War Bringer
Authors: Elaine Levine
Tags: #military romance, #alpha heroes, #Contemporary Romance, #Romantic Suspense
WAR BRINGER
A
Red Team Novel
by
© 2016 by Elaine Levine. All rights reserved
War Bringer Blurb
The Covert Operative…
Kelan Shiozski wasn’t looking for a girlfriend or a wife or any other sort of female in his life, but he found her hiding in his enemy's home...and he knew instantly she was his soul mate.
Patience has long been part of his warrior ethos—until it meant waiting for his woman to come of age. Now that time is here, and he’s about to spend three days alone with her, away from his team, away from their mission tracking a homegrown terrorist group operating out of the Rocky Mountains. He has three days to show her, with his heart and his body, what it means to be his other half.
But when she’s kidnapped before their celebratory weekend, Kelan must track her into the dark depths of a hidden crime world, which few ever experience or exit alive.
…And the Innocent
At just twenty-one, Fiona Addison has lived a sheltered life that began unraveling a year earlier when her mom and her friend died in two separate car accidents the same week. The layers are peeling away, revealing who she really is, culminating in a truth she cannot accept.
And now, everything she learns about herself imperils the future she hoped to have with Kelan, a man whose fierce warrior nature will not let her go despite the cost to himself.
They’ll either live together or die together...a fate they cannot let be decided by a madman.
Dedication
For Barry, who never lets my brand of crazy delay dinner.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to my team of beta readers. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your fitting my emergency reading requests into your packed schedules!
A special shout-out goes to my readers who made this story and this entire series possible simply through your encouragement. Your frequent reminders that I’m not on this journey alone mean everything to me!
A Note from the Author:
We begin
War Bringer
at the point where
Assassin’s Promise
left off. To maximize your enjoyment of this serialized story, I highly recommend reading the series in order, starting with
The Edge of Courage
and including the Red Team wedding novellas
,
before beginning this book!
As a fun extra, I’ve included at the back of this book a chapter of Abbie Zander’s book,
Dangerous Secrets
—the first story in her amazing Callahan Brothers series. If you enjoy sampling stories from authors I admire, drop me a note so I know to do this with future books!
* * * * * SPOILERS! * * * * *
Here’s a refresher for those of you who have read the previous Red Team books (skip this and go read them if you haven’t yet!). When we were last with our Red Team heroes…
- Greer and Remi uncovered the Friendship Community’s involvement in King’s biowarfare experiments with smallpox.
- Greer and Remi have decided to pursue their relationship.
- Greer learned what happened to Sally, the girl who tried to kill Kit in
Honor Unraveled
.
- Mandy and Ivy are pregnant.
- Rocco and Mandy have hired Wynn Ratcliff as a teacher/babysitter for Zavi.
- Rocco is still struggling with his PTSD.
- Someone—was it Greer? Ty? Owen? King?—killed Senator Whiddon.
- Kit asked Val to look into Ivy’s new waitress, Ace Myers, who has a mysterious background.
- Selena fired both Val and Owen as romantic interests.
- It’s September, and the team is in their fourth month of investigation.
- Fiona was kidnapped at the end of
Assassin’s Promise
.
And now, we continue with Kelan Shiozski and Fiona Addison’s story in
War Bringer
…
Chapter
One
How much loss one person could survive wasn’t something Fiona Addison ever wanted to learn. But learn it, she did.
Her sophomore year at Colorado State University began with the fatal car accidents that took her mom and friend and ended with her stepdad’s death. She lost everything…and found her heart in the wreckage of her life.
His name was Kelan Shiozski.
A former member of the elite Red Team special operations unit in the Army, he was part of the private security team that exposed the terrorists her stepdad had been working for.
Kelan had been there for her when her life had imploded, an anchor in a world that no longer made sense. Fiona drew a deep breath. Just thinking of him made her feel safe.
She was on her way up to the team’s headquarters to spend her birthday weekend with him. Her skin tingled at the thought of finally moving their relationship to the next level—a thing he’d refused to do until she was twenty-one.
The remote highway she drove between Colorado and Wyoming was especially scenic on a late summer evening like this, with the sun casting orange light over green hills and granite outcroppings. Her excitement for the weekend sharpened her senses; colors were brighter, scents richer. God, she couldn’t wait to be with Kelan.
She checked her mirrors. A couple of white vans were quickly approaching in the left lane, going a lot faster than the speed limit that she was already exceeding.
She looked forward again as the first one passed her. The second one slowed down and moved over to her lane. Weird that there were two white vans so close together. Could be they worked for the same company and were in a hurry to end their workday.
She grinned. She was in a hurry to get up to Kelan, so she could understand the need for speed.
The first van moved into her lane then hit his brakes. Maybe it realized how fast it was going. There weren’t a lot of cops on this road, but if any were lying in wait, they’d pull these guys over in an instant.
The van behind her got closer. The one in front of her slowed even more. She watched in confusion and growing fear as they got dangerously close to her, realizing too late that they were trying to run her off the road. She hit her brakes, but that was a big mistake, as her slower speed let them maneuver in closer. She tried to change lanes, but her car jolted as they blocked her in.
* * *
Waiting for Fiona to turn twenty-one made Kelan Shiozski feel as if he wore his skin inside out. But that wait was at an end; they would be celebrating her birthday this weekend.
It was time to talk about the claiming ceremony. He wasn’t in a hurry for the ceremony… Well, yeah, he kind of was. He was ready for them to be together forever.
He checked his watch again. Fiona had planned to leave Colorado a little later than usual today. She’d been good about varying her schedule, her route home, being alert and aware. This evening, she’d stayed in town to get her homework finished so that she could give him her complete focus for three full days.
He didn’t like her being so far away during the week, but it was working. So far. He especially loved that her school week ended Thursday afternoons, since she didn’t have classes on Fridays this semester.
He made another turn about the room, trying to keep his mind from thinking about locking the two of them in his room for the next few days.
A weekend was not going to be long enough, but it was a start. He’d already made it clear to Kit that he was off the clock. He was going to take Fiona over to the site he’d selected for their claiming ceremony. It would be a good time and place to explain to her what the ceremony was all about.
The guys were gathering in the living room, though it was a while yet until supper. Plenty of time still for Fiona to join them. The team had had a big break at the Friendship Community, blowing King’s biowarfare lab wide open. Felt as if things were turning in their favor at last.
His phone rang. He saw Fiona’s number and instantly got a hard-on. “Hi, babe. What’s up?”
“Kelan?”
Her voice was breathless.
“No. No. Stop it! Kelan, help me—”
Static came across the line. Kelan froze. “Fiona? Fiona?”
“Fiona’s not your worry anymore,”
said a man.
“She’s heading to her true home. If you know what’s good for her…and you, you’ll forget you ever knew her.”
Kelan straightened and frowned. “Who is this?”
The line went dead.
Shock froze Kelan as he stared down at his cell phone. None of the guys in the room moved either. He felt as if he were watching himself from a safe distance, someplace soft and numb, where he couldn’t feel the blood leaving his heart in an undertow of fear.
He looked at Greer. “They have Fiona.”
Greer hurried over, phone in hand. “Fee’s phone shows her moving south on Highway 287, back toward Colorado.”
Kelan pocketed his cell and went into the hall, heading for the garage. He grabbed a set of keys to one of the team’s SUVs and had the door to the garage open when Kit stopped him. Kelan shrugged free and jogged down the steps into the garage.
“Hang on, Kelan,” Kit said. “Fee could be God knows where by the time you make it down to where she is now. We don’t know what we’re dealing with, if she’s bait to get to you, to us.”
Kelan glared at him. “I know my woman’s been taken by our enemies. I know she’s headed south. And I know I’m hitting the road. Send me updates when you have them.” He looked at Kit just before getting into the SUV. “And if I’m bait, they can have me.”
Kit’s lips were pressed tightly against his teeth. “Angel, take shotgun,” he snapped.
* * *
Kelan navigated onto the narrow mountain road that Wyoming called a highway and sped toward Laramie, where he’d be able to pick up the road Fiona’s captors were on.
Angel monitored her progress on his phone. Kelan looked over every few minutes, watching the red dot blink in and out. It was a lifeline for him; as long as it beat, she was still alive, still traceable.
Five minutes later, it stopped moving. “What happened?” Kelan barked.
Angel changed the screen to get more detail about the location. “They probably tossed her phone. Looks about twenty minutes outside of Fort Collins.” He glanced over at Kelan. “It’s just her phone, man. I’m sure she’s okay. They wouldn’t take her just to kill her. She’s leverage for something—she has value to them. For now, at least.”
Kelan met his eyes. His hands tightened on the wheel as he faced forward again. There were only a few ways to get to Laramie from Fort Collins, where her university was, and only a single route from Laramie up into the Medicine Bows, where the team headquarters was. He should have met her. He should have picked her up. There was so much distance between them. It had been his greatest fear something like this might happen.
That it might have happened even if she’d switched to the University of Wyoming instead of continuing at Colorado State University was cold comfort at the moment.
He should have hired a bodyguard. At the very least, a chauffeur.
But even that was no guarantee of her safety. A chauffeur could have been compromised or killed. The truth was there was no level of security that could have ensured her safety against someone intent on harming or abducting her.
Because of him and the work the team did.
He should have insisted she sit out a semester or two until things settled down in the mission.