Page 8 of Callahan's Haven

The person calling him hadn’t specifiedhowHaven would be gone, but any scenario he could come up with scared the shit out of him.

Haven was clueless about his activities. She thought he worked in intelligence as a contractor for the State Department, and he did—on paper. He actually worked for an organization that literally had no name. Those in his circles just called it, The Cooperative. His job was to do what couldn’t be done through the normal chain of command or in the realm of the public eye, whether it be negotiations, interrogations, or coordinating and leading a myriad of other covert operations no one could know about.

Now, it seemed, he was in the untenable position of either losing his integrity or losing his daughter. His choice was a no-brainer. He would choose Haven over anything or anyone—even his own life or that of Sadik.

But how did they know about the summit he was mediating between the Turkish rebel and the Minister?

Duncan turned on the phone and pulled up the texting screen.

I NEED THE TEAM

He turned and walked toward the steps leading up to the front porch but stopped when the phone still in his hand rang, and then answered before it could get to the second ring without bothering to check the caller ID.

“My daughter’s in danger.”

4

“Here she comes,”Declan said, sitting up straight in the front passenger seat of Cal’s dark blue SUV. “God, she’s killing me. The naughty librarian takes off her glasses. She shakes out her long strawberry blonde hair.”

Cal cut his eyes over at Declan, still mumbling under his breath, and then followed his friend’s binoculared gaze toward the front of the library to the two young women chatting and walking down the steps. They were Haven’s best friends and roommates, Hope Danford and Destiny Maddox.

“Hope doesn’t wear glasses,” Cal said, grimacing at his friend.

Declan frowned but didn’t bother looking at him. “A guy can fantasize. Can’t he?”

“Sure… But we’re supposed to be watching for anyone paying particular attention to Haven. Colonel Sheppard’s daughter. The daughter who’s in danger.”

They’d been on campus for almost two weeks and so far all had been quiet. It reminded Cal of some of their assignments in the Corps—long days and nights of watchingnothing, but always prepared forsomething.

It had been three years since their last assignment, and he had to admit he’d missed working with his team. Because as it turned out, the good major’s parting shot had been right. The Elite Squad had been finished.

Just probably not the way Celeski had envisioned.

They’d caught all kinds of hell from Colonel Whitman when they’d turned the prisoner over to General Younces. Whitman had threatened to bring court-martial charges up against them for that and theirtreatmentof Celeski and his men. He probably later regretted the action since the ensuing shitstorm had brought to lightmoreunsavory behavior from Whitman and others under his direct command.

Thankfully, no one on Cal’s team had been implicated in what had ended up being a massive investigation with charges regarding the Colonel and his ties to local Turkish officials. But that hadn’t done away with the fact they’d participated—unwillingly or not—in an unauthorized interrogation, nor their actions against a ranking officer. It also hadn’t mattered the young woman in Celeski’s custody had corroborated their own statements.

He grinned to himself. Whitman, Celeski and his men, and a handful of other officers and enlisted men hadn’t fared well. Last he’d heard, all had been drummed out of the Corps and scattered to parts unknown. He still didn’t know why they hadn’t been imprisoned.

In the end, Cal and his team had been generously offered early retirement—something they’d had to thank General Younces and Colonel Sheppard for. So, after eleven years of Marine life, Cal had become a thirty-two-year-old retiree with full benefits. Having to leave the Corps had been a bitch, but he supposed retirement hadn’t been all that bad.

But all it had taken was one call from the Colonel for him and each member of his squad to drop what they were doing and come to the aid of their former commander. It wasn’t the best of circumstances to have the opportunity to work as a team again, but it had felt right—almost like no time at all had passed. They’d just come back together and…clicked.

Now if he could pull Declan’s focus away from the tall, curvy-figured Ms. Danford, things would be fine.

But who was he to talk? All he wanted to do was follow Haven around like some kind of ginger guard dog.

“Yeah, yeah. I know.” Declan frowned over at him and then raised his Steiner high-powered binoculars again. “I’m doing sweeps. Besides, she’s safe in the library. Solace is within yelling, well,whisperingdistance,” his friend said, grinning at his bad library-related joke, and adjusted the focus, “and Garrett’s watching her from the van.”

Cal glanced over at the strangely inconspicuous hi-tech vehicle the Colonel had provided for them where Garrett was geekily surveilling his heart out and monitoring the cameras and audio equipment they’d managed to install in and around the places Haven spent most of her time—something that had been scarily easy to do.

Security on campus wasn’t worth shit. All it had taken was appropriated maintenance uniforms and no one had questioned them. The implication of how effortless it would be for someone to get to Haven hadn’t been lost on any of them.

Cal rested his gaze on the library where their principle and the object of his desire currently sat, clueless about the danger she was in or the fact she had a man tied up in knots over her.

And wasn’t that something that had come out of left field?

Looking back, Cal figured the whole attraction thing might have started while he’d watched over her as she’d walked across the quad with Hope and Destiny the Thursday morning of that first week. His gaze had lingered on how the sun had caught the lighter strands in her dark golden-blonde hair before moving over her smiling face and then down her body. Once he’d realized what he was doing, he’d quickly refocused on those around her, but at that point it had probably been too late for him.

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