Kano’s Keep E-Book

Mayer Dale

• Herausgeber: Valley Publishing Ltd.
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Catherine. DeeDee. Paris. Kano had hoped to never deal with the three again. The woman he loved, her dragon of a mother, and a city to bring the best—and worst—memories to mind. A return trip leads to a conversation with DeeDee, which sheds more light on who is behind Bullard’s murder in that planned plane explosion.

After seeing Catherine again, Kano can’t stop thinking about her. That young woman matured into someone he couldn’t have imagined and now can’t forget. However, he’s afraid her powerful mother is setting him up to die—yet again.

Catherine hadn’t expected to see Kano again, but this time she’s not letting him walk away. And she’s prepared to face off against her snake of a mother to save him. Catherine must plumb the depths of her own soul and that of her family to save Kano—and herself.

Leseprobe

Kano’s Keep

Bullard’s BattleBook #5

Dale Mayer

Books in This Series:

Ryland’s Reach, Book 1

Cain’s Cross, Book 2

Eton’s Escape, Book 3

Garret’s Gambit, Book 4

Kano’s Keep, Book 5

Fallon’s Flaw, Book 6

Quinn’s Quest, Book 7

Bullard’s Beauty, Book 8

Bullard’s Best, Book 9

Bullard’s Battle, Books 1–2

Bullard’s Battle, Books 3–4

Bullard’s Battle, Books 5–6

Bullard’s Battle, Books 7–8

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

About This Book

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

Epilogue

About Fallon’s Flaw

Excerpt from Damon’s Deal

Author’s Note

Complimentary Download

About the Author

Copyright Page

About This Book

Welcome to a new stand-alone but interconnected series from Dale Mayer. This is Bullard’s story—and that of his team’s. All raw, rough, incredibly capable men who have one goal: to find out who was behind the attack on their leader, before the attacker, or attackers, return to finish the job.

Stay tuned for more nonstop action as the men narrow down their suspects … and find a way to let love back into their own empty lives.

Catherine. DeeDee. Paris. Kano had hoped to never deal with the three again. The woman he loved, her dragon of a mother, and a city to bring the best—and worst—memories to mind. A return trip leads to a conversation with DeeDee, which sheds more light on who is behind Bullard’s murder in that planned plane explosion.

After seeing Catherine again, Kano can’t stop thinking about her. That young woman matured into someone he couldn’t have imagined and now can’t forget. However, he’s afraid her powerful mother is setting him up to die—yet again.

Catherine hadn’t expected to see Kano again, but this time she’s not letting him walk away. And she’s prepared to face off against her snake of a mother to save him. Catherine must plumb the depths of her own soul and that of her family to save Kano—and herself.

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Chapter 1

Kano Stavros drove out of the Channel as he headed toward Paris. He had rented the vehicle just for this trip, and, with Fallon at his side, he was headed to see DeeDee, a powerful woman of mystery Kano knew from years ago. She was one of the top people at Kingdom Securities—one of Bullard’s greatest competitors. Yet Kano had never considered them a competitor at all because Bullard’s team was very different, operating in a unique manner, much closer to that of the US Legendary Security team.

DeeDee had a very competitive vibe, and anything other than top-of-the-line wasn’t good enough for her.

But right now, Kano was on his way to see her and hopefully to tie together some of these issues and to figure out what was going on. They needed to know who was behind the attacks on Bullard and the others, like Garret, Ryland, and Cain. Maybe just one of them had been targeted, but all of them may have been because they were part of Bullard’s team.

What Kano didn’t want were these attacks to continue. He wanted to put a stop to them, and he and his team wanted to return to living their lives without having to watch their backs every minute. In their business, trust and security would always be an issue to some degree, but to know that they were actively being targeted and attacked meant they had to deal with aggressive ongoing concerns.

“Nobody on the team has been directly attacked for a few weeks,” Fallon said quietly, shifting his position in the rented truck they were traveling in. “Feels like our enemies are waiting, but for what? An announcement about Bullard or something else?”

“I know. I’ve been thinking about that,” Kano said, “and I don’t like it.”

“Why not?”

“I think they’re preparing for something much bigger,” he murmured.

“Pretty damn hard to come up with much bigger than the way they started. Speaking of which, still no word on—”

“I know,” Kano said, interrupting Fallon before he could say it, “but it’s never a good idea to make any assumptions in this case.”

“I’m not,” Fallon said, “but the fact that we’ve had no news on Bullard is getting everybody down.”

“I wouldn’t put it past that guy to have survived somehow,” Kano said. “If anybody could, it would be him.”

“I agree, but, at some point in time,” Fallon added quietly, “we all go to the same end.”

But Kano wasn’t ready to talk about such an end. “Not him, not right now. He needs a good life.”

“And that may or may not happen,” Fallon said.

“How is Ice holding up?”

“She’s holding,” Fallon said, “though things are harder for her to juggle with a new baby. She’s staying in touch with Blachard, Bullard’s halfbrother. Both helping each other to stay positive. Terk is always there, looking for Bullard too. He’s in communication with his brother, Merk, as well.”

“Doesn’t that baby just blow you away?” Kano said. “Whoever thought that Ice would have a family?”

“I think it was always something she held dear to her heart,” Fallon said. “Afraid to speak it out loud, to hold out that hope.”

“And yet, of all the people in this world that I would have said weren’t taking such a step, it would have been Ice and Levi,” Kano said.

“Just goes to show you, we don’t know everything, even about the people closest to us,” Fallon murmured.

And, to that, Kano didn’t have an answer.

He pulled into the heavy traffic, coming out of the Channel, and said, “You know what? With all the things that we’ve managed to do as a society, like this bloody tunnel underneath the water and going to the moon,” he said, “you’d think we’d have more accurate ways to track people.”

“You mean, like Bullard?” Fallon asked.

“Like Bullard, like DeeDee. You know? We have satellite, yet it’s not enough,” he said. “All these rules and regulations stop us from doing what we need to do, and that’s frustrating as hell.”

“You just don’t like anybody stopping you from doing something,” Fallon said, with a chuckle.

“Do you blame me?” he asked, giving his buddy a sideways glance.

“Hell no, I don’t blame you. And I understand it because I have the same tendency to want to blast through all the restrictions. But we don’t really have much of an option over here.”

“No, that’s true,” Kano said. “At the same time, we want to keep moving our world forward. And that means playing these games that I don’t like playing,” he snapped.

After that, there was silence for twenty minutes, as they headed toward their destination.

“Did you book a place to stay?” Kano asked.

“I did,” he said. “Just follow the GPS directions.” Fallon nodded to the dash.

“No way I’ll let that viper know anything about us,” Kano said.

“Do you think she’s still that deadly?”

“Yeah, she’s definitely that deadly,” Kano said. “She’s the one giving Kingdom the bad name.”

“And what about her daughter?”

“Her daughter won’t have anything to do with me,” he said quietly.

“So you had a relationship at one time?”

“Maybe, or so I thought,” Kano said, “but you don’t have to look at the mother very long to realize it’s a bad deal all around.”

“You can’t really blame the daughter then, can you?”

“I can, and I did,” Kano said, and he hoped his buddy would lay off. But he didn’t.

“You can’t hide this stuff, man,” he said. “We’re heading into a tough time. It’s important that I know what’s going on.”

“Nothing’s going on,” Kano snapped.

“And yet your tone of voice says otherwise,” he said.

With that, Kano groaned. “Catherine is her own person,” he said, “but she was still very much under her mother’s thumb, and I couldn’t deal with that.”

“How close were you?”

“We were lovers. I thought it was going somewhere,” he said, “but obviously it wasn’t.”

“Any regrets?”

“Sure,” he said. “Obviously I cared. And I wouldn’t still be upset by your questions if I were over it all, but it was many years ago.”

“Has she moved on?”

“I sure as hell hope so,” he said, with a startled look at Fallon. “I’m not still holding a torch for her, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“Good,” he said, “that could get a little awkward.”

“Yeah, more than a little,” he snapped again. “But don’t worry. I will not let somebody like her turn my attention elsewhere.”

Fallon stayed quiet at that point, for which Kano was grateful. He just wasn’t sure where Fallon’s thoughts were going. As they pulled into the hotel, Kano looked at the five-star hotel and asked, “Who booked us such an obvious location?”

“I did,” Fallon said.

Kano looked at him in surprise. “It’s not our usual style,” he murmured.

“No, but no point in hiding here,” he said. “It’s better that we make a more ‘Hey, we’re here. Deal with it,’ statement.”

Kano chuckled at that. “I like that.”

“Good. Because this is the way we’re operating from here on out. We operate in the dark a lot of the time, but sometimes we’re much better off to be out in the bright glare of reality.”

“Interesting twist,” he said. “I still prefer the shadows.”

“Yeah, but no skulking around this time,” Fallon said.

He chuckled. “Says you.”

“Absolutely.”

As they walked in and registered, Kano headed up with the keys to their room. Registration always seemed to take so damn long, but, in this case, most of it had been done ahead of time. Kano unlocked the suite and stepped in. He smiled. “At least if we’re traveling, we’re traveling in style,” he murmured.

“Exactly,” Fallon said, “remember that.”

He shrugged and said, “Hard to forget.” As soon as he tossed his duffel bag on the floor in one of the bedrooms, he said, “I need a meal.”

“Not a problem,” Fallon said, “we’re meeting DeeDee for a bite.”

“Really?” Kano turned in disgust. “Can’t we even have one clean meal without being around her?”

“Is she that bad?”

“Think barracuda,” he said, “but one who doesn’t show her teeth until it’s too late.”

Fallon definitely looked interested, but Kano shook his head at him. “Don’t even bother. She’s poison.”

“You want to give me some examples?”

“She set up her second in command,” he said quietly, “to be killed on a job, so she didn’t have to worry about him taking over her position.”

Fallon’s gaze widened. “Oh, shit,” he said. “A black widow in person.”

“You have no idea. She’s been married twice,” he said. “Both husbands are dead.”

“She killed them?”

“No clue,” he said, “but I know her daughter wondered.”

“Yet she’s still close to her?”

“That was one of the dichotomies I struggled with,” he said, “and, no, I didn’t give her much chance to explain, once I figured out that she was still very much a mommy’s girl. I walked.”

“Yeah, at times, you’re just better off getting out because you’ll never know who to trust.”

“Now you’re getting it,” Kano said, “and this case is definitely one of not knowing who to trust. But DeeDee? She’s poison. Remember that.”

“Hey, I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “I like my ladies a whole lot younger than DeeDee and a whole lot simpler. Besides, I don’t want to worry about not waking up one night because she had designs on my career or my future,” he said.

“Let’s deal with her,” he said. “We don’t have any time to spare.”

“No,” Fallon said. “But I’d feel better if we could find any sign of Bullard.”

“Another reason why we don’t have any time to spare.”

“If she’s involved, maybe she’s already found him.”

At that, Kano turned and sent a horrified glance at Fallon. “Are we really thinking somebody may have picked up Bullard? That he’s being held captive somewhere?”

“What we don’t know is what happened at all,” he said. “We’ve found no sign of him.”

“Which,” Kano said, “isn’t all that unusual, given the location. If he drowned when the plane went down, we’ll never find any proof.”

“That would be very tough for all of us,” Fallon admitted. “But let’s go see if your black widow has any news that we need.”

“Great,” he said. “I would take a shower, but I’ll wait and have one afterward. I’ll really need it then.”

“I can’t wait to meet this woman,” Fallon said.

“Not only can you wait,” he said, “I wish you didn’t even have to.”

*

“Did you say Kano was coming?” Catherine asked over the phone.

“Yes,” her mother said, in that crisp, businesslike voice of hers.

“Why?” And wow. That she’d managed to speak at all said a lot about her years of learning control.

“I don’t know why,” her mother lied.

Of course it was a lie because her mother knew everything. She made a point of not having any appointments that weren’t completely to her benefit. It had taken Catherine a long time to actually see who her mother was. It was a heartbreaking realization, but she was finally there. Just years too late. “And what does it have to do with me?” she asked.

“I just thought I should tell you,” she said.

“You wouldn’t tell me unless you had a reason,” she snapped.

“Touchy, aren’t you? Is it possible that Kano still makes your heart flutter?” she asked in a mocking tone. “Been a long time since anything made that happen.”

“What’s the matter? Have you run out of logical options for husband number what, three, four, five?”

“I have number three, four, and five all laid out,” her mother answered smoothly. “When have you ever known me not to?”

“You haven’t remarried yet, so maybe you’re slowing down a little bit,” she said.

“Not likely, but you can’t do it too quickly. Otherwise they get suspicious.”

“You mean, suspicious that they may not survive to get a divorce?” Catherine caught her breath. That was the closest she’d ever dared come to accusing her mother of having a hand in the deaths of her husbands.

“I didn’t kill them,” her mother said in a harsh voice. “And I won’t tolerate you insinuating anything different.”

“No, you’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

Sounding somewhat mollified, her mother snapped, “And so you should be.”

“Still, don’t you want to have a different kind of relationship next time?”

“You mean, outside of a man who dies early?” her mother asked, bringing up the previous subject on her own.

“I never thought you were very happy with either of them. Were you?”

“What’s happiness?” she said. Catherine could almost see the shrug that her mother would have given on her end of the call. “Unless you’re thinking about that fantasy called love.”

“It does occur to me occasionally that something like that would be nice.”

“There isn’t such a thing, so forget it,” she snapped. “God, I can’t believe you’d still be foolish enough to think of that. Surely Kano was enough of a lesson for you.”

“And, if he was, why are you letting me know he’s coming into town?”

“Not just coming to town,” she said. “I’m meeting him for dinner.”

At that, she sucked in her breath. “Why?”

“He wants to meet with me for some reason,” she said. “Maybe he should be husband number four.” And, with that, her mother hung up.

Catherine stared at the phone in her hand, wondering who her mother had in mind for husband number three. “Oh, dear God, Kano. Why are you coming back? Please don’t have anything to do with my mother.”

It didn’t take very long for her to remember just how wise Kano was in dealing with her mother. Because Catherine hadn’t been willing to see the poisonous threads that her mother wove was the reason Catherine and Kano had split up in the first place. Talk about willful blindness. It had been hard for her to see through that, and she’d held off for a long time. But finally she couldn’t keep believing in the innocence of the person she’d always thought of as the best mom, always protecting Catherine.

At some point, once the blinders were off, Catherine realized her mother was there for herself and no one else. She had told Catherine so. Her mother had scoffed at her for being delusional for so long. She’d even said to her, “Grow up. We’re all here for a purpose, and, in my case, it’s to make my life easier.”

Catherine didn’t know what was going on with Kano now that he was asking to see her mother, and Catherine wished she had a way to contact him to find out. As she sat here, the longer she thought about her mother’s upcoming dinner with Kano, the more she worried.

She didn’t have a way to contact him and, at the same time, owed him nothing. Except that he’d been right, and she’d been wrong, and she had never told him so. Though it wasn’t necessary to tell him either. It had been a hard lesson, and obviously he’d been more adept at seeing through her mother than Catherine had been. But still, it wasn’t something she wanted rubbed in her face.

That wasn’t Kano’s way. He was straight-up and honest, and somewhere along the line she’d forgotten just how honest he was, until her mother brought up his name again. A man she had never gotten over after their harsh breakup, mostly on her because she hadn’t been willing to see the truth. And now, here he was, coming to town.

She stared at her phone and wondered. She still had a number in her address book. Should she? The longer she sat here, the more she realized her mother had an ulterior motive for meeting him. Without giving herself a chance to even think about it, Catherine sent him a text message. Why the hell would you have dinner with the black widow?

Then she tossed down her phone and waited.

Chapter 2

When Catherine got no response to her text, she let out a slow sigh of relief, got up, and put on the teakettle. She was determined to forget about her mother, her mother’s games, and definitely Kano. The fact Catherine was in Paris herself right now wasn’t something that she’d even let her mother know. Though it was tongue-in-cheek and mocking her relationship with Kano, her mother’s reveal of her dinner with Kano indicated that she already knew Catherine was in Paris.

Her mother prided herself on her spies and on her ability to keep track of those people she was interested in at any given time. It was kind of worrisome because Catherine never really knew when she would be the flavor of the month or when her mother had something else going on and needed to know what Catherine was up to. She hated coming to Paris just because of her mother’s presence here.

Catherine had a permanent residence in New York, but she spent time in other countries, as her expertise called for her as needed. Like, here in Paris, where she had a second home. Yet Kano wouldn’t know that. He was a person who, when he walked away, he walked away permanently. Too bad she hadn’t walked away at the same time. She still cared, and it continued to hurt like shit that she hadn’t been aware enough to do something about it.

In her heart of hearts, she knew that Kano would likely forgive her, but he wouldn’t take a chance on her again. He kept his heart very closed. She was the only one she knew of who had actually made it into the keep that he had locked down so securely, and then she’d blown it. It would be a long time before he let anybody else get in there. Just as she was making her tea, her phone buzzed. She turned and looked around to see the light shining. Walking over, she clicked on the message and gasped because it was Kano. The number she had for him was not only correct but his simple message left her stunned.

Come and find out.

The phone buzzed again, with the address of a restaurant. She knew it well. It was one of her mom’s favorite haunts. She frowned at that because it was where her mother brought her various victims. Catherine sent back a message saying, Dinner in the spider’s lair?

The response came back almost immediately. Best place to corner her.

She couldn’t help it; she answered, Or become her prey. She got a series of question marks after that. She wasn’t sure what he meant but figured that he was trying to figure out where her change of attitude had come from. She groaned and sat here for a long time. She didn’t want to go to dinner. Her mother didn’t expect her, and that was the one plus to going.

She really wanted to see Kano but didn’t want it to be under these circumstances. It wasn’t who she was, and it wasn’t the game she liked to play. She wasn’t good at playing games, and somehow her mother had managed to raise her in such a way that she lacked the ability to hide anything. That was all for her mother’s benefit because she didn’t like people keeping secrets from her.

Catherine had the most expressive face possible, and she failed at poker because of it. She also failed at lies and any other things that required deception. The very thing her mother prided herself on was exactly where her daughter failed.

So how was Catherine supposed to deal with that right now? She sat back and stared out the window. Sipping her tea, she thought about all the things she regretted the most, and losing Kano was one of them. But she also knew that her time with him had come and gone. He wasn’t somebody she could be with now. Not at this point. At least she didn’t think so, although the very possibility tantalized her.

It tore at her insides, making her worry and wonder and hope for so much more. But she had moved on. She’d had other relationships, but none that had stuck. Maybe that was what her mother was going on about. For some reason, her mother seemed to think she should have grandchildren, which just defied logic. She lived in a world of lies and fears, torment and executions, at least if Kano was to be believed.

Catherine had never quite looked at the deaths of her mother’s husbands with a clear objective eye because she always had to wonder if her mother had something to do with them. Mother swore she hadn’t, but Catherine no longer trusted her mother, and how sad was that? But then again she wasn’t sure that Kano even understood just how bad her mother had gotten. He was a fool to even engage with her.

Catherine knew she was barely up for the ensuing argument, although she didn’t think her mother would hurt her. At least not physically. Emotionally, verbally, mentally—absolutely. It was all a blame game for her. But Catherine wasn’t exactly sure where her mother’s power started and stopped. And what did any of that have to do with Kano? She frowned as she thought about it.

When her phone buzzed one more time, she looked down to see a new message from Kano.

Dare you.

She snorted at that. It was an old game between them. To try to get her to do something she didn’t want to do. Back then it hadn’t worked well either because she’d been very much the sweet, innocent girl who didn’t like conflict. She was still that person, but, at the same time, she had learned that some conflict was necessary, if only to save the people who she cared about.

As she sent him a quick message, saying that she would be there, she wasn’t even sure now if she was trying to save Kano or her mother. Kano was just as dangerous as her mother, but Catherine didn’t think her mother had come to that realization, which was sad because it was pretty obvious that Kano had a power which her mother did not. Catherine didn’t think her mother was even close to recognizing it, but maybe Catherine was all wrong. Maybe these people and their little games entailed something she just couldn’t understand. Maybe they knew something about life that she didn’t.

She knew that she preferred to stay in her own sweet little world and to ignore all of her mother’s world. Catherine spent her life working with special needs children, helping them to learn and to grow and to be the best that they could be. Her mother scoffed at her for what she was doing, telling her that she should work with whole humans and not incomplete humans. Catherine had taken great offense at the time, and her mother had just shaken her head.

“Such a pussy,” she said. “It doesn’t matter what anybody says to you. You’re just way too sensitive. You need to grow a shield around that heart, before somebody rips it out.”

At the time Catherine didn’t realize what her mother was talking about. But, after Catherine’s last big fight with Kano, a fight that had resulted in them breaking up because she didn’t want to see what her mother was truly like, Catherine thought that her mother might be correct on that one point. Catherine had grown up quickly after that, and she had chosen to stay with the incomplete humans, as her mother called them, to give them a bit of a better life, if Catherine could do something to help.

It was much better than dealing with what her mother would consider a whole human, though likely with only half a soul, as far as Catherine was concerned. The people in her mother’s world were crippled emotionally and spiritually. They were only skeletons of who they could be. But, in her mother’s world, they were the best they could be, and her mother would still tear them apart.

Catherine didn’t know where her mother’s anger and all that nastiness came from. Her mother had laughed at Catherine once when she’d asked her mother, who had said it was experience. Catherine didn’t quite know what that meant. But she figured something in her mother’s past had set her mother on this pathway. Catherine had thought about it a lot over the years, but, since her mother wasn’t into giving any answers, Catherine wasn’t sure she really wanted to know. The world was full of shitty people, and, even if you didn’t want to believe it, they still existed. And it was just Catherine’s bad luck that her mother was one of them.

Even if her mother had been terribly abused in her childhood, it was pretty damn hard to justify the kind of life DeeDee was living now and the people she was hurting. Her mother had laughed and said she wasn’t hurting anybody but those who deserved it. And Catherine didn’t really get that either because her mother clearly wasn’t short of people who needed her skills. It was a skill set she kept her daughter from knowing too much about, but Kano had made it fairly clear.

All in all, it was just killing Catherine to know that he was even here and that her mother was around the corner. That was just not something Catherine wanted to deal with. Yet, in spite of herself, she had decided she would go to this dinner where both of them would be tonight. She stared at her phone, wondering how to back out of it again and then realized she didn’t dare.

Because of all the people she knew from different times in her life, Kano was one she still cared about. And, if her mother had designs on Kano—maybe even thinking of seeking revenge on behalf of her daughter—Catherine was afraid her mother would make good on it. Hating herself for that, Catherine frowned and realized she really would have to go.

*

“Look at that,” Kano said, with a whistle. “Sounds like Catherine’ll join us for dinner.”

“Catherine, the daughter?”

“Yeah, she texted me and asked me why I was meeting her mother, especially in the black widow’s lair.”

“I thought you said she wasn’t like her mother.”

“She isn’t,” he said quietly, “so I’m not sure what’s going on.”

“She could only stay innocent of her mother’s activities for so long,” Fallon said.

“That’s true. She was pretty determined to stay innocent for a lot longer than I could stand.”

“Doesn’t mean she didn’t finally come to a full awareness though,” he said.

“Yeah. Apparently she gets it because she said we could become prey.”

“Can’t wait to meet this DeeDee woman,” Fallon said, rubbing his hands together. “You know that, generally, I like spiders.”

“I’m warning you,” Kano said, “don’t underestimate this one.”