Vengeance (SSU Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  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 1

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright

  Vengeance

  (SSU Trilogy #1)

  by Vanessa Kier

  *****

  Vengeance Copyright © 2013 by Vanessa Kier.

  *****

  This book is dedicated to my biggest fan, my mom.

  Mom, I wish you’d lived long enough to see Vengeance published. I miss you!

  Chapter 1

  Wednesday, Late Afternoon

  Surgical Strike Unit Training Compound

  Oregon

  Jenna Paterson had five minutes to rescue the hostage.

  She nodded and her partner rammed open the door. With steady hands, Jenna pulled the pin on a flash grenade and lobbed it into the room. She quickly turned her head away, closing her eyes to protect her vision against the brilliant explosion. Then waited for her team leader to give the signal to enter. Thankfully, the shock of the grenade had startled the hostage inside into silence. Jenna had been afraid that one more minute of listening to the woman’s terrified screams would throw her back to the night two years ago when she’d been attacked.

  Don’t remember, she warned herself. It’s not the same. You’re not the victim this time. Your job is to save this poor woman from further abuse at the hands of the terrorists.

  Yet her body wasn’t buying it. Her stomach tightened in dread and her mouth was as dry as the paint on a da Vinci. She pressed her back tightly against the cheap plasterboard wall of the hallway. Inhaled the scent of the grenade’s fumes and underneath that, the nauseating mixture of fresh paint and fresh blood. She tightened her grip on her automatic rifle and hoped the team leader would give the go-ahead before her nerves got the better of her.

  Stick to the plan, the voice inside her head chanted. These are not the men who attacked you. That’s not Kai in there.

  Jenna clenched her teeth. She was better now. She was. She hadn’t frozen during action since the last time they’d rescued a female prisoner in the middle of being raped.

  “Go!” The voice of her team leader came clearly over the headset. At a nod from her partner, Jenna drew in a deep breath and counted to five. He went through the door first, high and to the left followed by Jenna rolling low and to the right.

  The next minutes were a surrealistic blur. Muzzle flashes turned the lingering smoke from the grenade into a multicolored cloud. The hostage cried out in fear, not realizing she was being rescued. The terrorists grunted in pain, writhing in grotesque death dances as the bullets from Jenna’s teammates found their targets.

  Then, suddenly, silence. Jenna lay on her stomach, panting, her heart racing as she searched for another target. But the room was still.

  Three short bursts from a whistle signaled the end of the exercise. The house lights came up and the experienced Surgical Strike Unit operators who’d been playing the terrorists rose to their feet, laser tagged vests glowing where they’d been “hit” by her team’s fire.

  One of the terrorists pulled off his baseball cap, revealing sweat-stained blond hair. For a second he looked so much like Kai that Jenna turned her weapon toward him before reality returned. Reeling from the close call, she quickly lowered her weapon.

  Thank God the man hadn’t noticed her targeting him. She never would have lived that one down. As she pushed hastily to her feet she snuck a glance at the rest of the room to make sure no one else had seen. And met the fierce chocolate eyes of Niko Andros.

  Her heart stuttered. Didn’t that figure? The one person who’d observed her slip was today’s guest trainer, the man her classmates spoke about in awed whispers. The man who, with the predatory stillness of his body and the wary intelligence in his eyes, reminded Jenna of a falcon.

  Jenna did her best to act casual, like nothing had happened, but Niko glanced from her weapon to the guy she’d almost shot and raised one eyebrow. Damn. She shrugged and forced a slight smile, hoping Niko would chalk her edginess up to adrenaline.

  After holding her gaze for an uncomfortable moment, Niko’s expression shifted from questioning to a banked heat that caused an alarming frisson of sexual awareness to shoot through her. Feeling her cheeks flush, she quickly turned away.

  Her stomach churned with nausea. She couldn’t handle this. Not now. Yes, she’d worked hard since the rape to get over her fear of being the object of a man’s sexual interest. She couldn’t train with guys and not expect to receive a few suggestive looks or comments. But until today she’d never felt anything but revulsion in response to a man’s attention.

  The doctors would say that her appreciation of Niko as a male was a positive step. Yet even as a brief image of her running her fingers through his short dark hair flashed in her mind, panic began a familiar beat in her veins.

  She had to get out of here. Had to—

  “Hey, you okay?” her partner Elliot asked. She nodded, unable to meet his eyes. Afraid he’d see her fear. Hoping he hadn’t seen the look Niko had given her. What could she say? “I’m scared to death because for the first time in two years I’m actually feeling attraction toward a man, but all I can remember when I think of sex is pain and blood?” Yeah, that would go over well.

  Thankfully, Elliot didn’t push for a better answer. Ignoring her trembling legs, Jenna followed him and the rest of her teammates outside where their trainers waited to review the afternoon’s exercise. One of a handful of privately-funded special operations groups that had sprung up in recent years, the Surgical Strike Unit, or SSU, had one of the best reputations for skilled operators in the world. Which meant their trainers accepted nothing but success.

  The “terrorists” and the “hostage” moved into place in the center of the assembly area, then the senior trainer read out the statistics. Jenna had killed every one of her targets. She nodded, relieved that her nerves hadn’t affected her performance and proud that she hadn’t even hesitated this time. Not like during the exercise a month ago, when seeing the victim pinned face down under her attacker had thrown Jenna back to the night she and her family had been attacked. Trapped in memories, she’d lost awareness of the action around her. When the exercise had finished and the trainers turned up the lights it took them five minutes to bring her attention back to the present.

  From his position in line with the other trainers, Niko mouthed “Good job” at her. Jenna managed a slight nod in response, then looked away before he sensed the panic his continued attention caused her.

  Taking slow, deep breaths, Jenna told herself Niko wasn’t a threat. Besides, she wouldn’t see him again after today. Rumor had it that he’d been pulled out of deep cover in Afghanistan when his joint mission with the DEA had been c
ompromised, but that Niko was headed back to Afghanistan the day after tomorrow to set things right.

  So, all she had to do was avoid appearing too nervous for the rest of the afternoon, and she wouldn’t have to worry about his effect on her any more. Thankfully, no one else on the team threatened to break her reputation for being impervious to emotion. After two years of struggling to keep herself together so she wouldn’t be thrown out of the training program due to psychological instability, she couldn’t afford to have her suitability as an operator questioned now. Not with only four months until graduation.

  “Hey, Thompkins, you shot out my knee again, you moron,” one of the trainees jibed. “I’m your partner, not a damn terrorist, man.”

  Thompkins shot his roommate a one-fingered salute. “If you’d moved your lazy ass out of the way you wouldn’t have been shot.”

  The man next to Jenna snorted. “Right. That’s what? Excuse number five hundred and twelve? Face it, you’re never gonna be as good as Paterson, here. Beat by a girl.”

  “Yeah, she’s accurate. When she doesn’t freeze up and get herself killed,” Thompkins groused.

  There was an awkward pause as everyone’s eyes turned to Jenna. “It only happened once,” she muttered, feeling her cheeks heat at the unaccustomed attention. Her teammates didn’t usually include her in their banter. “I’m not the one who just shot his partner for the second time this week.”

  Thompkins blinked in surprise over her retort. Usually she kept her mouth shut.

  “Ha! Don’t mess with Jenna, boys. She’s got bite.” Tracy Wardynski, the only other female in their training class, bumped her shoulder companionably against Jenna’s.

  Jenna allowed the contact, although it hinted at a camaraderie she didn’t feel. The attack on her family had destroyed her ability to connect with others. Her heart was a cold, barren place with no room for anything but vengeance. Friendship was a risk she refused to take.

  Yet she had to quell an inexplicable urge to glance over at Niko.

  After the trainees and role-playing agents finished their reports, the senior trainer stepped to the center of the group, drawing everyone’s attention.

  “Well done, team,” the trainer said. Then he gave them a dangerous smile that had all of them groaning. “Gear up and head to these coordinates,” he barked, reading off longitude and latitude. “You have half an hour to get there. Starting…now!”

  Jenna typed the coordinates into her watch, then sprinted down the trail with the rest of the trainees.

  #

  Three Months Later

  “Run it again,” head trainer Walter Grayson shouted to the exhausted group of trainees. “This time, Jacobs, don’t treat Paterson like a damn china doll. She comes at you, you knock her down like Williams or Jones.”

  From his position off to the side of the training field, Ryker, the director of the Surgical Strike Unit watched the group run through a mock ambush. But Ryker wasn’t here to evaluate the entire class. His eyes were only for Jenna Paterson. His chest tightened with pride as he watched her take an elbow to the gut, then counterattack with a series of blows that brought her opponent to his knees.

  She’d never be as strong as most of the men and women in the group, she was naturally too slight, but years of dance training gave her quickness and flexibility. The detail-oriented art historian’s eye she’d once used to recognize microscopic anomalies in a painting now gave her an advantage on the target range.

  Ryker smiled as Jenna dodged around an opponent and took him down from behind. When he’d arrived at the public hospital in Newark, Delaware two years ago, twenty-four-year-old Jenna had been in intensive care. Partially scalped, throat slashed, back broken, and bleeding internally from a brutal rape. The doctors hadn’t known if she’d survive. If she’d wanted to survive. If she did live, they’d doubted she’d ever walk again.

  Jenna had almost died. Hours after she’d woken up in the hospital and learned she was the only survivor, she’d pulled her medical tubes out, hoping to kill herself and join her family. She’d briefly flatlined before the staff brought her back.

  Ryker knew it was his fault. He hadn’t warned her father of the danger in time. Since then, he’d done everything in his power to make it up to her. The moment she’d been stable enough, he’d moved her here to the SSU’s medical and training facility. He’d spent hours by her bedside, urging her unconscious body to live. Telling her childhood stories of her father and of their time together in the military. He’d watched with admiration as she fought fiercely to overcome her injuries. Despite his misgivings, he’d honored her decision to apply to the SSU’s operator training program, hoping the training would empower her and help her work through the trauma of the attack.

  Yet even though Jenna was in the top ten percent of her class, Ryker wasn’t convinced this was the life for her. He had trouble reconciling the smiling, energetic young woman she’d been before the attack to the grim, focused woman moving through today’s exercise.

  He walked over to Grayson. “How’s she doing?”

  They both knew he wasn’t referring to Jenna’s physical ability. Nobody watching her fight would guess she’d spent two months in a wheelchair. Or that she’d once been a sunny art history graduate student who taught dance classes on the side.

  “Desensitization mostly worked,” Grayson grunted. The grizzled, African American, former Army Sergeant dismissed the training class from the field with a nod. “Just average newbie mistakes so far. No fear of being approached from behind or grabbed by the throat. Okay pinned to the ground. Knife work remains her weakest skill, but she sucks it up and gets the job done.” Grayson slanted a glance at Ryker. “Still think she’s a walking time bomb. A girl don’t survive what she did without getting good and mad. She’s so calm, the boys call her Lady Zen.” He shrugged.

  Ryker watched Jenna finish the exercise, satisfied with her physical skill and her teamwork. Yet he shared Grayson’s concern about her emotional state. Yes, the psychiatrists had cleared her for duty. They said there was no way to predict if Jenna would ever have a major emotional breakdown. She’d made it two years and only lost it a couple of times. She’d been solid for a good six months now.

  Still…Ryker shook his head. Graduation was in a few weeks, but he wasn’t ready to let Jenna go. Not even knowing that she’d initially be paired with an experienced agent on low-risk missions eased his mind.

  His mouth twisted wryly. Who was he kidding? He never wanted Jenna out on assignment. She was his surrogate daughter. Her father, Eric, had been his best friend since they were three. Ryker had promised to keep Eric’s children safe if anything happened to him. He’d failed Eric once. Eric, his wife, and their fourteen-year-old twins Isabel and Justin were dead. But Ryker could make good on his promise and keep Jenna safe.

  He turned to leave, then paused.

  “Tell Jenna I want her in my office in half an hour,” he said. Maybe he wasn’t ready to send her out into the world, but it had been a long time since they’d shared a meal. He’d see if he could convince her to have dinner with him so they could catch up.

  #

  Short hair still damp from her quick shower after training, Jenna walked through the administration building toward Ryker’s office.

  “You have Paterson’s sister here,” an unfamiliar male voice said from behind Ryker’s partially opened door. “But you haven’t used her once to draw Paterson out of hiding. Let her come with me to Moscow. When Paterson learns his sister is alive, he’s guaranteed to show himself.”

  They’d found Kai! Jenna stopped, holding her breath as she waited for Ryker’s response.

  “No.”

  Ryker’s denial catapulted Jenna into molten rage. She slammed her palms flat against the heavy oak door and shoved it open. The door bounced against the wall with a satisfying smack as she stormed into the office.

  Ryker glanced at her with surprise, but didn’t show any guilt for the refusal she’d overheard. The tight
hand of betrayal closed around her throat, and for a moment she couldn’t breathe. Then anger broke through, forcing air into her lungs.

  “You know where Kai is,” she snarled, flinging the words at Ryker. “But you weren’t going to tell me, were you?”

  “Who’s this?” Ryker’s guest demanded. Then he did a double-take, looking between Jenna and something on Ryker’s desk. “Wait. This is the sister?”

  Jenna narrowed her eyes and gave the man the once-over. He was tall, probably a few inches over six feet. His rich, oak brown suit fit so perfectly it had to be custom tailored. His arrogant expression made her think of a king deigning to visit his peons.

  Jenna was so not in the mood for dealing with an asshole. She took an aggressive step toward the stranger before Ryker cleared his throat and sanity returned. Turning her body slightly away from the man, but keeping him in her peripheral vision, she planted her feet and crossed her arms over her chest, then focused her attention on her boss.

  Ryker sighed and stood up. “Mark Tonelli, meet Jenna Paterson, Kai Paterson’s sister. Jenna, Tonelli is with the CIA. He just finished participating in one of our joint operations.”

  Jenna gave a brief smile in response to Tonelli’s raised eyebrow.

  “Tonelli, please give us a moment alone,” Ryker said.

  The man pursed his lips, but with a curt nod he turned and left, shutting the door behind him.

  “What’s going on?” she demanded. Then she noticed what Tonelli had seen on Ryker’s desk. A fax with Kai’s picture on it. She snatched the fax before Ryker could stop her, waving it toward him as her anger flared back up. “You found Kai and weren’t going to tell me? You promised to keep me in the loop!”

  “I promised I’d let you know when we found Kai.” Ryker nodded toward the fax in her hand. “One of our informants spotted Kai getting into a cab in Moscow this morning. However, I never promised to let you go after him.”

  Jenna flinched. “I…you…you…” She could barely think past her anger. “You know that’s the only reason I entered the training program. So I’d be ready to take down Kai!”

  Ryker raised his eyebrows. “Is that right? I don’t remember seeing revenge listed as a motive in your paperwork. The SSU doesn’t condone vigilante action, Jenna.”