HOT Valor (Hostile Operations Team - Book 11) Read online

  HOT Valor

  A Hostile Operations Team Novel - Book 11

  Lynn Raye Harris

  Contents

  Preface

  About This Book

  Author’s Note

  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 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Epilogue

  Also by Lynn Raye Harris

  Who’s HOT?

  About the Author

  Preface

  A Hostile Operations Team Novel - Book 11

  HOT Valor: Mendez & Kat

  © 2017 by Lynn Raye Harris

  Find me:

  [email protected]

  http://lynnrayeharris.com/

  Lynn on Facebook

  Lynn on Twitter

  HOT Readers and Fans Group on Facebook

  Sign up for Lynn’s Newsletter

  About This Book

  They told him she was dead. They lied…

  Colonel John “Viper” Mendez is having the second-worst day of his life. Accused of using the Hostile Operations Team to assassinate a foreign official, he’s gone from being a respected military black-ops commander to a fugitive in the space of an hour. On the run, hunted, and stripped of his honor, Mendez has nowhere to go—and few people he can trust.

  Russian spy Ekaterina “Kat” Kasharin is a carbon copy of the woman Mendez once loved. Twenty-one years ago, Valentina vanished from his life. Kat claims to be her twin—but Kat’s lying. Ordered by her superiors in Russian Intelligence to abandon the man she loved—or watch him die—Kat had no choice but to obey.

  But twenty-one years is a long time to love a man from afar, and Kat won’t stand by as a traitor plans his death—even if it means risking her heart and her life to save him. She can never reveal her true identity—or the secrets she keeps locked away. Secrets he would hate her for. Working with him is strictly business, and she won’t let emotions get in the way. But the attraction between them is smoking hot—and it’s not long before they’re burning up the sheets.

  When the truth comes out, the mission implodes. Everything Mendez thought he knew was a lie. He’ll have to pull it together though before a deadly foe succeeds in taking away all he loves. By the time he realizes Kat might be most important of all? It could be too late to save her…

  Author’s Note

  July 2017

  Dear Readers:

  Truth is stranger than fiction. When I introduced Mark DeWitt in Book 5 of the HOT series, I knew he’d be a bad guy with shady connections. While it might seem that his Russian ties are ripped from current headlines, I can assure you that is not the case. HOT PROTECTOR, Book 9 in this series, came out in January 2016 (long before we knew who would be president in 2017). Sergei Turov and his dealings with then-Congressman DeWitt were set up in that book—and DeWitt was running for president. I thought it was important to let you know, especially if you are new to the books, that much of what happens in HOT VALOR was planned in mid-2015 when I was writing Book 9. Any resemblance, however tenuous, to current events is strictly coincidental.

  As always, I make up the rules for my Special Ops team. They do things the military can’t do. But that’s what makes it fun.

  Finally, a note on Russian names. The feminine form of my heroine’s last name should have an ‘a’ at the end while the masculine form does not. For the sake of consistency, I chose to make feminine and masculine surnames the same. Forgive me for a little literary indulgence.

  I hope you enjoy the colonel’s story! It’s been a long time coming, and I had a blast writing it. I’m half in love with Mendez myself. And never fear, there are more HOT books to come. This one is most certainly not the final book. The men and women of HOT (and Ian Black!) have more adventures (and love) coming their way. I hope you’ll join us!

  If you want to know the songs I listened to while writing Mendez’s story, here they are:

  PLAYLIST

  Stay - Rihanna

  Counting Stars - One Republic

  Love Runs Out - One Republic

  Apologize - One Republic

  When I Was Your Man - Bruno Mars

  I Can’t Go On Without You - Kaleo

  Dangerous Woman - Ariana Grande

  Love is a Losing Game - Amy Winehouse

  What Hurts the Most - Rascal Flatts

  Chapter 1

  Washington, DC

  There were days that changed your life forever, though at first they felt perfectly ordinary. You got up, you got dressed, you prepared to go to work and Charlie Mike the hell out of the day. Continuing the mission was what Colonel John “Viper” Mendez lived for. Every day he sent teams around the world to save pieces of it, and every night he went to bed knowing that tomorrow would be more of the same.

  He lived for the mission. He played sometimes, but not often, and when it was over he went back to work. He’d been doing it for so long that it was normal and expected. If he got up tomorrow and didn’t have a mission, he’d probably go out of his mind.

  But today… Today there was still a mission.

  Mendez—he’d long ago stopped thinking of himself by any name but that one—watched the news while he got dressed. It was the usual roundup of horror and mayhem, but there was one particularly discordant note. The Russian ambassador to the United States had been assassinated in Moscow while America slept. It wasn’t a particularly shocking occurrence these days, but it would definitely make the job harder as Washington reacted. They’d want to pull resources from other areas and concentrate them on Russia, and he’d have to argue for continuing the mission in many of the other places that needed it.

  The storm hadn’t broken yet, so for now he fielded the usual calls about operations and statuses as he prepared for the day. His aide pulled up to the curb at precisely five thirty a.m., and Mendez prepared to walk out the door.

  His phone rang again and he lifted it to his ear with a clipped “Mendez.”

  “Good morning, Colonel,” a cheerful voice said.

  Mendez stopped. “Black? What’s up?” Because Ian Black never called unless there was something important going on. Something that Mendez would want to hear. Maybe he knew something about the Russia situation.

  “I’m saving your ass today, Colonel.”

  Lieutenant Connor waited patiently in the car as Mendez stared out the window.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I’ve got news you need to hear. Today, around nine a.m., the military police will arrive at HOT HQ. They’ll be accompanied by a general officer who’s there to relieve you of comma
nd. They’ll probably arrest you, by the way.”

  Iron formed a ball in his gut. It wasn’t fear. It was fury. “Why? And where did you hear this?”

  “Why? Because the Russian ambassador is dead, and Vice President DeWitt has finally convinced the president that you’re dangerous and need to be stopped.”

  Mendez reeled. Of course it was DeWitt. That little motherfucker. He’d been after HOT for the past couple of years. Being President Campbell’s running mate in a successful election had elevated him to a position he’d only dreamed about—and given him the power to do things he couldn’t do as a junior congressman.

  “What does the ambassador’s death have to do with me?”

  “DeWitt is saying you ordered it. That you’ve overstepped your authority and you’re operating a rogue organization.”

  Mendez wanted to commit violence against DeWitt in the worst way. But that was a fool’s reaction, and he wasn’t a fool. “I’m not worried. The president’s daughter is married to one of my operators. HOT reports directly to the president—and Campbell won’t let HOT be defanged. I can handle an inquiry. Especially one as baseless as this one.”

  “This isn’t an inquiry. It’s a witch hunt. And I can’t tell you where I heard it, but trust me, it’s real. The president is caving in to pressure, whether he wants to or not. They have evidence, or he wouldn’t have agreed to it.”

  “If they have evidence, it’s fake. I can fight that.”

  “John, listen to me. There are some things you can’t fight. Get out while you can. Fight this from the outside. I’ll help.”

  Ian had never called him by his first name in all the time they’d known each other. Black was a mystery, a disavowed CIA agent who wasn’t disavowed at all in Mendez’s opinion. He was deep undercover, so deep that Mendez couldn’t figure out who his handler was in the CIA. He’d questioned Samantha Spencer, the agent he’d had a mutually beneficial relationship with until a couple of months ago, but she claimed not to know anything. Still, Mendez hadn’t forgotten how her fingers had trembled the first time he’d asked. She knew something even if she wasn’t admitting it.

  “I still gotta go to work. Not showing up is an admission of wrongdoing, don’t you think?”

  “No. I think it’s smart. Run while you can. Far better to work on exposing the truth than to be locked up and at their mercy.”

  Jesus H. Christ. What a clusterfuck. Maybe he should run, but it wasn’t the way he was wired. Besides, he wasn’t helpless. A general and a few MPs weren’t enough to stop him if he really wanted to get away. He’d been in black ops far too many years to be helpless. Plus he was pissed. Were they really going to arrest him? He wanted to hear the justification for it, because there was no way they could really think he’d ordered a hit on the Russian ambassador.

  “You do things your way and I’ll do them mine.”

  Ian Black sighed. “Your funeral,” he said. “But I think you should know something else.”

  Mendez’s patience hung by a thread. “What?”

  “Kat wants you to run.”

  “Who the fuck is Kat?”

  “Ekaterina. She says you knew her sister. She said you’ll recognize her name.”

  Everything inside him stopped moving. His mind reeled. It couldn’t be the name he was thinking. He’d searched during the year since Dmitri Leonov had told him Valentina was alive, but he’d found nothing. A sister? He didn’t remember Valentina talking about a sister. Must be someone else, yet still he hoped that was the name Black would say. “What name?”

  “Valentina.”

  That name was a battering ram to the brain. Ice coated his veins, stilled his blood. Someone was fucking with him. Baiting him. Hoping he’d do something rash. Hell, it could even be Leonov. Who, true to his word, had gotten sprung from an American prison within months of being captured. It could also be Sergei Turov, who against all odds had survived the bullet Dex “Double Dee” Davidson put in him last year. He’d even learned to walk again. Now that man had a grudge the size of Jupiter for sure.

  But rash was not how Mendez operated. Ever. He wasn’t called Viper because he reacted too quickly. No, he was Viper because his strike was silent and deadly.

  “That name means nothing to me,” he said.

  “Doesn’t it? Valentina Alexandrovna Rostov. Kat says you have a locket that belonged to her sister. Bring it to the Court of Two Sisters in New Orleans. Tomorrow morning, ten thirty sharp. Ball’s in your court.”

  The line went dead.

  Mendez went into his bedroom and removed some documents from the safe he kept for his personal use. He also took a few thousand in cash. He didn’t quite know what he was going to do, but he stuffed it all into his briefcase. Lastly, he set the self-destruct program on his computer. It would wipe everything and leave a brick of a hard drive. Even “id” Blake wouldn’t be able to bring it back to life.

  He took a last look around and then walked outside to get into the staff car reserved for his use. Sometimes he drove himself, but often his aide picked him up. The lieutenant got out of the car and saluted sharply before opening the rear door. Mendez saluted back.

  “How are you this morning, Connor?”

  “Excellent, sir. And you?”

  “Fine, thanks.”

  Mendez got into the car and waited for his lieutenant to get behind the wheel. He couldn’t help but think of Ian Black’s call and what it meant if it were true.

  Which he didn’t doubt it was, strangely enough. It was just like Mark DeWitt to orchestrate something so complex. The man was a spider sitting in the middle of a giant web, waiting to snare his prey. Whatever this was, it went even deeper than Ian knew. Mendez would bet his life on it.

  He spread his hands, looked at the veins carrying his lifeblood. He knew in his gut that this situation was more complicated than Ian realized. So why the fuck was he in this car, heading toward HOT and a potential loss of freedom—or worse? Being relieved of duty was one thing. Being arrested for a crime he hadn’t committed was another.

  Then there was the danger of having an accident while in custody. He had to acknowledge the very real possibility of that scenario. Lock him up, quietly assassinate him.

  He didn’t know which way this would go today—but he’d be ready no matter what. He considered what Ian had said about Kat. Valentina’s sister. A sister Mendez had never heard of. Who was she really and why was she involved? He didn’t know, but whoever she was, she’d known Valentina because she knew about the locket. That in itself was intriguing as hell. Part of him wanted to head to New Orleans right now.

  But he had a job to do, and he would do it up until the moment he couldn’t.

  Mendez took out his secure phone and went through email. He already knew what he had to answer, what was critical today. They had missions in Qu’rim, Acamar, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria—the list was endless, and the missions were vital to national security.

  Mendez pressed the button to send the glass up between himself and Connor. The silence was absolute. Connor wouldn’t hear what was said. Mendez hit the button to dial his deputy.

  Alex “Ghost” Bishop answered on the first ring. “Yes, sir?”

  “Ghost, we have a situation.”

  “Don’t we always?” Ghost’s voice was filled with a sort of resigned humor that Mendez understood.

  Yeah, they always did. That was the nature of the beast.

  “This is something we haven’t encountered before.” He pressed his thumb and forefinger to his temples as he concentrated on what needed to happen. “I think I’m getting arrested today. For the murder of Anatoly Levkin.”

  Ghost growled. “What the fuck? That’s impossible.”

  “Not if I used HOT assets to do it.”

  “We don’t even have a HOT asset in Moscow.”

  Mendez snorted softly. “Bet our records say we do.”

  He could hear the tapping of keys on a computer. “Jesus H. Christ,” Ghost swore. “Delta Squad.”
/>
  “They’re on a top secret mission right now.” Which was perfect for DeWitt’s purposes since it was impossible to say where they were or what they were doing without compromising national security. But how had he gotten access to HOT’s servers? That was pretty much an impossible thing to do. Someone had hacked into HOT—and that was not a good thing.

  But what if it went deeper than that?

  “Where is Delta Squad now?” Mendez asked, a sharp feeling beginning to churn inside him.

  The keyboard clicked. “All I’ve got is Moscow. But they can’t be there. Last known location was Afghanistan.”

  Anger began to throb in his veins. “Keep checking. Someone’s fucked with the database, but the real info has to be there.”

  “Yes, sir.” Ghost hesitated for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was hard. “What do you need me to do, sir? For you, I mean.”

  Gratitude rode hard on the heels of worry over his men. He and Ghost had served together a few times over the years. Ghost knew him, and he knew what kind of man Mendez was. Or so Mendez hoped. He could be putting himself out there for nothing. Trusting the wrong man. But he doubted it.

  “First and foremost, I need you to keep HOT running. And I need you to find Delta Squad. For now though, get Matt Girard, Dane Erikson, and Cade Rodgers together in my office. I want to talk to them.”

  “I’ll do that, sir. How much time do we have?”