“They’re worried I’ll hurt you.” He stepped away from me. “They’re probably right.”
“You haven’t hurt me yet.” I worried more about the forces separating us than I did about Jackson hurting me in a relationship gone bad. “Don’t you think I can handle what you do? I know who you are even when the world doesn’t. I’m not that breakable, Jackson.”
His gaze dropped. “I live a complicated life, Q. Feelings—emotions—get in the way.”
“So you do have feelings,” I teased, trying to lighten the mood. I hated this overthinking version of Jackson, but my jibe seemed to make him more anxious.
“Christ, Q. You used to understand this,” he countered. “I do my thing, and you are there. Always there. You ground me to the real world, yet you understand what I’m up against.”
“What makes you think that I won’t still understand it? Jackson, I lo—”
“Don’t say it.” He threw his hands up and stepped around the car. Opening the driver’s door, he grumbled, “Don’t say it. We can’t go there.” He slid into his seat.
I froze, afraid my knees might give out. I’d almost said it. Jackson, I love you. He’d heard me, my feelings on display, and he shut it down. But at my most vulnerable moment, I had glimpsed the fatal flaw of the hero I worshiped.
Jackson feared love.
The man faced perils that would break anyone else, yet he feared getting too close, connecting too deeply, or losing part of himself in a relationship.
But Jackson hadn’t counted on me.
Praise for Nichole D. Evans
Promise Me the Moon was a finalist in The Valley of the Sun RWA's Hot Prospect Contest in the Romantic Suspense Category (2016)
Promise Me the Moon
by
Nichole D. Evans
The Q Chronicles, Book 1
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either 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.
Promise Me the Moon
COPYRIGHT © 2018 by Nichole D. Evans
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Contact Information: [email protected]
Cover Art by Debbie Taylor
The Wild Rose Press, Inc.
PO Box 708
Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708
Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com
Publishing History
First Crimson Rose Edition, 2018
Print ISBN 978-1-5092-2330-5
Digital ISBN 978-1-5092-2331-2
The Q Chronicles, Book 1
Published in the United States of America
Dedication
To the real Q at Los Alamos National Laboratory whose brilliant inventions relayed covert messages making the World a safer place.
I miss you, Daddy.
Chapter 1
Lights! Camera! Cue the Action Sequence
“Jackson, pay attention. Are you high enough?”
I kept my voice steady—difficult, considering the circumstances. Special Agent Jayce Jackson’s cover had been blown upon entry, so as he worked a nonexistent plan B, radio communication lapsed.
His silence killed me. But then he did have a license for that.
Jackson had retreated to the rafters of a warehouse, dangling on a specialized climbing cable I had wound into his belt buckle—a titanium alloy, incredibly thin but strong. Just below him, a group of Russian military entrepreneurs arrived to sell a trailer full of Cold War Era missiles to a Middle-Eastern terrorist group from Syria. Back at the Control Room, we all sensed the precariousness of Jackson’s position.
Covert operations never unfolded as smoothly as they did in a blockbuster movie.
“Jackson, are you high enough? Are they going to see you?” I repeated over the surveillance mike as the players entered below him.
“If no one looks up, I’m high enough,” he muttered, maneuvering himself behind a support beam in the center of the room. “Q, have I ever let you down?”
“Frequently,” I responded, exhaling.
“Hey, Q? About this cable, how many pounds is it rated for?”
“Five hundred.”
“And the retraction mechanism?”
“We tested it to two hundred, but in theory it could lift more. Why?”
“No reason.”
I sighed—he always had a reason. Jackson ranked as one of the best thinking on his feet, but he made the mission unpredictable while the pieces came together.
“Are we expecting anyone else?” he asked, now climbing the beam and adjusting the cable.
I studied the monitor. Three Syrians, all low-level grunts, and four Russians, including the mastermind of this scheme, General Vlad Bartok gathered. If we took Bartok into custody, we’d stop the arms sales syndicate. “As far as we know, this is it.”
“Send me a kiss for luck, darlin’.” With that, Jackson pushed off the support beam and released the cable on his belt, lowering himself in a quick arc.
What happened next, I would have paid twenty dollars for a ticket and popcorn to see.
Swinging gracefully around the group, Jackson landed and circled two of the Russians. He slid his belt out of his pants and looped the belt buckle around the two men, latching it onto the cable. When he set the belt-buckle device to retract, the cable tightened around them and started pulling them up.
“My opinion of you is steadily rising,” Jackson remarked as the men’s feet left the ground.
As they rose, feet in the air, kicking and yelling, Jackson spun into a roundhouse kick, hitting the closest Syrian in the temple, knocking him out. In perfect Arabic, he told the other two Syrians to get out of there before he lost his cool. The men exchanged puzzled looks, then backed up and left the warehouse with their bags of money.
At the same time, Bartok and the last Russian jumped into the truck, now separated from the trailer of missiles.
Director Mitchell Mansfield, our superior, leaned toward the surveillance screen with the stress vein in his forehead twitching. “Leave the two in the air. Don’t let Bartok go.” The order left no room for questions.
“The things men will do for a little head.” Jackson’s comment, referring to the small Russian missiles he ran past, brought chuckles to the team. “Forgive me, Q,” he added.
“Don’t apologize to me, Jackson.” As the only woman on the team, I often heard off-color comments. “I’m not the one with a little head.”
On the radio silence echoed while my response sank in, and then good-natured laughs emerged.
“As much as I’d like to explore this conversation further, Q, I have a ride to catch.” Jackson latched his arms onto the side panel and pivoted his legs into the bed of the truck as the Russians tore out of the warehouse.
I doubted he had even broken a sweat.
“Switch to his body camera,” I ordered, and the picture changed from the overall view from the rafters to the jolting perspective from Jackson’s shoulder. I hoped the new clasp I had fashioned out of a tungsten-steel blend would hold the camera in place.