Lone Wolf, page 1
Lone Wolf
Mignon Mykel
Copyright 2022 by Mignon Mykel
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All right reserved.
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No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a media retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher of this book, excepting of brief quotations for use in reviews.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, are entirely coincidental.
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Cover Design and Formatting: oh so Novel
All images and vectors have been purchased.
For My Readers.
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This one is for you. Thank you for sticking it out and trusting I’ll give you the book the characters deserve.
Contents
Warnings
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 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Epilogue
About the Author
Also by Mignon Mykel
Warnings
Mentions of drugs, mental health, veteran suicide, and more. Please check reviews for specific triggers.
Chapter
One
Kellie
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Somewhere in Virginia
The clicking seconds of the clock is loud.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
I’ve been in this white room by myself for ten minutes. Maybe only five.
But it feels like hours.
Every few minutes I try to remind myself to check the time and compare it to the last time, but my mind is a jumbled mess and isn’t retaining anything.
The chair the police officer put me in is padded, so at least there’s that.
They promised I wasn’t in trouble. They just had questions for me.
I told them I didn’t know anything.
Before two hours ago, I didn’t even know Clay was doing drugs, let alone dealing them!
One minute, my boyfriend of two months and I were driving to dinner and the next, we’re being pulled over and forced into separate police cars.
I glance to the corner of the ceiling, where a camera is trained on me. I don’t know what they expect to see.
I literally have nothing to give them.
Bringing a foot up to the seat, I hug my arms around my leg and rest my cheek against my knee. At least I wore a long-sleeved shirt today.
Restaurants are always cold in the summer.
The same seems to go for police stations.
I’m not sure how much longer I sit there before the door opens.
Looking over at the same time I bring my foot back to the floor, I clasp my hands in front of me and swallow hard.
It’s the older detective who first started questioning me, and a blonde female I haven’t met yet. She’s maybe around my age, and wears a black see-through blouse over a black tank top, tucked into her tight black jeans.
And of course, she has black heels on, too.
She doesn’t wear a badge of any sort, though.
“Hi, Kellie,” she says, holding her hand out for me to shake before taking a seat at the table. The detective remains standing by the door. “My name is Carter Douglas. You’ve found yourself in quite the pickle, haven’t you?”
Not the word choice I’d use but, “Seems like it.” I don’t mean for it, but my tone is bordering on cold.
Her light eyes glance at my lap, and she reaches out to put a hand on my clasped ones. “You’re not in trouble, Kellie. I’m here to help you.”
I keep my mouth shut because even if I’m not going to be thrown in jail, I’m definitely neck deep in something.
I’d consider that “in trouble,” but that’s just me.
“Clay wasn’t a good guy,” she continues, turning in her chair to face the table, before opening a manilla folder the detective left earlier. She thumbs through the papers, shaking her head now and then. “And even if, when, he’s put away, there’s a high probability that you remain in danger.”
“I don’t think we’re talking about the same Clay,” I tell her. I’m so confused about this entire situation. Clearly there’s more going on than Clay dealing pain pills, but I’m completely in the dark.
I just...
I can’t wrap my head around everything.
This Carter woman then takes the next few minutes and tells me exactly who Clay is...
And who he’s not.
Everything I knew—thought I knew—comes crashing down.
“What...what does all this mean for me? I swear I didn’t know. I wasn’t an accomplice. I don’t even know those other guys!” My eyes dart to the detective before going back to Carter.
“Kellie, I know,” she tells me calmly. “We’ve been watching, and that’s clear to me and my team.” She quickly looks toward the stoic man at the door. “Detective Clydell knows this, as well. We have two options. One, nothing changes for you. You go about life as normal, but there’s a risk to your life with that. The people Clay worked for won’t take him going to jail lightly. He owes them too much. These people take women for collateral. There’s not a nicer way to say that,” she adds when my breath hitches. “The state can keep detectives on you, you can have security...none of it will matter. There will always be someone who wants you silenced.”
“But I don’t know anything!” My eyes are burning with sudden unshed tears.
“They won’t care, Kellie,” Carter says softly. “Even if they figure that out and know it to be true...there’s still the possibility they want to get back at Clay, and what better way to do that than to hurt his woman?”
“We’ve only been dating for a few months. Not even seriously!”
Carter glances at the Detective, and he nods once.
“Clay meeting you at O’Ryans wasn’t a coincidence, Kellie.” I gasp at her mention of the day he and I first started talking. “You were targeted from the beginning to be brought into the fold.” She reaches a hand out and taps her palm lightly on the table. “Again, not trying to scare you. Just letting you know the gravity of the situation. I do have another option for you, though. A far safer option.”
Swallowing, I nod. “Okay?”
“You die.”
My back straightens and I look at the detective, my entire body on alert. I what?
“...to them,” Carter continues. “We set it up to make you look like you die and you enter into a... Witness Protection type of program. The group I work for is willing to take on this case and get you to safety on the other side of the country. You’ll take on a new identity. A new name. A new past. An entirely new life. Kellie Zimmerman dies, and your new persona continues to live. We know your parents passed away and you have no other family. I know it’s not nice to hear but...no one’s going to miss Kellie. Maybe a couple of friends, sure...although if you ask me, this is your best option at living a long life.”
Her words are a harsh reality but she’s not wrong about me being alone.
“How...” I clear my throat past the fear. “How long?”
“You won’t ever be Kellie again. Whatever friends you have? You will be dead to them. You won’t be coming back here, and if you ever do...it will be many years down the road, and still, you won’t be Kellie.”
“Can...can I think about it?”
The woman pinches her lips together, but not in an aggravated way. Can you pull that face kindly? Well, Carter’s doing it.
“The moment you leave this room, the offer is gone,” Carter says. “If you take the offer, what’s going to happen is you’ll be escorted from the room and placed in a transport vehicle. The vehicle will bring you to your house, but it won’t be you leaving the car. We have a decoy person. You’ll then be transported to a safe location where you’ll be met by one of my guys. He’ll give you the rest of your information and your assumed identity. Your history. What your immediate future looks like. And then you’ll head to your new life.”
“And if I don’t take the offer?”
“You’ll be escorted home, and that’s that.”
I lift a shaking hand to my face and squeeze the bridge of my nose, trying to stop tears from falling. “This is just so much.”
“I know, Kellie. I’m so sorry you got caught in all of this.”
“How... I mean... No, yes.” My words are coming out about as coherent as they’re flying in my mind. “How did you learn of all of this? You said you were watching me?”
Carter nods. “The group I work for deals with hostage and rescue situations, some bodyguard work. This drug case came across our desk a couple of months ago via one of our guys.”
“Why me? I mean...you said it yourself, I’m no one. Why does your...group, you called it...why do y’all want to help me?”
“Plenty of innocent people get caught in bad situations. Are you saving all of them?”
The detective clears his throat, and both Carter and I look at him. “We’ve got to wrap this up if it’s going to move seamlessly, Ms. Douglas.”
Carter nods. “I’m sorry, Kellie,” she says to me. “I know this is fast. It’s a lot to take in, and in such a short amount of time.”
The last hours flash through my head.
Do I really have a choice?
Honestly, I don’t think I do. Not unless I want to look over my shoulder for the rest of my life—and if Carter’s words are true, my life won’t be all that long if I choose to stay.
I may not have anyone, but I certainly don’t have a death wish.
The thought of not getting a chance to accomplish dreams...
Swallowing hard, I give her a nod. “I guess... I guess I’ll do it.”
Chapter
Two
Hemming
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My phone beeps with an incoming car alert.
Carter and the girl are arriving.
Sighing, I stand and move toward the garage, pressing the door button so it lifts as my Marine friend’s sister pulls the blacked-out, tinted SUV in.
Fourteen years ago, I joined the Marine Corps because I didn’t have anything else to do. I wasn’t interested in college, and as much as I enjoyed the country life, I knew I had to get out of DeKalb county.
My girl said she’d wait. Said she was excited to see the world with me.
Then she slept with my best friend.
I pop a gum bubble between my molars. No sense thinking about Celeste. That chapter is long gone and closed.
In boot camp, I met a kid named Tucker Douglas. He and another guy in our platoon, Tanner “Chance” Henderson, headed off to infantry school and I went to Little Rock for aircraft mechanics. Thanks to social media, we occasionally talked, but the messages have always been far and few between.
But then a few months ago, I got a call from Tucker.
He was starting his own military-type company and wanted to know if I wanted in.
My options were either continue working at a ground level position at an airport and use what skills I learned in the Corps, or jump into a start-up military group where my pay and benefits were better than they were in the Corps.
I took option B.
Only after I told him my choice, and gave my two weeks to the other place, did Tucker fully explain what I was getting myself into, the bastard.
I nearly backed out.
This isn’t just some rescue the damsel, situation. There’s more going on than me escorting this girl to Montana, where she’ll live a life separated from the one she’s had for twenty-six years.
Because apparently, according to Tucker, the best way for her to start a new life was to be married.
And Tucker thought I’d be the best guy for the job.
“It works out better this way, Hemming,” he told me as we discussed details via web cam. “She’s going to need security for the first months, anyway, to make sure she doesn’t fuck up and the O’Ryans find her. I’m not positive that they won’t look for her, but I am positive that bringing her here, changing her identity, and giving her a constant bodyguard will keep her safe and alive. One year, and if everything seems good and she’s well-adjusted, then y’all get a divorce—”
“You mean this is going to be legal? A legal marriage?”
“Yes. One-hundred percent legal. You’ll have the paperwork. It’s all filed. It’s notarized. It's real. Every aspect. Your relationship. Her history. Hemming...it needs to be real. I mean, y’all don’t have to fuck but beyond that? Real. You can live in town, or you can stay on my property. Staying on my property would probably be better to let you both adjust, but if you’d rather go all in, feet first, and force the situation...I can have a place arranged.”
“Shit.” I shook my head and looked away from the screen. “Fuck, Douglas,” I repeat before lifting my hands in defeat.
I hadn’t lived with a woman—let alone been in a long-term relationship with one—since Celeste. Now I was being saddled with one I didn’t know, and was supposed to convince everyone that we were married.
Tucker then explained the girl’s situation more in depth, what Douglas Group was pulling her from, and I had to agree that this sort of op was what was best for her safety. I asked why me and why not one of the other men he recruited for Douglas Group.
“You’re a scary motherfucker.”
I’m no scarier than any other Marine or soldier. I spend time at the gym because lifting gives me a sort of therapy I couldn’t find anywhere besides the tattoo chair. But muscles and ink don’t make a guy a scary motherfucker.
It probably has more to do with the fact I keep to myself and only talk when I have something to say that’s important. I can see where that paired with the body would cause someone to step back.
“That’s supposed to help the girl?”
“Look, Hemming,” he answered seriously. “You both have nothing. Everyone here on the compound will know the details, but neither of you have anyone in your lives to convince. No family.”
“No friends...”
“You have us.”
Shaking my head, I sighed heavily. “Fine. When does it start?”
I had a few days to get used to the idea, but here I am, on the east coast waiting in a safe house for...
My wife.
Carter Douglas turns off the vehicle but neither woman gets out until the garage door is closed. Only then do I get my first look at the woman I’m supposed to convince the world I’m married to.
She’s on the taller side. As she walks behind Carter, it’s clear she’s at least five inches taller than my friend’s sister.
I’d give the woman five nine, five ten.
She has golden hair—which will be easy to disguise. We don’t have the time to do anything crazy with her hair, and lucky me, I get to play hair stylist.
Let’s hope I don’t fuck it up.
Thankfully, the woman doesn’t have any obvious distinguishing marks, from what I can tell. No beauty marks, tattoos, or scars.
In theory, it should be easy to make her into someone else.
“Hemming,” Carter says, and I step out of the way to allow both women into the house.
“Carter.”
Where Carter wears black from head to toe, the woman wears a long-sleeved t-shirt that’s unbranded with a pair of black leggings. She also has red high top sneakers on her feet.
The women next to one another are vast opposites—in dress and body language.
Carter appears confident.
The woman seems scared out of her mind.
“This is Kellie Zimmerman, or rather, from here on out, Kaelyn Johansen.”
The squeeze my chest makes at my last name on the woman is unexpected, but I do my best to ignore it.
“It’s nice to meet you. I’m sorry it’s under these circumstances,” I tell Kellie-now-Kaelyn. “We have a few hours and will be heading to our next location later tonight.”
The three of us make our way into the living room. Carter and K each take a seat, Carter on the couch and K on the two person sofa. I stay standing between seating arrangements and the front window, my arms crossed over my chest.
Carter shakes her head lightly at the protective stance I take.
Not saying Carter hasn’t earned any badass accolades she has—before Douglas Group, she was a freaking Marine Corps Lioness—but she’s still a woman and I’m still going to stand between her and any potential danger.
