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Marching Orders
Delores Fossen
Anna Caldwell hadn't planned on spending her honeymoon dodging bullets in the Texas chaparral with a husband who couldn't even remember her! Or their unborn child…Combat Rescue Officer Rafe McQuade had saved Anna's life, fathered the baby she carried and asked her to be his bride…but had no recollection of any of it. And unless he could unlock the secrets in his mind, rogue terrorists had no qualms about using his pregnant wife as a bargaining chip.Rafe didn't need his memory to know how much Anna - and his family - meant to him; he did need everything in his power to complete the most dangerous mission of his career. Lives, and his marriage, were on the line….
“I want answers and I want them now,” she said, her voice barely a whisper
“Answers?” he calmly repeated. He inched closer, but stopped when Anna lifted the gun and aimed it right at his heart. “What do you mean?” She’d obviously figured out he wasn’t the man she’d thought he was.
“Rafe and I were lovers,” she whispered, a tear racing down her cheek.
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” she snapped. “It’s a little too late for that, don’t you think? Two months too late. I’m pregnant.”
Oh, man. That knocked the breath right out of him. He couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move. All he could do was stand there and stare at her.
With her eyes brimming with tears, she levered the gun slightly higher. “And now I want to know what you’ve done with my baby’s father.”
Marching Orders
Delores Fossen
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Imagine a family tree that includes Texas cowboys, Choctaw and Cherokee Indians, a Louisiana pirate and a Scottish rebel who battled side by side with William Wallace. With ancestors like that, it’s easy to understand why Texas author and former air force captain Delores Fossen feels as if she was genetically predisposed to writing romances. Along the way to fulfilling her DNA destiny, Delores married an air force Top Gun who just happens to be of Viking descent. With all those romantic bases covered, she doesn’t have to look too far for inspiration.
Air Force Personnel Record
Classified
Name: Rafael "Rafe" M. McQuade
Rank: Captain (Officer-3 scale)
Career Field: Combat Rescue Officer
Security Clearance: Top Secret
Physical Description: Thick brown hair. Green eyes. Muscular 6’ 1” body. No distinguishing marks.
Specialty Skills: Weapons expert, hand-to-hand combat specialist, proficient in three languages.
Duty Description: Commands combat rescue operations as a direct combatant, including survival, evasion, resistance and escape.
Current Assignment: Alpha Team Task Force
Availability Status: On medical leave, but called back for ultrasecret mission.
Diagnosis: Anterograde amnesia—may or may not recover previous memories.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Captain Rafe McQuade—An air force Combat Rescue Officer who’s kidnapped while on a special ops mission. His captors accidentally destroy key pieces of Rafe’s memory—pieces that hold a deadly secret that puts Rafe, his bride and his unborn child in grave danger.
Anna Caldwell—She prays that Rafe can piece together the secrets buried in his memory in time to save them.
Colonel Ethan Shaw—Commander of the Alpha Team Task Force and Rafe’s boss. Is he willing to let Anna and Rafe die to cover up a botched classified mission that could cost him his career?
Nicholas Sheldon—A security specialist who has a personal grudge against Colonel Shaw and Rafe. But has that grudge caused him to seek revenge?
Janine Billings—Anna’s best friend who has ties to the very assassins who are trying to kill Rafe and Anna.
Special Agent Luke Buchanan—A Justice Department official assigned to the Alpha Team. The financial problems in his personal life might have caused him to betray Anna and Rafe.
To my editor, Priscilla Berthiaume.
Thanks so much for your guidance and support.
Contents
Prologue
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
Epilogue
Prologue
Monte de Leon, present
A bullet slammed into the crumbling chimney just inches from Captain Rafe McQuade’s head. He mumbled some vicious profanity and flattened his body against the battered roof of the abandoned hacienda.
“I’ve got an admirer,” he snarled into the thumbnail-size communicator on the collar of his camouflage uniform. “Do me a favor, Rico, and take him out, will you?”
“I’m trying” was the reply he got from Captain Cal Rico.
All hell was breaking loose on the ground twenty feet below him. Artillery shells. Frantic shouts. The smell of battle, smoke and gunfire.
None of which was supposed to be happening.
Talk about Murphy’s Law. Anything that could go wrong, had. And now his Alpha Team members—and Anna—were neck-deep in cross fire between two warring rebel factions that had chosen this godforsaken place for a showdown.
Rafe inched forward, leaving the meager cover of the overhanging tree that he’d used to climb onto the building. His equipment belt and assault rifle scraped along the bleached roof tiles.
Come hell or high water, he would get Anna out. Failure was not an option.
“Infrared shows no one else inside the building. For now,” Rico informed him through the receiver in Rafe’s ear. “But Anna just moved into the cellar. You can access it through a door beneath the stairs.”
“Atta girl,” Rafe mumbled. With gunfire riddling the papery walls, the cellar was her best bet. Now, hopefully, she’d stay put until he got to her.
“I’m going in,” he informed Rico.
Rafe scrambled to the lip of the roof, gripped onto the eaves and launched himself over the side. His feet crashed through the second-story window just below, and with his weapon ready to fire, he hit the floor running.
The hacienda had obviously been abandoned for months. Rafe fought his way through the litter of bashed furniture and debris to get to the stairs. He stopped at the landing and glanced down at the glass-strewn foyer. No sign of gunmen, but someone had shot out the windows and ripped off the double doors. The muggy breeze stirred what was left of a pair of ghostly white curtains. Just curtains.
Maybe.
Just outside the doorway, he saw a shadow of motion that had him holding his tongue.
Silently repositioning his weapon, Rafe waited. A second. Then two. Before he saw the man step into the foyer. A rebel fighter with an angry-looking machete and a semiautomatic. And he had his attention focused on the door that led to the cellar. Maybe the guy had actually seen Anna run in there. It didn’t matter. There was no way Rafe would let him get to her.
No way.
The man looked up. A split-second glance as he tried to take aim. It was the last glance or aim he’d ever attempt. Rafe took him out with two shots to the head. The rebel fell into a heap on the floor.
“I just lost an admirer,” Rafe reported to Rico.
Rafe barreled down the wide spiraling steps and made his way to the arch-shaped door beneath. “It’s me—Rafe,” he called out. “Open up, Anna!”
Almost immediately he heard her footsteps on the cellar stairs. With each one, his heart was right in his throat. There was a shuffle of movement before she opened the scarred door a fraction.
Rafe came face-to-face with a handgun.
Anna peered out at him, her gaze combing the foyer. Relief raced through him. And a whole host of other emotions that he didn’t want to take the time to analyze.
“You came,” she whispered, her voice shattering. She lowered her weapon. “I can’t believe you came.”
He pushed her back into the cellar and kicked the door shut, barricading it with the two-by-four and equipment bag already on the stairs. “Of course, I came. I’m an Air Force Combat Rescue Officer, darling. A highly trained CRO. Saving beautiful photographers is what I do best.”
She made a soft sound of frightened laughter, slipped her firearm into her pocket and caught on to him.
Rafe was about to tell her how ticked off he was that she hadn’t evacuated with the other journalists, but Anna stopped him. She latched her arms around him, and her mouth came to his. One kiss, and he forgot all about chewing her out.
Hell, he forgot how to breathe.
All Rafe knew was that he’d never, never wanted a kiss as much as he wanted that one.
Anna broke the mouth-to-mouth contact but held on tight. Rafe pushed the damp strands of honey-colored hair from her face and looked down at her. Her dark eyes shimmered with tears. Outside, the sounds of the fight began to fade, a clear indication that the Alpha Team was closing in.
“Anna’s alive and well?” Rico asked into Rafe’s earpiece.
Before he could answer, Rafe had to clear away the lump that’d settled in his throat. “Affirmative. Are we secure yet?”
“Only the area immediately surrounding the hacienda. Colonel Shaw’s arranging transport for Anna, but you’re looking at two hours, maybe three. I’ll give you a rendezvous point and time when I have it. Hold your positions until further orders.”
“Copy.” Rafe clicked off the audio portion of his communicator. Two hours, maybe three. He could have waited weeks now that he knew Anna was all right.
“How did you find out I was here?” she asked, lifting her head from his shoulder.
“The Alpha Team’s doing some jungle maneuvers so I’ve been keeping track of you since you arrived in Bogotá on assignment three days ago.”
Anna gave him a considering look. “And with all the jungles in South America, you just happened to choose the remote village of Monte de Leon for those maneuvers?”
Rafe decided it was best to avoid answering that truthfully. “In a way.”
A troubled sigh left her mouth, but she didn’t ask for an explanation. Which was a good thing. He couldn’t tell her about the classified mission that involved the Alpha Team, or the fact that he’d made sure he was close by in case something went wrong.
Rafe led her down the narrow steps and into the heart of the cellar. It was clammy, and the only light came from a bread-loaf size ventilation window at the back. He moved them as far away from that as he could, and with her snuggled in his arms, he sank onto a crumpled blanket in the corner.
“Soon we’ll both be on our way back to Texas. Promise. Everything will be all right,” he assured her.
Rafe leaned in and brushed his mouth over hers. It might have been just a brief kiss if she hadn’t made a sound of relief, and pleasure. A throaty, feminine sound that sent a trickle of fire through his blood.
