Rules of Re-engagement

Rules of Re-engagement
Loreth Anne White

A man back from the dead. A madman on the loose. One woman who will change everything.He should be dead. That was what Olivia Killinger thought when her former fiancé appeared at her door sixteen years after his "death." Now Jacques Sauvage was asking for her help to bring down a deadly syndicate–which was led by her own father.Olivia had never stopped loving Jacques, but how could she trust the man? She knew he needed her help…but did he also want to reignite the passion that had once burned between them?

How easy, he wondered, would it be to walk the fine line between pretending to be Olivia’s lover, and wanting to be?

And just where did that line begin and end? Because it was already blurred to hell and vanishing in his head. He figured he’d crossed it once already.

This is where the personal had to end, and the line be drawn strong and clear. And that is when he knew he would probably have to say goodbye to Olivia forever.

He could not allow his desire to be the downfall of the nation.

Rules of Re-engagement

Loreth Anne White

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

LORETH ANNE WHITE

As a child in Africa, when asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, Loreth said a spy…or a psychologist, or maybe marine biologist, archaeologist or lawyer. Instead she fell in love, traveled the world and had a baby. When she looked up again she was back in Africa, writing and editing news and features for a large chain of community newspapers. But her childhood dreams never died. It took another decade, another baby and a move across continents before the lightbulb finally went on. She didn’t have to grow up. She could be them all—the spy, the psychologist and all the rest—through her characters. She sat down to pen her first novel…and fell in love.

She currently lives with her husband, two daughters and their cats in a ski resort in the rugged Coast Mountains of British Columbia, where there is no shortage of inspiration for larger-than-life characters and adventure.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Romeo—The military designation for the time zone in which New York falls.

FDS—The Force du Sable—a private military company based on the island of São Diogo off the west coast of Angola.

Biosafety level 4—A level of safety from exposure to exotic, infectious agents that pose a high risk of life-threatening disease for which there is no vaccine or therapy.

The French Foreign Legion—An elite rapid-deployment force within the French military, established in 1831 and comprised of foreign volunteers, making it one of the most famous and legitimate mercenary forces in history.

The Republic of the Congo—A country west of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Also referred to as Congo-Brazzaville.

The Cabal—A covert organization that has been infiltrating the power structure of the United States over the past several decades and is now positioning itself to overthrow the government.

For more information, visit the Shadow Soldiers Web site at www.lorethannewhite.com.

Contents

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

Epilogue

Chapter 1

16:57 Romeo. Manhattan.

Tuesday, October 7.

He stood across the street from United Nations headquarters, watching—a scarred man hidden in the shadows of bare-fingered trees. A wanted man. He didn’t like being back on U.S. soil—illegally, no less. But he was here because he had to be. He was the only one who could stop an inordinately powerful man from bringing the entire nation to its knees in just six days.

And he needed a particular woman to help him do it.

She worked inside that building. She was the key to that man’s inner sanctum, his Achilles’ heel.

His daughter.

Jacques Sauvage thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his coat and narrowed his eyes into the brooding gray mist that was cloaking the city with premature darkness and chill. The trouble was, Olivia Killinger was also his own Achilles’ heel. Her father had already destroyed him once because of it.

Six days—that’s all he had to find out whether she was complicit in her father’s scheme. If she was somehow oblivious to what Samuel Killinger was doing, he would have to turn her, force her to betray her own flesh and blood, the father she adored.

But if he found her guilty, he’d have no choice but to use her life as leverage against Killinger. Either way he could not afford to fail. If he did, millions upon millions of innocent people in the country’s three largest cities—New York, Chicago and Los Angeles—would start dying by midnight, October 13. Just six days away.

And that would be only the beginning.

He hadn’t seen Olivia in sixteen years. How in hell did one begin to bridge a gap like that? Especially when the woman you were waiting for had once been your fiancée—and you were supposed to be dead.

He checked his watch. She should have come out by now. The row of flags—almost two hundred of them—that had clapped bravely in the fall wind had long been wrestled to the ground by security staff, their poles now naked as the scraggy boughs above his head.

Only the blue-and-white UN flag with its olive branches of peace was left snapping against the front sweeping down from the Arctic, dragging the premature chill of the Canadian prairies behind it.