Tormented Hearts (Black Heart Security #12)

Chapter One

As an Army Ranger, Heath Hawk spent years sitting through military debriefs where every second of an operation was reconstructed from memory.

The FBI expected the same thing, only in writing.

Black Heart Security had its own ideas.

Hawk had only been with the team a couple of months. Long enough to realize his bosses’ version of a debrief focused on the highlights, not every minute detail.

He glanced at the report in his hand. “Client extracted without injury.”

Denver Malone nodded from the seat across from him at the long conference table.

“Two hostiles neutralized.”

Another nod.

Hawk went on. “Rounds expended: zero.”

Denver looked up. “For the fourteenth time, we don’t need to know how many bullets you didn’t fire.”

Hawk met his gaze. “They’re part of the report.”

Denver sat back, giving Hawk what he’d started thinking of as the Malone stare.

All seven siblings had the same steel-gray eyes, and every one of them knew how to pin a person in place with a single look.

The six brothers had learned it in the military.

Willow had probably learned it from them, though she seemed to be the real hard-ass of the family so maybe it was innate.

Denver cocked his head to eye him better. “We brought you on because we know you’ve got what it takes. If you fire your weapon, we know it was justified.”

A second later, a striking woman walked through the door, a baby over her shoulder. Two little feet in yellow footed pajamas dangled down her crisp blue shirt.

At the sight of his wife and baby daughter, Denver pushed away from the table. Rhae breezed over to kiss him in her usual morning ritual before she went to her office.

The ranch itself was always hopping with activity. The acres nestled against the mountains had an extensive cattle ranch, a thriving horse business, a security agency office run by the brothers, the Black Heart Therapy lodge for veterans where Rhae worked and a new military training facility.

As she turned, the baby’s wide gray eyes popped into view over her shoulder. The baby stared at Hawk for a second before Rhae spun toward him with a smile.

“Debriefing, Hawk?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’ve told you before—we’re not formal here. Rhae is fine.”

“Rhae.” He gave her a small nod. His momma and the military had taught him manners, and old habits were hard to break.

Denver jumped into the conversation. “Hawk has been giving me an inventory of his last assignment.”

Rhae arched a brow. “And how many bullets were fired this time?”

Hawk lifted a brow in return. “Zero.”

Denver snorted. “We hired a cocky one.”

Rhae patted the baby’s back, looking between them. “And being cocky is different from the team how?”

It was Hawk’s turn to snort. “She’s got you there.”

Rhae bounced the baby on her shoulder. “I’ve seen it a time or twelve.”

The sharp little tap-tap-tap of boots on hardwood brought everyone’s attention to the doorway just as Navy, their young daughter, burst in. Two braids swung on her back and she was already covered in dust from the barn where she loved doing chores with all her uncles and friends.

“Daddy!” She shot straight to Denver’s arms. He squeezed her and tugged on her braid.

She squealed and laughed. Then she turned to Hawk.

“Say hello to Hawk, Navy,” Rhae instructed.

Navy gave Hawk hugs. True to form, she walked straight up to him and held out a hand for him to shake.

Hawk held out his hand. This was his arrangement with Navy. While the girl hugged every family member and pretty much every vet in the therapy program, she did not hug him.

Which was fine by him. He wasn’t a hugger.

He shook her hand as firmly as he could without crushing her sweaty little fingers. But she didn’t stand still for long. The next second, she shot out the door, crying, “Aunt Willow!”

A laugh echoed from the front office as Navy found her aunt, but the sound cut off when a phone started ringing.

Denver dropped a kiss to the baby’s fuzzy head and sent Rhae off to work with a tender smile. When they settled again after the interruption, Hawk glanced at his report, skimming over anything they’d deem unimportant.

He set the paper on the table and scrubbed a finger over his stubbled jaw. “Assignment completed. Client returned safely. Nothing further to report.”

Denver waited a beat. “That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

He flashed a grin. “See? Was that so hard?”

Hawk’s lips tipped at one corner. “So you don’t want to know how many breaths I took while I was in Vegas guarding the performer?”

“Unless you were breathing fire, the answer is no.”

They shared an amused look.

Hawk settled back in his seat for a chat with his boss. “Your kids are growing fast. The baby is twice as big as last time I saw her.”

He nodded, eyes lighting in a way they only did for family matters. When it came to the ranch or any of the operations on it, Denver was all business.

“She’s long for her age. And she’s finally sleeping through the night too. I thought we’d never get there.”

“You were a SEAL. You’re trained for sleepless nights.”

Like everyone else on the ranch, Denver bounced between his duties to the agency and helping out with chores, but he spent most of his days at the new training facility.

For Hawk, the biggest adjustment was the change in scenery.

He’d traded concrete FBI federal buildings for a Wyoming ranch where someone was always making coffee, muddy boots were left by the back door and meetings occasionally paused because a horse had gotten loose.

Denver eyed him. “You’re next in line, Hawk.”

He blinked. “For what?”

“A wife. A bun in the oven.”

Hawk laughed. “You’ve heard that you can’t get blood from stone? I’m the guy who can’t be lured by a pretty face.”

Just as he said this, the receptionist Ayla, who’d been here about as long as Hawk had, popped her head into the war room. “Denver, we’ve got a client near Timberline Ridge who says she’s being followed.”

Denver jolted upright. “Name?”

“Sinead Winthrop.”

Hawk stiffened. “Winthrop?” The name was familiar.

Really familiar.

He combed through his mind for where he’d heard that name. It wasn’t a name from his years growing up in small-town Wyoming, and he hadn’t served with any Winthrops.

Then it hit him.

“From the Legend of the Three Prospectors?” He’d grown up in these parts, hearing the tale around campfires and in bars.

Denver and Ayla stared at him.

Ayla shook her head. “Never heard of the legend, but you can tell us another time, Hawk. Right now, you’ve got an assignment.”

He pushed away from the table and strode to the door. “Sounds like there’s an old money, pampered princess out of her element in the woods.”

Ayla hurried after him. “She sounds calm and in control, but she wouldn’t call us if she weren’t scared.”

He continued to the door. “A deer probably spooked her. Send me her coordinates. I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”

He threw a look at Denver and referenced the thread of their conversation from earlier, about women and children.

He held up five fingers. “Five assignments with Black Heart Security. Zero entrapments.” He formed a zero with his thumb and fingers and walked out to meet his next ward.

* * * * *

The woods were thick here—the thickest spot Sinead could find, which was exactly why she’d chosen it.

She’d been to fourteen countries. She’d bribed a customs officer in Manila with a carton of cigarettes and a smile, and talked her way out of a checkpoint in a place she still couldn’t name on a map without looking twice.

She’d gotten herself into—and out of—more than one questionable situation.

But that didn’t stop her heart from slamming against her ribs the second she saw the two men moving through the trees half an acre out, mirroring her pace exactly.

She pressed her back against a pine and went still. Listened.

The birds had gone quiet a minute before—now they started up again, which meant the men had gone still too.

They were waiting, same as her.

You’re being ridiculous, she told herself. You’ve been on edge for weeks. This is grief talking, not instinct.

Her father’s instructions had been simple enough on paper. A property in the Wyoming backcountry the family had held quietly for over a century—untouched, unlisted, unmentioned in any conversation Sinead could remember growing up.

He’d left her coordinates, a hand-drawn map with an X that could have meant anything, and a note in his study that said only “Look where the ridge bends,” like it was a treasure map.

Only instead of actual treasure, she assumed she’d find a cache of old deeds. Maybe some mineral rights nobody bothered updating since the Eisenhower administration. The kind of paperwork problem a good lawyer could untangle in an afternoon.

Instead of hiring that lawyer, her father left Sinead a shovel and a riddle.

And six weeks of grief with nowhere to put it.

It was barely seven in the morning and cold enough that her breath fogged and the light through the pines was thin and gray. She was pretty sure her coat was stuck to the frost on the tree she’d pinned herself against.

And she’d told herself twenty times that the feeling of being followed was nothing. Just nerves. She hadn’t slept right since the funeral, and the lack of sleep would make anyone see ghosts in the trees.

Except ghosts didn’t move in formation.

At dawn, she’d been out here with a metal detector, waving it in slow arcs over the ground, telling herself she was being paranoid right up until she caught something a second time through the trunks.

Two men, moving in slow, deliberate steps and closing the gap between them with each one. That was when she threw herself behind a tree fast enough to skin her hand on the bark.

She sent a sideways look toward the place she last saw them. Nothing there.

The forest was waking up again, but it wasn’t normal either.

With a hand that was as unsteady as her heart, she slowly withdrew her phone from her pocket and found the number of a local security company.