The Mercenary: The Savage Seven. Katherine Garbera

I could just walk into our home and find you waiting for me.”

      “You could, but I won’t hurt you,” Ray said.

      “You pointed a gun at me.” Olivia realized she didn’t know Ray. Not the way she should have before she’d agreed to marry him.

      “Darling, I didn’t know it was you. That man was trying to kill me, and I was afraid you might be his accomplice,” he said. “You’re clearly distraught, go back home and we’ll talk about it. I’m not sure it’s safe for you. Everyone knows you are my fiancée.”

      “I can’t,” she said. “I’m leaving Johannesburg.”

      “Where are you going? Burati said you’d packed a bag,” Ray said.

      She took a deep breath. “I…a friend of mine is going through a tough time and she asked me to come and stay with her.”

      “Which friend?” he asked.

      “A school chum…Anna Sterling. I don’t believe you know her.”

      “Where is she?”

      Olivia knew better than to say London. So she stuck with the truth to a certain extent. “Washington D.C. I’ll call you when I get there and let you know when I can come back. Maybe you will have taken care of the threat to yourself by then.”

      She wondered if she should have kept that information to herself. What if he did something to Anna?

      She’d have to call Anna and warn her.

      “Olivia?”

      “Yes, Ray.”

      “I still need that envelope you were bringing to me,” he said. He sounded aggravated with her now.

      “I left it with the guard at the gate of the Onyx mines.” Olivia usually didn’t hold with lying, except maybe a little white lie when a friend had made an unfortunate fashion choice.

      In this case she figured that Ray didn’t deserve the truth from her. And he’d killed a man. She didn’t care what the circumstances were; she knew she couldn’t marry a man who was a murderer.

      She wondered if this was a onetime crime or if Ray had done this before. She knew that the diamond mine property was private and Ray wasn’t answerable to anyone except the diamond consortium.

      “Did you?” he asked.

      “Yes, Ray, I did. And now I have to go. You know I don’t like to talk on my mobile while I’m driving,” she said, hanging up the phone.

      She put the phone on the passenger seat and tried to think who she could go to with the evidence she had. The U.S. Embassy had no authority over the diamond mines. The only governing body that did was the diamond consortium. Her cousin Amy’s husband Phillip was on the board of the consortium. They lived in Denmark, so they weren’t exactly local.

      But she thought she might have to give them a call once she was safe. She wasn’t going to be able to think or really take a deep breath until she was out of Jo’burg. She just didn’t feel safe here.

      She felt tears burn the back of her eyes, but she didn’t cry. Wouldn’t allow herself to be that weak. Nothing bad had happened to her. She’d witnessed Ray doing something unspeakable, but that didn’t mean she had to break down. She could keep it together. She repeated that to herself until the words became the truth and she calmed down.

      Chapter Five

      AUGUST 1, ONYX DIAMOND MINE, CULLINAN

      “Fuck!” Ray Lambert threw his mobile phone against the wall as Olivia hung up on him. It shattered into several pieces just as his carefully ordered world was doing. He didn’t need this right now. Not from Olivia. She was part of his perfect world. The one that couldn’t be touched by the dirtiness of his life here at the mines.

      “Dammit. Anita, get in here.”

      “Yes, sir?” Anita, his secretary, asked as she stood in the doorway to his office.

      “I need a new mobile phone.”

      She nodded. “I have two replacements in my supply cabinet, Mr. Lambert. If you give me your old phone, I can send it back to the dealer.”

      He gestured to the floor where the pieces still remained. She looked at it and then got down on her knees to pick up the pieces. “What shall I say happened to it?”

      “It fell off my belt when I was in the mine,” he said.

      “No problem,” Anita said. She left his office and returned a few minutes later with a brand-new phone. She handed it to him along with his SIM card.

      He took the replacement BlackBerry and put the SIM card in the back. He hit the power button and waited. The phone worked fine and he dismissed Anita from his office.

      “Go with her, Nels,” he said to his bodyguard. The other man left his office.

      The Onyx Diamond Group was part of a larger diamond-mining consortium and Ray had been working for them since he’d come to South Africa nearly twenty years ago. He had started a lucrative sideline of off-the-record mining five years ago. The diamonds he sold on the black market provided a nice extra income that he used for gambling, women, and the good life.

      He didn’t have to worry about what he spent and what he lost, thanks to the two-pronged profit stream he had created at this mine in Cullinan. He’d worked his ass off trying to figure how to keep his bosses at the consortium happy and how to take care of the huge debts he had from gambling.

      Every single time he got caught up, he’d play a big game and almost win enough to be satisfied and then lose. Luckily he’d always been able to come back here and replenish his bank accounts.

      The deal with Olivia angered him. He liked her and had planned to have a family with her. She was going to be the perfect cover to his other life. He hadn’t really planned on getting engaged, but once he’d met her and realized she was the cousin of Phillip Michaels, the idea had come to him. Being in the family with one of the executives of the Diamond Consortium would definitely be a perk.

      And now that was all screwed up. Part of it was Olivia. He had no idea how much she’d seen this afternoon. Judging by her pale face and the way she’d gunned her engine to get away from him, he had to assume she’d seen him shoot Thomas and he had aimed his gun at her. If her car hadn’t had bulletproof windows, he would have shot. But wasting a bullet hadn’t seemed like the best idea.

      In retrospect he may have been able to scare her enough to make her crash her car or something. He should have thought that through, but he’d panicked.

      Killing a man was never an easy thing for him to do. And Thomas had been young, which made it a bit harder. Somehow, for him, if a criminal was older it was easier.

      And that was the other part of the problem. His black-market operation worked because he controlled the volume of the diamonds that were sold there. He made damned sure that they were well under the radar of the consortium, but Thomas had been slipping extra diamonds out of the mine to fund some sort of rebel faction in his hometown. That stinking ghetto of Soweto.

      And that had been unacceptable. Ray didn’t tolerate thievery.

      Now Lars Inglessin and Phillip Michaels were on Ray’s back about the leakage from this mine and were both coming here to personally make sure the operation was back on track.

      Phillip was Olivia’s cousin by marriage, which was going to make that entire mess a bit uncomfortable. But he’d deal with it. He always did.

      The fact that Thomas had been stealing gave Ray an easy scapegoat for the stones he himself had been funneling out, but he wasn’t sure how much Lars knew and how long he’d have to play along with Lars until the man left.

      This mess wasn’t what he needed right now. And with Olivia added to the mix…he had no idea what to do next. Of