Carol Ericson - Bulletproof Seal

He had to take the shot...

And kill his lover.

Branded a traitor, Rikki Taylor is in the sights of sniper Quinn McBride’s rifle. Yet the navy SEAL knows this woman intimately, and there’s no way she’d betray her country...or him. Saving her is his number one priority. Discovering her real secrets, including the baby she’s keeping from him, can wait—first, they have to make it out alive.

Red, White and Built

CAROL ERICSONis a bestselling, award-winning author of more than forty books. She has an eerie fascination for true-crime stories, a love of film noir and a weakness for reality TV, all of which fuel her imagination to create her own tales of murder, mayhem and mystery. To find out more about Carol and her current projects, please visit her website at www.carolericson.com, “where romance flirts with danger.”

Also by Carol Ericson

Locked, Loaded and SEALedAlpha Bravo SEALBullseye: SEALPoint Blank SEALSecured by the SEAL BulletproofSEALSingle Father SheriffSudden Second ChanceArmy Ranger RedemptionIn the Arms of the Enemy

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

Bulletproof SEAL

Carol Ericson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-07866-5

BULLETPROOF SEAL

© 2018 Carol Ericson

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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www.millsandboon.co.uk

Version: 2020-03-02

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Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Prologue

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

Epilogue

Extract

Prologue

The sweat stung Quinn’s eyes and he squeezed them shut for a second—just a second before he refocused on his target. Rikki’s beautiful face swam before him in his scope, her red hair standing out like a burst of flame against the emerald green landscape. Quinn’s hand trembled.

He shifted his sniper rifle to the two North Korean soldiers walking behind Rikki, prodding her forward. They had rifles pointed at her back. Quinn spit the sour taste out of his mouth, along with the mud from the hillside in the DMZ between North and South Korea.

Someone had misinformed the CIA. Rikki Taylor was no rogue operative working with the North Koreans. She was their captive...unless she’d set up this whole scene for cover.

Quinn knew better than anyone about Rikki’s duplicitous nature. But this? Working with the enemy to damage her own government and put her fellow CIA agents at risk?

He had a hard time believing Rikki would endanger agents in the field. Quinn lowered his sniper rifle and swiped the back of his hand across his mouth.

The trio below him stopped, and one of the soldiers pulled out a bottle of water.

Squinting, Quinn scanned the lush land where the borders of North and South Korea met—a no-man’s-land where hostility and mistrust haunted the verdant beauty—not to mention the scattered land mines. This mistrust permeated his pores, had him doubting his mission, a mission he should’ve refused once he’d discovered the target.

He would’ve had to have come up with a good reason to refuse an assignment from the navy—even after that untraceable text he’d received. He could’ve tried the truth, but then he would’ve come under suspicion. Then his pride had taken over and he had to prove that he could carry out the assignment, prove his professionalism and dedication.

He snorted softly, and the leaves on the branch tickling his nose stirred. Prove to whom? His old man?

The group on the ground was on the move again, and Quinn took up his position. His rifle weighed on his shoulder like a lead block. His breath came out in short spurts.

Usually before he dropped a target, a deadly calm descended on him. Now, his heart raced and his trigger finger twitched. In this condition he’d be lucky to hit that boulder twenty feet away.

He closed his eyes and took a deep, steadying breath through his nose and blew it out through puckered lips. He swallowed. He shifted. He braced the toes of his boots against the rock behind him.

Then he refocused. He put Rikki Taylor in his crosshairs for the last time.

Rikki licked her lips, and Quinn could almost taste their sweet honey on his own tongue. She tossed her fiery hair over one shoulder.

Quinn blinked and, in the split second of that one blink, Rikki attacked one of the guards, going for his weapon.

Quinn needed no other proof. He tracked his rifle to the other guard, lined him up and took the shot. The soldier jerked once and dropped to the ground.

Quinn swung his scope back to Rikki’s struggle with her captor, and his heart stuttered. The soldier had possession of his gun, and Rikki had fallen to the ground, out of sight behind a clump of bushes.

As Quinn watched through his scope, blood pounding in his ears, the North Korean soldier shot his weapon into the bushes.

In a fury, Quinn zeroed in on the man who’d just shot Rikki, but before he could even take aim, Quinn came under attack from a hail of bullets.