Midnight Kiss (Men of Midnight #7) - Lisa Marie Rice Page 0,15

serious shit. Maybe even government serious. Certainly, the only entities that could field that kind of operational reaction that fast would be US military SpecOps, maybe the CIA Special Activities Division and one or two private security companies, but they’d have to operate on the East Coast.

Or be everywhere, which was even scarier.

This was a woman who had serious enemies. Enemies who had infrastructure, resources and weaponry. She had nothing of that, not even tactical awareness. She had smarts and was nice. That was what Felicity said and he’d seen nothing that would contradict that.

Smart. And nice. Those weren’t good qualities to deal with the bad guys of the world. Particularly if one of them was her fucking father. Or grandfather. Who wanted her dead.

Luke had dealt with a lot of shit in his life, as a soldier and as a cop. But he’d never had to deal with anything like this. His own dad had been the best. Aloysius Reynolds, pure Irish, a twenty-year cop, had been the best husband and dad ever, in the history of the world. When Luke’s mom had cancer, his dad took leave and never left her side. She died with her hand in his. And when Luke had had his troubles, his dad had been by his side one thousand percent. In fact, Luke’s troubles had broken his dad’s heart.

He missed his dad, fiercely, every single fucking day.

His dad had never once raised a hand to him. He sure as hell hadn’t tried to kill him.

That was a level of viciousness he’d never encountered, not in fifteen years as a soldier and a cop. No wonder she was almost paralyzed with terror.

Luke watched her carefully as she spoke. She was exhausted and terrified but she spoke cogently, even elegantly. Every aspect of her spoke of a stable, intelligent young woman. Who also happened to be amazingly pretty. Not head-turningly beautiful, she was too understated for that. Beautiful women reached out and grabbed your hormones by the balls because nature programmed them for that. Not Hope. She just sat quietly and waited for you to notice the perfect skin, fine features, green eyes surrounded by black lashes, the shiny blue-black hair. She was quiet and made you come to her but once you did …

Shit.

What kind of man would want this young woman dead? How could a father not be supremely proud of a young woman who was so smart and brave? He just couldn’t wrap his head around a father wanting a daughter dead. Ordering her death.

Luke had come across great depravity as a soldier and as a cop but this … this was just too much.

He always did a good job, the best he was capable of. But by God, he was going to defend this young woman with everything in him. Luckily ASI was on board, and ASI had resources. They’d pull out all the stops for Felicity because she was loved, but once they got to know Hope, they’d pull out all the stops for her own sake.

He hated that lost look on Hope’s white face. The look of someone who’d suddenly had the gates of hell wrenched open right in front of her, with fanged monsters reaching out to grab her. She needed some sense of normalcy, otherwise she’d spiral into despair. Luke had no idea how resilient she was, but he did know that to track down those who wanted to hurt her, he needed her help.

Only she had the knowledge necessary to crack this, inside that pretty head of hers, but if she was beaten down, she couldn’t access it.

Normal … what was normal?

Well, food.

Leaning forward, he tapped her gently on the knee. She startled, looked him in the eyes. Her own were full of fear and misery.

“Hey. I think we need to take a break. You are completely safe here. I know you’ve been on the run and you must be running on fumes. This place has a great restaurant. How about we order in some food?”

That earned him a shaky smile and a nod. He didn’t want it to — this was a job, or if not a job, a favor to Felicity — but his heart simply turned over in his chest. She was doing her very best in a very shitty situation. Which, basically, was what being a Ranger and a cop was all about.

“Here.” He stretched out, grabbed the room service menu and sat next to her. He ran his finger down