Vicki Hinze - Torn Loyalties

FRAMED FOR TREASON

Madison McKay doesn’t trust anyone. The former military woman and owner of Lost, Inc., learned about betrayal the hard way, in work and in love. That’s why she’d never let herself fall for ex-military special investigator Grant Deaver. Yet when Madison is framed for a security breach at a top secret military facility, she’s forced to put her life in Grant’s hands. But after she discovers that he’s been deceiving her, everything will be torn apart unless Grant can convince her to trust him with her life...and her heart.

“What’s it going to take for you to trust me, Madison?”

That trust question had simmered unspoken between Madison and Grant from the start. But now that it was in the open, all she wanted to do was shove it back into unspoken silence.

Trust was hard for her, and for just cause. Still, Grant deserved an answer, so she gave him the only one she could. “I don’t know.”

“Since I hired on with you at Lost, Inc., you’ve put me through test after test—and you’ve poured on even more of them in our personal relationship.” He lifted a warning finger. “This is not the time for you to say we don’t have a personal relationship, so don’t you dare do it.”

She’d like to deny it, but she couldn’t. They did have a relationship. It wasn’t something either of them needed, but a relationship was there. A mostly adversarial one, but after four months, she had to admit there was also a spark between them that promised they could be very good together...maybe.

VICKI HINZE

is an award-winning author of nearly thirty novels, four nonfiction books and hundreds of articles published in as many as sixty-three countries. She lives in Florida with her husband, near her children and grands, and she gets cranky if she must miss one of their ball games. Vicki loves to visit with readers and invites you to join her at vickihinze.com or on Facebook.

Torn Loyalties

Vicki Hinze

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight: I will break in pieces the gates of brass,

and cut in sunder the bars of iron.

—Isaiah 45:2

To David, who understands that

to have a friend you must be a friend—and is.

With love and blessings,

Vicki

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Dear Reader

Questions for Discussion

Excerpt

ONE

Under the cover of deep darkness, Madison McKay slid on her belly in the dirt, lifted the binoculars to her eyes, then peered through a break in the thick woods and studied the distant top secret facility known as the Nest.

It had grown. A lot. In her days as an analyst there, the majority of the structures, a labyrinth of bunkers, had been built underground. Now, not one but four large buildings jutted into the night sky. A wide stretch of asphalt surrounded them, forming a clearing that ensured any approach would be noticed. Armed guards stood posted every twenty feet on the ground near concrete barricades, their backs to the buildings, and more soldiers were staggered on the rooftops. Obviously the commander expected something unusual to happen.

An attack? Unlikely. Only a handful of people assigned to the military installation surrounding the Nest knew the facility hidden at its core existed. So what had the Nest on high alert?

Her stomach burned; her fingers tingled. Northwest Florida had pretty mild winters, but being out in the woods, exposed to stiff winds and lying flat on the cold ground was enough to numb her gloved fingers and the tip of her masked nose. The stomach burn was acid due to sheer nerves.

Getting caught on the base without authorization would be bad, but getting caught on the perimeter of the Nest...

Not daring to think about the consequences, she cut off those thoughts, and kept watch.

Hours passed. Her eyelids grew heavy, then heavier, lulling her to doze off. She fought the temptation. Stay awake, Madison. Of all places, here—must stay alert.

Her resolve redoubled, she kept her breathing shallow, hoping that the mask would keep her exhaled breaths from fogging the air. Even something that slight from this distance could be noted. She kept watching, kept waiting.

Dawn threatened. Soon it would expose her, and in the past four hours, the only noteworthy observations she’d seen were changing of the guards. The soldiers had been relieved and replaced every hour, and that frequency proved telling. Whatever event or threat they expected hadn’t yet passed and the commander wanted the soldiers fresh, sharp and on their toes.

In the year she’d been stationed at the Nest, they’d only been on high alert once, for a practice drill in a readiness exercise that had lasted less than two hours. A string of forty-seven eighteen-wheelers had been stopped at the main facility’s outer gate. Soldiers had driven the trucks into the Nest, parked at the loading docks and unloaded boxes. The trucks were then returned to the outer gates and their drivers departed with them. The installation had been deemed ready.

Ready for what? No one, not even Madison, who analyzed delivery efficiency of the boxed contents defined only by one-word codes like Seeds or Purifier, had a clue.

But this alert was different, and two facts proved it: the absence of activity during the alert negated it being a readiness exercise drill, and the tension in the guards proved whatever initiated the alert was not ordinary.

The first signs of dawn pierced the horizon, tingeing it with a thin, pale streak that would soon thicken to daybreak. Her instincts told her to stay put, but she didn’t dare. If discovered, she’d never be in a position to expose the truth. The commander would see to that...and possibly to a lot more.

Disappointment battered her. Tonight, after the St. Valentine’s ball, she’d try again. Whatever happened here would happen at night.

The wind gusted. Madison’s eyes teared. She blinked hard and fast. If the commander and/or his vice commander had done what she suspected, she had to be vigilant and cautious. She was the only thing left standing between them and their possible actions, and those actions could not happen again. Not on her watch. No more lost ones could be sacrificed here. They must find their way home....

Tonight. Tomorrow night. Six months of nights—whatever it takes, Madison promised herself, then rose to a crouch and scanned the woods. Stealth and hyperalert, noting nothing unexpected, she moved from bush to tree through the thick woods, stepping lightly to avoid creating magnified sounds of dry leaves and twigs crunching underfoot.

With a scant fifteen minutes to spare before daylight exposed her, she left the restricted area and reached the public highway, then sprinted in the woods alongside the road to the sheltered spot where she’d parked her car to hide it from view.

Something odd was definitely going on out there. Whether or not it was connected to her case, she had no idea—yet. Bitterness filled her throat. Swallowing it, she eased into her silver Jaguar still hidden by darkness and shut the door.