Fatal Courage: Shadow Force International, Book 3 (Shadow Force International Romantic Suspense Series) Read online

  Fatal Courage

  Shadow Force International, Book 3

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  Misty Evans

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  To Mark, who is always salty, and free with the curse words.

  Acknowledgements

  Another wonderful adventure for me, writing Fatal Courage and learning about the world of medicine, the business of terrorism, and weaving an intricate storyline where a good guy might be bad…or he might be a bad guy who excels at making people believe he’s good. Which one is Elliot? Honestly, it wasn’t until I was done with the first draft that I knew myself. That’s where gratitude to Adrienne Giordano comes in. She gave me the idea for Elliot’s character. Thank you, my friend and awesome brainstorming partner.

  Thanks, also, to the Rockin’ Readers, my street team/review crew, who are always there for me, like an extended family. You guys make this journey fun and exciting. Often when I’m writing, I picture all of you in my head.

  A special shout-out to Maria Mercedes, who volunteered to share her name with Beatrice’s midwife. You’ll be reading more about Beatrice, Cal, and Maria in the upcoming novella, FATAL LOVE, starring the new baby. Girl or boy? Readers get to decide, so check out the end of the story to find out where you can cast your vote.

  The white room meditation mentioned in the story comes via my son, Ben, who also turned me onto Tibetan singing bowls. Kids these days.

  By the way, for those who love Jax, a piece of trivia. The name Sloan is Gaelic and means “warrior”. I didn’t know that when I picked his name, but it sure fits.

  A huge thank you goes out to my yoga sister, Gloria Rumpf, who told me about her midwife and the foot trick to induce labor during our teacher training. I had to use it, G. Great story! To all of my yoga teacher training classmates (Gloria, Julie, Kayla, and Sonya) and our beloved yoga teacher (Pam) —I owe you my sanity. I was writing this story during our training period and preparing for my sons’ graduation as well as my move to a new state. I met my edge many times over and handled it with your love and support. Thank you, yogis!

  As always, I am indebted to my editors, cover artist, beta readers, and formatter, who take my lump of clay and make it shiny and pretty. I couldn’t do it without all of you, or without Amy Remus, who does a fantastic job keeping me organized.

  Shadow Force International

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  A group of former SEALs, abandoned by the United States and labeled as rogue operatives, who now work as a black ops team performing private intelligence, security, and paramilitary missions for those who have nowhere else to turn.

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  Fate whispers to the warrior ‘you cannot withstand the storm’;

  the warrior whispers back ‘I am the storm.’

  ~ Anonymous

  Fatal Courage, Shadow Force International Book 3

  Copyright © 2016 Misty Evans

  ISBN: 978-0-9966470-7-6

  Cover Art by Sweet & Spicy Designs

  Formatting by Author E.M.S.

  Editing by Patricia Essex, Marcie Gately

  By payment of required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this eBook. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented without the express written permission of copyright owner.

  Please Note

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

  The reverse engineering, uploading, and/or distributing of this eBook via the internet or via any other means without the permission of the copyright owner is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Table of Contents

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  FREE Short Story

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Shadow Force International

  Copyright

  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

  Epilogue

  Thank You for Reading

  Books by Misty Evans

  About the Author

  Chapter One

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  JAXON SLOAN WANTED to stuff burlap in his ears.

  Techno dance music filled the air. The entire Chicago nightclub pulsed, the rhythm beating against his eardrums and making his eyes cross.

  He used to love this type of music, the deep throb that reminded him of sex. After his stint in Morocco with a certain female CIA operative, he lost his love of the hard-driving, electronic music. These days, he preferred the sensuous tease of finger symbols, flutes, and frame drums.

  Not even the sexy women grinding it out on the dance floor in front of him were enough to distract him. He should have had a hard-on from all the tight bodies on display, the luscious hips and full racks undulating under the flashing neon lights. Red lips, fuck-me pumps, skin, skin, and more skin everywhere he looked.

  She’s not here.

  He knew what that meant.

  No Ruby, no hard-on.

  Story of his fucking life.

  Forcing himself to tune out the hellish music, he scanned the crowd again. He’d spotted her rental outside. She had to be here somewhere.

  Restroom?

  Bar?

  Private room upstairs?

  His gaze darted to the reflective mirrors over the dance floor. The club boasted a private suite with two-way mirrors, a personal bar, and giant flat-screens. Tonight’s renter, a gangster named Augustus “Little Gus” Nelson, had recently dipped his toes into the international terrorist trade.

  A soft, involuntary growl rose from Jax’s throat. The thought that Ruby might be with Little Gus, using her inimitable charms as well as her CIA training to pump the king of the South Side black market for information made him want to draw his weapon and shoot the mirrored glass overhead.

  Pull your shit together.

  Beatrice, his boss at Shadow Force International, was always warning him about his tem
per. Too many times in his thirty years of life, it had gotten him into major trouble.

  But then, he sort of liked trouble.

  Hell, he loved trouble. Trouble meant confrontation, swinging fists, and sometimes a one-night stand with a beautiful, belly-dancing spy.

  Dropping his gaze, he analyzed various ways to get into that suite and find out if his intuition was accurate. The only reason Ruby was here tonight had to be Little Gus. She was supposed to have her ass planted behind a desk, spending her probation time from the Agency assisting the local Feds with counterterrorism cases. No fieldwork. No undercover assignments. Just good old-fashioned paper shuffling.

  Yet, she was here, in this club, frequented by the gangster. If Jax knew anything about the CIA’s former golden girl, Ruby wasn’t here for the apple cosmos and Calvin Harris music.

  Maybe she’s meeting Hayden.

  And wouldn’t that make his night? Snagging Elliot Hayden, Ruby’s former partner, currently a federal fugitive, would be one fucking big feather in Jaxon’s cap. Hell, he’d barely received his orders to go after Hayden three hours ago. If he wrapped up this mission for Shadow Force International before sunrise, he’d be on the fast track to running his own SFI team. Beatrice would be so unbelievably impressed, she might even congratulate him and give him a raise.

  Sweet bonus, that. The head of Shadow Force International teams was one hard woman to impress. Even harder to get in good with.

  Plus, Hayden was a scumbag. Taking him down—again—would feel pretty righteous. How the fucknugget had escaped federal prison was beyond Jax. He feared Hayden had had assistance from a pretty brunette who could talk her way into and out of anything.

  Including Jax’s bed.

  Although, to be fair, in that one night of mind-blowing sex, they’d christened every piece of furniture, the floor, and the shower, spending little time actually in his bed.

  Whoa. His gaze snagged on a young woman making her way onto the dance floor in a clingy red number that draped over her curves like hot fudge over ice cream.

  He couldn’t see her face as she danced alone, raising her arms over her head and shimmying her body. She was blond instead of brunette, but he knew that body well. The shimmying started at her fingertips, moved down her arms, her chest, her belly. It ended at her hips with a figure eight sway, back and forth, back and forth, her hips hitting that certain spot…and Jax knew.

  Knew.

  Like a straight shot of whiskey to his stomach, his system reacted. His fingers twitched; sweat broke out on along his hairline. The hard-on he should have had earlier jumped to attention.

  Goddammit, Ruby.

  He’d seen the belly dancer moves before, in the privacy of a steamy Marrakech bedroom, nothing touching her skin except for the see-through hip scarf with gold coins hanging low on her hips. He still remembered the way the coins were sensitive to every move she made.

  Ting, ting, ting. The remembered sound infiltrated his ears, blocking out the driving dance music, the rise and drop of her exquisite hips flashing through his mind.

  His hard-on grew.

  The memory of her dancing over him shook him to his core. The way she’d laid him on his back and kept those hips moving, the tinging mesmerizing him as much as her movements. She’d lowered her head to take in his jutting tip, then shook her hips, jingling that scarf. Inch by slow inch, she’d taken more of him into her mouth, undulating her hips in a belly dance he’d never forget in a million years.

  There was no one like Ruby McKellen.

  Every man, and many of the women, in the general vicinity stared at her on the dance floor, those enchanting hips and high, bouncing breasts impossible to resist. Another growl rose from the depths of Jax’s chest.

  Eight months since Marrakech. Mosques, medieval gardens, maze-like alleys. Sex and betrayal.

  His last mission as a SEAL.

  No, he didn’t need to see Ruby’s face to know it was her on the dance floor. Hips don’t lie.

  Hers were like a fingerprint. Unique. Unlike any other woman’s in the world.

  But when she whirled around, moving toward the center of the dancers, her stunning face confirmed it.

  She’s here.

  And she was undercover.

  The wig, the way she was purposely trying to draw the attention not only of all the people around her, but of the man sitting behind the mirrors upstairs…

  Jax’s body moved forward, striding onto the dance floor before the next pump of bass, his large frame colliding with people in his way. A woman reached out and ran a bold hand down his arm.

  “Hi handsome.” She grabbed onto him and slowed him down. “Dance with me?”

  She was a striking redhead with big green eyes and a wide mouth. Those eyes that told him she wanted nothing more than a dance and some sex. Another time, he might have given her exactly what she wanted.

  Not tonight. Even though he hadn’t had a woman since Ruby, and his dry spell was screwing with him, he had a job to do.

  Removing the woman’s hand from his arm, he gave her a charming smile. “Save me one.”

  The redhead pouted and he moved on, his attention once more on the spy dead ahead.

  As if she felt him bearing down on her, Ruby scanned the crowd. She’d picked up a partner whose hands angled for her hips, but she danced away, her gaze, and then the rest of her, colliding with Jax.

  Ruby McKellen was no amateur. If she was surprised to see him, it didn’t show. Her facial expression didn’t change except for an almost imperceptible widening of her eyes. Her body kept moving…right past Jax.

  Oh, no, honey. You’re not getting away that easy.

  As her new partner tried to follow, Jax cut in front of him. Over the music, he heard the guy balk. Felt a hand on his shoulder.

  One quick uppercut and the guy bent over, sucking wind. Jax patted him on the back. “Stay away from her or the next time you come within spitting distance, I’ll pull your heart out through your throat.”

  By the time he turned around, Ruby and her mind-blowing hips were slipping off the dance floor.

  SHE’D ALMOST BLOWN it.

  Ruby’s pulse hammered in her ears. Her legs, in the four-inch heels, wobbled as she half-ran for cover.

  That’s what Jaxon Sloan did to her.

  Every damn time.

  Get away.

  She scooted past a dancing couple, dodged a groping hand, and slid off the dance floor behind a woman slightly bigger than her. Her undercover training kicked in, her brain commanding her breathing to slow and her body to move less erratically.

  Less like prey.

  Seeing Jax out on the dance floor had shocked her system from head to toe. The months—they felt like years—had slogged by and suddenly he was here. An apparition. A ghost of her failure, come back to haunt her.

  Heading for the rear of the club, she didn’t dare look behind her. She’d nearly keeled over from a heart attack right there in the middle of everyone on the dance floor.

  What was he doing here? How did he know she was in Chicago?

  He could have blown her mission. Again.

  Worse, with her little slip, she’d almost let him. After all of her training and twenty-one missions with only that one, single failure, she knew how to handle surprises. Nothing tripped her up.

  Except Jax.

  Tall, dark, and forever full of himself, his sudden appearance had thrown her but good. For a second, she’d thought her subconscious had wished him into being. She’d been thinking of him—couldn’t get the man out of her mind even after all this time. With every move of her hips as she danced, she’d thought of him and their time in Marrakech. The way he’d touched her, the way he’d made her moan his name and beg for more.

  She hit the back hallway, signs for the restrooms pointing to the left. Ruby went right.

  Her pulse returned to normal and she dodged into an office doorway to avoid being seen by one of the owner’s goons. The back entrance was only a few steps a
way. Her car waited in the parking lot.

  The goon disappeared and Ruby started forward, then stopped. Now that she was thinking more clearly, she had to consider the consequences of bailing. A part of her didn’t want to go—it wanted to confront Jax. Yell at him. Tell him to get the hell out.

  Or maybe, take him back to her place.

  Ah, hell.

  Yep, she’d nearly flaked out on the dance floor when she saw him in the flesh, his smoldering dark eyes eating her up. Her heart had frozen in her chest, her limbs suddenly quivering with anticipation.

  That’s what happened when you’d been fantasizing about a guy for months and then he showed up looking even better than he did in your dreams.

  Fantasy. That’s all he was and that’s how he had to remain.

  Mission first and always. She didn’t have time for distractions. Elliot was counting on her. The Agency was breathing down her neck.

  The last person on the face of the earth she wanted to talk to—regardless of the fact he was the only man who’d ever chiseled his way past her solid walls—was Jaxon Sloan.

  As she stepped out from her hiding place, Jax’s deep voice stopped her in her tracks. “Are you running from me, Ruby?”