Kitabı oku: «Battle Tested»
Someone WAS always watching her…
Everywhere she went, Rosalyn Mellinger had eyes on her. The Watcher followed her everywhere. It seemed hopeless, inescapable…especially when she met Steve Drackett on vacation. Another person to be hurt by her stalker. But Rosalyn didn’t know Steve was part of Omega Sector—there was literally no one better to protect her, if she’d just open up to him. He had years of experience, and while the Watcher preyed upon Rosalyn, Steve would beat him at his own game.
But Rosalyn had a secret even Steve couldn’t see coming: a baby from their vacation romance…
Omega Sector: Critical Response
Steve did something he hadn’t done in twenty years of law enforcement: lowered his weapon in shock.
“Rosalyn?”
She reached up and lowered the hood of her windbreaker as she turned completely around.
It was her. Beautiful black hair, gorgeous blue eyes. Even the splattering of freckles over her nose. Rosalyn was alive.
Which was impossible because he’d just ID’d her dead body a few hours ago. Steve didn’t care. By whatever miracle she was here—and he would get her to explain it all, no doubt—he would take it.
He holstered his weapon and pulled her into his arms. Then yanked her back immediately, looking closer at the rest of her body.
Rosalyn was here. She was alive.
And unless he was very, very wrong, she was definitely pregnant.
Battle Tested
Janie Crouch
JANIE CROUCH has loved to read romance her whole life. The award-winning author cut her teeth on Mills & Boon Romance novels as a preteen, then moved on to a passion for romantic suspense as an adult. Janie lives with her husband and four children overseas. She enjoys traveling, long-distance running, movie watching, knitting and adventure/ obstacle racing. You can find out more about her at www.janiecrouch.com.
This book is dedicated to my aunt Donna. You are a blessing
to me and so many others. Thank you for all the times you
brushed my hair (because goodness knows I didn’t do it)
and loved me like a second mother. And for teaching me that
romance books are the best books.
Contents
Cover
Back Cover Text
Introduction
Title Page
About the Author
Dedication
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
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Extract
Copyright
Chapter One
Rosalyn Mellinger had reached her breaking point.
She was exhausted, frightened and about to run out of money.
Sitting in a diner in Pensacola, Florida, one she’d chosen because she could see both the front customer door and the rear employee entrance from her corner booth, she huddled around the third cup of coffee she’d had with her meager meal, stretching out her stay here as long as possible.
Although sitting with her back to the wall didn’t help when she had no idea what the person who stalked her looked like. She tensed every time the tiny bell chimed signaling someone new had come through the door, like it had just now.
The couple in their mid-eighties, entering and shuffling slowly to a table, were definitely not the Watcher.
But she knew he was around. She knew because she would get a note later tonight—or an email or a text or a phone call—that would say something about her meal here. About what she’d eaten or the name of her waitress or how she’d used sweetener in her coffee rather than sugar.
Some sort of frightening detail that let her know the Watcher had been nearby. Just like he had been for the last five months. She scanned faces of other patrons to see who might be studying her but couldn’t find anyone who looked like they were paying her any attention.
It always seemed to be that way. But still the Watcher would know details as if he had been sitting here at the booth with Rosalyn. And would mention the details in a message to her, usually a note slid under her door in the middle of the night.
Rosalyn clutched her coffee cup, trying to get her breathing under control.
Or maybe the Watcher wouldn’t say anything about the diner at all. Maybe he wouldn’t contact her for days. That happened sometimes too. Rosalyn never knew what to expect and it kept her on the precipice of hysteria.
All she knew for certain was the constant acid of fear burning in her gut.
Her waitress, Jessie, who couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen years old, wiped the table next to Rosalyn’s, then came to stand by her booth. The kid looked decidedly uncomfortable.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but my manager said I would have to ask you to leave if you’re not going to order anything else. The dinner crowd is coming in.”
The burn in Rosalyn’s belly grew at the thought of leaving the diner, although she didn’t know why. She was no safer from the Watcher in here than she was somewhere else.
He’d found her again last night. Rosalyn had been in Pensacola for four days, staying at a different run-down hotel each night. Three nights had passed with no message, no notes, and she’d let just the slightest bit of hope enter her heart that she had lost the Watcher permanently.
Heaven knew she had driven around enough times to get rid of anyone who followed. Hours’ worth of circles and sudden turns around town to lose any tails. Then she had parked at a hotel before sneaking across strip malls and a small park to another hotel about a mile away just in case there was some sort of tracker on her car. It seemed to have worked for three nights.
Rosalyn thought maybe she had figured it out. That the Watcher had been tracking her car and that’s how he always found her. She would gladly leave the car rotting in the wrong hotel parking lot if it meant she could get away from the man who stalked her.
But then last night a note had been slipped under the hotel door as she slept.
When she saw the envelope lying so deceptively innocently on the floor of her hotel by the door as she woke up this morning, she promptly vomited into the trash can by the bed.
She finally found the strength to get up and open the unsealed envelope and read the note. Handwritten, like them all.
Sorry I haven’t been around for a few days. I know you must have missed me. I missed you.
She almost vomited again, but there was nothing left in her stomach.
She took the note and put it in the cardboard box where she kept all the other notes. Then she meticulously put the box back inside her large duffel bag. From her smaller tote bag, the one she always kept with her, she took out her notebook. With shaky hands she logged the date and time she found the note, and its contents.
She’d taken her bags and gone back to her car—a tracker there obviously wasn’t the problem—and driven toward the beach and ended up at this diner. She needed to get on the move again. But she didn’t know how—her savings from when she’d had a decent-paying job as an accountant were gone. And she didn’t know where she would go even if she had had money.
The Watcher found her no matter where she went.
Sometimes she was convinced he was in her head since he seemed to know everything she did and thought. But that would mean she was crazy.
An idea that was becoming more and more acceptable.
Rosalyn rubbed her eyes. Exhaustion weighed every muscle in her body.
“Ma’am?”
None of this was her waitress’s fault. She turned to the girl, who seemed so much younger even though she was probably only five or six years less than Rosalyn’s twenty-four. “Of course. I’m sorry, Jessie. Just let me pay my bill and get my stuff together.”
Jessie shuffled her feet. “No need to pay anything. I already took care of that for you. Pay it forward and all that.”
Rosalyn wanted to argue. Jessie had been working hard the three hours Rosalyn had been in the booth. The girl was probably saving up for college and needed the money.
But the truth was, Rosalyn was down to her last twenty dollars. Not having to pay six dollars for her meal would help a lot.
Being able to live a normal life and return to a regular job would help a lot more, but Jessie’s gesture was still touching.
“Thank you,” Rosalyn whispered to the girl. “I truly appreciate it.”
“I can probably hold my manager off for another thirty minutes if that will help you. I’m sorry I can’t do more.”
“No. I’ll be fine. Thanks.”
The girl nodded and walked away.
Rosalyn wondered if she would read about her conversation with Jessie later tonight in the note the Watcher left her. Or even worse, if Jessie would end up dead. That had happened three months ago with the detective in Shreveport, Louisiana, when she’d passed through. Rosalyn had taken a chance and told him what was happening and found, to her surprise, that he believed her. Detective Johnson was the one who suggested she keep all the notes and take photos of any texts and try to record any phone messages. He was the one who got her the notebook and told her to write down everything that happened.
The relief to find someone who believed her, who didn’t think she was just out for attention like her family had, was overwhelming. Finally the feeling of not being utterly alone.
Unfortunately, Detective Johnson—a healthy fifty-year-old man—suddenly died of a heart attack two days after meeting with Rosalyn. He was found in his bed. Natural causes, the newspaper said. Rosalyn was heartbroken that she’d so unfortunately lost the one person who had listened and believed her.
Until she received an anonymous email the next day with a link to a drug called succinylcholine. A drug that in a large enough dose caused heart attacks but was virtually untraceable in a victim’s system.
Detective Johnson’s death had been no accident.
Neither had the mechanic’s—a man named Shawn who had been super nice and repaired Rosalyn’s car at a deeply discounted rate a month ago in Memphis. She mentioned to him that she was on the run. Didn’t want to say more than that, but he asked. Shawn’s sister had an ex who had turned violent and terrorized her. Shawn recognized some of the same symptoms in Rosalyn. He pressed and Rosalyn gave him some details. Not all of them, but enough. He invited her to his mother’s house for dinner, explaining the importance of not going through something like this alone.
Rosalyn, almost desperate for a friend, agreed. When she came back to the shop that night, she found the place surrounded by cops.
Shawn had been a victim of a “random act of violence” as he was closing up his garage. He was dead.
She still had the newspaper clipping that had been slipped under her door the next morning.
Rosalyn rubbed her stomach against the burn. She hadn’t spoken to a single person about the Watcher since that day. She’d just kept on the run, trying to stay ahead of him.
He’d found her again. Pensacola was the sixth town she’d moved to in five months. He always found her. She wasn’t sure how.
Exhaustion flooded her as she grabbed her tote bag and walked toward the door. Jessie gave her a small wave from behind the servers’ station and Rosalyn smiled as best she could. She was almost to the entrance when she stopped and turned around, walking back to Jessie.
The girl looked concerned. For Rosalyn or because of her, Rosalyn couldn’t tell. Rosalyn took six dollars out of her bag.
“Here.” She handed the money to Jessie. “Paying for my meal was very kind and I’m sure it will get you karma points. But I know you’re working hard, so I’ll pay for my own meal.”
“Are you sure?”
No, she wasn’t sure. All she knew was that she couldn’t take a chance that something would happen to this pretty young woman because she’d spotted Rosalyn six dollars’ worth of salad and chicken.
“Yes.” She pressed the money into Jessie’s hand. “Thanks again, though.”
Rosalyn turned and walked out the door feeling more lonely than she had in...ever.
She couldn’t do this anymore.
What good was it to run if the Watcher was just going to find her again? What good did it do to talk to people if any ties she made were just going to get them hurt?
And at what point would the Watcher stop toying with her and just finish her off? Rosalyn had no doubt her death was his endgame. She just didn’t know when or how.
Maybe she should just save him the trouble and do it herself. At least then she would have some measure of control.
She looked down the block toward the beach. She would go sit there. Think things through. Try to figure out a plan.
Even if that plan meant taking her own life. That had to be better than allowing innocent people to die because of her. Or living in constant fear with no end in sight.
She began walking toward the beach. She would sit on the sand, watch the sunset. Because damn it, if this was going to be her last day on earth—either by her own hand or the Watcher’s—she wanted to feel the sun on her face one last time.
Beyond that, she had no idea what to do.
Chapter Two
Steve Drackett, director of the Omega Sector Critical Response Division, was doing nothing. He couldn’t remember the last time that had happened.
And even more so, he was doing nothing in a tiki-themed bar on the Florida Panhandle. In flip-flops.
He was damn certain that had never happened.
It was his first real vacation in ten years. After his wife died twelve years ago, there hadn’t been much point in them. Then he’d become director of the Critical Response Division of Omega—an elite law enforcement agency made up of the best agents the country had to offer—and there hadn’t been time.
But here he was on the Florida Panhandle, two days into a weeklong vacation for which his team had pitched in and gotten for him. Celebrating his twenty years of being in law enforcement.
And to provide him with a little R & R after he was almost blown up last month by a psychopath intent on burning everything and everyone around her.
Either way, he’d take it. Home in Colorado Springs could still be pretty cold, even in May. Pensacola was already edging toward hot. Thus the flip-flops.
Steve sat at the far end of the bar, back to the wall, where he had a nice view of both the baseball game on TV and the sunset over the ocean, along with an early-evening thundershower that was coming in, through the windows at the front of the bar. It also gave him direct line of sight of the entrance, probably not necessary here but an occupational hazard nonetheless.
The cold beer in his hands and an order of wings next to him on the bar had Steve just about remembering how to unwind. Nothing here demanded his attention. The bar was beginning to fill up but everyone seemed relaxed for the most part. The hum of voices, laughter, glasses clinking was enjoyable.
As someone whose job on most days was literally saving the world, the tiki bar was a nice change.
Then the woman walked through the door.
He glanced at her—as did just about every pair of male eyes in the bar—when she rushed in trying to get out of the sudden Florida storm. Another couple entered right behind her for the same reason, but Steve paid them little attention.
She was small. Maybe five-four to his six-one. Wavy black hair that fell well past her shoulders. Slender to the point of being too skinny. Mid-twenties.
Gorgeous.
Steve forced his eyes away, although his body stayed attuned to her.
She didn’t belong here—he had already summed that up in just a few moments. Not here in a tiki bar where the patrons were either on vacation or trying to just relax on a Sunday evening.
She wasn’t wearing some flirty skirt or shorts and tank top or any of the modes of dress that bespoke enjoying herself on a Florida beach in mid-May. Not that there was anything wrong with how she was dressed: khaki pants and a blue button-down shirt. No flip-flops for this black-haired beauty, or any other type of sandals. Instead she wore athletic shoes. Plain. White.
Her bag was also too large for a casual outing or catching a couple of beers for an hour or two. And clutched too tightly to her.
This woman looked ready to run. From what or to what, Steve had no idea.
Steve had been out of active agent duty for the last ten years. His job now was behind a desk on most days. A big desk, an important one. But a desk nonetheless. He didn’t need to be an agent in the field to know the most important thing about the woman who’d just walked into the bar: she was trouble.
Since trouble was the very thing he was trying to get away from here in flip-flop Florida, Steve turned back to his beer and wings. Back to the game.
But as he finished his food, he found his eyes floating back to her.
She was obviously over twenty-one, so it was legal for her to be here. If she wanted to take off in a hurry—with her oversize tote-type bag—as long as she wasn’t doing anything illegal, it was her own business.
She didn’t want to buy a drink—he noticed that first. But as the storm lingered, then grew worse, she obviously knew she’d have to or else go back out in it. She ordered a soda.
She sat with her back to the wall.
She tried not to draw attention to herself in any way.
She was scared.
Steve finished one beer and started another. He flexed his flip-flop-enclosed toes.
Not his monkeys. Not his circus.
This woman was not his problem, but he still couldn’t stop glancing her way every once in a while. She barely moved. Unfortunately, Steve wasn’t the only one whose attention she had caught. Just about every guy in the place was aware of her presence.
At first men waited and watched. Was she meeting someone? A husband? Boyfriend? When it became obvious she wasn’t, they slowly began circling. Maybe not literally but definitely in their minds.
Then some began circling literally.
A couple of local boys who had been here since before Steve arrived—and had been tossing beers back the whole time—worked their nerve up to go sit next to the woman. She didn’t give much indication that she was interested, but that didn’t deter them.
Since the baseball game was over, someone turned on the jukebox and a few couples were dancing to some Jimmy Buffett song. One of the guys stood and asked the woman to dance but she shook her head no. He reached down and grabbed her hands and tried to pull her to a standing position, obviously thinking she was playing hard to get.
Steve could read her tension from all the way across the bar, but the guys talking to her obviously couldn’t.
He should leave now. He knew he should just walk away. The boys weren’t going to get too out of hand. As soon as the woman put them down hard, they would leave her alone.
She was trouble. He knew it. He should go.
He sighed as he put money on the bar for his meal and began to walk toward the woman and the two men who were now both trying to get her to dance. He hadn’t become the director of one of the most elite law enforcement groups in the country by walking away from trouble.
He stepped close to the first local guy, deliberately invading his space. The way the guy was invading the woman’s.
“Excuse me, fellas. The lady doesn’t want to dance.”
“How do you know?” The other guy snickered. “Are you her dad?”
The woman’s eyes—a beautiful shade of blue that stood out in sharp juxtaposition against her dark hair—flew to Steve’s. She winced in apology at the crack about his age.
Steve was probably fifteen years older than the woman. Not quite old enough to be her father, but probably too old to be anything else to her.
“No, not her father. Just someone old enough and sober enough to realize when a woman is uncomfortable.”
“She’s not—” The guy stopped and really looked at the woman then—the way she was clutching her bag, discomfiture clear on her face.
“The lady doesn’t want to dance,” Steve said again.
The local guy and his buddy released the woman, murmuring apologies. Steve stepped back relieved he wasn’t going to have to make some show of strength. He could’ve. Could’ve had both men unconscious on the ground before they were even aware what sort of trouble they were facing. But the guys hadn’t meant any harm.
Steve nodded at the woman as the locals walked away. He didn’t step any closer or try to talk to her. His flirting skills were rusty at best and this lady obviously wasn’t here to scope out men. Steve turned to make his way back to his seat only to find someone had already taken his place.
Looked like it was time to go.
That was fine. It wasn’t like Steve had any grand plans for his evening here in the tiki bar. He began walking toward the door.
“Thank you.”
He heard her soft voice as the black-haired beauty’s hand touched his arm. Steve stopped and turned toward her.
He smiled. It felt a little unpracticed. “I don’t think they meant any harm, but it was no problem.”
“There was a time I would’ve let them both have it, but I just don’t seem to have it in me lately.” She looked a little surprised that she was even talking to him.
She was skittish, scared. She’d been that way since the moment she’d walked in. It made him want to wrap an arm around her, pull her close and tell her to take a breath. He’d protect her from whatever demons she was trying to fight.
It surprised him a little that he felt that way. His entire life had been spent helping people, first as an FBI agent, then as he was recruited into Omega Sector. But usually he was more at a distance, less personal.
He already felt personal with this woman and he didn’t even know her name.
“I’m sure you could’ve handled them. I just was doing my fatherly duty.”
She snorted and humor lit her blue eyes. “Father, my ass. You’re what? Thirty-nine? Forty?”
“Forty-one.”
“Oh. Well, he should’ve said grandfather, then.”
Her smile was breathtaking. Steve couldn’t stop himself from taking a step toward her. “I’m Steve Drackett.”
She shook his outstretched hand. He knew the thought that a flash of heat hit them both as their skin touched was both melodramatic and sentimental. Steve was neither of those things.
But he still felt the heat.
“I’m Rosalyn.”
No last name. He didn’t press. It was just another sign she was trouble, but Steve somehow couldn’t bring himself to care.
“Can an old man buy you a drink or something?”
She studied him hard as they finally released hands. They were halfway between the bar and the door. He honestly wasn’t sure which way she’d choose. To stay with him or to leave.
She ended up choosing both.
“May I ask you something?” She slid her tote more fully onto her shoulder. She had to step a little closer so they could hear each other over the noise in the bar. He found himself thankful for the chaos around them.
“Sure.”
“Are you some sort of psycho? A killer or deranged stalker or both?”
She asked the question so seriously Steve couldn’t help but laugh. “Nope. Scout’s honor.” He held up his hand in what he was sure was an incorrect Scout salute. “I’m an upstanding member of society. Although you know if I was a crazy killer, I probably wouldn’t answer that question honestly.”
She shrugged, her eyes back to being haunted. “I know. I guess I just wanted you to tell me so I could see if I would believe you.”
“Do you?”
She smiled so sadly it damn near broke his heart. “I think so. Or maybe I just don’t care anymore. And to answer your question, yes, you can buy me a drink. But let’s get out of here.”
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