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  ABBOT

  Alison Kent

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2020 by Alison Kent

  This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to locales, events, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the author.

  Cover by Temys Designs

  Editing by Novel Edits

  Formatting by Rocks and Ink

  Table of Contents

  Abbot

  Copyright

  Say Hello to the Avenging VIII

  Up Next

  Dedication

  Kyle Thomas Armstrong Abbot

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Elsewhere...

  Ezra Moore

  More Books by the Author

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  Say Hello to the Avenging VIII

  Meet Kyle, Nate, Tai, Bishop, Marshall, Owen, Kiki, Desi, and Asa. (Yes. That’s nine. Some things just take an unexpected turn!) Together, this group of covert operatives will right wrongs beyond the scope of law enforcement, and along the way fall madly in love... as it should be!

  I hope you enjoy their stories. If so, I’d love for you to leave reviews on whatever platform you use for your digital reading purchases. Word of mouth is the best way for authors to find new readers, and for readers to find new books. Thank you so much for giving mine a try!

  Happy avenging!

  Alison Kent

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  Up Next

  Click here for more info!

  Nate Elder's black ops cover as owner of the Pitch and Roll bar demands he ignore the come-ons from his female patrons. But the woman repeatedly checking her phone and downing margaritas as if the world were coming to an end has him thinking not​-​so​-​nice thoughts​ about what he could do to her up against the wall in the storeroom​.

  At least until all hell breaks loose on the street out front and he learns she's connected to ground zero.

  Evangeline Macklin isn't fazed by the ease with which the bartender produces a weapon. This part of town? She'd be surprised if he didn't have one. Good for her, too, since it looks like she might need one. But when he offers her use of his place as a safe house, she's a bit more ruffled, especially considering that's where the real danger lies.​

  Dedication

  To Kris Hack for designing the cover that fired the idea I’d had simmering for ages

  To Jessica Poore for expertly fixing my words in gold-medal record time

  To Evan Smoak

  KYLE THOMAS ARMSTRONG ABBOT

  KYLE THOMAS ARMSTRONG ABBOT

  Four years ago...

  “COME CLOSER SO I CAN see you. I’m not going to bite. I don’t have enough teeth left, and I’m hardly contagious. You’re as safe with me as you’ve always been, Kyle. Now, come here.”

  If Lucinda Bruce was contagious, her condition would be easier to bear.

  She wouldn’t be suffering because a psychopath’s family had become collateral damage in the man’s war with the right side of the law. Her wounds wouldn’t be about his kidnapping her younger son as payback. She wouldn’t be fighting for her life because she’d defied her police lieutenant husband and gone after the man who’d taken their child on her own.

  Years had passed, years during which her fierce resolve had inspired those around her.

  Finally, she’d found him.

  But she’d gotten too close.

  Kyle pushed up from the corner of the dark hospital room where he’d been hunkered for the past hour. Hunkered in the corner was the position he’d been in as a skeletal ten-year-old when Lucinda and Jeb had entered his foster home and legally removed him from the system.

  Then not so legally changed his name and groomed him for a life in black ops.

  He’d lived with the others the Bruces had chosen: kids abandoned, mistreated, some on the streets, none with family, all with a higher than average IQ. They’d been educated and trained off the grid, then they’d enlisted. With Jeb pulling strings, each had served a single tour that had taken them places most servicemen never went... or wanted to go.

  Kyle had been discharged four years ago and had spent the time since righting wrongs conventional solutions—lawful solutions—had failed to correct. No one knew. No one would ever know. And that was the point. He and the others were Jeb’s personal enforcers.

  They’d seen more damage and destruction in their twenty-eight years than most people saw in a lifetime. Emotional damage. Physical destruction. They’d suffered the same. They’d expected to. It was part of their covert existence. Part of being invisible.

  Being nobody.

  Looking over their shoulders was as natural as drawing breath. But that was their life.

  Not Lucinda’s. Never Lucinda’s.

  She squeezed his hand, her fingers cold, her grip surprisingly resilient for a woman who’d endured what she had. Then again, only a strong woman would’ve stayed alive this long. If she didn’t pull through... He choked back the emotion in his throat. A tear fell to his hand. Another onto Lucinda’s. Making circles with her thumb, she rubbed them until they were gone.

  “Promise me you’ll leave this alone. Let Jeb handle it. Please, Kyle. Promise me.”

  Kyle said nothing. He didn’t have to. Lucinda knew what his answer would be.

  It was a promise he would never make because the woman asking had raised him better.

  Chapter One

  Current Day

  “ANOTHER, MR. ABBOT! Again! This is your final day, so once more unto the breach!”

  Kyle Abbot wasn’t sure he had another in him. Another beer, sure. Another baseball game or rack of ribs or Wes Williams novel, you betcha. But Ezra Moore was sending him to lap the Avenging VIII’s obstacle course for the ... huh. Which time was this anyway?

  He’d been dead meat when he’d rolled out of bed at zero-four-thirty hours, downed a green smoothie in the kitchen, then headed for the gym. A few days from now he’d be fine. But at this particular moment... Yeah. Not so much.

  Groaning, he used his shirt sleeve to wipe the sweat from his eyes. Then he took a deep breath and set off for the tires and the rope and rock walls.

  The training barracks at the team’s compound were spartan. No TV, no cell phones, no internet. A library of classics, but nothing written in the last fifty years, and no access to current events. Meals were simple. Showers were quick. Downtime was limited. At the end of his solo stay, he’d be lucky if he remembered how to speak to another human being.

  Not that he was much of a talker or had a problem with solitude, but Ezra’s instruction was as much about the mind as the body, and the grueling drills took an ass-grinding toll.

  He was here more often than the others. As a result, his body was a work of art.

  His mind... well, that was why he’d come.

  He was beginning to doubt he belonged on the team.

  The thought had been weighing on him for a while now. His place with the Bruces was solid; he loved Jeb and Lucinda as if he’d been born into their family along with their biological sons. He’d cried with Asa when Loren had been taken, but he hadn’t known how to comfort the adults in their grief. Instead, he’d devoted every waking hour to his training.

  He’d grown strong. He’d grown smart. He’d become more capable than the other kids
in many ways. It still hadn’t been enough. The Bruce family continued to suffer the loss of Loren. Nothing he tried eased their pain. That sense of inadequacy had stayed with him.

  If he couldn’t make things better for the people he loved, how could he help those he didn’t know? It was a child’s way of thinking; of that he was completely aware. But he couldn’t shake it. At the end of every mission, he felt as if he could’ve done more, done better. That he’d missed a way to repair the damage, to reverse the destruction.

  That he’d failed.

  Which had him questioning his place with the Avenging VIII.

  “Again.”

  He stood with his hands on his knees, heaving, sweat dripping off his nose, his chin, soaking his hair to the roots. He’d let his mind wander on the last lap. He knew that. Obviously Ezra did too and was making him pay. This time he’d focus. He’d feel his body. Every muscle as it stretched and flexed to carry him toward the end goal.

  He spit out the bile burning his throat and took off. Maybe when he finished this round, he’d know what that goal was. Because even with all he’d done as an A8 operative, that was the one thing he was lacking. A sense of purpose. A defining objective.

  A reason to stay alive.

  CONSIDERING THE HOUSING equipment was state of the art, Kyle could’ve done his laundry at the compound. Instead, he decided to put the training facility behind him.

  His past was what sent him there, the demons he carried along with his backpack and phone. His past that refused to stay buried, that he hoped to excise once and for all.

  Stupid, really. He knew what would happen, how the memories would come to vivid life when he arrived at the facility, sharing his sleep, his showers. Keeping him company on the obstacle course.

  Still, he returned, a self-flagellation that made no sense. He wasn’t a fool, doing the same thing, expecting a different result—even if it appeared so from the outside looking in.

  Maybe that’s what Ezra was trying to whip into him: He couldn’t run from the events that had made him who he was. He’d had no control over his first ten fucked-up years. He’d had no control over the Bruce family’s suffering. All he had was himself and the here and now.

  He flipped off the truck’s radio, tired of the static. When he stopped, he’d grab his phone from his duffel and hook up his tunes. He ached from his eyebrows to his toenails. It was a hurt that felt good... something else he figured was part of Ezra’s pushing him to the edge.

  He had to know his limits, those of his body as well as those of his emotions and mind. Once he did, he wouldn’t keep expecting more of himself than he was capable of.

  The washateria sign came into view, surprising him. As often as he’d driven this road, it shouldn’t have, but he was running emptier than usual. He needed sleep. He needed one of Kiki’s burger baskets—the sharp cheddar, the wedge-cut fries, the thick Angus beef grilled a juicy medium-rare. Tomatoes from her garden. Red onions. His stomach growled.

  Laundry first, he decided. He’d sit and watch his boxers and T-shirts tumble. Hell, he’d be a rebel and wash his whites with his jeans. He had just about reached that level of not giving a shit, no matter Ezra’s extreme mentoring. Then he’d head home, call Kiki to hook up his food to go, and down it in the elevator before he hit the bed for twenty-four hours straight—

  What the hell?

  The scene that met him as he slowed for the turn into the parking lot had sweat pooling at the base of his spine. His scalp bristled. He popped his neck, flexed his fingers on the wheel, and analytically sliced up the view: Row of storefronts to the right. An aged import. A panel van. Woman near the door. Three men to the left facing her. One visibly armed. A Beretta M9.

  Kyle knew the pistol well.

  He released his seat belt and gunned the truck forward, skidding to a stop between the woman and the men. His bumper clipped the one with the gun, sending him to the pavement.

  The other two reached for weapons and rushed him as he jumped from the cab. Shielding himself with his door, he grabbed the Beretta from the ground and slammed the butt into the downed man’s head, putting him out of commission. Then he turned toward the others.

  He spun the second to the ground, landing hard on his hip and taking a blade to his shoulder in the process. Shallow wound, bleeder, arm still worked. Gun in his hand, he swung, connecting with the third man’s jaw. He stumbled back long enough for Kyle to hop to his feet and kick out as man number two charged. The knife skittered up under his truck. He kicked again, tangling his legs with the second man’s and going down with him once more.

  That’s when he saw the woman scrambling beneath his truck for the knife. And that was his undoing. She distracted him and he took two seconds too long to come up fighting.

  Man number three was back in the game with his fists. Kyle’s jaw bore the brunt. He spun and the gun went flying, bouncing into the bed of his truck. Before he turned, another knife came at him, glinting. He dodged, ducked, saw the woman vault over his tailgate.

  Distracting him. Again.

  And that was all he knew.

  Chapter Two

  ANNIE WHITMAN LISTENED to the steady breathing of the man beside her, the man bleeding all over her passenger seat. He’d said no hospital, no doctor. He’d been adamant. Lucky for him she’d finished a year of nursing school before Army had been born. Yeah. Lucky.

  Tears burned her eyes as her six-year-old son’s face came to mind. His big blue eyes, his gap-toothed smile. His blond hair that he used water to spike. He left for school looking like a rock star. By the time he got home, he was her Army again. Her sweet innocent little boy.

  She caught back a sob. Was he scared? Hungry? Did he miss her? Or did he believe this was the adventure she’d told him it was when his father had taken him from her at gunpoint? Vince’s thugs had flanked her so Army hadn’t seen their weapons. One had been pressed to her side, level with her heart, one to the center of her spine. Her ex hired only the best.

  She couldn’t call the cops; Vince owned them. She couldn’t think of anyone in town who might help; Vince frightened them. The idea that he’d evict the Gamas for coming to her aid... She groaned, the sound more of a sob. And if she valued her own life, if she ever wanted to see her son again, she had to sit and wait for his instructions. Her hands were completely tied.

  She couldn’t believe this was happening. She couldn’t believe he would do this. What had happened to the boy she’d gone to school with, the one who’d become the man she’d fallen in love with and married, the father who’d sworn to give his son the best life possible?

  He may have kept Army from seeing the danger she was in, but he was using him for leverage. That was not what a father did! And he was demanding something she couldn’t deliver in exchange for Army’s return.

  She had no idea what she was going to do. She hadn’t even had time to process the afternoon’s events. It was like she’d been dropped into the middle of a bad crime show. It made her want to laugh. But mostly cry—

  “Where are we?”

  Startled, Annie waved a hand mindlessly toward the near distance, then returned it to the wheel. “I’m taking you home. To my home.” Nothing in Markit, Texas, was far from anything else. They’d be there in three minutes. “No doctors leaves you with me to patch you up.”

  “I can patch up myself,” he said, straightening in the seat, a groan in his throat like coarse sandpaper. The sound went with the rest of him. Coarse. Rough. Uncivilized, though that could’ve been his defense skills... not to mention the state of his clothes. And the smell.

  He should’ve driven to the closest truck stop and used their washing machines. And their showers. Not that she was really complaining because smell or not... wow. Just wow. She could’ve stared at him for, well, longer than the drive would allow.

  She shook off what felt a whole lot like lust. This wasn’t the time. This wasn’t the place. He wasn’t the right man... Though what did she know about men? Look at the son o
f a bitch she’d married. Fucking Vince. “I appreciate you stepping in, but they weren’t going to hurt me.”

  “They had guns. And knives,” he said, wincing.

  “That was to scare me, but they need me alive so...” Ugh. She sounded so ungrateful. And honestly, she had no idea if Vince intended to follow through on his threats. The decency she’d once seen in him had obviously been an act. She’d been so stupid. So stupid.

  She pulled to a stop at the upcoming sign and took a deep breath before accelerating. “Thank you. I’m sorry you ended up hurt.”

  “It’s not as bad as it looks,” he said just as she hit a pothole. He grunted and flinched.

  She grimaced and apologized. “You can’t be sure—”

  “I can. I’ve had worse.”

  “You do this a lot then?” Rescue damsels in distress?

  She kept the thought to herself, hating that she’d entertained it. She might be in distress, but she would figure a way out. She had to figure a way out.

  “Fight?” He shook his head, working his bruised jaw. “I saw some combat action.”

  Combat meant service and had her thoughts returning to Vince. Her voice was sharper than she intended when she said, “I meant interrupt a stranger’s workday to bleed all over her car.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” He turned to face her, leaning into the door, his shoulders broader than the import’s narrow seat. “I’ll pay to have it cleaned.”

  She made the turn onto her street, wanting to scream. It was Vince who deserved her fury, not this man. Her eyes began to burn anew, and she sniffed, slowing for her driveway. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I’m not worried. I’m saying I’ll pay.”