Excerpt:
Josiah King reached for his gun and grabbed only air. Not that a weapon
would do him any good. Shooting a wall-sized monitor wouldn’t stop the
bloodthirsty execution unfolding in front of him.
“What are you watching . . . Wait, where is this feed coming in from?”
Mike Shelby asked as he walked up to stand next to his team leader.
“Man, I hope this is some sort of training exercise because that guy looks like
shit.”
“It’s real. A video. One-way, and I have no idea how were getting it.”
But this was personal and meant for him. Josiah knew that much. “I’m pretty
sure it’s live.” It had to be because Josiah would know if this horror had
already happened. They all would. No, this hell played out in real time.
“So we can see this poor bastard but he can’t hear or see us?” Mike got
up close and squinted as his gaze scanned every inch of the screen. Even waved
his hand in front of the monitor. “I don’t get it. What exactly is this?”
Josiah feared he knew the answer. “A message.”
“For?”
“Me.” That’s really all he could say. He couldn’t wrap his mind around
the idea of his personal life being beamed into a secure facility as spectator
sport.
Mike glanced over, already frowning. “What?” Josiah kept staring up at
the center screen hanging right in front of him in the Warehouse, the de facto
headquarters of the undercover task force called the Alliance. He blinked a few
times, sure he’d fallen into a bleak nightmare he needed to fight and punch his
way out of if he ever wanted to breathe again.
Somehow he spat out the right answer. “Uncle.” Mike shifted the whole
way around and faced Josiah head on. “Uncle . . . as in your uncle?”
The man highlighted on the screen in front of them looked like a
version of the very formidable 3rd Earl of Stonechase, Thomas Benedict Asher, a
hereditary peer in the House of Lords. For Josiah, simply the uncle who taught
him how to fish. Now a man tied to a chair, his white hair sticking out in
every direction. His usually pristine white shirt ripped open to reveal the
folds of pale skin around his stomach and spray of gray hair on his chest.
Blood ran in a line from his temple. More pooled in a circle near his
heart. Yet more on his wrist. He’d been beaten and strapped down in a room
painted gray with high ceilings and dramatic print curtains. Josiah couldn’t
see the bookcases he knew lined the wall, but he recognized the desk.
Intricately carved, with a secret compartment used by his ancestors as they
passed the secrets of the four-story stone manse down from generation to
generation along with the title and the land.
It all looked familiar except for the bomb strapped to his uncle’s
chest and the obvious shake moving through him. Those were the parts that
finally registered in Josiah’s brain and kick-started him into action. This was
no nightmare. He couldn’t wake up, couldn’t unsee the scene unfolding in front
of him.
“Phone.” He snapped his fingers and pointed to his cell on the
conference table behind Mike. “Get me a phone.”
“It’s . . . it’s too late for me. I will . . . die.” His uncle’s voice,
usually perfectly smooth, held a rough edge as he stumbled over the words and
his voice trembled. He stared straight ahead, probably into a camera, in a way
that looked like he was talking directly to Josiah through the monitor. “No
matter what action you take that will happen.”
Mike froze as he handed over the cell. “Sweet Jesus.” Through the haze
falling over Josiah he realized the clipped words coming through the monitor
speakers weren’t delivered in his uncle’s normal style. That likely meant he
read from a script or something similar. No question someone wanted to deliver
a haunting message and decided to use an old man to do it.
“He says you caused this.” His uncle’s gaze darted up and to the right
as he spoke, as if he were taking direction from someone in the room.
Josiah hit a few buttons and dialed to get through to his uncle’s
house. A beeping sound greeted him, so he tried again, desperate to hear the
familiar voice.
“Anything?” Mike’s gaze did not waver from the screen as he slipped his
phone out of his back pocket.
“No.” He was going to fucking fail again. Josiah could feel it. Be so
close but not on time.
His heartbeat thundered in his chest. He’d spent a lifetime in the
intelligence service. Seen people cut down by bullets and shredded by
explosions. He’d stayed focused. Now, his mind took off on a wild rush and he
fought to wrestle it back under control. Strategies bombarded his brain, none
of them workable from his position on the grounds of Liberty Crossing, the
modern complex outside Washington, DC, that housed the National
Counterterrorism Center. Virginia had never seemed farther away from his
uncle’s London townhouse than right now.
“You and your team ruined everything.” His uncle visibly swallowed as
the trail of blood seeped down his cheek and his gaze stayed locked on the
camera, which must have sat just out of sight. “Now you’ll pay.”
“He’s being told what to say but seems to know he’s talking to you.”
Mike didn’t wait for agreement. He shook his head. “I’m calling everyone in.”
No one else stood in the room with them. Bravo leader Ford Decker had
his team practicing building raid maneuvers. Josiah had his Delta team muster
for weight training earlier but they’d all moved out after showers, taking the
rest of the day for some much-needed time off.
Somewhere the people who ran the Alliance sat in their offices across
the Liberty Crossing grounds. Being people with access to everything they’d
have access to this feed, as would other intelligence services, which were
likely monitoring and mobilizing. Josiah knew in the next five minutes people
would pour through the doors with theories and strategies. Later there would be
questions about how this video beamed into the Warehouse with such apparent
ease, about protocols and firewalls, but none of that mattered now.
He hit the emergency button and the metal doors clanked and locked with
heavy precision as the Warehouse switched into lockdown mode, trapping them
inside. The move would send a warning to the entire Alliance team. Bravo,
Delta, and admin would get the call to come rushing back to assist. As he
waited for that to happen he tried his uncle again, this time using private
backdoor numbers.
The ringing in his ear echoed on the monitor in front of him. His uncle
jerked at the sound but couldn’t go far in his chair thanks to the cords
binding him. Something in the room, something Josiah could not see, had his
uncle’s gaze shooting to that same corner spot again.
Then he looked directly into the camera. “You can’t stop this, Josiah.
Please don’t try . . .”
The brief break in his tone. Josiah read it as a personal plea. One he
had to ignore even as he knew to his soul no one could get to his uncle in time.
Phones started ringing in the Warehouse. Josiah could hear Mike
relaying information, likely to team members. The other monitors lining the
walls flickered to life in front of them and a steady hum filled the room as
computers turned on and paper started spilling out of the printer. Lines of
information filled one screen. Josiah knew his team had started working its
magic but the gnawing in his stomach, the rolling bile, told him whatever they
did would be too late.
Mike put a hand over the phone. “Where is he? Which residence are we
looking at?”
The behind-the-scenes recon had flipped into action. The people Josiah
trusted most in the world likely searched files and made calls to try to find a
peaceful end to this. “Belgrave Square. London.”
“Shit, nowhere near here.” Mike repeated the information and listened
for a second before disconnecting the line and going back to staring at the
screen. “They’re mobilizing MI5 or MI6 or whoever stops bullshit like this in
your country other than us.”
But Josiah knew it wasn’t that simple. His uncle possessed resources.
Serious resources. “He has security.” Mike shrugged. “We both know that can be
broken.”
He didn’t get it. “He has guards, Mike. A damn militia within shouting
distance at all times.” Josiah rubbed a hand over his face as he started to
pace.
“Who the hell is your uncle?”
He didn’t wallow and never felt helpless. Right now both sensations
raced through Josiah. “Someone hard to get to, which I’m assuming is the
message here. No one is safe, no matter how well-connected or high up in
government.”
He was about to say more, to explain why this could only be described
as surreal and impossible and how it shouldn’t be happening, but the words fell
away as he clenched the phone even tighter in his palm. He called the line that
went directly into his uncle’s home office again, hoping to get through to
someone in power and reason with him.
The second after the private line rang his uncle started talking again.
“He knows you’re the one calling.”
“Who is the ‘he’ leading all of this?” Mike asked to the monitor as a
second screen filled with images of men in uniform, approaching vehicles on the
way to the Belgravia residence.
One name popped into Josiah’s head and refused to leave. The name of
the same “he” the Alliance had been hunting across every continent, sifting
through every lead and turning over every rock, waiting for him to slither out.
“There’s only one person who knows enough background on us to come
straight at us like this.” Their nemesis, the enemy of every law enforcement
and intelligence operation in the world. The man who hid under the radar until
the Alliance had dragged him into the open seven months ago. They’d stopped a
major international sale he brokered among some of the worst motherfuckers
around, and then destroyed the delivery system he hid in Pakistan to spread a
new viral weapon of destruction.
Mike’s mouth dropped open. “It can’t be. No fucking way.”
“He wants you to know how this works . . . for . . .for next time.” His
uncle closed his eyes and his head dropped. The rest of the words muffled
against his chest. “Because he will not stop. I am only the first.”
Josiah needed to walk, to hit. Much more of watching this and he’d
crawl right out of his skin. Claw his own eyes out. “I can’t believe this.”
Mike grabbed the remote and zoomed in on the picture. “If it is him,
he’s smart enough to stay far off- screen.”
“Goddamn coward,” Josiah screamed at the screen even though he knew
only Mike could hear him.
The minute he had this guy, whoever he was and whatever he called
himself, Josiah would use more than words to eliminate the threat. Some people
looked at him and saw a proper British businessman. Little did they know what
lurked under the surface. The rage. The ability to turn off his humanity and
get the job done.
“The bomb is attached to me . . . to my . . .” His uncle squinted as he
looked away from the camera. “What did you say?”
A second later horror flashed across his uncle’s face. What was left of
the color drained away, replaced by an icy paleness that had Josiah dreading
the answer.
“Heartbeat.” His uncle coughed out the word as he faced them again. “As
it accelerates, it triggers the bomb.”
Mike turned to Josiah. “Is that even possible?”
He wanted to deny the possibility. They worked for an undercover group
that answered to few and were bound by almost no laws or internal government
rules. They saw fucking awful things on a daily basis. Women used as pawns and
literally ripped in half. Men thrown off buildings and burned alive. And those
were the lucky ones. But standing there as a mix of adrenaline and frustration
pumped through him, Josiah knew the sick truth.
“Look at the incision.” His gaze wandered over his uncle’s chest, then
down to his arm. “The blood. Even if making a human bomb isn’t possible,
someone wants us to believe it is.”
“If my heartbeat stays even, he has a . . .”
“A what?” Mike leaned in, as if he were having an actual conversation
through the screen.
Josiah watched as his uncle stared right into the camera, unblinking
and almost still, and opened his mouth. “Kill switch.”
“Fuck me.” Mike answered the phone and hung up again without talking.
“MI5 and SCO19 are moving in now.”
“Firearms Command, like British SWAT.” The words rolled off Josiah’s
tongue without even thinking them through first. He’d gone into operations
mode. Heard everything around him, saw the battle unfolding on the screens in
front of him. Only this time he would not be able to react in time. There
wouldn’t be a single defensive maneuver or offensive strike he could launch
before death took his uncle.
Mike blew out a long breath. “These armed squads can get in there and—”
“I will be the first but not the last,” his uncle said in a monotone
voice, clearly parroting the message he’d been ordered to communicate.
The camera moved back and panned around the room. Men in dark suits,
sprawled in lifeless heaps on the floor as blood ran from their bodies and
pooled on the carpet that had always been his uncle’s favorite. Worse, he was
giving up. Surrendering to the end and letting the terror go. Josiah heard it
in his uncle’s voice, saw it in the now-determined lines of his body.
The calmer his uncle became, the more unraveled Josiah felt. He ached
to do something—anything— even if it meant tearing the giant screen from the
wall and smashing it into pieces on the concrete Warehouse floor.
“You will all pay. You will all watch as . . .” Fear morphed into
sadness in his uncle’s eyes as he continued passing on the information he’d
clearly been kidnapped to tell. “You will all lose someone you care about.”
Mike grabbed his phone and started punching in numbers. The yelling
came next. “Where are these supposedly impressive reinforcements?”
“You need to . . .” His uncle leaned in.
Sensing his uncle was breaking from the prepared script again, Josiah
stepped closer to the screen, desperate to hear any piece of intel that might
help. Eager to keep his uncle talking until the gunmen had a chance to storm
in.
His uncle’s gaze darted around the room as he inhaled. Then his words
came out in a rush. “About forty and scarred with burns. He said his name is—”
A sharp bang rang out, making Josiah jump back. He started to rush
forward again but his knees buckled and he had to grab the corner of the table
to keep from falling as the room on the screen in front of him blew apart.
“No!” But Josiah knew he was too late.
A static buzz sounded in his ears. The talking, the pleading cut off,
and the heirloom desk vanished in an explosion of smoke. The room shifted on
him as his gaze traveled over the devastation. Everything inside him
stopped—his heartbeat, his breathing—as he looked at the splatter of blood and
flesh on the screen.
Being thousands of miles away didn’t save him from the pure brutality
of the moment. Someone he loved, broken down to nothing more than bone and
skin. Not recognizable. Not even human anymore.
“Holy shit.” Mike grabbed Josiah, locked his arms around him, and
wrestled him back. “Do not look.”
But he had to. It was all so unreal and impossible. His uncle had
people and prestige. This could not happen. “Let me go.”
Mike held on as he stepped in front of Josiah, blocking the direct line
of sight. “You don’t need to see any more of this.”
Just as Josiah broke free, the screen went blank. Completely black. He
could hear a crunching sound and decided his mind had shut down as some sort of
defense mechanism.
He stood there and rocked back on his heels. Buried his face in his
hands and silently cursed a world where shit like this happened. As if blowing
up another person were normal. “Fuck. I can’t believe . . . fuck.”
“Now what the hell is this?”
Josiah heard the shock in Mike’s voice and looked up. The black screen
had turned a smoky gray as the video snapped to life again. The crunching sound
grew louder and Josiah could make out legs through the haze. Hear the crackle
and thud as each footstep landed on unidentifiable piles of debris on the
floor.
The figure turned toward the camera but the lens never strayed higher than
knee-level from the floor. Bodies were scattered and shards of what looked like
wood stuck up here and there. Papers littered the area and a ball of
something—something Josiah feared was once his uncle—lay right between two
black wing-tipped dress shoes.
A voice broke into the horrible silence. “The name is Benton, but then
I think you know that.”
That word. One name. It’s all they had to go on. All any law
enforcement agency in the world had of the faceless, seemingly invisible
international terrorist who didn’t pick sides and delivered death and
destruction in the form of weapons sold to the highest bidder. A pure
psychopath. One sick fuck.
“He survived.” Mike shook his head. “We lit him on fire with a rocket
launcher months ago and he lived.”
But that was just it. They did hit him. Josiah knew that now. Gone was
the smooth, cultured tone he remembered from their one meeting. Now Benton
sounded winded, his voice scratchy. Josiah hoped that meant they’d done some
real damage to the guy while in Pakistan. Nothing compared to what Josiah
intended to do to him, but something he hoped hurt like hell, burned with pain,
every day since.
“Your uncle was a hard man to reach, Josiah.” A harsh laugh followed
the line. “But I did. I couldn’t get him to admit he knew you. So proper. So
dedicated to protocol and keeping your identity secure. It’s a shame your
actions killed him.”
Mike swore under his breath. “This guy sure does like to hear himself
talk.”
“I started with Josiah but you’ll all get a turn.” The figure they
assumed was Benton shifted as he used the toe of his shoe to push the body at
his feet to the side like nothing more than garbage. “Some of you will not be
able to hold on to your secrets.” He made an annoying tsk-tsking sound. “And
you should know once I kill those you care about most I’ll start again and keep
going until the head of everyone you know is splattered in pieces against a
wall.”
“Next time I’m putting the rocket launcher right up his ass before I
fire,” Mike said to the empty room.
“See you soon.” Benton delivered the line, then the screen blinked out.
For a few seconds they didn’t move. Didn’t talk. Alarms blared inside
the Warehouse and monitors not already on sparked to life all around the room.
Josiah heard a thunk as the lock on the main doors disengaged. The sound of
voices as team members flooded in.
“They won’t catch him.” The police could surround the house and lock it
down, and Benton would get out. Josiah didn’t doubt that for a second.
“No, but we will,” Mike said, making every word sound like a guarantee.
“Right.” Josiah stared at the dark screen. “We’re coming for you,
asshole.”
About FACING FIRE
HelenKay Dimon returns with
another hot installment of her romantic suspense series featuring the fierce
men of Alliance—a top-secret military security agency—and the only women who
can tame them.
When his uncle is brutally
murdered, Josiah King knows that business just got personal. His uncle’s ties
to the Alliance can mean only one thing: Josiah and his black ops team are
targets, along with everyone they love. Primed for vengeance, Josiah is
determined to unravel the plot—until long-legged redhead Sutton Dahl becomes a
dangerous distraction.
Sutton is very good at uncovering other people’s secrets—and protecting her own. When Josiah bursts into her life she’s torn between pushing him away and asking for his help. Mysterious, strong, and much too sexy, he’s a puzzle she longs to solve, and a temptation she can’t ignore.
Thrown together in the face of Alliance’s most lethal threat, Josiah and Sutton become unlikely partners, fighting for their lives even as the attraction between them flares into real passion. Torn between his team and the woman who means everything to him, Josiah will risk it all to save Sutton, even if that decision is his last.
Sutton is very good at uncovering other people’s secrets—and protecting her own. When Josiah bursts into her life she’s torn between pushing him away and asking for his help. Mysterious, strong, and much too sexy, he’s a puzzle she longs to solve, and a temptation she can’t ignore.
Thrown together in the face of Alliance’s most lethal threat, Josiah and Sutton become unlikely partners, fighting for their lives even as the attraction between them flares into real passion. Torn between his team and the woman who means everything to him, Josiah will risk it all to save Sutton, even if that decision is his last.
About HELENKAY DIMON
Helenkay Dimon spent the years before becoming a romance author as a .
. . divorce attorney. Not the usual transition, she knows. Good news is she now
writes full time and is much happier. She has sold over thirty novels, novellas
and shorts to numerous publishers. Her nationally bestselling and award-winning
books have been showcased in numerous venues and her books have twice been
named “Red-Hot Reads” and excerpted in Cosmopolitan magazine.
But if you ask her, she’ll tell you the best part of the job is never having to
wear pantyhose again.
Praise for HELENKAY DIMON
“The Bad Boys Undercover are back, and this third
installment gives readers everything they love: high stakes, intense action and
unexpectedly searing chemistry.”—RT Book
Reviews on FACING FIRE
“Nail-biting suspense and steamy romance are the
mainstays of this novel, as the protagonists must discover whether their
attractions stems from deeper emotions.”—Publishers
Weekly on FACING FIRE
“The latest high-adrenaline installment in
Dimon’s (Playing Dirty, 2015) Bad
Boys Undercover series delivers plenty of testosterone-fueled action and
smoking-hot sexual chemistry between a rough, tough, alpha hero and a
strong-willed heroine, who is more than his match. Give this one to fans of
Suzanne Brockmann or Cherry Adair.”—Booklist
Where to buy DIRTY TALK
HarperCollins: http://www.harpercollins.com/9780062330109/facing-fire
Barnes and Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/facing-fire-helenkay-dimon/1120998783
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/HelenKay_Dimon_Facing_Fire?id=FIgQBgAAQBAJ&hl
GIVEAWAY:
a Rafflecopter giveaway This product or book may have been distributed for review, this in no way affects my opinions or reviews. COPYRIGHT © 2014 LIVE TO READ
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