by Leah Ashton
Dear reader
Welcome to the world of Elite SWAT! Thank you for picking up For the Fight, and I so hope you fall in love with Nate and Luella the way I have.
Elite SWAT is set in Western Australia and as such is written and edited in British English. Because Nate and Lou are Australian, For the Fight is written through their eyes, and as such I haven’t changed any terminology for international readers. Yes, even thongs! (Which some of you may call flip flops)
But, if you find any terms confusing, please don’t hesitate to ask me what they mean - I love to hear from readers! Just email me at [email protected] or message me via my Facebook page.
Leah xx
PS For the Fight was originally published as Undaunted. Apart from minor edits (including changing the team name from WASP to Elite SWAT) it is the same book.
Copyright © 2018 by Leah Ashton
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
ISBN 978-0-6488598-1-9
First eBook edition published March 2019 (as Undaunted)
This eBook second edition first published June 2020 (as For the Fight)
For Eve, who is awesome
(and who I might let read this one day)
Contents
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
Preview of Out Run the Night
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Leah Ashton
Chapter One
Today, Luella Brayshaw was planting a bomb.
On this perfect, cloudless Perth morning, while the Swan River sparkled and the sun beat down on the hundreds of tourists that meandered around Elizabeth Quay.
Admittedly it was only a fake bomb – or rather – the concept of a bomb. This was a training exercise, after all, and the backpack she carried contained no more than the clothes she’d so painstakingly chosen for her first day at Elite SWAT Headquarters – only to discover she would not simply be answering phones today.
But still. It felt like far too nice a day to even be thinking about blowing anything up. After twelve years in the Western Australian police force, Lou should know more than most that awful things happened despite a postcard-worthy backdrop. In real life, bad guys certainly didn’t need murky camera angles or a foreboding soundtrack. Shitheads just did shithead things.
And sometimes during those shithead things, experienced police officers make stupid mistakes.
And ended up on desk duties at Elite SWAT – or rather, not on desk duties, but instead walking around aimlessly at Elizabeth Quay, pretending they had a bomb in their backpack.
Honestly, it would be difficult for this situation to be any more humiliating.
Her entire career, Lou’s colleagues and sergeants had encouraged her to consider a move to the Elite SWAT team. A constable with her talent and track record would surely aspire to work with the best of the best, right? Elite SWAT – or E-SWAT - had everything: a tactical response team, dignitary protection, covert surveillance, bomb technicians, negotiators, snipers – every specialist team in the police had been brought together under the Elite SWAT umbrella.
But Lou had never been interested. It had always been grassroots policing that had been her passion: being a part of the community she protected and served. She wanted to help with everyday problems that rarely got the attention they needed, and certainly never ended up in the news: like the young woman who’d finally felt safe enough to press charges against her abusive partner, or the elderly residents being scammed by unscrupulous door-to-door salesmen. No one wrote a front-page article when she let an impressionable first-time twelve-year-old shoplifter off with a warning – and a tour of the lock-up and a sombre lecture of exactly how their life would pan out if they continued to make such stupid, selfish decisions.
By contrast, barely a week went by without the WA media lauding some huge E-SWAT-led success story. There were, of course, countless other success stories that never made it public.
But that didn’t appeal to Lou. You needed great cops to deal with the big stuff that Elite SWAT dealt with daily. But you also needed great cops to deal with the small stuff left to everyone else.
Except – now no one thought Lou was a great cop.
One day, one mistake, and she was reduced to this.
A fill-in for an actress who’d called in sick. Wearing one of the female Elite SWAT operator’s spare clothes: jeans that were just a bit too big, a white tank top that was just a bit too small.
But it would have to do. The one day she’d ever rocked up to work in heels, a pencil skirt, and blouse (hey, if she was going to be relegated to desk duties she was going to look good doing it), she’d had to get changed out of her beautiful new clothes almost immediately.
Thankfully she’d had a pair of sneakers in her car she could wear – dark blue suede with pink stripes – so yeah, fashionable rather than practical, but certainly better than walking through Perth in her heels or a stranger’s work boots. And she had a lot of walking to do today.
Just act natural, her sergeant had said, after he’d dropped her off beneath the glinting glass and copper of the Bell Tower. Wait for my call.
Acting natural had taken her for a walk from the Bell Tower and Barrack Street Jetty, and across to the small man-made island that jutted out at the mouth of the quay. Children laughed and shrieked as they swarmed a wooden tower-dotted playground, and the small kiosk at the island’s centre tempted her with the allure of caffeine – but she had no idea if purchasing a takeaway latte was allowed. Do fake bombers carry coffee cups?
Old Lou would’ve asked her new sergeant all about the exercise in the short drive in from Elite SWAT headquarters to the city. But this new version of Lou had felt the weight of derision and reluctant obligation emanating from Sergeant Peters. Lou had no idea why or how she’d been dumped at Elite SWAT, but clearly Peters wasn’t a fan.
So, she’d sat silently like the gutless loser everyone now thought she was, and now had no idea what was going to happen today, or what she was actually allowed to do, other than wait for Peters’ phone call. After that, she’d make her way to an unknown destination, covertly followed by who knew how many E-SWAT operators.
As she left the island via the swooping, dramatic curves of the pedestrian bridge that traversed the gently rippling Swan River, her skin prickled with awareness. Were eyes on her now? They must be, the operators on this exercise couldn’t have been too far away.
Self-consciously, she tugged at the too short hem of her tank top as she passed yet another couple taking selfies on the bridge, Perth’s collection of glass and metal sky scrapers rising above the quay behind them.
Her phone rang just after she stepped off the bridge and onto the western promenade, and Lou tugged it out of the back pocket of her borrowed Levis.
Peters didn’t bother with hello. “Perth Train Station. Don’t walk straight there, act like someone who doesn�
�t want to be followed. Reckon you can do that?”
His lack of faith in her was palpable.
“Of course.”
Peters grunted. “Pay attention to anyone you notice following you. If you do, try to lose ’em. Got it?”
“Got it,” Lou said, but he’d already hung up. “Arsehole,” she added, to the black screen of the phone before shoving it back into her pocket.
Then, she took a deep breath, tucked the escaped strands of long brown hair she’d so carefully braided this morning behind her ears, and straightened her shoulders.
She’d do anything to change what had happened two weeks ago, to change the decision that had landed her here. But she couldn’t.
She had mandated counselling and training to complete before she got her firearm back and life went back to normal. She might not like it – and based on Peters’ reaction, Elite SWAT might not like it either – but for now, she was stuck with them.
And so, because Luella Brayshaw never did anything half way, she was going to be the best damn fake bomber they’d ever seen.
Nate Rivers held his long-empty takeaway coffee cup to his lips as he waited for the target to exit the arcade behind him.
He kept his gaze on the window display directly in front of him, the glass providing a clear view of the narrow arcade in its reflection. To a casual onlooker – or to a target being followed – he looked like a typical suit in between meetings.
Although, he hadn’t quite stretched to wearing the jacket part of the navy-blue suit he kept back at Elite SWAT headquarters for CBD-related surveillance. It was just too hot in Perth in March to wear a jacket. Nate figured that in this scenario, he just worked somewhere with a fairly relaxed dress code. And in that spirit, he’d also tossed his tie and popped open the top few buttons of his shirt – although not so many as to expose the narrow, paper-thin band of the microphone collar beneath the crisp white fabric.
“Target about to enter Murray Street Mall, heading west. White singlet, pink stripes on shoes, dark hair in plait.” The voice in his hidden earpiece was clear and succinct.
“Got her,” Nate said, as the woman stepped from the darkness of the arcade into the bright sunlight of the pedestrian mall.
“All yours, mate.”
Nate waited a beat before turning, watching the woman pause and retrieve her phone from the back pocket of her jeans. But she wasn’t really looking at the phone. As he watched, she subtly glanced up and down the mall and then over her shoulder. Her gaze didn’t even skim over Nate; there were at least twenty people between him and the woman at any moment in time. The wave of shoppers, tourists, and workers was constant and effectively camouflaged him from view.
He couldn’t see her all that clearly in the window’s reflection either. About all he knew was that the woman was about average height, slender without being skinny, and her hair was in a thick, brunette braid.
Apparently satisfied with her survey of the mall, the woman turned left, towards Forest Chase, stepping into the wake of a large group of teenage girls. As Nate watched, she moved through the group, and then he lost her as they walked between a café and its alfresco seating and market umbrellas, his view obscured.
A moment later, when the girls continued down the mall, the woman wasn’t there.
This was new. As he’d listened to the target’s progress along the kilometre journey from the quay to Perth train station – only a few hundred metres beyond where he stood – she’d taken twists and turns – doubling back on herself, alternatively ducking into shadows and walking in plain sight, and even travelling a short distance on one of the city’s zero-fare buses that constantly looped through the CBD. She’d almost lost her tail then, but knowing the fixed route of the bus the team had deployed operators to all upcoming stops and picked her up again as she’d alighted. But still – if this exercise had involved a smaller team, the manoeuvre might have worked.
Of course, the guy on her arse should’ve worked out what she was doing before she’d got on the bus – but then, that was the point of this exercise. The team today was made up of tactical operators, including himself. They didn’t normally do a lot of surveillance, they were more about taking targets down once all this work had been done: like waking up pieces of shit at three in the morning with red dots on their foreheads for arrest warrants, stopping some gun-toting arsehole from shooting people, or intercepting million-dollar meth hauls.
But like all the operators at Elite SWAT, they needed to have a working knowledge of everything Elite SWAT did. He might not be a bomb tech or a negotiator or whatever, but he knew a hell of a lot more than the average beat cop, and he needed to, never knowing what the next job would bring.
So, yeah, he wasn’t about to lose this target.
Nate crossed the mall to drop his coffee cup into a bin located near the café. The woman only had two options – she was either in the café, or the adjacent accessories shop. All they needed to do was cover the exits – each had only a single door in and out, which he had covered – and he spoke quietly into his microphone to direct the nearest operators to cover any exit out the rear.
Then, he simply walked straight past both shops and took a seat on a bench in the centre of the mall, facing away. Then watched the opposite shop windows to see what happened next.
Minutes later, she reappeared.
This time, she didn’t pause. She was out the door of the accessories shop, then off, walking briskly towards Forest Chase.
Nate hesitated before following her. Partly because he couldn’t be that obvious, but mostly because something about her walk triggered something … reminded him of something. Of someone.
The way the woman walked – the neat posture, the determined strides, even the swing of her arms – he knew that walk.
But that was impossible.
Actors were always used for these exercises, and the woman she reminded him of, was – last time he checked – still a cop.
Not that he kept tabs on her, or anything. Just occasionally, he wondered how she was doing after all this time. Curiosity, nothing more.
Nate stood, and began to follow the woman down the mall.
Lou had to admit that the E-SWAT guys were good.
Despite knowing she was being followed every step of her walk from the quay to the train station there’d been only one time she’d been pretty sure she’d spotted an operator. A guy in board shorts, singlet and thongs – his outfit in itself nondescript, his ripped deltoids and biceps not so much. Even then she’d been unsure, he certainly hadn’t been obviously following her. It was more a feeling. Yet when she’d jumped on that bus, she was almost certain she’d seen what could only be described as an Oh Fuck expression on his face as the bus zipped away.
She had to admit, it’d been rather satisfying.
Now, as she crossed the overpass between Forrest Chase and the double-storey train station, she wasn’t entirely sure what to do. Was the exercise over the moment she stepped into the building?
As she did exactly that – a bakery to her right, and the station information and ticket stand to her left – nothing happened.
Lou grinned. What had she expected?
She came to a stop just in front of the ticket gates, then turned around, imagining the final operator who’d been tailing her would be behind her and could tell her where to go next. Or maybe Sergeant Peters would call her, as surely, he’d be well aware she’d reached her destination.
Or maybe she should call him? She reached for her phone, only to go absolutely still as she recognised a man not even ten metres away from her.
A tall man with dark, army-short hair and dark blue eyes. A man with broad shoulders and tanned skin revealed from wrist to elbow by the shoved-up sleeves of his snowy-white shirt.
The planes of his face were different – harder, which made sense. It’d been more than ten years. Nate Rivers had gone from young man, to man. He’d been gorgeous back then, but now, 100 percent grown up? He was devastating.
Nate’s gaze met hers.
She watched as his eyes widened, and as his gaze swept up and down her body. Was he cataloguing her changes, too?
Longer hair, better make-up, a few extra kilos from when she was twenty-one. How did she stack up?
Why did she care?
She didn’t. She didn’t care at all what Nate Rivers thought of her.
What was she doing? Nothing had changed. They had nothing to say to each other.
Without thinking, she turned away. She needed to move, to get away from him.
Stupid, unwanted prickles tightened her throat, stung her eyes.
Hell no. She was not going to let Nate see her tears.
That horrifying possibility propelled her forward, into the crowd of commuters.
Why would she waste tears on him? Where had they even come from? She was over him. She had to be – it had been forever.
A lifetime ago.
She realised she was at the ticket gates. With no ticket, of course. Around her, card readers beeped merrily, while she held up the line. What to do?
“Luella?”
No.
Even his voice sounded older. Richer.
And too close to her, definitely too close to her.
Beside her, a mother was waved through a wider gate with a pram, and Lou simply stepped in behind her.
The transit guard either didn’t notice or didn’t care, and grateful, she almost ran to the escalator that would take her down to the platforms below.
She didn’t look back as she jogged down the moving steps, springing onto the platform without looking back, her gaze darting about. Where to go now?
“Lou,” Nate said, even closer now, but she wouldn’t turn around. “Wait, please.”