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Bulletproof Seal
Carol Ericson
Saving her is his number one priority!Branded a traitor, Rikki Taylor is in the sights of sniper Quinn McBride’s rifle. Yet the navy SEAL knows this woman intimately, and there’s no way she’d betray her country…or him. Discovering her real secrets can wait – first, they must make it out alive!
He had to take the shot...
And kill his lover.
Branded a traitor, Rikki Taylor is in the sights of sniper Quinn McBride’s rifle. Yet the navy SEAL knows this woman intimately, and there’s no way she’d betray her country...or him. Saving her is his number one priority. Discovering her real secrets, including the baby she’s keeping from him, can wait—first, they have to make it out alive.
Red, White and Built
CAROL ERICSON is a bestselling, award-winning author of more than forty books. She has an eerie fascination for true-crime stories, a love of film noir and a weakness for reality TV, all of which fuel her imagination to create her own tales of murder, mayhem and mystery. To find out more about Carol and her current projects, please visit her website at www.carolericson.com (http://www.carolericson.com), “where romance flirts with danger.”
Also by Carol Ericson (#ud8f13364-d3f5-57ea-824a-f2159eb7c65d)
Locked, Loaded and SEALedAlpha Bravo SEALBullseye: SEALPoint Blank SEALSecured by the SEAL BulletproofSEALSingle Father SheriffSudden Second ChanceArmy Ranger RedemptionIn the Arms of the Enemy
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Bulletproof SEAL
Carol Ericson
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-07866-5
BULLETPROOF SEAL
© 2018 Carol Ericson
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
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www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Contents
Cover (#ub63f27e3-5a07-5801-96ea-992db6785da6)
Back Cover Text (#u4f7681d8-c468-5320-b92b-59c5caf78873)
About the Author (#u98598c99-3077-5785-baff-cca1a66ab03b)
Booklist (#u15d9a6a1-76ba-59e8-80c1-230964d46f6c)
Title Page (#u52b80b8f-5448-5acc-af10-a4c6685ec82d)
Copyright (#u7255757a-39ce-5d20-b103-b293d35763ff)
Prologue (#ub696ebcb-259f-53e7-9211-f202d1a8f5c2)
Chapter One (#uda8e207e-27a0-5ac2-b7e0-6cec359f5566)
Chapter Two (#u94e7f099-7063-50ff-9f08-c13b66a7d37f)
Chapter Three (#ub2a0bc81-fdd4-5f20-ab73-b165142926b6)
Chapter Four (#u0aa674c3-125e-5b73-bcf4-dcc821259fc6)
Chapter Five (#u060b82da-44c4-5818-b95f-e8bee97a5729)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue (#ud8f13364-d3f5-57ea-824a-f2159eb7c65d)
The sweat stung Quinn’s eyes and he squeezed them shut for a second—just a second before he refocused on his target. Rikki’s beautiful face swam before him in his scope, her red hair standing out like a burst of flame against the emerald green landscape. Quinn’s hand trembled.
He shifted his sniper rifle to the two North Korean soldiers walking behind Rikki, prodding her forward. They had rifles pointed at her back. Quinn spit the sour taste out of his mouth, along with the mud from the hillside in the DMZ between North and South Korea.
Someone had misinformed the CIA. Rikki Taylor was no rogue operative working with the North Koreans. She was their captive...unless she’d set up this whole scene for cover.
Quinn knew better than anyone about Rikki’s duplicitous nature. But this? Working with the enemy to damage her own government and put her fellow CIA agents at risk?
He had a hard time believing Rikki would endanger agents in the field. Quinn lowered his sniper rifle and swiped the back of his hand across his mouth.
The trio below him stopped, and one of the soldiers pulled out a bottle of water.
Squinting, Quinn scanned the lush land where the borders of North and South Korea met—a no-man’s-land where hostility and mistrust haunted the verdant beauty—not to mention the scattered land mines. This mistrust permeated his pores, had him doubting his mission, a mission he should’ve refused once he’d discovered the target.
He would’ve had to have come up with a good reason to refuse an assignment from the navy—even after that untraceable text he’d received. He could’ve tried the truth, but then he would’ve come under suspicion. Then his pride had taken over and he had to prove that he could carry out the assignment, prove his professionalism and dedication.
He snorted softly, and the leaves on the branch tickling his nose stirred. Prove to whom? His old man?
The group on the ground was on the move again, and Quinn took up his position. His rifle weighed on his shoulder like a lead block. His breath came out in short spurts.
Usually before he dropped a target, a deadly calm descended on him. Now, his heart raced and his trigger finger twitched. In this condition he’d be lucky to hit that boulder twenty feet away.
He closed his eyes and took a deep, steadying breath through his nose and blew it out through puckered lips. He swallowed. He shifted. He braced the toes of his boots against the rock behind him.
Then he refocused. He put Rikki Taylor in his crosshairs for the last time.
Rikki licked her lips, and Quinn could almost taste their sweet honey on his own tongue. She tossed her fiery hair over one shoulder.
Quinn blinked and, in the split second of that one blink, Rikki attacked one of the guards, going for his weapon.
Quinn needed no other proof. He tracked his rifle to the other guard, lined him up and took the shot. The soldier jerked once and dropped to the ground.
Quinn swung his scope back to Rikki’s struggle with her captor, and his heart stuttered. The soldier had possession of his gun, and Rikki had fallen to the ground, out of sight behind a clump of bushes.
As Quinn watched through his scope, blood pounding in his ears, the North Korean soldier shot his weapon into the bushes.
In a fury, Quinn zeroed in on the man who’d just shot Rikki, but before he could even take aim, Quinn came under attack from a hail of bullets.
Taking down the other soldier had revealed his position, and now he was outnumbered and outgunned. He rolled to his back and scrambled down the hillside like a forward-moving crab. He scuttled behind a row of trees and started breaking down his rifle.
Dragging himself up and wedging his back against a tree trunk, he stuffed his gear into his bag and then swung it onto his back.
He lunged forward onto his belly and army-crawled his way through the forest to the tunnel that would take him back to South Korea and the designated pickup point.
What would he tell his superiors? He did end up with mission success. Although it wasn’t his bullet that had done the job, he had neutralized the target—Rikki Taylor.
They’d been wrong. They’d all been wrong. Rikki had not been working with the enemy.
And now that Quinn was responsible for her death, his life wasn’t worth living.
Chapter One (#ud8f13364-d3f5-57ea-824a-f2159eb7c65d)
Sixteen months later
The footsteps echoed behind her on the rain-slicked pavement. Rikki stopped and spun around. Silence greeted her as she peered down the dark, narrow street.
With her muscles coiled tightly, she continued, and her tag-along followed suit. As she began to turn again, the footsteps, two sets, quickened and two bodies rushed her.
The glint from a knife flashed in the night, and Rikki finished her turn with her feet flying. She kicked the assailant with the knife in the gut, and he doubled over, his weapon clattering to the cobblestones.
The other man yelped in surprise and before he could recover, Rikki swept up the knife from the ground and wielded it toward her attacker’s face.
“Get lost, or I’ll slice you from chin to navel. Yu done know?”
The man’s eyes widened so that the whites gleamed like two orbs. His friend groaned from the ground.
Rikki growled, “And take him with you.”
He held up one hand and grabbed his buddy by the arm with the other, dragging him to his feet. “Eazy, nuh.”
“You take it easy and get moving or I’ll call the police.”
The two hapless muggers took off, and Rikki pocketed the knife. The streets of Jamaica, even in the tourist trap of Montego Bay, turned deadly after dark, but Rikki had more to fear in her own country right now.
She slipped into the alley where an orange light swayed in the breeze, sidling along the walls of the ramshackle building. She ducked under a tattered blue-and-white-striped awning and rapped at the window.
A curtain stirred. Rikki stepped sideways into the weak light to identify herself.
A wiry man opened the door and hustled her inside as he poked his head into the alley and looked both ways. “Where’s your ride?”
“I walked from the main street.”
He shook his head. “Dangerous place for anyone to be walking, especially a girl like you.”
Rikki hid her smile behind a covered cough. “I’m okay. Are you Baily?”
“The one and only.” He double-locked the door behind them and twitched the curtain back in place.
“Do you have everything ready?”
“Come with me.” He crooked one long finger in her direction.
Rikki followed him through a single room where an old woman sat in front of an older TV, the blue light flickering across her lined face. She didn’t acknowledge Rikki’s presence or even move a muscle.
Baily shoved a dark curtain aside and waved Rikki into a small room. He pointed to a green screen and said, “Stand in front of that. I’ll get your picture first. Everything else is ready to go.”
