K-9 Security, page 1
“We need to get out of here.”
“What? No.” Elena refused to budge. “We have to find—”
Bear growled low in her chest, the sound echoing off the walls closing in around them.
He took aim at empty space along the corridor, but something was down there. Something that rivaled his human senses.
The power cut out. Bear whimpered from the tail end of their search party. Her fear of the dark would override any command he gave, and without her to protect Elena, he was operating blind. They had to get out of here. This whole plan had been a setup from the beginning. Just like before.
“Damn.” Cash grabbed for his flashlight. He hit the power button. “Back up. Head for the door.”
Elena’s hand fisted around the shoulder of his Kevlar vest. Her gasp reached his ears as a single face emerged in the beam.
“Please. Don’t rush out on my account,” the man said. “I’ve been waiting a long time for my wife to come home.”
K-9 Security deals with topics that some readers may find difficult.
K-9 Security
Nichole Severn
Nichole Severn writes explosive romantic suspense with strong heroines, heroes who dare challenge them and a hell of a lot of guns. She resides with her very supportive and patient husband, as well as her demon spawn, in Utah. When she’s not writing, she’s constantly injuring herself running, rock climbing, practicing yoga and snowboarding. She loves hearing from readers through her website, www.nicholesevern.com, and on Facebook at nicholesevern.
Books by Nichole Severn
Harlequin Intrigue
New Mexico Guard Dogs
K-9 Security
Defenders of Battle Mountain
Grave Danger
Dead Giveaway
Dead on Arrival
Presumed Dead
Over Her Dead Body
Dead Again
A Marshal Law Novel
The Fugitive
The Witness
The Prosecutor
The Suspect
Blackhawk Security
Rules in Blackmail
Rules in Rescue
Rules in Deceit
Rules in Defiance
Caught in the Crossfire
The Line of Duty
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Cash Meyers—He can spot a threat from a mile away, but he was too late to stop the violent attack on a small New Mexico town. Pulling the only survivor from the debris was supposed to be part of his job as the first line of offense against the Sangre por Sangre cartel. But he never expected Elena.
Elena Navarro—The cartel abducted her youngest brother in a massacre of underage recruitment, and she will do whatever it takes to get him back—but she can’t do it alone. Relying on the private military contractor intent on keeping his distance, she’ll risk it all—including her heart—to stop the cartel lieutenant who doesn’t forgive and never forgets.
Bear—The former DEA drug K-9 is more than Cash’s asset. She’s all that’s left of his family.
Jocelyn Carville—Socorro’s logistics officer might knit cozy mittens and host movie nights to aid operatives’ spirits, but she’s possibly the most dangerous asset on the team.
Socorro Security—The Pentagon’s war on drugs has pulled the private military contractors of Socorro Security into the fray to dismantle the Sangre por Sangre cartel...forcing its operatives to risk their lives and their hearts in the process.
Ivy Bardot—Founder of Socorro Security.
To my husband: for managing to keep me from going insane during COVID-19 quarantine so I could write this book.
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
Chapter Fifteen
Excerpt from Helicopter Rescue by Danica Winters
Chapter One
“It’s going to be okay.” Elena Navarro tried to keep her voice low. It was hard to make sure her brother had heard her over the screams penetrating the windows and doors.
Another burst of gunfire contracted every muscle she owned around Daniel’s small frame. She clamped a hand over his mouth to muffle his sobs. They’d hidden beneath their parents’ bed, but there was no sign that her mom and dad were ever coming back. “I’ve got you. I’m not going to let anything happen to you. Okay?”
Daniel nodded, the back of his head pressed against her chest.
Alpine Valley was supposed to be safe. With only two hundred and fifty people in town, the cartel that’d slowly started consuming New Mexico shouldn’t have even glanced in their direction. They should’ve been left alone. Instead, Sangre por Sangre had come for blood and recruits.
And Daniel was the prime age to get their attention.
She had to get him out of here. Had to get him somewhere safe.
“Listen to me. If we stay here, they will take you. I need you to do exactly what I say, and we’ll be okay.” Elena kept her gaze on the closed bedroom door while backing out from underneath the bed, her hand never leaving her brother’s side. Carpet burned against her oversensitive skin, but it was nothing compared to the realization that her parents were most likely dead. “Come on.”
He didn’t move.
“Daniel, come on. We’ve got to leave.” They didn’t have much time. The cartel soldiers would start searching homes to make sure they hadn’t left anyone behind. By then, it’d be too late. “Let’s go.”
“Quiero mama.” I want mama. He shook his head. “I don’t want to leave.”
She didn’t have time for this. They didn’t have time for this. Elena fisted her brother’s shirt and dragged him out from beneath the bed. His protests filled the room, and she struggled to get his flailing punches and kicks under control. He didn’t understand. He was too young to know what the cartel would do to him if they got their hands on him. “Para. We have to go.”
Hiking Daniel onto her hip with one arm, she quieted his cries with her free hand. She hugged him to her, his bare feet nearly dragging against the floor. She wasn’t tall in any sense of the word, and Daniel had shot up like a beanstalk over the past years. He was heavy and awkward, but she was all he had left. She’d do whatever it took to get him out of here.
A flashlight beam skimmed over the single window of her parents’ bedroom. Elena launched herself against the wall to avoid being seen. The jerking movement dislodged Daniel’s black-and-red unicorn dragon, and he cried out for it.
The beam centered on the window.
“Shhh. Shhh.” Her breath stalled in her chest. Time distorted, seconds seemed like an eternity and she couldn’t seem to keep track of what must have been only an instant. That beam refused to move on. The sound of gunfire had quieted. All she could hear was Daniel’s soft cries, but no matter how hard she held on to him, it didn’t comfort him.
Shouts pierced through the panes. “I can hear you in there.”
The flashlight arced upward. A split second before the window shattered.
Daniel’s scream filled her ears.
They didn’t have any other choice. They had to run.
Elena hauled him against her chest and pumped her legs as hard as she could. Glass cut through her heel, but she couldn’t stop.
“Dragon!” Her brother’s sobs intensified as he locked his feet to the small of her back, trying to wiggle free.
“We’ve got to go!” She ran down the hallway and headed for the front door. It burst open within feet of her reaching it. A dark outline solidified in the doorway. The soldier’s flashlight blinded her, but she kept moving. The back door. She just had to get through the kitchen.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Heavy footsteps registered from behind.
Her fingers dug into her brother’s soft legs as she raced across old yellow decorative tile. They nearly collided with the sliding glass door. Elena clenched the handle to wrench it open.
It wouldn’t move.
Panic infused her every nerve ending. The broomstick. Her parents had always laid a broomstick in the door’s track to deter break-ins. The flashlight beam gleamed off the reflective glass behind her.
“Nowhere to go, señorita,” a low voice said. “And what do we have here? Daniel, right? That must make you Elena. Such a pretty name. Your parents are just outside. Give me the boy, and I will take you to them. Easy.”
Easy? No. Her instincts told her every word out of his mouth was a lie. Elena turned to face the shadowed soldier, the light mounted on his gun too bright. She pressed her shoulders into the glass door and crouched. Her thighs burned as she tried to support Daniel’s weight. “It’s going to be okay,” she told him.
“That’s right.” The shadow moved closer. “You know you can’t win. Give me the boy. He’ll make a fine soldier.”
“Over my dead body.” She found the thick broomstick with the broken handle. She swung it into the soldier’s shin with everything she had.
His scream punctured through the roaring burst of gunfire. Flashes of light gave her enough direction to grab for the door handle, and she and Daniel fled into the backyard. Echoing shouts and pops of bullets closed in. She hiked Daniel higher up her front, his sobs louder now. They couldn’t take her car. The cartel would have already set up roadblocks. Their only choice was the desert. Alone. Without supplies. “We’re going to make it. We’re going to make it.”
She wasn’t sure if she’d meant that for Daniel or herself.
“You’re going to pay for that!” The soldier who’d cornered them in the kitchen tossed the broomstick onto the back patio. His beam scanned the opposite end of the yard, buying her and Daniel mere seconds.
Elena pried a section of chain-link fence free from the neighbor’s cinder block wall. The opening wasn’t big enough for both of them. She maneuvered Daniel through. “Go. Run, and don’t stop. Don’t look back. I’m right behind you.”
“Come with me, Lena. Come on. You can fit.” Another sob escaped him. He tugged at her hand to drag her through after him.
She shoved at him through the fence while trying to make the opening large enough to fit her, but it wouldn’t budge. “Daniel, go!”
The beam centered on her from the back door. Another burst of gunfire caused cinder block dust and chunks to rain down from above. She ducked to protect her head as though her hands could stop a bullet. “Run!”
Her brother ran.
Movement penetrated her peripheral vision. Followed by pain.
A strong hand fisted a chunk of her hair and thrust her face-first into the wall. Lightning struck behind her eyes. Her legs collapsed from beneath her, but the soldier wouldn’t let her fall. He pulled her against him. “You’ve got more fight in you than I expected. I like that. After we find your brother, I’ll come back for you.”
“No.” A wave of dizziness warped his features. She couldn’t make out anything distinctive, but his voice... She’d never forget that voice. The ground rushed up to meet her. Rocks sliced into the back of her head and arms. The shadow was moving to climb the fence as she tried to press herself upright. Daniel. He was going after Daniel. “You can’t have him.”
Her head cleared enough that she shot to her feet. She jumped the soldier as he tossed his weapon over the fence to the other side. She locked her arms around his throat and held on for dear life. She didn’t know how to fight. That didn’t matter. She’d do anything to stop these men from getting hold of her brother.
“Get off.” Those same strong hands that’d rammed her face into the wall grabbed for her T-shirt and ripped her from his back. Air lodged in her chest as she hit the ground. A fist rocketed into the side of her face, and her head snapped back. “When will you people learn? You’re not strong enough to fight us.” He grabbed her collar and hauled her upper body off the ground, ready to strike again. “We are everywhere. We are everything.”
She couldn’t stop the wracking cry escaping up her throat as she cradled one side of her face. She spread her hand into the rock-scaping her parents had put in a few years ago. Her fingers brushed the edge of a fist-sized rock. Securing it in her hand, Elena slammed it into the side of his head as hard as she could.
The soldier dropped on top of her. Tears flooded down her face as she tried to get herself under control. She shoved him off, relief and adrenaline fusing into a deadly combination. This wasn’t over. The man who’d come after her and Daniel was just one of many. There would be more soon. She had to go. “Daniel.”
Elena clawed out from beneath the man’s weight and stumbled toward the fence. She managed to squeeze through, but not without the sharp fingers of steel leaving their mark across her neck and chest. Darkness waited on the other side. No sign of movement. No sign of her brother.
She tested the sting at one corner of her mouth with the back of her hand and started jogging. Dead, expansive land stretched out in front of her. Only peppered with Joshua trees, cacti and scrub brush, the desert made it hard to tell where the sky ended and the earth began. And Daniel was out here alone.
“Lena!” His cry forced ice through her veins. Not from ahead as she’d expected. From behind. “Help me! Lena! Let me go!”
Elena turned back to the house. “No. No, no, no—No!”
Brake lights illuminated the sidewalk in front of her parents’ house enough for her to get a look at two men forcing her brother into the cargo area of a sleek, black SUV.
“Daniel!” She lunged for the fence she’d just climbed through. Her bare feet slipped in the panic to get back over as fast as possible. She was on the edge of getting to the other side when her body failed her. She fell beside the soldier she’d knocked unconscious. Pain exploded down her arm and into her ribs. It wouldn’t stop her.
Daniel’s screams died as the cargo lid closed him inside the car.
“No!” This wasn’t real. She ran as fast as her body allowed, along the side of the house and toward the front. “Daniel!”
She reached the corner of the house as the car sped away.
The butt of a gun slammed into the side of her head.
And the world went black.
* * *
CASH MEYERS GAVE a high-pitched whistle, and his Rottweiler, Bear, launched at the gunman.
Her teeth sank deep into the bastard’s arm as the woman the soldier had knocked unconscious hit the ground. A scream echoed through the night, but it was nothing compared to those he’d heard on the way in. Of pain, loss. Of fear. Fires burned out of control from at least three homes that were torched during the recruiting party. Sangre por Sangre had raided a small New Mexican town for new blood. And left nothing but devastation.
Bear brought down her target, and Cash called her off with a lower-pitched whistle. His weapon weighed heavy in his hand as he approached the gunman and took aim. “How many others?”
A low laugh was all the answer he received, but Bear’s low growl put an end to that. “Too many for you, mercenario.” Mercenary.
Cash had been called much worse, but the truth was he and the men and women of Socorro Security were the only ones stopping the cartel from gaining utter control of this area. So he’d take it as a compliment. “It’s sweet you’re concerned about me, but I’ve got Bear. Who has your back?”
Nervous energy contorted the soldier’s expression in the gleam of flames and moonlight. The man’s fingers splayed across the dark steel of his automatic rifle. An upgrade from the last time Cash had a run-in with the cartel. “You’ll need more than a dog to protect you if you kill me.”
“Oh, I’m not going to kill you.” He rammed the butt of his weapon into the soldier’s head and knocked him out cold. “You’re just not going to be happy when you wake up.”
“Steh,” he told Bear in German. She huffed confirmation as Cash tossed the soldier’s gun out of reach and turned his attention to the woman who’d run headfirst into the weapon’s stock. Her face came dangerously close to being impaled by one of the cacti, and he maneuvered her chin toward him. Scratches clawed across her neck while swelling and a split lip distorted sharp cheekbones and smooth skin. She’d fought. That much was clear. He set one hand on her shoulder and shook her. “Hey, can you hear me?”
No answer.
Hell, he should’ve hit the bastard who’d struck her harder. Or let Bear get her pound of flesh. Cash scanned the street. Sirens pierced through the roar of flames and cries. Not even Bear’s low whimper compared to the dread pooled at the base of Cash’s spine. He’d been too late. He hadn’t seen this coming, and now the people in Alpine Valley had paid the price.
Fire and Rescue rolled up to the burning house across the street. One ambulance in tow. It wasn’t enough to treat the people gathering for medical attention. Older couples holding their heads, a man calling a woman’s name, a toddler screaming in his mother’s arms.
Sangre por Sangre had ruined lives tonight.
Because of him.
“Daniel.” The woman at his feet cracked her eyes open. Flames reflected in her dark pupils a split second before she slipped back into unconsciousness.
