Weather the Storm (Security Specialists International #3) Read online

  Weather the Storm

  Security Specialists International, Book 3

  Monette Michaels

  Published 2013

  ISBN: 978-1-62210-059-0

  Published by Liquid Silver Books, imprint of Atlantic Bridge Publishing, 10509 Sedgegrass Dr, Indianapolis, Indiana 46235. Copyright © Published 2013, Monette Michaels. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Liquid Silver Books

  http://LSbooks.com

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.

  Blurb

  Research librarian Elana Fabrizzio was in the wrong place at the wrong time. While working her late night shift at the library, she overhears a man hire a mercenary to kill Keely Walsh-Maddox and other Security Specialists International operatives. Things go from bad to worse when the man kills a student and a security guard on his way out of the library.

  SSI operative Vanko Petriv is in New York City on holiday and is redirected to Washington, D.C. to become Elana’s personal security. Turns out the man she overheard is the traitor SSI has been pursuing for quite a while. Her eyewitness testimony would eliminate the treacherous thorn in SSI’s side and rid the intelligence community of a traitor once and for all.

  Vanko is instantly attracted to the courageous Elana and vows to make her his. Elana is surprised when she’s attracted to Vanko. Bad past experiences have made her leery of dominant men.

  When another enemy from Elana’s past appears, Vanko does what is needed to keep her alive. Their burgeoning attraction is threatened from all sides, but true love weathers any storm.

  Dedication

  To Cherise, for always knowing when to kick my ass.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to my beta-readers Michelle, Debbie, Gail, and KaLyn for all your encouragement and enthusiasm for this book. My critique partners, Ezra and Cherise, always make me better; I couldn’t have finished this book without your help, thank you. Lots of hugs to Terri Schaefer for always making me look good. And as always, thanks to April Martinez for another luscious cover.

  Chapter 1

  Friday, December 2nd, 10:00 P.M. (EST), Lauringer Library, Georgetown University campus

  “Elana?”

  Elana turned toward the other “lucky” librarian who’d gotten stuck working the late shift on a Friday night. “Yes, Betsy?”

  “I think I can handle the hordes of knowledge-hungry students if you’d like to check the study carrels for AWOL reference materials.”

  Elana laughed and looked around the mostly unoccupied third floor which, unlike most buildings, was the main floor of the modernistic library. “Yeah, only the die-hard students come out on a night like this.” Fridays were always slow, but tonight also had the draw of a big basketball match-up, Georgetown versus Purdue.

  Betsy nodded toward the guard station. “Harry has the game on and has been shouting the score every ten minutes or so. I stopped shushing him after the third time since there really aren’t many students to complain and the ones who are here keep asking him for a score update.”

  “We’re up by ten with ten minutes left in the half.” The guard, an ex-D.C. police officer, didn’t even turn around. His eyes were glued to the small television he’d brought to work.

  “Thus my point is proven.” Betsy laughed.

  Elana smiled. “I won’t be long.” She picked up her walkie-talkie; all librarians carried them at night. While violence on the campus, and in the library in particular, was low, it was better to be safe than sorry. One push of the button and Harry would be alerted. “I’ve already checked all the carrels on this floor and the fifth, so I’ll make a pass on the fourth. That should take care of us until Monday when the students start hiding and hoarding materials again.”

  “Yeah, some things never change.” Betsy shooed her on. “Go. When you get back, we can take turns going on break.”

  “You’ve got a deal.”

  Elana skirted the edge of the circulation desk and took the main stairs to the fourth floor. No need to take the elevator since there were a couple of carts already on four.

  As she climbed the stairs, she slid her hand along the metal railing and stopped to plié every other step. The muscles in her legs ached in a good way at her impromptu practice. Years ago, if someone had told her she’d be living in the U.S. and working as a librarian, she would’ve laughed. Until the age of sixteen, she’d trained to be a prima ballerina just like her mother. Then a madman had entered her life, destroying her family and her dreams.

  A frisson of remembered fear swept over her, making her shiver.

  Stop it. That’s all in the past. You’re safe. Demidas is not here.

  Yes, she was safe. She enjoyed her job and the new friends she had made. She had her dance classes to keep her in shape and because she loved to dance, plus she’d added some self-defense classes, just in case. All in all, her life was good—what little family she had left had sacrificed enormously to make it so. After all the trouble and effort she and others had gone through, including changing her name from Fabrizzio to Cruz, to protect her from Sergei Demidas, she planned to live the new life created out of the ashes of tragedy to the fullest. The past was past and would remain so.

  But is it really? Are you living life to the fullest?

  She mentally bitch-slapped the nagging little voice. No good ever came of dwelling on the past. This was her life now—and it was a blessedly secure one.

  Coward.

  Whatever. She had the right to live however in the heck she wanted. If that meant being a technical services librarian in the United States, so be it.

  Elana ruthlessly shoved the past into a dark, hidden corner of her mind. She had a job to do; one of her jobs was to make sure all reference materials were available equally to all students. Unfortunately, some students weren’t the least bit concerned about fairness in access. Since finals were right around the corner, the problem was worse than usual.

  Boring job. Boring life.

  The damn mental voice, her conscience or whatever it was, had been loud of late, forcing her to examine her life’s choices more and more. The voice had become pushier after she’d obtained her doctorate in computer sciences, her concentration in statistical analysis. She had begun to think she should be doing more to hunt and stop evil men like the sadistic bastard who’d ravaged her life twelve years ago.

  What kind of idiot would leave the sheltered, sane world of the library to find a job seeking monsters?

  You’re afraid Demidas will find you.

  Yes, absolutely. She’d managed to survive Demidas’s cruel abuse once; she wasn’t sure she could do so again and remain sane.

  The voice, for once, had no response. Because no matter how snarky her inner voice got about hiding in the library job, her subconscious was bone-deep scared of their nemesis too.

  Elana pushed open the door to the fourth floor. She stopped and blinked, allowing her eyes to adjust from the bright neon lighting of the stairwell to the dimness of the fourth floor. While cost-effective and green, the low-level lighting created lots of shadows. Tonight, those shadows seemed ominous. She damned the niggling voice in her head for throwing her back in time and bringing images
of her personal bogeyman to mind.

  The preternatural silence of the huge room was suddenly suffocating. She forced herself to take two slow, deep breaths. They didn’t help. Her skin crawled and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She rejected the urge to turn on all the overhead lights or, as an alternative, run back down the stairs.

  “Stop being a wuss, Ellie,” she muttered to herself; her voice sounded loud in the still room, “and get to work. You’re in a library. It’s safe. You’ve done this dozens of times.” She touched the walkie-talkie clipped to her waistband for reassurance. Harry was only one floor away.

  Selecting one of the empty carts, she kept to the aisle along the outside wall where the graduate private study rooms were located. Using her master key, she opened one darkened room after another, checked the sign-out cards on the reference materials, and retrieved those that were overdue. She left the neglectful students a preprinted note to come see her as soon as possible. Their sign-out privileges would be suspended until they did. They all knew the rules: Forty-eight hours and back to the reference desk.

  The mundane routine should’ve calmed her frazzled nerves, but it didn’t. Every minute or so, she’d check over her shoulder and search the plentiful shadows.

  “Just stop it,” she whispered as she moved briskly toward the next study room. “You’re being pathetic.”

  After five unoccupied study rooms, the next one had a light on. She let out a sigh of relief. Human contact and conversation would be good right about now. She knocked and heard, “Come in.” She opened the door and entered.

  The student inside looked up and smiled. “Oh, hey, Elana. Didn’t see you downstairs when I came in earlier.”

  Libby Hays was a graduate student in Political Science and very pregnant with her first child.

  “That must’ve been when I was on five rounding up my strays.” She winked and then did a slow scan over Libby’s huge baby bump. “You look as if you’ll have the baby any day.”

  “The doctor says it’ll be two more weeks. But I don’t believe her.” Libby gestured at the laptop. “Which is why I’m burning the midnight oil. I’m almost done with my last term paper.” The girl picked up a stack of manila folders next to her. “You can have these back. I’m done with them.”

  Elana reached for the material from the library’s vertical files. “Thanks. Saves me from taking out my thumbscrews and using them on you.”

  Libby chuckled. “Bad this year, huh?”

  “Oh hell yeah. The students get worse each year. The whole ‘it’s all about me’ thing.” She turned to leave, but then paused. “Do e-mail me when the baby’s born. I want to know all the details.”

  Libby laughed and scrunched her nose. “I’m hoping to forget everything but the end result.”

  “I’ve heard that’s the best idea.” A fleeting pang of envy swept through Elana. As a teenager she’d often dreamed of getting married to a wonderful man who would adore her, someone like her father who’d worshiped her mother, and having lots of babies. But witnessing her parents’ murders and being raped by their killer had a way of keeping her from all but the most superficial intimate relationships with men.

  Not all men are him.

  Elana knew that, but still…it was hard to trust them. She sighed. Maybe someday she’d find the perfect man, one who was both strong and gentle and capable of dealing with her demons.

  Of course, she’d been telling herself that for several years. So far she’d struck out. Most of her dates never made it to second base, and those few men who managed to get into bed with her eventually told her she was too much work. It had reached the point where she stopped dating to save herself and the men who’d approached her a lot of frustration.

  “Elana?” Libby’s questioning—and concerned—voice brought her back to the present. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Elana gave Libby a forced smile, “just planning out the rest of my evening. Good night.” With a wave, she left Libby to her term paper.

  She finished the row of grad study rooms and then began the seek-and-find foray through the Quiet Study Area. After pushing the filled cart to the area near the elevator, she retrieved another empty cart and headed for the Lounge, a favorite place for students to stash research materials. Some students taped materials in baggies to the undersides of tables with duct tape; she’d often found some of the one-of-a-kind documents hidden in that manner. With that in mind, Elana began the onerous task of crawling under tables.

  She was under a table in the farthest, darkest corner of the large room when she thought she heard the outer door open. She listened carefully for several seconds and tried to convince herself she’d misheard. But her gut and that damn tickle on the back of her neck told her differently. Honestly, Ellie, don’t be a wimp. She started to crawl out to check the room and the door opened. This time the sound was unmistakable.

  Everything in her froze and she stayed where she was. Why hadn’t the lights come on? Students entering would turn on the overhead lights. Betsy or Harry or even Libby would’ve seen her cart outside and called out. Whoever was in the room had wanted darkness. But for what purpose?

  A man spoke in a deep, raspy voice. His tone was low, but it seemed loud to Elana. “You know I don’t like meeting like this, Crocker. Hiring mercs isn’t something I do in public.”

  The anger in the speaker’s voice chilled her to the bone. Then it registered what he’d said. Mercs? Feeling very much like prey, Elana held very, very still and breathed shallowly. If she didn’t move, didn’t make a noise, maybe they wouldn’t find her.

  Another male—the merc, Crocker?—replied, “Good to know, boss” ─the man drawled the word, turning it into an insult─ “but I only take jobs on face-to-face meets. You should’ve learned that about me when you spoke to our mutual friend. I don’t risk my ass or those of my men until I’ve read a man’s eyes.”

  Crocker’s voice was gravelly and mean-sounding. So much so, it was all she could do not to whimper. She clenched her teeth and worked hard to keep her breathing quiet. No easy task since her heart threatened to pound its way out of her chest.

  “Fuck that…there’s always risk in wet work,” the Boss snarled. Something thudded and a chair scraped across the floor and hit a wall.

  She clapped a hand over her mouth so her shocked gasp would go unheard. These men did not like one another. Was she going to be a witness to a murder?

  The Boss continued and the sound of his voice rose and lowered as he paced the room. “You just want to know who to blackmail if things go tits up.”

  Crocker laughed, a sinister sound. The atmosphere in the room filled with the electricity of their mutual animosity. “Got that right. At least you aren’t too stupid. Who am I gonna kill and how much is it worth to you?”

  Elana pressed her hand tighter over her mouth and swallowed past the giant lump of fear lodged in her throat. A cold sweat broke out over her body and she trembled so much she was afraid the men could hear her bones rattling. She prayed for all she was worth the two men wouldn’t search the room and find her.

  The urge to call for Security was great. But she mustn’t. The walkie-talkie wasn’t set to silent mode. If she sent an emergency signal, Harry would try to reach her. Any noise would guarantee her death.

  She could do nothing to extricate herself from the situation, but she could listen. Maybe she could hear enough details to help prevent the cold-blooded murder they planned. When she’d thought about using her skills to track bad guys, she hadn’t actually planned on doing so in person.

  Be careful what you wish for.

  Over the sound of her blood pounding in her ears, she strained to catch every word.

  “Your primary target is Keely Walsh-Maddox,” the Boss spoke as if he were ordering a Big Mac. “And if you can take out Ren Maddox and any of the SSI operatives while you do her—all the better. I’ll pay one million dollars.”

  Oh my God! Elana knew Dr. Walsh…well, sort of. The woma
n had lectured at Georgetown on statistical analysis systems and their use in information retrieval to hunt terrorists, sex traffickers, money launderers, and other criminals.

  Her brow creased. She took a breath and forced herself to listen and use her head. If she didn’t, Dr. Walsh could die. She couldn’t let that happen. I’ve trained for this─I can do it.

  But what did Dr. Walsh have to do with this SSI? And why was SSI so dangerous the Boss wanted Crocker to kill anyone he could?

  “Not enough. Big job. Deadly job,” Crocker rasped out.

  His vocal cords sounded damaged. This was one clue which might help identify him. She’d bet his real name was not Crocker.

  “Those fuckers at SSI are well-trained, most of them former Special Forces,” Crocker said. “Your last attempts to take them out were fucked to hell and back. It’s gonna cost you big money, ’cause I’ll need to take on men who are crazy, suicidal or both.”

  “Are you trying to extort me?” The Boss’s words were low and snarly.

  “Yeah.” Crocker chuckled. “I’m the only merc left willing to take your jobs. So, my price is the going price.”

  “How much?” The Boss sounded as if he spoke through clenched teeth. “If you get the job done, I’ll have a lot more wet work for you.”

  The Boss was or had been in intelligence. “Wet work” was what spies, most often the CIA kind, called killing strategic human targets.

  Now, you’re thinking like an analyst, Ellie.

  “Five million dollars for me and my men, plus you cover all my out-of-pocket costs. Half up front for hiring bonuses and securing weapons and such.”

  Crocker had just revealed his antecedents. He came from the South or had spent his formative years there. His accent was subtle, but his syntax showed his origins.

  “Done. Where do you want the deposit sent?”

  Five million dollars plus costs. No negotiations at all. The Boss must really need Dr. Walsh and the others out of the way. But why? Keely Walsh was a professor at MIT—or at least she had been the last Elana heard.