Code of Honor (Special Ops Book 7)

Copyright © 2014 Shunta Montgomery

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Publisher’s Note:

Code of Honor is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, event or locales is entirely coincidental.

Special Thanks

Thanks to all of my readers for showing your support for my work by buying and reading my books.

Some Other Books by Capri Montgomery

Guarding Angel

Pegasus

Pattern for Murder

Play it Again

For the Love of Layla

Mine’s to Kill

Hunted

Write Me A Murder: Sing Me to My Grave

Shadow Hills Returns: Revenge Justified

Shadow Ridge

Shadow Hills Returns: Breaking Point

Shadow Hills Returns: Obsession’s Curse

Forged in Fire

The Funeral Planner

Hiking for Danger

Shadow Hills Returns: Family Ties

Providence

Shadow Hills Returns: The Cost of Love

The Sixth Sentinel

On the Line

Inferno

When the Heart Breaks

In Love Before Christmas

Killing Hannah

On Thin Ice

Warriors of Persia

Sworn to Secrecy

Explosive: Deadly Connections

Betrayal of the Dove

Vendetta

Shadow Hills: M is for Murder

Seducing the Bodyguard

Shadow Hills: No Valentine

Shadow Hills: Fallen Hero

Fahrenheit

Secrets and Lies

Returning Sheba

Saints and Sinners

The McGregor Affair

Dream Walker

The Geneva Project

The Admiral’s Daughter

Dangerous Obsessions

Watch Over Me

And Many Others…

Coming Soon:

The Devil’s Lair  (The Russian Connection series)

Kill List (Special Ops series – Witness Protection segment)

About the Author

Capri Montgomery is an author of multicultural and interracial suspense, science fiction and contemporary romance. She is passionately exploring worlds one book at a time.

When she’s not writing, Capri enjoys nature—unless the insects are biting her, traveling, old movies, art, photography, playing cello, and exploring emotions and worlds through music.

Find more information on books by Capri Montgomery at:

Blog:
http://caprimontgomery.wordpress.com/

(Print books)
www.lulu.com/haremnights

Twitter:
http://twitter.com/#!/caprimontgomery

Code of Honor

Capri Montgomery

Prologue

Rhys was so not feeling this shift in duties. He was intelligence only and now they wanted him to put some woman in his house under his protection? What the hell was wrong with Autumn? Pregnancy, that was the only answer he could come up with because he was sure it was working dysfunctional chaos on her mental computing capabilities. If she was already like this at only three months God help them all when the hormones really started raging and waging war on her sanity.

No he did not want to be the man watching over this woman in need of protection. Technically he wasn’t a Marshal. “Can’t you get somebody else?” He growled.

“No. Nobody else can handle the man who is after her.”

“Put a bullet in him and you’re done.” He brushed his hand over his red short cropped hair. Full on retirement did not retire the Marine in him. He still kept the cut of his hair to military standards but sometimes he had to grow it out or add a little extra for his cover if his cover required hair more swiftly than what letting it grow could handle.

Very few people knew what he looked like now and the only people who truly did were long dead. His mother and father had always called him the master of disguise and trickery. Of course his father thought he was going to go join a three ring circus or something like it. Never had he expected his little boy to grow up to be an elite military man. He knew had he lived to see him retire from the military that he wouldn’t have expected to see his boy become a CIA man turned man on a mission of his own. His life had been against what anybody thought would come for him, and that was part of his skill. People didn’t know him and they never would. That mastery had allowed him to become the best at what he did. His skill, wisdom and higher IQ had just sealed the deal for him. But this, watching over a woman and playing protector was not his job.

“Won’t work, they tried.”

“Get better shooters.” He growled. This was not what he wanted. “I was Special Ops Intelligence and while I know how to fight and kill I’m out of that war. I’d like to stay out and focus on my own mission now.”

“And what if I were to tell you she collides with your mission? Look, I know you have a vengeance against select agents in the CIA, but I need you on this, Rhys. Nobody else can keep her safe.”

“Autumn,” he growled. “Don’t use my past for leverage.”

“I’m not. The guy who’s after her is MARSOC. You know the Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command.”

“I know what MARSOC is. I was in it long enough to know that.” He growled. “Find somebody else.”

“He’s a triple treat, Rhys. Simper Fi means nothing to him.”

“I don’t care.” He had met many of Marines who had gone rouge and didn’t believe in the Always Faithful line unless they were being faithful to themselves and their wallets. This wasn’t his fight. But something told him Autumn was going to keep pushing until he made it his fight. Well she would be sadly mistaken. He was not going to pull out bottle of noir dye, taint his hair, put in the blue contacts to mask his emerald eyes, nor was he going to dust off the makeup bottles he would use to convert his natural look into something unnatural to him.

His mother was a beautiful Irish woman while his father was a Colombian import to America. Two first generation immigrants who found each other on that fateful day of swear in. Their citizenship brought them together completely. Their joining brought him to life. He had his mother’s emerald eyes, but he had a hint more of his father’s coloring—a hint of darkness to mix with the pale Irish of his mother. He tanned like a world class beach bum, so he had been told, but that color was more his than sun kissed induced. Golden gorgeous red, the girls in school used to call him. they got on his nerves so much he wanted to run as far away from all of them as he could—sadly for him, school was mandatory and running was not an option.

He would have gotten a different reaction had he looked more like his father than his mother in some features. Thank gods in heaven for that because his father looked like a girl. Well maybe girl was too hard of a blow for a soft looking man, but he did. His features didn’t look tough man-like. He was short, yes, thin for a man, and his facial features were soft like the features of a woman. While his mother was the opposite. She was tall, broad shoulders, stocky hips, thick muscles even though she didn’t lift a bit of weights other than growing up working on a farm in Ireland where she was the only child and the family needed her to work like a boy since a boy is all they wanted in the first place. She was six feet even and her nose was stark and sharp on her face. His nose had taken the longer slender look from her. his cheekbones had taken the tough as nails look from her. his height had surpassed hers by two inches, but the hair and they eyes had come from her too. Well, maybe not the hair although even though she swore nobody in her perfectly Irish family had red hair, and she didn’t either, he couldn’t imagine getting this shade of red from his father who had dark eyes, dark hair, and features that screamed his Columbian heritage. His mother and father were like night and day but they were strong together and in love with each other. Most women wouldn’t have looked twice at his father, and most men would have run from his mother. Yet somehow they found beauty in each other’s outer and inner appearance. They found it and they shared it proudly. The Jessops were an enigma of a couple. He had shaken his head at the last name. Why his father had changed his name when he came to America had been a bit of a mystery to him until lately. That mystery was unraveling and his anger was intensifying.

“He was part of their Force Reconnocense team.” Autumn’s voice brought him back to the here and now.

“FORECON, I know it.” He also knew those men were lethally trained because he had been a part of that too.

“He was also one of their top men for the Military Intelligence teams too.”

He growled. Now he got it. They needed him because this man was a younger version of him. Force Recon, military intelligence, lethal training with the intellect to know how to use it and use it well. The man could find anything and get in and out without a hint of warning. He knew this because he had been that man during his career.

“So then how do you know he’s the guy you’re after? In my day FORECON men didn’t get seen.”

“In your day men probably didn’t get distracted by their southern head. He has a heart on to sink his dick inside this woman before he kills her.”

He grumbled several curses in perfect Columbian Spanish as he saw the file with the picture of the woman that Autumn sent to him. He couldn’t blame the guy, he’d want to introduce his southern head to her vagina too, but back in his day men followed their mission through without distraction. Maybe…just maybe…he traced his fingertips over the picture of her delicious looking lips.

He wasn’t thinking with his southern head here; he was thinking with the northern one. There wasn’t anybody in the Special Conditions Witness Protection program who was qualified to deal with a man with this guy’s training. Not even a southern distraction would save an officer guarding her. She would be dead in less than three days.

“Don’t make this a habit, Autumn. I mean it. I’ll pick her up at the stopping ground…you know which one I’m talking about and how we’ll do this. Don’t be late. I won’t wait.” He disconnected the call. He had twelve hours to get his stuff together, and less than forty eight before the war commenced.

Chapter One

Two Days Earlier

Abigail Hayashi had her MP3 player set to almost the top of the line loud because when she went for her run she always had to turn it up to hear over the passing cars. She jogged the sidewalks of the main road because she wouldn’t take chances on the trail that early in the morning. Heck, she wouldn’t take chances on the trail during the day either. If it weren’t the snakes of the two legged persuasion to worry about there were still the snakes of the belly slithering persuasion to worry about. She would admit the belly slithering ones scared her most since they seemed to like to fall out of trees. The two legged persuasion ones, while disturbing, were something she could handle. Fighting wasn’t foreign to her. Any man tried to take a piece of her and she would make sure they lost the only reason dangling between their legs that they were considered a man.

The trail had been off her radar not just because bad things could happen on the trail, bad guys stalking young women jogging alone, or walking alone, she had seen one too many snakes when she hit the trial with her friend Kissy Barringer. Kissy had been trying to lose weight, although for the life of Abigail she didn’t know why. Kissy wasn’t thin, but she wasn’t fat either. She was a nice size eight with curves in all the right places—c-cup beasts, nice round hips, a little jiggle to her middle, but heck she was sexy as all get out and she didn’t even know it. Kissy didn’t need to lose weight, but she wanted to. She also wanted to get healthier. Abby could agree to that. Not being overweight did not mean healthy and Kissy was definitely not the healthiest dame on the block. She could stand to eat healthier foods, less greasy fast food would be a good thing for her heart. Kissy was diabetic so one would think she had a handle on her food intake, but the only handle Kissy had on it was that she didn’t pig out, other than that she ate all the foods she knew she shouldn’t have been eating. One would have thought seeing her uncle lose his leg, her aunt go blind, and her mother die of kidney failure as a result of her diabetes would have shocked Kissy into submission, but Kissy was fighting it all the way.

When Kissy approached her and asked her to help her get a workout routine Abby hadn’t wanted to help her really, but she had contemplated not going down that road again. She had gone down this road with another friend, one who really did need to lose weight and her doctors had demanded she lose some before they could do the surgery she needed, and that road had been rocky all the way. Jill Scott-Dwyer had started slow with walking which meant Abby had to get in two workouts a day because walking wasn’t going to get any cardio in for her and she still needed her own workouts. Doing two workouts started making her lose weight she didn’t want to lose, but she tried to keep up the routine to help Jill. Then what does Jill do? She gets her panties in a bunch about skinny “chicks” and how hard they make it for everybody else. She ranted and raved for so long that Abby just got sick of it. She looked at Jill and with complete honesty said, “that’s your problem; you blame everybody else for what you don’t have. Some of those women are blessed with genes that help them stay thin without working for it, but a lot of those women are working their butts off to get what they want, to have the body they have. If you don’t like your body then stop complaining and work for the body you want.” That had been the friendship ender because Jill just couldn’t handle the truth.

Kissy could handle the truth, she just couldn’t handle the workouts. Abby smiled softly. She may not have been able to handle walking the trail, but she had bought her a Giselle to use at home and Kissy seemed to love it. It was hard at first and she only did ten to fifteen minutes a day, but she worked up to forty-five minutes. Abby was in awe of her progress.

Abby looked down at her MP3 and hit the button to advance the song to the next song. She loved her epic orchestra selection and usually on her walk back to her apartment she liked the easy listening of classic with a twist ala the Piano Guys, but today she wanted something with an edge—Seven Dust.

She should have turned the volume down and maybe she would have heard her neighbor—well the guy living two apartment buildings over from the one her unit was situated in—come out of his apartment. She rarely paid attention to apartment 104 because he always seemed to come out in his underwear to smoke his cigar. She didn’t need to see his very white boxers and his very hard with muscles chest and stomach, but he seemed to like showing it off.

Had she been paying attention the arm that snaked around her waist wouldn’t have caught her off guard and the hand that went over her mouth to keep her from screaming wouldn’t have happened either. But just as quickly as he had her lifted from the ground he had her back inside his apartment as he kicked the door shut. The sun was just starting to come to wake up the sky outside so even though it wasn’t dark, it wasn’t broad daylight either and people were either still asleep or getting ready for work. What didn’t help matters was that the apartment above him and the one on the right of his apartment had been recently vacated. His apartment was the end unit so nobody was on the left.

She thought her martial arts training would work to her advantage. She had been trained in Jukido, karate and Chun Kuk Do since she could walk because her father had been a martial arts master who competed in completions from childhood on up to his dying days. The only thing that had been able to stop the man was a disease—prostate cancer.

She used her training in all forms of the arts but for every move she tried he countered her expertly, proving he was the more skilled between them. She would not be taken easily, that was her promise to herself. If he killed her she would be sure to have evidence of his DNA under her nails, but she couldn’t get a shot in. The next attack she came with he won the upper hand, pulling her arm behind her back, taking her to her knees and sticking his foot hard against her opposite shoulder as he yanked back on the arm he was holding. From that position she knew he could yank it out the socket.

She heard a yelled cry escape her lips and she was angry with herself for giving him the satisfaction of knowing that he hurt her. The faint chuckle she heard from him told her he enjoyed it immensely. Somewhere in their struggle she had lost her MP3, her keys and her identification while trying to protect her life. If he killed her here would the cops find any evidence that she had been in this apartment or would he make sure he got rid of everything she came in with along with her body?

“I’ve wanted you since the first day I saw your picture. You are the most delicious kill I’ve been given and I’m going to enjoy this. I’m going to enjoy this kill more than any other kill in my life. You wearing those sexy sweat pants, that baggy sweatshirt and that sexy red hair of yours up in a messy bun had turned me on with one look,” he nearly growled. “Now I get to have you. Then I get to kill you.”

She was about ready to retort with something sarcastic when the door burst open. The two men she saw in plain clothes toting guns had her feeling relieved—unless they were drug lords here to kill the guy then that would suck because they would no doubt kill her too.

“Let her go,” the tall one with the dark hair that fell slightly below shoulder length and the ice blue eyes that looked lethal at the moment growled his command.

The guy holding her laughed as he yanked her up and held her in front of his body. Blonds, she thought, short blonds were trouble personified. She shouldn’t think that way but this guy was the picture of a good guy she would say. She wasn’t that keen on him, but she didn’t expect this. He was five nine, dirty blond hair and from what she had made out from the tattoo on his arm he was military—or at least had been. Simper Fi, she knew what that meant. He had been a Marine, but the Marines she knew didn’t do stuff like this.

She had seen the tattoo the first time he came out with shirt and pants missing and only the white boxers covering certain areas of his body. She expected military men to have a certain code of honor that should have defied crazy like this, but then she knew that wasn’t always true. Some people were crazy personified and no amount of suspected honor would change that, but why her? And what did he mean he had wanted her since he saw a picture of her? He had been living in this complex for like three months now; if he was supposed to kill her then why hadn’t he done it before now?

“Now!”

The man in front of her scared her more than the one holding her. He looked like a man ready to take a shot and she just hoped he didn’t shoot her. She was five eight and one misaimed shot could make that bullet hit her.

“If you say so,” the man behind her laughed right before pushing her with force into the two men holding guns. What surprised her was how quickly her attacker had jumped out the side window and taken off.

“Watch her,” Blue Eyes said to the man who had come in with him before vanishing from the apartment.

“It’s going to be okay, Miss.”

She looked up to the man helping her up from the floor. He had sandy red hair and stark green eyes—almost like cat eyes with a hint of flecks of yellow she would say. She noticed once she was standing that he was shorter; she would peg him at about five nine at most because he wasn’t standing that much higher than she was.

“All my training and it still wasn’t enough,” she said absently. She was astonished and now scared. She always knew there would be somebody better. Her father had told her, “no matter how good you are, somebody will always be better.” She believed him; she just never thought she would ever have to fight that mysterious somebody.

Her father was Japanese-American, or as he would always say, “just American,” because he had been born in America and didn’t see a need to separate himself from the country of his birth. Her mother was Irish via her father’s lineage and a hint of bi-racial black from her mother. Her mother, the grandmother goddess in Abby’s eyes, had been fifty-fifty black and white biracial mix as Abby’s mom would say. That meant she was Irish from her father and a little bit of coffee and cream from her mother which combined to make her mom super beautiful. Her mother was tall, big breasts, perfect curves and steel green eyes that could kill just with one glare. Abby thought her mom was gorgeous and her grandmother was magnificent too. She had listened to her mother as a child talk about her own looks as she showed her pictures of her grandmother and grandfather. Abby’s mom told her that her ancestry made her a delicious toffee crème latté. Everybody always said Abby looked exotic in a sexy way, but not strikingly beautiful in a “world’s most beautiful woman,” kind of way. She wasn’t sure how to take that really. It was like a compliment and an insult all at the same time.

“He’s a former Marine, Miss. Dishonorably discharged to say the least. There wasn’t much you could do with his training. It’s not just the military training, but this guy has trained in about seven different forms of fighting. He’s got the upper hand on all of us.”

She felt fear grip her harder now. A former Marine, dishonorably discharged and ready to kill her. Great, what did she do to piss Karma off this time?

“So what are you all doing here?”

“We were conducting an investigation. Some murders have taken place and we think maybe he’s involved.”

“So you’re cops?”

“No. We’re U.S. Marshals, part of a special operations division. This isn’t really in the norm, but sometimes we have to operate outside the norm.”

“Telling her all our secrets, Tony?”

The man in front of her shrugged as Blue Eyes entered their space. “He got away?”

“Yeah. I lost him.” He finally set his attention on her. “Are you okay?”

She nodded. “I will be.”

“I hate to scare you here but we think he’s in town for a hit but we don’t know who the target is yet and since he’s killed before, people in our unit and in our program, we needed to keep watch on him.”

“Well, that’s comforting,” she shook her head. Thanks a lot for telling her they had lost people in their program to this guy’s attack because that was not making her feel safer. “Well I’ll do you one better. He’s here to kill me.”

Both men gasped and looked at each other and then her. “No, that’s not his MO. He never makes direct contact before.”

“Never doesn’t mean he wouldn’t. He made his contact today. He told me he has wanted me since he got the picture of me and that he was going to enjoy this kill. So now my question to you is, why does this man want me dead? Or more like, who hired this man to put me in the ground?” The fact that they looked like they didn’t have a clue told her she was in a world of trouble here.

“You should come with us.”

“Seriously? You just told me he’s killed some of your people before so why should I think you can protect me?”

“What choice do you have?” Blue Eyes had a point there and she couldn’t deny it. she could go home, but that man would be back and clearly she wasn’t good enough to make sure he didn’t kill her.

“I need a shower and a change first.”

Blue Eyes nodded and took her upper arm in his big hand with a firm grip. She pulled away.

“That arm still hurts from the last guy who manhandled me.”

“Sorry,” he nodded before taking a softer hold of the same arm. “What is it you do exactly?” He asked her as they walked back to her unit. The other guy had called the cops but he had accompanied them back as a just in case. Having the window broken out wasn’t something they could let go unreported, at least that’s what Blue Eyes had said.