Chapter 1
Marshall
San Diego, California
The Present…
“Here’s your damn cookies that Shelby made for you,” Wyatt Durand grumbled unhappily as he reluctantly dropped the tin of cookies onto the table as he entered the conference room at Last Hope headquarters.
I was already seated in front of a laptop computer at the long table. I smirked as I snagged the cookies and put them near my computer.
Wyatt was possessive about his wife’s cookies, and he hated it when she gave them to anyone else but him.
I liked him, but I enjoyed harassing him about Shelby. It wasn’t that long ago when he’d sworn he wasn’t interested in any kind of commitment or relationship.
“Was it really that painful?” I asked Wyatt with a straight face.
“Yes,” he answered gruffly as he took a seat next to me in the room. “Shelby is a chef, but she doesn’t bake that often. I like you, Marshall, but I’d prefer to keep her baked goods for myself.”
Wyatt was a billionaire and perfectly capable of flying in the best pastries on the planet to his home in San Diego.
Not that Shelby’s cookies weren’t incredible. I coveted them myself. I was pretty sure that Wyatt was possessive of anything that was created by his wife.
I was also certain that Wyatt hated it when Shelby did something nice for another guy, and she did plenty of nice things for me. She thought I was a lonely, older bachelor who didn’t take good care of myself on my own.
She was partially right.
I wasn’t lonely, and even though I was twelve years older than her husband, Wyatt, I wasn’t ready to think of myself as truly old.
However, I was a fifty-three-year-old man who was obsessed with my job and my private volunteer rescue organization that we called Last Hope.
Shelby was probably right about me not paying much attention to my personal well-being most of the time.
I was too obsessed with our hostage rescues to think about what I ate or cooking for myself most of the time.
Wyatt and I were currently sitting at Last Hope headquarters in San Diego, a high-tech facility with impenetrable security.
We monitored and ran our rescue missions from these headquarters while one of our volunteer teams rescued hostages in the field.
Every one of the men on our teams were previous special forces.
Mostly, we took on cases that couldn’t or wouldn’t be handled by the government.
I’d founded the organization after I’d been forced to retire as a SEAL commander because of an injury to my leg that had left me with my leg still intact. Barely. I had a noticeable limp, and I hadn’t been able to return to my duties in the military.
What had started off as a small volunteer rescue operation to fill a gap in the system had morphed into a covert, international organization over the years.
The funding from five billionaires who had signed on to volunteer a few years after the creation of Last Hope, including Wyatt, had boosted Last Hope to another level.
Not only did I have amazing funding for a high-tech operation, but the skills those men provided to help me run complex operations from our operation room here were invaluable. All five of them were top-notch previous special forces.
I took a sip of the strong coffee I’d brewed in the kitchen and swallowed before I asked, “Exactly why are we here right now? I know Brock and Nate requested a conference call immediately, but why the urgency?”
Brock and Nate were half of a very important volunteer team based in Michigan.
Although we had previous special forces volunteers scattered across the globe, they were the A-team we called on the most for hostage rescues.
They’d been part of Wyatt’s Delta Force team for years, and they’d never had a failed operation as long as they’d been volunteering for Last Hope.
Wyatt shrugged. “I don’t have any more information than you do,” he informed me.
“But if they say it’s an emergency, I’m not going to argue.
They never ask us for anything for all of the things they do for Last Hope, and they’re still part of my team even though we aren’t serving in Delta together anymore. ”
I nodded sharply. “Agreed. If they have a problem, I’m here to help them resolve it.”
My fingers flew across the keyboard of the laptop and logged us into the meeting to wait for Brock and Nate to join us.
If Brock and Nate needed information, I was the guy to hit up.
I’d formed an intricate network of informants and useful people to know on both sides of the law throughout my years as a SEAL commander. I’d added even more to that list after my years in the military were over through Last Hope and my contract job with the government.
I was also one of the best hackers on the planet, and there was very little information I couldn’t obtain if I needed it. There was no conceit about my skills. They were simply…a fact.
Having a genius IQ had come in handy over the years, and the areas where I was especially gifted were technology, gathering intel, and an uncanny ability to recall almost any fact or information I’d learned in the past.
I watched my screen as Brock dropped into the meeting and his face appeared on the screen.
I didn’t know our Michigan team as well as Wyatt did, but I could tell that the younger man was stressed.
And it was damn hard to stress out a previous Delta Force operative.
Brock, Nate, Gage, and Seth were around Wyatt’s age, and they all had balls of steel.
I nodded at Brock. “Wyatt is here with me. What’s your situation?” I asked abruptly.
I wasn’t known for being a warm and fuzzy kind of guy.
I cut right to the point.
Brock actually looked relieved that I didn’t bother to make idle conversation.
“Nate’s here, too,” he answered as Nate’s face popped onto the screen.
“We have a friend that’s missing. She left four days ago for a consulting job in Lania with Prince Niklaus.
I told her to check in with me every morning.
Lania might be considered a safe country now, but it was a hellhole not that many years ago.
I heard from her the first and second day, but she missed her check-in yesterday, and I haven’t heard from her this morning, either.
She’s not answering texts or calls from anyone. ”
Fuck! I hated Lania. Most people who were previous special forces still did, even though it was considered a tourist mecca these days.
The country was in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea with pristine beaches and white sand beaches, which the tourists loved.
To me though, it would always be a country that I’d taken way too many hellish trips to when it was a war-torn, small island nation consumed in civil war.
Back then, the rebels had taken hostages, and few of them had lived to tell their stories.
Even after the rebels had supposedly been eradicated, two women had been taken hostage by a few straggling rebels who had remained hidden on the desolate side of the island. Those women were now the wives of two of my billionaire partners who helped to run Last Hope.
Thank fuck we’d actually managed to rescue those two geologists who had been there for geological exploration.
I’d hoped to hell that I’d seen the last of Lanian rebels and Lania.
“What’s the concern?” I asked Brock abruptly. “Prince Nick assured me that all of the rebels were long gone and that Lania was a safe tourist destination now.”
I’d made it a point to become acquainted with Prince Nick a long time ago, and we still kept in touch.
“The rebels are gone,” Nate agreed. “But the king isn’t well physically now. There are a few political enemies who aren’t thrilled about the possibility of Prince Nick becoming the king. Some of them are resistant to the changes he’s made.”
Prince Nick of Lania was unofficially the reigning monarch because his father, the king, had become too demented to make decisions for his country.
I knew the modernization of his country hadn’t been popular with everyone, especially those who didn’t want to see the country become a true democracy in the future.
“We can’t get verification on this,” Brock added. “But we heard from confidential sources that there was an assassination attempt on Prince Nick. We know that you have contacts in Lania, and that you know Prince Nick. We need information, Marshall.”
“I’ll contact him,” I assured Brock. “What kind of work was this woman doing in Lania?”
“She’s a marketing designer,” he replied. “She’s been working with Nick for a while now to improve Lania’s brand. He wants the world to see Lania as a safe, beautiful, and prosperous country after years of war. Their economy is growing fast from tourism.”
“Maybe she just got busy,” I suggested.
Brock shook his head. “No. She’s not like that. If she makes a promise, she keeps it. She knows we’d all be worried if she didn’t check in with us. Something isn’t right. I can feel it.”
“Are we talking about Emma?” Wyatt asked grimly.
Brock nodded. “Yeah. You met her when you visited here, Wyatt. You know her well enough to realize that she’d never just ignore checking in.”
“Yeah, I agree,” Wyatt replied, his voice concerned. “She’s definitely not a flake.”
“When is this woman due back?” I questioned.
“In a week,” Nate said gruffly. “We can’t wait that long. If Emma is in trouble, we need to find out now. We were hoping that you could help us get some intel, Marshall.”
“You really think this woman is in trouble?” I asked Brock with a frown. “We don’t even know if this assassination attempt is real, and what would anyone achieve by kidnapping an American woman?”
Really, the woman could be anywhere.
Maybe she was in Lania for work, but it did have amazing beaches and other things to do for leisure.
Maybe this female wanted a break and didn’t want to be found for a few days.
However, I couldn’t deny the fact that Brock’s gut instinct was always spot on.
“The kidnapping of an American could kill their tourist growth,” Brock mused. “Or maybe they just want her as leverage because she was with Nick.”
I supposed either of those things could be motives if someone really wanted to hurt Nick.
“I’m going to need all of the data you have on this woman,” I said. “Photos, license, and passport info if you have it.”
“Brock and I are getting ready to leave for Lania. I already sent all the info I have to your email,” Nate answered grimly. “We’d just like to get as much information as possible before we leave.”
That didn’t surprise me. If this woman was important to them, they were going to go after her. Whether she was in trouble…or not.
Wyatt pulled his phone out of his pocket. “I have a few photos of Emma that I took the last time I was visiting in Cherry Cove.”
He enlarged a photo and turned his phone around so I could see it.
My heart nearly stopped as I glanced at the picture of a beautiful, blonde woman manning a barbecue grill with a water view in the background.
The smile on her face and the mischief in those ocean blue eyes as she looked at the camera were unmistakable.
Fuck! Emma was a common name. I’d never dreamed that we were discussing a woman I’d known intimately a long time ago.
Maybe it had been fourteen years since I’d seen her face, but it was Emma.
The woman I’d never forgotten, no matter how hard I’d tried over the years.
“Hold off on leaving for Lania,” I said hoarsely. “I’ll hop the first plane I can get to Cherry Cove after I get the intel you need. I’ll be in touch tonight.”