by Elle James
They’ll have to trust each other
in order to survive this mission.
After escaping Trinity, a terrorist organization, trained assassin CJ Grainger has insider knowledge about the group’s plans, but she needs resources that Cole McCastlain, a member of Declan’s Defenders, can provide. Yet they face a dilemma: they must either facilitate the deaths of government officials or become Trinity’s next targets. CJ and Cole will make it out alive only if they can place their lives in each other’s hands.
Cole’s burner phone vibrated. His pulse leaped and he lifted it to his ear. “It’s me.”
“It’s me,” she echoed.
Cole smiled. CJ’s husky voice flowed over him like warm chocolate.
“Now, tell me…did you find a place to stay?”
“For now.”
“Any trouble getting away from the Trinity guy after you?”
“No.”
She wasn’t very forthcoming. Cole sighed. “What are my chances of actually seeing you so that I can protect you?”
She laughed. “Slim to none. I don’t need protection.”
“Would you have made it out of the library without my help?”
“Yes.”
“Did my assistance help you make it out without an altercation?”
She hesitated. “Yes.”
“It can’t be easy searching on public computers. Charlie has a room full of computers in a secure location.”
“Thanks, but I’ll manage.”
He felt her pulling away. “CJ?”
She didn’t answer, but the line didn’t go dead.
Cole continued. “I really want to help you.”
“Find the Director.”
“We’re working on it,” he said, wanting to reach through the airwaves and grab her hand.
DISRUPTIVE FORCE
New York Times Bestselling Author
Elle James
Elle James, a New York Times bestselling author, started writing when her sister challenged her to write a romance novel. She has managed a full-time job and raised three wonderful children, and she and her husband even tried ranching exotic birds (ostriches, emus and rheas). Ask her, and she’ll tell you what it’s like to go toe-to-toe with an angry 350-pound bird! Elle loves to hear from fans at [email protected] or ellejames.com.
Books by Elle James
Harlequin Intrigue
Declan’s Defenders
Marine Force Recon
Show of Force
Full Force
Driving Force
Tactical Force
Disruptive Force
Mission: Six
One Intrepid SEAL
Two Dauntless Hearts
Three Courageous Words
Four Relentless Days
Five Ways to Surrender
Six Minutes to Midnight
Ballistic Cowboys
Hot Combat
Hot Target
Hot Zone
Hot Velocity
SEAL of My Own
Navy SEAL Survival
Navy SEAL Captive
Navy SEAL to Die For
Navy SEAL Six Pack
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Cole McCastlain—Former Force Recon marine dishonorably discharged from the military; good with computers.
CJ Grainger—Trained to be an assassin by a secret organization called Trinity. She wants to stop Trinity from turning children into weapons.
Charlotte “Charlie” Halverson—Rich widow of a highly prominent billionaire philanthropist. Leading the fight for right by funding Declan’s Defenders.
Gordon Helms—Vice president of the United States.
Chris Carpenter—Homeland Security Advisor to the president.
Roger Arnold—Charlie Halverson’s butler and former UK SAS soldier.
Mack Balkman—Former Force Recon marine, assistant team leader and Declan’s right-hand man. Grew up on a farm and knows hard work won’t kill you—guns will.
Declan O’Neill—Highly trained Force Recon marine who made a decision that cost him his career in the Marine Corps. Dishonorably discharged from the military, he’s forging his own path with the help of a wealthy benefactor.
Frank “Mustang” Ford—Former Force Recon marine, point man. First into dangerous situations, making him the eyes and ears of the team.
Augustus “Gus” Walsh—Former Force Recon marine radio operator; good with weapons, electronics and technical equipment.
Jack Snow—Former Force Recon marine slack man, youngest member of the team, takes all the heavy stuff. Not afraid of hard, physical work.
I dedicate this book to my three children, who are now grown and successful adults; to my husband, who supports my crazy habit of writing books; to my mother, who has encouraged me from the beginning; to my sister, who started this journey with me; and to my father, who taught me the value of hard work and perseverance. Family is everything and I love all of them dearly.
I miss you, Dad.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Excerpt from Conflicting Evidence by Lena Diaz
Chapter One
Are you still assigned to help me? CJ Grainger hesitated before she sent the text to Cole McCastlain. The former member of Marine Force Reconnaissance now worked for Declan’s Defenders, the small but dedicated agency created to help fight for justice when the police, FBI and CIA couldn’t get the job done.
A week ago, CJ had helped Declan’s Defenders by providing them information she’d found on the dark web about a potential assault on the National Security Council meeting.
That attack had gone down as predicted. The VP and Anne Bellamy, a mid-level staffer for the National Security Advisor, had been taken hostage, amid another plot involving a deadly serum. Fortunately, Declan’s team had been ready. They’d rescued the vice president and the staffer, killed two Trinity sleeper agents embedded within the White House staff as well as two other agents who’d worked with them to abduct the hostages.
Trinity.
Even the thought of the name and organization made CJ break out in a sweat. She’d spent the past year hiding in plain sight. One of very few who’d escaped Trinity and lived.
I’m here, Cole texted.
Again, CJ hesitated. On her own for so long, she’d survived because of her independence and ability to disguise herself. She’d been very careful not to leave a trail a trained hacker, private investigator or Trinity-trained assassin could follow. And she didn’t have anyone to be used as leverage. No Achilles’ heel, no loved one Trinity could hold hostage to get her to come out into the open.
The part about no loved ones had been one of the reasons she’d been recruited into the Trinity training program in the first place. And by “recruited,” she meant stolen out of a foster care home she’d been placed in by Virginia State Social Services.
The state of Virginia hadn’t spent a lot of time and resources looking for a child nobody wanted.
Years ago, as a young adolescent, she’d been assimilated, brainwashed and
forced to learn how to fight, how to defend herself and how to kill people Trinity ordered her to eliminate.
Until one year ago.
They’d ordered her to kill a pregnant woman. The wife of a senator. When CJ had sighted her rifle on the woman, who’d been probably eight and a half months along in her pregnancy, she hadn’t been able to pull the trigger. She’d hesitated, wondering if the baby was a boy or girl and thinking that if she killed the child’s mother, she’d be without a parent. And knowing that if Trinity decided the father was of no further use to them or was a risk who could expose someone within the organization, the father would be eliminated, as well. That would leave the child parentless.
Having been parentless, CJ had refused to let that happen to the unborn child.
Her hesitation hadn’t helped the woman. Trinity had a second assassin waiting on a rooftop to do the job if CJ wouldn’t.
The shot was fired, the bullet piercing the woman’s belly, killing the baby instantly. It wasn’t until much later that CJ learned the mother had died in transit to the hospital.
After she’d failed to take the kill shot, CJ had known what would happen next. Since most Trinity agents didn’t get second chances if they failed an assignment, she knew the man who’d assassinated the pregnant woman and her baby would be turning his rifle on her.
CJ, anticipating the inevitable, had ducked low, out of the sight line of the rooftop from where the gunman leveled his sniper rifle and pulled the trigger.
The bullets flew well over her head. She’d tucked her rifle into the golf bag she’d carried up to the rooftop and then crawled to the door and descended to the first floor. There, she hid her golf bag under the last step of the staircase, planning to retrieve it after the furor died down.
In the meantime, she’d pulled a hooded jacket out of her satchel and slipped it on over her sweater. The added bulk made her appear heavier. She slipped on a pair of black-rimmed plastic glasses and tucked her hair under the hood of the jacket. Then she jammed her hands into the pockets of her jeans and hunched her shoulders like a teen trying to be invisible. Slipping out of the apartment building, she’d blended into the rush of people heading home from work.
Instead of going to her apartment, she’d kept walking. Nothing in that apartment meant anything to her. It had been a place to sleep and shower. She always carried everything she needed in the satchel she’d slung over her shoulder. A laptop, a couple changes of clothes, three wigs in varying colors, makeup and her Glock 9mm pistol. She’d also had a burner phone in her pocket, along with a wad of cash and a couple of credit cards that would have to be shredded since she’d become a target for the same organization she’d worked for.
For the past year, she’d been on the run, dodging shadows and living from day to day looking over her shoulder.
Are you in trouble? Cole’s second message brought CJ back from her memories to the task at hand.
Are you still digging into Trinity conspirators? she texted.
CJ didn’t want help, but she had to find the leader of Trinity before he found her. Two or three people searching the internet was better than one person using borrowed internet from public libraries.
Yes.
Look into Chris Carpenter, the Homeland Security Advisor for the National Security Council.
Cole’s response was quick.
Got anything to go on? Any clues?
CJ hated to say she had a gut feeling about the man. A trained assassin relied on cold, hard facts, disregarding emotion and luck.
Prior to the attack in the NSC, the conference room coordinator received a text from Carpenter.
The guy who helped kidnap Anne Bellamy and the vice president?
Yes.
His assistant, Dr. Saunders, was the woman who was almost killed in a hit-and-run accident, wasn’t she?
That’s the one.
On it.
CJ had been doing her own digging on the dark web via the Arlington Public Library. She’d hacked in, making it past the firewall of the phone system used by Chris Carpenter to his billing information. She’d narrowed her search of his calls to the day of the attack. She’d gone through his phone records, searching for a connection to Terrence Tully, the conference room coordinator for the NSC meeting, and found one.
Terrence Tully had been one of Trinity’s sleeper agents, embedded in the White House, waiting for his call to serve.
That day, he’d helped orchestrate the kidnapping of the VP and Anne Bellamy, the woman CJ had contacted to warn about the attack.
Can we meet? Cole asked.
CJ frowned. Any contact she had with others put them at risk. She’d already broken the first rule she’d made for herself upon her defection from Trinity: stay away from anyone or anything to do with the organization. Including people who were actively searching to destroy it.
She’d broken that rule by contacting Anne to warn her of the attack.
Then she’d involved herself in Declan’s Defenders’ rescue effort. If that wasn’t bad enough, she’d gone to their base location at Charlotte Halverson’s estate. The Defenders knew more about her than she’d wanted to divulge, including what she looked like. And they’d assigned one of Declan’s men to be her protector and backup.
CJ snorted. Like she’d let that happen. If she allowed anyone to get that close to her, it would be one more way for Trinity to find her and the agent would be collateral damage when Trinity came to kill her.
Being a loner was better for all involved.
She typed, If I need you, I’ll find you.
CJ backed out of Carpenter’s phone records she’d been perusing and went back on the dark web, digging into anything she could find that might lead her to Trinity’s leader, the best kept secret in the entire organization.
When she’d first left Trinity, her main focus had been on staying alive and out of their way. It didn’t take her long to realize, however, that she’d never be truly safe until the organization was destroyed. And the best way to do that was to find its leader and destroy him. Because of the recent Trinity activity in the DC area and the fact that it was a world capital, she felt confident that Trinity’s head was somewhere in the vicinity.
A little more than a week ago, she’d found a particular website with a forum where anyone could anonymously arrange to hire a hit man. It seemed assassins for hire didn’t like that Trinity was an exclusive organization they couldn’t crack. Some of the people on the site had it out for Trinity and had made it a personal challenge to identify its leadership and/or to sabotage the organization’s hits. It was on that site through online chats and more that CJ had learned about the potential attack on the White House during the NSC meeting.
Going to the site, CJ went directly to the message board.
Still looking for the Director, she typed.
A few seconds later she received this response: They’re still looking for you.
Weary of the chase, the worry and living below the radar, she wrote, Time to stop T.
The time will come. We will find the Director.
Today?
Probably not.
The next message made her pulse pound.
Someone knows where you are.
CJ frowned.
How do you know?
Message traffic on another site, listing IP address of Arlington library.
She glanced out the glass window of the computer room to the library beyond. Moms were helping their children carry stacks of books to the counter, and a college student with a backpack leaned over the desk to ask the librarian a question. No one looked like a Trinity assassin. But then, she had been one and had been trained to blend in.
Where are you seeing this? she typed.
No time.
He’s here now?
Now. Run. Don’t go home. Compromised.
CJ cleared the browser, cleared the screen and logged off the computer. She ducked low, pretending to get something from her backpack. Instead of putting something in, she took out the blond wig cut in a short bob, pulled it on and quickly stuffed her own auburn hair beneath it. Then she took off her black leather jacket and crammed it into the backpack, straightening her pale pink T-shirt with the cartoon kitty on the front. Setting a pair of round sunglasses on her nose to hide her green eyes and popping a piece of bubble gum into her mouth, she stood.
Disguise in place, CJ exited the room through the opposite door from where she’d entered and slipped through the stacks, weaving her way along the travel section into the how-to books.
A gray-haired man peered at a gardening book for beginners. A young woman perused a book on designing websites.
CJ moved past them. She’d have to go through the front entrance to get out without setting off any emergency exit alarms.
A group of two women and six children ranging in ages from five to fourteen loaded books into bags and headed toward the door.
The college student stood at the magazine display, leafing through the tabloids.
CJ crossed the open space in front of the checkout desk and trailed the group of women and children out of the building and into the parking lot. She looked around, keeping the door to the library in her peripheral vision.
CJ moved across the parking lot in the opposite direction of the children, not wanting them to be collateral damage should the situation get sticky. She kept walking, figuring the farther away from the library she got, the better. Once she knew she’d shaken whoever might be after her, she’d hop on a bus and head for...
Hell if she knew. If the apartment she’d rented had been compromised, she couldn’t go back there.
Footsteps sounded on the pavement behind her.
CJ stepped around a large SUV and chanced a look back.
The college student had followed her out of the library. He had slipped his backpack off his shoulder and was reaching inside.
CJ made it to the sidewalk, quickly passing shops and other buildings until she found the right one. She ducked into the restaurant and walked to the back. The dim lighting forced her to remove the sunglasses. Following a waitress, she entered the kitchen.