Rules in Defiance

by Nichole Severn

  No wonder he’d suggested she take the time to heal from her own wounds before identifying the body. It hadn’t been to save her from seeing her husband on a slab. It’d been to cover his mistake. By the time she’d had the strength to get out of that damn bed, it’d been too late. The hospital had released who she thought had been her husband into her custody, and Declan’s former partner had taken responsibility for all of the funeral arrangements. Nobody knew her husband hadn’t been inside that coffin?

  The surgeon had lied. Why?

  She swiped at her face as the tears finally fell. Declan didn’t know her name?

  Tires screeched on asphalt a few houses down. Headlights flared to life, but she couldn’t see the driver through the truck’s windshield. Probably one of the neighbor’s teenagers. It’d been so long since she’d lived on the street, she didn’t know who’d moved away after the shooting, her neighbor’s names or if any of them had kids old enough to drive. Wasn’t important. Staying calm long enough to assess the situation—that was all that mattered now. The engine revved loud in her ears as the faint outline of the passenger-side window lowered.

  The door supporting her disappeared, strong hands pulling her inside a split second before the first bullet of many shattered through the house’s main window. Kate hit the floor hard, her head snapping back as Declan returned fire. She checked her holster—empty—and recognized the gun in his hand. Her Glock.

  The sound of peeling tires faded, and the gunfire ceased.

  Declan barricaded them inside the house, back to the front door as he dropped the gun’s magazine, counted the rounds and slammed it back into place. Guess there were some things amnesia couldn’t destroy. Loading a weapon being one of them. Light blue eyes settled on her as he offered her his hand. Calluses slid against her palms as he wrapped his hand around hers and pulled her into him. “Are you hurt?”

  “I’m getting tired of people shooting at me.” Her awareness of him hiked to an all-time high. The pounding of his heart beat against her palm, the pressure of his attention on her. Even the way he held her took a bit of the strength out of her knees. She shook her head and stepped out of his reach to counteract the heat rising in her neck. He’d saved her life. The least she could do was help him recover his. “It’s Kate, by the way. My name is Kate.”

  Copyright © 2019 by Natascha Jaffa

  Keep reading for an excerpt from Hidden Truth by Danica Winters.

  Hidden Truth

  by Danica Winters

  Prologue

  She clicked open the tabs of the gun case, exposing the M24 sniper rifle. It was a thing of beauty. Even without firing a single round from this particular gun, Trish Martin could recall the precise feel of pulling the trigger, smelling the spent powder and watching as her enemies fell to their knees.

  There was no greater feeling in the world than a justified kill. The men standing around her, those dealing in death, would be easy to strip from this earth.

  She ran her fingers down the synthetic stock, taking in the slight imperfections on the newly manufactured gun. This one would be for a different kind of kill, a long-term tactical assault, rather than a one-and-done straight to the head.

  Some people were only too happy to judge her and her family for the work they did, but she didn’t care. She didn’t care that she was out there protecting the ones who didn’t appreciate it right alongside the ones who did. She was a hunter, a predator, who fought for her territory and for life as she knew it.

  The shroud of darkness wormed its way around her as she waited for the Bozkurtlar, or what some people called the Gray Wolves. To call them a Turkish crime syndicate was an understatement. No, they were so much more.

  They were the reason she and her family were here in Adana, the reason she couldn’t sleep at night, and the reason there were so many unmarked graves scattered around the Turkish hillsides. Their name suited them. No matter where in the world they were, death and mayhem followed.

  That would all end soon.

  She heard the sound of footsteps on the concrete floor and the clink of the metal door closing behind the group. From the sound, there had to be at least ten men. If anything went wrong...

  She looked around her. They had made a mistake in agreeing to meet them in this shell of a warehouse. There weren’t nearly enough hiding places or corners where she could find cover if she needed to. And there wasn’t anywhere for her brothers to hide within the building. Without a doubt, the group’s intention had been to isolate her and to strip her of any way to double-cross them.

  “Ms. Stone,” a man with a thick Turkish accent said from behind her. “I hope you aren’t planning on brandishing that weapon. We’re here to buy new, not used.”

  She stood up to face Fenrisulfr Bayural. He was nearly a foot shorter than her, but what he lacked in height, he made up for in his stance. When he stared at her, his golden-hued eyes took on the darkness that surrounded them, making her instinctively twitch for the gun at her side.

  She stared down at him, forcing herself to act far more confident and self-assured than she felt in his presence. He couldn’t sense weakness in her. If he did, he and the bodyguards around him would certainly pounce. When it came to running guns, buyers tended to get skittish.

  Two years ago, in Egypt, one of her team’s sting operations had ended with a shipment of American weapons falling into the wrong hands—and the men on her team being murdered. They were part of the reason she had ended up here—men, especially those with a Napoleon complex, tended to be more than happy to play nice with a hot brunette. But she’d be crazy to think her looks would keep this from becoming a firefight.

  “We sell nothing but the best. You’d be a fool to think anything less,” she said.

  “Good. But will you also be providing more advanced weaponry or just the ARs?”

  He wanted the launchers. Of course he did. But rocket launchers weren’t something that they readily had on hand. Yet what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. For now, she just had to play along and make it out of this room alive.

  “How many did you want?”

  “Four thousand RPGs and ten thousand ARs. I need my men to have adequate coverage when they attack Ankara.”

  As he spoke the name of the city, she felt the warmth of the mic strategically stitched into her jacket. They had their location and an estimated number of enemy combatants—admittedly, a number far greater than they had anticipated. But perhaps it was Bayural’s plan to inflate the numbers. In the event any of their dealings leaked, he would appear far more powerful than he and his group really were.

  “What do you have available for us?” Bayural crossed his arms over his chest, covering his vital bits as he prepared to negotiate his price.

  No matter how he tried to protect himself, once her brothers bore down there would be no protection great enough. His life would be theirs for the taking.

  “The Type 91 Kai MANPAD rocket launcher will do everything from annihilating a door to wiping almost an entire city block clean with its shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles. They’re easy to carry, cheap and fast to reload. Everything you want.” She chuckled slightly as she realized how much she sounded like a used car salesman instead of a trained killer. Her mother would have been so proud.

  Bayural squatted down and picked up the sniper rifle. He lifted it up as he stood and shifted the gun in his hands as though he was weighing it. “Hand me a round,” he said, turning toward the guard to his right.

  The man pulled a round from his pocket. Bayural jacked the round into the chamber, smiling at the metallic click and slide sound the gun made.

  No. He couldn’t be allowed to actually shoot the rifle. It would be too dangerous. They were here to keep the general public from falling into harm’s way, not to place them into greater danger. “The gun is solid. The shipment will be solid. Our team, Black Dragon,
will get them to you by tomorrow.” She tried to sound nonchalant as she slipped in their fake name, the code word. Her team would be here any second to strike these bastards down.

  Finally, they could cut off the wolf’s head.

  “Tomorrow? I want them within the hour.” He lifted the rifle, pointing it directly at her center mass as he peered down the scope. “You can do that, can’t you?”

  She glanced toward the far wall, hoping like hell that she would see the laser signal letting her know her brothers were in place, but there was nothing.

  “When can we expect your shipment?” Bayural pressed.

  “First, I want my ten million.”

  Bayural smiled. “Ten is too much.”

  “With everything happening in Syria, prices have gone up for your standard RPGs. You know as well as I do that the market is at least two Gs per RPG. As for the ARs, you are getting a screaming deal. That’s less than two hundred a gun. We could get five if we went somewhere else.”

  He nodded slightly. “I’ll give you a G per RPG.”

  She laughed. Even if she had really had the weapons, there would be no way she would go for such a ridiculous deal, but she had to keep up the negotiation until her brothers arrived.

  “Or we will give you two if you can have our shipment to us within the hour.” Bayural’s pitch rose, like he was growing more nervous with each passing second.

  His bodyguard leaned in and said something in his ear, something far too quiet for her to hear. Bayural’s eyes widened and his brow furrowed. Whatever he said, it wasn’t good news.

  Her chest tightened, and her Kevlar vest suddenly seemed all too heavy.

  Her brothers should have been here by now, at her side. “We can do the hour, but I’ll have to talk to my team. Your order is larger than we were anticipating.”

  This was falling apart. Fast. She had to get out of there. She scanned the room for her planned exit point. The door to the alley was closed, barred from the inside. There was nothing to use as cover. It would take at least three seconds for her to get to the location, two to get the door open. Five seconds. Basically, a lifetime if they opened fire.

  He clicked off the safety, the gun’s barrel steady as it pointed at her. “Is something wrong, maybe you have something you want to tell us?” His voice threatening.

  “No,” she said, trying to appear relaxed as she took a step back. “But if you wish to have the deal go through, you need to lower that gun.”

  Bayural lowered the weapon slightly and motioned toward her with his chin. His guard took a step closer.

  “What are you doing?” she asked as the guard grabbed her wrist and pulled her arm behind her. Her shoulder pinched as he lifted her hand higher, forcing her to submit.

  Her instinct was to struggle and pull free, to launch into an attack. To get the hell out of there. But no, she had to trust her team. If they were waiting, there had to be a reason. They were trying to get more information. They must have needed more. She had to believe in her family.

  “Back off,” she growled at the guard. “Let go of my arm or the last thing you will see is me ripping it off and shoving it down your goddamned throat.”

  He lifted her wrist higher, forcing her to lean forward from the pressure.

  “Bayural, get your man—”

  “To stand down?” Bayural said, finishing her sentence. “Hardly. Who the hell do you think you are to command me?” He dropped the rifle to the ground and looked to his guard. “Break the stock.”

  She looked at the base where she had just run her fingers. The imperfection suddenly seemed so much larger.

  The guard picked up the gun and smashed it against the floor again and again until cracks formed in the plastic. He batted it against the concrete one more time, sending the small GPS tracker her team had planted in the plastic skittering across the floor.

  “You, your brothers, your sister, your team... You’re dead.”

  “You may get me, but you’ll never get the rest of them. We’re survivors.”

  “Even if I have to spend the rest of my days on this earth hunting every one of your family members down, I’ll do it. When I’m done, you and your kind won’t even be a memory. You will be nothing.”

  There was a smatter of gunfire outside the corrugated steel building. A round pinged against the metal siding, the sound echoing through her.

  With her free hand she reached down and pulled the knife from her boot. She jammed it deep into the guard’s foot. The man screamed, letting go of her arm in a panic to remove the blade.

  She grabbed her sidearm, taking aim at Bayural and pulling the trigger. The round ripped from the barrel, striking the man in the chest. Buyural didn’t seem to notice the hit. He must have been wearing a vest.

  The guards around him pulled their guns as she turned to find cover. Anything. Anywhere. She had to get the hell out of there. Now. She rushed toward the door as the sound of gunfire rained down upon her. The first round struck her in the thigh, ripping through her muscle with a searing heat, but there was no pain. Her ravaged thigh tripped her, the muscles failing to follow her brain’s command. Her body fell to the floor, but she pressed on, dragging her injured leg behind her as she crawled toward the back door.

  The door flew open, and standing in the nearly blinding light was her brother. “Trevor!” she screamed. “Get the hell out.”

  He ran toward her in what seemed like slow motion, but as he took two steps, the next round struck. Wetness. Warmth. Something had splattered her cheek.

  She stopped struggling as she pressed her fingers to her face and traced the spatter to the gaping hole in her neck. No. This couldn’t be real. This couldn’t be happening. Not like this. Not now.

  She sank to the floor as the blood poured from her.

  The concrete was cold against her face as she watched the pool of red grow. The world narrowed to a pinpoint until all she saw was Trevor. His face. He’d always been so handsome. So dangerously handsome. She’d miss her brother.

  She’d miss them all.

  Breathe. All she had to do was breathe. But as she struggled to fill her lungs, there was only a strange gurgling sound.

  She had been wrong to think this operation would be easy. Nothing in their lives had ever been simple. And now that misjudgment—and her desire to trust—would prove fatal.

  Copyright © 2019 by Danica Winters

  ISBN-13: 9781488046261

  Rules in Defiance

  Copyright © 2019 by Natascha Jaffa

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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