Page 1 of Savage Reckoning

PROLOGUE

Megan

I’m in love.

Captain Megan Alexander rolled over in her bunk at Fort Carson US army base in Colorado and stared at the ceiling. Her stomach fluttered. She hugged herself and repeated the affirmation, as if to just make sure it was true. After all, at almost twenty-seven years old and with barely a romantic liaison to her name so far, this was momentous news, and she needed to get used to it. Try it on for size, explore the notion and make sure it actually fitted her.

She allowed herself the luxury of basking in this heady haze for a while longer as the base came awake outside. She wasn’t on duty until eleven hundred hours so could take the time to simply be, to savour this new reality.

I’m in love, she repeated, as if her mind hadn’t heard her the first time, or had failed to fully grasp the implications, the enormity of it. And I’m getting married. Me, a married woman. And to a colonel, no less.

Well, probably. Definitely. That’s the way these things go, isn’t it? It’s just a matter of time now before it becomes official. Before he actually asks me. Or maybe I should ask him. This is the twenty-first century, after all…

She swung her legs out of bed. The colonel in question, one Ed Baker, was due here at ten. They’d probably spend a happy half hour or so tumbling across her bunk, then on to the officers’ canteen for whatever was left of breakfast. Megan sauntered into her en suite shower and caught sight of her sloppy grin in the mirror.

Get a grip, girl. It’s just sex. The good sort, obviously, but even so…

Except, it wasn’t just sex. Making love with Ed was much more than that. It set her tingling; her soul was alight. He was… He was… just everything. So what if he was a bit older than her. And a senior officer. And so what if she only met him a few weeks ago when he’d been transferred to her base after a distinguished tour in Afghanistan? They were in love, and that was all that counted.

It had been classic Hollywood stuff. Eyes meeting across a crowded target range, a crackle of awareness that had nothing to do with the tons of high explosives stacked in the armoury next door. The firearms instructor had paired up the class, and Megan found herself with Ed, taking it in turns to aim at the silhouetted figures a hundred yards away while they covered each other. By the end of the session, she was smitten. And so was he.

He sought her out, in the canteen, or the officers’ mess. They ate together, chatted, compared their mutual love of heavy rock and dislike of tapioca pudding. He was her soulmate. They had been brought together by Fate.

He was the first to declare how he felt. He’d whispered “I love you” after they’d slept together for the first time, though Megan would be the quick to agree there had been little in the way of sleeping that night. Ed had quite simply swept her off her feet.

True, he hadn’t mentioned marriage, and neither had she. Yet. But it was only a matter of time. They were meant to be together; she could feel it.

He was built like a Greek god, an Adonis on steroids. Dark-blond hair, icy-blue eyes, chiselled jaw, and abs that could cut diamonds. Pretty much every female on the base was in lust with Colonel Ed Baker. The other women whispered about him when they thought Megan wasn’t listening, because obviously they all knew what was going on. Neither Megan nor Ed made any attempt to hide the fact that they were seeing each other, but that didn’t bother the top brass or affect their lives as soldiers because their roles were so far apart.

Megan was in the medical corps, having entered the military as a doctor, just qualified and fresh out of college. She intended to specialise in emergency and trauma care so had headed straight for the US Army at the first opportunity. Ed was an intelligence and explosives specialist with a talent for deactivating bombs. He’d made a name for himself in the international peace-keeping force in Afghanistan dealing with al-Qaeda insurgent attacks. And as luck would have it, they were both scheduled to fly out to the Helmand province in the next month for a tour of duty. Megan would be stationed at the military hospital in Kabul rather than in actual combat, but she had no doubt their paths would cross frequently.

And later, when they returned to the US, they would marry. They might both stay in the army where she would carve out a glittering career as a surgeon and Ed would climb the ranks to the heady heights of a four-star general. And much later, when active service was all over, they’d retire to a nice little house in a quiet suburb somewhere. Megan fancied Washington. They’d enjoy their grandchildren while she did charity work in disadvantaged neighbourhoods and Ed played golf, or maybe he’d go into politics. Not that they’d discussed it yet, and of course, Ed might have other ideas. But their future would be along those lines, she was sure of it.

On that heady, confident note, she dressed quickly then slipped out of her room to check the mail depot. She was expecting a letter from her auntie Jacqueline in the United Kingdom. Since her parents’ death a few years ago, Auntie Jackie was her only relative, and Megan liked to stay in touch. It was what her mother would have expected.

“…of course he’s married. All the best ones are…”

Megan grinned. It wasn’t in her nature to eavesdrop, but the two female corporals sifting through mail at the next table were making no attempt to keep their voices down.

“Ginny says he’s a proper man-whore. Shags anything with a pulse.”

“I have a pulse,” came the optimistic reply. “He can share my bunk anytime.”

“Get in line. Or take a number. Sex-God Baker will be with you when he has a moment.”

“I heard he was boning one of the medical officers. Lucky cow…”

The voices faded as the women found their mail and moved away.

Megan stared after them. Had she heard right? Had they actually mentioned the name Baker? That was odd, because as far as she knew there was only one Baker on the base, and she was sleeping with him. Who was this other ’man-whore’? And did Ed know about it? With gossip like this bouncing around, someone could too easily mix the two Bakers up, and that wouldn’t do Ed’s career any good. There’d be rumours, and…

She checked her watch. If she hurried, she just had time to nip over to the base hospital block and check the records there. Every soldier on the base was registered with the medical facility, it would only take a moment to pull up all the Bakers and find this other guy.

The nurse on reception barely glanced at her when she nipped through the front office and into an empty consultation cubicle. There, she fired up the network computer and logged in to the medical records system.

A, B… Luckily, she didn’t have far to scroll to get to the Bs. Megan located them quickly, then started to hunt through. Babington, Backhouse, Bagshaw, Baker.

Edward Baker, aged thirty-six, rank : Colonel. The record listed the key details of Ed’s military career, and Megan would admit to being impressed. A career soldier, he had getting on for twenty years’ service and had been decorated for bravery twice. He’d never mentioned that. There was not much in his actual medical history. A couple of bouts of influenza and a mild case of malaria years earlier. She moved on to check the next guy with a similar name.

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