Prologue
Taylor
Seven Years Ago…
Every person on Earth was going to experience profound grief at some point in their life.
It was just a fact, unless that person was a sociopath, or so removed from reality that they weren’t capable of feeling any type of emotion.
For some, that event happened early, with the loss of a parent or even both parents, or maybe a very beloved grandparent.
For others, it happened in their adult life, when they completely understood death and dying, and the very real fact that their relationship with that person who was leaving this world would never be there for them again.
Not in this life, anyway.
I just wasn’t sure I was ready for that to happen to me right now.
Not when the elderly man I was looking at in a hospital bed was my entire world.
I didn’t have siblings to lean on, another parent, or any other family who was going to understand how I felt.
It was just me, and Mac Tanaka, the only parent figure or family I’d ever known.
And once he was gone, I’d be completely and utterly alone in the world at the age of twenty-one.
I started to panic as I sat beside Mac’s hospital bed, holding his hand, wondering what in the hell I was going to do without him.
He’d been my father figure, my teacher, my friend, and the only person wise enough, in my opinion, to run to with any problem I had. Mac gave levelheaded advice. I’d always been able to count on that.
Not that the elderly man hadn’t always encouraged me to be free-thinking and independent.
He’d always warned me that I was only going to share a small part of my life with him because he’d been in his seventies when he had taken on the challenging task of raising an eleven-year-old girl.
Now, ten years later, I was feeling robbed because our time together had been way too short.
But dammit! I needed to be strong for him right now since he’d always been there for me.
“I can see that brilliant brain of yours working, and you’re thinking much too hard, Tay,” Mac said in a weak voice, sounding out of breath every time he talked. “You’re ready to tackle the world on your own. You just don’t know it right now. It’s way past time for you to start living your own life, instead of taking care of me.”
There wasn’t a single hint of an accent in Mac’s voice. Even though his parents had been born in Japan, the guy was as American as apple pie.
He drew on his Japanese heritage for wisdom and philosophy, but embraced his position as a first generation American, and this culture, too.
I think that’s something that had always fascinated me about Mac. “I’ve never minded taking care of you,” I protested.
Billionaire Undercover
He smiled weakly, his face pale and wan. His skin was almost the same color as the starkly white sheets and pillowcase. “Maybe not,” he agreed. “But you’ve put off your education for too long.”
I didn’t mind that, either. Yeah, I’d always wanted to go to Stanford to pursue a career in geology, but there had been no question in my mind, when Mac had been diagnosed with cancer three years ago, that I was going to wait.
I’d put my acceptance with the prestigious university on hold, because honestly, I was all Mac had, too.
I’d never once regretted that decision. In the beginning, he’d been able to take care of himself, but over the last year or so, he’d really needed me.
“I’ll get to Stanford someday,” I assured him. “Now just rest, Mac.”
As I watched his eyes flutter shut, I instinctively reached for my necklace Mac had given me, and closed my eyes.
He’d presented the pendant to me on my sixteenth birthday, and I’d rarely taken it off since that day.
It was a fierce dragon with a long cage tail that protected the pearl inside.
Mac had told me to touch it every time I felt nervous, so I’d remember that I was gentle, but also incredibly strong and powerful.
Generally, wrapping my hand around the symbol helped, but I was starting to think I wasn’t as courageous as Mac thought.
Breathe, Tay. Just breathe.
I could hear Mac’s encouraging voice in my head, his younger, stronger tone as he’d taught me to find serenity inside myself, even when my entire world felt like it was in chaos.
I took one deep breath and let it out. Followed by another.
And then one more.
I can do this. I can keep my shit together for Mac. I owe him that, and so much more.
As I opened my eyes, and squeezed his cool hand lightly, I told myself that I didn’t need to grieve yet. Mac was still with me, and I was going to appreciate every second I had.
He’d been my rock in the past, so it was time for me to be his damn boulder.
That was exactly what I did for the next several days, until the night that Mac had quietly left me, comfortably passing away in the middle of the night while I slept, curled up in a recliner beside his bed.
I crumbled because I didn’t need to be his boulder or his rock anymore.
For a long time, I was simply a mass of tiny pebbles, scattered a million different directions, before I found the strength to move on.
Chapter 1
Hudson
The Present…
Something needs to happen right fucking now. Three of our geologists were captured nine days ago while they were on a short exploration mission that should have been completely safe,” I said in a low growl to the other three people sitting around the large conference table at Montgomery Mining headquarters. “Why the hell we didn’t hear about any of this until today is irrelevant at the moment. Our focus is to get our other two Montgomery Mining team members out of Lania alive, and the clock is ticking right now.”
Generally, I didn’t lose my cool because I knew it was counter-productive as the head of this company, but at the moment, I was sitting at the very edge of my patience.
Probably the only reason I wasn’t going off right now was because one of those three team members who had been captured by guerilla forces was sitting at the other side of the large conference table, and she was fragile at the moment.
In fact, Harlow Lewis looked like she was barely capable of sitting upright for much longer.
I’d already fired the people responsible for not contacting my brothers and me the second they’d gotten word about the fate of one of our exploration teams.
I’d been gone to Seattle for nine damn days to attend my cousin Mason’s wedding festivities with my two brothers. It was the only time all three of us had been away from our San Diego headquarters for that long since we’d saved the corporation from the brink of going under. Still, it was nine damn days, right?
What could possibly happen without one of the three of us here in such a short amount of time?
Those optimistic, comfortable thoughts had been completely obliterated when my brother Jax and I had come back to the office this morning. I’d learned that some really bad shit could happen in a hurry, even in a monster company like mine that usually worked like a well-oiled
machine on a day-to-day basis.
I’d returned to a goddamn nightmare situation.
“We did tell our upper management that we would be unavailable for nine days,” my brother Jax mused aloud from his seat beside me. “For fuck’s sake, I didn’t tell our executives not to call me if three of our employees were taken hostage and in a dire situation. I would definitely classify that as an emergency, in which case, I did tell them to call us. This isn’t a small issue; it’s a damn crisis, and we should have been involved in the hostage negotiation from the very
beginning. We own the company.”
I took a deep breath, knowing I had to contain my edginess. I’d spent the last fifteen minutes listening to Harlow Lewis spill out her story between anguished sobs, knowing that if we’d been involved from day one, we wouldn’t be in the situation we were facing right now.
The FBI negotiation process had been too damn slow.
Nine days was an eternity to waste when you had a hostage in the hands of Lanian guerillas. They weren’t exactly known for their humane treatment of captives.
Apparently, upper management had negotiated Harlow’s release with FBI assistance in our absence, but we still had one man missing, and an intern in captivity who had been doing a summer internship under Harlow’s supervision.
Son of a bitch! How had three of our geologists ended up being captives of Lanian rebels in the first place? It didn’t make any sense. Number one…now that the previously war-torn country had been at peace for several years, and a new generation of leadership had taken control, Lania had been on its way to becoming a highly desirable tourist destination in the Mediterranean.
Number two…all of the rebels were supposed to be gone. There hadn’t been an incident in Lania for the last two years, and before that, there had only been a few minor protests.
Number three…why was I so damn furious right now that numbers one and two were apparently bullshit?
If there was any rebel activity, we damn well should have known about it.
I looked at my younger brother Jax, and I could tell he was feeling the same way I was at the moment, even though you’d never know it by looking at his face. However, I knew my brother, and there were always a few small tells he couldn’t hide from me that clued me into exactly how he was reacting.
My youngest brother, Cooper, had decided to stay in Seattle for a few weeks to connect with some old college buddies. But if he were here, I knew he’d feel the same outrage Jax and I were experiencing right now.
Goddammit! This shouldn’t be happening.
But it was, which is exactly why I’d called in the third person in the room.
I turned my gaze to Marshall, the leader of the volunteer rescue task force that was simply known as Last Hope, and tried to gauge his position.
Jax and I had put in an urgent call to Marshall the moment we’d heard about the kidnapping. As usual, he’d showed up within a few hours with all the relevant information needed to try to perform a rescue attempt.
Unlike Jax, the former Commander Marshall was really hard to read. His calm demeanor under pressure, and kick-ass skill as a previous leader of one of the Navy SEAL teams was legendary. So it wasn’t all that surprising that I didn’t have a clue what the older man was thinking, even though my brothers and I had worked alongside the guy for years to get Last Hope to where it was today.
Marshall was an enigma to almost everyone who volunteered for Last Hope. All we really knew is that he’d been injured during a mission while he was active military, which had forced him into retirement earlier than he’d planned.
Jax, Cooper and I had jumped on board with Marshall soon after we’d all left our own Special Forces units, and the military, to take our places as the owners of Montgomery Mining. We’d wanted to help Marshall grow Last Hope, and we had.
In the beginning, my brothers and I had carried out a lot of the rescues ourselves, but Marshall now had way more volunteers than he actually needed for that. Younger guys who were fresh out of special ops.
One of the most important reasons we tried to stay out of doing rescues ourselves was because all our faces had become more and more recognizable since we’d left the military. The press chased Jax the most. I tried to keep a low profile, and so did Cooper, but there were times we couldn’t avoid photos, either. Once we’d returned to the civilian world, and put Montgomery Mining back at the top, everybody had wanted a photo of the billionaire bachelor Montgomery brothers.
It had gotten too damn risky for us to be on the front line.
Now, we were much more valuable providing resources and working on the strategic planning—most of the time.
Marshall lifted a brow. “Obviously, the federal government is treading lightly on this one now that we’re friend rather than foe to Lania, and everyone has kissed and made up during the last couple of years. They don’t want to rock the boat, and any Lanian rebels are considered terrorists. You boys definitely know the U.S. govern- ment’s position on negotiating ransom with presumed terrorists. They sent in the FBI to assist with the negotiations for Harlow, but Montgomery Mining ultimately was the one who paid the ransom for her release. Any attempted rescue for Taylor, if it happens, would need to be completely covert, and we’re on our own.”
Fuck! Yeah, I knew that. All of the cases we handled were situations that the federal government didn’t want to, or wouldn’t, take any action on. However, it was a hell of a lot easier to pull out captives when we weren’t tiptoeing around politics.
I turned to our lone released hostage again. She’d already told us her story, but as expected from anyone who had been a captive, it had been slightly scattered. I had to make damn sure I was up to speed since I’d only found out about this entire situation a few hours ago. Having the woman show up at Montgomery Mining headquarters not long ago to plead for help for her intern and boyfriend had been the only stroke of luck we’d had so far.
I had to give her credit, she had gotten my attention, even though she’d rolled her way into the upper offices in a wheelchair, completely out of breath from the effort it had taken her to get there. She’d demanded to see a Montgomery in a hoarse but scratchy voice that had somehow carried into my office.
“Dr. Lewis, you were released two days ago?” I asked, trying like hell to use a much calmer tone.
The pretty blonde looked like she’d been through hell, and should be in a hospital instead of here in downtown San Diego. Then again, if someone I cared about was possibly dead, and my friend was still being held hostage, I’d be doing everything I could to get them help, too.
She cleared her throat nervously. “Please, all of you, call me Harlow, and yes, I was released two days ago. It took a day for them to get me back to the U.S., and once I was back, the doctors wanted to get me totally hydrated again, run a million tests, and start some physical therapy before they let me out of the hospital. But I couldn’t get any information about Taylor and Mark from the medical center since I don’t exactly have any of the Montgomery brothers on speed dial. I ended up leaving the facility this morning against medical advice because I have to do something. I think everyone assumes Mark is dead, and Taylor was my responsibility, a summer intern working under my guidance. She’s also my friend, and she’s still being held. I don’t understand why she wasn’t let go with me.” Her voice was desperate now, and her expression tormented. “Taylor puts on a brave face, but she isn’t going to last much longer. We were both in bad shape when I left. And after two more days in that sweltering hot box with no water, I’m not even sure she’s still alive.”
Harlow looked fragile and haunted, which bothered me much more than I wanted to admit. Even though she and I had never per- sonally met, I felt responsible for every single person who worked for Montgomery Mining, and she’d been on this exploration for us. All three of them had. “I’m sorry this happened,” I said, not know- ing what the hell else to say. “My brothers and I should have been informed immediately, not nine days after the fact. Our management did everything they could to get you released, and I’ll do everything I can to bring back the other two.”
I exchanged looks with Jax and Marshall, because we all knew exactly why only Harlow had been released. We’d gotten the outra- geous demand for Taylor’s ransom this morning, along with a proof of life short video clip of the female still in captivity.
As of yet, we hadn’t gotten a single word about Mark, Harlow’s boyfriend, and the mining engineer who had planned to meet the two women at the dock in Lania. Until her release two days ago, Harlow had been imprisoned with Taylor, but Mark was totally unaccounted for, and hadn’t been at the dock when the two women had been taken. I would have forked over the money for my intern immediately, no questions asked, if I thought it would buy Taylor Delaney’s freedom.
But it wouldn’t.
I had enough history with Lanian rebels to know that the last ones being held never made it out.
Harlow had been lucky. Her release was a supposed act of good faith, but I wasn’t buying that bullshit.
“I just want them back,” Harlow answered frantically. “I don’t know what happened to Mark, and Taylor won’t last much longer. We didn’t get food at all, and the only water we could get was if and when it rained, which didn’t happen often. We could barely get part of our arm through the vents to the outside to gather as much as we could when it was raining. I checked the weather in Lania. It doesn’t look they’ve gotten a drop of rain since I left.”
Fuck! If Harlow had been critically dehydrated, Taylor didn’t stand much of a chance.
“Other than the lack of food and water, how was your treatment while you were there? Can you give me any more information about where you were kept?” I asked Harlow in a tone that was as gentle as I could manage at the moment.
“It was hot,” she answered grimly. “We were kept in a one-room structure with a steel door, and there wasn’t much air movement. There were a few openings near the ceiling, which is what we used to try to get water, but the walls were cement. There was nothing we could use as tools to try to break out of there. Believe me, we tried. We were sweltering, and I think our guards wanted us weak. If you’re asking if they beat us, they didn’t. It was mostly yelling, shoving and most of their communication was in Lanian.”
Hell, that had certainly changed since she’d left, but I wasn’t about to tell the distraught woman about that. Taylor had definitely been beaten, and judging by that brief proof of life video clip we’d seen, she was in no shape to try to get water, even if it did rain.
“And there was no….sexual assault?” Jax queried right before he let out an uncomfortable cough.
No matter how many times we’d had to ask the uncomfortable questions, it never got any easier.
“No. Or maybe yes. I’m not sure,” Harlow answered as she fidgeted in her chair. “Every night, the rebel leader came to get Taylor. He’d take her away just after dark. It seemed like forever, but she was probably only gone an hour or so before he tossed her back into our prison again. She swore he wasn’t hurting her, and that the leader spoke English, so she was trying to get him to release us. She refused to say anything else, and I’ll be completely honest, I was half out of my mind. I was so worried about Mark that I believed her at the time. Or maybe I just wanted to believe it because there was nothing else I could do. Now that my mind is clearer, I’m not so sure that she wasn’t assaulted or raped. No matter how convincing Taylor can be, I don’t buy that she was trying to talk the leader into letting us go every single night.”
And just like that, the lid I’d tried to slap down on my personal emotions cracked open just a little.
Son of a bitch! My gut started to churn as I thought about some fuckhead rebel using one of my interns as his sexual toy every single evening. And what kind of woman would go willingly, and then come back to Harlow and lie about what had happened to keep her friend and mentor from worrying?
It took some major balls to surrender when all you wanted to do was fight.
“It’s possible. I highly doubt that they were negotiating a release plan,” Jax told Harlow bluntly, not sugar-coating his response. “Can you tell us anything else that would tip us off to exactly where they’re keeping Taylor?”
Before Harlow could answer, Marshall spoke. “I think I have the location for Taylor.”
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