Fixed Asset (Downrange), page 1
Discover Other Titles by Riley Edwards
Hollow Point
Playing with Lies
Playing with Danger
Playing with Love
Playing with Forever
Takeback
Dangerous Love
Dangerous Rescue
Dangerous Games
Dangerous Encounter
Dangerous Mind
Dangerous Hearts
Dangerous Affair
Gemini Group
Nixon’s Promise
Jameson’s Salvation
Weston’s Treasure
Alec’s Dream
Chasin’s Surrender
Holden’s Resurrection
Jonny’s Redemption
Red Team: Susan Stoker’s Universe
Nightstalker
Protecting Olivia
Redeeming Violet
Recovering Ivy
Rescuing Erin
Gold Team: Susan Stoker’s Universe
Brooks
Thaddeus
Kyle
Maximus
Declan
Blue Team: Susan Stoker’s Universe
Owen
Gabe
Myles
Kevin
Cooper
Garrett
Silver Team
Theo
Easton
Smith
Jonas
The 707 Freedom Series
Free
Freeing Jasper
Finally Free
Freedom
The Next Generation (707 Spinoff)
Saving Meadow
Chasing Honor
Finding Mercy
Claiming Tuesday
Adoring Delaney
Keeping Quinn
Taking Liberty
Triple Canopy
Damaged
Flawed
Imperfect
Tarnished
Tainted
Conquered
Shattered
Fractured
The Collective
Unbroken
Trust
Stand-Alone Titles
Romancing Rayne
Falling for the Delta (cowritten with Susan Stoker)
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Otherwise, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2025 by Riley Edwards
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake, Seattle
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ISBN-13: 9781662532764 (paperback)
ISBN-13: 9781662532757 (digital)
Cover design by Hang Le
Cover image: © JooLaR, © Leigh Prather, © phiseksit / Shutterstock; © Wander Aguiar Photography
To my family—my team—my tribe.
This is for you.
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
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
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Author Note
About the Author
Chapter One
“Have you lost your goddamn mind?”
The caller needed no introduction. I knew that growly voice.
I hadn’t heard from him in nine months, but who was counting? Not me. Nope. I was not ticking off the days since I’d last seen Jack Donovan. I wasn’t still dreaming of our time in Las Vegas or all the times he’d made me laugh.
“Hello, Jack. How have you been?” I kept my voice low, not wanting to draw attention to myself in the café. Even with my hair dyed dark brown and my clothes purchased from the local mall, I didn’t blend in. An American was easy to spot.
“I asked you a question, Catarina.”
Another growl, this one feral. A shiver ran up my spine despite the heat and lack of air-conditioning in the small restaurant.
God, he had such a great voice—full of gravel with a hint of rugged edge.
Right, had I lost my mind?
Probably.
Just being a woman in Honduras was dangerous. An American woman eating lunch in a café in the gang-controlled Barrio Guadalupe was akin to a death sentence. But Jack shouldn’t have known where I was.
“Why would you ask that?”
“Catarina.”
Sweet Jesus, I loved hearing him say my name. I wasn’t proud to admit I’d fantasized about how it would sound falling from his lips while he moved inside me. But I had. Jack Donovan had starred in every self-induced orgasm in the last nine months.
“Jack.”
“Is everything a game to you?”
That was an interesting question. One I didn’t need to think all that hard about. Life was a game. Nothing more than a series of choices—some choices moved you forward, some sideways, and some backward. The trick was knowing the game, who your opponent was, and what moves they were going to make. My problem was, I never could figure out Jack’s next move. He was too smart to show his hand.
“Yup,” I answered honestly.
“What the hell are you doing?”
I glanced down at my forgotten bang bang chicken, then slid my gaze around the room. One could say that in the US, the health department would’ve closed this establishment on a variety of violations that had nothing to do with the old, chipped tables or the missing chunks of mortar between the bricks that made up the walls. Though I was a tad bit worried the building was going to crumble at any moment.
“Eating lunch.”
I left out the “taking my life into my own hands by eating bang bang chicken off a plate that doesn’t look like it’s actually been washed since the last person used it” part. Call me crazy, but I didn’t think he’d find my comment amusing in his current mood.
“Jesus fuck, woman—”
The sound of rapid gunfire out on the street had me diving for the dirty floor. The glass shattering all around made me curl up in a tight ball with my hands covering the back of my head. I’d been in Tegucigalpa for three days. This was not the first time I’d heard shots fired. It was, however, the first time I’d been minding my own business eating lunch and become an active participant in the festivities.
The gunfire stopped. The café was eerily quiet; no one was screaming or scrambling to make an escape. There was no panic coming from my fellow patrons—not that there were many of them—and no one made a fuss. A drive-by was a normal occurrence in the gang-infested neighborhood.
I lifted my head and pulled up on my knees to have a look around. The front windows were toast. New bullet holes peppered the wall behind me. A man at a corner table was still sitting in his chair eating, unbothered there’d just been a shoot-out. A few people were getting to their feet. One man was helping a young boy off the floor.
I spotted my phone, snatched it up, righted the chair I’d been occupying, then hefted myself to my feet.
Right. This might’ve been an everyday occurrence for the people of Barrio Guadalupe, but I’d lost my appetite. I didn’t know if or when the police would show up, but I did know I didn’t want to be here if they did. They could tip off the wrong people. I wanted to be seen, but I was in this particular neighborhood for a reason—the gang that controlled the area was a step down from the viciousness of the rival gang two streets over. And that step down could mean the difference between merely being kidnapped or taken to the killing field and murdered.
With that in mind, I fished some money out of my wallet, tossed a few bills on the table. Swung my backpack over my shoulder and secured it in front of me. The pack would do nothing to shield me from the next round of bullets, which could fly at any moment, but wearing it backward would stop thieves from snatching it off my back.
Glass crunched under my feet as I exited. It would be easy to call the situation insane. The normalcy of a drive-by that didn’t set off a panic was absolute lunacy. But in truth, it was tragic.
Once outside, I hustled east, back to the relative safety of the Central District municipality. I didn’t dally and take in the sights as I had during my stroll to the café—not that the sights were your typical vacation points of interest. Unlike th
A turn down the wrong street could mean death—literal death. Thus, I was paying attention to where I was going. My hotel next to the embassy should’ve been a little over a two-kilometer trek, according to Google Maps. However, my alternate route carefully skirting Mara Salvatrucha gang territory added twenty minutes to the walk.
A door to my right swung open. I quickly sidestepped the stumbling, drunk man coming out of the liquor store. A few meters ahead of me, a woman was yelling in rapid-fire Spanish at an older man—which was dangerous. The woman was speaking too fast for me to pick up more than a few angry words. The traffic on the street was busy. The cars did not stop for pedestrians here, but I’d rather take my chances playing Frogger and dodging cars than risk getting caught up in the domestic dispute up ahead. I’d had enough adventure for one day. I just wanted to get back to my hotel, study the maps my contact at the CIA gave me, and plan tomorrow’s outing.
I stepped closer to the curb, waiting for the traffic to clear enough that I could make a mad dash across the two lanes. Scooters, bicycles, rusted trucks, and cars in varying states of disrepair sped by.
One foot was on the crumbling curb, the other on the garbage-covered asphalt. I was getting ready to make a break for it when I caught a white van barreling down the road at a high rate of speed, narrowly missing a man pushing a cart.
I was on my back foot, preparing to jump out of the way, when someone came up from behind and hooded me. In an instant, everything went dark. Two arms banded around me, immobilizing me.
It was too soon.
This wasn’t supposed to happen here.
Not yet.
Not now.
I struggled and screamed, but the arms tightened. I heard tires screech. The smell of rubber and diesel mixed together.
The second I was lifted off the ground, I kicked out. My foot made contact with something solid; there was a grunt but no other sound. I was being attacked on a busy street. There were people all around, and not one person came to my rescue. Not one person shouted for my attacker to let me go.
Not a single soul helped.
My ankles were grabbed and, with quick precision, secured together. I twisted the best I could to get free until I heard the scraping of metal followed by a bang as the door closed, and I felt the van moving.
The whole abduction—from the hooding to getting me into the vehicle—took seconds. I hadn’t even had time to register how hard my heart was thumping in my chest. Fight-or-flight had kicked in, but the fear trailed behind. Now that I was in the back of a moving van, terror ripped through me.
My plan had looked good on paper—risky but necessary.
Now I was at the mercy of men who wouldn’t bat an eye at killing me—or worse—and I saw my mistake.
Jack had been right. I’d lost my mind.
The fight drained from my body, my muscles locked, and my training kicked in. Now wasn’t the time to try to escape while I was in a confined space with an unknown number of assailants. Now was the time to listen, gather intel, think, and plan.
I didn’t need my life to flash before my eyes—or to think about all the things I’d never done, never accomplished—to know if I died, I’d go to my grave with a mountain of regret. I’d leave this world never knowing what it felt like to be in love.
A flicker of a memory of Jack teasing me before everything had turned to shit. I’d convinced myself I’d fallen for him. I’d believed I meant something to him. Right up until those blue eyes of his—so dark they were navy, and unless you were in the light, they looked black—turned cold and he walked away from me.
I pushed the wayward thoughts of Jack out of my mind and focused. I’d been trained by the best, spent years attached to the First Special Group. I knew my way around a hostile interrogation—both in practice on the battlefield and in the classroom. I’d played hide-and-seek with my SERE instructors and survived—twice. My first go-around with my Human Intel class was easy, the second time not so much. SOCOM didn’t screw around when it came to training their soldiers.
Deep breath.
The van took a hard right, my body pitched to the side, but strong arms kept me in place.
Something wasn’t right.
I took another breath, this one more of a sniff.
Clean.
No body odor, no smell of booze or pot. All of which I’d smelled in abundance since I’d arrived in Honduras.
I didn’t think gang members cared all that much about freshly laundered clothes before they snatched a woman off the street. But that didn’t mean the Bratva hadn’t heard about an American woman roaming the streets unprotected and decided to make a play in rival territory. Though the Russians mostly kept to Ecuador, I’d been warned they were still operating in Honduras.
I wasn’t sure which was worse—the Russians or the Hondurans. One of those groups would have me in a shipping container headed to the Mother Country before anyone knew I was missing. The other would likely enjoy torturing me before help could arrive.
The van came to an abrupt stop. Hands wrapped around my secured ankles. But instead of being yanked from the vehicle, I was lifted.
I turned my head toward one of the arms locked around me and sniffed again.
Tide.
Did I smell Tide?
Chapter Two
I was going to spank the ever-loving hell out of Catarina Keys. Peel her jeans down her legs, bend her over my lap, and redden her delectable ass.
The woman had no sense.
None.
I’d died a thousand deaths since I’d met her.
The problem was, she was smart as fuck, and her risky behavior paid off. At least it had when she was undercover in Las Vegas pretending to be a ditzy bombshell on the prowl for a sugar daddy. Our target had zeroed in on Cat’s gleaming blonde hair, blue eyes, tight body, and gorgeous face, and took the bait. Then for the next few weeks, I had to watch her cozy up to a rich scumbag who made his money by selling women. Not only selling them outright to other rich, sick fucks but renting them out by the night.
Each time she’d tricked herself out for a meeting with Martin Jackson, my gut had churned. Every night she had been with him, worry had set in until it burrowed deep and turned to fear. One wrong move would’ve been the end of her. It wasn’t just our target but also his entourage of guards she’d had to fool.
In reality, there was nothing sweet, soft, or compliant about Catarina. Yet she’d expertly pulled it off. All the way to the very end, when, during the takedown, Cat had beaten the absolute shit out of Martin.
I couldn’t say the man hadn’t deserved it, but the rage behind it was what had worried me. I’d seen the way Martin had touched her. How his hand had rested on her thigh while the motherfucker made her sit on his lap. That beating said something other than takedown—it screamed of retribution.
The last time I saw the woman was on the veranda of a mansion—dress torn, barefoot, with blood coating her hands along with splatters on her face, neck, and forearms.
And there she was, once again putting her life in danger. This time without the full support of the Sex Offender Investigation Branch of the US Marshals Service. She didn’t have the FBI as backup. She didn’t have my old boss, Wilson McCray, and my old team to watch over her.
This time, she was alone in a country known for femicide. And she was there, alone, eating lunch in a café in an area of town that was a hotbed for kidnapping and murder.
Oh yeah, I was spanking her ass. Then I was demanding answers. I was done playing games with this woman.
My teammate, Mason Hughes, lifted Cat’s feet and stepped out of the van. I hadn’t zip-tied her wrists—something I’d have to think about later—but the lack of restraints meant I’d had to keep her back pressed tightly to my chest the short drive to the warehouse. I wasn’t exactly sure if I wanted the excuse to keep her in my lap or if hooding her and tying her ankles together was as far as I was willing to go in my ‘scared straight’ ploy.
