One Minute to Midnight (Black Ops: Automatik) Read online

  One Minute to Midnight

  By Nico Rosso

  He was her safety.

  She was his backup.

  Former navy SEAL Ben Jackson knows that sexy “Mary Long” is nothing but a cover; that beneath the stylish clothes and flirty smile is a stone cold super-soldier no one ever gets close to. Until her kiss hits him like one of her sniper rounds. But Morris Flats is no place for a hookup—menace hums through the town, and the more the two operators keep pushing for answers, the more deadly the current seems to run.

  For former Special Forces sniper Mary Kuri, flirting with her muscular teammate feels like playing with fire. It’s hard to tell where the cover ends and the real feelings begin. What she does know is they can’t afford to lose focus. Their mission is to gather evidence, and with the gunrunners watching their every move, a single mistake could prove fatal.

  It’s two against the world, and Ben and Mary are about to discover that not only do the lives of innocent people hang in the balance, but they’re also fighting to save the rare connection they’ve found with each other.

  This book is approximately 72,000 words

  Dear Reader,

  There’s something magical about being the one to publish an author’s first book. It’s a wonderful feeling to experience the joy, the excitement and even the terror along with a debut author. Everything is new and wonderful, even while being new and sometimes scary as we work to release the book into the world. This month, I had the privilege of working with not one, but two debut authors, and I know you will love their books as much as I do, so please check them out!

  The winner of Harlequin’s 2015 So You Think You Can Write Contest, chosen from thousands of submitted manuscripts, debuts this month with her fantasy romance, The Emperor’s Arrow. Lauren D.M. Smith delivered a kick-ass warrior and the emperor she’s honor bound to defend in this story of romance, adventure and intrigue that will have you wishing you could stay with the characters longer!

  Also debuting this month is Jade Chandler. The subtitle of this fab romance might give you a hint of what you’re in store for, so hold on for the ride! His MC brothers call him Dare for a reason. He never backs down from a challenge. And Lila is going to be the sweetest challenge he’s ever conquered. Don’t miss Enough: A Dark, Erotic Motorcycle Club Romance.

  Fans of Julie Moffett will be thrilled to know that not only does she have a new release out this month, but it is also available in print at select online retailers. Pick up a copy for your bookshelf today! Everyone’s favorite geek girl is back in No Strings Attached: A Lexi Carmichael Mystery, and this time Lexi and her hacker friends are taking on the Chinese in a dangerous game of revenge. Haven’t tried Lexi yet? You can start at the beginning with No One Lives Twice.

  Readers praised Nico Rosso’s romantic suspense Countdown to Zero Hour, and One Minute to Midnight delivers the same action-packed thrill ride and swoon-worthy romance. Seasoned black ops soldiers Ben Jackson and Mary Kuri have never worked undercover together, but when their fake identities start flirting, a very real passion flares between them, and it seems like nothing can stop it—except maybe the dangerous gunrunners they’re investigating.

  You fell in love with the hero of Julianna Keyes’s Time Served, and this month she’s back with a new hero who hits all the right buttons in The Good Fight. Former fighter Oz returns to his dying hometown where he falls for a stubborn, sexy doctor. He’s willing to jump back into the fight to gain her love, her trust and her forever.

  Don’t forget, we have a full backlist of books across genres to keep your e-reader or reading app full. Make sure to check out our selections in paranormal romance, male/male romance and historical romance at www.carinapress.com!

  Coming next month: Scott Hildreth makes his Carina Press debut with a bad-boy mafia romance, we launch a new paranormal romance series full of alpha heroes from Kerry Adrienne, and Anna del Mar is back with a sexy new romantic suspense.

  As always, until next month, my fellow book lovers, here’s wishing you a wonderful month of books you love, remember and recommend.

  Happy reading!

  ~Angela James

  Executive Editor, Carina Press

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Also Available From Nico Rosso

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Ben Jackson knew the sign on the side of the highway lied. It read, Welcome to Morris Flats, but they didn’t want him there. Not if the town had any idea what his mission was. A secret festered behind the walls of the small burg that had grown up around agriculture and industry. Automatik had sent him in to track the rot and strategize how cut it out with surgical precision.

  Ben pulled off the highway and onto the streets. He had a quarter tank of gas and a full magazine of 9mm bullets in the pistol strapped to his ankle. This was the recon stage of the mission, but he still wanted to be ready for anything. That meant he needed a gas station, so the SUV was always topped off in case of a hasty bug out.

  The simple homes and single-story businesses blurred past his windows. Somewhere else in Morris Flats, another operator was there to pry into the secrets from a different angle. For the first time with Automatik, he wasn’t backed by his old SEAL teammate, Harper. Any insertion into possibly hostile territory brought a prickle of nerves. Ben knew not to ever get too comfortable. The tension between his shoulder blades was heightened by the unknown variables of working with a new partner. “Bolt Action” Mary, the strike team sniper, kept herself at a distance. Even when the Automatik operators were sharing a beer after a successful job, she still seemed like she was a thousand yards out and viewing it all through her telescopic sight.

  Not that he doubted her skills. The woman always came through with precision dialed down to the millimeter. But what would it be like, just the two of them trying to gather information in potentially hostile territory? Where would her distance put their communication? Ben spotted a gas station and motored that way. He was being selfish. Mary was attractive, somewhere around his age, fit, and with dark eyes that had seen the same corners of the world and the same corners of war fighting as he had. He’d always tried to shine a light on what she knew, who she was, but she’d always remained a shadow operator. Maybe that was why the nerves prickled. She lit a fuse in him, and he didn’t know where it would lead.

  The gas station with a convenience store was the only pool of light on the block. Ben pulled in and brought his rental SUV to rest by the pumps. He got out and stretched in the biting, late fall breeze. Fourteen hours on the road, just for a cover story. This job was already more complicated than door kicking and room clearing, and he hadn’t even met any of the population yet.

  First contact came with a shout. Authoritative voices barked around the far side of the convenience store. Ben walked to
the end of the gas pumps and saw the rear of a police car parked at a sharp angle. The lights were off. He pulled out his phone and faked like he was ambling aimlessly, as if still getting the blood back into his legs after the drive.

  As he approached the police car, the scene came into view. Three teenagers, two Latino and one African-American, sat on a curb next to the convenience store. Facing them were two uniformed police officers, white men, thick with hours spent at the gym. They stood with their hands on their hips and loomed. The angriest-looking one, with short black hair, pointed to a pile of broken skateboards. “And don’t pretend that you didn’t know.” The wood had been snapped in half. Not from use, but from someone stomping on them. Everything about the officer was designed to intimidate, all the way down to the polish on his boots.

  It wasn’t necessary. The kids were terrified. They weren’t handcuffed, but they slouched, completely defeated. And if skateboarding was their biggest crime, they’d more than learned their lesson tonight. But the angry cop didn’t stop, strutting in front of the teens, his duty belt creaking and his hand close to the gear, including his pistol. Anger choked in Ben’s throat. The show of force had gone too far. Was the cop getting his rocks off, or was there a bigger picture? How tight a grip did the police have on this town?

  The officers certainly felt like they were the apex predators of the territory. They were so confident, they had both their backs turned to Ben and were unaware as he made it look like he was checking his email while shooting video of them with his phone.

  One of the kids caught sight of Ben first and shot him a frightened look. And warning him. Ben’s ire flared and his heart broke. How far would this go? The angry officer pulled a can of pepper spray from his belt, though he’d been faced with no opposition. Ben had just shown up in town and needed to maintain his cover through the intelligence gathering, but he couldn’t just stand there and do nothing.

  “Oh, damn,” he exclaimed. “I was looking for the bathroom. Is it over here?” He held his hands up, his phone in one, still recording.

  The startled officers turned. Ben suppressed his emotions and concentrated on his battlefield calm. Things could escalate quickly. Either he could diffuse them, or he might have to fight his way out of the town he’d just arrived in. And that would fuck the mission.

  The other cop, a blond man, had his hand over his sidearm while assessing Ben. The angry cop seemed paralyzed with rage. He clearly wasn’t used to being interrupted or challenged.

  The blond cop cocked his head toward the convenience store. “They’re inside,” he commanded.

  “Got it. Thanks.” Ben backed up, hands still raised shoulder height. He wanted to be moving toward this fight. Anything to put more distance between these cops and those kids.

  He rounded back to the front of the convenience store, seething. Be cool. It would be bad to make enemies on the first night out. He and Mary and Automatik were playing the long game. It had taken at least three years of intelligence operatives tracking illegal guns to bring their focus on Morris Flats. The place was a hub for all kinds of transportation, and the weapons had been hidden parallel to legit shipments across the country. An intercepted crate had linked to one of these aboveboard manifests, which tied to another, and another, until they’d finally zeroed in on this spot on the map. If big-time gunrunning was happening in the area, the cops would know about it. And those two officers certainly behaved like they had a secret to protect.

  Ben had to take a long breath to erase the anger in his voice when he spoke to the clerk behind the counter. “Do I need a key for the bathroom?”

  “No, sir,” the older clerk answered and waved Ben toward the back corner of the room.

  Ben locked himself inside and brought up the Automatik communication app on his phone. It tied them all to the shared information on the missions. A big change from the military chain of command he’d left behind. All the doors were open in Automatik. The operators called the shots, and everyone was itching to take down these gunrunners. He explained his brief encounter with the local officers and uploaded the video.

  He left the bathroom and bought a candy bar before returning to his SUV. Things seemed quiet on the other side of the store. It would put him too far out on a limb to check, so he pumped gas in his car and tried to keep the frustration from seizing all his muscles.

  Then he heard the telltale hiss of pepper spray. The kids yelped and grunted in pain. He halted the urge to rush around the corner. Surprising the cops would only add up to a bullet in Ben’s chest. He yanked open the SUV door and leaned across the driver’s seat so his shoulder pressed on the horn. The sound blared. He saw the clerk come out of the store behind him. Glancing through the front windshield revealed the blond cop coming around the corner as well, still ready to draw his weapon.

  Ben leaned away from the horn and stepped back from the SUV, dragging his coat from the passenger seat. “Sorry, guys.” He smiled sheepishly. “Just grabbing my jacket.” He pulled it on and turned the collar up.

  The clerk watched the cop warily and slipped back into his shop. The blond man approached, cocked for confrontation. At least the sound of the pepper spray had abated.

  “You gassing up to get back on the highway?” The cop made the question sound like an order.

  “No, sir.” Ben kept his hands in plain view, but he was close enough to rush the officer if the man tried to pull his sidearm. “I have some business in town.”

  The cop looked him up and down. Ben chafed under the scrutiny. He’d done nothing wrong other than interrupting an inappropriate show of force. He was tempted to list parts of his service record with the SEALs to prove he was a solid citizen. But not the kind of citizen they wanted in town. He was there to seek and destroy the gunrunning business in which this cop was no doubt some kind of player. The cop kept staring. Ben had felt that look before. He was a stranger. A black man. And he wasn’t ducking or as quiet as this officer wanted.

  “Well, then.” The cop smiled without warmth. “Best of luck. Stay out of trouble.”

  The gas pump clicked off. Ben nodded at the cop and turned to finish fueling his car. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the cop still staring him down for a moment before moving back to where his partner was with the teens.

  Ben was cranked up, ready for action. But he’d have to wait. The fighting would start after he and Mary had found solid evidence and populated the list of major players for the final strike.

  The police car backed away from the convenience store and pulled onto the street. The rear seat was empty; the kids hadn’t been arrested. But this night was bad enough for them. Ben watched the three boys stagger away, carrying the pieces of their skateboards and rubbing their sleeves across watering eyes.

  Ben wrapped up his business at the gas station and drove back into the quiet town. Lies surrounded him. Barely ten minutes into the op, he already felt it balancing on a hair trigger. He wouldn’t stay out of trouble, like the cop said. He was there to look for it.

  Chapter Two

  Mary Kuri reached past the loaded .38 Special in her purse, found her lip gloss and touched up her color after having left too much of it behind on the rim of a glass of red wine. She preferred to drink whiskey. She also preferred a .40 automatic as a pistol backup. But she was on an operation and had to look more like a real estate developer than a former black ops soldier.

  “How’s that Pinot?” The other customers’ drinks sat dry while the hotel bartender paid her too much attention.

  “Nice.” It wasn’t, but it was the best the Sycamore Inn could offer. “Perfect end to a travel day.”

  “Where from?” He put his hands on the bar and flexed a little. The guy, in his late twenties, filled out a dress shirt fine. Blond hair, clean features.

  “Dallas now, but the boss has me scouting so much, I’m like a vagabond.” She sipped the
acidic wine and checked the mirror behind the bartender for who might be listening. Two men sat down the bar, paying more attention to the basketball game on the high TV than her. A man and a woman slouched at a table, both looking at their phones and weary from business travel. Slow weeknight at the Sycamore Inn.

  The bartender’s nametag hung awkwardly from his chest pocket, purporting him to be Will. “You drove up here from Dallas?” He asked it as if recording it to memory and ready to repeat it to the next interested local.

  “Anything under ten hours is a dream.” Which wasn’t part of the act. She’d spent forty-eight hours or more awake during many ops in the Middle East. “I’m just glad to have a little wine and a roof over my head.” She glanced about the small bar off the hotel lobby. One security camera looked down from a corner, but it had a blind spot all the way on the opposite side of the room. “The Sycamore Inn is looking mighty fine.”

  Will topped off her wine with a conspiratorial wink. “The best we got in Morris Flats.” A troubling thought brought his brow down. “You’re not here to develop another hotel, are you?”

  The remote town at the southern tip of Illinois seemed like it could barely support the one four-story hotel.

  “Not to worry. We do multi-use spaces. Businesses on the bottom, apartments on the top. That kind of thing.” The manufactured shop talk prompted her to fish her phone from her purse and check over the notifications. Her gut tightened as she glanced over Ben’s account of the gas station activity. They’d barely started their op, and her new partner had already sparked against the local cops. Not that she blamed him. She blew out a breath and justified her frustration. “Really, Helen?” Her fake boss sending a fake afterhours email. Will started to drift away, but she caught his attention while still looking at her phone. “I just got here, and she’s asking about prospects.”

  “That’s the problem with the phone.” He patted his back pocket. “They can always get you.”

  “Well—” she placed her phone facedown on the bar, “—I’m not going to run around an unknown town after dark. You should see the places they send me.” She’d been to Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya and other locations her service records would deny. “How’s Miller Flats? I’ll find stuff out here, right?”