Fatal Honor: Shadow Force International Read Free Page B

shared a similar sense of duty, loyalty, and honor.
    So, thanks to the debt he owed Emit, he was here in San Diego, recovering from his last paramilitary stint and wondering who his stalker was. The bodyguards now suddenly in his care were doing a decent job of handling themselves without him and for that, he was grateful.
    Today, he’d seen the black hybrid behind him in the late afternoon rush hour traffic. Tonight, it was sitting a block south of his apartment.
    He’d been declared MIA after his team had been destroyed in those mountains. His ankle had healed, but it wasn’t strong enough for him to return to the Teams once he was back home. He’d found he didn’t have the stomach for it anyway. He didn’t deserve to wear the emblem of the United States Navy anymore.
    With his fellow SEALs all dead and him missing, the U.S. had presumed he was dead too. If it hadn’t been for that mysterious guardian angel who’d found him and patched him back up, he would have been.
    Her luscious curves and beautiful face invaded his mind day and night even all these months later. Every time he thought of her—her tender, healing touch, the hours she spent tending to his wounds, the way she’d used her own body to help him regain his strength—he missed her. They’d shared food, shelter, and physical comfort in each other for six weeks, and yet he didn’t even know her real name. Sarah, she’d told him, but she looked close enough like the picture of Agent Butter that Andrew Hardy had shown him, Miles knew it had to be her. During their time together, he’d played it careful, trying to draw out her story without being obvious. Outside of a few throwaway childhood stories, she’d never talked about herself, always switching the conversation back to him or distracting him with sex.
    He hadn’t seen her since the night she’d disappeared from the cabin and Emit Petit had shown up in those godforsaken Carpathian Mountains to rescue him. Truth was, at that point, he hadn’t wanted to be rescued.
    He missed her fiercely. Her wildness, her kindness, her laughter. Some days, he wanted to escape his current life and go back to that time. To her.
    The solid gold cross lying under his shirt warmed the skin next to his heart. The only thing he had from their time together. That and the memories.
    He’d drawn a sketch of her face, ran it through the SFI facial recognition software. The closest ID he’d come upon was a British Intelligence agent named Charlotte Carstons. There were no decent photos of Carstons anywhere in the system. No social media or public photos either. Which only made him more convinced she was an undercover operative.
    While the Brits wouldn’t give him any info on her, Miles had done research, asking contacts and putting out feelers. Being part of SFI helped. Beatrice Reese, Petit’s second-in-command, was former NSA and knew everyone and everything. She’d put out a few feelers too, before getting her hands slapped by the Queen of all people. If their intel was correct, Charlotte Carstons had been MIA since that very time period Miles had spent healing and making love to a woman who still haunted his dreams. If she were indeed Butter, it was rumored she had been feeding Nicolae Bourean classified information and helping him sell it to the highest bidder.
    Just my luck, I fell for a traitor.
    Miles’ cell rang and he answered it without taking his eyes from his night vision goggles. “Whatcha got for me, Rory?”
    “Not much, Poison.” Rory, the SFI tech specialist, referred to Miles by his Rock Star bodyguard name. Rory stayed behind the scenes keeping them all on track. A former SEAL as well, he’d done wet work for the CIA for a bunch of years before ending up with SFI.
    The man had a voice only a mother could love. He sounded like he’d smoked too many cigars and enjoyed too many shots of tequila that evening. Probably had. “Car’s rented from a smalltime dealership in La Jolla. Name on the