Helping a friend in need is never a wrong move. And Saul knows the value of his friends. When he’s called to find Benji’s missing brother, Daniel – he’s on it.

Only Daniel might be involved in something a lot darker than avoiding his brother’s phone calls. At least according to Rebel who’s been haunting Daniel’s apartment, looking for her missing girlfriend.

When the bodies start showing up, Rebel is terrified her friend will be next…

And that’s not something she’s going to sit by and allow. No matter if Saul thinks she should. He needs to get out of her way or she’ll run right over him. The trouble is, it doesn’t take long for her to realize he’d like that – and so would she.

Now if only they could save their friends…before the entire mess blows up and takes them all out.

Benji, a friend from their old unit needs help. His brother Daniel has gone missing and Levi is sending a team to find out what happened to him. Saul, Merk, Stone and Dakota are the team sent in. What they didn’t expect was someone else staking out his apartment.

Rebel’s been watching Daniel’s apartment looking for any clue she can find about her friend Tammy’s disappearance. She was leaving Daniel’s and going home promising to call Rebel when she got there. She never called.

Saul is the one to catch up with Rebel and when they all start talking things start coming out that lead the guys to believe something a lot bigger is going on.

Tammy and Daniel were both programmers at the same company as Rebel, although she was in marketing and not privy to what they worked on. She’s taken time off to try to find Tammy and the guys are taking all the clues she has to heart.

Bodies start showing up as they get a strange text following that lead and now Saul is staying by her side.

This is a favorite scene.

Saul hadn’t wanted to leave the crime scene. He could only hope the police shared the information they found. He planned to go back in the daylight and see if he could find any evidence that Tammy had been in that building.

Plus he also would check out where the homeless man was known to hang out. Just because he was in the building at the end of his life did not mean Tammy had been there too. She could’ve been anywhere along his route. He could’ve taken the locket off her dead body for that matter. Or he could’ve seen it on the ground someplace where she might’ve been involved in a struggle. There were endless possibilities.

He drove to Rebel’s apartment. He knew the area well. He had friends living not too far from here. When he drove up in front of a large brick apartment building, he nudged her. “Is this your place?”

Startled, she looked at him, a dazed look in her eyes. “How did you know where I lived?”

“I heard you tell the policeman.”

She had a right to be suspicious. He just didn’t want her suspicious of him. She contemplated his answer; then she reached up and rubbed her face. “I’m sorry. I’m just not myself right now.”

He parked the vehicle, got out and walked around to her side of the car. She still sat in the passenger seat, staring at the building. She needed time to work through this. He opened her door and helped her to her feet. “Come on. Let’s get you inside.”

The Jeep pulled up behind him. Saul and Rebel walked up to the entranceway, and she punched in a security code into the keypad on the wall. The door unlocked in front of them. He pulled it open and held it for her to walk through. The other three men waited in the Jeep, watching. He gave them a half wave, walked her inside and to the elevator. He studied her carefully. He wasn’t sure she should be alone right now. “You have anybody you can call? Any other friends or family who could stay with you?”

She shook her head. “Only Tammy. I would call Tammy.”

Damn. That just triggered another memory of Tammy. Not that Rebel was likely to stop thinking about her best friend under these circumstances.

On the third floor the elevator door opened. He gently grasped her arm above the elbow, nudging her into the hallway. With the keys from her vehicle in his hand, he checked for an apartment key. Sure enough, he tried the door, and the selected key worked. He opened the door and led her inside.

And she froze. “What happened?”

His gaze sharpened. He kicked the door shut and put Rebel between him and the door. He pulled out his weapon with one hand and his phone with other, saying, “Get up here.”

He put away his phone and left her backed against the front door to search her destroyed apartment. He could see most of it from this vantage point but not enough to ease his concerns. Still, he had to leave her to do a full sweep. Her kitchen table and the kitchen drawers were tossed to the ground. The living room couch cushions had been slashed open. He noted all this while running a timeline through his head. Had Tammy been kidnapped? Had she told them about Rebel? Or had whoever killed or kidnapped Tammy known that she and Rebel were best friends? Did Daniel tell the kidnappers that? Or did the kidnappers/murderers find Rebel lurking around Daniel’s apartment building too, just like Saul and his team did? That alone revealed Rebel had some deep connection to Daniel and/or Tammy. Were the women best friends enough that Rebel would hold something for Tammy?

He hadn’t even thought to question Rebel on that last aspect. But, with Tammy and Daniel both being in IT, espionage was not an unlikely leap. The fact that Daniel was suspected of hacking into his employer’s system and creating coding errors somehow played together. Saul didn’t understand how yet, but he would.

He made a quick sweep of the tiny one-bedroom apartment. By the time he made it back to Rebel—still leaning against the door, her face stricken—a knock at the door made Rebel jump. Saul checked the peephole and then let his friends in.

They stepped inside, took one look and Stone let out a low whistle. “Well, this is an interesting development.”

Something about his tone of voice and wording caught Rebel’s attention. She turned on him. “Interesting? This is interesting for you? This is destructive. This is horrific. This is my entire life here.”

Stone looked at her pointedly. “And yet, you’re alive. So they knew you weren’t here. They went through your property, went through all your possessions. What were they looking for?”

Saul watched her face go blank.

Then her jaw dropped. “You think they were looking for something?”

She shook her head in bewilderment. “Looking for what?” she cried out. “I don’t have anything. Hell, Tammy made way more money than I did. Why would they not destroy her place instead?” She stared at the men, her gaze going from one to the other and then back again. “Why me?”

Dakota stepped in. “That’s what we’ll find out. One of the first questions we need to know is did Tammy, at any time in the last few months, give you anything to safeguard for her?”

That was the very question Saul wanted answered; he stepped closer and peered at Rebel’s face, looking for any sign of subterfuge.

She stared at the men and shrugged her shoulders. “No, of course not. Why would she?”

“She could have found something damning at work, and she needed you to hold on to it, on the off chance something happened to her.”

She frowned, her focus remaining on the men. “She didn’t give me anything to hold or keep. I didn’t know of anything potentially dangerous in her world. She would’ve told me.”

“Did she feel the same way about you as you feel about her?” Saul asked quietly.

She turned her gaze to his. “Yes. We’ve been best friends since forever.”

“Maybe she wouldn’t tell you about this, seeing it would bring danger to your doorstep.”

He watched the wheels in her mind turn, and then a stricken look took over her face as she realized something. “That’s exactly what Tammy would do,” she whispered. “As I would for her.”

“And that’s why this is interesting,” Stone said. “Because this changes our avenues of thinking completely. Whoever came here was looking for something, for whatever reason, whether she told them or they assumed so because of your close association.”

“Or because Daniel told them,” she said bitterly. “He was always a troublemaker.”
Mayer, Dale. Heroes for Hire: Books 7-9 ((pp. 289-294). Valley Publishing Ltd.. Kindle Edition.

In spite of the conflict of Rebel not liking Daniel and her being more concerned about Tammy, Saul finds himself more than a little attracted.

I love the way the suspense and the romance build in this book, gradually getting hotter until everything bursts into flame.

I can’t wait to finish the next book in this series.

5 Contented Purrs for Dale!

Dale Mayer

Dale Mayer is a USA Today bestselling author best known for her Psychic Visions and Family Blood Ties series. Her contemporary romances are raw and full of passion and emotion (Second Chances, SKIN), her thrillers will keep you guessing (By Death series), and her romantic comedies will keep you giggling (It’s a Dog’s Life and Charmin Marvin Romantic Comedy series).

She honors the stories that come to her – and some of them are crazy and break all the rules and cross multiple genres!

To go with her fiction, she also writes nonfiction in many different fields with books available on resume writing, companion gardening and the US mortgage system. She has recently published her Career Essentials Series. All her books are available in print and ebook format.