A Veteran’s Promise (Wild Heart Veterans #2)

Chapter 1

LAUREN

As soon as I cut the headlights, the parking lot vanishes into shadow. My car glides into a parking space, and I kill the engine. The only light is from my phone and the location pin that pulses on the screen.

He’s here. He’s somewhere inside the cluster of dimly lit buildings ahead.

My car door opens with a squeak, and I hold my breath, my ears straining in the darkness. But the only sounds are the nocturnal animals in the brush that borders the parking lot of wherever the hell I am.

I followed the tracking beacon out of Hope, up a winding mountain road, and to this collection of buildings tucked into the side of the mountain.

I close the door behind me as silently as possible, and it gives another noisy creak, which is what I’d expect from a car that’s twenty years old.

“Shhh,” I mutter at the old girl as I click the door shut. I leave it unlocked, not wanting to risk the noise of the key fob.

The night is still as I move across the parking lot. There are a handful of cars scattered about, mostly dusty pickups and SUVs. Mountain cars.

The shapes of buildings loom out of the darkness, and I follow a path that goes past what looks like an office. No lights are on at this time of night, and I keep to the shadows.

My phone shows that the tracking beacon has stopped up ahead.

The path widens, with a well-kept garden to the left and a courtyard.

“What is this place?” I mutter to myself.

Male voices float through the darkness, and I press myself against the wall of the office building. When I dare to look around the corner, there’s light coming from an open warehouse.

I keep my body low as I move around the neatly trimmed bushes to get a closer look. My heart thunders in my chest as I wonder what the hell I’ve stumbled into.

It could be illegal goods. It could be a gang headquarters, or—I clutch my throat at the thought—a drug sorting center. I could be walking into a drug deal.

My knees go weak, but I make myself keep going.

I shouldn’t have come. I shouldn’t have moved here. Why did I think a small town in the North Carolina mountains would be any safer than anywhere else?

Male shapes move in the light, but there’s a line of small trees in the way that blocks my view of what they’re doing.

If it’s a drug deal, then I should get the hell out of here.

I should go back to my car, call the police, and drive down the mountain.

I glance at my phone and at the flashing tracking beacon. But I won’t.

Instead, I slip my phone into my back pocket and make a run for the trees.

I keep to the shadows and stay low, and I make it to the trees without being seen.

They’re not tall trees, more like a hedge, and now that I’m crouching behind them, I catch the scent of roses.

What kind of drug deal takes place at a warehouse with rose bushes?

Perhaps it’s part of the disguise.

I slowly maneuver myself so I’m on my haunches. The bushes barely clear my head, so I have to stay low. There’s a gap in the hedge near the top, and I peer through.

Floodlights shine down on the open space. It has concrete floors, and equipment lines the walls, black benches and racks of weights. In the center of the room, with the lights shining on it, is a boxing ring.

“Oh.” A long breath escapes me. “Clever.”

They’re doing a drug deal in a training gym.

There are two men, and they’re both in sweatpants and singlets. One of them is on a weights machine and the other is behind the ring with a group of younger men.

A third man is doing push-ups on a mat next to the boxing ring. And it’s him I zone in on. He’s not wearing a shirt, and every time he presses upward, muscles ripple down his back. Beads of sweat make his skin slick, and his deltoids dance in the floodlights.

Heat flashes through my body, and a long-forgotten feeling stirs in my core. My mouth goes dry, and with every thrust upwards of his muscles, my heart stutters.

I unfurl myself from my position behind the rose bushes so I can watch the smooth motion of his movement. The way he effortlessly thrusts upward and back down, powerful, masculine, mesmerizing.

He finishes his push-ups and sits up in one fluid motion. Perspiration glistens on his hard chest, and my gaze rakes down his torso, following the line of his pecs over the defined ridge of his abs and the perfect triangle with a line of dark, tight, curly hair leading downward to…

“Hey!”

My gaze flies upwards to find the man staring right at me. Without realizing it, I’m standing fully upright behind the rose bushes, and I’ve been caught ogling him.