Colleen Thompson - Capturing the Commando

She shrugged, her manner flippant. “Why wouldn’t I? I’m just about to go into a situation that could get me fired—if it doesn’t get me killed.”

She might think she had him fooled, but Rafe had to wonder, was she really up for this?

“Wish me luck.” One corner of her mouth quirked, forming a perfect dimple in her cheek. A dimple he pictured himself softly kissing.

He scowled, worry making it crucial to wipe the look from her face, to make her understand how critical this moment was. Looking across the front seat at her, he said, “This is it, Shannon. This means…everything.”

Her eyes softening, she nodded. “I know, Rafe,” she said. Laying her hand atop his, she gave him a reassuring squeeze.

He felt her lean over the console an instant before her unexpected kiss lit the powder keg of his confusion. As he turned to wrap an arm around her, to drag her even closer, moist heat exploded, mouth to mouth and man to woman.

But as much as Rafe would have liked to taste, to touch, to break the unbearable tension for a short time, he pushed her away, his brain reminding him of the business at hand and his heart’s blood going ice-cold with suspicion.

Is Special Agent Shannon Brandt trying to get me so worked up I won’t notice that she’s kissing me goodbye?

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To old friends, lost friends, and fond memories.

Thanks for being part of the journey.

After beginning her career writing historical romance novels, Colleen Thompson turned to writing the contemporary romantic suspense she loves in 2004. Since then, her work has been honored with the Texas Gold Award, along with nominations for RITA ®, Daphne du Maurier and multiple reviewers’ choice honors, along with starred reviews from RT Book Reviews and Publishers Weekly. A former teacher living with her family in the Houston area, Colleen has a passion for reading, hiking and dog rescue. Visit her online at www.colleen-thompson.com.

Shannon Brandt—A rookie FBI field agent with everything to prove, for Shannon, failure’s not an option—any more than falling for the man she’s sworn to stop at any price.

Rafe Lyons—This decorated Army Ranger will stop at nothing to avenge his little sister’s death and find his missing niece—even if that means kidnapping one gorgeous federal agent.

Lissa Lyons Smith—Murdered in her eighth month of pregnancy, Lissa had finally moved beyond her troubled youth to find happiness in the months before her death. Or had she?

Garrett Smith—The computer geek is helping Rafe track his wife’s killer. But is his grief for Lissa real or carefully contrived?

Steve Brandt—Though he thinks his sister is better suited for teaching preschoolers than hunting felons, sibling rivalry won’t stop this special agent from rescuing Shannon at any cost.

Dominic Powers—This shady lawyer will do anything to keep his luxurious South Florida lifestyle intact—no matter how many must suffer and die to ensure it.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Tampa, Florida

August 21, 7:20 a.m.

He had her dead to rights.

Maybe dead, in fact, too, Shannon Brandt realized as a deep voice warned, “Don’t move,” and something hard jammed into her back. The barrel of a handgun? All from a passerby she’d barely noticed as she hurried to the corner breakfast joint where the rest of her team was already positioned, ready to make the grab. The tall white male, face mostly hidden by the brim of a goofy tourist ball cap, had been looking down, apparently engrossed in a brochure for the kitschy mermaid park nearby. He’d seemed harmlessly distracted, with a diaper bag tucked guy-style, like a football, beneath one arm. Waiting for his wife, she thought, and paying no heed to anyone else.

Or so it had seemed until the moment she’d passed and he was out of sight.

Her stomach plummeted when he ground out, “Into the car. Now. We’ll have our little talk there, Special Agent.”

Giving her a slight push, he propelled her not toward the nondescript stolen vehicle she might have expected but to a cherry-red Cadillac the size of the Queen Mary. The gas-sucking seventies engine rumbled, and she saw a sweaty-looking pale man with dark, reflective glasses slouched low behind the wheel.

Though shaded by a floppy beach hat, the driver’s weak chin gave him away as one Garrett Smith, she realized, her heart constricting with the knowledge that that meant the man behind her, the fake dad with the weapon, was well prepared to use it—that he was the very fugitive she’d been so certain she had fooled into walking into their trap.

She blanched, wondering how long it had taken him to figure out she was FBI. And whether he meant to retaliate for her online masquerade and efforts to entrap him.

She sucked in a lungful of humid air, thinking of the slim-frame Glock in her inside waistband holster. But thinking, too, of the half-dozen civilians gathered at the nearby bus stop, the men and women on the sidewalk with their greasy sacks of sugary doughnuts and newspapers, or their lunches packed for a new workday.

For a split second her mind lost its purchase, allowing the memory of another nightmare to crash its way through to reality. The concussive blast, exactly where she’d ordered the tactical team to place its charges. The hot crimson slick spreading from beneath the collapsed wall.

The cigar store hostages in Iowa, whose lives she had been charged with saving. The hostages whose lives she’d blown away just two months ago…

The faint drawl of a West Texas accent yanked her ruthlessly back to the present.

“Make a move for that gun and this goes real bad in a hurry, Special Agent. I promise you, we’re only talking. I swear it as an officer of the U.S. Army Rangers.”

“An AWOL officer,” she corrected, “on a mission your superiors never authorized and—”

“Let’s go catch up with your mother, honey,” Captain Rafe Lyons interrupted, his deep voice turning cheerful. “The little guy probably needs changing by now.”

Adrenaline detonating in hot waves all through her, she couldn’t wrap her brain around the shock of this game changer. Around the fact that rather than playing a crucial role in capturing the commando, she was the one being taken to his waiting car instead. Taken captive, possibly—or maybe to be killed before her thirtieth birthday, regardless of what he had just promised.

She could already hear the voices, the old guard bureau veterans at her funeral scoffing, If that girl was half the agent her old man was, she’d have fought her way free and dragged Lyons back in handcuffs. Could picture her older brother, Steve, a special agent working out of Oklahoma, wondering aloud why she couldn’t quit competing with him and find herself a nice safe job teaching preschool.