Second-Chance Hero Read online

  “Why did you help me today? Why did you help my daughter?”

  Did Grace not remember? Draven wondered. Had the trauma wiped out the memory of what she’d wrung from him that day? He gazed into blue eyes he’d first seen looking up at him from a pile of devastation. They’d been full of pain and fear that day, but nothing could vanquish the fierce life he’d seen there.

  “I promised you.”

  Her eyes widened, her face paled. “Oh, my God.”

  “You remember.”

  She sucked in an audible breath. “I remember everything about that day.” Her gaze narrowed. “And I remember it exactly. I asked you to take care of my daughter when I…”

  “Died.” He said it bluntly.

  “I was sure I was going to. But I didn’t, so keeping that promise is unnecessary.”

  “The fact that you didn’t die does not release me from that promise. Grace, I should have found you sooner.”

  Second-Chance Hero

  JUSTINE DAVIS

  Books by Justine Davis

  Silhouette Intimate Moments

  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

  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

  Silhouette Books

  Silhouette Summer Sizzlers 1994

  “The Raider”

  Fortune’s Children

  The Wrangler’s Bride

  JUSTINE DAVIS

  lives on Puget Sound in Washington. She 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?”

  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

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 1

  “I diverted a plane to pick you up, should be there within the hour.”

  Already diverted a company plane? John Draven took a deep breath before answering his boss, Josh Redstone.

  “You seem awfully sure I’m going.”

  “I already apologized,” Josh said.

  He had said, not very convincingly, that he was sorry to interrupt Draven’s time off. Draven had refrained from pointing out that you couldn’t interrupt what hadn’t yet begun.

  “I’m on leave.” He repeated what he’d said when Josh had first called.

  “And you still will be. I just need you to do this one thing first. This is something only you can handle,” Josh said.

  Only he could handle? From what Josh had told him, it was a simple case of sabotage, from someone among the population of ten or so thousand who apparently didn’t like the idea of Redstone coming to that unnamed little cay off the coast of Belize. Nothing any one of the team couldn’t handle.

  Draven felt how tightly he was gripping the phone. He frowned. Relaxed his fingers. Yet another sign, he thought. He’d always been able to separate inner tension from bodily reaction. But not now. And that was what had gotten him into this.

  “Besides, when you’re done with this problem at the construction site, you can stick around. Do some diving. The Belize reef is one of the best dive spots in the world.”

  So that was Josh’s master plan, he thought. Force him to relax. Josh was big on that kind of thing, making sure his people took care of their spirits as well as their bodies.

  “I know,” he said.

  And he couldn’t deny that diving had already been on his list of things he might consider for this supposed leave of absence. He hadn’t been pleasure diving in a long time. For the past several years, all his dives had been work-related, whether it was simply checking the function of an underwater system, or doing a hull check for explosives on a Redstone vessel that had been too long in port in a volatile part of the world.

  The idea of days of simply drifting in the warm waters off the Central American coast held a definite appeal. Under water the world above barely existed. Down there it was peaceful, quiet and fascinating, the only predators the ones you knew on sight. Unlike that world up top, where they sometimes came in disguises so clever you didn’t find out until it was too late.

  Now he knew he was in trouble. He never thought of things like that. He resisted the urge to blurt it all out to his boss. But how could he tell the man who trusted him with the safety of the empire he’d built, “I nearly slugged a guy for just mouthing off?” Or “I lost control and threw a chair through a window?” Or worse yet, “I nearly blew a job and got one of our own hurt, because I couldn’t keep a grip on my temper?”

  “Look,” Josh said, “you go, contact our people, handle what you find—no matter what it is—and then you’re on your own.”

  That one phrase triggered Draven’s radar; they knew what the problem was, so what did “no matter what it is” mean? He didn’t feel capable of handling anything at the moment. He didn’t even have the energy to ask for details. But he owed Josh Redstone a great deal. He also knew Josh would never trade on that, and wouldn’t ask this of him unless he really thought it was necessary.

  And Josh Redstone wasn’t often wrong.

  When he hung up and went to get his largest duffel bag, he knew he’d been manipulated. But it was Josh, so he couldn’t bring himself to resent it. They’d come a long way since the day he’d shown up at a ramshackle hangar in Iowa to tell Josh his brother’s dying thoughts had been of him. He’d quickly seen what Jim had meant when he’d said Josh was a dreamer, that he’d either do glorious things or nothing, but not end up in between.

  Glorious had obviously been the choice. Tiny Redstone Aviation, riding on the wings of Josh’s self-designed Hawk 1 jet, had quickly grown into a varied, global entity worth more than Draven could even wrap his mind around. Yet Josh Redstone was the most genuine, unassuming and generous person Draven had ever know
n, and he was not a man who was easily convinced of the goodness of anyone. He’d seen too much, dealt with too many of the opposite ilk.

  Draven put the bag on the bed and turned to his laptop, already booted up and on his small desk. While he searched for the data he wanted online, he searched his memory for what he knew about Belize from a brief visit to Belize City years ago. Redstone had done a project or two in the area before, and he’d read the informational data. Population well under a million. Airports minimal with paved runways, and only one with a runway length of over fifteen hundred meters. The inevitable drug trade in that part of the world had a solid foothold, with the threat to grow.

  But they had an abundance of natural treasures, not just the diving Josh had mentioned. Tourism was the answer to many of the country’s woes, and they knew it. And were promoting it, widely. So it was easy to find out what concerned him at this moment: the weather. Eighties, he read on the Web site, this time of year. Humid. Rain frequently, usually better than six inches in July. That would get better in August, they promised.

  He shut down the laptop and slipped it into the case. He put the case in the duffel bag, followed by his shaving kit, a few short-sleeved T-shirts, khakis and jeans, one lightweight jacket and, just in case he had to do any midnight recons, a set of black jeans and matching long-sleeved shirt. His hair was dark enough that he didn’t worry about covering it, but it was long enough to get in his eyes, so he threw his usual knit cap in more to control it than cover it. He added a camouflage paint kit and a few other odds and ends he thought might come in handy. He did most of it without much thought; it was routine to him, and he usually had a good sense of what might be needed.

  The problem with that was that it gave him too many free brain cells to think with. And as seemed typical lately, he couldn’t seem to stop himself from thinking about the last thing he wanted to remember, his meeting with Josh two days ago. Draven knew he would never forget the look on the man’s face when he realized what Draven had handed him was his resignation.

  Draven had been face-to-face with some of the most vicious humans on the planet, and he’d felt nothing like the unease he’d felt then. He saw the moment when Josh shifted from shock and concern to determination, and when the barrage began, he’d been ready.

  “Are you sick?”

  Not physically. “No.”

  “Someone else sick?”

  Josh knew there was no one else. “No.”

  “In legal trouble?”

  If only it were that simple. “No.”

  “Financial?”

  Redstone paid him more than he could ever imagine spending in his life. “No.”

  “Do you want out of the field? A desk?”

  He’d go insane, locked up inside all day. “No.”

  Josh looked at the letter again. Read it as if the wording had somehow changed. Then he looked back at the man standing at parade rest in front of him. When he spoke again, it was in the soft voice Draven had been dreading.

  “We’ve been together a lot of years, Johnny. You’ve helped me build Redstone into what it is. Don’t you think I deserve a little more than ‘It is with great regret I tender my resignation?’”

  “Yes.”

  Draven’s voice had been as gruff as Josh’s had been soft. Nothing in his life or career had been as difficult as quitting on the man he admired most.

  They’d finally compromised on this unwanted leave of absence. So as long as he wasn’t officially unemployed, he was still Josh’s man.

  Finished packing, he slung the duffel over his shoulder. He locked the door of the small studio apartment behind him, not that there was anything of real value in it. He wasn’t there enough to make him want to invest in much. Most things he personally valued were tucked away in his locker at Redstone, although none of them would matter much to anyone else. If you didn’t count the shares of Redstone he owned, and the investment portfolio Harlan McClaren had built for him, the most expensive thing he owned was the laptop he’d just packed.

  That and the holstered weapon at the small of his back.

  He strapped the duffel on the back of his motorcycle. He’d long ago sold his last car. For the same reason as the apartment, it didn’t make sense to let a car sit and depreciate when he wasn’t around to drive it. The serviceable bike had enough power, was reliable and didn’t have the name, chrome or flash that made it a theft target. Suited him just fine.

  When he pulled through the security gate at the airfield utilized by Redstone Security for scrambling to various parts of the worldwide Redstone empire, he rode to the back of the unmarked Redstone hangar. He unlocked the small door with his code, and rolled the bike inside. He parked it in the back corner, then trotted up to the loft where the lockers were.

  He didn’t think he’d need heavy firepower, but given the part of the world he was headed to, and the reason, he needed something. He’d take the 17-round Glock he was wearing, and a smaller backup just in case. He added a satellite phone and a couple of boxes of ammunition, glad yet again for the convenience of not having to fly commercial.

  On the thought he heard the roar of a jet engine, unusual enough at this small airfield to tell him there was a good chance it was his ride. He stepped outside just in time to see a sleek gray-and-red craft land dead center with a feather touch and nary a bounce.

  His brows furrowed. This had to be it, they were the Redstone colors, but…

  “Holy skyrocket,” he breathed.

  It was the Hawk V. It had to be. No markings, just the tail number, but the unmistakable color scheme of Redstone. And a cutting-edge design, smaller than the biggest Hawk, the recent Hawk IV that Josh personally flew, but also sleeker and more efficient. It was still in prototype stage, although two had been completed and were undergoing intense testing.

  One, apparently, was about to make a test trip to Belize.

  “Well, shoot, Josh,” Draven said to himself with a grin, “all you had to do was say the flight was on this and we could have saved a lot of time and talk.”

  He went back to get his gear. By the time he locked the door behind him, the jet was coming to a halt on the apron beside the hangar. And a small fueling truck was already in sight, heading their way from the big storage tanks.

  A few moments later the gangway came down, dropping out of the sleek side of the craft like some loading ramp on a futuristic spaceship. He got his second surprise when the pilot hit the steps.

  “Tess?”

  The petite, dark-haired woman with the pixie haircut came down grinning at Draven. “You think I’m going to give anybody else the chance to test drive this baby?”

  He grinned back at her; Tess was one of the few people outside his own security team who had his complete and total trust and respect. She was the best fixed wing pilot he’d ever seen, and was almost as good with a helicopter. She’d been with Redstone even longer than he had, and had flown in and out of some of the most difficult spots on the planet, under sometimes even more difficult conditions.

  Even under fire. The first time he’d flown with her, when Josh had sent her to fly Draven and Redstone point man Noah Rider out of a Colombian jungle where Rider had been exploring the possibility of opening a branch of Redstone Research and Development, utilizing the local vegetation in an effort to produce cheaper medical products. The fact that it might also stabilize the area, and perhaps give them a path other than the illegal drug trade to follow, was one of the side benefits that tended to accompany Redstone projects.

  But the local insurgent guerillas had quickly decided the presence of globally known Redstone was not going to help their cause, and would quite likely hurt their drug business. Draven had seen helicopter evacs in war zones that had taken less fire than Tess had that day. But she’d kept on coming, never wavered, had held the ship rock steady as he and Rider had scrambled aboard. She’d had them out of there in seconds. Only when they’d landed safely in neighboring Brazil did they see the results; it was going to tak
e some time to mend the bullet holes in that chopper. They all knew how lucky they’d been that they hadn’t been blown out of the sky, and Draven and Rider knew who to thank that they were still alive.

  When Tess had taken over the personal flying for Josh, who had reluctantly given up flying himself on business flights so he could work en route, no one had been surprised. It would take one hell of a pilot to get Josh Redstone to surrender the controls. And Tess Machado was exactly that.

  Draven gestured at the plane. “So, is she all she’s supposed to be?”

  “And more,” Tess said. “Faster, more efficient, with greater range even on some of those questionable fuels we find some places.”

  “Quite a résumé.”

  She nodded. “Josh designed it after Ian Gamble came up with a new composite material that’s incredibly strong, with a higher stress point than any traditional material.”

  Draven lifted a brow. “You mean he didn’t come up with an impossible design and then tell Ian to make it work?”

  Tess laughed at his description of one of Josh’s typical approaches to inspiring his people. Amazingly it worked more often than not. Draven knew that was because of the caliber of people Josh hired, and the loyalty he inspired in them, but sometimes it still amazed him.

  “No, although it did require some breakthrough construction techniques. But this plane is going to bring the price down to within reach of people who never thought they’d be able to afford a private or company jet.”

  Draven’s mouth quirked upward at one corner. Tess laughed again. “I know, I know, I sound like a promo brochure or something.”

  “You love what you do. That’s beyond price,” he said.

  He knew when Tess’s smile faded and her gaze narrowed that his voice really had sounded as solemn as he’d thought.

  “John?” she asked quietly. She was one of the few people, even at Redstone, who ever used his first name.

  He didn’t respond. Instead he flicked a glance at the fuel truck. “Might want to keep an eye on that fueler. He’s looking more at the plane than watching what he’s doing.”