"Ike is wonderful and pure hero material. I would not mind having a man like him to"
Reviewed by Darlene Kendall
Posted October 31, 2011
Suspense | Romance Suspense
Eryn McClellan never thought her job as a teacher of English
as a second language would put her in danger, yet one of her
students saves her from being kidnapped and beheaded.
Without knowing which terrorist group would wish her harm,
and believing it has something to do with her father being
a General, Eryn is taken into protective custody by the
FBI. Eryn becomes worried when she's allowed no contact
with her father. Former Navy Seal Ike Calhoun owes General
McClellan big time which is why he leaves his isolated
cabin to snatch Eryn from the FBI under the conditions that
he would hand her off to one of his teammates. The General
knows Eryn is being used as bait. When Ike's teammate
doesn't show at the rendezvous he is forced to take her to
his cabin where the close proximity makes it hard to ignore
their mutual attraction, not that Eryn wants to ignore it.
When the FBI leads the killer straight to Ike's door, he
knows there is nothing he won't do to protect the woman he
has fallen in love with. Ike is wonderful and pure hero
material. I would not mind having a man like him to
protect me. The plot is believable and will keep you on
the edge of your seat as these two try to stay alive and
learn who the real bad guy is in this suspenseful novel
about patriotism.
SUMMARY
Eryn McClellan teaches ESL in Washington, D.C., until the
day she’s targeted by terrorists avenging her father’s
actions in Afghanistan. The FBI has stepped in, but when it
looks like they are using her for bait, General McClellan
enlists the aid of the only man he knows he can trust:
former Navy SEAL Ike Calhoun. Embracing solitude in his
remote cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Ike thought he'd
left the War on Terror behind. Now he’s stuck shielding a
blue-eyed beauty from ambitious federal agents and crazed
jihadists. More disturbing still, the charming Eryn seems
intent on shattering his self-imposed isolation. Ike does
his best to resist her welcoming ways, but he can feel his
restraint eroding like a mountain in a mudslide. With the
FBI hot on their heels and the terrorists not far behind,
Ike willingly wages a one-man war in defense of the woman
whose passion and faith have given him the strength to rise
above his past.
ExcerptWell, I’ll be damned, thought Ike. He’d been studying the
back of the safe-house waiting for Cougar to show up when
the part of the fence he’d compromised keeled over and out
stepped the woman he was supposed to recover, all blue eyes
and wild hair. Up till then he’d had no idea how Cougar had planned to
retrieve her without the FBI agents’ knowledge. He stood up,
relieved. She’d saved them a hell of a lot of trouble. Or not. To his incredulity, she took one look at him, clutched her
handbag to her chest, and sprinted the other way, up the
grassy alley with the dog at her side, heading in the
opposite direction from his getaway vehicle. Sonofabitch. The other camera, tucked under the rear eaves was filming
her exodus. It would film him, too, if he went after her,
but the odds of snagging her were better now than they’d
ever be, especially if the FBI caught her first. So Ike took off after her. The girl was surprisingly fleet-footed. She had almost made
it to the tree line before he curled a gloved hand around
her elbow and swung her around. Lunging for the dog’s collar
at the same time, he pulled them both to a jarring halt.
"Wrong way," he grated. "Let go of me!" Her voice came out high and thin. "I’m not
going back." She struggled against his grasp, proving more
difficult than the dog, who eyed him warily. The odds of a successful nab and grab depended significantly
on the amount of time it took to seize the recovery target
and disappear. Ike had two minutes, tops, to make them
disappear. Ignoring Eryn’s shriek, he banded an arm around her waist
and plucked her off her feet. "Come," he said, relying on
the dog to follow his mistress. He carried the squirming
woman into a fenceless back yard where he hid them all
behind a utility shed. She was a wriggling bundle of resistance. "Let me go!" He had to pin her to the shed’s wall. "Quiet," he ordered,
covering her mouth with a gloved hand. Her face went waxen;
her pupils dilated. Christ, she was terrified of him, and he
had mere seconds in which to reassure her. "Look, I’m not with the FBI and I’m not a terrorist," he
said, peering around the corner of the shed for any sign of
pursuit. "Your father sent me." She sucked a startled breath through her nose. That’s right, princess. "The safe word is
Lancaster. He said you’d understand that." Not that
he did. Looking back into her eyes, he was relieved to see her fear
fade. Suddenly, she looked more like the teenager in the
photo on Stanley’s desk at HQ, all freckles and periwinkle
eyes. Except the lithe body crushed under his most
definitely belonged to a woman. Easing his hand off her mouth, he saw that her jaw now bore
the imprint of his glove. "Lancaster," she whispered, touching the tip of her tongue
to her full upper lip. She was too beautiful. Aware that his right thigh was wedged
between hers, Ike eased his weight off of her. They needed
to get moving. "I’m here to take you somewhere safe," he
added, measuring the distance to his car as she took stock
of him. "Do I know you?" she asked. "Isaac Calhoun." He glanced at his watch. No more time to
chat. But then she gave a cry of relief and threw her arms around
him, hugging him tightly. "Thank you!" she cried, leaving an
impression of soft breasts and fragrant hair. Ike disguised his sudden befuddlement by tying a short rope
to the dog’s collar in a makeshift leash. "We need to go.
Can you run?" "Of course." She seemed more than eager, looping the strap
of her purse over her head. He swept the area one more time. "Now." Seizing her hand, he
tugged her back into the grassy alley toward the condo he’d
been using. Sliding open the rear entrance, he pulled her and the dog
inside and locked it behind them. In seconds, they were
stepping out the front door. The man who owned the place
happened to be in the service, making him compliant to the
Commander’s strange request for a house key. Everything was legal, right down to the parking space, one
lot south of the one fronting the safe house. "Look casual," he said, ushering Eryn to an older-model
Mercedes. They passed a young mother buckling her baby into the back
of a van. The rest of the parking lot stood deserted, with
most residents away at work. Ike opened the door. No alarm sounded yet. He might just
pull this off. Ten seconds left. He trundled Eryn into the front seat.
"Head down," he said, pressing her head to her knees. He opened the back door for the dog. "In, boy," he said, but
the dog balked. "Winston, come!" Eryn called, popping up in order to coax
her dog into the back. It all came down to time. He could leave the dog if he had
to, but then he’d have a hysterical woman on his hands. With the last precious seconds ticking off the clock, Ike
muscled the dog into the back, slammed the door shut, and
rounded the vehicle to slip behind the wheel. Two minutes and five seconds had passed since he’d grabbed
her. The odds were against them already. Pulling briskly out of the parking space, he took the route
out of the area suggested by the GPS device stuck to his
dash. He had programmed it to guide him through a maze of
back roads, avoiding Randolph Road and Viers Mill, where the
FBI had parked their RV. A sudden explosion shattered the morning quiet, so loud that
the windows of the car reverberated. Eryn screamed and
ducked. Ike, startled by the sound, swerved and recovered.
What the hell was that? He increased his speed. "It was a bomb!" Eryn cried. "I knew it was a bomb!" He glanced at her sharply. "What was? Where?" "The UPS man was knocking on the front door. He had a
package in his hand. I knew it was a bomb!" No way. Terrorists had just tried killing her again?
"Did you see him? Did you recognize him?" "Yes. No. I don’t know. There was a man at the door with a
box. He might have been the one who killed Itzak. I couldn’t
tell." The surface of Ike’s skin abruptly cooled. He increased his
speed, not at all surprised to hear sirens wailing in the
distance. Eryn, who looked like she was going to throw up, peered
fearfully through the back window. "Head down," he reminded her. At least the bomb, if that’s
what it was, would make it harder for the FBI to pursue
them. But would they deem him responsible when they replayed
the surveillance tapes? Cued by the GPS, he swerved right, cutting through a
middle-class subdivision, past a busy elementary school with
kids pouring out of yellow busses. Out the corner of his eye, he watched Eryn drop her face
into her hands and rock herself. The shock had finally
gotten to her. He braced himself for the sight of her
vomiting or, worse yet, sobbing hysterically. But, with a
sharp sniff, she dashed the moisture off her cheeks and
turned her lowered head to look at him. "You s-saved me, Ike," she said in a shaky voice. Startled to hear his nickname, he looked back at her. "Why’d
you call me that?" "Ike? That’s what my f-father calls you, right? I recognize
you f-from pictures in his e-m-mails." Dragging her purse
closer, she started fumbling through it. "That wasn’t me," he said, amazed that she could talk
without biting her tongue. Not that he blamed her for being
shaken. Christ, if terrorists had just bombed the safe
house, then that had been one hell of a close call. If she
hadn’t run out to greet him, she might well have been killed. He swallowed convulsively as he imagined telling Stanley
that he’d been too late. "Sure it w-was you," she insisted. "You had a b-beard back
then, and your hair was reddish gold." She fished a
prescription bottle out of her purse and wrestled with the
safety lid. The comment proved she knew exactly who he was. Before the
clusterfuck that had left most of his squad dead, he’d had
the coloration of a young man. Grief and guilt had turned
his hair silver, practically overnight. "But your eyes are the same," she chattered on, shaking a
pill into her palm. "I never forget a face. It’s a gift, I
guess." He glanced at her, surprised she found his face memorable at
all. He had no exceptional features, no disfiguring scars.
Pretending to scan the road signs even though the GPS would
tell him the way, he focused on the mission. "Do you have any water?" she asked. "No." He glanced curiously at the pill. She swallowed it anyway, making a face that told him it was
lodged in her throat. The GPS prompted him to turn right in fifty yards. As he
swung onto a boulevard jammed with service stations and auto
parts stores, the sound of sirens grew louder. Flashing blue
lights bore directly down on them. Ah, shit! But the black and white cruiser screamed
past without even slowing. Probably heading to the scene of
the explosion, he figured. Something sure as hell had
happened. "That was close," Eryn commented, clutching her purse with
white-knuckled fingers. He slowed, searching for the narrow entrance to the garage
where his Durango was parked. There. He braked abruptly, grabbing Eryn’s shoulder
to keep her head from plowing into the dashboard. As he
swerved into the alleyway between two buildings to a lot in
the rear, she glanced up. "Why are we here?" she asked. The yard behind the mechanic’s shop was crammed with
dilapidated European cars. "Changing vehicles," he said. Cougar could tell her the whole story once he finally
checked in. What the hell was keeping him, anyway? As Ike
saw it, he had done his part. Cougar could do the rest. He
never wanted to see Eryn McClellan again. She made him think
about the past. She brought urgency and agitation to the
present. He would rather just exist in limbo, wanting
nothing for himself.
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