The Commander

His stare was so dark, Lena felt herself slide into its endless depths. She fought the sensation with everything she had in her, stopping the headlong disaster at the very last moment.

She spoke slowly, distinctly. “I’m here today, Andres, because I had a job to do. As far as I’m concerned, that job is the only reason I’ll be seeing you again. I certainly don’t feel like going over old times.”

“And if I disagree?”

Her pulse hammered, but Lena had trained herself well. She knew her expression was neutral. “Feel free to disagree all you want. I don’t care one way or the other.”

Before he could reply, she said, “The stairs are going to be our most open point. Stay as close to me as possible and keep your head down. When we hit the ground, we’ll walk directly to the car. If anything happens, fall down. Understand?”

At her imperious tone, his own voice sharpened. “Lena, I know what to do. I’ve done this be—”

“Good. Then do it right, and we’ll all come out alive.”

They’d barely reached the bottom of the stairs when the first bullet slammed into the car.

Dear Reader,

The Commander holds a special place in my heart because it tells the story of a very strong, very independent woman, Lena McKinney. As the leader of Florida’s Emerald Coast SWAT team, Lena faces death daily. She fights crime and keeps victims safe, leading fifteen men into dangerous operations around the clock. But Lena isn’t unique. Every woman reading this book knows someone like Lena.

She could be your mother, she could be your boss, she could be your next-door neighbor or your very best friend. Whoever she is, she’s someone you can depend on to be there when you need her. She’s someone who will listen to you complain and laugh at your silly jokes. She’s someone who will hold you when you cry and comfort you when you’re sad.

She’s your inspiration.

I grew up in a family of strong women, the first of whom was my grandmother. She raised five children by herself, cleaning churches to put food on the table. Then there’s my mom. A survivor of cancer, she’s the most incredible woman I know. Sharp as they come, she can still run rings around everyone else in the family. My sister’s no slouch, either. She teaches elementary school and has put two girls through college on her own. They will be the next generation of formidable women.

A powerful woman deserves an exceptional man. He has to be her equal in all ways, but he can’t be threatened by her strength. He has to appreciate it, to nurture it, to understand it. Fortunately for Lena—and for the women in my family—men like that do exist.

While reading The Commander, I hope you come to appreciate the strengths of all the characters, male and female. Most of all, however, I hope you realize how many people like the ones I’ve described—strong, special and powerful—there are in this world. Chances are you’re one of them!

Sincerely,

Kay David

The Commander

Kay David

No author ever writes in a vacuum.

I always turn to many experts for help,

too many, in fact, to list here. Heartfelt thanks to everyone,

but the following three need special mention.

To Patricia Brown for generously sharing her medical

expertise regarding gunshot wounds. Thanks for the help,

but most of all, thanks for being such a great friend.

To Dr. Ron Grabowski for helping me with my anatomy

questions. You’re a rare breed—someone who cares

and cares deeply. Thank you for everything.

To Caimee Schoenbaechler, one of my three beautiful,

intelligent nieces, for editing my Spanish. I wish I’d had you

with me in Argentina. People would have understood me

a heck of a lot better had you been my interpreter!

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

Somewhere off the coast of Cuba

THERE WAS no moon, thank God.

Andres Casimiro stared into the endless black of the water and counted the only blessing he had. If there’d been light, he’d be a dead man by now.

Easing the throttle of the boat, he slowed the vessel and cut the engine. The gentle sound of slapping waves replaced the throb of the motor, and he took a breath of something that felt like relief. No moonlight, no noise…he might have a chance.

In the still, hot quiet, he looked down at the chart on the table beside the wheel and checked his location again. His gaze traveled past the spot that marked his current position, and he drew a mental line from his home now—Miami—to the place he’d grown up—Havana: 198 nautical miles from one to the other. It should have been much farther, he thought. They were worlds apart. He shook his head to dislodge the thought. All he had to do right now was wait. Wait and not think.

Andres had never been a patient man, but in this instance, the waiting would be easier than the thinking anyway. He had to make his mind as empty as the sea beneath him to get through this. If he couldn’t, the next few hours would be his last.

The minutes ticked by slowly. After a while, he lowered his arm to hide the light and pressed his watch to read the dial—l:00 a.m. Despite his best efforts to the contrary, a surge of disappointment—so strong it felt more like grief—washed over him. He and Lena would have been in Cancun by now, the wedding ceremony long behind them, the I do’s said and sealed with a kiss. They would be settling into the villa on the beach. He’d reserved the last one on the Point, where no one ever came. He’d wanted the privacy, the intimacy of it. When he’d told Lena about the special house, she’d smiled in that secret way of hers and said one word. “Perfect.”

He wondered what one word she had for him right now. It wasn’t perfect, he was sure.

A tiny beam broke the darkness, unexpectedly radiant against the inky night before it winked out. Andres’s heart bucked as if someone had punched him, and he fumbled the flashlight he’d been holding, dropping it to the deck. With a curse, he fell to his knees and patted the wooden planks. His fingers found the flashlight and he jumped up and flicked it once, then again. He thought he heard a splash, but he wasn’t sure.

He started the countdown in his mind. They’d agreed on every thirty seconds. One thousand one, he began silently, one thousand two…

The numbers echoed in his mind, each digit accompanied by the same mantra. Forgive me, Lena. I didn’t have a choice…. Forgive me….

He’d been completely unprepared for the phone call he’d gotten early that morning. Mateo’s voice, coming over the tinny line, was the last one Andres had expected to hear only a few hours before his wedding. His best friend, Mateo Aznar had helped the eighteen-year-old Andres escape Cuba twenty-four years before and had served since as the sole source of information Andres had on the island. A former cop but now working for the Justice Department, Andres passed the intelligence on, most of it centering on one organization—the Red Tide. A drug cartel that purported to be freedom fighters, they had no good intentions.

“You’ve got to come,” Mateo had gasped. “They’ve found out about everything. The radio, the lines, everything. If you can’t get me out, they’ll kill me.”

Andres’s breath had stopped. “But how did they—?”

“I have my suspicions.”

“The same as mine?”

They hadn’t wanted to say the name—in Cuba, there were ears everywhere. Andres wasn’t sure Destin was any better.

“Sí,” Mateo had replied. “I’m certain it’s him.”

“Do you have any proof?”

“I’ve got records of the payments. I think it’s good enough together with what you know of his ‘friends.”’

They’d gone on to what was needed, talking in a code they’d already developed. Within hours, Andres had been on a plane to Miami, then at the dock, renting the boat. He loved Lena desperately and the decision had torn him apart. But it was the only one he could make. When this was all over, he’d go back to her. He’d tell her what he could and pray she’d understand. Deep down, he knew she wouldn’t, but to get through the night, he had to believe in the lie.

One thousand twenty-nine, one thousand thirty… Holding the flashlight above his head, Andres switched it on once more. His eyes searched the water. He’d anchored well offshore, but Mateo should have been visible by now. A movement to the right caught Andres’s eye. Was it him? His palms pressing into the railing, Andres peered over the side of the boat.

If he hadn’t been so focused, he might have seen them.

As it was, when the white-hot flash of the spotlight blinded him, Andres was astonished. The huge cutter loomed as suddenly as if the boat had been dropped from above. When his vision returned, shocked and in a panic, he shot his gaze back to the water. Twenty yards off the bow of his own vessel, he spotted Mateo, floundering in the waves. Before he could cry out, the larger boat angled between the two men.

“Put your hands up and prepare to be boarded. Drop any weapons now!” The warning was given in Spanish, through a bullhorn from the deck of the ship.

“¿Comprende?”

Instead of answering, Andres screamed into the night. “Hurry, Mateo, hurry! You can make it! Swim faster! I’ll come get you!”

The water was choppy and rough, but Andres’s and Mateo’s eyes connected over the waves. In that instant, that split second, Andres knew he’d done the right thing. Leaving Lena at the altar, giving up the only woman he’d ever loved…How could he have lived with himself otherwise? He revved the engine then maneuvered the tiny boat around the cutter and headed toward his friend.

He reached Mateo just as an onslaught of bullets peppered the water. A searing pain streaked down Andres’s arm as he took a direct hit, but the wound was nothing compared to the agony he felt as Mateo screamed and began to flail about in the now crimson waves.

“Goddammit, no! No!” Andres gunned the boat and cut past the spot, turning the craft as tightly as he dared to fly back once more. He searched the waves with desperate eyes, placing himself between the huge ship and where Mateo had been, but there was nothing to see.

Mateo was gone.

Andres screamed a useless curse and wasted a few more dangerous moments searching the water. With no other choice, he spun the boat around and disappeared into the darkness. Gunfire followed his wake, but it couldn’t reach him. His craft was fast and small, and the cutter didn’t have a chance.

He made it to Miami a few hours later. He’d sacrificed love for loyalty, a wife for a friend.

Now he had neither. It’d take him a lifetime to forget.

And forever to forgive.

CHAPTER ONE

Destin, Florida

Two years later

LENA MCKINNEY stepped onto the red-carpeted aisle of the flower-filled church, the solemn strains of the “Wedding March” drifting above the crowded pews.

All the guests were watching her and she knew what they were thinking—little Lena McKinney was finally getting married…after all this time! Her tomboy years were behind her, and now she was a woman. From beneath her lacy veil she smiled with silent satisfaction, then all at once, the realization hit her.

Other than the veil, she wore nothing. She was completely naked.

A wave of humiliation swamped her as she dropped her bouquet and tried to cover herself. Her actions were pointless, though. Everyone had already seen. Everyone already knew.

With a startled exclamation, Lena woke up and pushed herself out of the tangled sheets of her bed. She glanced at the clock on the nightstand, her heart still pounding from the dream—5:00 a.m. What in the hell was she doing? She had to get up in another hour, and now she’d never go back to sleep. She never did after the dream.

She collapsed against her pillows, muttering a curse then immediately chastising herself. Her poor mother was probably turning over in her grave. That’s what came from eating, breathing and drinking your work, Lena thought guiltily. She was starting to sound like the testosterone-charged cops she worked with 24/7.

No excuse, her mother’s ghost said with a hopeless sigh. You’re supposed to be a lady, try acting like one for a change.

Lena stared at the stained ceiling above her bed. At least her mother hadn’t been alive to see the Disaster, which was how Lena always thought of the aborted wedding.

The beautiful sanctuary, the silken gown, the wonderful music…every detail coordinated down to her bouquet of white freesias and apricot roses. They’d waited for as long as they could, her father holding her hand in the tiny room off the narthex, then they’d sent out Bering, the eldest of her four brothers. He’d explained as much as possible, and the guests had gone home. Lena had been worried, then incredulous, both emotions finally exploding into a bitter anger the next day when Andres had shown up and given her his lame excuses.

Get a grip, she told herself furiously. It was past history. Dead and gone. Andres had moved on and so had she. Stationed in Miami, he was climbing the ladder at the Justice Department, going up so fast he was nothing but a blur. She hadn’t been standing still, either. In charge of the Emerald Coast SWAT team, Lena held a position of authority and power, too. Two cells of topflight officers worked under her command.

Moaning with disgust over the dream and at herself for having it, Lena sat up and put her feet on the floor. A front had blown in last night and the stained concrete was cold and hard, the icy feeling instantly traveling up her legs. The scene outside the uncovered windows added to the chill, a gray and stormy Floridian sea churning on the beach only a hundred yards away. Above the waves, the October sky looked just as forbidding. Dark, heavy clouds hovered over the horizon, their swirling depths promising rain later.

One of the panes of glass rattled loudly, and propelled by the sound, Lena turned to go to the kitchen. The pipes sang, the shingles leaked, and half the time the heater refused to work. She didn’t care. She had memories of her mother here, and of good summers, laughing and chasing her brothers over the dunes. Her father had tried to buy her a condo last summer in the new high-rise going up off Inlet Beach. The units were “only” three hundred thousand, he’d said. A bargain at preconstruction rates. She’d turned him down, and he’d gotten angry, not understanding.

In the kitchen, she flipped on the television set, reaching for the door of the refrigerator at the same time. Bleary-eyed, she grabbed the last diet cola and a boiled egg left over from a few days before. The breakfast of champions. Her planned stop at the grocery store yesterday had been put on hold, as a lot of her plans were, when the team had gotten a late-afternoon call-out. The situation had dragged on forever, and they hadn’t cleaned up the mess until after two that morning. But that’s what SWAT team work was like. You stayed until the end, no matter how long it took to come.

No one had been hurt, though. That was always her goal: everyone gets out alive.

She popped open the cold drink, then took a long swallow before beginning to peel the egg, dropping the bits of shell into the sink. “Everyone gets out alive,” she repeated out loud. “Hostages, victims…even jilted brides.”

The ringing phone startled her and Lena fumbled with the egg. She caught it right before it slid into the disposal, then grabbed the receiver. “McKinney here.”

Sarah Greenberg’s soft voice sounded, and Lena relaxed the muscles she’d tightened automatically on hearing the phone. Sarah was the SWAT team’s information officer, and her calls didn’t usually signify an emergency. “Sarah! You’re calling awfully early. What’s up? Everything okay?”

“We’re fine,” the young woman answered.

Lena sipped her cola. “Did Beck tell you about last night?” A former negotiator, Beck Winters had left the SWAT team a while back but Lena had promised him a desk job and he’d returned.

Before Sarah could answer, Lena launched into an explanation. “Panama City Beach had a warrant they were trying to serve. It went downhill fast, but—” She realized suddenly that Sarah had gone silent. Usually the young cop had plenty to contribute but for some reason, she hadn’t said a word. Lena frowned. “Sarah?”

A pause—this one lasting long enough to make Lena really nervous—then Sarah spoke. “We got a fax this morning ordering a special dignitary detail for next week. I thought you might want to know about it right away so you could…um…prepare for it.”

“I’ll be in the office in an hour,” Lena said slowly. “It couldn’t wait until then?”

“I thought you might want to know about this one before you got here…so you wouldn’t be surprised.”

Lena waited a minute, but Sarah said nothing more and finally Lena spoke again, this time somewhat impatiently. “Well, are you going to tell me or do I have to guess?”

“It’s for the guy from Justice in Miami.” Sarah sounded almost shaky. “You know, the one they’re sending to open the new office? There’ve been death threats called in. They think an attempt might be made on his life.”

She should have known, Lena told herself later. She should have seen it coming. But it was only after Sarah said “Miami” that Lena’s mind kicked into gear. “No…oh, no…Shit…”

“I’m sorry, Lena. But it’s Andres Casimiro. He’s coming to Destin and he needs protection.”

“IS THIS THE FULL REPORT?” Andres raised his gaze to Carmen San Vicente, his assistant. They were in the director’s private jet, fifteen thousand feet above the Florida Panhandle. Andres hadn’t taken the time to look out the window and see the turquoise waters beneath him, but he’d buzzed the captain a moment before and asked for the ETA. The man had said ten minutes and Andres had felt his gut respond accordingly. Now he was glaring at Carmen and she had no idea she wasn’t responsible for his expression. He was thinking of the same thing he’d been thinking of for the past week—every day, every hour, every minute—since he’d known he was coming back to Destin.

Lena.

Carmen answered, but Andres’s mind had already gone elsewhere. He hadn’t spoken to Lena since the night he’d returned to Destin following Mateo’s death. The meeting had been disastrous, of course. He’d told her what he could—that a special mission had come up, that he’d had no choice but to miss their wedding.

She’d stared him in the eye and said just what he’d expected, her voice calm and controlled. “I’m a cop, Andres. I would have understood if you’d told me.”

With his heart cracking in two, he’d met her accusing stare. It had held equal shares of pain and anger, and he’d felt both just as deeply. “I couldn’t tell you, Lena. Not this time.”

She’d looked as if she wanted to believe him, but a moment later she’d closed her expression. “Then we have nothing more to discuss.” Pulling off the diamond he’d given her, she’d handed him the ring and turned away. “Please leave.”

He’d done what she asked because he hadn’t had another choice. And he still didn’t. To begin with, she would never believe him, and if she did accept his suspicions—by some miracle—it would almost be worse. The news would completely destroy her.

Lena’s father had arranged Mateo Aznar’s death. He’d wanted to kill Andres, as well.

Andres had had his suspicions before the wedding, but for Lena’s sake, he’d kept them to himself. He’d waited and watched, collected the tiny scraps of evidence he could, the main one being a local drug dealer named Pablo Escada, who had kept Phillip McKinney’s law office on retainer. The Panamanian immigrant was in the Union Correctional Institution for the moment, but he hadn’t shut down his business. Andres couldn’t prove the connection but he knew—he knew—Escada was hooked up with the Red Tide. He had to be. The organization funneled all the drugs that came through the area.

And Phillip was connected to Escada.

For months after the murder, Andres had devoted every minute of his time trying to document Phillip’s involvement, but he’d ended up with nothing. He’d been unable to find a shred of data, an iota of validation, to link the wily old attorney with the terrorists.

After a while, Andres had to let it go and accept what appeared to be the truth: things had gone terribly wrong that night and the Red Tide had acted on their own. Mateo had been wrong about the money coming from Phillip’s office.

“I brought everything that was in the folder.” Carmen’s voice held an anxious flutter. “Are you missing something?”

Andres finally heard her apologetic tone. He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bark at you. I’m a little preoccupied—”

“It’s okay,” she answered in an accommodating way. “I understand. Really, I do. It’s impossible to get anything done when you have to travel all the time.” She reached up and tucked a strand of dark hair behind one ear then her eyes warmed hopefully as Andres’s gaze met hers. “Would you like to work this evening? I could come to your hotel room after dinner tonight and we could finish this then.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “We’ll cover the final details right before the meeting in the morning. It’s not necessary to take you away from your kids and make you work overtime, too.”

Andres watched her hide her disappointment by turning away to fuss with some files in her hands. With her shining hair and olive skin, she had the kind of beauty for which Miami’s women were famous. Years before, she’d befriended his aunt Isabel, and the older woman, more of a mother to him than his own had been, had convinced him to hire Carmen when she’d needed a job. She was smart and ambitious, a single mom with two children she was putting through private school.

She’d finally gotten him into bed the month before.

He’d known the minute it started, he was making a big mistake. He’d tried to tell her, to back away and bow out gracefully, but she’d put her fingers across his mouth and stopped him from saying more. When her lips had left his and gone lower, he’d said nothing else, allowing her hot eyes and slow touch to comfort him. But he should never have given in. It’d been unfair to her.

Carmen started toward the front of the plane, then stopped at the bulkhead and turned, as though just remembering something. “Did you get your vest?”

He stared at her blankly. “My vest?”

“The director left a bulletproof vest for you to wear when you get off the plane. He told me he’d have my head if you weren’t wearing it when you arrived.”

Andres dismissed her words with a wave of his hand. It was a very Latin gesture; as a child, he’d seen his Cuban father make the same one a thousand times.

“I promised him,” she said.

“You shouldn’t have. They’re hot and heavy and totally useless. I never wore one when I was a cop and I’m not going to start now.” He went back to the files spread before him.

“And did the Red Tide have money on your head while you were a cop?”