Dedication
To my dear readers,
Thank you for the encouragement you’ve given me
from the very first step I took on my writing journey,
which all started with Weakest Lynx
I so appreciate your kindness.
Chapter One
Early mornings were my most coveted moments of sleep. Throughout my nights, I tossed and turned and was startled by nightmares. Come morning, perhaps out of sheer exhaustion, I can dive deeper into the sleep cycle and glide beneath the tumult of my over-active brain.
Honestly, I don’t know how Striker gets any rest coming to bed with me to sleep. I’ve suggested he make the guest bedroom his and that we visit back and forth. But he stops me mid-sentence, holding up a hand and saying, “No, I spent too many nights desperate for you to be in my arms. Sleep in the room next door? That’s not happening.”
And so he puts up with my nighttime internal fights.
Sometimes, in the mornings, Striker will hold me and gently comb his fingers through my hair. Those are the good dreams, the peaceful, “floating on the river in the August sun” dreams. And I loved the luxury of slowly surfacing into a new day. A blinking awareness. A moment when I can piece my world back together: I’m in my bed on Silver Lake. I’m safe.
On other mornings, like this morning, I sensed Striker quietly climbing from the bed, dragging on his running clothes in the bathroom, and tapping his thigh to let Beetle and Bella know that, yes, he was taking them for a run. They didn’t have to stomp and clatter their nails on the hardwood floor in the hallway to make their point.
Waking up with a burst of go-juice was a Striker thing, definitely not a me thing.
After Striker set the coffee up to perk, there was a slide-tap of the shutting door and the catchunk of the lock tumbling into place.
The house settled into a deep stillness that became a weight, sinking me deeper into restorative sleep.
And that was exactly where I was, deep in the depths of my subconscious with an utter lack of awareness, when suddenly, a scream—a sustained high note of desperation, shrill and echoing—shattered the peace from the front of the house.
Lying cozy in bed one moment, sprung into midair, racing forward the next. Fists balled, face fierce, anything—and I mean anything—that was endangering my niece would feel the full explosion of my wrath.
Flicking on the light, head on a swivel, I found the soft pink walls and the gentle billow of white sheers dancing with the vented air conditioning.
There was no enemy to doom.
My heart pounded so hard in my chest that it threw me off balance, and I grabbed at the doorframe.
There, in the glare of the overhead light, Cammy knotted her thin limbs into her unicorn sheets, her long black curls damp around a sweating face. Beneath her lids, her eyeballs shot back and forth in REM. Her whole body shivered as she fought whatever demon was rearing its ugly head.
I had years of experience on the sleeping side of a nightmare. I can’t say I’ve ever been around someone else’s night terror. Though I wanted to shake her and snap her into the present, I knew how disorienting that could be.
I turned off the light and did what Striker did for me. I crawled into bed with her, wrapping my body around hers. And I chanted, “You are not alone. I’m here, keeping you safe. You’re safe. You are not alone.”
I normally don’t scream in my sleep. I talk and claw and cry. Striker won’t tell me how many times in the night I wake him up with my night terrors, but I knew that when I was living in the safe house when he first came into my adult “Lexi” life, it was at least once or twice a night. The only time I screamed out as loudly as Cammy had just done was when I was psychically connected in my dream to a flailing, failing, dying Gator in desperate need of rescue. That scream had been loud enough that it pulled in the calvary, and sure enough—
“Lynx, it’s Reaper and Houston. We’re in your house.” The call came up the stairs in a voice that would tell any intruder that boded poorly for their health and well-being.
Reaper was an ex-SEAL, now Cerberus K9 trainer. He and his family lived on the other side of my duplex. His house configuration was the flip of mine, so his master bedroom and Cammy’s room shared a wall. Of course, he heard. And, of course, like me, he sprang awake and into go-mode with Houston, his tactically trained service dog extraordinaire, by his side.
Houston yipped and whined. I knew she wanted to race up the stairs, but Reaper was giving it a minute. Imagine him barging through a door to find me naked and screaming at a spider. Not that that was the kind of person I was, just a scenario that might occur to him and one that he would want to avoid.
I dragged my phone from my pajama bottom pocket. I had gotten in the habit of sleeping with it on me lately, though I didn’t know why. Perhaps I found reassurance in sliding it into my pocket and feeling like I had a lifeline should a lifeline be needed.
Lexi: Cammy’s room
When Houston’s claws scrambled up the stairs, sleeping Cammy opened her arms wide, and a smile danced at the corners of her mouth. Cammy was nuts about dogs, all dogs, all the dogs. She couldn’t get enough dogs.
Without waiting for a special invitation, Houston leaped onto Cammy’s bed, which told me that was a place where Cammy had welcomed Houston many times before.
She turned a circle, then collapsed into a yin symbol, pushing backward just a bit so that Cammy curled around her furry back. Houston looked at me over her shoulder with a “you can go now, I’ve got this” glance.
Cammy wrapped an arm around Houston, dragging a sigh of contentment into stuffy nostrils, deeply asleep.
I gave Houston a scratch, then climbed out of Cammy’s bed, making my way over to Reaper. His brows drew tightly together, not yet ready to release that warrior go-mode that I myself had experienced moments before.
Patting Reaper’s shoulder as I moved past him into the hall, I tipped my ear toward the stairs. Silently, we slid through the darkened house, around the geometric shadows of my furniture, and into the kitchen where the light was still glowing from when Striker put the coffee pot on this morning and grabbed the girls’ leads.
“We heard a scream,” he said. “I came to see if I could help.” Reaper was wearing a pair of blue gym shorts, and that was it. With tousled hair, he slicked his tongue over what were surely still-unbrushed teeth.
“Thank you. I’m really grateful.” I opened a cabinet. “Can I pour you a cup of coffee?” Without his answering, I pulled two mugs from the shelf. “Nightmare. Cammy sprang me from my bed, too,” I said, reaching for the pot.
“Poor little kid.” Reaper dragged a chair from the table and plopped down on the seat. “She’s seen entirely too much in her short life. I look at my own kid, and I sometimes picture—”
“Yeah, you need to stop that.” I walked over to him and set the steaming yellow mug with a smiley face onto a napkin on the table. “Serves no purpose other than making you crazy.” I kicked my chair out just enough to slide onto the seat, set my too-hot mug on the table, and shook my hand to cool it off. “Cammy talks about having bad dreams. That’s the first screaming nightmare she’s had since she’s come to live with us. She didn’t wake herself up. Hopefully, she’ll forget all about it with a little Houston dog medicine.” I rubbed my hand over the cotton fabric of my pajama bottoms. I was still sweaty from the adrenaline geyser. “Whew, Cammy scared the living daylights out of me with that scream. She’s got a set of lungs on her for sure.”
“Kate looked like she saw a ghost when I headed over.”
“Kate!” I pulled my phone out again and tapped out a text: Sorry, kiddo had a nightmare. Thank you for sending Reaper and mostly Houston. Dog medicine is being applied.
“I’m letting Kate know everything’s safe.” After pressing send, I laid the phone on the table in front of me. “I can’t imagine the level of vulnerability she’s feeling in her third trimester. The sense of risk, knowing that you were housing your baby inside of you and not really being able to fend off any foe, must be so hard on a mother.”
Reaper lifted his mug, blew on his coffee, and set it down without tasting it. “She loves that you’ve been letting Beetle and Bella spend their days with her. Thank you for that. She has her share of nightmares, too.”
“I bet. Hey, my blood is still throbbing in my veins. Let’s change the subject. What do you know that’s good? How’s Kate doing when her neighbors aren’t exposing her to night terrors?”
“The doctor wants her off her feet as much as possible. Sarah is keeping Little Guy across the street when he’s not napping. I’ll bring Kate breakfast in bed when I get home.” He blew and sipped. “Then I’m heading to Cerberus. We’ve got a guy coming in to interview for Team Charlie. Basil St. John code name Halo, and his K9 Max. I’m picking them up at the airport.”
“Max! What kind of dog?”
“Malinois. Nose and a bite, training in tactical. If this team seems like a good fit, we’ll work on building the necessary skill sets.”
“Basil St. John isn’t a name you hear every day.”
“He’s an Australian Commando brother of Ryder Kelly. They trained together in K9 handling.”
“He’s an Australian? An American?” I asked.
“Dual citizen. That’s all I know of the situation. And you? What’s going on with you?”
Me? Why, I had just threatened the Joint Special Operations Command that I was about to unmask their ongoing black ops unless they gave me what I wanted. And today, I would find out what they thought about my threat.
My gaze wandered to the bird that chirped outside my kitchen window. “As soon as Striker gets back from his run with Beetle and Bella and can take over Cammy’s care, I’m heading to General Elliot’s house. He has some information for me about a personal situation. I’ve got my fingers crossed that it’s good news.”
And that I hadn’t made myself enemy number one of the men in charge of the most secretive, lethal forces in the world.
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