Doranna Durgin - Checkmate

Kim Valenti:

An NSA cryptologist by day, this analytical genius and expert code breaker is the key to stopping a deadly bomb.

COUNTDOWN by Ruth Wind

Diana Lockworth:

With only twenty-four hours until the president’s inauguration, can this army intelligence captain thwart an attempt to assassinate him?

TARGET by Cindy Dees

Selena Jones:

Used to ensuring international peace, the FBI legal attaché had her biggest assignment yet—outsmarting a rebel leader to save hostages abroad.

CHECKMATE by Doranna Durgin

ATHENA FORCE: Chosen for their talents. Trained to be the best. Expected to change the world.

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spent her childhood filling notebooks first with stories and art, and then with novels. After obtaining a degree in wildlife illustration and environmental education, she spent many years deep in the Appalachian Mountains. When she emerged, it was as a writer who found herself irrevocably tied to the natural world and its creatures—and with a new touchstone to the rugged spirit that helped settle the area and which she instills in her characters.

Doranna’s first published fantasy novel received the 1995 Compton Crook/Stephen Tall Award for the best first book in the fantasy, science fiction and horror genres. She now has fifteen novels of eclectic genres on the shelves and more on the way. Most recently she’s leaped gleefully into the world of action-romance. When she’s not writing, Doranna builds Web pages, wanders around outside with a camera and works with horses and dogs. There’s a Lipizzan in her backyard, a mountain looming outside her office window, a pack of agility dogs romping in the house and a laptop sitting on her desk—and that’s just the way she likes it. You can find a complete list of titles at www.doranna.net along with scoops about new projects, lots of silly photos and a line to her SFF Net newsgroup.

Thanks to William Sanders and Robert Brown for wicked cool gun trivia, and to Judith Byorick for finding the inadvertently silly bits and to Evanescence for providing Selena with a theme album. And big thanks to Catherine Mann, for making sure I got the Predator details down right!

Dedicated to survivors everywhere.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

B erzhaan.

What a mess. Political unrest from within, political pressures from without, a country seething with unreleased social tension and unspoken dangers.

It was exactly what Selena Shaw Jones needed. Distraction.

She stood on the crest of a rubble-strewn hill in Berzhaan and knew herself for a coward. She stood amidst the revered ruins of the Temple of Ashaga and knew she should have been at home, working things out with Cole. She shouldn’t have retreated like a wounded child, unable to face the truth. It wasn’t a reaction typical of her—of the controlled, perfectionist FBI Legal Attaché who traveled the world to develop counterterrorism programs in other countries and to create team-work between those countries and the United States. Of a woman with extensive experience and training in dangerous situations, from fraught negotiations to firefights.

Emotionally, unexpectedly wounded. And no idea how to deal with it. So Selena had indeed retreated, all the way across the ocean to the brand-new legate office in Berzhaan’s capital, Suwan. So brand-new that her support staff had not yet arrived, and she spent most of her time with the U.S. ambassador, strategizing ways to build trust with a wary Berzhaani prime minister—or with the prime minister himself, attending flashy government functions to establish her presence here.

The rest of the time she spent learning the lay of the land—figuratively and literally. It was one reason she’d come to this shrine of ruins. The other…she’d heard this was a peaceful place. A contemplative place. A place where even a distressed Special Agent might sort out her thoughts.

She looked back down the steep hill she’d just ascended, a challenging obstacle course of rocks both large enough to climb over and small enough to turn an ankle. Below, the village of Oguzka looked peaceful, unchanged by its proximity to the shrine. No tourist attractions, no shacks lining the road offering trinkets to rich Europeans and Americans. Just families, going about their lives.

As it should be. One of Selena’s jobs was to keep things this way, wherever she went.

The house closest to the foot of the hill boasted a large backyard, unenclosed. A dormant garden covered nearly a third of it. Goats stood idly in a pen at the back, and the stone-walled house boasted a tidy, weed-free exterior. Peaceful. A little boy darted around the side of the house, young enough to stumble every third step and also young enough that he didn’t care. He played with a string of scrap material, letting it flutter in the wind.

Selena’s eyes burned, unexpected and startling, almost as unexpected as the sudden closing of her throat.

He was the reason she’d come.

He was also one of the reasons she’d run.

Family. Children. Plans and hopes and visions of a future with Cole that included cribs and baby mobiles and a thousand pictures of that first crawl, that first step, of a plump little mouth forming those first words…

Selena whirled away, taking a few abrupt steps toward the temple. She carefully wiped her eyes and retied her modest and respectful head scarf against the stiff winter breeze. She refocused on surroundings of ancient stone and ancient, eternal flame. Stone walls defined the courtyard, covered with moss and lichen, their once-square edges crumbled into softness. Built against those walls, low, dark religious cells waited for the return of the pilgrims who had once flocked here. Before her, a square shrine stood stolid against the years, precisely fenestrated to reveal the eternal flame within. This, the Temple of Ashaga just outside Berzhaan’s capital city of Suwan, held the muted awe of generations. A quiet place; a revered place.

Just what she’d wanted. Needed.

Then…why wasn’t it helping?

Because it definitely wasn’t helping.

Selena deliberately turned to matters more directly at hand. Distraction. Berzhaan had wedged itself between the tumultuous Middle East and acquisitive Russia, swapping between freedom and occupation too many times in the last century. The changes made for a country in turmoil, seething with unrest and jam-packed with diplomatic complications that filled Selena Shaw Jones’s hours and let her tumble into bed exhausted, knowing she was doing her best to keep terrorism away from the little boy down below as much as from those children in the States. If only Razidae would let her build the network between their countries that would allow the communication, intelligence gathering and local counter-terrorist education that it was her job to establish….