One Intrepid Seal. Elle James

Klein, Reese’s client, who’d paid over one hundred thousand dollars for this hunting expedition, clung to his rifle from his position strapped to the top of the vehicle.

      “He’s not even supposed to be shooting leopards, is he? I thought there was a ban on shooting big cats? What the hell are you thinking?” Had Reese known Klein was coming to Africa to bag a leopard, she’d have told him no way. Her understanding was that he was there on a diplomatic mission for his father, the Secretary of Defense.

      She wasn’t playing bodyguard to an endangered-animal killer. If they weren’t traveling so fast and furious, she’d have gotten out of the vehicle and taken her chances with the wildlife, rather than witness the murder of a magnificent creature.

      The leopard jagged to the right and shot east into the rocky hills.

      Rather than turn and follow, Mubanga kept driving north.

      “Hey!” Klein yelled from the front of the vehicle. “The cat turned right!”

      Mubanga completely ignored Klein and increased his speed.

      The vehicle jolted so badly, Reese fought to keep from being thrown from her seat. The seat belt had long since frayed and broken. If she wanted to keep her teeth in her head, she had to brace herself on anything and everything to keep from launching through the window.

      Klein flopped around like a rag doll on the front of the vehicle, screaming for the driver to stop.

      “Stop this vehicle!” Reese yelled over the roar of the engine. She reached for the handgun strapped to her thigh. Before she could pull it from its holster, Mubanga backhanded her in the face so hard, she saw stars.

      Reese swayed, her fingers losing their grip on the door’s armrest. A big jolt slammed her forward, and she banged her forehead against the dash. Pain sliced through her head, blinding her. Gray fog crept in around the edges of her vision. She fought to remain upright, retain consciousness and protect her client, but she felt herself slipping onto the floorboard of the Rover. One more bump, and she passed out.

      * * *

      A FEW MINUTES might have passed—or it could have been an hour, or even a day. Reese didn’t know. All she knew was that the vehicle was still and Mubanga no longer sat behind the steering wheel. As her vision and clouded brain cleared, she pulled herself up to the seat, her hand going to the holster on her thigh, pain throbbing through her temple.

      Her 9-millimeter Glock was gone.

      The door jerked open at her side. Someone grabbed her by her hair and yanked her out of her seat and onto the dirt.

      She struggled to get her feet beneath her, but the man behind her swept out a leg, knocking her feet out from under her. Reese crumpled to the ground, her scalp screaming with the pain of being held steady by a handful of her hair.

      “What the hell’s going on?” she demanded. “Where’s Mubanga?”

      The men spoke in a language she didn’t understand. The goon holding her by the hair kicked her in the side and shoved her away from him.

      The relief on her scalp nearly brought tears to her eyes. At last, Reese was able to study her surroundings. Day had turned into dusk. Twenty dark-skinned men stood around her and Klein, each wielding a wicked-looking AK-47 rifle or a submachine gun. None looked like they were part of the Zambia Wildlife Authority. Their clothing was a mix of camouflage and rags. Mubanga was nowhere to be seen.

      Ferrence lay unconscious on the ground, several feet away from her.

      Some bodyguard she was. Her first international assignment, and her client was most likely dead. Her heart squeezed hard in her chest. Even though Ferrence had been a pain to work with, his father was nice and would be sad to lose his son. The man had paid a lot of money for her services to protect Ferrence, and she’d failed him. Reese hadn’t wished ill on Ferrence. He was a job to her, but even more so, he was a human being. No one deserved to die on vacation in Zambia.

      Since giving up mixed martial arts fighting, she’d put all her effort into her personal-protection-service start-up. She’d tapped on a few connections she’d gained while in the limelight of her fighting career and landed the job with the Kleins.

      Ferrence hadn’t wanted a bodyguard, thus, she’d come along at his father’s insistence that the younger Klein needed an assistant to make his vacation in Zambia smooth and to his liking. Reese was also to pose as his assistant on his upcoming diplomatic visit to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

      Reese had stressed to both Ferrence and his father that she wasn’t for hire for sexual favors. Not that Ferrence had listened to a word she’d said. She’d fought off more than one advance before the private jet had left the ground in New York, nearly crippling her client with a knee to the groin.

      Since then, Ferrence had limited his advances to bumping into her whenever he could manage.

      Now the spoiled son of a billionaire lay on the ground, still as death.

      Reese inched toward him. In her peripheral vision, she kept an eye on the guns waving all around her. When she was only a foot away from Klein, the barrel of a rifle stopped her. She glanced up at her captor, a man with skin as black as the darkest night.

      “I just want to see if he’s still alive,” she said.

      “He alive,” the man said in stilted English. “For now.”

      The sound of an engine drew her attention from her captor. That’s when she noticed they were on the bank of a river. The motor noise came from a boat barreling toward them as though it would run aground before the driver slowed. Just as it neared the banks where the group of men stood, the driver pulled back on the throttle, and the craft slid to a gentle stop.

      Two men reached for Klein, one grabbing his wrists, the other his ankles. They lifted him and slung him over the side of the boat, dropping him to the bottom.

      The man beside Reese slipped the strap of his rifle over his shoulder and bent toward her.

      Reese could easily take him, now that she was conscious and steadier on her feet. She could make a break for it, and might even make it to the tree line. She reasoned she could make a run for help. But that would mean abandoning the unconscious Klein. She was supposed to be protecting him, and she’d botched the job completely. Abandoning him now was not an option.

      When the man reached for her arm, she jerked it away and rose to her feet. “I can walk.”

      His eyes narrowed, and he stared hard at her for a split second. Then he bent in half, hit her like a linebacker in her midsection and tossed her over his shoulder.

      “Bastard!” she yelled. But she didn’t fight hard. Her goal was to land in the boat next to Ferrence. When the time was right, and Ferrence was conscious, she’d find a way to escape. In the meantime, she let the man dump her into the boat, her body cushioned by Ferrence’s limp form.

      As the other men clambered aboard, Reese was able to check her charge for a pulse, which beat strongly. Reese breathed a sigh of relief. At least the man wasn’t dead, and they were both tagged with GPS locator chips. She might yet repair the situation, if her captors didn’t kill her first.

      Three days later

      DALTON SAMUEL LANDON, Diesel for short, leaned out of the open door of the MH-47 helicopter. Dusk wrapped around the helicopter, lengthening shadows between the trees and brush below and giving the team the concealment they needed to kick off Operation Silver Spoon.

      While being lowered on cables, a Special Operations Craft-Riverine—or SOC-R boat—swayed over the muddy waters of the southern Congo River, before it was released and plopped into the water, rocking violently before it settled.

      A bead of sweat dripped down Diesel’s neck, into the collar of his shirt. Night swept over the sprawling marshlands of the Congo River in the southern province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

      SEAL Boat Team 22 had been deployed to Djibouti, on the Horn