www.millsandboon.co.uk

      AMY J. FETZER

      The daughter, wife and mother of U.S. Marines, Amy J. Fetzer has written over twenty-seven historical, paranormal, short contemporary and romantic suspense novels and novellas, and now she takes on adventure romance for Silhouette Bombshell. From moving across the country to across the world, Amy has a storehouse of knowledge and experience to draw on for her writing. A certified diver with five years of Shorin Ryu Karate (just in case she’s attacked sixty feet underwater by a flounder), Amy has rappelled down a mountain, fired weapons and loves writing “strong heroines who know what has to be done, then do it. Believe me, a Marine wife would never wait to take action.”

      To the women of the United States Marine Corps Our often forgotten heroines, mothers, sisters and daughters who strap on a helmet, a nine-millimeter, shoulder a rifle and heft a sixty-pound pack just like their male counterparts.

      For walking into danger and being willing to die to protect and defend the freedom of a nation.

      If that’s not a true heroine, I don’t know what is.

      Semper Fi

      Contents

      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 1

      Somewhere in northeast Texas

       10:00 p.m.

      E li Archer’s world was about to change.

      If he’d had any smarts, he’d have left for his usual Friday night out with his pals by now. Instead, he’d stuck around his house, drinking too much too early—and that turned a redneck bully into two hundred pounds of mean and nasty.

      His mistake was in taking his temper out on his small, barely nineteen-year-old wife while Darcy was less than a hundred yards away.

      At the first scream, Darcy’s long legs ate up the dry, flat land, each step on her toes to make as little noise as possible. She hitched over the porch railing and stopped short of rushing through the half-open back door, then flattened against the wall. The floor-boards creaked but Eli couldn’t hear the noise over his own shouts. Over the degrading insults he threw at his wife, Mary Jo.

      Darcy reached up and gingerly unscrewed the back-porch light, throwing the area into darkness.

      She’d been watching the isolated country house from the tree line since sundown. Up close, it was worse. Sacks of garbage torn open by animals were stacked against the house. The stench of rancid grease and rotten food hung in the night air, which pulsed with swarming flies.

      Darcy’s eyes watered. The place reeked more of hopeless neglect. Its sagging porches and roof begged to be put out of their misery with a well-placed wrecking ball. Paint barely colored the wood exterior, the stains of the rusted tin roof streaking the sides of the building like bars caging in its inhabitants.

      But a shiny new pickup truck sat in the dirt driveway, a full gun rack clear in the rear window. Easy to see where Eli’s priorities lay. Darcy had already unloaded the weapons and removed the firing pins. But that didn’t mean Eli Archer didn’t have more. Men like him always had more weapons than guts. Predictable morons. Eli drank heavily, worked little and, for recreation, tortured stray cats and spotlighted deer. That Eli beat his wife was a character flaw that put him just below amoebas.

      A real prize.

      Inside the house, Eli shouted for his boots. He was leaving. Men like him always left long enough to work up some twisted reason as to why they pounded on women—she had personal experience to back up that theory. Darcy prayed Eli went out the front door without hurting Mary Jo again. Confronting a drunken wife beater was not in her immediate plans, but she couldn’t let him hurt the girl. If his mood was any indication, he’d kill her.

      Darcy spied through the window for a sign of Mary Jo Archer. Shadows moved behind tattered curtains, and her heart pounded a little harder as the people inside drew closer to her position.

      This was stupid. Normally, she snatched abused women while the men were gone. She could be shot for being this daring, but she couldn’t abandon Mary Jo, either. And where the heck was Jack? He should have been here by now to back her up.

      She moved to the open doorway, peering inside. Despite what the Archer place looked like on the outside, the interior was tidy and clean. But then how else would Mary Jane spend her time as a prisoner in her own home?

      Darcy flinched when another door slammed somewhere inside, shaking the windows. She heard Eli’s voice, harsh and deep as he hurled foul words at the woman he’d promised to love, honor and cherish.

      Three days ago, Darcy had been woken by Mary Jo’s call around midnight, the voice on the other end of the line sounding achingly familiar, hushed, terrified. Sobbing. The caller had heard from her only friend, Tomas, a worker at the local grocery store, that Darcy helped women like her. Darcy had driven like a madwoman to get there, to find Tomas and discreetly learn all she could about the Archer household. It paid to be aware of routine.

      Eli met his pals at the Bullriders Saloon like clockwork every Friday night, leaving his wife locked inside the house like a punching bag he stored