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  PRAISE FOR

  SEAL’s Honor

  “Megan Crane’s mix of tortured ex–­special ops heroes, their dangerous missions, and the rugged Alaskan wilderness is a sexy, breathtaking ride!”

  —­New York Times bestselling author Karen Rose

  Also by Megan Crane

  SEAL’S HONOR

  SNIPER’S PRIDE

  A JOVE BOOK

  Published by Berkley

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2019 by Megan Crane

  Excerpt copyright © 2019 by Megan Crane

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  A JOVE BOOK, BERKLEY, and the BERKLEY & B colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Ebook ISBN: 9781984805515

  First Edition: October 2019

  Cover images: Couple © Claudio Marinesco; Chalet and trees © Sandra Cunningham / Trevillion Images

  Cover design by Sarah Oberrender

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either 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 locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  This book is dedicated to the incomparable Karen Rose, who dared me to write a local cop heroine paired with one of my over-­the-­top Alaska Force heroes. Challenge accepted.

  Contents

  Praise for Seal’s Honor

  Also by Megan Crane

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  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

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Acknowledgments

  Excerpt from the newest Alaska Force book

  About the Author

  One

  The man she was supposed to meet was late.

  Deliberately, she assumed.

  Investigator Kate Holiday of the Alaska State Troopers noted the time, then sat straighter in the chair she’d chosen specifically because it faced the door of the only café she’d found open in tiny Grizzly Harbor, one of Southeast Alaska’s rugged fishing villages that was accessible only by personal boat, ferry—­which at this time of year ran seldomly—­or air.

  Another minute passed. Five minutes. Ten.

  This was not a particularly auspicious beginning to her investigation into the strange goings-­on in and around this remote town, tucked away on one of the thousand or so islands along the state’s southeastern coast. Kate took a dim view of strange goings-­on in general, but particularly when they consistently involved a band of ex-­military operatives running around and calling themselves “Alaska Force.”

  Of all things.

  Kate was not impressed with groups of armed, dangerous, unsupervised men in general. Much less with those who gave themselves cute names, seemed to expend entirely too much energy attempting to keep the bulk of their activities off the official radar, and yet kept turning up in the middle of all kinds of trouble. Which they then lied about.

  She had been unimpressed the moment she’d read the file that carefully detailed the list of potential trans­gressions her department at the Alaska Bureau of Investigation believed the members of Alaska Force had committed. But then, Kate had a thing about the men up here, on this island and all over the state, who seemed to think that the law did not apply to them. It was a time-­honored part of the Alaskan frontier spirit, and Kate had hated it pretty much all her life.

  But this was not the time to think about her unpleasant childhood. What mattered was that Kate had grown up. She had escaped from the armed, dangerous, and unsuper­vised men who had run roughshod over her early years, helped put them away, and had thereafter dedicated herself to upholding the rule of law in the most defiantly, gleefully lawless place in the United States.

  This introductory interview with the supposed public relations point person of Alaska Force was only the opening shot. Kate was unamused that the group—­who secreted themselves away on the near-­inaccessible back side of the island, and when had anything good come from groups of dangerous men with hideouts?—­considered it necessary to have a public relations point person in the first place.

  She had every intention of taking them down if they were responsible for the escalating series of disturbances that had culminated in an act of arson two days ago, which had amped up her department’s interest in what was happening out here in Grizzly Harbor. Because she had no tolerance whatsoever for people who imagined themselves above the law.

  Much less people who thought it was entertaining to blow up fishing boats in the sounds and inlets that made up so much of Southeast Alaska, where summer brought cruise ships filled with tourists. This time there had been no one aboard, likely because it was the first week of a dark December.

  But it wouldn’t always be December.

  The door to the café opened then, letting in a blast of frigid air from outside, where the temperature hovered at a relatively balmy thirty-­three degrees. Or likely less than that now that the gray, moody daylight was eking away into the winter dark and the coming sunset at three fifteen.

  Kate glanced up, expecting the usual local in typical winter clothes.

  But the man who sauntered in from the cold was more like a mountain.

  She sat at attention, unable to help herself, her body responding unconsciously to the authority the man exuded the way other men—­and the many deadly wild animals who roamed these islands—­threw off scent. And she deeply loathed herself for the silly, embarrassingly feminine part of her that wanted to flutter about, straightening her blue uniform. She refrained.

  The man before her was dressed for the cold and the coming dark, which should have made him look bulky and misshapen. But it didn’t, because all his gear was very clearly tactical. He was big. Very big. She put him at about six four, and that wasn’t taking into account the width of his shoulders or the way he held himself, as if he fully expected anyone looking at him to either cower in fear or applaud. Possibly both.

  Kate did neither.

  It was December on a steep, rugged island made from the top of a submerged mountain and covered in dense evergreen trees, perched there in the tr
eacherous northern Pacific with glaciers all around. One of the most beautiful, if inhospitable, parts of the world. There were only about 150 or so year-­round residents of this particular village, and Kate was the only person in the café besides the distinctly unfriendly owner, who had provided her a cup of coffee without comment, then disappeared into the kitchen.

  Meaning she was, for all intents and purposes, alone with a man who made her feel as instantly on edge as she would if she’d come face-­to-­face with a grizzly.

  Kate didn’t speak as she eyed the new arrival. She’d joined the Troopers after college and had been on the job ever since, helping her fellow Alaskans in all parts of this great state. And sometimes providing that help had involved finding herself in all kinds of questionable situations. The man standing before her radiated power, but Kate knew a thing or two about it herself.

  She watched, expressionless, as he stuffed his hat and gloves in the arm of his jacket, like a normal person when he wasn’t, then hung it up on one of the hooks near the door. All with what seemed to Kate entirely too much languid indifference for a man who was clearly well aware he was nothing less than a loaded weapon.

  He looked around the café, as if he expected to see a crowd on this dreary, cold Friday afternoon in the darkest stretch of the year. Then he finally looked straight at Kate.

  For a moment, she felt wildly, bizarrely dizzy. As if the chair she was in had started to spin. She went to sit down, then realized three things, one on top of the next. One, she was already sitting down. Two, the man might have made a big show of looking around, but he’d taken in every single detail about her before he’d fully crossed the threshold. She knew it. She could tell.

  And three, the man in front of her wasn’t only big and powerful, and incredibly dangerous if the file on him was even partially correct; he was also beautiful.

  Shockingly, astonishingly, absurdly beautiful, in a way that struck her as too masculine, too physical, and too carnal all at once.

  He had thick black hair that didn’t look the least bit military and that he made no attempt to smooth now that he’d pulled his hat off. His eyebrows were arched and distinctly wicked. His eyes were as dark as strong coffee, his mouth was implausibly distracting, and his cheekbones were like weapons. He looked the way Kate imagined a Hawaiian god might.

  Which was a fanciful notion that she couldn’t believe she’d just entertained about a person of interest in a recurring series of questionable events.

  His gaze was locked to hers, and she wondered if people mistook all that inarguable male beauty for softness, when she could see the gravity in those dark eyes. And a certain sternness in his expression.

  But in the next second he smiled, big and wide, and Kate was almost . . . dazzled.

  “You must be Alaska State Trooper Kate Holiday,” he said in a booming voice. “Come all the way out to Grizzly Harbor to sniff around Alaska Force. I’m Temple­ton Cross, at your service.”

  And when he moved, his strides were liquid and easy, two steps to cover the distance and extend his hand to Kate as if he were welcoming her to his home like some cheerful, oversized patriarch. As if he weren’t on the wrong side of an interview with law enforcement.

  As if he weren’t very likely responsible for—­or complicit in—­a string of hospitalizations, explosions, and other dubious events as far away as Juneau, but mostly concentrated in Grizzly Harbor, going back years. With a noted and concerning uptick over the past year.

  But being a trooper wasn’t like other kinds of policing, or so Kate gathered from watching police shows based in the Lower 48. Alaska State Troopers had to get used to roles that defied proper job descriptions, because anything could and would happen in the course of a shift when that shift took place somewhere out in the Last Frontier. Kate knew how to play her part. She stood, smiled nonthreateningly, and took his hand.

  And told herself that she was cataloging how hard and big it was, that was all. How it wrapped around hers. How Templeton Cross, whose military record stated he had been an Army Ranger until he’d moved off into something too classified to name, made no attempt to overpower her. He didn’t shake too hard. He didn’t try to crush the bones in her hand, to let her know who was boss. There was no he-­man, Neanderthal moment, the way there too often was in situations like these.

  He shook her hand like a good man might, and she filed that away because she suspected he wasn’t a good man at all. And a man who could fake it was exponentially more dangerous than one who oozed his evil every­where, like a fuel leak.

  She angled her head toward the table she’d claimed, removing her hand from his and waving it in invitation. Because she could act like this was her home, too. No matter that the hand he’d shaken . . . tingled. “Please. Sit down.”

  “Right to business,” Templeton said, with a big laugh that jolted through Kate. She told herself it was an unpleasant sensation, especially the way it wound around and around inside her and heated her up from within. “Caradine!”

  The unfriendly owner of the café was a woman with a dark ponytail and a scowl, who appeared in the doorway to the kitchen and glared. “I can’t think of a single reason you should yell my name. Not like that. Or at all.”

  “Deep down,” Templeton said to Kate, with a conspiratorial grin, “I’m convinced that Caradine is a marshmallow. Just wrapped up in all that barbed wire.”

  “No marshmallow. No barbed wire. And no interest whatsoever in being psychologically profiled.”

  Caradine came over to the table as she spoke, then plunked down what looked like straight black coffee at the place across from Kate.

  “Thank you for opening today,” Templeton drawled, grinning wide, as if this was all a complicated friendship ritual. Which maybe it was, if Caradine had opened the café for this meeting on a day that she likely wouldn’t see much other business, if any. “And you know you love my psychological profiles.”

  Caradine did not grin back. “I love nothing, Templeton, except your money.”

  Kate couldn’t decide which one of them was putting on a show. Or was this a coordinated performance for her benefit? Yet somehow, as Caradine stomped back toward her kitchen, she didn’t think so. Caradine struck her as a typical sort of resident found all over the wildest, largest state in the union: happy to mind her own business and downright ornery when someone else attempted to mind it for her.

  Templeton struck her as a problem.

  She smiled at him anyway as he threw himself down into the seat across from her, taking up more than his fair share of space. And his big arms, clad in a tight henley, showed her exactly how seriously he took his physique.

  “Do you think this will make you seem more approachable?” she asked.

  He belted out another laugh. “Do I seem approachable? I must be slipping.”

  And for a moment they both smiled at each other, competing to see who could be more pleasant.

  “You must know that I’m here after the rash of incidents that seemed to stem entirely from your little group,” Kate said, folding her hands on the table and watching his face. His expression didn’t change at all. “You’ve chosen to show up for this conversation late, then engage in what I imagine you think is charming small talk. Your military record goes to great lengths not to say what sort of classified things you engaged in after you were a Ranger, but I’m going to guess it was Delta Force.”

  “I don’t like that name,” Templeton said, almost helpfully. “It’s so dramatic, don’t you think?”

  “Now you’re being funny,” Kate observed. “Which suggests you find yourself entertaining. What interests me, Mr. Cross, is that you think comedy is the appropriate way to handle the situation you find yourself in.”

  She knew a lot of things about Templeton Cross. Among them, that he’d achieved the rank of master sergeant—­but unlike many people with military backgrounds she’d encount
ered, he didn’t correct her when she failed to address him by his rank.

  “And what situation is that?” he asked instead. “I’m having a cup of coffee with a law enforcement officer. As a former soldier myself, I have nothing but respect for a badge. I didn’t realize there was an expectation that this conversation stay grumpy. But we can do that, too.”

  “Fascinating,” Kate murmured, though he was be­ing evasive, and she was certain that was intentional. “Why don’t we start with you explaining Alaska Force to me.”

  “Alaska Force isn’t anything but a group of combat vets who run a little business together,” Templeton said genially. “It’s all apple pie and Uncle Sam around here, I promise.”

  “Mercenaries, in other words.”

  “Not quite mercenaries,” Templeton said, and she thought she saw something in his gaze then, some flash of heat, but it was gone almost as soon as she identified it. “I can’t say I like that word.”

  “Is there a better word to describe what you do?”

  “We like to consider ourselves problem solvers,” Templeton said, sounding friendly and at his ease. He looked it, too. Yet Kate didn’t believe he was either of those things. “You start throwing around words like mercenary, and people think we’re straight-­up soldiers of fortune. Soulless men who whore themselves out to the highest bidder. That’s not us.”

  “And yet Alaska Force has, to my count, been involved in no less than six disturbing incidents in the past six months.” Kate replied in the same friendly tone he’d used. She even sat back a little, mirroring his ease and supposed laziness right back at him. “There was a member of your own team, if I’m not mistaken, who presented at the hospital in Juneau with injuries consistent with being beaten over the head and forcibly restrained. He claimed he tripped and fell.”

  “Green Berets are notoriously clumsy,” Templeton replied blandly.

  “Right around that time, an individual known to be a self-­styled doomsday preacher, who Alaska Force interfered with years back—­”