Excerpt Black Knight by Lynn Raye Harris

Dec 232020
 

Black Knight (Black’s Bandits #4) by Lynn Raye Harris

Hardened mercenary Jared Fraser doesn’t need anyone. He’s a loner and he likes it that way. He protects people who need his help and he doesn’t get attached.

Until her.

Liberty King needs a knight in shining armor. She knows things she shouldn’t, and someone wants her dead because of it. But she can’t give up now. Somehow, she has to put a stop to a madman’s evil plans – or watch the world burn.

Jared knows better than to let things get personal with Libby. Do the job, get out alive. That’s his number one principle. Yet, for the first time ever, the sweet little secretary with the innocent eyes makes him want more.

But if he surrenders, the price could be both their lives…

Excerpt Black Knight by Lynn Raye Harris

#1

“You okay?”

She turned her head. She had the blanket beneath her chin and she smiled weakly. “Fine. You?”

“Perfectly. But I’m not the one who looks worried about something.”

Her brow furrowed. “I think I don’t like how isolated we are. And that we have no power. When the lights were on, I could pretend everything was normal.”

“We have lights, heat, and food. It’ll be fine.”

“But what if the generator stops working? Or what if it runs out of gas? Then what?”

“Even without lights, we have a cord of firewood and a gas stove. We can stay warm and eat.”

She nibbled her lip. He watched, feeling oddly fascinated by the sight. There was a flicker of interest deep inside, no matter how much he might want to deny it. He didn’t know what it was about this woman, but he was drawn in by her gestures, her laughter, her chatter—and even her silence.

“I guess we’d have to be stranded for a month or so to really be in trouble, right?”

“At least. And we won’t be, Libby. Look at this like a snow day from work. It’s bad right now and the snow trucks can’t keep up, so it’s best to stay home. But in a day or two, the main arteries are clear and people are heading back to work and school. I’ve been in far worse situations, believe me.”

She looked interested. “Really? Like what?”

He leaned back in his chair and watched the flame. He’d been in worse situations, yes. But which ones could he actually tell her about without scaring the piss out of her?

“I had to go to Alaska for a mission once,” he began. “We were after a guy who’d done some bad things, and he was heading into the wilderness. He was a survivalist and he had a two day head start.”

“What kind of bad things?”

“Not important to the story.” And not something he could talk about either. National security shit to do with satellites and top secret facilities. “What is important is that there were two of us in pursuit, and on the fifth day, when we’d left the last supply station behind two days before that, our snowmobiles stopped running.”

“Both of them? At the same time?”

He nodded. “Yep. Rascal and I were in a bit of a bind. Our snowmobiles had been sabotaged, but it was so subtle as to not be apparent until they quit. Which they did in the middle of nowhere. We had a tent and enough food for two weeks, but no way out except on skis. And there was a blizzard coming.”

Her eyes were big. “What did you do?”

“We radioed for help, but we had to dig in and build a shelter. The wind was brutal, and the cold was biting. We huddled in that shelter for two days with no external heat and only MREs. We were both pretty worried we weren’t going to survive, but then it happened.”

She was holding her breath. “What?”

“The storm broke, the sun came out, and we survived. We found our survivalist. He drove his snowmobile off a cliff, probably due to low visibility, and broke a leg. He froze to death because he couldn’t move.”

Libby’s eyes were huge now. “Oh my god, that’s horrible.”

Jared shrugged. He kind of wished he hadn’t told her that last part. Too late now. “He was a horrible person, Libby. He caused deaths, even if he didn’t pull the trigger himself. And he betrayed his country. He would have caused more death and destruction if he hadn’t been stopped.”

“It sounds like a Mission Impossible movie.”

Jared laughed. “Sometimes it does.”

“What’s an MRE?”

“It’s a prepackaged meal ready to eat used by the military. No microwave necessary.”

She accepted that information and moved on. Typical Libby, he was coming to realize. “And your friend is named Rascal?”

“It’s a call sign or code name, whatever you prefer to think of it as. A lot of guys in Special Ops have them instead of using their given names.”

“Do you?”

He should have known she would ask. “I did.”

She gave him a look. “And?”

He hadn’t used the name in a long time, for many reasons, but he suddenly wanted to say it aloud again. He wanted to hear it for the first time in years. “It was Knight with a K. I don’t use it anymore.”

“Why not? It sounds pretty cool to me.”

He didn’t know what to say. The name felt good on his tongue, and yet he’d left it behind when he’d left the Air Force. “I just don’t. It’s part of my past, not my present.”

“How did you get it?”

He went to poke the fire, wishing he’d never mentioned it. He should have known she wouldn’t let it be. Libby was curious and she asked questions. Lots of questions. But there were too many feelings tangled up with that name, and he wasn’t prepared to examine them right now. “It’s not important,” he said, a bit more sharply than he’d intended.

#2

“How do you feel today?” he asked.

“Still sore, but not as bad as yesterday.”

“Let me look at your head.”

She was still as he peeled off the bandage and inspected the area. It was scabbing over nicely. He moved on to her neck. Same deal there.

“Will there be a scar?”

“Shouldn’t be.”

“Thanks again for all your help, Jared. If you hadn’t found me, I would have frozen to death out there.”

“You didn’t, though. You’re safe. We’ll get you home and back to your life in no time.”

“I hope so. I want to remember. I hope I like where I live and work. What if I don’t?” She looked genuinely concerned.

“Then you make changes.”

“You make it sound so easy. Maybe it is. Maybe I’ve been stuck in a rut and this is just what I needed to get me out of it.” She was back to sounding cheerful again. He admired how she could take lemons and make lemonade. His mom would have liked her.

That thought stopped him in his tracks. Why was he thinking about what his mom’s impression of her would be?

Probably because she was gone, and because Libby was the first woman he’d ever met that he thought his mom might find interesting. He’d had girlfriends as a teenager, but that wasn’t the same thing. His mom had been gone before he’d become an adult, so he’d never know what she thought about any woman he dated.

In the distance, the baying of a dog echoed through the trees, slicing into his thoughts like a hot knife.

Libby jumped at the sound. “Is that a wolf?”

Jared’s listened, his blood chilling. “No.”

She looked relieved. He was anything but. He recognized that sound. It was the sound of a dog tracking a scent.

Could be any scent. Could be a hunting dog going after prey.

But every instinct he had told him this dog was hunting a person.

#3

“What’s wrong, Jared?”

He was utterly still, a look of concentration on his face. “I need you to get your shoes on. Put on the socks I gave you first. Put your jacket on, too.”

Libby’s heart raced as fear spiked. Jared strode into the bedroom he’d claimed for his own, returning with a sweatshirt that he threw at her. “Put this on over the jacket.”

He dropped a bag on the floor and unzipped it. A moment later he was yanking guns from the interior, shoving magazines into the weapons, and dropping them beside him like his own mini-arsenal. In the distance, the braying dog was joined by another one. And was that a snowmobile?

She didn’t know what was going on, but she did as Jared told her, fear a hard knot in her belly. She dragged the sweatshirt over her head, clawed it down until it draped over her hips. That was when she noticed Jared removing an assault rifle from a case.

It was wicked looking, with a long scope and a tripod that he could unfold to prop it up. The barrel had a lot of holes in it. He glanced at her, his expression grim.

“What’s going on?” she whispered, her throat too tight to speak properly.

“I don’t know, but I mean to find out.” He inserted a huge magazine into the weapon until it snapped into place with an audible click. Then he slung it around his body until it was across his back before bending to pick up the other weapons. Somehow he put several of them on his person. “Do you know how to shoot?”

Libby swallowed. “I-I don’t know.”

He took one of the weapons, dropped the magazine, and held it up. “Pull the top of the gun back toward you. Like this,” he said. He pulled and released a couple of times, then aimed at a kitchen cabinet before pulling the trigger. The gun clicked.

“Your turn.” He handed it to her. It was difficult to pull at first because the top of the gun was tight, but he showed her how to hold it so she could put more muscle behind it. When she had that trick down, she repeated the motions he’d shown her.

Jared nodded. “You just cleared the weapon and dry-fired it. Now you put this magazine in and pull back the slide when you want to fire. Release it and you’ve loaded the chamber. Then point and fire.”

He handed her the loaded magazine and she pushed it into the grip with shaking hands until it clicked.

“Don’t point it at anything you don’t intend to kill. And don’t do it unless you have no other choice.”

She felt like her eyes were huge. “What does that mean exactly?”

“It means that if anything happens and we’re separated, you use that on anyone who tries to hurt you.”

The dogs and snowmobiles were growing louder. She was cold, but sweat popped up between her breasts anyway. “Who’s going to hurt me?”

“Maybe no one. But I prefer to be prepared.”

Libby sucked in a breath. “I’m scared.” Maybe she shouldn’t admit it, but it was too huge a thing to ignore. She didn’t know who she was, other than a name and occupation, but she was pretty sure she didn’t encounter dangerous situations very often. She wasn’t a warrior.

Jared wrapped an arm around her and tugged her against his side. It was unexpected, but welcome. When he dropped a kiss on her forehead, she couldn’t help the shiver of delight that tripped down her spine.

Stupid time to be pleased, Libby.

“I know,” he said softly. “But this is what I do. It’s like winning the lottery, Libby. You happened upon the right guy at the right time. There’s a lot in this world I can’t do, but this is something I’m trained for and highly skilled at. No one’s getting to you without going through me. And that’s not an easy thing to do, I promise you.”

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