Darkness at Dawn

“With its fast-paced and action-packed suspense . . . its poignant romance rife with identifiable emotions, its subtle humor, and its beautiful unembellished and undiluted love scenes,
Shadows at Midnight
ticked all the boxes for me.”

—
Fiction Vixen Book Reviews

“Complete with everything from a super sexy Marine hero, a smart and tough heroine, plenty of action and sizzling romance,
Shadows at Midnight
was one I couldn’t put down!”

—
The Romance Readers Connection

“One of the best romantic suspense novels I’ve read in quite a while . . . A great book.”

—
The Romance Studio

“A fast-paced, pure adrenaline rush of a story . . . An engaging romance adventure.”

—
Romance Junkies

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Published by the Penguin Group
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

DARKNESS AT DAWN

A Berkley Sensation Book / published by arrangement with the author

PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley Sensation mass-market edition / July 2011

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

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ISBN : 978-1-101-51645-4

BERKLEY
^®SENSATION

Berkley Sensation Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. BERKLEY
^®SENSATION and the “B” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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To my dear husband, Alfredo,
and to my wonderful son, David, always.

And to my gang,
le amiche di sempre
:
Athina, Bridget, Diana,
Lorena, Mickey and Theresa.

And of course, to my partners in crime:
Mariateresa, Maria Paola and Giovanni.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many thanks to my wonderful agent, Ethan Ellenberg, and my wonderful editor, Kate Seaver, and Katherine Pelz of the Berkley team.

I’d like to thank my very dear friend Judith Edge, nitpicker
extraordinaire
, for her careful reading of my books. And another huge thank you to my best buddy, Ellen Cosgrove, who gave me word pictures of Nhala. Thanks to all of you.

P
ROLOGUE

NHALA—A SMALL KINGDOM IN THE
HIMALAYAS
NOVEMBER 15

HE trekked painfully forward, in the immense white desert on the roof of the world. There was nothing alive as far as the eye could see—only snow and granite mountain peaks, a brilliant red with the setting sun.

The entire world was red.

He saw red everywhere—the Himalayan valley he knew was covered in snow so pure it glowed, the deep crimson peaks, which had always been white; even the cloudless sky overhead was a lurid purple.

This would ordinarily trouble him, for he was a straightforward, no-nonsense man, the best operative in his section, coming back from a successful mission, information vitally important to the security of his country carefully loaded onto a flash drive tucked into one of the dozen Velcro-zipped pockets of his parka.

Snow was not red, the sky was not purple. He knew this, knew it deep in his bones, but somehow these facts didn’t trigger his internal alarm system.

Other things were doing that, such as the fact that he could barely put one foot in front of the other. He was young and strong and smart, had just pulled off an intelligence coup, and all he wanted to do was curl up in the snow and . . . rest. Forever.

The temperature on the digital reader on the sleeve of his parka read—thirty-five degrees, but he was burning up from the inside. Sweat was pouring down his face, down his back and sides under his mountain gear, and he could smell the stench of his own sweat. And of something else, something dark and dank.

The smell of death.

He shook that thought away the second it popped into his head, but it stayed, lingered, like a burr.

He was trekking downhill, but it felt as if he were climbing the peak of Mount Silva, towering overhead at twenty-seven thousand feet, the fourth highest peak in the Himalayas. His legs burned, his lungs burned, he could barely stay on his feet.

He stopped for a moment, swaying, head swimming, heavy sweat making his balaclava stick to his skin. He blinked, blinked again, then kept his eyes closed, the effort to open them too great.

His throat burned and felt raw, as if something sharp had scraped him inside. He opened his eyes with enormous difficulty and looked around him, at the immense red fields. Red, not white. Though he was hot, his entire body shivered.

He swayed, backward then forward, and his legs gave out from under him, plunging him to his knees in the snow, surprised that he wasn’t melting the snow around him. His body was a furnace, pumping out heat and sweat.

Goddammit!! He had to . . .
He drew a blank. Something was critically important, yet he couldn’t think because his brain was boiling.

His stomach hurt, sharp, slicing pain mixed with nausea, rising quickly up his gullet. He tried to swallow it down, but all of a sudden his abdominal muscles tightened and vomit came out of his mouth in a stream that shot a foot out. The taste was vile, the vomit full of clots.

He could hardly breathe, his lungs were on fire, all of him was on fire. His stomach clenched hard again and a red black stream spewed out of him, lasting so long he couldn’t catch a breath.

He spat something into the snow and looked at it, uncomprehending. Head swimming, he reached out his gloved hand and picked it up, crushing the spongy tissue between his fingers.

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