The Fox (Guardsmen Security Book 3), page 1
Author’s note
This book contains mature themes and language and is only suitable for 18 years and over.
Copyright © 2023 by Theresa Houseman
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
9th February 2023 cr
Created with Vellum
The Fox
Guardsmen Security III
Theresa Beachman
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Bonus scene
Also by Theresa Beachman
About the Author
Acknowledgments
1
Fox angled his mountain bike down the dark thread of the mountain track. Sunlight flashed through gaps in the trees, flashes of light between the green-dark coolness and the woodsy press of pine and birch. Hollers behind him confirmed Griff was still on his tail and closing the gap. Fox hunkered lower, removed his hands from the brakes and pedaled faster. Perhaps if he cycled fast enough, he could lose the burden of thoughts from the past few weeks. This hope had propelled him to accept Griff’s offer of a weekend lost in the majestic scenery of Romsdalen.
He jerked the front wheel hard left, jolting over exposed tree roots and sending a spray of grit and pebbles clattering down the steep slope.
His last mission, rescuing an injured veteran, Abbie Allard, from rural Russia, had taken up residence in his heart in a way that made no sense.
Abbie was the only known survivor of Raptor’s research program that had seen over a hundred veterans suffer a dark and freezing death at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, before Eli and Bea had found her alone and starving in a hospital in a hidden town in rural Russia. To aid her recovery, intelligence services had secreted Abbie away in the bunkers hidden under Helsinki to give her time to recover physically. He had thought of little else over recent weeks, worrying about how she was, and if progress had been made in locating her missing daughter.
Muddy water soaked his legs as he hurtled through a row of puddles left over from last night’s rain that had left the air redolent with the scent of wet earth and leaves. Griff was right. This was what he needed, time away from everything and the sharp, cleansing air in his lungs. A change of scenery would give him perspective.
He had done his own research to locate Abbie’s daughter, Mia, but had found nothing. Raptor had buried the girl well, knowing she was their only leverage, and instead insinuated Abbie may have harmed her daughter and that was why she couldn’t be found.
The idea made his blood simmer—that Raptor had Mia hidden away somewhere, keeping her in the wings for when they needed a bargaining chip.
A rusty red blur darted out from a thorny tangle of brambles. Fox swerved left.
Not enough—
His front wheel clipped a tree root jutting out of the packed mud. The handlebars wrenched free of his grip and the back wheel slid sideways.
Fox hit the ground, his teeth snapping electricity through his jaw as he landed with a bone-jolting halt that ripped the air from his lungs.
Fuck.
His feet snagged the pedals, and the bike landed on top of him in a wiry cage, wheels spinning.
A flick of orange and a white-tipped tail was the last he saw of his adversary. Fox yanked at the bike and shoved it free of his body.
Brakes screeched, and dirt pebbled his leg. “What the fuck, Fox?” Griff extended a hand. “You’re meant to stay on the damn bike, not roll around under it.”
Fox accepted the offer of help and allowed his friend to boost him back to his feet. He rolled his eyes at Griff’s grinning face. “You’re fucking hilarious. There was an animal. Fucking fox.”
“Seriously?” Griff snorted.
“I know. What are the chances? Dusted by my namesake.” He wiped leaves and mud from his arms. Damp soil blackened his knees. He rotated his shoulders and took a few steps, kicking away the prickly branches he’d taken down with him. He winced at the tenderness, but everything was working, although he had an impressive scrape running from elbow to wrist. “No bones broken.”
“Wish I could say the same about your bike.” Griff dismounted and toed the impressive buckle in Fox’s front wheel.
Fox squatted, ran a hand across the top of his helmet. Fuck. He grabbed the frame and straightened the bike. The front wheel pointed left while the rest of the bike faced straight ahead. The chain hung loose, split in half.
He unzipped the small toolkit strapped to the back of his saddle so he could remove the front wheel to straighten it.
“Perhaps if you weren’t so distracted?” Griff unclipped his water bottle.
“What?”
Griff took a seat on a low, moss-covered branch. “Your mind hasn’t been in the here and now much these last few weeks.”
“There’s a lot going on.” Fox spun the spanner on the central bolt, and the wheel uncoupled with a pop.
Griff swigged his water. “I know, but everyone needs time off.”
Fox straightened with a glare. “I’m here, aren’t I? Fucking having time off and enjoying myself. For all the good it’s doing me. Fuck.”
Griff was unperturbed, but his eyebrows rose. “This is exactly what I mean. You need more time off.”
“Situations like these don’t warrant time off. There’s a kid missing.”
“I know, but anyone would think it was your kid.”
The spanner slid from Fox’s grip, and rough metal abraded his knuckles. Shit. He rubbed his stinging fingers against the opposite arm.
“I am well aware she is not my kid.” Nor was Abbie his woman. Never would be, because he had found and lost the love of his life already. Men like him didn’t get second chances.
“Right.” Griff clipped his water bottle back to his bike.
“I’m looking for the kid because that’s part of my job, part of both of our jobs.” Fox wagged the spanner at Griff. “Keeping people safe. Or finding them and making sure they are safe.”
“Right. It’s all about the job.”
“Fucking is,” Fox growled.
“Not because you feel something for her mother?”
Blood coursed hot in Fox’s veins. “She’s attractive but—” He’d never been so grateful for the shrill tone of his phone.
Griff sighed and pressed his lips into a flat line as Fox swiped the unknown number to answer. “Fox.”
“Hello?” Female. Youngish. Unique accent. “Thom Fox?”
Griff glanced at him, clearly hearing the anxiety in the woman’s voice that could mean only one thing.
The woman didn’t wait for an answer. “Listen. You don’t know me. My name is Steph. I’m Abbie’s nurse.”
Abbie.
“Abbie Allard?” He had to be sure.
“Yes—”
“How is she?” His voice caught, and he had to cough to clear his throat.
“Great.” A pause as Steph collected herself. She was slightly breathless. “She’s been doing really great, actually. They removed the microchip from her head… but she’s decided to check herself out of the clinic. I can’t stop her—she’s not under arrest, but she’s vulnerable. I don’t think she should be on her own until she’s given her testimony.”
Her testimony. Her account of Raptor’s manipulation of the veterans who had signed up thinking they were working to find a PTSD cure for countless others, but who, in reality, were being used to refine a weapon.
Steph continued. “I can take steps here to keep her safe, but bureaucracy… Everything takes days and has to be signed off in triplicate. She needs someone to talk some sense into her now. She’s mentioned you, so I thought—”
“She’s mentioned me?”
“Yes. You were there. One of the team that found her at Tryokghgorny, no?”
Images seared his mind’s eye. Abbie, weak and malnourished, shadows under her eyes, her cheeks gaunt from lack of food and stress. But also her proud posture, ev
“Look, Steph, I’m not sure…” A wave of emotion washed through him. Protectiveness. The same feeling that overcame him when he held Abbie in his arms at Tryokghgorny. He swallowed the emotion, its rawness and intensity setting him on edge. How could a woman he had only met once get to him like this? Make him feel so much with no effort at all?
He pinched the skin on the bridge of his nose, locking down his inexplicably intense reaction. I’ve already loved and lost. I can’t do that again. Not now, not ever. It would destroy me.
“Are you trying to give me the brush off?” Her voice rose a few octaves, a no-nonsense tone he recognized from his own days as a senior registrar. Then he’d been working in the emergency department under the tutelage of a draconian matron who made him repeatedly stitch bananas till he could pass as a world class seamstress.
Fuck, no. And if Abbie was involved? Never.
“No. I wouldn’t do that.” His ear smarted from the pressure of his phone.
“Good. I hoped not.” Her voice rose. Loud enough for Griff to hear.
Griff looked up from where he had the busted wheel wedged between his knees and waggled his eyebrows.
Fox looked the other way, trying desperately not to think of Abbie. Her amber eyes, the fullness of her lips against luminous skin.
Shit.
“So.” Steph’s tone firmed up. “Now that I’ve established I can rely on you. When can you get here?”
Griff stalled with his spanner rotations and stared openly at Fox, a bemused expression on his face. Fucker was waiting for his answer and didn’t care that Fox knew it. Fox exhaled. He should have walked away, had a private conversation.
“Tell me where you are.” He listened, committing the details to memory as he had done so many times before on missions when written instructions were only a hazard and a risk that could cost the lives of his team.
He ended the call as Griff secured his wheel back in place.
“Wonky, but you can freewheel down the hill. Get you where you need to be.” Griff swung onto his own bike. “Ready to go.”
Fox followed suit.
Where he needed to be.
He pushed off, already making travel plans in his head with only one destination.
Abbie.
2
Abbie Allard stuffed her belongings into a small backpack. It wouldn’t take long. She only had a few changes of clothes, some toiletries, and a secondhand purse Steph had bought for her.
“You can’t leave. What are you doing? This is crazy.” Steph planted her hands on her hips, but she didn’t intimidate Abbie. Deep down, Steph was a cinnamon roll and wouldn’t stop her.
“I have to do this.” Abbie surveyed her scant belongings. She swallowed the rise of emotion in her throat. Getting upset would only be a hindrance, because right now she needed her head on straight, her thinking clear.
“You can’t leave.”
“You’ve already said that, but I’m going anyway.” She looked up at Steph’s concerned face and then away again. Steph had been so kind to her in the time she had spent here, hidden away from the world. “I’ve been here for six weeks. Mia is still missing, and I can’t sit around any longer and not do anything.” She scrubbed at her arms. The need to see her daughter had lodged under her skin, a deep burning ache that gave her no peace. Action was the only thing that would soothe it, of that she was sure.
Mia was missing, and Raptor claimed they had nothing to do with it, that Abbie herself had sent her daughter away without a trace. Her memories of that time were hazy. Had she hidden her daughter away and then forgotten? It didn’t seem possible, but nothing she’d experienced in the last six months, from having an AI chip implanted in her head, to almost dying in an abandoned hospital in the wilds of Russia, seemed possible, and yet it had been.
Steph crossed her arms across her chest. “I just think this is a mistake.”
“The chip is out, Steph, and today the doctor gave me the all clear.” She glimpsed herself in the pockmarked mirror on her bedroom wall, her hair shorn, a scar tracking the left side of her head above her ear. Ugly, but she took comfort from the fact that the chip Raptor had implanted in her brain was gone despite the trail of damage. “My stitches have healed. There’s nothing keeping me here any longer but fear.”
“And the tests?”
Abbie stopped packing, her hands clenched tight on the zipper of her small backpack. It was barely half-full. Raptor had ripped her old life from her and left her with nothing.
She swallowed the hot rise of bile stinging her throat, shook her head. “No more tests.”
She would find Mia, and then? She would make Raptor pay. The microchip in her head, implanted to neutralize the traumatic memories that had plagued her since she retired from the military had left her memories in disarray, but she remembered enough. Her testimony would count.
Raptor had recruited her for a submarine mission that she had narrowly avoided at the last minute after overhearing Raptor’s true intent. That she could remember such details, but not where she had agreed to send her daughter cut deep.
Steph sighed and sat down on the bed. She ran a hand through her long hair. “What about your testimony against Raptor? It’s in less than two weeks.”
Her testimony could end Raptor’s research. There was a lot riding on her staying alive.
“I’ll be there, but right now, this is what I need to do.” Abbie was breathing too hard, her nostrils tense as anger vented liquid in her veins. She had not signed up for this. Not only had Raptor taken her daughter, they’d reached right inside her head, changed who she was, her very being.
She touched the newly grown fuzz across the side of her head. She felt stripped to the bone, her long hair gone, till there was only her, raw and exposed. Somehow, in this stripped landscape, she had to find herself again and her daughter. “I can’t wait anymore, Steph. Finding Mia. It’ll be good for both of us.” God, she wanted that to be true, even though she didn’t know if it would be.
“So where will you go?” Steph plucked at the sheets on Abbie’s bed, but her tone had altered, tinged with acceptance.
Where would she go? Away from here—this hidden city under Helsinki. She craved light and fresh air and familiarity, something that had been missing from her life for too long. “Home. See if something there triggers a memory, gives me a clue where Mia is.”
“And Fox?” Steph’s tone was casual, but the words were not.
Thom Fox. One of the security team who found her half-dead and starving, at the hospital in Tryokghgorny after Raptor had sent men to kill her in Russia.
Memories of him flickered through her unreliable mind. His large, warm hands. A gentle touch as he asked for her permission before listening to her heart and breathing. Corded muscle under his shirt as he tugged an emergency blanket around her shoulders, the whisper of his scent tickling her nose. A woodsy smell of masculinity that soothed her exhausted mind and promised safety and comfort.
Another time, another life, she would have been interested in a man like him.
He’d sent regular updates of his continuing efforts to locate Mia. But he hadn’t found her. No one had. There was only her now, and as a mother, it was her job to find Mia. Nothing else mattered.
She kept her tone casual. “What about him?”
“He’s been trying to help. Shouldn’t you at least speak to him before you leave?”
“He’s found nothing. His company, Guardsmen Security, checked all the schools in Norway and Sweden.”
