Heart of the Wolf Read online

  Heart of the Wolf

  USA TODAY Bestselling Author

  Lindsay McKenna

  Wolf Harding might have left Morgan Trayhern’s mercenary business, but he was still intrigued by worthy causes. One look at Sarah Thatcher and Wolf knew he had to get involved with the lovely spitfire—for her own safety. But who was going to protect him from the tempting vixen?

  Sarah realized that bruises and broken bones weren’t all Wolf had suffered in the past—his heart had been shattered as well. And if Sarah wanted to tame the wounded warrior, she had to earn his trust…before Wolf ran for the hills

  Also available from Lindsay McKenna and HQN Books

  The Last Cowboy

  Deadly Silence

  Deadly Identity

  Guardian

  The Adversary

  Reunion

  Shadows from the Past

  Dangerous Prey

  Time Raiders: The Seeker

  The Quest

  Heart of the Storm

  Dark Truth

  Beyond the Limit

  Unforgiven

  Silent Witness

  Enemy Mine

  Firstborn

  Morgan’s Honor

  Morgan’s Legacy

  An Honorable Woman

  Contents

  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

  About the Author

  Prologue

  “Dr. Shepherd? I’m Morgan Trayhern, from Perseus. You’ve got two of my men here, Harding and Killian.”

  Morgan realized he was having trouble controlling his voice. He cleared his throat. Dr. Marlene Shepherd, a pleasant-looking woman whose face was lined with fatigue, looked up at him.

  She smiled tiredly and leaned against the nurses’ station. “I’m glad you could come, Mr. Trayhern.”

  “How are they?”

  She straightened and gestured for him to follow her to the empty visitors’ lounge. At two in the morning, the entire hospital was quiet, with only a skeleton staff on duty. “They arrived only an hour ago, Mr. Trayhern. Mr. Harding is in fair condition, and Mr. Killian is in good condition.”

  Morgan inhaled a deep, thankful breath. Restlessly he scanned the dimly lit halls, automatically hating Bethesda Naval Hospital’s sterile, antiseptic smells. “Then they’ll be okay?”

  The doctor halted within the spacious visitors’ lounge and faced him. She took off her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “I won’t lie to you, Mr. Trayhern. Both men are malnourished, just for starters.”

  “Starved,” he said flatly. It was a statement, not a question. Morgan wondered how much the navy doctor knew about his three-man mercenary team’s stint in Peru. Studying her intently, Morgan decided from the worry and confusion on her full, square features that she didn’t know much.

  “Yes.”

  “So what’s Wolf Harding’s condition—specifically?” Wolf had been the team leader in Peru.

  “Specifically, Mr. Harding has been, for lack of a better word, tortured extensively, Mr. Trayhern.” The doctor’s full mouth pursed, and she gave him an incisive look. “So has Mr. Killian—to a far lesser degree.”

  “You’re going to need a microbiologist, a good one,” Morgan said grimly. “They’ve been in the Peruvian jungle for nearly two years. They may be suffering from bacterial infections.”

  “We’ve already begun testing for that,” Dr. Shepherd said, putting her glasses back on. “No broken bones,” she offered.

  Broken spirits? Morgan wondered bleakly. The entire Peru venture had been unsuccessful. As he stood listening to Dr. Shepherd continue to list his two mercenaries’ lesser medical problems, Morgan forced himself to be patient.

  Wolf Harding had been commander of the three-man Perseus team. And his condition was only fair. What had gone wrong? Morgan tried to appear attentive as the soft-spoken doctor completed her analysis of his men’s conditions.

  “When may I see them, Dr. Shepherd?”

  “0800 tomorrow morning, Mr. Trayhern.”

  “Not any sooner?”

  She gave him a sympathetic smile. “I’m sorry. Both men are exhausted and are sleeping deeply right now.”

  Curbing his impatience, Morgan gave her a curt nod. “I appreciate all your help, Dr. Shepherd.”

  “Of course. If you’ll excuse me, Mr. Trayhern, I have my rounds to complete.”

  Morgan nodded, then remained standing in the gloomy visitors’ lounge as she disappeared down a corridor. The silence ate away at him as his mind traveled back in time. Two years ago, he’d formed Perseus—a security consulting company—and hired twenty mercenaries. His men and women would go anywhere in the world, aiding those in jeopardy who were beyond the help of direct U.S. government intervention. Today, Morgan had more demands for his people’s services than he had people to fill those requests. And Perseus had an unblemished record of success—until now.

  Rubbing his sandpapery jaw, he decided to stay at the hospital—just in case Wolf took a turn for the worse. He wouldn’t abandon his men the way he’d been left—to die alone in some foreign country’s hospital. He didn’t care whether his men knew he stood guard over them. When he’d started his company, Morgan had made a promise to his people and to himself: He’d treat them the way he’d want to be treated.

  Morgan’s connections in the upper levels of government meant Perseus lacked for nothing. He had state-of-the-art communications with the FBI and CIA, satellite links, and the eager help of friendly countries. The government had been only too happy to hear he was setting up shop. There were many cases involving American citizens that they couldn’t become directly involved in—shadowy political cases that could threaten the progress of diplomacy if the government was implicated. Perseus came in and quietly handled the problem.

  Slowly pacing the length of the visitors’ lounge, Morgan felt exhaustion tugging at him. He’d had a sixth sense about this long mission, which involved three of his best men. Stopping, he looked around at the gloom and sighed. He was lucky they hadn’t been killed. And for that he was grateful. Perseus employees were culled from the top mercenaries in the world. They were at the top of their craft, highly intelligent, loyal, and emotionally stable—unlike many mercenary types, who might have skills, but lacked the stable psychological profile Morgan demanded.

  He thought of Laura, his wife, who would still be sleeping soundly in their nearby Washington, D.C., home. She’d become accustomed to him bailing out of bed at ungodly hours to meet his returning mercenaries, arriving from a mission at one of the region’s two major airports—or sometimes at the Bethesda Naval Hospital. He’d call and leave Laura a message on the answering service so that she’d know where he was and not to worry.

  Frowning, Morgan loosened his paisley tie and unbuttoned his shirt collar. He sank down onto the plastic cushions of a visitors’ room sofa, which creaked in protest as he relaxed for the first time in hours. Two of the three men he’d sent to Peru had been injured. Jake, the third—not requiring medical transport—would be returning on a later flight. Morgan would have to wait to hear his version of events. Morgan wished he could get used to this part of his job, but he knew he never would. Once a leader of a company of men, the old Marine Corps saying went, always a leader of a company of men. Well, he’d had his men caught in one hell of a vise. They were lucky they’d survived at all.

 
; With a sigh, Morgan tipped his head back and closed his eyes. He needed to talk to Wolf Harding. He needed to find out what had happened.

  A groan pulled Wolf out of his deep, healing sleep. The noise sounded as if it came from faraway, but as he slowly forced his eyes open a fraction he realized he was the one doing the groaning. Pain lapped at the edges of his semiconscious confusion. Where was he? The room was quiet, white and clean. The hell he’d lived in for over a month had been dark, dank and torturous.

  I’m alive.

  The thought congealed in his groggy mind. Wolf forced his awareness outward. He was in a bed—unshackled. Every muscle in his body felt as if it were on fire. Widening his attention span, Wolf took in two IV’s dispensing life-giving fluids into both his arms. Blips of memory from the nightmarish past sped through his mind.

  He saw faces, inhaled horrible smells. He heard screams. The scream of a woman. Oh, God…

  The door to his room slowly opened.

  Wolf blinked back the tears that had welled up in his eyes. Though his vision was blurred, he recognized his boss, Morgan Trayhern, who look disheveled, his face darkly in need of a shave, his tie askew over the open collar of his white silk shirt.

  A wall of emotion funneled up through Wolf. He opened his mouth to speak, but all that came out was an animal groan. He saw Morgan’s pale features grow taut as he approached, his mouth thinning. Wolf knew he must look like death warmed over.

  “You look like hell,” Morgan said by way of greeting as he halted at Wolf’s bedside. Wolf’s face was bruised, cut and swollen, the flesh around his eyes puffy, allowing Morgan only a glimpse of gray through the slitted eyelids.

  Wolf nodded and dragged in a ragged breath. “Where?” he croaked.

  “Bethesda Naval Hospital. The Peruvian police called me, and we sent the jet down for you and Killian. You arrived around midnight last night.”

  At the mention of his Irish friend’s name, Wolf tried to speak, but he found it impossible.

  “He’s in better shape than you are,” Morgan said, reading the question in Wolf’s bloodshot eyes. “And Jake is fine. He caught a military flight out of the country and will be arriving here shortly.” Morgan frowned. “You’re the one we were worried about.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You in much pain?” Morgan recalled all too vividly the times after his own surgery when his pain medication had worn off and he’d sweated in agony for hours before some harried, overworked nurse finally came by to check on him.

  Wolf nodded once. He saw Morgan lean over and press the button that would bring a nurse with a shot to numb his physical pain. But as much as he wished there was a shot or pills that could dull the raging pain in his heart, Wolf knew there was nothing to lessen that shattering ache. A clawing sensation tugged at his chest—something he wanted to escape but couldn’t. The emotional wall of pain nearly suffocated him as he lay beneath Morgan’s concerned gaze. From somewhere, he dredged up the strength to speak.

  “Leave,” he muttered thickly, his words slurred. “I want to go away, Morgan.”

  Morgan’s eyes narrowed. “Oh?”

  “I want to leave the field for a while.”

  Morgan watched as a parade of emotions crossed Wolf’s battered features. “Perseus has an automatic policy to grant returning mercenaries time out of the field after a mission’s completed, Wolf—you know that.”

  “More than a month,” Wolf rasped, struggling to speak, struggling to overcome the pain. At least the intensity of the physical pain seemed to temporarily override the emotional pain. That was something.

  Morgan looked up toward the window. The bright May sunlight was spilling into the room. “Something happened down there.”

  Wolf’s breath began to come faster, and his heart began to pound, as it thought of—Savagely he slammed the door shut on the too-fresh memories that haunted him. “I…want…time…Need time, Morgan.” He forced his eyes as far open as possible. “Get away. Get me a job…any job…away…”

  Hearing the desperation in the rising pitch of Wolf’s husky voice, Morgan raised his hand. “Just tell me what you need, and I’ll make sure it happens, Wolf.”

  Collapsing against the bed, the tension bleeding out of him, Wolf closed his eyes. His voice was wobbly with raw feelings. “Something safe…quiet…The mountains. Somewhere away from everything.”

  “People?”

  Wolf was always startled by Morgan’s insight. Maybe it was because he’d suffered so much himself that he could read Wolf’s suffering so easily. “No people. Got…to be alone…”

  Rubbing his jaw, Morgan thought for a moment. “Dr. Shepherd said it would be at least three weeks before you can leave the hospital.”

  “After that,” Wolf forced out violently. He had to escape! He had to be alone in order to start dealing with the horrible atrocities he’d managed to survive in Peru—and the emotional ones he feared he hadn’t survived….

  “Montana far enough away?” Morgan asked.

  Wolf nodded.

  “I can get you a job as a forest ranger. I’ve got the connections. You’d be fairly isolated. Working alone in the wilderness. Interested?”

  Again Wolf nodded. He was afraid to speak, afraid that if any noise escaped him it would be a sob—and he’d start crying for all those months of hell he’d endured.

  “It’s yours, then,” Morgan promised. “All I ask is that when you’re feeling up to it you write me a report on what the hell happened down there. I’ll have my assistant, Marie Parker, have the job ready for you when you walk out of this place.” Morgan reached down and gripped Wolf’s large, callused hand, which bore many recent pink scars. “Just get well, Wolf. Take the time you need. Perseus needs your talents, your abilities. I need you.”

  Chapter One

  Oh, no! Sarah sucked in a sharp breath as the Douglas fir she was working under gave a sharp, splintering crack. Scrambling, she tried to throw herself upward, out of the cavernous hole beneath its twisted roots.

  A gasp broke from her as she was slammed back onto the dusty white earth and its carpet of dried fir needles. The sixty-foot tree had arched to one side, missing her head and torso, but pinning her ankles and feet beneath the massive roots. Trapped! She was trapped! And then pain shot up her legs. Groaning, Sarah lay still a moment, reorienting herself, before she struggled to a sitting position. She was in the shallow depression she had dug beneath the fir as she searched for the sapphire gravel concentrate that collected beneath the roots.

  “How could I?” she whispered disgustedly, her fingers trembling as she frantically dug in and around the roots, trying to locate her ankles. “This is an amateur’s mistake, Sarah Thatcher.” And then she grimaced and stiffened. The agony was real.

  Pushing strands of damp blond hair away from her furrowed brow, Sarah clawed at the loose soil, trying to remove enough from under her legs to free her trapped feet. The sapphire gravel—the gemstones in their natural state, as small, round pebbles—were piled around her with the rest of the debris.

  Gasping, Sarah arched back suddenly, her fingers clutching her jean-clad thigh. The pain had increased tenfold. Had she broken one or both of her ankles? Anger at her stupidity warred with her fear of the situation. Glancing up through the fir trees, Sarah could see the clouds building. It was late August, and here in the Rocky Mountains near her tiny hometown of Philipsburg, Montana, it was common for afternoon thunderstorms to pop up, sending furious torrents of rain at a moment’s notice.

  Her fingers lacerated and bruised, Sarah renewed her digging efforts. Then her eyes widened: The roots of the tree were lodged against a huge black boulder. Her anger gave way to disgust—then real alarm. What if she couldn’t escape? What if she really couldn’t free herself? Of course, Summers would thank his lucky stars if she was found dead up on her Blue Mountain sapphire claim, Sarah thought bitterly. Gerald Summers, the local land developer, certainly hadn’t wasted any time mourning her father’s sudden death. But then, Summers had
thought she would sell out, and he’d have been too happy to take over her family’s claim.

  “No way…” she muttered through gritted teeth, stretching as far as her five-foot-three-inch frame would allow. Her prospector’s hammer lay mere inches from her outstretched hand. She never traveled without her rifle, a canteen of water, and her mining tools. Her fingers dusty, her nails almost nonexistent from the demands of her livelihood, Sarah groaned as she reached farther—and managed to secure the hammer. Its long, sickle-shaped point was specially designed for digging into rock or dirt.

  Sarah kept her blond hair twisted between her shoulder blades in one long, frayed braid so that it was out of the way when she worked, mining the sapphire gravel that lay approximately a foot beneath the thick groves of firs on the slopes of Blue Mountain. Although it was necessary to dig holes around and between the tree roots to find the gravel, any miner knew to dig uphill, away from the tree, so that if the fir fell, it would drop away from where the miner was working.

  “Stupid, so stupid, Sarah. Where was your brain this morning?” she chastised herself as she began to chip and strike at the boulder that held her captive. The hard granite gave little beneath her relentless hammering, sparks and tiny chips of the stubborn stone flying from beneath the steel tool’s onslaught—not unlike the pressure she endured from Summers. He just kept chipping away at her. First, he’d murdered her father—though the county sheriff, Noonan, had called it an accident. Then her fifty-year-old mother had suffered a stroke upon hearing how her husband had died. The mine was still in her parents’ names and Sarah knew Summers would love to get her out of the way. Her mother, Beth Thatcher, was semilucid these days and likely to sign over the sapphire mine to anyone without question, such was the damage the stroke had done to her memory.

  “No way,” Sarah whispered again, her voice cracking. But this was a stupid mistake on her part, not Summers’s work. Frantically Sarah increased the power and strokes of the hammer. Very little of the granite boulder budged.