Chapter 1
St. Anna Private Hospital
Northern California
The security guard didn’t stand a chance. Alexander Montgomery watched as three of his men disarmed him, then showed him their credentials.
At the present hour, the hospital corridors were all but deserted.
A nurse pulled out her cell phone to record Alexander’s fifteen-man entourage as they passed.
Her phone was taken and destroyed as she was ushered away.
The group separated at the bank of elevators.
Alexander’s faction was made up of his brother Stephen, Dr. Evan Childress, tech specialist Michael Bowers, and attorney Christopher Bennett.
The nurse stationed behind the desk reached for the phone as they commandeered the west wing of the eighth floor.
Alexander couldn’t be sure what shocked her more—him and his men, or the two hospital board members accompanied by head psychiatrist Dr. Jay Meyers approaching from another corridor.
She dropped the phone and sat in silence. Smart woman.
“I’m not happy about this,” Dr. Meyers said as he reached Alexander.
“Dr. Meyers,” Alexander began, “I can unequivocally assure you no one is unhappier than I.” He looked to his attorney, Chris, who withdrew the necessary paperwork.
After a careful inspection, the documents were signed.
Under almost any other circumstances Alexander would have felt victorious. This was none of those. “Where is she?”
He followed Amanda’s doctor down the hallway.
Considering the press she’d had over the past nine months and that she was a celebrity in this century in her own right, Amanda’s room was the only one in this hall that was occupied.
Three men stood outside her door. At first glance they seemed harmless, perhaps visitors loitering in the hallway.
But they weren’t harmless. Or visitors. Until twelve hours ago, they’d been Amanda’s private security detail. Now they worked for Alexander.
“Finch.” Alexander shook Stan’s hand, a wave of relief washing over him at finally meeting the man who, for all intents and purposes, held his family’s charge. He owed the man more than he could ever repay.
Stanley Finch had kept his family safe when he could not.
He’d kept them hidden too. Bloody hell, he’d kept them so hidden Alexander had had to purchase the company to find them.
It was the sixth of such businesses he’d acquired in his efforts.
Amanda had been signed into the hospital under an assumed name.
Alexander hadn’t even known she was pregnant until the papers were signed and JDL Security had become his.
Since landing in the twenty-first century seven months ago, he’d done nothing but try to find his wife and daughter.
Why he’d thought it would be as simple as walking through the front doors of his estate escaped him.
He’d quickly discovered that Amanda and Callie weren’t there—nor was anyone for that matter.
He’d learned later they had left only the week before, closing the house for an extended time away.
They hadn’t been able to leave the property immediately, though.
Instead, he, Stephen, and Gregor had spent days searching for, finding, and digging out the chests of gold and silver bullion, jewels, and other personal items they’d buried in the tunnels before jumping off the cliff in the eighteenth century.
Since, back then, he and Amanda could never be sure which portal opening she had originally come through, he’d decided it was best to jump from the one she and Callie had fallen into.
It wasn’t hard to locate the exact spot—it was a moment Alexander would never forget, one forever imprinted in his brain—and, with Stephen halfway down the cliff wall and Gregor waiting upon the rocky shore as Alexander pushed a few sacrificial goats into the sea, they’d determined that the portal opened no more than twelve feet below where Stephen stood.
They’d tested again and again with various small game until they were sure of the exact location of the portal before making the leap themselves.
Shaky and amazed that they’d actually made it, the trio quickly realized that the twenty-first century was even more different from the eighteenth than they’d ever imagined.
They hadn’t calculated it would take so much time to acclimate to their new surroundings and the advancement of science. All sciences.
Thankfully, the Abersoch property had been updated by its previous owners over the centuries, which gave them a softer introduction into what he now knew of modern technology in its truest form.
Disturbing would be putting his reaction to the new order of things mildly.
It was one thing to listen to Amanda speak of how things were in her time, in the great fantastical future as they’d jokingly called it while they were together.
It was something else entirely, though, to experience them firsthand.
Stephen managed with the changes quite well, and Gregor…
Gregor’s eyes lit with each new gadget, large or small, they happened across—be it light switch or automobile, electric knife or jet.
Having been a spy during simpler times had its advantages. They’d cracked Amanda’s safe, which was, thankfully, exactly where she had told him it would be when, on a lark one evening, Amanda had taken him on a “tour” of his own home, gleefully pointing out how things were different in her time.
It took only a small amount of the explosives Alexander had packed in one of the chests to open the safe, and inside they found she’d left behind multiple passports, all with varying aliases and addresses, both for her and for Callie.
All of the information was bogus. He did, however, find the remnants of a receipt in Amanda’s nightstand drawer that brought him to the bowels of London, to the establishment where Stan had taken her to purchase their illicit traveling papers.
Stan, he later learned, was a longtime friend of Samantha’s and had a reputation for being what people in today’s world called a “cleaner”—someone who could, and would, take care of anything and everything for his employer.
He’d have known Amanda, too, Alexander realized, if they all went to college together.
He wondered how much Amanda remembered of her time with them.
The seedy back alley storefront was just that, a front for anyone plying in the trade of secrets.
Its patrons ran the gamut from legitimate blokes working for various intelligence agencies to the dregs of society using it for things like black market trades and human trafficking.
As such, it was a hive of activity and under constant surveillance.
Alexander had thought he, Stephen, and Gregor had done pretty well with their futuristic “present day” disguises, but looking back, he realized how off they’d been.
Their peculiar looks had resulted in their being tailed back to the estate by Michael and Trevor, who at the time worked with what the Crown now called the Secret Intelligence Service—or MI6. Alexander and the boys had had their obligatory pissing match, then threw their cards on the table.
As he was wont to do, Alexander won them over, so Michael and Trevor helped him obtain all the necessary identification and travel documentation that he, Stephen, and Gregor needed.
More than that, the boys taught Alexander and his cohorts about current weaponry, wireless gadgetry, and military issue surveillance equipment. In turn, Alexander taught them hand-to-hand combat and the fine art of mind bending without all the textbook bullshit.
He’d tried to pay them in cash, even gold, but they’d refused. Instead, they’d been impossible to shake and joined what he now considered to be his merry band of brothers in the new order of things.
Michael and Trevor themselves were actual brothers and essentially orphaned.
Having only each other, they’d somehow gotten it into their heads that they’d join forces with Alexander, Stephen, and Gregor.
He referred to them as the “boys” and, despite their rocky introductions, he was, in all honesty, rather fond of them.
It was Michael who’d introduced him to most of the men who worked for him now. All retired military, British and American alike, with a random spray from other countries. The more they brought within their circle, the more who stayed.
They’d followed Amanda’s trail and found she’d paid cash for everything.
But as that was the only trail he’d been trained to follow, it had been simple for him.
Not easy, only simple. They found the doctor who’d repaired her hand, the stores where she’d purchased clothes for Callie.
The skeleton staff she’d hired for the estate.
The document lab and Captain Morgan, who’d flown them to the States.
Lastly, the New York estate where they’d spent the summer.
Then they’d vanished. Literally. Stan was that good.
Alexander had used all the resources at his disposal, his new band of brothers, and an exorbitant amount of money to buy JDL.
The purchase included a training facility and compound in northern California.
It was constantly bristling with combat training, weaponry, explosives, and surveillance.
Providence that it was where he’d ultimately found his family.
It was because of Amanda he’d decided to make the business of security his actual business.
One, he needed to find her, and two, it was lucrative.
Half of his current employees worked private security like Stan; the other half were hired mercenaries.
He shared a look with Stan now as they changed guard duty, Alexander never more grateful to resume such an awesome responsibility—the care of his family, Amanda, Callesandra, and their newborn son.