Covert Risk (Prey Security: Alpha Team Book 5), page 1
Covert Risk
Jane Blythe
Copyright © 2023 Jane Blythe
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, distributed, reverse engineered or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, including photocopying and recording, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented without permission in writing from the publisher.
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Bear Spots Publications
Melbourne Australia
Cover designed by RBA Designs
I’d like to thank everyone who played a part in bringing this story to life. Particularly my mom who is always there to share her thoughts and opinions with me. My wonderful cover designer Letitia who did an amazing job with this stunning cover! And my fabulous editor Lisa for all the hard work she puts into polishing my work.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
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
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Book List
About the Author
Chapter One
October 13th
12:25 P.M.
This sucked.
Majorly.
But with the threat hanging over his head Christian “Surf” Bailey didn’t see that he had any other choice.
Drawing in a deep breath, he forced himself to do this. Breaking Lila’s heart would break his right along with it, but he couldn’t let her know that. If he wasn’t strong and didn’t make a clean break of things, then he was painting a major bullseye on the woman’s back, and he’d rather break her heart than get her killed.
Surf knocked on Lila’s apartment door and schooled his expression into a mask of disinterest. If he didn’t like the woman so much this wouldn’t be so hard. When he’d met her, he’d been in the middle of a month-long sex binge. Falling for a woman had been the last thing he’d wanted.
After he and his team—Prey Security’s Alpha Team—had been ambushed and held captive in Somalia, they had been beaten and tortured for two weeks before they’d been rescued. He’d found the only way he could cope with the mess of emotions and overwhelming helplessness the ordeal invoked was the high of an orgasm.
Meaningless sex was all he’d wanted. In and done as quickly as possible. Get the woman off, get himself off, then leave. He hadn’t even known the names of the vast majority of them. Hadn’t wanted to. It wasn’t about them, wasn’t even really about him, he just needed that high to survive.
Until Lila had changed everything.
“Oh, Christian, hi. What a great surprise.” Lila’s sweet smile greeted him like a beacon shining a light through a pitch-black night. She might not know it—would likely never know it—but she was what had saved him. Brought him out of that darkness, and he hated that this was how it was going to end.
All he could do was pray that once they found and eliminated the threat hanging over him and his team, he could come back, explain, and Lila might understand.
Not sure he would if he was her, but he could hope.
Had to hope.
“We need to talk.”
At his tone, the smile slowly fell from Lila’s face, and instead, uncertainty danced in her beautiful baby blue eyes. It had been a few days since he’d been able to come and see her, but they had talked on the phone and texted every single day since they had met. He knew this was going to come completely out of the blue for her, she wouldn’t understand, and he absolutely hated that. But telling her the truth meant putting her in danger, and he hated that even more.
“Uh, sure, come on in.” When she stepped back to let him enter her apartment, he felt that distance like a physical blow.
This was it.
In just a couple of minutes, he would rip out her heart and walk away like she meant nothing to him. She’d saved him, and she wouldn’t know it. It seemed so unfair, and he cursed everyone involved in this plot to overthrow the government that now had him and his team marked for death.
“Umm, do you want something to eat? I was just about to make lunch. I can make you something too,” Lila offered. She’d closed the door behind them but was watching him somewhat warily as though she suspected whatever he was there for wasn’t something she wanted to hear.
“No, thanks anyway. I think it’s best that I just do this.”
Lila lifted her arms to wrap around her stomach, bracing herself for a blow, and he hated that he was the one who was going to deliver it. She wasn’t usually the kind of woman he found himself attracted to. Usually, he went for outgoing, loud extroverts, people who liked to be the life of the party, but also women who had a great sense of humor and loved to have fun.
In contrast to that, Lila was quiet and contemplative. She had a steady confidence that you might not notice right away, but she held herself tall in a crowd, paid attention to everything happening around her, noticed details, and hadn’t been afraid to stand up for herself or to him.
They’d met quite by accident.
He’d been leaving after having sex with a woman he’d already forgotten what she looked like. She’d been coming home from her job as a 911 operator.
Already losing that high he’d needed, Surf had been distracted, dropped his cell phone, and bent down to pick it up, not realizing a woman was walking by. She’d tripped over him and would have hit the hard pavement if he didn’t have quick reflexes.
She had been understandably wary of him given it was early morning, the sun just beginning to rise, and had told him off for not paying attention to his surroundings. The spark of irritation in her eyes had immediately captured his attention, but the lurking sadness made his heart stir and take notice.
It had taken all of his charm and sweet-talking skills to get her to agree to go to a local diner with him for an early breakfast. Eventually, she had opened up and told him that it had been a rough shift at her job. She’d had a kid die of anaphylaxis and a woman kidnapped while on the line.
Seeing how deeply she cared about people she didn’t even know, he knew then and there that she was something special.
Had he been thinking long-term?
No, not yet.
Too much had happened over the last few months, and he was wary of planning a future when he knew the future was anything but certain. But he’d been intrigued, liked her and wanted to get to know her.
Since meeting Lila, he hadn’t had sex with another woman, hadn’t even thought about it. Lila had been more than enough to satisfy him in every single way. Not just physically, although they were certainly burn up the sheets compatible, but emotionally and psychologically as well.
Without Lila’s calming presence in his life, he feared he would resort back to having to chase that high with random women all over again.
“Christian, you’re scaring me. Can you just tell me why you’re here?” Lila’s voice drew him out of his head, and he took one last look at her before he severed the connection that seemed to have bound them together from that very first moment.
“I’m sorry, Lila, it’s over.”
“You’re breaking up with me? Just like that?” Lila’s eyes widened with shock. And he hated how this had come completely out of the blue for her. When he’d last seen her a few days ago everything had been perfect, and when they’d spoken on the phone right before he and his team raided the Mikhailov estate to rescue Julia Garamond, they’d made plans for another date.
Now he was here ending things.
“Just like that.”
Tears shimmered in those gorgeous eyes, and they almost had him breaking down and telling her everything. But Lila’s life was what was important here, and he wouldn’t put it in danger.
“But I don’t understand, everything was going so well,” Lila said. “I thought this was going somewhere.”
“Well, it’s not.” Surf hated coming across as so callous. While he was every bit as deadly as the rest of the men on his team, he was the lighthearted one, the goofy one, who was able to put victims at ease, and charm anyone into doing what he wanted. This wasn’t him, but he didn’t know any other way to end things and keep Lila safe than to shatter her sweet heart.
“But—”
“Look, babe, it’s not up for discussion. We had some fun, but you knew when I met you that all I wanted was a physical relationship.” It took everything he had not to cringe at the words coming out of his mouth.
Lila’s eyes went almost impossibly wide. “So, I meant absolutely nothing to you but a warm body primed for sex?”
The incredulity in her voice told him that he would never h ave a chance to convince her that this had all been a ruse to protect her.
“Don’t call me, Lila.”
Anger shoved aside some of the confusion and hurt. “Oh, don’t worry about that. I have no intention of calling. I don’t want to see or speak to you ever again.”
Mission accomplished.
Memorizing every detail about her, her long, wavy blonde hair that fell like a golden waterfall down her back, the soft dusting of freckles across her nose, and the way her plump lips quirked up when she was amused before her face bloomed into a full-blown smile.
She was everything he wanted.
Everything he needed.
It killed him to have to walk away like this.
“You should go now.” Lila stalked to the door and threw it open, waiting expectantly for him to leave.
Because he was a weak man, a selfish one as well as it turned out, Surf paused at the door. Curling one hand behind her neck, he touched his lips to hers in one last kiss.
One last taste of paradise.
Then he turned and walked away leaving his heart in tatters on Lila’s apartment floor.
* * * * *
October 29th
6:49 A.M.
“No, no, no, no, no.”
Lila Angeletti groaned as she sunk back to rest against the side of her bathtub.
Another morning, another round of vomiting.
It was getting harder to pretend that nothing was wrong.
Harder, but still she clung to denial.
This couldn’t be happening to her.
It couldn’t.
It would be the most unfair thing in the universe.
She had turned thirty just a week ago, was single, and hadn’t had any plans for marriage and a family until a sexy former Navy SEAL came barreling into her life. She had been perfectly content with her life. Her hard fight for freedom meant she could live where she wanted, have the job she chose, and live in her own cozy little apartment that was furnished the way she wanted.
Free from her family’s influence, she had fled to the opposite side of the country, needing an entire continent between them to finally feel safe. A job that was tough but she loved, friends who knew who she had been but accepted she wasn’t that person anymore, and a man she had been falling in love with.
Now she was sitting here, on the bathroom floor, drenched in sweat, no longer able to pretend that this was food poisoning or a stomach virus, alone, scared, angry, and hurt.
More than two weeks had passed since Christian “Surf” Bailey had broken her heart and she still didn’t understand what had happened.
What had changed?
One minute they had been falling in love—well, at least she had thought they were, Lila knew she had been—the next he was showing up at her place out of the blue, ending things with no explanation whatsoever.
Christian had told her that first day they met about his issue. While he hadn't gone into details, she’d known that something had happened to him and his team a few months prior to their meeting and that it had been bad, and his coping mechanism was sex.
But she’d thought they had something more.
Stupid.
She should have known better.
Her track record with men was a disaster, although it wasn’t her fault, it was her family’s. Which was part of the reason she now lived in New York while they lived in Los Angeles. But this mistake had been all hers, and now she might have a constant reminder of said mistake growing inside her.
Could she do this on her own?
Juggling a demanding job with long hours and being a single mom sounded utterly terrifying. Plus, there was the financial aspect. She made enough to support herself, but herself and a baby?
Lila wanted her child to grow up knowing who his or her father was, but would Surf even want to be part of the baby’s life? And if he did, would she be okay with him parading women through their son or daughter’s life? That wasn’t the environment she would want for her child, but Christian was the baby’s father so he had as much right as she did to be part of its life, and she could hardly dictate how he lived when their child was with him.
What if he decided he wanted to take the baby from her?
His job with Prey Security’s Alpha Team was unpredictable and dangerous, but he had more money than she did and could hire a nanny to care for the baby when he couldn’t be there. Would he use his money to hire a lawyer, get full custody of their child, and cut her out of their lives?
Nausea churned in her gut only this time it had nothing to do with potential morning sickness.
Now it had everything to do with the fear of being cut out of her child’s life.
“You’re getting ahead of yourself, Lila. Calm down.”
Easier said than done.
There was no point in panicking until she even knew if she was carrying a baby. There could be other reasons why she missed her last period and why she’d been getting sick in the mornings.
They had used a condom. Christian had been insistent, which she understood given he’d been sleeping around, and she hadn’t wanted to wind up pregnant and alone anyway, so they had used protection every time they’d slept together.
But no birth control was infallible.
As she might be about to find out.
Using the side of the tub for leverage, Lila hauled herself to her feet. There was a moment when the world spun around her and she was sure she would hit the tiles when she collapsed in a heap, but somehow, she managed to remain standing.
In the bathroom cabinet—buried way down at the back—were the pregnancy tests she’d bought a week ago.
On her birthday.
When she realized she was late and that what she thought was a stomach bug could be something else entirely.
She’d been so excited to celebrate her birthday with Christian. It would be the first year she’d celebrated with a real boyfriend. Pathetic, she knew since it was her thirtieth, but the relationships she’d been forced into in the past made her want to steer clear of the whole thing.
Christian was different though. Lila had felt a connection to him the moment their eyes first met. Love at first sight? Maybe not. But a connection nonetheless. He had hinted he had special plans he was making for her birthday, and she’d thought the day was going to be the perfect way to usher in a new decade of her life. One where she learned to cut the final threads tying her to her past so she could finally be completely free and happy.
Instead, she’d spent the day curled in a ball in bed, feeling sick and so alone and heartbroken it had physically hurt.
Lila wanted to run from this, pretend she hadn’t missed a period, that she wasn’t throwing up every morning, and it didn’t mean anything at all. But pretending wouldn’t change anything.
If she was pregnant, she was pregnant.
She’d deal with it.
Just like she had dealt with everything else life had thrown at her.
If Christian wanted to be part of the baby’s life, they would work something out. If he tried to take the baby from her she’d fight, and if he wanted nothing to do with the baby like he wanted nothing to do with her then she’d raise it on her own.
Her fear—over something she hadn’t even confirmed existed—over losing her child proved that she did, in fact, want this. Maybe it wasn’t what she had planned, maybe it wasn’t what she had expected, but she would find a way to make this work no matter what it took.
Crouching down, Lila rummaged around until she found the box and pulled it out of the cabinet beneath the sink. Her hand trembled as she opened the box and took out the stick.
The trembling increased as she shoved her pajama bottoms down, along with her panties, and held the stick in place so she could pee on it. After she’d flushed the toilet, she pulled off some toilet paper and put it on the vanity beside the sink, setting the stick on it while she washed her hands.
Now there was nothing to do but wait.
Seconds ticked by, feeling like hours.
As terrifying as this was and as absolutely alone as she felt, Lila found she was already accepting the fact that this was just a formality. She already knew there was a new life growing inside her.
“Okay, Lila, it’s time to see what your future looks like. Whatever it is you can handle it. You’ve been through worse, and this time there isn’t anyone controlling your life. It’s just you and …” she trailed off as she reached out and picked up the stick.
