Rogue Protector Read online

  Copyright © 2020 by Patricia D. Eddy

  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.

  Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Design: Deranged Doctor Design

  Cover Photo: Paul Henry Serres

  Editing: Jayne Frost

  Contents

  Just for you

  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

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Patricia D. Eddy

  If you love sexy romantic suspense, I’d love to send you a short story set in Dublin, Ireland. Castles & Kings isn’t available anywhere except for readers who sign up for my mailing list! Sign up for my newsletter on my website and tell me where to send your free book!

  http://patriciadeddy.com.

  Chapter One

  January

  Austin

  “He’ll see you now, sir,” the uniformed airman says as he nods towards Commander Ivan Clarke’s office door. My boss, the head of the Special Operations Command Unit, summoned me here with an early morning phone call and then made me wait for two hours.

  Two hours I spent sitting on an uncomfortable couch, back stiff, hands on my thighs, staring straight ahead at the photographs lining the wall behind the airman’s desk. I’m in some of them. As are the President, the Vice President, and the Secretary of Defense. Photographs that used to represent the pinnacle of my career. Everything I ever wanted and more. But now… I don’t know.

  Standing, a quick tug on my coat hem smooths away the wrinkles, and I give the younger man a nod of thanks.

  I shut the door behind me, then march up to the Commander’s desk, stopping three steps away and giving him my best salute before standing at Attention, my gaze fixed just over Clarke’s shoulder.

  “Pritchard,” Commander Clarke says. “You weren’t due back here for another month.”

  The judgement in his tone doesn’t surprise me. Nor does his lack of an At Ease command. He’s pissed. In his position, I’d probably do the same damn thing.

  “Sir. I had a family emergency—“

  “You’ll want to shut your trap before you dig that hole any deeper.”

  “Yes, sir.” Clarke has the power—and every right—to end my career. Or worse. Leaving my post without warning or permission, going AWOL—especially at my level—was a stupid move. But one I’d make again without hesitation. My sister and my best friend needed me, and if I hadn’t dropped everything to go to Venezuela, Trevor might be dead. And Dani...his death would have killed her too.

  But the real offense? Engaging with hostiles on foreign soil without orders. If I was seen, recognized, recorded by a single traffic camera, I’ll be stripped of everything. My job. My rank. My pension.

  My freedom.

  Clarke could convene a court-martial with the snap of his fingers. From the look on his face, he still might.

  “Morales called me. Passed on your vague excuses for why you had to disappear in the middle of the fucking night and not contact anyone for three days.”

  The commander runs a hand through his thinning hair before muttering, “For fuck’s sake, Pritchard. At Ease.”

  I interlace my thumbs behind my back and track the commander’s movements as he turns to stare out the window at the rain that’s been hammering Fort Bragg all morning. “You’re one of the best, you know. Or were. When I tapped you for JSOC commander, I knew—knew—it was the right decision. You wanted more, and you deserved it. But now?” Shaking his head, he says, “I don’t know. Maybe you’ve been riding a desk too long.”

  Fuck.

  His gray eyes focus on me, and I can see the exhaustion in them. Not much different from the look in my own every morning. “It’s like you’re trying to get court-martialed. Explain yourself.”

  “There’s still a lot of good I can do here, sir.” I don’t believe that. Not anymore. But it’s what I’m supposed to say. All the conversations I’ve had with Clarke over the past year have been full of everything I’m supposed to say. “I can be on a flight out before the end of the day to rejoin Morales and the others.”

  “No.” Commander Clarke leans back in his chair and shakes his head. “You’re goddamn lucky you chose your friends wisely, Pritchard. And you better hope there’s no fucking evidence you were ever in a foreign country without authorization.”

  “There isn’t, sir. Because I wasn’t.” Again, what I’m supposed to say. He’s not buying my bullshit. Not for a second. But this is the game.

  “You went rogue,” he says. “And I can’t have that on my watch. So you’re headed to Pakistan. We’ve set up a dozen Grey Fox listening posts across the country to monitor for terrorist chatter. You’ll oversee them until I have some fucking confidence you can do your job and follow orders.”

  Pakistan?

  I swallow hard and force myself to look him in the eyes. “So, I’m out. Sir.”

  Clarke snorts. “You should be. Without a doubt. And if it were up to me, you would be. But the President doesn’t want any official churn right now. So, until he’s ready, you’re going to Pakistan. Officially, you wanted to get back into the field for a few months. To put your finger on the pulse of the men who risk their lives every day.” The commander flattens his hands on the desk, and his voice roughens. “If you tell anyone otherwise, I will put an end to your career so fast you won’t know what hit you.”

  “Give me a timeline.” I shouldn’t say a fucking word. His tone tells me how thin the ice is. But I have to ask. Going to Pakistan without knowing when I’ll be back? No. I can’t do it.

  “You’re dismissed, Pritchard. Get out of my sight.”

  No amount of anger and frustration can overrule more than twenty years of training, so I shove my feelings down so deep, they’ll never escape. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” Snapping to attention, I execute an about face, then march calmly out of his office.

  Pakistan. I’m so fucked.

  Twenty-four hours later, I’m in fatigues on a military transport plane headed to Pakistan. I didn’t call my parents. I couldn’t. Dad’s going to see right through Clarke’s manufactured excuse, and I’d rather be halfway around the world when that happens. Steve Pritchard might be over seventy, but he doesn’t miss a beat.

  My sister Dani texted me this morning, but I haven’t opened the message yet. She doesn’t need to deal with my shit right now. Or even worse, be reminded of Gil and his betrayal.

  My parents adopted Dani and Gil when Dani was only nine
, and when Gil turned on everything—our family, the CIA, his entire fucking country—we lost so much. Hell, he tried to kill me five years ago, and last week, Dani almost lost Trevor again. The first time, they were just kids. The second? I can’t even think about what almost happened in Venezuela.

  I rub my thigh as the plane levels out. The hundreds of cuts Gil used when he captured and tortured me five years ago cover my chest like latticework, but other than the pain and blood loss, none of them were serious. Until he plunged a knife deep into my thigh. I didn’t lose any motor function, but it still aches from time to time. A dull pain that won’t let me forget how I failed him.

  Closing my eyes, I can still picture Gil as he was. The boy my parents brought into our house. Angry. Extremely protective of his little sister. Wary. But harmless. We were the same age. In the same class at school. Even…friends for a short time. Or so I’d thought.

  The vision of him as a teenager morphs into the man who lured me to Caracas on a containment mission then ambushed my team, killing everyone but me.

  That day? That first terrible day? When I woke up bound and gagged in an abandoned office building? Gil loomed over me, his face so full of pain and rage, there was nothing left of the man I’d once known.

  “This is all your fault, brother,” he says as he twirls the switchblade in his hand. “You could have stopped this.”

  I shake my head so hard the room spins. Gil flaunted his crimes to the CIA, the NSA, so many U.S. allies…anyone who would listen. He’ll never see the light of day again. That is if Trevor can do his job.

  I dig my fingers into my thigh. I could have stopped him. I should have. Because I should have known what he was planning. Maybe down deep, I did.

  “Commander Pritchard? You okay?” The kid next to me looks like he should still be in college. If not high school. Except for his eyes. There’s wisdom there.

  “Fine. And you are…?”

  “Hargrove. Griffin Hargrove.”

  I give him the once over, studying his mannerisms, the practiced casual air, trying to figure out who he is and whether or not I can trust him. “First time in Pakistan?”

  “Yes, sir.” His blue eyes dart around the plane before he clears his throat. “I’m on your security detail. Sir.”

  Great. And he’s never been to one of the most dangerous regions in the world?

  Clearly, I do a piss poor job hiding my displeasure, because Hargrove rushes to continue. “I’m the junior member, sir. I spoke to the team leader this morning, and he’s been in Islamabad for two years now. So has the rest of the team.”

  Well, that’s something, at least. “Good to know, Hargrove.”

  “Griff. No one but my SSO calls me Hargrove.” He offers me a sheepish smile. “Always makes me feel like I’m about to be singled out in front of the class.”

  I arch a brow. “CIA?”

  “Yes, sir. My previous posting was in Afghanistan. And I speak some Urdu.”

  Offering him a firm handshake, I force all thoughts of Gil from my mind. This mission might be punishment, but it’s one I deserve. If I wallow too much in my own misery, I’ll put this kid—and the others working with me, for me—at risk, and that’s unacceptable. “Let’s hope the next few months are uneventful,” I say, regaining some of the composure and authority I lost in Venezuela.

  Fake it till you make it. One of Dad’s favorite sayings. Time to put it into practice.

  Chapter Two

  August

  Mikayla

  The freak summer rainstorm sounds like hundreds of tiny pebbles hitting the roof of my car as I pull out of the garage at Baltimore/Washington International Airport. Next to me in the passenger seat, my mother sighs.

  “You look so tired, Mikayla. How late did you work last night?”

  Thank goodness I’m driving so I don’t have to look her in the eyes. “I left around 2:00 a.m.” My mother clucks her tongue, and though she only wants the best for me, she doesn’t understand why I do this. “Mom, the World Horticultural Society needed supporting documentation for the fellowship application, and I had to get it right.”

  “At the expense of your health?” my father asks from the back seat. “If you had gone to medical school—“

  “That was your dream. Not mine.” I meet his gaze in the rear view mirror briefly, then return my focus to the road and merge onto the freeway. “I love what I do, Dad. My work… There’s an orchid that only grows in Guatemala and one specific region of Mexico high up in the mountains. It produces a rare phytotoxin in its roots and flowers, but one of my colleagues at Johns Hopkins thinks he can use it to help create a treatment for Parkinson’s.” I pause, hoping they’ll understand the importance, but despite losing my grandmother to that horrible disease, my mother’s still giving me the side eye. “The orchid’s in danger of extinction. Most of its habitat has already been lost to coffee farming, and it’s so rare, poachers make a fortune selling it. Without proof it has more value than being one flower amid a host of others, it’ll be gone in under a decade.”

  “We did not leave Syria and seek asylum in America so our daughter could risk her life studying a flower,” my father says.

  Anger flares up, bright and hot. This is his favorite argument, but it’s also one I can refute easily. “No. You left Syria so your daughter could decide for herself what she wanted to do with her life. I want to study this orchid. Preserve its existence.”

  “And how does working all hours of the day and night help this?” The judgement in my mother’s voice grates on my nerves, but despite her nagging, she’s always come around in the end and has been my biggest fan—as long as I could justify my actions. She convinced Dad to stop pressuring me to go to medical school, supported me when I told them I was moving from Mountain View, California to Edgewater, Maryland to take a job at the Smithsonian, and I know I can sway her now too.

  “If I get this grant, I’ll be able to take a team of graduate students with me down to Mexico and study the orchid in its natural habitat. With the information we’ll get there, we might be able to find a way to preserve its existence. Reliably grow it in the lab or cross-breed it with a hardier variety. And we’ll bring back enough samples for Johns Hopkins to work towards a clinical trial.”

  My words spill out over one another in my excitement, and I know I’m rambling in ways my parents didn’t fly across the country to hear. They just wanted to spend a long weekend with me. But I can’t help myself. “If we visit the grow sites, we can take air, water, and soil samples, install equipment that monitors all those variables year-round, and maybe even convince the Mexican government to do more to stop poachers from stealing the flowers and selling them illegally.”

  “You want to study poisonous plants? In the mountains of Mexico?” my father asks. “Mikayla, that does not sound safe.”

  “It is. I promise. The poison is only active when the flowers and roots are dried, and we always wear protective equipment when we handle the samples. And it’s not a poisonous plant. It’s a plant that could potentially help millions of people. That just happens to be dangerous when dried.”

  “You would be hiking? Up in the mountains? Alone?” My mother rests her hand on my shoulder. “I do not like that idea.”

  Traffic grinds to a halt. A heavy summer rainstorm combined with rush hour doesn’t make for ideal conditions, and as I stop the car, I lock eyes with each of my parents in turn. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The research papers I’ll be able to publish alone off of this study will make my whole career. And if I can work with Dr. Branch—he’s my colleague at Johns Hopkins—on his paper… Mom, I could save lives.”

  She’s softening. I can tell from her expression, and emboldened, I take a deep breath. “I promise I’ll be careful. I’ve started using the stair machine every day trying to get my lungs in shape, and my graduate students…they’re working their butts off designing experiments and thinking up new ways we can possibly save an entire species. They deserve this as
much—if not more—than I do.”

  For a full minute, no one says a word. Traffic starts crawling slowly, and I return my focus to the road just as my father clears his throat. “You know we love you, Mikayla. We are simply worried. It’s what parents do.”

  Mom settles back into the passenger seat. “Your father is right, Mika. We worry because we love you.”

  I flash her a quick smile, and the tension in my little Prius evaporates almost immediately. “I know. I love you too. I worked so late last night so I wouldn’t have to go in again all weekend. And I bought all of the ingredients for kibbeh bil sanieh. Tomorrow, we can cook together.”

  “You mean tomorrow I will cook and try to stop you from eating all the pine nuts.” Mom huffs out a breath, but her lips curve into a smile.

  I laugh, letting work fade into the background for now—and hopefully for the rest of their visit. “You won’t have to. I bought double what we need, so I get to eat as many as I want. Dad can too. And I picked up a box of those chocolate caramels you love. We all get to indulge this weekend.”

  They only visit twice a year, and my work has kept me so busy, I couldn’t fly out to see them during Ramadan. While I’m not a practicing Muslim, Mom and Dad are, and I know they were hurt when I couldn’t even make it for a weekend trip during the holiday. For the next few days, I’ll do my best to put work out of my mind and enjoy my time with them. And hopefully, in a couple of weeks, the grant will come through, and so will my dreams of making a difference.