30 Pieces of Silver (65 page)

* * *

Now onward to the promised sneak peek of
30 Pieces of Silver’s
sequel…
Havoc
!

Sneak Peek of
Havoc

Brandt’s shoulder slammed into a tree trunk. The air rushed from his lungs and refused to go back in. No matter. Brandt pulled a knife from his boot sheath, pivoted the blade backward and arced up with his arm, hard. A muffled cry answered the maneuver. He shoved his assailant back while still trying to catch his breath.

For a moment, his vision swam and all he could see was Rebecca’s face. But she was safely stowed away in London doing research, and he was knee-deep in half-frozen pig slop. This lonesome corner of Croatia had seen better days. And he wouldn’t live to see another if he didn’t get his freaking head in the game.

Gulping a breath, he pushed off the tree and turned on his attacker. He blocked a punch, but the pain shot up his arm and settled into his shoulder. Damn it. Where the hell was Lopez? Or Talli? Or Brandt would even take that sorry excuse for a new point man, Harvish.

No one could replace Svengurd, of course, but seriously, this was the second ambush in two days that they’d walked into. And for a brief moment he even regretted not having Davidson up in some tree, then bile choked the back of his throat at the private’s betrayal.

No, Brandt had to work with what he had. And at the moment all he had was his knife.

As he swung around for another swipe, a flash of gold caught his eye. His wedding band. It caught him by surprise each time he saw it.

Bam
. A punch to the kidney.

Forget freaking matrimony. Brandt needed to just get out of this day alive.

His boot caught the top of an ice-encrusted rock and sent him sprawling forward, just in time for him to miss a bullet to the head. Even though he landed on his injured shoulder in a soggy, rotting, leaf-covered pool of pig excrement, Brandt thanked his luck.

Gaining momentum with his legs, he caught his attacker in a scissor kick, bringing him down to muddy ground. He scrambled up, bringing the knife down, nailing the guy in the chest.

“
No!” Lopez screamed, but it was too late. The well-maintained knife had sliced through his attacker’s rib cage and sunk in to the hilt.

The corporal sprinted up. “That’s Amed!”

But it couldn’t be. They were tracking his third in command, second at most. This couldn’t be Amed. Looking down into the man’s eyes, so dark they looked like the soot that smeared both of them, Brandt knew Lopez was right. He had just struck a mortal blow to the head of an al-Qaida splinter group.

Normally he would be ready to down a beer in victory, but this prick was the only one who knew the location of the biologicals that were stolen from the Russian armory. Had they been deployed? Were they safely contained or leaching into the groundwater near some metropolitan area? Only Amed knew.

Lopez tried to stanch the bleeding, but Brandt knew it was a done deal. That blade was in Amed’s left ventricle or he wasn’t as good as he thought.

“
I think he’s trying to say something,” Lopez said as he knelt over the dying man.

Talli joined them, dropping his light frame to the ground. “Back away.”

While all of them knew Farsi, Talli was half Pakistani and half Iranian. The soldier knew his way around the Arabic dialects. But even with those credentials, the man shook his head, unable to make sense of Amed’s mumbling.

“
Damn it,” Brandt growled and grabbed the terrorist by the collar and jerked him up so that they were nose to nose. “I know you speak English, prick. If you want to talk, talk!”

Amed laughed, causing blood-red froth to coat his lips. “I go to paradise, brother.”

What was the guy playing at? Brandt had read the man’s extremely thick Interpol file. The Iraqi-born leader was a cold-blooded, send-children-to-their-fiery-death kind of extremist. Shouldn’t he be cursing them and spitting in their eyes rather than calling him brother?

“
The prophet is chosen. There will be no hiding.”

Brandt looked at Talli. “Is that some kind of code he’s talking about?” Off the darker man’s shake of the head, he continued, “a parable?”

Talli shook his head forcefully. “I know not of what he speaks.”

Amed gripped the knife’s hilt, shoving even deeper into his chest. “The Word is spoken. Shalom.”

The man fell back, dead. His eyes fixed upon a point over Brandt’s shoulder, an eerie smile upon his face.

“
Why would a hard-core Islamic extremist use a Jewish phrase like that?” Harvish asked, as he limped up to join them.

Lopez leaned back on his heels, wiping the dead man’s blood from his hands. “I bet I know one doctor who might be well enough versed in Islam and Judaism to answer that question.”

Rebecca, of course, had come to Brandt’s mind as well.

Talli looked quizzically between them. “We are speaking about the paleoanthropologist Dr. Monroe, are we not?”

Lopez slapped Talli on the back as they all rose to their feet. “Oh yeah.” He turned to Brandt. “But is she gonna be pissed!”

“
Rebecca’s a professional. She’ll help even if she’s sworn off religious controversy,” Brandt corrected.

“
Dude, not
that
she.”

“
Then she, who?” Brandt asked, confused.

“
Um, Maria. Your pregnant wife, remember?”

Oh, yeah.
Her
.

***

Rebecca carefully positioned the cross-section of bone. This microscopic splinter of James’ bone was the only thing left from their near-fatal quest to find the savior’s remains. She had lost so much in that darkened smoke-filled cave. Everything really, she just didn’t know it yet.

Sure, she and Brandt had a whirlwind romance, and then a surprise engagement at the Taj Mahal, but shortly thereafter reality crashed in. A reality by the name of Maria. It seemed a one-night stand had resulted in a pregnancy. It had happened several months before he and Rebecca had met, and she’d been sure they could get through it, but Brandt’s damned Catholic sense of honor and duty had forced him to break off their engagement and marry the mother of his child.

She caught tears at the edge of her eyes. Not wanting to, but unable to stop herself, she looked up to the second shelf above her workstation. A diamond sparkled at her. Her engagement ring. It was still where Brandt had left it. He had refused to take it back. He had said it was his final gift to her. She should have thrown it back at him, screamed at him, done something besides let him walk out that door. Now she couldn’t bring herself to move the damned thing. It sat there mocking her. Reminding her of the life that could have been, that could never be.

But she couldn’t dwell on the past. Or at least not the recent past. She still had the “smart” gene to prove. And somehow through the fifteen thousand debriefings she had survived, of course lying through her teeth at each one of them, Rebecca had kept this tiny, tiny shard of James’ bone hidden.

All the preparations had been made. All the calculations done. Today was the day she would drill into the bone and extract a minuet quantity of DNA from the bone marrow. Given the fragment’s extremely small size, she would have only one chance at this.

Rebecca needed her mind and hands focused. She needed to block out everything but this piece of bone and her micro-knife.

Taking a deep breath, Rebecca double checked her instruments, then looked through the microscope. She could see the tiny spicules of bone, interlaced before her. She knew within this tiny lattice, the DNA she needed lay hidden.

Closing her eyes, Rebecca steadied her nerves. Whether or not she was ready to have her theory proven correct or debunked, James’ bone was ready.

Slowing opening her eyes, she found a spot between two spicules that looked especially promising and moved the joystick into position. Ever so carefully, Rebecca moved the joystick forward, angling the micro-blade toward the position. She would have to coordinate the cut and the sterile vacuum to collect the material before it turned to dust.

She was ever so close to fulfilling her life’s work when the door burst open.

“
Dr. Hottie Monroe! Are you ready for some Latin love?”

In her shock she not only drove the micro-blade through the entire section, but she broke the seventy-thousand-dollar tip off as well. “No!”

Months of preparation ruined. James’ bone destroyed.

Rebecca spun around, ready to lay waste to whoever had ignored her huge sign warning anyone not to enter, but found Lopez with his arms spread wide. Behind him a figure hung back in the doorway.

Their eyes met over Lopez, locked in some kind of painful flashback. God, had Vincent’s jaw gotten even squarer? Were his eyes more crystalline than before? And his biceps. How easily she could remember them holding her.

Even though Lopez was no slouch in that department, his fierce hug felt completely hollow.

“
What, you don’t have any love from an old comrade-in-arms?” Lopez asked, feigning hurt. She simply punched him in the arm.

“
You trashed my experiment, Ricky.”

“
My bad,” the corporal said, but his grin told a different story.

Two other men had entered the laboratory. She didn’t know them nearly as well, but by Brandt’s constant complaining about them not living up to their predecessors she knew the shorter, darker-haired one was Talli and the redhead was Harvish.

All eyes were upon her. Well, upon her but then flickering back to Brandt. Clearly they had come on some military need, but that didn’t change the utter awkwardness that choked the room.

“
Dr. Monroe,” a voice called from the other room. “Is there a problem?”

Rebecca willed the man to stay back, announcing, “Sam, everything’s fine!”

But the younger man, his face a riddle of reconstruction scars, came around the corner. His features were so distorted that it took a moment for Brandt to recognize who stood in front of him. Lopez was quicker on the draw.

“
Davidson!” Rebecca rushed to get between them as Lopez whooped, “Dude! You are alive!”

But that might not last for long, as Brandt brought his gun to bear and aimed it at Davidson.

The red laser light glowed against her previous enemy’s, now assistant’s, forehead.

Brandt growled, “I’ve been waiting a long time for this.”

Havoc
will be out in the fall of 2012. If you would like to read a vital short story that bridges Brandt and Rebecca’s adventures between
30 Pieces of Silver
and
Havoc
, check out
An Engagement to Remember
in the anthology
8 Hearts Beat As One
. And don’t worry, just because it is in a romance anthology, it has plenty of the patented McCray action to go around!

Click here to purchase or sample the anthology
.

About The Author

I started out like most authors. I had a story in my head that would not shut up! LOL

I wrote the book, pitched it around agents/NY and received amazing feedback about how amazing
30 Pieces of Silver
was, but (and a BIG but) no one thought they could sell the book. They thought people were tired of religious/historical thrillers.

From my reviewers and beta readers that people were really enjoying the story I told, so I decided to take it to the streets so to speak. I decided to indie publish and since that decision, I have sold over 20,000 copies of
30 Pieces of Silver
.