Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 54968 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 275(@200wpm)___ 220(@250wpm)___ 183(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 54968 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 275(@200wpm)___ 220(@250wpm)___ 183(@300wpm)
Zara continued to stand in her spot, watching her mother pack, not interested in helping. She didn’t really care what was put in that suitcase. She’d never been a fussy, high-maintenance kind of girl. She still wasn’t as a woman. She never wore makeup and rarely wore nice clothes or bothered to do anything fancy to her hair.
She’d learned from a young age that she’d give anything to be ordinary instead of having people stare at her. So she’d let her hair fall in her face, worn a ballcap, and pretended to be a tomboy. She’d worn loose clothing, jeans, unflattering shirts, and scuffed tennis shoes.
None of that had helped. People had noticed her anyway. She couldn’t avoid it. As soon as she looked anyone in the eye, they gasped. Apparently, her features were coveted—stunning blue eyes, golden brown skin, and long wavy brown hair.
Zara had even gone through a phase where she’d worn brown contacts and kept her hair in a bun, but she’d never gotten used to the contacts, and the band around her heavy hair had given her a constant headache.
So, she’d lived with her curse.
“Consider it a nice vacation,” her mother insisted.
Zara groaned. “Have you ever known me to lounge by the pool, sipping cold drinks with umbrellas in them, Mamá?”
Her mother chuckled. “No, my studious child, but you can start now.”
“Not a chance.” Zara put her hands on her hips again and stood taller. It wasn’t a stance she often took since it drew attention to her cursed, perfect frame. Besides her face, she was five-nine with coveted curves and high, round breasts. “I’ll go under one condition.”
Her mother gave an exasperated sigh. “What, mija?”
“That I have to take a job, working for the resort.”
Chapter Two
Kestrel controlled his rock-steady hand from shaking with iron determination as he held the jump drive in his palm. It contained his assignment, and everyone around the dinner table knew it.
Sadie, Rocco’s Little girl, had just handed him the envelope containing the jump drive. Celeste was the only other woman in their group so far. She was sitting on her Daddy’s lap, waiting as anxiously as the rest of them. Hawking had his arms wrapped around her, holding her. The rest of the team—Magnus, Phoenix, and Caesar—were currently breathing out sighs of relief that they hadn’t been the one to receive this next assignment.
It wasn’t that any of them minded being assigned to protect another person with their life, but they hadn’t even had a chance to catch their collective breaths after a trip across the ocean to put an end to the threat to Celeste’s life.
Kestrel knew the drill. All six men on this team were former military, trained to save lives at the risk of their own. Kestrel had been in the Air Force for several years in his twenties. He was a pilot. He prided himself on being able to fly just about anything he climbed into. Currently, his official job at Danger Bluff Mountain Resort was a cushy one—taking guests on helicopter tours.
All of them had jobs at the resort, and though they did them every day of the week, the truth was those occupations were a front for what they’d been hired to do: save lives. Their benefactor—Baldwin Kingsley III—was the man in charge. He was mysterious, and none of them had met him. They didn’t even know where he lived on this planet. However, they owed him, and when he gave them their assignments, they accepted the jobs and went to work.
Adjusting his ballcap further over his eyes, Magnus pushed from the table and stood. “I assume you’d like me to open that jump drive before we dive into dinner.”
Phoenix chuckled. “Hell, it’s not my assignment, and even I want to see the information before we eat.”
All eight of them moved to hover around the computer center as Magnus slid the jump drive in and pulled up the details.
Kestrel lowered himself onto the chair next to him to get the best view.
Magnus started reading off the details. “Zara Lynch. Mother’s American. Father’s Mexican. Wealthy. Educated. Twenty-two years old. And… My God.”
Kestrel’s breath hitched as he read ahead. “She’s in the sights of a human trafficking ring,” he murmured. “Fuck.” A shudder wracked his body. If there was one thing he abhorred more than anything in the world, it was human trafficking, and he’d certainly had his fair share of dealing with it in the past. It was why he’d landed in a Mexican prison, after all.
“Why?” Celeste asked. “Revenge or something?”
Magnus scrolled slowly through the information until he came to several photos of her.
Kestrel stopped breathing. So did everyone else.
The woman in the photos was stunning. Granted, they’d thought the same thing about Celeste and Sadie when they’d met those two, but Zara was… There were no words to describe how gorgeous she was.