CHAPTER ONE
Three years later …
“Suspect’s heat signature, behind a shack about twenty-five feet ahead of you, on the right. One side of the roof has collapsed.” Luna Pannikos conveyed information to the OSI Dark Ops team through their high-tech earpieces. “Hang on, I’ll reposition the drone and mark his position for you.”
Darks Ops was a specialized group of covert operators who focused on human trafficking, and Luna was in charge of the ops center.
The team was currently working a mission down near Memphis, and she was providing overwatch from their base near Fredericksburg, Virginia.
Her thumb manipulated the rocker knob on the handheld video remote control and repositioned the drone until it was hovering directly over where Hashir Al-Shamrami was crouched down behind the dilapidated building.
She pressed and held a button to shine a laser down to pinpoint his location.
“Suspect targeted.” Luna kept her attention on the screen on the remote.
The only way to see the bright green light was through NVGs, night vision goggles, like the ones the team was wearing. Al-Shamrami would never even know he’d been spotted until it was too late.
“Got it.” Cole Lambert, her boss and the head of the Dark Ops division of O’Halleran Security International, was leading this op. “Go ahead and bring the drone back to headquarters.”
“Will do.” She tapped the screen on the remote, the drone turned, and the team’s bright green images faded from view as the near-silent drone headed back to its preprogrammed destination.
Through her headset, she could hear the team’s breaths and the rapid thumps of their boots on the grassy terrain as they ran toward the shack. A moment later, all hell broke loose.
“Down on the ground! Do it! Now!” Cole yelled the commands in Farsi.
They had received solid intel that Al-Shamrami was trafficking people across the southern border and into the United States.
He specialized in young women and boys between the ages of eleven and twenty.
Dark Ops had been trying to take him down for several months, but every time they got close, he somehow managed to slip away.
Relieved the operation was successful and that no one had been hurt, Luna began to roll her shoulders in an effort to loosen them. Then, out of the blue, the sound of gunfire blasted through her headset.
“Shit!” Her entire body flinched, and she grabbed the drone’s remote control, but the skirmish would likely be over before she could get it back to their location.
Tapping into the satellite feed wouldn’t work—there wasn’t enough time.
Her gaze flew up to the screen on the wall showing each team member’s vital signs through their bio-patches. Other than a minor spike in their heart rates, everything else appeared to be normal.
Someone yelled, “Drop it!”
There was the sound of a scuffle, some grunting, and what she assumed were twigs snapping beneath their boots.
Luna sat forward, her heart racing, and focused on the sounds in her ears and the numbers on the monitor. She was worried about all of them, but for some confusing reason, one particular man’s handsome face flashed through her mind.
Time ticked by for what seemed like days but was really only minutes.
“Perp is subdued.” Cole continued, “We’re all good.”
Luna blew out a long, relieved breath and dropped back against her chair. “Okay, good.”
“Yeah, Boone lassoed the guy like he was a cow getting ready to be branded.” Eddie Calabretta, the eternal jokester, chuckled.
Boone Langston was the newest member of the Darks Ops team. He was friendly, had an easy charm, and was drop-dead gorgeous. He seemed sincere, but Luna had been fooled by a charming, good-looking guy once before, and that situation had ended tragically.
“I’ll stick around for the debrief.” Luna put her hands on the edge of her desk, gave a gentle push, and rolled her chair to another desk behind her.
“Nah, it’s late, Luna,” Cole said. “Debrief can wait until morning.”
“You sure?” She was disappointed she would have to wait until tomorrow to hear all of the details.
That wasn’t the only reason for her disappointment, but admitting to herself that she wanted to see with her own eyes that Boone was okay meant he was wriggling his way behind her defenses.
She could not let that happen.
“Yeah, it can wait until the morning.” Cole likely wanted to get home to his wife, Dulce, and their adorable little boy.
“Thanks for the backup, Luna.” Boone’s deep voice wrapped around her eardrum like a hug. “It’s always reassuring to know you’re watching over us.”
The rest of the team thanked her, too, but only his voice seemed to seep beneath her skin, threatening to breach the walls of her well-guarded heart.
“You’re welcome.” She tapped her headpiece and began preparing the post-op data she would need for their meeting in the morning.
Luna glanced up at the clock—almost ten o’clock. She should be exhausted after being there for close to sixteen hours, yet she was in no hurry to go home.
She loved her little house and knew it was secure. After all, her brother-in-law, Caleb O’Halleran, had personally seen to it that she was protected by one of his specially designed high-tech security systems. He’d even flown from San Francisco to install it himself.
But sometimes Luna felt … lonely. Which was ridiculous, since her solitude was pretty much self-imposed.
When she’d first accepted the job with Dark Ops and moved away to Virginia, thousands of miles from Caleb and her older sister, Dawn, Luna had been adamant about needing her independence and wanting to build a life of her own.
A life lived outside of their overprotective bubble.
She understood and appreciated their need to protect her. After all, she’d made some pretty dumb decisions in the past. Decisions that almost cost multiple people their lives. People she cared about deeply.
“Enough,” she grumbled to herself, then slid off her headset, set it down on the desk, and jiggled the mouse to wake up her computer. “This data isn’t going to compile itself.”
Thanks to therapy and the love and patience of her sister, brother-in-law, and the rest of the O’Hallerans, she’d matured a lot in the seven years since her world imploded.
But her ability to fully trust her own instincts was still fragile, and she wasn’t sure if, or when, she would ever be ready to extend that trust to a certain cowboy.
Luna stirred awake at the sound of voices coming from down the hall. She tossed off the blanket and swung her legs over the side of the cot. Her back arched as she stretched her arms high overhead and let loose a jaw-cracking yawn.
She’d ended up staying in the ops center last night.
Sammy Joslin, her counterpart at OSI’s PacNW compound and all-around genius, taught her the value of having a decent cot, pillow, and blanket in the ops center.
“You never know how long an op is going to take,” she’d said.
Luna slid the scrunchie from her wrist, speared her fingers through her long hair, and pulled it up into a high ponytail.
She shoved her feet into her sneakers and pushed up off the cot.
She thought about folding the blanket but didn’t want to be the last one into the briefing room.
Because the last one to show up for a meeting had to fetch coffee from the break room for everyone.
She cast a quick glance at the monitors on the wall—all was quiet—and slid open her desk drawer. She rifled through all the stuff until her fingers brushed the pack of gum. She grabbed a piece, tore off the wrapper, and folded the minty gum into her mouth.
“That’ll have to do.” She grabbed her laptop from her desk and dashed down the hall.
Luna heard Boone’s voice as she approached the room and wished she’d taken a minute to at least check herself in a mirror.
You’re not interested, she reminded herself rather vehemently.
She stopped short, hugged her laptop to her chest like a shield, and entered the room.
Don’t look at him. Don’t look at him. Don’t look at him.
Of course, what was the first thing she did? She looked at him.
Their eyes connected, and she froze in place. She wasn’t sure how long they stood there like that—trapped in their own … whatever the heck it was—when Cole’s voice snapped her out of her stupor.
“Let’s go ahead and get started.” He sat at the head of the table.
On his right sat Golden Bailey, aka Viking; Calliope Daniels; and Lucas O’Halleran. He was one of the cousins. In addition to working together, he and Calliope were a couple, and they were a kick to be around.
Luna moved over to take the seat across from them, and Boone beat her to it. She looked up at him as he rolled back her chair. One corner of his sexy mouth lifted, as if challenging her to reject his gesture.
“Thank you,” she said.
Once she was seated, he plopped his tight butt into the chair right next to her.
How the heck did he always manage to do that? He’d ended up sitting next to her during pretty much every meeting since he joined the team.
Hawk sat on the other side of Boone and was talking to Viking.
Luna looked across the table and noticed Calliope watching them. She rolled her lips in, trying hard to hide her smile.
What was that about?
“Ignore her.” Lucas winked at Luna and bumped his shoulder against his fiancée’s.
“What?” Calliope bumped him back. “I think it’s awesome.”
Oh, great. Just what she needed—everyone thinking there was something going on between her and Boone and then blabbing to her sister.
After the meeting, she was going to have to set Boone straight. Whatever his endgame was, she wanted no part of it.
Eddie hurried into the room, stopped short, and looked around the table. “Ah, crap.”
Everyone started calling out their coffee orders for him.
“Luna?” He gave her a questioning look. “Did you want anything?”
“Sure, I’ll take a bottle of water,” she said. “Thanks.”
“Boone?”
“Thanks, man, I’m good.”
“Don’t start without me.” Eddie turned and hustled out of the room.
Cole said, “While we’re waiting for the barista to return—”
“I heard that!” Eddie called out, and everyone chuckled.
“Luna, why don’t you pull up what you need on the monitor.” Cole flipped open a manila folder.
“Sure.” She opened her laptop, and her fingers flew over the keys.
Anticipating her needs, Boone sat forward, reached to the center of the table, and grabbed the remote. “Here ya go.” He placed it in front of her.
“Thank you.” She kept her eyes on her laptop because, on top of him being so friggin’ nice and incredibly capable, his level of physical hunkiness made him super difficult to resist.
Luna just had to stick to the plan—be nice, be cordial, but remain aloof. And most importantly, never let her guard down.
Good luck with that, she thought.