letting the rest of her hair fall over her left shoulder. The C-4 and detonator were courtesy of her handler, from among the items she’d found in the locker he’d sent her to in the train station.
Once she had her diversion devices secured, she dug a long black dress out of the bottom lining of her purse and shook out the wrinkles. She’d purchased the dress while shopping with her friend, intending to wear it to a less expensive charity event later that summer.
She almost laughed at the thought. That was when she was still an innocent American female who had nothing more to worry about than riding the Metro to and from her work as an aerospace engineer. The irony of it all was that she’d been recruited by the FBI to help them capture someone stealing government secrets from the corporation where she worked.
They’d come close but hadn’t nailed the bastard. What was so ironic was that thief might have been working for the Russians. Just like she was.
She pulled the dress over her head, settling the halter strap around her neck and letting the silky gown slide down her torso and over her hips. Riley and her roommate had both loved the dress. Though it had been a little pricey for her budget, she’d purchased the garment, excited to wear it to a ritzy DC function.
She no longer was the child easily molded and trained by her parents. That little girl had grown into a woman with a mind of her own. All the propaganda her parents had used to shape her beliefs had been replaced by the readings and research of an inquisitive mind. She had no desire to work as a spy or an assassin for a country for which she felt no affiliation. She was an American, despite her parents’ home of birth. She wanted the American dream, the American lifestyle, and the right to pursue happiness and love. And she’d hoped to accomplish some of that pursuit in the dress she’d purchased with her roommate.
K-9 Defense (HQR Intrigue) Page 20