Fearless (Somerton Security Book 3) Read online

  Fearless

  Somerton Security, Book 3

  Elizabeth Dyer

  Contents

  Praise for Elizabeth Dyer

  Also by Elizabeth Dyer

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Afterword

  About the Author

  Previous Books In The Series

  Praise for Elizabeth Dyer

  “An excellent blend of suspense and romance—I was sucked into the story from page one!”

  —Susan Stoker, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling author

  “Funny, clever, and suspenseful—I couldn’t put this book down! The world needs more nerdy-hot heroes and fierce-hot heroines.”

  —Penny Reid, USA Today bestselling author

  “Sexy, suspenseful, and downright hilarious in places. Defenseless had me gripped with the perfect balance of romance and intrigue. A tightly crafted plot combined with a beautifully told story as well as characters I was rooting for meant I couldn’t put it down.”

  —Louise Bay, USA Today bestselling author

  “Defenseless from Elizabeth Dyer is my favorite romantic suspense debut of 2017. Fast-paced action, heart-pounding passion, and a cat that rides a Roomba! I love it when the tension in a book is tempered with humor, and this author delivers in spades. Georgia Bennett and Parker Livingston are meant for each other. She’s the type of woman you’d want to be friends with. And he’s ‘. . . lazy Sunday mornings after sex-against-the-wall Saturday nights.’ Love it!”

  —Dana Marton, New York Times bestselling author

  “Relentless is a fast-paced, action-packed romantic suspense that had me turning the pages late into the night. Ethan Somerton is determined to rescue his friend, taken prisoner by the Columbian cartel. To do that he must infiltrate the Vega family, and he zeroes in on the mafia boss’s niece, Natalia Vega, as a way to find the information he needs. Sparks fly as these two dance around each other. Relentless is a sexy, edge of your seat story with a complex hero and a woman trained to kill. I highly recommend it.”

  —Sandra Owens, author of the bestselling K2 Team and Aces & Eights series

  “Edgy, passionate, and laced with unexpected humor, Relentless is this summer’s romantic suspense must-read. From their first meeting, I rooted for Ethan to break through Natalia’s well-earned walls and show her a love worth fighting for—even if it might cost them everything.”

  —Jessica Hawkins, USA Today bestselling author

  Also by Elizabeth Dyer

  Somerton Security

  Defenseless

  Relentless

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2018 by Elizabeth Dyer

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.

  Cover design by Najla Qamber, Qamber Designs

  For every single reader who asked: What about Will?

  This one is for you.

  Chapter One

  São Paulo, Brazil

  She was being followed.

  For Cooper Reed, it was an experience as uncomfortable as it was depressingly familiar.

  Disavowed by the CIA. Forgotten by the army. Buried by her family.

  From predator to prey—if nothing else, she could appreciate the irony.

  That was her life now.

  The constant threat of discovery. Sleeping with a gun by her side, a knife in easy reach, burning through countries and jobs and identities.

  Alone.

  Under the best of circumstances, it was an exhausting race without a finish line.

  But nights like tonight, as a misting rain soaked her jacket then gathered and slid beneath her clothes in tiny, determined rivers, life was an endless nightmare and the cost of waking too damn high.

  She slipped across the street and around a corner.

  Shadows followed her.

  Eyes burned through her.

  Paranoia rose like a shiver across her skin.

  Living with a price on her head—modest but growing—had hollowed her out until the only thing that filled her was a desperate rage.

  That she’d been used.

  That she couldn’t go home.

  That sometimes, in the early hours of the morning, when memories and hard realizations kept her from sleep, she didn’t believe she deserved to.

  The things she’d done to try to make things right. To save her best friend, her partner. . . She’d made compromises and crossed lines—so many lines she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to find her way back.

  A problem for another day, she reminded herself. And only one of many.

  For now, she had to focus on moving forward. And tonight, she had to deal with her shadow, before he dealt with her.

  Permanently.

  She tugged the hood of her coat down, hiding her features: blonde hair that still clung to a muddy brown dye job, fair skin that had seen layer upon layer of sun, but remained far lighter than the bronzed hues that surrounded her in South America. She stood out, drew stares, commanded attention.

  But she could disappear when she wanted to. Long enough, at least, to turn the tables and grab the advantage.

  Not that she needed it. She’d seen this one coming. He wasn’t skilled at the hunt, something she’d been born to. So she’d lingered near windows, stepped slowly through crowds, and strolled through streets and around corners. He thought himself a predator, but she led him like a lamb. In a city of twenty million, anyone could go missing—there one minute and gone the next—and in the South American favelas, tinderboxes of redbrick stacked and sprawled, alive and dying, pulsing with the primal beat of survival, anyone could be wiped from the playing board.

  It wouldn’t be her.

  She knew the neighborhood too well. Had walked the endless turns and paths and alleys that led to secret doors and private ventures and abrupt dead ends. She’d made deals and greased palms, brought kind conversation to some and quiet threats to others until the locals recognized her for who and what she was: someone desperate for a way out, but without the means to leave.

  A foreigner, but one of them, too.

  They wouldn’t bother her.

  She turned again, doubled her pace, whispered a hello to the little boy, his cheeks sunken and his eyes bright—a mural splashed against crumbling mortar that always left her with a strange sense of hope.

  Two more turns and she took the half-dozen stairs up to a darkened doorway, careful to avoid the spill of rain off the gutter-less roof.

  She stilled and waited. He didn’t disappoint.

  It took ninety seconds—she counted, timing his progr
ess—and he appeared, his pace a cautious prowl forward. Barely out of his teens and a local, but one who’d left the favelas for the lure of the cartels and the money they offered. It was there in his clothes, wet and clinging to his skin, but new and clean. In the chain, gold and glinting, around his neck. And in the pistol tucked against the small of his back. It wasn’t fancy, and the serial number would be missing but it’d shoot straight all the same.

  If he lived to see thirty, he’d reach what passed for old age in his profession.

  He might have had a chance—life out here was capricious at best—but he’d come for her.

  A fatal mistake.

  How had he found her? He wasn’t agency. Wasn’t even the sort of contractor they sometimes employed. It didn’t matter. He was green and sloppy, and Cooper had been in this life long enough to know that a true threat would be one she never saw coming.

  No. Whoever this guy was—mercenary, opportunist, or something else altogether—he wasn’t her end.

  But she would be his.

  She let him pass, started her count again. Factored in the way the rain would muffle her steps and dampen his senses. Recalculated the distance she needed to maintain surprise. He was still new enough at this to be cautious, to keep his movements slow and quiet. It did him credit, but the learning curve in this business was brutal, and his job didn’t promote the careless.

  Cooper slipped down the steps, hugged the deep shadow of the buildings, and fell into his wake.

  Gunshot? Too loud.

  Knife? Too messy.

  Stranglehold? Not with their height disparity—she wouldn’t have the leverage.

  A blow to the outside of his knee would take him down and her training would do the rest.

  She’d snap his neck.

  Fast. Effective. Silent.

  By the time his body made its way to the morgue, he’d become just another statistic in a city rife with them.

  And she’d be gone.

  He turned, heading toward what Cooper knew to be a dead end.

  She quickened her pace; there’d be no better opportunity.

  A hand reached out of the dark, grabbed her bicep, and jerked her through a door she hadn’t realized was open.

  Bait and switch? God damn it.

  She went for her gun, a last, desperate resort, but pressure to her wrist encouraged her to let go. No-fucking-way. She brought her knee up, clipped the heavy muscle of a thigh and elicited a laugh instead of a grunt.

  “Now, now, love,” a deep voice scolded, “it’s not sporting to kill the young ones.”

  Cooper stilled, murder on her mind, but not in her heart.

  Pierce. Because sure, why wouldn’t he be here? The man was like a bad penny.

  “Sporting?” she asked on a huff. “He’d have shot me, snapped a photo, and collected the two hundred thousand on my head.”

  “Three-fifty, last I checked.” Pierce shrugged as if she hadn’t just leveled up in a big way. He released her, but stayed close, crowding her against the wall. “It’d be like shooting Bambi.”

  “You expect me to believe you have a weakness for green mercenaries and baby animals?”

  “Chicks dig baby animals,” he said, his accent muted and generically European, as if it had been worn down beneath the grind of time and constant travel.

  As always, it made Cooper wonder where the man had come from.

  “But I couldn’t care less about the kid.” He braced his hand above her head and stared down at her. “By all means, kill him, but before you do, you should know he wasn’t sent to murder you.”

  “The gun he had tucked in his pants implied otherwise,” she said with a roll of her eyes.

  “Think it through—he’s young. Local and inexperienced—”

  “And dumb enough to think that just because I’m a woman, I’m helpless.” She tilted her chin up. “An easy payday.”

  “Perhaps,” he agreed. “Though the people who want you dead aren’t stupid enough to waste an opportunity on a cartel kid who won’t live to see his next birthday.”

  “Then why?” she asked, her thoughts racing to put together the puzzle Pierce had clearly already solved.

  “When you picked up a shadow, you entered the favelas—why?” Pierce asked.

  Cooper shrugged. “I know them. Most people get lost—”

  “And you can disappear. A neat trick and a distinct advantage.”

  Yes, except the kid was a local. And though the cartel had provided the means to escape the slums, he’d been born here. This was his backyard, and Cooper, no matter how many paths she explored and how many routes she memorized, was a visitor in this maze.

  Which meant . . .

  “Ah, realization dawns,” Pierce gloated.

  “He was herding me toward something,” she said, her skin going cold, then flushing hot with embarrassment and anger. She’d made it so easy for him.

  “Not something,” Pierce corrected. “Someone.”

  Cole. Jesus, he’d found her. Again.

  Exhaustion doused her rage.

  “Thanks,” she told Pierce, her annoyance with him smothered beneath the weight of what might have happened if he hadn’t stepped in.

  “Don’t thank me,” he said, his voice a rough whisper of regret. “I’m not doing you any favors, Cooper. Avoiding this . . . it’s only putting off the inevitable. The man wants you dead. If you had any sense at all, you’d kill him first.”

  She ducked beneath his arm and paced away. “You know I can’t do that.”

  “Can’t?” he asked. “Or won’t.”

  She shrugged. “Pick one. Cole’s my partner.” For a long time, he’d been so much more than that. Her best friend, her spotter. Her work husband and her brother-in-arms.

  “He was your partner. Now he’s just a guy who wants you dead. I’d find that hard to forgive.”

  “It’s not his fault.” Which was the truth and the only thing that mattered. Someone in the CIA had taken everything about Cole that was good and decent and human and corrupted it with a cocktail of drugs and illegal experiments. And for what?

  To create nameless, faceless men and women willing to kill on command, without question or remorse?

  Familiar anger rose on a heavy wave, but Cooper forced it back. The why didn’t matter. Not right now.

  She wanted to know who had ordered it . . . and how to fix it. Everything else could wait.

  “Such loyalty,” Pierce murmured. “I do hope he earned it.”

  He had. Ten times over, Cole had earned it. She couldn’t, wouldn’t abandon him.

  “So what is this?” She stowed her gun then tugged at her rumpled field jacket. “I save your life, you save mine?”

  Pierce cracked a grin, white teeth flashing, single dimple high on his right cheek winking. That smile, half rueful honesty and half crafted lie had probably charmed a number of women into regrettable life choices. It had certainly worked on Cooper.

  Once.

  Oh, she hadn’t done anything so stupid or self-indulgent as fall into bed with him. No, she’d done much, much worse.

  “If this makes us square, you place far too little value on what you did for me,” he said, all humor bleeding from his voice until it dropped like a curtain of rain. The truth, on the rare occasion it fell from his mouth, always came in a stark, heavy deluge. Cleansing and fierce and with the power to drown her beneath the weight of reality. “When you cash in on the favor I owe you—and we both know you will—then we’ll be even.” He stepped toward her, a potent presence in the dark, but friend or fiend she was never sure.

  “You’ve got a rare and valuable chip in your pocket, Cooper.” He brushed a thumb across her cheek and wore conceit with the surety of experience. “A golden ticket. Do spend it on something more interesting than a chocolate factory.”

  She scowled. But mostly because he was right. For now, at least, Cooper held Pierce in her debt. She wasn’t about to squander the advantage. Besides, keeping him on the hook was a
n amusement in and of itself.

  “So, what’s this then?” she asked, the muscle in her jaw flexing. “A gesture from the goodness of your heart?”

  “You insult me—we both know I don’t have one.”

  She snorted. Oh, Pierce would love for her to believe that. And his reputation did precede him—cold, calm, calculating. Disinterested at best, vengeful at worst. It all depended on who you asked.

  Though everyone said the same thing eventually: Pierce didn’t do anything he didn’t want to. But always did exactly what he said he would.

  He wasn’t a man you wanted to screw over.

  But he wasn’t a man she feared, either.

  “What are you doing here, Pierce?”

  He studied her for a moment, his gaze guarded but weighted with raw, open honesty he so rarely shared. “You don’t belong in this life, Cooper.”

  “And you do?” She shoved him away as if such a simple action could push aside words she didn’t want to hear. What good did they do? He was right, but after over a year on the run she was no closer to answers, to proof, to a cure. She was chasing ghosts . . . and becoming one herself.

  Pierce grimaced, then reached out to tuck a rain-soaked strand of hair behind her ear, his touch gentle and his fingers calloused.

  “Can’t go home when there’s no home left,” he admitted, dropping his hand. “But that’s not true for you, is it?”

  No, it wasn’t. She had a family. A hometown. Old friends with changing lives. A surly cat that probably didn’t miss her but would ignore her in punishment all the same. Homesickness had long ago become her faithful shadow. But she couldn’t go home. The second she crossed the US border the target on her back would double in size and glow like the Vegas strip. The CIA had sent Cole, but in the end, they just wanted her dead. They wouldn’t be picky about the method. Not if they thought she could expose them.