RESCUE MISSION (PAPERBACK)

Chapter one
Maya

I would have rather done a midnight raid in hostile territory than continue down Thunder River rapids with the bunch of fat bankers in my rubber raft. But that wasn't an option. These guys had paid me a lot of money, or rather their employer had, to take them white water rafting for the day.
My job was to show them how to work as a team. However, these four selfish bastards had zero comprehension of what it meant to work together.
Clutching the tree branch I was using to hold the raft against the shore, I stood at the rear of the boat with my shoulders back. Their eyes bounced to my breasts as if they were magnets and the four of them were just fat lumps of metal.
“Listen up, guys. The rapids we just did are nothing compared to what's downriver. If you don't work together and follow my instructions, then you’re going to end up in the water, and you’ll have to swim all the way to the ocean. Do you want that?”
They all lowered their gaze, and not one of them answered.
“Well, do you?”
I glared at each of them, but they couldn't even look me in the eye. Not even Peter, and I’d pegged him as the man with the most potential in the group.
But that was why they had come to me. I was the team bonding champion. Apparently.
“Grab your paddles. When I let go of this branch, the river will take us. At first, it's going to be nice and cruisy. So, kick back and enjoy this amazing scenery. Then there will be a few more rocks for us to bounce over, and then the river gets narrower. What happens when a team gets narrower, Adam?”
“It gets more powerful.”
“That's right. When you have a lot of people, the pressure is defused. When a team gets narrower, each person holds more power. Think of the river like that. She's a powerful bitch, and she’s about to show you just how much.”
I slapped my paddle into the water, giving them a little splash. By their ghastly expressions, you’d think I’d poured acid over them.
“When I tell you to paddle backward, you paddle backward. When I tell you to dig in and paddle, what are you going to do? Peter?”
“I'll paddle.” Peter said it like he was ordering cupcakes.
“Not I’ll paddle.” I mimicked his response. “You will fucking dig that paddle in and scoop the water like it’s a nasty little employee you’ve been trying to get rid of. Got it?”
He nodded.
“So, Peter, what are you going to do when I say paddle?”
“I’m gonna drive my paddle into the water and scoop that fucking bitch out.”
I grinned at him.
He grinned at me.
I turned to Joe. “What are you going to do, Joe?”
“I'm gonna fucking dig that bitch.”
“Good,” I said. “And you, Hurun?”
“I'm gonna fucking paddle!”
They were finally getting it. The test would come when we hit Devil’s Dive. The five-foot waterfall that was coming up was always a surprise package, and if they didn't listen, one of them, or maybe even all of us, would get thrown into the water.
“Are we ready to do this?” I asked with all the motivational joy I could muster.
“Yes,” Peter and Hurun said together. The other two just nodded.
“I said, are we ready to do this? Say hell yeah!” I yelled like my sergeant, Blade, had done in the army.
“Hell yeah!” they yelled in unison.
It was the first thing they’d done as a team. Progress.
Thunder River could be deceiving with the way the sun glistened off the surface, and lush trees leaned over from the riverbank, creating beautiful reflections in the mirrored water. It gave the impression that we were out for a nice, easy paddle.
But that would be wrong.
I have taken white water rafting groups down Thunder River nearly every week since I started my adventure business Executive Rush two years ago. I'd had everything from backpackers to the executive bastards that were in my boat today. And I hadn't lost a person yet.
But my time in the army had taught me many things. Working together was king. Trusting your mates was queen. Putting your body on the line was the whole goddamned chessboard. And that life was no fucking game.
Life was short, and you had to live in every moment.
My sister died when she was nineteen, and every day since then, I wished I’d had more moments with her. Not a day went by when I didn’t think of her or the asshole who murdered her.
I let go of the branch, and at first the raft hugged the left-hand side of the river. Using the paddle, I pushed us away from any jagged branches sticking out from the shore.
“Okay, who’s on my left?” I asked.
Adam and Peter raised their paddles.
“Good. That means you two are on my right.” I pointed at Hurun and Joe.
“Paddle backward.”
The four of them dug in like a bunch of six-year-olds.
“Together!” I yelled. “One. Two. One. Two. That's it. Now you got it. Now you’re working as a team. Look at you go. On my left, paddle.”
Adam and Peter dug in.
“Stop. Okay, we are in the middle of the river, drifting at about five miles an hour. Around the next bend, our speed will quadruple and about six hundred yards beyond that, it’s going to get narrow and nasty.”
They all chuckled. Their expressions confirmed they underestimated just how nasty this was going to get.
“Okay, men. You’ve paid me a lot of money to get bitch slapped.”
They burst into laughter, but Joe was as jittery as a patient at a vasectomy clinic.
“Let's see if we can get you all working together. Everyone dig those paddles in and pull. And again. Dig and pull. One. Two. Three. Yes! You’re doing it. You’re working as a team. I'm impressed.”
Adam grinned at me like I was his favorite schoolteacher.
I grinned back. I'd learned a long time ago that flirting with men could be useful. Some of those bastards had been too busy checking me out to notice the weapon I’d used to kill them.
My military service in the army had been some of the most honest days of my life.
Protecting my country.
Eliminating bad guys.
Working with a team of men and women who I knew would take a bullet for me.
I’d thought I would be an army sniper and medic until my pension kicked in. I never envisaged being booted out of the only career I ever wanted.
Forcing my brain to be in the moment, I used my paddle to point ahead. “See those tiny rapids? They’re created by submerged rocks. We’re going to cruise over them nice and easy. You can stop paddling and enjoy the ride. It’ll be fun.”
Again, Adam flashed his grin at me. He was the only one amongst them who didn't have a double chin. He was handsome, with maybe a couple of mixed cultures in his breeding. A lineage that gave him olive skin and dark eyes. Spanish, perhaps?
Maybe he was thinking he could hook up with me later.
That was never going to happen. It wasn't that I was against having sex. I just wasn't into having sex with a guy like him who had more money than he could spend in a lifetime and thought that wealth defined who he was.
“Pull your paddles in with the handles down, just like I showed you, and grip onto that rope.”
They were a little clumsy but they got it. The front of the raft dipped, then bulged upward. The rocks thumped underneath their feet and disappeared out the back.
We cruised around the bend in the river, where the rapids began their real show. White water tumbled over dozens of obstacles, squirting out at random intervals to reveal rocks that were impossible to see otherwise.
“On my right. One paddle.”
The men did as they were told.
“Paddles up.”
“Oh, Jesus!” Joe blurted.
If he was worried about what he was seeing now, he was the man I needed to watch once we hit the real rapids.
“On my left. Two strokes, please. One. Two. Paddle up.”
Their four paddles stuck out the raft like a pair of cheering arms as we hit the rapids in the middle of the river.
The rubber raft bumped and glided over the submerged rocks like it was designed to do.
A pair of giant boulders loomed ahead of us. I always wondered if those two had once been one massive rock that the water had carved through over the millennia. The five-foot drop on the other side of them was like a massive liquid tongue, sucking us in and then spitting us out like we were poison in its throat.
“Okay, men, listen up. Now we’re getting serious. Up ahead is Devil’s Dive. It’s a tiny waterfall—”
“How tiny?” Joe’s eyes bulged.
“It’s just a four-foot drop on the other side,” I lied. The size of the drop didn’t matter.
If they did their jobs right, that is.
“And the boat may fold in half as we crash down on the other side. But don’t worry, it will right itself within a second.”
Joe made a noise like he was about to vomit.
“On my right. Paddle. Get into it. Quick, Joe! Get your paddle in there. Joe, dig deeper. Work together. Do it. Together, you two. This is it. Paddles in! Wedge your feet and hang on!”
I sat and wedged my foot into the base of the raft, securing me in position.
The men looked like they were going to piss their pants, and it took all my might not to burst out laughing. We reached Devil’s Dive doing about thirty miles an hour. The front of the raft aimed between the rocks. Joe squealed as we punched through the gap. We were airborne for the count of two. Then, the front of the raft speared into the water, curling a wave over the top of all of us and drenching us to the core.
The boat righted.
I cheered. “Woo hoo! Look at you guys go. You did Devil’s Dive. Give yourselves a high-five.”
The four of them high-fived each other, and Adam flashed his perfect white teeth at me. But the rapids were far from over. They were just beginning.
“Get your paddles ready, boys. Now we’re getting into the fun stuff.”
Joe glared at me like I was a tomahawk missile about to hit. The whites of his eyes bulged, and his lips were drawn to a thin line. He had behaved like a macho dickhead when I’d done the debrief that morning.
He wasn't so macho looking now.
“We are coming up to Witch’s Cauldron. It’s a whirlpool. If we don't do this right, we’ll be sucked into that bitch and will be spun around like we're in a washing machine with no off switch.”
Joe moaned and the blood drained from his face.
“Our goal is to stay away from that big rock. The one that’s shaped like a V-dub on steroids.” I pointed. “See it?”
Joe's eyes got even bigger.
“On my right, dig in. Paddle. One. Two. Stop.”
“Remember, if you fall in, hang onto your life jacket and put your feet downriver. Keep your head above the water and don’t struggle. We will come and get you.”
Joe’s mouth fell open like one of those creepy clowns at the penny arcade.
“You’ll be okay, Joe,” I said.
He was the biggest man amongst them, both in height and weight, but fear was written all over his face.
“Let’s do this. On my right, dig in again. Go. One. Two. Come on, put some muscles into it. Go. One. Two. Dig in. Joe, dig in! Do it. Christ! Dig in.”
Joe froze with his hands strangling his paddle.
“Son of a bitch. We’re too close. And we’re too late. Everybody, hang on!”
The torrent grabbed us like a giant fist. We were no match for its power and were sucked into the rock’s vortex. Joe’s paddle snagged on the rock, scooped under his belly, and flipped him out of the boat like he weighed barely ten pounds.
“Hang on,” I yelled at everybody else.
The raft curled around the giant rock and bounced off the edge. I pushed with all my might with the paddle, forcing us away. The ass end of the raft was sucked into the current, pulling us from the rock and spinning us around backward.
“On my right, paddle, paddle, paddle.”
Adam and Peter put everything they had into each stroke.
We spun around and I stood, scanning the river ahead. “Anybody see Joe?”
Unless his feet got wedged under a rock, he would pop up to the surface.
The lifejacket will save him—I hope.

BOOKS IN THIS SERIES:

Escape Mission
Hostile Mission
Rescue Mission
Stealth Mission
Shadow Mission
Rogue Mission

She’s a skilled sniper. He’s a Hollywood hunk. But when the bullets start flying nobody is acting.


Ex-army sniper, Maya Grayson (Codename: Ghost) has pulled the trigger on many bastards. But since her military career was yanked away from her, finding her place back in the real world isn’t easy. And civilian men struggle with both her career choice and her sassy confidence.


Born into money, action star hero, Neon Bloom, has it all. Fame. Fortune. Female friends. And when he’s declared Hollywood’s Most Eligible Bachelor, his ratings and income skyrocket. So does the attention. And not all of it is good. Both his movie producers and mega-rich parents will pay any ransom, making full time guards a necessity Neon hates.


With an abandoned island resort as the backdrop for a new action blockbuster, feisty Maya is charged with babysitting the cocky playboy and their personality clash is worthy of an Oscar. But when Maya discovers the true gentleman behind Neon’s fake façade, saving him from ruthless kidnappers becomes the most important mission of her life.


Can Maya and her team save Neon? Or will this be his final act?