Robin Perini - The Cradle Conspiracy

“Best thing you ever tasted. Right?”

With a run of his tongue across his lips, he stared at her. “Yeah, and the cookie’s not half-bad, either.”

“I want to—” Before her brain stopped her, she pressed her lips to his mouth, and her body leaned into him.

Daniel didn’t resist. His arm snaked around her waist and tightened his hold, drawing her to him. He took over, parting her lips, exploring her mouth, holding her captive with his caress.

Lord, he could kiss.

Forget chocolate. She had a whole new favorite taste. Raven wrapped her arms around his neck and held him closer, taking the kiss even deeper.

With a groan he eased back. “This is a bad idea,” he said softly.

“I don’t care,” she whispered against his mouth. And she didn’t. She just wanted to feel.

The Cradle Conspiracy

Robin Perini

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Award-winning author ROBIN PERINI’s love of heart-stopping suspense and poignant romance, coupled with her adoration of high-tech weaponry and covert ops, encouraged her secret inner commando to take on the challenge of writing romantic suspense novels. Her mission’s motto: “When danger and romance collide, no heart is safe.”

Devoted to giving her readers fast-paced, high-stakes adventures with a love story sure to melt their hearts, Robin won a prestigious Romance Writers of America Golden Heart Award in 2011. By day she works for an advanced technology corporation, and in her spare time you might find her giving one of her many nationally acclaimed writing workshops or training in competitive small-bore-rifle silhouette shooting. Robin loves to interact with readers. You can catch her on her website, www.robinperini.com, and on several major social-networking sites, or write to her at PO Box 50472, Albuquerque, NM 87181-0472, USA.

Before you start reading, why not sign up?

Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!

SIGN ME UP!

Or simply visit

signup.millsandboon.co.uk

Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.

Dedicated to the warriors from all walks of life who battle post-traumatic stress disorder, and the families who fight beside them every minute of every hour of every day. May your journey find light, hope, love and peace.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Epilogue

Chapter One

She came to slowly, her head throbbing, crippling pain skewering her temple like an ice pick digging deep. Without opening her eyes, she tried to lift her hand to touch the side of her head, but her arm wouldn’t move, almost as if it were pinned against her body. Confusion swept over her, and she forced her eyes open to sheer, cloying darkness. The air around her was fetid and stale, stinking of dirt, wet wool and...

And blood.

Oh, God. Where was she? Desperation clutched at her throat.

She struggled to move, but her arms were numb. Something held her as if she were encased in a straitjacket. Frantic, she lifted her head, and her face bumped up against what felt like cheap shag carpet. She clawed her fingers beneath her and identified the distinctive weave. This couldn’t be happening.

Instinctively she gasped for air, the darkness pressing down like a vise clamped on her chest.

Was she buried alive?

Her stomach rolled, and bile rose in her throat. She couldn’t get sick. She had to escape.

She twisted and turned, struggling against the suffocating prison, scratching at the rough fabric. It was above her, below her, around her. She fought to free herself, panic mounting from deep within.

She rocked back and forth. Dirt and dust shook free. She sucked in a breath, and her lungs seized on the foul air. She had to get out.

“Help,” she tried to scream, then fell to coughing as if she’d used up the meager air supply.

Worse, the rug had muffled the sound of her voice. Wherever she was buried, would anyone hear her cries? “Oh, God. Someone help me. Please,” she croaked in a voice she didn’t recognize.

Her breathing turned shallow. The air had thinned.

She sucked in one more desperate breath and froze, aware of a new scent, far more subtle than the rest. It penetrated her mind. Sweet, familiar, and so very, very wrong. Baby lotion.

Nausea suddenly churned, and her dread escalated. Strange visions stirred through her. A pink blanket. A tiny crib. But along with the images came stabbing pain in her head that nearly shattered her.

Her thoughts grew fuzzy, and she fought to hold on to reality. Somehow she knew, if she closed her eyes, she would never wake up. She couldn’t pass out. She had to find...

A name flitted at the dark edges of her memory, then slipped away, leaving despair and terror. She turned toward the sweet scent again and breathed deeper. More flashes. Pain. Fear.

A stranger’s voice screaming, “No!”

Lights exploded behind her eyelids and darkness engulfed her, closing around one wisp of memory.

The last sound she heard was a baby’s terrified cry.

* * *

THE AFTERNOON SUN beat down on Daniel Adams from a bright West Texas sky. He adjusted his dusty brown Stetson to block the back of his neck and stood at a fork in the road, not a cloud in sight, not a car to be seen, nothing to tempt him to travel one way more than the other. He could choose a twisting blacktop leading into the Guadalupe Mountains or the county road veering east.

The dirt road headed in the general direction of Carder, Texas. He had friends there who’d made it clear he had a place waiting at Covert Technology Confidential. Staffed with former Special Forces, CIA and FBI operatives, CTC helped people in big trouble with nowhere to turn. The only rule they followed: justice.

Daniel wanted to be there, but he couldn’t put himself back into the battle.

Not yet.

He was still too screwed up from his imprisonment and torture in the small European country of Bellevaux. Right now all he wanted was to find his way back to normal from the PTSD and not eat a bullet like his old man had done to deal with the same thing.

Daniel looked around again, frustrated he couldn’t even decide which way to go next.

He normally made split-second, life-or-death decisions, but that was before. Before he’d been thrown in a dungeon, before the bastards had taken a whip to every inch of his body, an iron bar to his legs, and so flayed his mind with lies and threats that he’d almost broken.

For what seemed like an eternity, he’d fought every damn day with every ounce of strength to stay alive, to not give the interrogator the information he’d wanted.

In the end, Daniel had prayed for death.

Like his old man.

But Daniel was still alive. He’d been found, then stuck full of tubes and even now had more metal holding him together than Wolverine. Against the odds the doctors had given him, he’d healed, then stood and, after six months of recovery in the States, had walked again.

Daniel was broken. He knew it; the CTC operatives knew it. Only his family and his therapist held out hope. Talk about delusional. Daniel knew better.

What other reason would a man sleep outside and walk the highways and dirt roads from Langley, Virginia, ending up in Texas months later? A bit Forrest Gump, but Daniel couldn’t face his team till he knew his PTSD didn’t endanger anyone, until the memories and flashbacks no longer turned him into a terrified beast, striking out at everyone. So here he was, facing miles of desert plateaus, prickly pears and the occasional rattler.