Noah's Nemesis Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  About This Book

  Prologue

  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

  Epilogue

  About Tomas’s Trials

  Excerpt from Ryland’s Reach

  Excerpt from Damon’s Deal

  Author’s Note

  Complimentary Download

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  About This Book

  Noah heard the woman’s cry for help through Levi’s phone, and he was already in the car and moving before anyone could stop him. He hated for any woman to be in distress, and this one sounded devastated. Having helped her once, he was determined to keep her safe, while the team tracked down her attacker.

  Dianne was looking forward to her upcoming weekend seminar and even more to the few days with her friend, Ice, at the compound. Dianne wanted to talk over a business idea she was ready to put into place. Being attacked wasn’t part of the plan. Neither was Noah. Still she was happy to have him as a babysitter, given the circumstances.

  Only someone has a grudge against Levi and sees Dianne as a way to get back at him.

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  Prologue

  Noah Wilkerson walked into Levi’s kitchen and sat down, hoping for a midmorning snack and more coffee.

  “Hey, Noah. Even your buddy Bonaparte is hooked up now, isn’t he?” Levi asked.

  Just then Bonaparte walked into the kitchen. “What’s this? I heard my name, didn’t I?”

  “Yeah, how is Angela doing?” Levi asked him.

  “She’s doing amazing,” Bonaparte said, with a big grin.

  Noah stared at him. “I haven’t seen that smile on your face before.”

  “Hey,” he said, “you haven’t met Angela.”

  Noah laughed. “Nope, but I do hear that you were pretty resistant to the idea, before you went out there.”

  “I sure was, but she changed my mind pretty damn fast.”

  Noah looked over at Levi, just as Ice appeared. “So, you guys are running quite the matchmaking service, it seems.”

  “Sometimes it works out that way,” Ice said, with a smile. “You interested?”

  Noah thought about it, shrugged, and said, “Well, if you can find me a partner like the ones you’ve found for these guys, maybe,” he said. “I can’t say I’ve really been thinking about it though.”

  “Of course not,” Ice said, her smile growing bigger. “Nobody really thinks about it, unless they’ve been trying for a long time.”

  “Nope, not me. I broke up about a year ago from a long-term relationship and haven’t really found anybody interesting since.”

  “What broke it up, Noah?” Bonaparte asked.

  “She wanted a family, and, in the four years we were together, she couldn’t conceive. So she decided she wanted to change the herd sire.” They all just stared at him, and finally he shrugged, picked up his cup of coffee, and had a sip. It was the first time he’d really told the truth about it.

  “Wow,” Ice said. “I’m sorry. Did you ever get tested? Or did she?”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t. Don’t know about her. Maybe she did and didn’t tell me. I don’t really know. But that was the reason she gave for the breakup.”

  Just then a phone call came in, Ice taking it.

  “What’s going on?” Levi asked Ice, when her expression changed.

  “Remember Di?” Ice asked Levi, while listening to the caller on the other end too.

  “Which one? Diamond?”

  “No, Dianne from Australia.”

  “Oh, yeah, sure. What about her?”

  “She’s in Houston, and she said—Wait, Dianne. I’m putting the phone on Speaker.”

  “Okay,” Di said, and they heard her taking several deep breaths.

  “Are you okay?” Ice asked.

  “I’m not sure I am,” she said, with a tearful tone. “I was just attacked in my car.”

  “Uh-oh,” Ice said. “Did you call the cops?”

  “I would have,” she said, “but he, the guy, had a strange message.”

  “What message?” Levi asked.

  “Oh, good. Levi, I’m glad you’re there,” she said in relief.

  “Dianne, are you hurt?”

  “No,” she said. “Well, yes, but not badly.”

  “Take it easy,” Ice said calmly, her tone measured and comforting. “You’re safe now.”

  “Well, I am now that he’s gone,” she said, with a hysterical laugh. “Unfortunately he didn’t leave fast enough. He cut me.”

  “How bad?” Levi asked sharply.

  “My arm, my shoulder, and a slice across my belly,” she said. “None of them look bad. They’re just stinging and painful. I’ll have to get them checked.”

  “So tell me again. Why call us and not the police?” Levi asked curiously.

  “Because the attacker, he had a message for you.”

  “For me?” Levi asked, standing now and walking closer to Ice. “What did he say?”

  “He said, it was for—for past sins.” Then she started to cry.

  “Jesus,” he said, staring at Ice. “Did you recognize him, Dianne?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “It was Maxwell.”

  “Maxwell? Maxwell who?”

  “Do you remember the guy who approached us on the boardwalk in Sydney a while ago? The really angry man, who lashed out verbally at the two of you? We were talking about me coming to Texas, when he ran up to us, screaming at you. Something about losing his son and it was your fault?”

  “That Maxwell?” Levi asked.

  “Yes.”

  “But that makes no sense,” he said.

  “No,” she said. “None of it makes any sense. But it was him. He was right here, attacking me moments ago, and something about past sins was your message.”

  “But we didn’t have anything to do with the death of his son.”

  “No,” she said, “but remember? He wanted your help, when his son was used against him.”

  “And you really think that’s why he’s after us?”

  She started to cry again.

  Noah stared at the three of them in shock. “Hey, Dianne. This is Noah.”

  “Noah? Do I know you?”

  “I work for Levi,” he said. “I’m not sure if we’ve met before or not, but do you want me to come help you?”

  There was silence as Levi looked at Noah.

  Noah shrugged. “I don’t want to see her alone right now.”

  “Where are you?” Levi asked Dianne.

  “Just give me an address,” Noah said to her, “and I’ll head your way. What are you doing there anyway?”

  “I’m here for a conference,” she said, “and, when I went to the underground parking lot for my rental, wanting a break, just to grab a coffee or a quick bite, that’s when he attacked me.”

  “Sit tight. I’m coming.” Noah turned to Ice and said, “Can you get me as much information as you can, then hook me into the conversation, while I drive there?”

  She nodded. “On it,” she said. “Dianne, I’ll call you right back. Noah is on his way.”

  “Okay,” she said, her voice small, her tone teary. “I just don’t know why Maxwell used me to get to you.”

  “Wrong place, wrong time,” Levi said.

  “
I don’t think so,” she said, her voice getting stronger. “The way he cut me, it felt like so much more than that.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll get to the bottom of it. Noah is headed your way.”

  Chapter 1

  Noah Wilkerson was in one of Levi’s vehicles and out the front gate of the compound, racing toward Dianne’s location within a few minutes. It had been instinctive to grab one of the vehicles with bulletproof glass. But, if somebody was after her, it would be hard enough to deal with all the possible issues without getting sidelined by something unexpected. Sure, it was an abundance of caution—too much, perhaps—but that wasn’t a problem for him.

  After spending several years working for people like Levi and Bullard all around the globe, Noah had settled back in his home country and had found that the violence was just about as bad in the USA as everywhere else he’d been. It was second nature for him to look around every corner for it. He didn’t think he’d ever met Di before, but he’d heard about her from their mutual friends. Then he thought about it again, and they may have crossed paths in Australia, but he just couldn’t think of the details right now.

  The fear in her voice had been compelling. She was absolutely terrified. They didn’t have anybody in town right now, one of the few days nobody was running errands or picking up supplies or anything. Dianne just had to hold tight, stay on the phone, and talk to Levi and Ice, while Noah drove into Houston proper. He wasn’t even a few minutes out of Levi’s compound when his phone rang. He quickly punched buttons and was connected into a conference call between Ice, Levi, and Dianne.

  “Any news?” Noah asked.

  “Nothing yet,” Levi said. “She’s sitting still. The car doors are locked. She’s just terrified.” A gentle sob came in the background and then obvious efforts on Dianne’s part to regain her breathing.

  “I’m … I’m okay,” she said.

  “Just hold strong,” Noah said. “Fifteen minutes, that’s all.”

  Levi said on a humorous note, “Unless, at that rate, you get pulled over.”

  “Naw, not happening,” Noah said. “The angels are on my side. They know I have to help someone.”

  “I hope they are,” Di said, and then her voice gained strength. “And then I’ll want to know where they were an hour ago.”

  Noah smiled at that, loving the grit in her voice. “Well, messages sent like Maxwell’s are never very nice,” he said. “And the reasoning behind all this, if we’re correct in our thinking, is even harder. When a man loses somebody very close to him, somebody he obviously cares deeply for, it’s understandable that he’d go off the deep end, but he can’t stay there. Levi, how long ago was it that his son died?”

  “It’s got to be at least a year, I would think.”

  Ice stepped in and said, “I think it was about eleven months ago.”

  “So, long enough to recover from the initial wave of grief, yet not long enough to establish a new world order in your life,” Noah murmured. “And just long enough for something like revenge to grow.”

  “Yes,” Levi said heavily. “We weren’t responsible for his son dying though, so I’m not sure why he’s latched on to us.”

  “It doesn’t really matter, since it appears that he has chosen us, rational or not,” Noah stated. “What’s interesting is that he’s using transference and sees Di as a way to get at you.”

  “I’m thinking that must have been something off the cuff,” Ice said. “Maybe he just saw Di, and it was a flashback of us together joined with Maxwell losing his son, and everything just aligned itself into this being what he had to do.”

  Dianne gave a choking laugh at that. “My God,” she said, “that just makes me wonder how many people are out there who have a screw loose and are ready to blow.”

  “Well, think about it,” Ice said in a calm voice. “Say he’s going along in life, doing the best he can to find a new way to live, then all of a sudden he sees somebody related to the worst horror he went through, and she’s sitting there in a fancy hotel’s parking lot, having a happy successful life, while he’s struggling, and his anger and rage just lashes out. It’s a simple case of transference. He knows you’re connected to Levi and me, so unfortunately you became an easy target that he could reach, instead of hitting out at the two of us.”

  At that, Dianne calmed a little more. “I guess,” she said. “He seemed so angry.”

  “That’s because he hasn’t dealt with his issues,” Ice murmured. “He’s still looking to lash out.”

  “Survivor’s guilt?” Noah asked.

  “Hey, I’m sure we could get into tons of psychological stuff here. The bottom line is that Maxwell’s targeting us and our friends,” Levi said. “Noah, you need to keep an eye out and make sure that somebody isn’t targeting you now.”

  “Well, this vehicle doesn’t have any identifying symbols on it, and nobody knows that I’ve worked for you for years overseas,” he said.

  A thoughtful tone came into Ice’s voice, as she said, “You know what? You’re right. You could be the best man for this job, since you are relatively unknown here now.”

  “Except for a few of your guys, I’ve worked with,” Noah said, “nobody here will have any clue.”

  “And the fact that Maxwell’s already targeted Dianne for his anger is interesting,” Ice said.

  “I think either he’s just warming up or it doesn’t matter. As long as he can start on the fringes and hurt us, he’ll be happy,” Levi said.

  “The question is, who might he see as his next target?” Noah asked. “Because Maxwell’s obviously in town here, so who all is in danger?”

  “Everyone,” Ice said. “All of our team and their partners will immediately be put on lockdown.”

  “Great,” Dianne said. “They’ll all love me for that.”

  “Not if they understand what’s just happened,” Ice said. “It’s one of the rules of being here. You’ll always be on the edge of some kind of attack or another.”

  “You know something? I used to think the USA was safe,” Noah said, with a laugh. “But it seems like, in some ways, it’s just as bad or even worse than anywhere else.”

  “An awful lot of domestic violence is here,” Ice said. “But usually that’s targeted much closer to home than something like this.”

  “Well, I’m just hitting the city limits,” Noah said, “so hold tight, Dianne.”

  He clicked off the phone and maneuvered through the traffic just starting to build. He was an expert driver, and he needed to shave off as many minutes as he could getting to Dianne. He knew that she had calmed down and was doing much better than she had been, but he didn’t want the attacker sitting off to the side, waiting to come back and torment her again. Because Noah had seen that happen too. Sometimes an attack happened, and the perpetrator retreated, enjoying seeing the victim deal with the aftermath and the trauma, only to go after them again. That wouldn’t wash with Noah today.

  Still, the traffic was just heavy enough that, for every minute he shaved off, he lost a couple more in lights and idiots. Never any way to deal with the bad drivers on the road and elsewhere, except to smile kindly and to keep going. What he wanted to do was take a battering ram and clear the freeway for his own use. It seemed like, anytime he tried to get anywhere, many more people were trying to get someplace too. And they were always in his face.

  Still, by the time he drove down the designated street, looking for the hotel and the connected car park where Di was, he had made good time overall. He set up his phone again and called Ice. “I think I’m about thirty meters away.”

  “We just got off the phone with her,” she said. “Second layer, spot D42.”

  “Okay, I’m going in now.” He hung up, pulled into the car park, swung up to the second loop, and slowly drove ahead. When he found the spot, he stopped and frowned. He called Ice again on his phone. “Hey, what was that number again?”

  “D42,” she said. “She’s got a dark green Honda SUV.”
/>   “Well, a dark green Honda is here, but it’s empty,” he said. He turned off the engine and hopped out, his phone in his hand, as he walked over to the vehicle. “No sign of her,” he announced, followed by a moment of silence.

  “I just got off the phone from her,” Ice said. “Not a minute ago.”

  “And she sounded okay?” He looked around the area but saw no sign of anybody walking nearby. “The place is deserted.”

  “Dammit,” she said.

  Noah said, “Let me check inside the vehicle.” He opened up the driver’s side, surprised that it wasn’t locked. It was empty and so was the other side, and then he heard something in the back. He flipped the front seat forward, swore, and raced around to the back, where he popped the hatch.

  “I found her,” he said, bending over the unconscious woman in the back. “She’s been stuffed in the back of her vehicle.”

  “Goddammit,” Ice said. “Is she okay?”

  “Well, I’m checking her out.” He laid down the phone, as he quickly checked her over. “It doesn’t look like anything major was broken, though she has some head trauma, and the cuts she mentioned. She’s moaning ever-so-slightly.”

  “Let’s get her to the hospital.”

  “Yeah, it’ll be easier if I take her.”

  “No, not easier,” she said, “but faster and away from the bastard, who can’t be too far away from you.”

  “You want to call ahead?” Noah asked, as he looked all around for anybody suspicious. “I’ve already got her in my arms. I’ll take her in the truck.”

  “I don’t like this at all,” Ice snapped, and he heard her fretting on the other end of the phone.

  “Well, we found her. She’s alive, and we’ll move on from here,” he said. “I’ve got her.” He struggled to open the truck door, but, when he finally did, he gently put her in the passenger seat and buckled her in tight, then shut the door, setting the car alarm. He raced back to the Honda, closed up the SUV, checked it, but he didn’t see anything useful other than her purse. She’d want that. “You might want to get her vehicle combed for evidence.”

  “Yeah,” Ice said, “we’ll get it towed out of there.”