All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.

Former Army helicopter pilot DJ Poe is a woman used to working in a man’s world and comfortable as SSI’s first female field operative. It’s her instant attraction to the company’s computer specialist that has her questioning her ability to overcome her past and develop an intimate relationship with a man.

Stuart “Tweeter” Walsh already admired DJ for saving his brother’s life in Afghanistan, but when the tall, leggy, blonde goddess joins SSI, he falls instantly in love. All he has to do is convince the man-shy beauty to take a chance on him.

Take one alpha-male geek, add in one skittish female warrioress—throw them into close proximity, and you have the perfect conditions for storm warnings.

Note to the Reader and Acknowledgments

The year 2015 started out stormy for me. The rough weather came out of the blue, no warning at all, in the form of quintuple bypass surgery for my husband. People do not bounce back quickly from this type of surgery, and because he is my soul-mate and the love of my life, all my energy for three months was aimed at helping him get better. As of August 1
st
, we are six months post-surgery and beginning to see some of his energy and zest for life (and golf!) return.

So, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that during this life-changing time, I had very little energy to write.
Storm Warning
was put down and picked up so many times, it should have whiplash. To get a summer release date so my fans wouldn’t have to wait any longer than necessary, I decided to self-publish the book. I’ve been around e-publishing for a long, long time (since 1998), so I had an idea of the work it would take to get a book of this length to retailers. I also realized it could not be done without the help of a lot of wonderful, supportive friends, authors, fans, my long-time publisher, and my new distributor.

So let me thank and acknowledge those who helped or contributed to getting this book to you.:

First, more thanks than I can say and much love to my primary critique partner, Cherise Sinclair. Cheri reads all my complete first drafts. She is, hands down, one of the best critique partners/first readers an author could have. I adore her, because she always makes me go that extra step to make my book the best it can be.

Thanks to my second-line-of-defense critique partner, Terri Schaefer, for giving my manuscript her eagle eye and making me do the right thing in that one scene. Yes, Terri, I fixed it.

Thanks to my beta-readers: Eran O’Donnal, Gail Northman, Debbie Kline—and especially, KaLyn Cooper for her military knowledge.

Thanks to Cherie Nicholls for sharing her British slang; to Nelle Hacking for her local Idaho knowledge, the gals would never have made it to Lewiston and the mall without you; and to Valerie Samouillan, Heather Hand, and Erin Bentley for bad guy names and Tweeter’s Dark Net persona.

Thanks to Theresa Wilson for allowing me to use her middle name (Dawn) and her last name for Interpol agent Dawn Wilson.

As always, thanks to my talented cover artist April Martinez for another beautiful cover.

A second set of thanks to Gail Northman who gave me pep talks and did the formatting for the e-books.

Mega-thanks to Kelly Peterson and her staff at INscribe for taking me on so this book could make it to all the retailers my books currently reach.

And, last, but not least, thanks to Linda Eberharter, just because.

This book is dedicated to my husband. I love you.

Chapter 1

2 a.m., January 3
rd
, Williamson, West Virginia

DJ Poe squinted through the windshield of the Jeep Cherokee, trying to focus on Williamson Memorial Hospital through what seemed like a blizzard of fat, fluffy snowflakes. She shivered and clasped the collar of her shearling jacket around her neck with shaking hands. The wind chill had already leached most of the warmth from the shut-off vehicle.

Not all of the cold in her bones, all of the trembling in her fingers, was due to the weather. Some could be attributed to out-and-out fear.

A little over twenty-four hours ago, she’d received an emergency text from a trusted source that read: “Your momma is dying.” She hadn’t been calm or warm since.

DJ swallowed hard, the taste of dread acrid in her mouth. God, she hadn’t been this scared since one muggy, West Virginian summer night ten years ago.

She’d deal better if she was doing something. Instead, she sat here on her ass, waiting for an all-clear, while somewhere in that building her mother could be dying. “Could be” being the operative term—because the whole situation smelled like an elaborate trap.

Her mother’s health and safety were the only reasons DJ would come back to Mingo County, one of the most morally corrupt places in the world—and the site of DJ’s own personal hell on Earth, Red Bone. Since she’d served several tours in Afghanistan as an Army helicopter pilot, she recognized hell when she saw it.

Face it, Dahlia Jane, the fear is worse because of the guilt.

Yeah, that nailed it. While DJ had tried to get her mother away from her abusive husband, she’d failed, miserably. When DJ had gone to the legal system, justice failed both her and her mother. Physical evidence of abuse, it seemed, wasn’t enough; which demonstrated her father and his friend Ed Varney had too much clout and her mother, a typical abuse victim, had refused to file charges.

DJ had been too far away to change any of the outcomes, but once she received her discharge, “Operation: Rescue Nancy Poe” had become DJ’s top priority. She’d just finalized her solo plan to sneak her mother out of Red Bone when she’d received the alarming text.

Guilt, thy name is Dahlia Jane Poe.

Yeah, DJ should’ve gone against her mother’s express wishes to forget about her and Red Bone and tried something more drastic sooner. Something along the lines of what she and her friends Andy and Devin Walsh were doing tonight. Of course, at the moment she wasn’t doing a damn thing but taking up space and worrying like an old woman. The guys, typical macho Marines, had also smelled a trap and convinced her they needed to surveil first.

DJ pounded the steering wheel with her fist. Dammit! What the fuck was taking them so long? They’d been gone fifteen minutes. How long could it take to find one room when they already had the number and knew the layout of the building? This was a small county hospital, not a large city medical center. She could’ve been in and out five times already.

Frustrated, worried, and just generally pissed at the whole effin’ situation, she pounded the steering wheel again. It didn’t help.

Hold on, Momma. I’m here.

“She’s not here, DJ.” Andy’s husky baritone came over the headset she wore under her wool watch cap. “She never was.”

Relief swept over her. For the first time in over a day, she relaxed. She unclenched and wiggled her tension-cramped fingers even as she slumped into her seat. Her mother wasn’t dying all alone in a hospital bed.

The whole emergency text had been a ruse, a trap loaded with the perfect bait. Only her father and the Varneys would know just what enticement was needed—and only they had reasons to lure her back to their turf.

“Roger that. Not totally surprised,” she replied. Obviously, the source of the text message, Mrs. Binkley, her high school English teacher, had been misled or maybe even forced to send the message. She’d have to follow up that line of inquiry once she and the guys had found her mother and secured her safety. They might have to rescue more than one woman tonight.

Then it hit her, this
had been
a trap, so—

Swallowing hard past the boulder-sized lump in her throat, she asked, “Who did you find?”

“Three men waiting by the elevator and a woman in the room,” said Andy.

Woman? Had her father and the Varneys hurt Mrs. Binkley? Used her as a decoy?

“Let me see the woman’s picture,” she gritted out.

“Sending image,” Andy said. “But she’s not an innocent.”

“Got that right, brother,” Dev said. “We’re bugging out, DJ.”

“Roger that.” She stared at the image on her smart phone. While the situation wasn’t funny, her lips twitched at the sight.

Donna Barstow—Red Bone’s resident slut
.

Donna had done anything for money ten years ago, and it looked as if the skunk hadn’t changed her scent.

“What did she tell you,” DJ asked, “before you gagged her.”

“She knows nothing.” Dev’s low growl was filled with distaste. “She was shocked—just shocked, mind you—that we thought Nancy Poe would be in that bed.” He huffed. “Of course, the medical chart inside the room says ‘Nancy Poe,’ and the hospital computer system we hacked into gives Room 420 as Nancy Poe’s private room.”

“DJ,” Andy interjected, “we’ll give a full report once we’re away from the hospital. Things are quiet and under control—for now.” He paused and added, “But either the hospital security is really lax or purposely MIA.”

Someone had messed with the hospital’s security? More likely, someone in security was in on the trap. The Varneys owned a lot of people in Mingo County.

“Roger that.” DJ started the Jeep, put the defrosters on high, and then got out to clear the snow off the headlights and windows. The snow was coming down more heavily, maybe an inch an hour. The winds had picked up slightly and the wind chill could freeze extremities in less than five minutes. She pulled her balaclava up around her nose, so she wouldn’t inhale the cold air directly.

“We going to Red Bone?” Andy’s voice came across the headset as clear as if he’d been standing right next to her. She heard the clang of a metal door shutting and then the thudding of the two men’s boots as they descended stairs.

Red Bone was where she’d been born, raised, and lived for the first eighteen years of her life. It was a mining town—well, not even a town, but a population district—south of Williamson, on U.S. 52. The godforsaken bump in the road had become a place to loathe as soon as she’d developed breasts, mostly because of Sean Varney.

Sean was two years older than her. He was a spoiled brat, a bully—her nemesis—and the reason she hadn’t been back to West Virginia since the morning after she’d graduated high school.

DJ shuddered and clenched her teeth against the anguished moan threatening to claw its way out of her throat. The memories of that time had never faded, but had gone stealthy like a predatory beast waiting to attack her when she was at her weakest.

She’d made it her business never to be weak. But that might be impossible here and now. The memories—the pain—were far too close to the surface.

“DJ? You copy?” Dev’s voice held a hint of impatience.

Get your head out of your ass, Dahlia Jane.

DJ shook off the tentacles of the sly past—for now.

“Yeah—and yeah, Red Bone,” DJ replied, happy her voice didn’t reflect her unease. “If my momma’s at the cabin, then we’re going to get her out of that fricking hellhole.”

If her mother wasn’t at the old homestead, then DJ would happily beat the information out of her bastard of a father. He deserved to get a taste of his own medicine. The man had beaten her and her mother whenever he felt like it—didn’t need a reason. He was just plain mean.

The memories of years of abuse at her old man’s hands slithered through her mind’s eye. She shook her head—
Not now
. Remembering him and Sean would do her absolutely no good. She couldn’t allow anything to distract her from the mission at hand.

But it’s all a part of what’s going on now, isn’t it? If you’d dealt with your pa and the Varneys all those years ago, now wouldn’t be happening.

Yeah, she’d been a coward, the proverbial ostrich with her neck buried halfway to China. Because of her lack of guts, her mother, and maybe even Mrs. Binkley, could be hurt or worse.

No, she couldn’t think that way. Her mother was fine. Mrs. Binkley, also. She refused to allow the past and a mixed bag of negative emotions to tank the mission; it was too important, maybe the most important mission of her whole life.

DJ pulled her Beretta pistol and double-checked the magazine. The routine maneuver served to calm her nerves. The only better routine would’ve been performing a pre-flight check on a Black Hawk, the airframe to which she’d been assigned after finishing Army flight school.

Gun in hand, she checked the surroundings for potential danger.

No one was out. But why would they be? It was the middle of the fricking night, colder than the ice lakes of Hell, and snowing as if the next Ice Age had arrived. Shift change at the hospital wouldn’t be for several more hours. All the other fine citizens of Williamson were home, tucked in their beds.

Worry gnawed at her control once again. Was her mother safe and warm? Was she hurt? Was she even alive?—
Stop it.
—All she could do was move forward one step at a time.

Assured the area was secure for the men’s return, she holstered her weapon, then climbed back into the driver’s seat and waited for her teammates.

DJ couldn’t have asked for better partners than Andy and Dev. The men had dropped everything, sacrificed their last few days of leave from their Marine Special Operations Command teams, and driven straight through from the North Carolina coast to help with the rescue of her mother.

She’d only known the two Marines for about six months, but Andy and Dev had become closer to her than her blood kin—with the exception of her mother. They’d met when Dev had asked a room full of Army helicopter pilots for a volunteer to fly a risky rescue mission to pick up a MARSOC team led by his brother Andy. All the pilots had offered, but DJ had been chosen since she was the best pilot for the job. The risky mission had been a success.

That one small act, something she would’ve done for anyone, led to the Walsh family adopting her as one of their own. They’d even gotten her an interview which had led to a job with the private security firm Security Specialists International, owned by Ren Maddox, the husband of the Walsh’s only daughter, Keely. DJ would be SSI’s first female operative.

With a job waiting for her, she left the Army after ten years. She’d arrived in the States and stayed with the Walshes at Camp Lejeune while she’d finalized her plans to get her mother away from her father.

Then Mrs. Binkley’s text had arrived. It had been Andy and Dev’s mother Molly who’d noticed DJ’s distress. The woman had gently, but determinedly, pried the information out of DJ—and then called a family meeting where DJ had given the Walshes the Cliff’s Notes version about her family situation.

Andy and Dev had insisted on coming along as her backup. They wouldn’t take “no” for an answer. Their—the whole Walsh family’s—unqualified support had filled a place in her heart that had been empty for far too long.

A low whistle over the headset alerted her to the brothers’ approach. She unlocked all the doors. The two men piled in.

DJ turned toward Dev. “Tell me about—”

“Later. Get us away from here,” Dev said. “If someone discovers the four people we left trussed up in that suspiciously vacant ward, a cluster of cosmic proportions will rain down on us.”

“Why? What did you do?” As the men buckled up, DJ pulled smoothly out of the alley into which she’d backed. Driving at an appropriate speed for the weather, she headed for the outskirts of Williamson; her destination, an all-night truck stop right off U.S. 52.

“
Who
is the correct question. One of the three men was the Mingo County Sheriff.”

Dev delivered the statement in the same calm tone and manner he’d use to order a coffee. But the impact on her nerves was like that of a surface-to-air-missile taking down a chopper. She lost the cool facade she’d forcibly donned before the men had reached the Jeep and shrieked, “Sheriff? God, what did you—”

Dev grasped her shoulder, then gently squeezed. “Chill, DJ. They’re tied up, but unharmed. They can’t identify us. We had ski masks on and wore gloves. Just get us to a place so we can fully debrief.” He looked in the side mirror. “I haven’t spotted a tail. Andy?”

“Nada. I keep telling you, no one saw us, bro,” Andy chimed in from the back seat. “That wing was deserted. Old technology security cameras, shut down. I checked them as we went in and out. That hospital doesn’t have the budget to do anything super-high-tech small. Face it, the Sheriff was being a bad boy. He didn’t want DJ’s capture to be seen. Kidnapping charges definitely wouldn’t look good for his re-election chances.”

Andy was making light of the situation, but it was serious. From the beginning, the whole situation had stunk to high heaven. She should’ve anticipated the potential of crooked law enforcement participation. She hadn’t warned the Walshes about the Varneys—so they hadn’t had all the facts about how things worked in Mingo County. She’d only told them about her low-life father and that had been bad enough. Now, it looked as if the minute details she’d skimmed over in her back story might bite them all on their asses.

“Sweet Jesus, what have I gotten you guys into?” This wasn’t their fight. Guilt, fear, and worry—of late, her close emotional companions—ate at her gut. “Maybe you guys should—”

“Shut it, DJ. Do
not
finish that sentence,” Dev gritted out. “We aren’t leaving until we get your mom and
you
away from here.”

“Yeah, we’re a team, and a team member doesn’t leave a teammate behind. You know that,” Andy scolded.

Yeah, she did, but that was in the military—this was personal. However, she wasn’t surprised at their response, but was still leery of risking their lives and reputations.

BOOK: Storm Warning (Security Specialists International Book 4)

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