Delores Fossen - Marching Orders

“Answers?” he calmly repeated. He inched closer, but stopped when Anna lifted the gun and aimed it right at his heart. “What do you mean?” She’d obviously figured out he wasn’t the man she’d thought he was.

“Rafe and I were lovers,” she whispered, a tear racing down her cheek.

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” she snapped. “It’s a little too late for that, don’t you think? Two months too late. I’m pregnant.”

Oh, man. That knocked the breath right out of him. He couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move. All he could do was stand there and stare at her.

With her eyes brimming with tears, she levered the gun slightly higher. “And now I want to know what you’ve done with my baby’s father.”

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Imagine a family tree that includes Texas cowboys, Choctaw and Cherokee Indians, a Louisiana pirate and a Scottish rebel who battled side by side with William Wallace. With ancestors like that, it’s easy to understand why Texas author and former air force captain Delores Fossen feels as if she was genetically predisposed to writing romances. Along the way to fulfilling her DNA destiny, Delores married an air force Top Gun who just happens to be of Viking descent. With all those romantic bases covered, she doesn’t have to look too far for inspiration.

Classified

Name: Rafael "Rafe" M. McQuade

Rank: Captain (Officer-3 scale)

Career Field: Combat Rescue Officer

Security Clearance: Top Secret

Physical Description: Thick brown hair. Green eyes. Muscular 6’ 1” body. No distinguishing marks.

Specialty Skills: Weapons expert, hand-to-hand combat specialist, proficient in three languages.

Duty Description: Commands combat rescue operations as a direct combatant, including survival, evasion, resistance and escape.

Current Assignment: Alpha Team Task Force

Availability Status: On medical leave, but called back for ultrasecret mission.

Diagnosis: Anterograde amnesia—may or may not recover previous memories.

Captain Rafe McQuade—An air force Combat Rescue Officer who’s kidnapped while on a special ops mission. His captors accidentally destroy key pieces of Rafe’s memory—pieces that hold a deadly secret that puts Rafe, his bride and his unborn child in grave danger.

Anna Caldwell—She prays that Rafe can piece together the secrets buried in his memory in time to save them.

Colonel Ethan Shaw—Commander of the Alpha Team Task Force and Rafe’s boss. Is he willing to let Anna and Rafe die to cover up a botched classified mission that could cost him his career?

Nicholas Sheldon—A security specialist who has a personal grudge against Colonel Shaw and Rafe. But has that grudge caused him to seek revenge?

Janine Billings—Anna’s best friend who has ties to the very assassins who are trying to kill Rafe and Anna.

Special Agent Luke Buchanan—A Justice Department official assigned to the Alpha Team. The financial problems in his personal life might have caused him to betray Anna and Rafe.

To my editor, Priscilla Berthiaume.

Thanks so much for your guidance and support.

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

Monte de Leon, present

A bullet slammed into the crumbling chimney just inches from Captain Rafe McQuade’s head. He mumbled some vicious profanity and flattened his body against the battered roof of the abandoned hacienda.

“I’ve got an admirer,” he snarled into the thumbnail-size communicator on the collar of his camouflage uniform. “Do me a favor, Rico, and take him out, will you?”

“I’m trying” was the reply he got from Captain Cal Rico.

All hell was breaking loose on the ground twenty feet below him. Artillery shells. Frantic shouts. The smell of battle, smoke and gunfire.

None of which was supposed to be happening.

Talk about Murphy’s Law. Anything that could go wrong, had. And now his Alpha Team members—and Anna—were neck-deep in cross fire between two warring rebel factions that had chosen this godforsaken place for a showdown.

Rafe inched forward, leaving the meager cover of the overhanging tree that he’d used to climb onto the building. His equipment belt and assault rifle scraped along the bleached roof tiles.

Come hell or high water, he would get Anna out. Failure was not an option.

“Infrared shows no one else inside the building. For now,” Rico informed him through the receiver in Rafe’s ear. “But Anna just moved into the cellar. You can access it through a door beneath the stairs.”

“Atta girl,” Rafe mumbled. With gunfire riddling the papery walls, the cellar was her best bet. Now, hopefully, she’d stay put until he got to her.

“I’m going in,” he informed Rico.

Rafe scrambled to the lip of the roof, gripped onto the eaves and launched himself over the side. His feet crashed through the second-story window just below, and with his weapon ready to fire, he hit the floor running.

The hacienda had obviously been abandoned for months. Rafe fought his way through the litter of bashed furniture and debris to get to the stairs. He stopped at the landing and glanced down at the glass-strewn foyer. No sign of gunmen, but someone had shot out the windows and ripped off the double doors. The muggy breeze stirred what was left of a pair of ghostly white curtains. Just curtains.

Maybe.

Just outside the doorway, he saw a shadow of motion that had him holding his tongue.

Silently repositioning his weapon, Rafe waited. A second. Then two. Before he saw the man step into the foyer. A rebel fighter with an angry-looking machete and a semiautomatic. And he had his attention focused on the door that led to the cellar. Maybe the guy had actually seen Anna run in there. It didn’t matter. There was no way Rafe would let him get to her.

No way.

The man looked up. A split-second glance as he tried to take aim. It was the last glance or aim he’d ever attempt. Rafe took him out with two shots to the head. The rebel fell into a heap on the floor.

“I just lost an admirer,” Rafe reported to Rico.

Rafe barreled down the wide spiraling steps and made his way to the arch-shaped door beneath. “It’s me—Rafe,” he called out. “Open up, Anna!”

Almost immediately he heard her footsteps on the cellar stairs. With each one, his heart was right in his throat. There was a shuffle of movement before she opened the scarred door a fraction.