Danger Signs (Delta Force Echo: An Iniquus Action Adventure Romance Book 1) Read online

  Ty called down to D-Day. “T-Rex is one of our fastest runners. It’s only three kilometers. He’ll be here soon.”

  “Soon would be awesome.”

  Chapter Two

  Kira

  Kira was halfway up the brick stairs to her porch when she saw the brown-paper-wrapped box leaning against the front door of her little Cape Cod-styled home. She stalled as she took in the Arabic writing at the top left, fluid and beautiful. Colorful Qatari stamps covered the top right. And in the center in block letters, less sure and comfortable, “Shakira al-Attiyah” was written atop of her Durham, North Carolina address in the Latin alphabet.

  Kira had been waiting expectantly for this box.

  “A treasure,” she whispered to Princess Beatrice, the King Charles spaniel who sniffed at the thick bank of ruby-red geraniums that lined her walkway.

  Beatrice was her friend London Davidson’s dog. Kira was working for London this summer—the time between walking across the stage to collect her doctoral diploma and the beginning of her next chapter. Her summer job was not so much about the need for money—Kira had inherited from her father and didn’t need to work at all—it was more about quieting her family’s concerns.

  Kira was an unmarried female, and her father was dead. While she lived in America—she was, in fact, born and raised an American—the whole of her surviving family lived in Qatar, where by tradition, her life would be defined by her male protector.

  Since her father’s death, there was no male head of household who took responsibility for Kira in the United States. This traditional duty landed on her father’s oldest brother’s shoulders. Uncle Nadir had told Kira that as long as she was enrolled at the university, she could continue along her educational path. Qatar held education in high regard, and even among females, most everyone in the small peninsular country, jutting like an egg into the Persian Gulf, had a college education.

  Her family obligation to follow the dictates of her uncle was ultimately why Kira had obtained her Ph.D. It was sort of like the men during the Vietnam era who stayed in school for as long as possible to dodge the draft and thus dodge Viet-Kong bullets.

  The bullet Kira dodged, for the time being, wasn’t as obviously lethal.

  But with her graduation, her Uncle Nadir had called Kira back to Qatar, where Kira’s widowed mother now lived with her deceased husband’s family. Her mother, Hamina, too, was under the “protection” of Uncle Nadir.

  The difference was that Kira’s mother was happy for the arrangement, and Kira most decidedly was not.

  Stepping into Kira’s melodrama was Kira’s friend London. London was able to give Kira a little more time to make up her mind—would she move to Qatar and do as she was told? Or, would she refuse and thereby give up her relationships with her mother as well as her beloved aunts and cousins?

  Family or Freedom?

  The choice had tormented Kira since she was eighteen, and her dad’s freak slip on the ice, the blow to his head in the fall, and his ultimate death when no one realized he was outside in the winter storm for hours.

  Looking at her life, Kira could say that there were many times when fate seemed to step in and change her future’s trajectory—even if fate was working one degree away from her.

  London Markle was a perfect example.

  London had been Kira’s randomly assigned roommate freshman year at Duke. The two women had always gotten along and had lived with each other through undergrad. When Kira went to visit her family in Qatar, London often accompanied her there. Together, London and Kira had enjoyed the fantastic museums, the cultural foods, art, and music, the tableau of international glittery people.

  During their last visit to Doha, Kira introduced London to Uncle Nadir’s friend William Davidson, an energy industry billionaire—a man who was easily as old as Kira’s dad would have been had he lived.

  That age difference didn’t matter to London; when she met William, she was agog. If Cupid had been flitting around and shot off his arrows, that was the only way to describe what Kira witnessed. When London shook William’s hand, her eyes stretched wide, and she stared at him as though her brain had stopped processing. London shook herself free, but the spell had been cast.

  Love at first sight?

  Kira hadn’t believed in it. She had thought London merely star-struck, or maybe that she’d eaten a bad oyster, and it was making her hallucinate.

  But no, London was smitten.

  It was a May-December romance. Though London was younger than William’s Army-pilot daughter Christen—which was gross—and this was actually William’s fifth attempt at conjugal bliss, London and William decided their love was fate. After a three-month whirl-wind romance, they tied the knot.

  Kira had been fascinated by London’s stepdaughter Christen, her ability to thwart the family’s expectations and desires for her to be a pampered socialite. Christen simply did what she wanted, going off and joining the Army to become some hotshot pilot with the radio name D-Day.

  Kira couldn’t imagine wanting to be in danger—going out and looking for dire situations, flying helicopters into the deadly scenarios. Though, there was the perk that Christen flew with special operator teams—the best of the best of hunky heroes. Kira wouldn’t mind having her own hunky hero—the kind she’d read about in her novels.

  She sighed noisily. “Come on, Princess Bea, time to go in.” She gave a gentle tug on the lead, which Beatrice ignored. “Spoiled thing.” Kira smiled at the pup with a bit of indulgence and a bit of impatience. Kira wanted to open her box. But Beatrice looked like she might potty. That would give Kira some time between the constant in and out, in and out of Beatrice’s routine.

  Kira moved into a shadow to wait and think. Yes, Kira had spent long hours thinking about London’s step-daughter Christen. It was brave of her to strike her own path through life. Was she happy? And did Christen have a price that she paid for her choices? One that hurt, like Kira’s would?

  London had made her life’s choices, too. And she paid a price for them; London got a fair amount of blowback being called a trophy wife, a gold digger…

  Kira was selfishly glad for London’s union. The fact that William and Uncle Nadir were in business together was the single reason why Kira had this tiny little wiggle room in her uncle’s proclamation that she should return to Qatar following her graduation, where he would find Kira an acceptable husband.

  Kira would push the inevitable decisions out as far as she could into the future.

  William Davidson had told Uncle Nadir that he would tuck his “dear wife’s friend” under his wing and act as Kira’s protector this summer.

  Granted, Kira was twenty-eight years old.

  She was quite comfortable on her own and had been since she graduated from Patrick Henry High ten years before.

  Kira felt no reason whatsoever for her uncle to pressure her the way he did.

  Except—

  If Kira was to stay in America, unwed and without “male protection,” she would bring shame to her family. Her family was part of the extended royal family. She was part of the royal family and could prove a “diplomatic challenge” should anything go wrong.

  Uncle Nadir was playing hardball using Kira’s close relationship with her mother, aunts, and cousins as a cudgel. Did she want to bring dishonor to her family? Make her cousins unmarriageable in the view of polite society? Because, just like in the 19th-century novels that Kira studied, the morality of an individual reflected on the entire family. Brought disgrace to the whole family. And that shame would have to be punished.

  Kira didn’t think it would go that far, but it was always a possibility that she could be disposed of by honor killing. Dozens happened every year right here in the United States. The borders wouldn’t protect her.

  A shiver raked Kira’s body, and she quickly looked over her shoulder and up and down the street.

  For now, for today at least, as long as Kira worked for London, she had a reprieve.

>   And working for London meant doing fairly mindless tasks like dogsitting Princess Beatrice the Spoiled.

  “Come on, Bea.” Kira tugged at the leash once Beatrice lowered her leg and started nibbling at the flowers.

  Beatrice disliked change and had been rather punitive toward Kira in both big ways and small. That had been tolerable up until Princess Beatrice spun around at Kira’s command and saw the package at the door. The spaniel darted up the stairs ahead of Kira and lifted her leg toward the box.

  Kira plunged forward and snatched the package up. “Are you kidding me right now, Bea? You would do that? You just went.”

  Princess Beatrice pouted while Kira inserted her key into the deadbolt lock. “I’m going to tell London that you’ve been extra destructive since you’ve been here. You know,” Kira said as she pushed the door open to the cool dark interior of her entry hall. “Your momma is heading to Tanzania. And in Africa, there are lions.” She elbowed the door shut, clicked on the hall lights, and moved inside, glad to be out of the intensity of the July sun and North Carolinian humidity.

  Beatrice toddled along behind her.

  “Lions are huge cats. As big as…oh as big as my couch. And a lion would eat you as a snack, lick its chops, and search for another bite to eat.” Kira placed the package on her entry table, clanged her keys into the key bowl, then bent to unhook the lead from Beatrice’s collar. “So you should be grateful that I let you come here as my house guest. And you should be more considerate about where you pee and what you chew up. If it wasn’t for my willingness to take care of you, you’d be heading out on safari and fending off the wild animals.” She scooped Beatrice up, tucking the furball under her arm, and walked toward the kitchen. “I’m going to put you in your kennel and let you think about your bad behavior and how you can improve.”

  Beatrice actually loved her crate, loved the soft blankets, loved her chew toys. And she loved to nap.

  Kira gently closed the door and flipped the latch. “I’ll come back and get you at dinner time.”

  Butterflies flitted in Kira’s stomach as she stood. She rubbed at the goosebumps on her arms. “This is so exciting!” she told the robin sitting on the bird feeder outside of her kitchen window.

  Two months ago, a cousin of her Aunt Fatima in Qatar had written her a letter. “I have a friend who found something in her grandmother’s trunk that you might be interested in studying,” it had begun.

  Kira’s specialty was rare book collections and, more specifically, women’s writing from historical times and from geographical locations where it would have been improbable for women to be writing anything at all.

  These women shared the commonality of women’s struggles worldwide. Their fiction intrigued Kira, the bittersweetness of family life—being a mother, wishing more than anything that they could be a mother, the people they loved, the devastation they survived. It was all so raw on the page when a woman thought that no one would ever see the stories she’d created.

  The strength and honesty of these women, Kira believed, should be honored and elevated.

  And she was the one to do it.

  Kira moved to her little guest bathroom and thoroughly washed her hands and arms, dried them, and went back to her office.

  Imagine, she thought, putting such a rarity in a box and sending it across the ocean as if it were a sweater that she’d bought online.

  Kira took the package from the entry hall to her office to unwrap the covering and pull open the cardboard top. With the end of a clean paintbrush, she gently lifted the tissue paper and peered down at the nineteen-thirties-styled photo album. The padded white satin on the cover was rusty and yellowed with the acid of aging materials. Dapples of mold marred the bottom corner with ugly dark gray splotches. “Our Wedding” was written in Arabic across the top in navy blue.

  Kira had been told that the wedding album was used to hide the secret writings from male eyes.

  She pulled open her desk drawer, full of snowy-white cotton gloves. She pulled on a pair before touching the treasure, protecting this artifact from any oils or dirt that might remain on her hands, lest it further degrade the book.

  Tenderly lifting the album from the box, Kira moved the gift to her work table.

  She took a deep breath and opened the cover.

  Chapter Three

  Ty

  “How many Russian helicopters have you stolen in your lifetime, D-Day?”

  “This is a first for me.” Christen Davidson—known by the call sign D-Day—with her massive flight expertise, had attached to Echo to figure out next steps on their mission. They were tasked to sneak into Uganda at the northern tip of Lake Edward and steal the latest in Russian helicopter technology.

  “I’ll tell you what, Ty,” D-Day said, “you break my legs on this jump, and no one is flying out of here on that bird.”

  “Wind is wind, ma’am.”

  “I hear you.” D-Day reached behind her, grasping at Ty’s arms as a gust blew her out over the abyss. Her cry of distress was held back behind clenched teeth.

  Briefly, Ty considered unclasping D-Day; they’d both be more comfortable. But then, she’d have nothing tethering her to the tree. She’d be on her own if she were to lose her grip.

  D-Day was his tandem jumper. Ty was responsible for her safety.

  It would suck if Ty broke her on the way to the big event.

  This was only step one of their mission. Get on the ground, then hoof it fifteen kilometers through the wilderness along the Congolese-Ugandan border to the strip of meadow and the helicopter.

  Why had Russia abandoned its helicopter?

  Could be it was out of fuel.

  Could be that it had a major malfunction.

  Or the pilot had been killed or captured. Maybe he fell in love with a local girl and decided to live in a round hut and herd cattle.

  Maybe the pilot just decided fuck-it-all and walked off into the horizon.

  Or maybe—and this was Ty’s bet—Russia had tucked the helicopter away for some upcoming event… Oil had been found under Lake Edward, and there was an international scramble turned to massive unrest around the rights to that oil.

  Already big oil out of England was making the locals’ lives miserable—damaging Lake Edward’s waters and causing the already difficult existence of those who survived on its shores for food, hydration, and sanitation that much more challenging.

  Unrest.

  Echo certainly didn’t want to get swept up in that.

  Sure, Echo had the permission of the Kenyan government to fly over their airspace. And yeah, Uganda had specifically rung up the Pentagon with an invitation for the United States to come and take the abandoned helicopter away as quickly as possible, pretty please, before the tribal factions discovered it.

  The reason these two governments had called on America to show up and take over the situation was the need to preempt any number of less-than-optimal outcomes that could manifest on the world stage by leaving the heli in place.

  JSOC absolutely did not want the Unit to run into any Russian operators. “Keep a tight lid on this mission, boys.”

  Yep. America had stepped warily into the situation. If Echo got this right, they’d have their hands on the latest and greatest technology that Russia was employing. The engineers could study the systems and decide if any of the features were useful in updating America’s fleet. It would also show America where the Russian ‘copters weak spots were and how they could best be exploited.

  That sounded like a win.

  But if they were caught red-handed by tribal leaders or failed at remaining covert… The Somalian FUBAR mission Black Hawk Down came full-blown to Ty’s mind. Yeah, their being in Uganda could piss off a bunch of people who might just want to turn this into a geo-political crisis.

  It might even spark a war.

  Stealth in this situation had been Echo’s go-to crisis management tool.

  When the jump plane took off an hour ago from a Kenyan military
base, it flew through a thick bank of clouds that blanketed the sliver of new moon light.

  Delta Force Echo had waited three days for these near-perfect weather conditions for the mission.

  They’d been jazzed by the circumstances. Now? Ty tipped his head back as he heard the parachute silk rip—not so much.

  “Don’t move,” Ty gasped out, tightening his grip on the branch above him. He tried to stop their swaying to get a new foothold. He’d guess that they just slid another ten or fifteen feet before he could once again get the parachute lines tangled and supporting their weight.

  “That’s not me. That’s the wind.” She didn’t sound like she was freaking out.

  Ty had been on a couple of missions where D-Day was the pilot. She seemed to be the one JSOC sent in when they needed someone to white-knuckle fly a bird mere feet off the ground, at high speeds, and even higher external pressure of enemy attention.

  A blink of the eye could leave the heli and all the passengers in a ball of fire.

  D-Day had ice running through her veins.

  She liked to be balls to the wall. And she liked control.

  Hands on the stick, managing a situation was a far cry from their present circumstance.

  “Yo, D-Day?” A voice boomed from about twenty yards to their five o’clock.

  “Is that you, Nick?” Nick of Time was D-Day’s copilot. “Are you okay?”

  “When they said they wanted my expertise in the air, I had no idea I’d be here hanging around like a banana on a tree.”

  “Don’t talk about food,” she called back. “I’m starving, here.”

  “You’re always hungry,” he said with a laugh.

  “We should probably exercise noise discipline, ma’am.”

  “Oops. Sorry.”

  Once again, the night turned silent. It was eerie to be in the jungle with no sounds around them, save for the rustling leaves.