Targeted Risk (R.I.S.C. #7) - Anna Blakely Page 0,73

going to die without ever having the courage to tell Jake she was in love with him. That single thought was more painful than anything these men could ever do to her.

Though she’d never been shot, Olivia knew to the depths of her soul that a bullet piercing her flesh would be nothing compared to the pain searing through her heart at this very moment.

With more thoughts of Jake and a lifetime of regret, she glanced back over her shoulder. The scarred man was right behind her, now. He raised his gun, and Olivia screamed.

She tried to run faster, but it was too late. He was too close, and her body had nothing more to give. She squeezed her eyes shut and pictured the last thing she wanted to take from this world.

Jake’s handsome face appeared in her mind’s eye. He smiled, the movement deepening the shallow lines bracketing each side of his mouth. His piercing blue eyes sparkled back at her.

I love you.

The words whispered through her mind just before a sudden, sharp pain exploded in the back of her head. And then...nothing.

****

Jake McQueen couldn’t think. God Almighty, he couldn’t breathe. The dizziness and nausea hit him like a freight train as he reached for the remote, desperate to block out the nightmare playing before him. He willed his thumb to press the power button, but his fingers refused to follow the simple order.

“The brief clip you just saw was from the memorial service held yesterday in honor of the eight men and women who were violently murdered in what authorities are still reporting as a drug-related raid. Five weeks ago, the group of American doctors and nurses arrived in Toamasina, Madagascar to offer volunteer medical aid to those in need. As I’m sure most of our viewers already know, Toamasina was one of the many areas devastated by the massive hurricane that hit Madagascar early last month.”

Jake shook his head, his denial instant and final because no way, no fucking way was this really happening. The media, the so-called authorities...they had to be wrong.

Ah, God, not her. Anyone but her!

He continued listening to the TV, searching for something, anything that said this was all just some horrible mistake. But the longer he sat there, the more Jake’s unwavering wall of denial began to crumble. Everything he’d just seen and heard pointed to only one truth—Olivia was dead.

Last week, while he and his team had been completing their most recent mission, her entire group had been gunned down. Their bodies burned beyond recognition. A week ago.

Jesus.

Finally regaining some bodily control, Jake raised the shaking remote. He refused to sit and listen to another goddamn word about how she’d been brutally gunned down and then fucking burned.

Just then, Olivia’s face filled the oversized screen. His thumb froze in place. He couldn’t tear his gaze away now if his life depended on it.

Jake knew the picture well. He should, he'd taken it the day Olivia received her nursing degree. She smiled back at him from his TV, her laugh from that long-ago moment forever captured.

A pair of gorgeous, hazel eyes with their mesmerizing swirls of greens and browns bore deeply into his own. They were eyes he’d always sworn he could get lost in. Jake blinked, and her name appeared on the screen in bold letters beneath the picture.

Olivia Bradshaw.

His best friend’s little sister. The girl he and her brother, Mike, had spent countless hours of their childhood tormenting...all the while, protecting her with everything they had. She was also the same girl who’d grown before his eyes into the most beautiful, compassionate woman he’d ever known. And the most stubborn.

Olivia had given him so much shit throughout the years, challenging him at every turn. Despite all her sass—or maybe because of it—Jake had never wanted a woman more.

For years, she’d been the star of more fantasies than he could count. The cause of more wet dreams than he’d ever admit. She was also the only woman who’d managed to steal his heart, and last week she’d died without knowing the truth about how he really felt.

A rush of bile hit the base of his throat and Jake barely made it to his kitchen sink before losing the fast-food lunch he’d scarfed down on his way home. A few minutes later, his hands shook so violently that it took three tries to get the damned faucet turned on so he could rinse the rancid taste from his mouth.

After running the garbage