War Bringer, The Red Team Series, Book 6 (Red Team #6)
Elaine Levine
Dedication
For Barry, who never lets my brand of crazy delay dinner.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to my team of beta readers. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your fitting my emergency reading requests into your packed schedules!
A special shout-out goes to my readers who made this story and this entire series possible simply through your encouragement. Your frequent reminders that I’m not on this journey alone mean everything to me!
A Note from the Author: We begin War Bringer at the point where Assassin’s Promise left off. To maximize your enjoyment of this serialized story, I highly recommend reading the series in order, starting with The Edge of Courage and including the Red Team wedding novellas, before beginning this book!
As a fun extra, I’ve included at the back of this book a chapter of Abbie Zander’s book, Dangerous Secrets—the first story in her amazing Callahan Brothers series. If you enjoy sampling stories from authors I admire, drop me a note so I know to do this with future books!
* SPOILERS! *
Here’s a refresher for those of you who have read the previous Red Team books (skip this and go read them if you haven’t yet!). When we were last with our Red Team heroes…
Greer and Remi uncovered the Friendship Community’s involvement in King’s biowarfare experiments with smallpox.
Greer and Remi have decided to pursue their relationship.
Greer learned what happened to Sally, the girl who tried to kill Kit in Honor Unraveled.
Mandy and Ivy are pregnant.
Rocco and Mandy have hired Wynn Ratcliff as a teacher/babysitter for Zavi.
Rocco is still struggling with his PTSD.
Someone—was it Greer? Ty? Owen? King?—killed Senator Whiddon.
Kit asked Val to look into Ivy’s new waitress, Ace Myers, who has a mysterious background.
Selena fired both Val and Owen as romantic interests.
It’s September, and the team is in their fourth month of investigation.
Fiona was kidnapped at the end of Assassin’s Promise.
And now, we continue with Kelan Shiozski and Fiona Addison’s story in War Bringer…
Chapter One
How much loss one person could survive wasn’t something Fiona Addison ever wanted to learn. But learn it, she did.
Her sophomore year at Colorado State University began with the fatal car accidents that took her mom and friend and ended with her stepdad’s death. She lost everything…and found her heart in the wreckage of her life.
His name was Kelan Shiozski.
A former member of the elite Red Team special operations unit in the Army, he was part of the private security team that exposed the terrorists her stepdad had been working for.
Kelan had been there for her when her life had imploded, an anchor in a world that no longer made sense. Fiona drew a deep breath. Just thinking of him made her feel safe.
She was on her way up to the team’s headquarters to spend her birthday weekend with him. Her skin tingled at the thought of finally moving their relationship to the next level—a thing he’d refused to do until she was twenty-one.
The remote highway she drove between Colorado and Wyoming was especially scenic on a late summer evening like this, with the sun casting orange light over green hills and granite outcroppings. Her excitement for the weekend sharpened her senses; colors were brighter, scents richer. God, she couldn’t wait to be with Kelan.
She checked her mirrors. A couple of white vans were quickly approaching in the left lane, going a lot faster than the speed limit that she was already exceeding.
She looked forward again as the first one passed her. The second one slowed down and moved over to her lane. Weird that there were two white vans so close together. Could be they worked for the same company and were in a hurry to end their workday.
She grinned. She was in a hurry to get up to Kelan, so she could understand the need for speed.
The first van moved into her lane then hit his brakes. Maybe it realized how fast it was going. There weren’t a lot of cops on this road, but if any were lying in wait, they’d pull these guys over in an instant.
The van behind her got closer. The one in front of her slowed even more. She watched in confusion and growing fear as they got dangerously close to her, realizing too late that they were trying to run her off the road. She hit her brakes, but that was a big mistake, as her slower speed let them maneuver in closer. She tried to change lanes, but her car jolted as they blocked her in.
*
Waiting for Fiona to turn twenty-one made Kelan Shiozski feel as if he wore his skin inside out. But that wait was at an end; they would be celebrating her birthday this weekend.
It was time to talk about the claiming ceremony. He wasn’t in a hurry for the ceremony… Well, yeah, he kind of was. He was ready for them to be together forever.
He checked his watch again. Fiona had planned to leave Colorado a little later than usual today. She’d been good about varying her schedule, her route home, being alert and aware. This evening, she’d stayed in town to get her homework finished so that she could give him her complete focus for three full days.
He didn’t like her being so far away during the week, but it was working. So far. He especially loved that her school week ended Thursday afternoons, since she didn’t have classes on Fridays this semester.
He made another turn about the room, trying to keep his mind from thinking about locking the two of them in his room for the next few days.