Operation Midnight Read online

  “Why are you kidnapping me?”

  Being spirited away—with her dog, Cutter—by armed men in a black helicopter is the last thing Hayley Cole ever expects. And why is her usually savvy dog so friendly toward their lean, dark-haired leader? She’s determined to escape. Unfortunately, Quinn with his intense, searching gaze is always three steps ahead—and much, much too close....

  For Quinn Foxworth, control equals safety. Taking Hayley is the only way his undercover witness-protection team can protect her and their client. But convincing her he’s one of the good guys is easier than guarding himself from her innocent courage. And with danger closing in, can he risk letting Hayley into his heart for good?

  “We could die here. I need to know who you are, why you are—”

  Quinn’s mouth came down on hers, cutting Hayley off. Then, as if every nerve in her body had been jolted into awareness, heat flooded her. For an instant it seemed as if he were as stunned as she at the sudden conflagration. But then he moved, encircling her with his arms, pressing her against him as he deepened the kiss.

  Hayley’s every nerve was sizzling. She couldn’t feel her knees anymore, and her arms felt heavy, weak. But it didn’t matter, none of it mattered, not as long as Quinn was there, holding her—she wouldn’t fall, he wouldn’t let her. All that mattered was his mouth, coaxing, probing, tasting.

  It was going through her in pulses now, that surging, delicious heat, like nothing she’d ever known. Some tiny part of her brain tried to insist it was because it had been so long, but Hayley knew it wasn’t that, knew it had never been like this in her life, because she’d never kissed a man like Quinn before....

  * * *

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  Dear Reader,

  Ever have a dog that was too smart for its own good? One that could open doors, cupboards, or con that last treat—or bit of your own dinner—out of you? One that could make you laugh at the drop of a hat, or comfort you when no one and nothing else could? Wait, that pretty much describes all dogs in one way or another, doesn’t it?

  But let me tell you about Cutter. He’s a composite, I suppose, not just of my own dogs over the years, but others I’ve met. From the one who could pick just my horse out of the herd, to the one helping his mom to weed by carrying the offending plants to the wheelbarrow, to the one who delighted in rides on an office chair, to the one who knew with her first glimpse of my ill husband who she was here to rescue. (That is the real meaning of “rescue dog,” you know.)

  It’s not really that big a stretch from there to a dog who is not just very, very smart, perceptive and brave, but—well, I’ll just have to let you see for yourself. I hope you enjoy this first story, about two people who didn’t know how much they needed each other. Who didn’t even know each other yet. Humans are so slow sometimes that a dog just has to take charge....

  Happy reading!

  Justine

  Justine Davis

  Operation Midnight

  Books by Justine Davis

  Harlequin Romantic Suspense

  Always a Hero #1651

  Enemy Waters #1659

  ‡Operation Midnight #1695

  Silhouette Romantic Suspense

  Hunter’s Way #371

  Loose Ends #391

  Stevie’s Chase #402

  Suspicion’s Gate #423

  Cool Under Fire #444

  Race Against Time #474

  To Hold an Eagle #497

  Target of Opportunity #506

  One Last Chance #517

  Wicked Secrets #555

  Left at the Altar #596

  Out of the Dark #638

  The Morning Side of Dawn #674

  †Lover Under Cover #698

  †Leader of the Pack #728

  †A Man to Trust #805

  †Gage Butler’s Reckoning #841

  †Badge of Honor #871

  †Clay Yeager’s Redemption #926

  The Return of Luke McGuire #1036

  *Just Another Day in Paradise #1141

  The Prince’s Wedding #1190

  *One of These Nights #1201

  *In His Sights #1318

  *Second-Chance Hero #1351

  *Dark Reunion #1452

  *Deadly Temptation #1493

  *Her Best Friend’s Husband #1525

  Backstreet Hero #1539Baby’s Watch #1544His Personal Mission #1573

  *The Best Revenge #1597

  *Redstone Ever After #1619

  Deadly Valentine #1645: “Her Un-Valentine”

  Silhouette Desire

  Angel for Hire #680

  Upon the Storm #712

  Found Father #772

  Private Reasons #833

  Errant Angel #924

  A Whole Lot of Love #1281

  *Midnight Seduction #1557

  Silhouette Bombshell

  Proof #2

  Flashback #86

  Silhouette Books

  Silhouette Summer Sizzlers 1994: “The Raider”

  Fortune’s Children

  The Wrangler’s Bride

  †Trinity Street West

  *Redstone, Incorporated

  ‡Cutter’s Code

  Other titles by this author available in ebook format.

  JUSTINE DAVIS

  lives on Puget Sound in Washington. Her interests outside of writing are sailing, doing needlework, horseback riding and driving her restored 1967 Corvette roadster—top down, of course.

  Justine says that years ago, during her career in law enforcement, a young man she worked with encouraged her to try for a promotion to a position that was at the time occupied only by men. “I succeeded, became wrapped up in my new job, and that man moved away, never, I thought, to be heard from again. Ten years later he appeared out of the woods of Washington State, saying he’d never forgotten me and would I please marry him. With that history, how could I write anything but romance?”

  For Nikki, the first, when I was too young to understand.

  For Whisper, who taught me so much, and deserved better than I and life gave her at the end.

  For Murphy, because without him there might not have been a Decoy (and now his sister Bailey, too).

  And for Chase, who proves that boys can be sweet, too.

  To all the sweet, funny, smart, wonderful dogs I’ve known. But most of all for The Decoy Dawg who, against all odds and predictions, at this moment has seen another summer. I love you, my sweet girl. I won’t give up until you do. And when you do, I’ll try to let go with the grace you’ve taught me.

  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

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter One

  “Cutter!”

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nbsp; Hayley Cole shouted once more, then decided to save her breath for running. It wasn’t that the dog was ignoring her. Sometimes he just got so intent on something, the rest of the world ceased to exist.

  Serves you right, she told herself, for spoiling him. Treating him like a human just because half the time he acts like one.

  That he’d shown up on her doorstep when she most needed him, that she now couldn’t imagine life without the uncannily clever Cutter didn’t help at the moment, as she was traipsing after him through midnight-dark trees. If she hadn’t known these woods from childhood she might be nervous, but it was the wrong time of year for bears, and she wasn’t afraid of much else. But a sassy dog could get into trouble; just last night she’d heard coyotes. And a cornered raccoon could be nasty. While she had faith in the clever dog’s ability to come out on top, she didn’t want him hurt in the process.

  At least out here, if you heard a sound in the night, your worry wasn’t who, but what. Well, maybe except for that blessed helicopter that had buzzed the house a while ago, setting Cutter into the frenzy that started this whole chase. They weren’t uncommon in the Pacific Northwest, what with the navy and coast guard coming and going. Normally they didn’t ruffle the dog, but this smaller one had been frighteningly low and had set him off like a rocket.

  She dodged around the big cedar tree on the north side of the trail that could barely be found in full daylight. She should have grabbed her heavy, hooded parka with the flashlight in the pocket, but while fall was in the air it was still merely cool at night, not cold. Besides, she hadn’t realized this was going to be a lengthy expedition.

  She was on her neighbor’s property now, and she doubted the reclusive older man would welcome either her or her four-legged mischief maker, so she forged onward.

  “Like some stupid character in a bad horror movie,” she muttered under her breath, rethinking sharing the last of the beef stew she’d made with the carrot-loving dog.

  She rounded a large maple and nearly tripped over Cutter, who had stopped dead.

  “Whoa,” she said, recovering. “What—?”

  The dog’s tail gave an acknowledging wag, but his attention never wavered. He was staring through the trees at something. A little wary—it was too early for bears, wasn’t it?—she moved up beside the dog to look. For a moment it didn’t register, it seemed so unlikely.

  In the darkness it was almost indistinguishable, in fact would be invisible if not for the faint light from the house. That light slipped over polished, gleaming black, so that the shape she saw was a series of faint reflections, curved and straight, rather than the object itself.

  But she still knew what it was, instantly.

  The helicopter that had rattled her windows fifteen minutes ago was sitting in her reclusive neighbor’s yard.

  Something about the thing sitting there, glimmering faintly in the dark, unsettled her. The fact that it had no apparent markings unsettled her even more. Weren’t they like planes? Didn’t they have to have numbers on them?

  Maybe it’s a prototype, her logical mind said. Hasn’t been registered yet. Lots of aircraft industry up here in the Pacific Northwest. Maybe her neighbor was a designer or something. She had no idea what he really did, nor did any of the others in this semirural, forested little community. Being mostly kind, they didn’t call him antisocial, at least not yet. The speculation ranged from eccentric hoarder to grief-stricken widower, depending on the mind-set of the speculator. Hayley, who herself valued her privacy and the quiet of this wooded setting, preferred to simply leave him alone if that’s what he chose.

  Being right next door, she’d seen him more often than anyone, which meant exactly twice. And both times he’d retreated immediately inside, as if he feared she might actually approach him.

  But now she was wondering if a little more curiosity might have been wise. Scenarios from mad scientist to terrorists foreign and domestic raced through her mind. Her mother would have laughed at the very idea of such things in quiet little Redwood Cove, but her mother had been unaware of many dark things in the world in the last years of her life. Not by choice, but because she was focused on the battle to extend that life as long as possible, a battle Hayley had fought beside her for three years, until it was lost eight months ago.

  She heard a sliding door opening, and in the next instant a bright light on the side of the house came on. Instinctively she jerked back, even though the apparently motion-sensing floodlight didn’t reach this far. Cutter, on the other hand, took a half step forward as two men stepped out onto the deck. His nose lifted, twitching rapidly as he drew in the scents the faint breeze wafted his way.

  The light threw the helicopter back into the realm of, if not ordinary, at least no longer sinister—at least it did until she realized she could now see that indeed, there wasn’t a single marking to identify the craft.

  The light also made the silver in her neighbor’s neatly trimmed beard gleam. The second man, much younger, with a buzz cut and a leather jacket, was a total stranger. He seemed to be helping the older man as they went down the steps, gripping his arm in support.

  Her breath caught as, coming down the steps into the yard where the helicopter waited, the leather jacket parted and she saw a holstered handgun on his hip.

  She grabbed Cutter’s collar; all her silly notions about men in black and their black helicopters suddenly didn’t seem so silly anymore. Were they the good guys, if any still existed, and was her neighbor being arrested? Was the reason for his reclusiveness something worse than she’d ever imagined?

  She shivered, wishing more than ever for her parka. And then another thought followed rapidly: What if he was the good guy? What if these men in the black helicopter were the bad guys, and her neighbor was being snatched by them? That it could be some twisted combination of both also occurred to her; these days it was harder than ever to tell bad guys from good.

  The two men got into the helicopter, the younger one again helping the older, with every evidence of solicitousness. Moments later, the helicopter came alive, engine humming, running lights blinking on.

  Her mind was racing. Two men, one of them armed, get on the helicopter, and it starts up. So obviously, unless her neighbor was the pilot, which seemed unlikely, the other man was. Which had to mean her neighbor was going willingly, didn’t it? Otherwise, wouldn’t he run while the other man was occupied with…well, whatever you did to fire up a helicopter? Unless he couldn’t. Perhaps he wasn’t well enough? Or was simply too frightened to try to escape?

  Or…could there have been a third man, waiting aboard the craft all this time?

  Cutter made an odd, uncharacteristic, whining sort of sound just as a movement on the deck caught her eye. And she realized there was at least a third man, because he was coming out of the house now. Tall, lean, with hair as dark as the sky. He had a large duffel bag slung over his left shoulder. He started down the deck steps, and two things happened simultaneously. The sound of the engine got louder. And Cutter let out a sudden, sharp bark.

  Before she could react, the dog had twisted free of her loose grip on his collar. And to her dismay he bolted, straight toward the third man. Tail up, head down, he raced out of the trees and across the open yard. Cutter was never vicious, but the man he was charging didn’t know that, and she took off after him.

  So much for a silent retreat, she thought as the man, obviously having heard the dog’s bark, dropped the duffel bag to the ground.

  “Cutter!”

  The dog ignored her, intent on his target. But he was running happily, joyously, as he did when he greeted her if she’d been away and left him home. Some part of her mind wondered if perhaps he knew the man. She’d never seen him before; now that he’d turned in their direction she knew she wasn’t likely to forget a guy who looked like this one.

  She had a split second to wonder if the mystery of Cutter’s appearance in her life, at the time when she’d needed the distraction most, was about to be solved.
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  The man turned to face the dog’s onslaught.

  And pulled a gun. Aimed it at Cutter.

  “No!”

  Panic lifted her shout to a scream. He didn’t shoot. It should have been reassuring. Except that he instantly turned his attention—and his weapon—on her. She kept going. He hadn’t shot Cutter, and he had to be a lot more threatening than she was.

  Then again, maybe not, she thought, her pace slowing as the dog reached his goal. And while she’d never expected him to launch into an attack, she certainly hadn’t expected what he did next; the dog sat politely at the man’s feet, then looked over a furry shoulder at her with an expression of utter delight. His tongue lolled happily, his ears were up and alert and he looked just as he did when he found the exact toy he’d been searching for.

  He looked, for all the world, as if he were saying, “Look, I found him!”

  The man lowered the lethal-looking black handgun but did not, she noticed, put it away.

  She grabbed Cutter’s collar, firmly this time.

  “I’m sorry. He got away from me, but he’s harmless, really. He doesn’t usually… I mean, he’s usually a bit slow to warm up to strangers. He doesn’t generally charge up to them…”

  She was babbling, she realized, and made herself stop.

  “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “We didn’t mean to trespass.” She glanced at the waiting helicopter, gave an embarrassed smile, hoping her neighbor could read her expression since he doubtless couldn’t hear her inside and over the noise of the engine.

  “Damn.”

  Her gaze shot back to the man who had just muttered the curse. The light was behind him, silhouetting his rangy frame, making him seem even taller, looming over her. Her gut told her the quicker she got them out of here, the better. She tugged on Cutter’s collar, but the dog was reluctant and reacted with uncharacteristic resistance.

  Everything the darn dog had done since that helicopter had buzzed the house had been uncharacteristic, she thought, tugging again.

  The door of the helicopter opened. The first armed man she’d seen leaned out.

  “Time, Quinn,” he shouted over the noise of the engine and the growing wind of the main rotor.