Lock 'N' Load

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Discover more Amara titles… Reckless Honor

  Undercover with the Nanny

  Wanted for Life

  Hard Pursuit

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 by Tee O’Fallon. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

  Entangled Publishing, LLC

  2614 South Timberline Road

  Suite 105, PMB 159

  Fort Collins, CO 80525

  rights@entangledpublishing.com

  Amara is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.

  Edited by Brenda Chin and Karen Grove

  Cover design by Erin Dameron-Hill

  Cover photography from Getty Images and Deposit Photos

  ISBN 978-1-64063-574-6

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First Edition May 2018

  To all the wonderful dogs I’ve loved in my life: Chief, Frosty, Kobie, Kiska, Taz, and Jet. And to the beautiful puppies I hope to have again one day.

  To all the working dogs: K-9s, military dogs, guide dogs, therapy dogs, companion dogs… For all that you do to keep us safe and make our lives better.

  Last but hardly least, to all the dogs currently living in shelters worldwide. May you one day soon find the loving human you deserve.

  Prologue

  Forty years ago

  She squeezed her eyes shut, willing the unbearable pain to stop. It didn’t.

  With every breath, her ribs screamed in agony, to the point where she nearly blacked out. The muscles in her abdomen spasmed from the fresh blows, never having completely healed from the last beating. Her left eye throbbed and was so swollen, she could barely see out of it.

  Gritting her teeth, she pressed her palms on the cheap linoleum kitchen floor, trying to push up on her hands, but there was no traction and she fell back down with a painful thud. It was impossible, she now realized. In her weakened state—and with the floor so covered in blood—her hands kept slipping.

  “Mama!” her little boy cried.

  “Stay there!” She held up her hand, gasping as another shaft of pain speared her entire upper body.

  Her son’s pale cheeks were streaked with tears, as were hers. Although she didn’t know whether his were from seeing her like this or the terror of what was before them.

  Lying in the ever-widening pool of blood surrounding her was her husband’s deer-gutting butcher knife. And her dead husband.

  The flow of thick, sticky blood that had poured from the gaping wound in his belly and the deep slice in his neck had gradually slowed to a trickle. From the amount of blood, she’d guess the knife had sliced into an artery somewhere.

  “We have to get out of here, Billy,” she whispered on a strained exhale. She took another agonizing breath, this one shallower, so it didn’t hurt so much. “Walk around the blood and help me. Careful not to step in it.” She didn’t want to leave any sign that her son had been there, including any bloody sneaker prints.

  Billy stared at her, his watery blue eyes wide, his hands trembling. Still, he didn’t move, and the realization had her worrying that he’d be mentally scarred for life.

  First things first.

  “Billy, sweetie. I need your help. Can you come over here and help Mama?” Painful though she knew it would be, she raised her arm, wincing as her ribs screamed in protest. Surely several of them were cracked. “Come quickly. Please,” she added when he didn’t budge.

  “O-okay.” His chest rose and fell, and to her relief, he began skirting around the blood, keeping his back to the kitchen counter.

  She grabbed the bloody knife from the floor and began wiping it clean on her shirt. Even though her husband had a lengthy record, the police would still process this as a crime scene and look for the killer.

  Another spasm ripped through her, and she dropped the knife, squeezing her eyes shut as she stifled a scream. When she opened them, her heart thudded. The knife had slithered well beyond her reach into the center of the bloody pool. Looking up at the ceiling, she sent out a silent prayer that she’d managed to clean off all the fingerprints.

  “That’s good,” she said to Billy as he approached her from behind. “Now hold out your hand and keep it steady while you help me up. No matter what I say or do, just keep helping me to stand. Okay?”

  Billy nodded, and after placing her hand in his, she took several deep breaths. What happened next would be excruciating, but it had to be done. Will’s brother, Avery, was due over shortly, and if her brother-in-law caught them there, she and her son would both surely die. Most likely, Avery would hack them to ribbons and enjoy every second of it. The son of a bitch.

  She and Billy locked gazes. “Pull me up, and remember what I told you. No matter what I say, don’t stop.”

  Without hesitating, he pulled. The scream she let out was high-pitched, like that of a wounded animal. Which was exactly what she was.

  “Mama!” Billy cried when she was halfway to her feet.

  “Don’t stop,” she hissed. White stars exploded in her vision, and she wavered, reaching frantically for the nearby counter. Billy was small for his age and might not be able to fully support her. If she fell to the floor, she doubted she’d be able to rise again.

  Fumbling through the haze of agony, she grabbed for the edge of the laminate, gripping it so tightly several of her nails cracked. She sucked in shallow breaths, exhaling through her mouth until the spasms passed. Vaguely, she recognized Billy’s cries of concern, although his voice was muted, as if he were far, far away.

  “I’m okay. Just give me a minute.” You don’t have a minute. Avery was coming, and his rage would be ten levels beyond Will’s worst. That was the way of the West Virginia Sands clan. Violence was their family legacy.

  Gradually, she could begin to make out shapes from her one good eye. She blinked and shook her head to clear it, but that only intensified the throbbing.

  Behind her, Billy threw his arms around her waist, plastering his body against hers. Covering her mouth with her hand, she muffled the scream rising in her throat from the tight contact around her battered midsection.

  Grimacing, she eased away from him and snagged Will’s pickup truck keys from the hook by the kitchen door. “Let’s go.” She turned and
tugged Billy’s hands from her waist, leading him to the door. With every step, her chest ached. Her eye throbbed. More than once, her knees nearly gave way out from under her.

  “Mama, can I get my mitt?” His hopeful voice made her heart ache as they made their way slowly to the truck.

  “No, sweetie.” Her steps were slow, mincing, but eventually they got to where Will’s pickup was parked in front of the old shed. “I’ll buy you a new one. I promise.”

  As Billy helped her up into the driver’s seat, she wondered how or where she would get the money to pay for a new mitt. She cranked over the motor, grateful for the engine’s loud, reliable rumble.

  Billy climbed into the passenger seat, and she waited while he buckled up. An ironic snort of laughter bubbled in her throat. An evil, violent man would soon be coming for them, and all she could think of was that her son needed to fasten his seat belt before they drove off.

  Taking one last look at the dilapidated house that used to be their home, she suddenly saw that her path moving forward was the clearest it had been since she’d made the horrible mistake of marrying Will. Once again, she prayed that this time she’d be able to find the resources and courage to do what needed to be done next.

  Then she and her son would disappear. Forever.

  Chapter One

  Present day

  Trista dug into her bag for her ID and pushed through the heavy glass door of the George Bush Center for Intelligence, aka CIA headquarters.

  Though it was early September, summer was still in full swing, and the building’s cool interior was a welcoming, icy whisper over her face. Of course, on a day like today, she probably shouldn’t have worn her long gray pencil skirt with its matching long-sleeved knit blouse. But the outfit was comfy and covered nearly every square inch of her, which was precisely why she’d chosen it. Baring a lot of skin had never been her thing.

  Voices echoed in the cavernous lobby as she walked briskly across the sixteen-foot-wide circular floor seal bearing the well-known eagle-and-shield symbol of the CIA. Trista groaned inwardly. She hated Mondays. Not because she hated work. Hardly. She absolutely loved her job and had ever since she’d interned with the CIA during college.

  With majors in math and computer engineering, she’d been recruited by the agency only days after graduating from Columbia University. Having interned for several summers in St. Petersburg, she was also fluent in Russian and naturally gravitated to the agency’s Directorate of Analysis, focusing on Russian politics. But her true love was computer cryptography, part of the Directorate of Science and Technology. There, she’d quickly discovered she possessed that ultra-rare talent for seeing things in codes and ciphers that no one else could see, and finding patterns and associations hidden beneath layers of jumbled data. At thirty-three, she was one of the youngest—and the only CIA employee—to work on projects simultaneously for both directorates. Including her current assignment: surveil the cultural attaché to the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Washington, D.C. On the internet, that was. And she was eager to log in and get back on his digital trail.

  I really, really do hate Mondays.

  Mondays were reserved for tours, and sure enough, an early morning student tour of the building was already clogging the lobby, partially blocking the two employee lines to the security checkpoints. Even those lines were unusually long this morning. The magnetometer occasionally beeped from someone who failed to remove keys from their pocket, and the X-ray machine’s conveyor belt rattled and thumped as visitors placed their bags and briefcases down for inspection. Until recently, Langley didn’t allow public tours, but now that they did, they weren’t taking any chances with shoddy security.

  She got into one of the two employee lines and began tapping her ID card against her thigh. Her latest assignment was the first one in months that had really gotten her juices flowing, and she was eager to dig in. With her analytical aptitude for anything requiring a computer and all things coded, she was a whiz at her job. Hence, the additional security clearances that came with the embedded circuitry in her ID card.

  “C’mon, c’mon.” She tapped the card harder against her thigh. It was just before seven a.m., an atypically early time for a student tour. Due to the seven-hour time difference between Virginia and Russia, she’d altered her shift to start an hour earlier, and the delay at getting upstairs to her computer was irritating. Eavesdropping on someone eight time zones away was a royal pain in the zadnitsa.

  To keep herself occupied, she turned her attention to several boys who were part of the tour. She’d learned early on as a child that she was a people watcher, and she was good at it. Ironic, since she considered herself socially inept. Her three gifts in life were her analytical mind, her ability to read people, and, of course, her fluency in Russian. Beyond that, I got nothin’. With her, social skills and good looks must have skipped a generation.

  The boys had caught her attention partly because they were big, seventeen she’d guess, and partly because they were standing close to each other, leaning in and whispering. A clandestine huddle. She wasn’t an operative—a CIA agent—but she loved the lingo.

  In unison, the boys craned their necks, eyeing the employee checkpoints. One of them grinned slyly, nodding his head. She’d bet he was the leader of the pack and was trying to act cool in front of his friends by doing something totally brainless.

  She snorted. Don’t do it. He wouldn’t be the first idiot to try to blow past the visitors’ screening checkpoint, and he probably wouldn’t be the last.

  “Hey, Tris!” a bubbly voice called from somewhere behind her.

  She looked over her shoulder to see her friends, Bonnie and Kevin, at the back of the employee line. She waved back, grinning at Bonnie’s attire. Her friend was everything Trista was not—gorgeous and a social butterfly extraordinaire.

  Bonnie Mistrano was tall, about five foot eight, voluptuous, and wore skintight clothes. She had that whole Italian beauty queen thing going, and it worked for her. Men loved Bonnie, and she loved men. Ironically, Bonnie had it bad for Trista’s teammate, Kevin Lowell. But Kevin was so blockheaded and job-obsessed that he appreciated RAM, memory space, and a super high-speed internet connection more than a beautiful woman’s attention.

  Kevin was a classic, pocket protector–wearing computer geek who had eyes only for his computer screen. The man was totally oblivious to how much Bonnie lusted after him, and Trista had been sworn via pinkie oath never to reveal how much Bonnie loved the guy.

  The familiar whooshing from the glass shield entry panels opening and closing meant she was closer to the checkpoint scanner, with only a half dozen people in front of her. That’s when she noticed the new cop standing in front of the scanner visually checking IDs before people swiped in. Holy moly. It would have been impossible not to notice him.

  He was tall. Really tall. By her estimation, several inches over six feet. In her sensible, boring, flat shoes, he would easily tower over her measly five foot one. Perhaps he was new to the CIA’s Security Protective Service, because she didn’t think she recognized him. Then again, she probably needed new glasses.

  Pushing her thick trifocals up higher on the bridge of her nose, she peered around the man in front of her to get a better look.

  Wide shoulders and an impossibly broad chest filled out the cop’s navy-blue uniform shirt. His short sleeves were filled with thick, bunching biceps. Her gaze traveled down his torso to his trim hips and from there to a pair of long, muscled legs flexing beneath his uniform pants, then back up to his duty belt loaded with, among other things, a large holstered gun.

  With the line shortening, there were only three people ahead of her now, giving her an even better view. Pathetic though it was, she couldn’t stop herself from cataloging more of the cop’s assets.

  Short, dark-brown hair curled boyishly around his ears, as if his cop haircut was on the verge of needing a trim. Deep, chocolate-brown eyes. Like Ghirardelli. No, Lindt. My favorite. With his straight,
patrician nose, high cheekbones, and chiseled square jaw, he was GQ-handsome, in a rugged kind of way.

  The vigilant way he scanned the visitor line reminded her of a panther surveying the forest from the treetops, ready to strike its prey at any time. But what he did next was totally juxtaposed from the wild image she’d just created in her mind.

  Alvin Sykes was the CIA’s oldest living employee, and Alvin refused to use a walker, instead preferring to lean heavily on his cane. As he hooked the cane over his forearm to swipe in, he tottered, and the officer shot out a hand, steadying Alvin and allowing him to use his arm for added balance.

  Unable to tear her gaze away, she continued watching the cop, alternately fascinated by both the infinite gentleness he showed to Alvin and the rippling play of thick muscles in his forearms. She’d definitely never seen him before. His was a face she could never have forgotten. He was unbelievably gorgeous. The man was like a living, breathing Greek statue cut from marble by the most gifted stonecutter in history.

  Her perusal momentarily paused at the gold, rectangular name tag on that incredible chest. Sgt. M. Connors. When she looked up at his face, he was staring at her intently, almost…thoughtfully. She froze, her throat clogging. Oh, pooh. Her face heated with embarrassment.

  Why can’t I be as fluent around men as I am with computers?

  Yet another major flaw in her social abilities, or lack thereof. Getting outcast as a brainiac early on in school had led to social awkwardness—the source of her hot-guy anxiety. The minute she found a man even remotely attractive, she got flustered, and her ability to converse like a normal Homo sapien went totally out the window, as if someone had switched off the power button to her brain. Sadly, that had only worsened over the years.

  She quickly averted her eyes from his and moved up in line until there was only one person standing between her and the scanner. She couldn’t wait to get upstairs and escape to the comfort of her office—the one place in her world where she felt truly competent.

  Dark brows drew together as Sgt. Connors stepped aside for her to access the scanner. That’s when she noticed it. A tan-and-black dog sitting obediently at his side. She’d seen the other CIA K-9s before but never so close that she’d have to pass within inches of the animal in order to move through the checkpoint.