Radclyffe - Price of Honor

Price of Honor

© 2015 By Radclyffe. All Rights Reserved.

ISBN 13: 978-1-62639-177-2

This Electronic Book is published by

Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

P.O. Box 249

Valley Falls, New York 12185

First Edition: July 2015

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

Credits

Editors: Ruth Sternglantz and Stacia Seaman

Production Design: Stacia Seaman

Cover Design By Sheri (graphicartist2020@hotmail.com)

By Radclyffe

Romances

Innocent Hearts

Promising Hearts

Love’s Melody Lost

Love’s Tender Warriors

Tomorrow’s Promise

Love’s Masquerade

shadowland

Passion’s Bright Fury

Fated Love

Turn Back Time

When Dreams Tremble

The Lonely Hearts Club

Night Call

Secrets in the Stone

Desire by Starlight

Crossroads

Homestead

Against Doctor’s Orders

Honor Series

Above All, Honor

Honor Bound

Love & Honor

Honor Guards

Honor Reclaimed

Honor Under Siege

Word of Honor

Code of Honor

Price of Honor

Justice Series

A Matter of Trust (prequel)

Shield of Justice

In Pursuit of Justice

Justice in the Shadows

Justice Served

Justice For All

The Provincetown Tales

Safe Harbor

Beyond the Breakwater

Distant Shores, Silent Thunder

Storms of Change

Winds of Fortune

Returning Tides

Sheltering Dunes

First Responders Novels

Trauma Alert

Firestorm

Oath of Honor

Taking Fire

Short Fiction

Collected Stories by Radclyffe

Erotic Interludes: Change of Pace

Radical Encounters

Edited by Radclyffe

Best Lesbian Romance 2009-2014

Stacia Seaman and Radclyffe, eds.

Erotic Interludes 2: Stolen Moments

Erotic Interludes 3: Lessons in Love

Erotic Interludes 4: Extreme Passions

Erotic Interludes 5: Road Games

Romantic Interludes 1: Discovery

Romantic Interludes 2: Secrets

Breathless: Tales of Celebration

Women of the Dark Streets

Amore and More: Love Everafter

Myth & Magic: Queer Fairy Tales

By L.L. Raand

Midnight Hunters

The Midnight Hunt

Blood Hunt

Night Hunt

The Lone Hunt

The Magic Hunt

Shadow Hunt

Acknowledgments

The Honor series holds a special place in the chronology of my titles. Above All, Honor was one of my early works and marks a place in my journey that would prove to be life-changing. I was halfway through writing Above All, Honor when I got sidetracked and stopped writing it. I have never written two novels at one time, since I have always written every work from start to finish. Stopping in the middle to write something else (with the exception of short stories, and then just briefly) just didn’t happen. But in 1997 I discovered the Internet, and along with it, X-Files fan fiction. Almost immediately, I began to explore writing and posting fan fiction on the X-Files ScullySlash list. Along with that very new adventure came the realization that sharing my work, which I had not done up until that point, added an extra dimension of pleasure and reward to the process of writing. I discovered writing colleagues and a whole new world of challenges.

For a year I wrote nothing except fan fiction on a daily basis, all of which is still available on my website (radfic.com). And during that time, I wasn’t writing any original fiction, although I wrote original characters in my fan fiction. Eventually when the TV series died off, I returned to writing original fiction, and one of the first things I did was finish Above All, Honor . That book was one of the first I formally published in 2001, and eventually was one of the first to be published by Bold Strokes Books in a revised, expanded edition in 2004. My intention was never to write a series, but I was seduced by requests from readers for more of these characters, and somehow, the series has morphed into ten novels and several story arcs. Each time I start a new “chapter” in the lives of Cam and Blair and all the supporting cast, the characters are at once new and familiar to me and their stories a renewed pleasure. I hope you find the same to be true.

Many thanks go to: senior editor Sandy Lowe for her contributions in keeping me and BSB running on track, editor Ruth Sternglantz for knowing where I’m going before I do, editor Stacia Seaman for always reading with care and attention, Sheri Halal for the expert graphic work, and my first readers Paula, Eva, and Connie for encouragement and inspiration.

And as always, thanks to Lee, who joined the train at the very beginning and is still up for the ride. Amo te.

Radclyffe, 2015

To Lee, intrepid traveler and brave explorer

Chapter One

In the foothills of the Bitterroot Mountains, Idaho

Jane had had so many names in her life, she could barely remember the one she was born with. She’d been known as Angela Jones in Eugen Corp, where she’d worked in the Level 4 lab up until the day she’d disappeared with a vial of deadly avian flu virus tucked into a fold of her clothes. In the paramilitary compound deep in the Idaho mountains, she’d been Captain Jane Graves to her fellow militia. She’d liked being known by the name she shared with her father, General Augustus Graves. Now she was neither Jane Graves nor Angela Jones or any of the long-ago names she’d had as a child moving from place to place with members of the freedom movement who’d taught and trained her. The FBI and Homeland Security knew her by those names and were looking for her. And her father was dead and had taken his name, all their names, to the grave with him.

Now she was just Jane.

She smiled as she slid the blades of the drugstore scissors along her neck and closed them on the strands of wet crimson hair scalloped on her skin. She knew her father was dead. She’d seen Cameron Roberts’s face in the starburst light of the muzzle flash when Roberts gunned him down. Graves had gone to the grave. No matter. She knew who she was. A name was only a mask she wore, part of her camouflage. She was a soldier, a freedom fighter, a defender of the Constitution. She’d learned that as soon as she had learned to talk, when she’d had the first name, the one she could barely recall. Her father and those who had stood for him had raised her to be a patriot. God, family, country. These were the things that mattered.

Her country, America’s America, was being perverted, weakened, humiliated in the eyes of the world by politicians who cared only for their own power and greed, by misguided and self-serving bureaucrats who pretended to care about the common man while undermining the strength and fabric of the American middle class. Her father and those like him understood that a strong America began with its leaders, men who believed in the words of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, who’d ensure America was for the Americans, and that the world knew it. His vision. Her vision. God and country, forever strong.