Rules of Re-engagement. Лорет Энн Уайт
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How easy, he wondered, would it be to walk the fine line between pretending to be Olivia’s lover, and wanting to be?
And just where did that line begin and end? Because it was already blurred to hell and vanishing in his head. He figured he’d crossed it once already.
This is where the personal had to end, and the line be drawn strong and clear. And that is when he knew he would probably have to say goodbye to Olivia forever.
He could not allow his desire to be the downfall of the nation.
Rules of Re-engagement
Loreth Anne White
LORETH ANNE WHITE
As a child in Africa, when asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, Loreth said a spy…or a psychologist, or maybe marine biologist, archaeologist or lawyer. Instead she fell in love, traveled the world and had a baby. When she looked up again she was back in Africa, writing and editing news and features for a large chain of community newspapers. But her childhood dreams never died. It took another decade, another baby and a move across continents before the lightbulb finally went on. She didn’t have to grow up. She could be them all—the spy, the psychologist and all the rest—through her characters. She sat down to pen her first novel…and fell in love.
She currently lives with her husband, two daughters and their cats in a ski resort in the rugged Coast Mountains of British Columbia, where there is no shortage of inspiration for larger-than-life characters and adventure.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Romeo—The military designation for the time zone in which New York falls.
FDS—The Force du Sable—a private military company based on the island of São Diogo off the west coast of Angola.
Biosafety level 4—A level of safety from exposure to exotic, infectious agents that pose a high risk of life-threatening disease for which there is no vaccine or therapy.
The French Foreign Legion—An elite rapid-deployment force within the French military, established in 1831 and comprised of foreign volunteers, making it one of the most famous and legitimate mercenary forces in history.
The Republic of the Congo—A country west of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Also referred to as Congo-Brazzaville.
The Cabal—A covert organization that has been infiltrating the power structure of the United States over the past several decades and is now positioning itself to overthrow the government.
For more information, visit the Shadow Soldiers Web site at www.lorethannewhite.com.
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
Epilogue
Chapter 1
16:57 Romeo. Manhattan.
Tuesday, October 7.
He stood across the street from United Nations headquarters, watching—a scarred man hidden in the shadows of bare-fingered trees. A wanted man. He didn’t like being back on U.S. soil—illegally, no less. But he was here because he had to be. He was the only one who could stop an inordinately powerful man from bringing the entire nation to its knees in just six days.
And he needed a particular woman to help him do it.
She worked inside that building. She was the key to that man’s inner sanctum, his Achilles’ heel.
His daughter.
Jacques Sauvage thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his coat and narrowed his eyes into the brooding gray mist that was cloaking the city with premature darkness and chill. The trouble was, Olivia Killinger was also his own Achilles’ heel. Her father had already destroyed him once because of it.
Six days—that’s all he had to find out whether she was complicit in her father’s scheme. If she was somehow oblivious to what Samuel Killinger was doing, he would have to turn her, force her to betray her own flesh and blood, the father she adored.
But if he found her guilty, he’d have no choice but to use her life as leverage against Killinger. Either way he could not afford to fail. If he did, millions upon millions of innocent people in the country’s three largest cities—New York, Chicago and Los Angeles—would start dying by midnight, October 13. Just six days away.
And that would be only the beginning.
He hadn’t seen Olivia in sixteen years. How in hell did one begin to bridge a gap like that? Especially when the woman you were waiting for had once been your fiancée—and you were supposed to be dead.
He checked his watch. She should have come out by now. The row of flags—almost two hundred of them—that had clapped bravely in the fall wind had long been wrestled to the ground by security staff, their poles now naked as the scraggy boughs above his head.
Only the blue-and-white UN flag with its olive branches of peace was left snapping against the front sweeping down from the Arctic, dragging the premature chill of the Canadian prairies behind it.
The irony of that lone UN flag flying in the face of the coming storm wasn’t lost on him. Global peace wouldn’t stand a chance in hell if Samuel Killinger’s plan succeeded. War would be his tool, the weapon that would feed his massive corporate coffers. Samuel Killinger and his Cabal were about to launch the U.S. into an era of violently aggressive imperialism that would kill democracy and forever change the shape of the globe’s future.
Unless Jacques got to Olivia in time.
He checked his watch again. The temperature was dropping. Leaves skittered across the road, clattered and churned in the wake of a cab. It was fully dark now, the streetlights just fuzzy halos in mist. Still she didn’t come.
He felt the first spits of rain against his face. Perhaps he’d missed her. Perhaps he hadn’t recognized her profile among the huddled shapes that had scurried from the building into the streets, bent against the cold, making for home. Or perhaps she’d used a different gate. He shifted his feet against the growing numbness in his toes.
Then, suddenly, she was there.
Primal recognition slammed through him. His body snapped tight, and his nostrils flared, as if he’d somehow detected her scent on the chill wind. The muscles of his face grew taut, twisting at his scar as his world tunneled into just this moment. Just her.
The headlights of a car panned round and silhouetted her figure as she ran across the road, the wind playing with her coat like a malevolent spirit, opening it so that it fanned out behind her, pressing her skirt firmly against the outline of long, lean legs. She moved in his direction, her boot heels clicking on the pavement as she neared. His heart beat faster.
A sharp gust whipped hair over her face. She tried to hold it back with a leather-gloved hand, and he noticed she’d had it cut shorter. It looked more chic, but it was just as thick, just as lustrous. The sensation of his fingers combing through those soft waves of chestnut brown clawed through his memory.