Ghost: A Linear Tactical Romantic Suspense Standalone Read online

  Copyright © 2019 by Janie Crouch

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locals is entirely coincidental.

  Cover by Deranged Doctor Design.

  A Calamity Jane Publishing Book

  GHOST: LINEAR TACTICAL

  To my Stephanie…

  always more than an editor.

  A friend

  A sister

  An advocate

  An inspiration

  Not just to me, but to so many

  We’d all go play in traffic for you, woman.

  But you’d be yelling at us to get off the street the whole time.

  I love you.

  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

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Epilogue

  CYCLONE - Sneak Peek

  EAGLE - Sneak Peek

  SHAMROCK - Sneak Peek

  ANGEL - Sneak Peek

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Janie Crouch

  About the Author

  1

  Dorian Lindstrom stood in the icy sleet of a freak March Wyoming storm.

  Thundersnow. When Mother Nature couldn’t decide what the hell she wanted to do, she did everything: snow, rain, lightning.

  Nobody in their right mind would be standing out here in it.

  Dorian hadn’t been in his right mind for some time. For the six years since he’d gotten out of an enemy prison in Afghanistan, to be exact.

  But the good thing about being tortured within inches of your life? Standing out in the middle of a balls-to-the-wall storm didn’t faze you in the slightest.

  Especially when you were on the hunt for someone threatening your family. Or at least the only family Dorian had left.

  Not many people were stupid enough to threaten the men of Linear Tactical, especially on their home turf in the mountains of western Wyoming.

  Their years as US Army Green Berets had trained them to adapt, defend, and survive almost every type of situation. Then they’d left active duty and started their own self-defense, weapons, and wilderness survival training facility for civilians.

  So if someone was brilliant enough to think it was a good idea to come after the men of LT—or their loved ones—they’d better have a damned good plan.

  Dorian wasn’t sure the people he was currently watching for in this crazy-ass storm had any plan at all, much less a good one.

  He knew his enemy today, and he wasn’t afraid of them or any attack they might make. Dorian would prefer a straight-up fight, but these guys weren’t going to give it to him. They’d already shown their true colors by bullying a woman who lived alone as well as cutting the brake lines of a Linear guy’s fiancée today. Pregnant fiancée.

  Whether the dumbasses knew it or not, they’d sealed their fate the moment their razor had touched that hose.

  With this storm, and until Dorian and his team could hunt down the people responsible, the Linear guys were taking the tactically smart approach: a united front. They were keeping the people who meant the most to them together inside Finn Bollinger’s house where the team could keep them safe.

  Dorian had volunteered to take watch outside. Nobody had been surprised by that. Everyone knew Dorian didn’t do crowds. Even friendly ones.

  But as much as he was spoiling for a fight, there had been no sign of a threat out here besides the storm itself. There was nobody out here. Nobody—especially not people with the limited skill level of these guys—got past Dorian in the wilderness.

  And he wasn’t the only one keeping watch. There were another half dozen men associated with Linear in vehicles around the perimeter of the house. Some military trained, some not, but all able to handle themselves.

  Three of Dorian’s closest friends—brothers in every way but blood—had the women they loved inside Finn’s house for protection.

  This was his family. They had helped him pick up his pieces six years ago when there hadn’t been many pieces left to actually pick up. And they continued to help him pick them up every time he broke apart.

  He would die for them. Kill for them.

  But he wouldn’t have to tonight. There was no threat to his family out here right now. Another wide circle around the perimeter of the house confirmed that.

  Perhaps the friendly neighborhood idiots had come to their senses and realized an attack would be a suicide mission. More likely, they were cowards and planned to strike when their targets were more vulnerable.

  There was no sign of a threat here. No sign of anything but a winter hurricane. Dorian ought to move inside too. The guys in the cars could keep watch, and he could come back out every hour or so.

  Dorian knew these woods, had spent days—weeks—in the surrounding wilderness. The people who had targeted Charlotte’s brakes had been careless enough to leave traces behind. There was no way anyone that sloppy was in these woods tonight.

  Nobody was in these woods but him.

  Yet his eyes were in constant motion, surveilling the woods around him even when he sensed nothing.

  Because he felt it.

  Felt it again, damn it.

  Felt her.

  He stopped suddenly, crouching down. He’d had that being-watched feeling on and off for weeks. There was no danger to his friends out here, but was there danger to him?

  Was there a literal ghost—Wraith—out there? Or was his mind playing tricks on him again?

  What Dorian had lived through would’ve killed most men. But there had been a price for that survival. Reality sometimes became fuzzy.

  In this case, the dead coming back to life.

  Grace Brandt, codename Wraith, had died a little over six years ago. He’d seen her die in an explosion no one could’ve survived. He’d been captured and subsequently tortured for forty-one days because he’d been so distracted by her death.

  Her being alive was impossible. Her being in the tiny town of Oak Creek, Wyoming, in the middle of a thundering snowstorm, was beyond impossible.

  But this wasn’t the first time he could’ve sworn he’d felt her presence recently. He’d always been able to feel their connection when Grace was near.

  He ran a gloved hand across his forehead. His mind sometimes couldn’t be trusted.

  Hundreds of hours with his psychiatrist, Dr. Diaz, had finally enabled him to say that out loud.

  So he said it now. “My mind sometimes can’t be trusted.”

  God, it sucked to say that. Even worse, it sucked to know it was true. That his body had come out of forty-one days of torture and eventually healed. His mind . . . well, some days were better than others.

  Evidently, this wasn’t one of the good days if he thought a dead woman was nearby. He stood back up and walked toward the house. There was no way Wraith was alive.

  “My mind sometimes can’t be—”

  His senses picked up on the arrow a split second before it struck him in the waist from behind. He let out a mostly silent curse before dropping low behind a tree, ignoring the pain.

  He’d been shot with a damn quarrel. There was a reason he knew what the short arrow used in a crossbow was called.

  Because it had been Wraith’s weapon of choice. Had been for all the years he’d known her.

  He didn’t touch the bolt—another name for it. He got into position in the cover of the trees and pulled his riflescope up to his eye.

  Nothing.

  Even knowing exactly where the shot had to have come from, he saw nothing. This crazy-ass blizzard didn’t help.

  Phasing out the pain, he kept his sights on the area in front of him, keeping his head down as much as possible, waiting to see what other attack would come.

  None did. Minute after minute . . . nothing.

  One perfect quarrel shot had struck his body, letting him know he wasn’t alone but without doing any true damage.

  And it had come from someone good enough to stalk these woods without his knowledge.

  There were very few people in the world who could accomplish the latter. Even fewer who could accomplish the former.

  There was only one person in the world good enough with a crossbow to hit him at this distance in a storm like this one.

  Maybe his mind could be trusted.

  The dead
didn’t always stay that way.

  Wraith.

  “IS it okay if I touch you, Dorian?”

  Two hours later, he sat in one of the curtained-off sections of the emergency room in Oak Creek’s small hospital. It was a busy night. Lots of minor accidents due to the storm.

  Once he’d determined he wasn’t going to end up as a pincushion for more arrows, he’d gotten himself back to Finn’s house. Dr. Anne Nichols, Zac Mackay’s girlfriend, had immediately brought him here.

  “You’ve already taken the quarrel out, Doc. I think the worst part is over. Plus, I’ve been through a lot more pain than having an arrow removed.”

  She smiled at him, then moved behind him to look at the wound. “I know you have. I’m not worried about your pain threshold. But I also know you don’t like to be touched, so I didn’t want to assume it was okay.”

  Didn’t like to be touched was an understatement. Could barely stand to be touched was closer to the truth.

  Anne Griffin had walked back into Zac Mackay’s life nearly a year ago. Despite a rough start and a difficult history between the two of them, Zac had quickly realized what a treasure the quiet, insightful doctor truly was. Any other medical professional probably wouldn’t have realized Dorian’s discomfort the first time, much less asked about it.

  “I know it’s you, Annie. I’m okay.”

  “I want to check the stitches before we release you. Honestly, you couldn’t have been hit in a better place. No organ damage, minimal muscle damage—you did the right thing by not yanking the quarrel out, by the way.” He’d already taught her the proper terminology.

  Dorian shrugged. “We were all trained in basic field medicine in the army. Not yanking out an impaled object is Field Med 101.”

  “Well, that and the fact that whoever shot you used a really small arrowhead means you should be back to fighting shape in no time.”

  “Small arrowhead?”

  Annie reached around him to the table and lifted a bag. “This needs to stay in the bag in case it becomes a piece of evidence in a criminal case. But I knew you’d want to see it, so here it is.”

  He studied the bolt through the clear plastic. “It’s a practice head.”

  Annie nodded. “Yes, that’s actually what I thought too. A hunting arrow would’ve done significantly more damage to your flesh, no matter where it had struck.”

  “Believe me, the person who did this—”

  “Your Wraith?”

  Dorian nodded. “If she’d wanted to maim or kill me, I wouldn’t be sitting here right now talking to you. This was a message.”

  “The note? I mean, I appreciate the woman letting us know that Jordan’s house was on fire, but couldn’t she have just picked up a phone?”

  The note attached to the arrow had allowed them to help save a friend in need.

  Dorian shrugged. Yeah, a phone would’ve worked, or a knock on the door, or stepping out from behind her cover and talking to him.

  He turned away from Annie to look out the small window in the treatment room. Any of those things could’ve worked. But they would’ve led to questions.

  First and foremost . . . how the hell was Grace alive?

  Annie fooled with the evidence bag behind him. “Having that note attached to the arrow had to have made her shot much more difficult.”

  He nodded without looking. “It did. She would’ve had to compensate for both it and the storm. It’s a testament to her skill.”

  Annie, generally so mild and kind, scoffed. “It’s a testament to her recklessness. I know we have our hands full with the people trying to hurt Jordan, but I think you need to hunt this Wraith down, and we need to make sure she’s put behind bars.”

  Dorian didn’t waste his time explaining the futility of trying to arrest Wraith. She would never allow herself to be taken alive.

  He turned to face Annie. “I’ll deal with her.”

  “Dorian, we all respect the hell out of you, you know that.” Annie’s eyes were steady on his. “Zac loves you like a brother. But are you sure the person who shot you is who you think it is? I know that sometimes . . .” She faded off.

  “Sometimes I can’t tell reality from fantasy?”

  She gave him a delicate shrug. “Sometimes we all need a little help deciphering what’s dangerous when we can’t see it for ourselves.”

  “I think that’s my cue to enter.”

  Both Dorian and Annie looked up at the woman standing in the doorway.

  “Hey, Doc,” Dorian said. He wasn’t surprised Annie had called his psychiatrist, especially since she had an office here in the hospital.

  Hell, half the town of Oak Creek probably thought he was crazy, although none of them ever said it to his face. He certainly had plenty of symptoms of mental deterioration.

  Unable to be around people for long periods of time? Check.

  Unable to stand most physical touch? Check.

  A tendency to stay in the wilderness for days, sometimes even weeks, at a time? Check.

  Putting two of his best friends in the hospital during an uncontrollable bout of violence? Check.

  Dorian shrugged. “I don’t blame anyone for thinking I’m crazy.”

  Dr. Diaz leaned her head against the doorframe. “I prefer a different term than crazy.”

  “Prone to chronic distress, delusional proclivities, and neurotic tendencies, as well as suffering from acute post-traumatic stress disorder?” Dorian was well aware of his own psychological diagnosis.

  Dr. Diaz raised an eyebrow. “I was going to say ‘cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs,’ but, you know, whatever.”

  Dorian laughed, and even Annie chuckled. This was why he’d made more progress with this young psychiatrist, who’d happened to set up practice in Oak Creek, than any of the other PTSD specialists who’d tried to work with him over the years. She always made it her priority to see he stayed connected to his humanity. Humor had been one of the best ways to do that.

  Annie turned back to him. “I don’t think you’re crazy or cuckoo, Dorian. None of us do. But we’re all aware that you’ve been through a severe—the most severe—trauma. Nobody comes out of that unscathed.”

  Dorian looked down at all the scars covering his chest and arms. Both women had already seen them. Different sizes, lengths, thicknesses. Some, he could remember distinctly what had given him the mark—and he had discussed many of them with Dr. Diaz. The one on his shoulder was from a soldering iron. He had a matching one on his left calf.

  The scars around his wrists matched the ones around his ankles. They were from the first two weeks of his captivity, when he’d fought against his metal restraints, tearing the flesh of his wrists.

  After two weeks, he hadn’t had the strength anymore to waste on futile attempts at escape. All he could do was put his energy into merely surviving each day.

  But most of the scars that riddled his body were a complete blank. At some point, his mind had blended them all together in a cauldron of agony. Dr. Diaz had gently suggested that was probably for the best.

  No need to constantly relive what had nearly killed him the first time.

  Annie moved toward him with a bandage, looking at him for permission, and he nodded.

  He held his arm up out of the way as she covered his wounds. Dr. Diaz was still keeping her distance at the door.

  “As much as it might not look like it, since I’m sitting here in the emergency room, that arrow wasn’t a threat. It was a message.”