Praise for Monica McCarty and Her Novels
“McCarty’s gift lies in writing strong characters into wildly entertaining and often unexpected scenarios.”
—The Washington Post
“A master storyteller . . . McCarty breathes life into her memorable characters as they face dangerous adventures. The fresh plots, infused with romance and passion, are also brimming with history and drama.”
—RT Book Reviews
“McCarty creates an enjoyable romance with torrid chemistry, appealing characters, and believable historical situations.”
—Publishers Weekly
“McCarty sets up the story well and she creates multifaceted characters. . . . The love scenes are steamy and entertaining.”
—Fresh Fiction
“Monica McCarty is a master of blending fact and fiction.”
—Romance Junkies
“Strong, intricate plotting and believable characters keep the pages turning.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“A mixture of passion, history, and great wit to create a tale to captivate your senses! To die for!”
—Addicted to Romance
“Heart-wrenching . . . made a lasting impression on me.”
—Under the Covers Book Blog
“Monica McCarty is an absolutely superior author! Her Highland Guard series has to be one of the absolute best Highland series out there! Fun, fast paced, fact driven, and totally fantastic!”
—Bodice Rippers, Femme Fatales and Fantasy
“A powerful tale of love, woe, hardship, and the power of true love . . . a must read!”
—My Book Addiction Reviews
Also by Monica McCarty
The Highland Guard
THE GHOST
THE ROCK
THE ROGUE (novella)
THE STRIKER
THE ARROW
THE KNIGHT (novella)
THE RAIDER
THE HUNTER
THE RECRUIT
THE SAINT
THE VIPER
THE RANGER
THE HAWK
THE CHIEF
The Campbell Trilogy
HIGHLAND SCOUNDREL
HIGHLAND OUTLAW
HIGHLAND WARRIOR
The MacLeods of Skye Trilogy
HIGHLANDER UNCHAINED
HIGHLANDER UNMASKED
HIGHLANDER UNTAMED
A JOVE BOOK
Published by Berkley
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
Copyright © 2017 by Monica McCarty
Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.
A JOVE BOOK and BERKLEY are registered trademarks and the B colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.
Ebook ISBN 9780399587719
First Printing: September 2017
Cover art: man © Claudio Marinesco; fire © Dmitry Pistrov
Cover design by Rita Frangie
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
To Veronica, my Scotland travel partner in crime who helped this story come to life on our second cruise through the Hebrides. When is #3 again?
Contents
Praise for Monica McCarty and Her Novels
Also by Monica McCarty
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Special Preview of Off the Grid
Acknowledgments
When I decided to write a contemporary series after twenty-two historical romances, it would have been a lot more daunting had it not been for the overwhelmingly enthusiastic response of my agent, Annelise Robey, and my new editor at Penguin, Cindy Hwang. Ironically, Cindy was one of the first editors I met when I joined RWA about fifteen years ago. Our paths have crossed many times over those years, and it is so nice to finally have the chance to work together. Thank you both for your confidence, excitement, and support in getting this series off the ground and running. Here’s to #2!
I have had an impressive run of covers, but Going Dark just might be my favorite to date. A huge thanks to the art department for all the hard work they put into getting this one just right. And thanks to production and my fabulous copy editor for helping me keep the secret of my horrendous spelling, tendency to capitalize everything, and the occasional gerund. I do know the rule—I swear.
I also want to thank the 2016 Kiawah gang—Ally Carter, Sarah MacLean, and Louisa White—for helping me get this proposal written last spring, and for all of your collective wisdom about this crazy business.
Jami Alden read my first book—what became Highlander Untamed—about fifteen years ago, and she has been the first reader of every book since then. She knows me, my audience, and my writing style better than anyone, and I wait on the proverbial pins and needles for her always insightful comments and feedback. She can never leave me. Seriously.
Veronica Wolff pulled double duty on this book for me. Not only did she accompany me all the way to Scotland to help this book come to life; she also provided that final last-minute-assurance read to make sure I hit a few things just right.
On the latest Scotland trip, Veronica and I also had a chance to reconnect with the tour guide from our first Scottish adventure way back in 2008, Iain Watson, who came out of tour guide retirement for a special trip around the Highlands. It was my luck that Iain’s new job is as an officer with Scotland’s Ministry Defense Police, which as it happened became pertinent for this book. A huge thanks to Iain for the fabulous tour and the quick responses to my questions.
And finally, when I put out the word on Facebook asking whether anyone knew som
eone who might be able to help me with a few SEAL/navy-related questions, PJ chimed right in and offered to contact a friend who put me in touch with Paul R. I could have asked him a million questions, but I restrained myself to about a dozen. If there are mistakes, you can be assured those were ones I didn’t ask. And, Paul, I owe you an A’s game (or two) the next time you are on this coast.
Prologue
BARENTS SEA, ABOUT SEVEN HUNDRED MILES OFF THE NORTH COAST OF NORWAY
MAY 25, 1800 HOURS
SEALs liked to say the only easy day was yesterday. Well, Brian Murphy wished it could hurry up and get to tomorrow because today fucking sucked.
Another sharp roll of the sea sent him sideways, and he had to fight to hold on to his seat—and his lunch.
Christ, he hated this. Even a hundred feet down, the storm was making itself felt, and it was getting worse. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold on. One more sudden lurch and the long-fought battle with the contents of his stomach was going to be over. In a big all-over-the-floor kind of way that he would never live down.
Suddenly, a sharp grating sound interrupted the constant hum. Keyed as he was to every little sound, he flinched.
“What was that?” Special Warfare Operator First Class John Donovan said in an anxious voice—which should have been Brian’s first clue. “Oh God, we’re all going to die!”
The words elicited their intended reaction and Brian paled, causing Donovan to burst into laughter. He was joined by the others close enough to have heard him. Basically the entire sub.
Donovan was just fucking with him. Brian relaxed—marginally.
“You’re looking a little nervous, MIT.” Donovan hadn’t stopped grinning and his teeth flashed white in the dim, battery-saving light of the sub as he performed last-minute adjustments on his mask. “The government won’t be too happy if you puke all over its twenty-million-dollar new baby.”
Brian, the newest member of the not officially acknowledged SEAL Team Nine, wiped the cold sweat from his brow and forced his hands to steady as he made adjustments to his own mask, but the rapid beat of his heart gave him away.
He was nervous. Who the hell wouldn’t be? After almost two and a half years of training, it was finally the real thing, and he was anxious to prove himself. Which was damned hard to do when he’d been gritting his teeth to fight off nausea the entire ride.
Of course his first op had to be in a submersible—in a storm, no less.
He didn’t care if Proteus II was the height of American stealth submersible dual-mode technology with all fourteen members of the platoon seated in relative comfort—relative dry comfort, that is, as opposed to previous “wet” submersibles that had required them to be submerged in water for the ride—he hated subs.
He hated the cramped conditions, the dank, reduced-oxygen air, the creaking as the pressure of the water closed in around them—he repressed a shudder—and most of all the feeling of being locked in a tin (or in this case fiberglass) can. Buried alive. For fifteen hours. In an Arctic storm.
Hooyah.
But leave it to Donovan to find his weakness. They all had them. Being a SEAL didn’t mean you weren’t afraid of anything—it meant you knew how to control the fear and could still perform at the highest, most elite level under extreme conditions. He’d been handpicked for this op not because of his Physical Screening Test scores—some of the highest ever posted—but because of his fluency in Slavic languages, and he wasn’t going to do anything to fuck it up. Sub or no sub. But give him a nice high-altitude-jump infil from a plane any day of the week.
Navy SEALs were supposed to be as at home in the water as they were on land. And he was. A sub wasn’t either of them.
But if he didn’t want to hear about being the SEAL who was scared of subs for the rest of his career, he’d better get himself under control. MIT was a bad enough code name for someone who’d gone to Caltech. But he was damned sure Donovan could come up with something much worse. He’d heard of one guy who’d thrown up on his first mission, and it had taken him ten years to lose the name “Cookie.” As in “toss yours.”
“My stomach is hurting,” Brian admitted. He knew better than to deny, but he could try to deflect. “No more Mexican food in Norway. Those fish tacos sounded a hell of a lot better than they went down.”
As a fellow Californian, Donovan winced in sympathy and shook his head. “It’s a siren’s call, FNG.” Fucking New Guy—his other nickname. Why couldn’t it be good ol’ Murph? “The promise of a burrito or taco is hard to resist, but you’ll learn. Nothing will kill your optimism like Mexican food in Europe. They try, God love ’em, but it’s never quite right.”
“Jesus Christ, don’t get him started on Mexican food,” Senior Chief Dean Baylor interjected with a glare directed at Brian. “I’m tired of his constant moaning. You’d think it was all he could eat.”
“You might understand if you came from a state where they actually knew how to make it. Ranch beans and cheese sauce?” Donovan shuddered dramatically. “I think I’ll be sick here along with FNG.”
Actually the fucking new guy wasn’t feeling so sick anymore. Brian wondered if that had been Donovan’s intention. Lightening the mood seemed to be the role he’d carved out in the fourteen-member platoon. Retiarius Platoon. Named for the gladiators who killed with a net and a trident—the SEAL insignia.
Yet here they were, on their way to undertake one of the most difficult ops any SEAL team had ever attempted—an operation that put the “fuck up and you die” in “no fail”—and they were talking about Mexican food.
“It’s queso, asshole,” Senior Chief Baylor said. “And Tex-Mex isn’t Mexican. It’s a Texan improvement.”
Brian looked at Donovan in horror, but he wasn’t going to be the one to tell the last-person-you-want-to-piss-off senior chief that he was out of his ever-loving mind.
Another voice popped in from farther down the hull. “Those are fighting words where I come from, Tex.”
Brian recognized the voice of Michael Ruiz, the third Californian in the fourteen-man platoon, although he might as well have been from another galaxy. The ganglands of South Central LA were light-years away from Pasadena, where Brian had grown up, though their houses were probably no more than twenty miles apart. Brian didn’t know whether Ruiz had actually been in a gang, but he looked mean enough and had the ink on his arms to make it likely.
“My Winkler can take on your switchblade anytime, Miggy,” the senior chief said.
The rest of the team laughed.
“You guys are a bunch of racist assholes,” Ruiz said with a disgusted shake of his head. “Except for you, White,” he said to the assistant platoon commander, Lieutenant Charles White III, aka Charles “Not” White.
“Technically I’m half a racist asshole, Miggy. My mom was as white as Hart over there. And I like both Mexican and Tex-Mex.”
Only in the locker room atmosphere of the Teams could you get away with needling a Mexican guy for his “switchblade,” or calling him Miguel when his name was actually Michael, or nicknaming a black guy—half black guy—with the last name of White “Not.” But when you trusted that guy with your life on almost a daily basis—and vice versa—race was just one more potential topic to give someone shit about.
Senior Chief Baylor and Ruiz had been best friends for years, but the entire platoon was as tight as brothers. They were the only family most of them had. That was part of why they’d been handpicked for Team Nine. Men without families could deploy on covert ops without anyone asking questions.
Donovan leaned closer to him as if he meant to whisper, but he intended for the entire sub to hear him. “They’re both delusional. I don’t know what White’s excuse is, but Baylor is from Texas. They still think they’re a separate country down there.”
The senior chief just lifted an eyebrow. “This from the guy from the People’s Re
public of Berkeley?”
Donovan just beamed that shit-eating grin of his. “Free love, brother.”
Senior Chief Baylor muttered a curse and shook his head. But Brian thought there might be the barest hint of a smile hovering around his mouth. It was hard to tell with all the dive gear. Although Brian suspected it would be hard to tell even without it.
Dean Baylor epitomized the old navy slang of a sea dog. In his case, a bulldog. The senior chief was the most experienced man in the platoon and the leader to the enlisted men. He was a no-nonsense, tough-as-nails veteran sailor in the old-fashioned sense of the job who always seemed to have the answer—most of the time before the question had been asked. Even his unimaginative vanilla “Tex” code name made sense—no one would dare give him a shitty code name like Cookie. He was feared, loved, and respected; the men would follow him anywhere.
“You get too much of that as it is, Dynomite.”
Dynomite—not Dynamite. Brian had erroneously assumed Donovan’s code name had come from his skill with explosives. But it actually came from the TV character Kid Dyn-o-Mite portrayed by Jimmie Walker in Good Times. “Good times” were what Donovan showed women. Apparently lots of them. With the laid-back California surfer boy thing he had going—Brian had never seen so many ugly-assed Hawaiian shirts in his life—he probably had them lining up. But he wasn’t a surfer. Donovan had been a star water polo player at the University of Southern California, recruited by the SEALs after graduation.
“I told you he was delusional, MIT,” Donovan replied. “It isn’t possible to get too much. I’m sure they taught you that in one of your physics classes? There has to be some kind of natural law for that. Newton’s law of attraction maybe?”
“It’s the Law of Universal Gravitation, asshole,” the senior chief said. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Ivy League?”
Brian nodded but didn’t take the bait. He wasn’t going to point out that MIT—the school he hadn’t even gone to—wasn’t in the Ivy League. Instead he nodded and tried not to shudder at the thought of being called Ivy for ten years.