Title Operation: Protected Angel
Author Margaret Kay
Genre Military Romance, Women’s Adventure Fiction, Romantic Suspense
Publisher Sister’s Romance
Book Blurb
Angel Matthew’s day started like any other…until she ran into the armed man in
the hallway at work. What came next was a blur, a hostage ordeal, a terrorist attack, explosions and gunfire, a fight for her life. Then she wakes with a head injury and finds herself in the custody of a group of armed men, who won’t disclose exactly who they are. One of them, the attractive and attentive Jackson is kind and Angel finds herself trusting him, falling for him.
Excerpt
Alpha
Blinding bright white light, painfully so, surrounded by darkness. She struggled to keep her eyes open, even the tiny slivers they were. Pain everywhere in her body. Her head felt as though it was actually split open. Noise, explosions, muffled shouts, she felt the sensation of moving, of falling. She grabbed onto something, an arm, a person. He came into her line of sight, momentarily blocking out that intense light. A man, his face leaned in close, the white light a distant halo around him.
He was saying something, quiet garbled words. Why couldn’t she hear or understand him? He had kind eyes, hazel-green, a helmet on his head like a soldier or SWAT would wear. His squared-off face was framed in a trimmed dark beard with a mustache over lips that were still talking to her, words she still couldn’t hear and didn’t understand. He was handsome in a rugged, dangerous way. She was past the point of caring if he meant her harm. Darkness overtook her, and all the noise quieted. Bliss.
“I’m Jackson; I’m here to keep you safe. Stay with me,” he yelled above the gunfire, his face in hers as he cradled her in his arms. He easily lifted her petite frame from the floor. Her eyes had re-closed.
“You got her Jax?” Came through his comms.
“Roger that, Coop,” he replied, his eyes shifting across the room to where Cooper laid down cover fire.
“Exfil in five, four, three, two, one,” Coop counted down, and then a concussion reverberated through the room while the bright flash stunned the Tangos.
Jackson bolted to the door, went past Cooper and cleared it without incident. He held her tightly to his chest, dead weight in his arms.
“Watch her head,” Doc’s voice came through his comms.
“You want to come take her?” Jackson demanded.
“Just keep the head up and as still as possible. She’s got one hell of a concussion,” Doc’s worried voice spoke as Jackson mounted the stairs, the first flight of the eight he’d run up with her one-hundred-twenty pounds of toned muscle and feminine curves clutched in his grasp.
“I’ve got her,” Jackson repeated with annoyance. This wasn’t his first go-around with a concussion. He didn’t need to be reminded.
He heard the pounding of Razor’s boots a flight up and Doc’s and Coop’s a flight down in concert with his own, interrupted with the intermittent gunfire echoing up through the stairwell. These guys were tenacious. They really wanted her.
His chest was tight as he pushed himself harder. The strain and fatigue cramped his leg muscles and the heaviness of his breathing burned his chest by the time he reached the roof access door. Doc passed him on the stairs and stood, holding the door open for him.
The gust kicked up by the rotor blades of the Lakota UH-72A ahead, battered his face and sent her long black locks wildly whipping through the air. The whirl was loud in his already deafened ears, drowning out all other sounds. Razor stood near the chopper, his M4 CQBR at the ready. The setting sun was an orange blaze behind his solid form.
Jackson hurried over and slid in, seating himself way to the back of the bird on the floor, still cradling her in his arms. Doc crowded in beside him, immediately assessing her condition. Coop brought up the rear with both him and Razor jumping in. The pilot pulled it off the roof before the doors were even secure. The craft banked sharply to the left, clearing the roof and then it dropped below the roofline of the hospital, gaining speed.
Thirty minutes before
“On target in five minutes,” their pilot’s voice came through their comms.
Anthony ‘Razor’ Garcia turned off his pregame music, a playlist of the Stones, Doors, and Cream. John ‘Coop’ Cooper’s eyes snapped open from the purposeful focused state he had been in. He never called it meditating. Alexander ‘Doc’ Williams closed his medical kit, having spent the last twenty minutes reviewing his supplies, and Ethan ‘Jax’ Jackson turned off his country music playlist that he always listened to before going into a shitstorm.
The four men did one more check of their equipment. “Holden and his team are barricaded in the imaging lab suite, first floor, southwest corner, unknown number of Tangos. They knocked out the surveillance cameras,” Coop reported. He ran his fingers through his short-cropped blond hair before securing his helmet.
“They’re taking heavy fire, multiple casualties,” Doc added. He checked over his mags of ammo and grenades to be sure he was properly geared up.
“Let’s make this a quick in and out, exfil within twenty minutes of insertion, with the target,” Coop ordered.
“Roger that, your standard dustoff,” Garcia’s baritone voice acknowledged. He was fully geared up from head to toe. The black of the fatigues matching his deep-set eyes.
“Holden reports she is completely incapacitated,” Doc said, his steely gaze penetrating Jackson’s eyes. “She’s yours to get out.”
Jackson nodded, as was usually the case. He checked his weapons a second time. Rifle loaded and secure, Sig 320 9mm at his side, multiple mags of ammo secured everywhere there was space available.
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Author Biography:
Margaret Kay is a wife to her best friend of forty years, a mother of two adult children, a grandmother, and a dog-mom who makes her own dog food. She counts herself as fortunate that she has turned her passion of daydreaming about characters and storylines into books that people want to read. Margaret has to date published 15 books in the Amazon Best Selling Shepherd Security Series out of 24 planned and has written several short stories that are included in charity anthologies. A Women’s Fiction, Contemporary Romance/Family Drama novel, That First Year, that also ranked Amazon’s Best Sellers List, rounds out her current published work. She has many other story ideas, in several other genres planned.
Check out her website for more info: https://www.sistersromance.com/