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  What readers are saying about the Montana Marshalls

  Action, drama, adventure, flawed individuals and emotional and spiritual challenges are hallmarks of Warren's books.

  Christian Library Journal

  Warren has a knack for creating captivating and relatable characters that pull the reader deep into the story.

  Radiant Lit

  Susan May Warren did a fantastic job. Knox is a book that has enough action to keep you on the edge of your seat and enough romance to make you swoon. I have fall completely in love with the entire family. I can not wait to read the rest of this amazing new series!

  Emily, Goodreads reviewer

  Ford

  Montana Marshalls Series Book 3

  Susan May Warren

  About Ford

  Ford

  Montana Marshalls Book 3

  Family…country…or the woman he loves…

  Navy Seal Ford Marshall isn’t the kind to stand by and let a woman get hurt—especially when it involves his twin sister, RJ. So, when she makes the news, accused of sparking an international incident, he doesn’t care what it takes—he’s going to find her and bring her home.

  But he might need a little help, so he calls on the woman who has had his back during the last three years—Petty Officer Scarlett Hathaway, former communications expert-turned Rescue Swimmer candidate. She’ll help him get into the country, watch his back, and…well, they might be able to have one last mission together before she leaves for a new life, a life he very much wants to be a part of now that she is off his team. Maybe he can convince her to give them a chance to kindle the spark that’s simmered between them for years.

  Can she love a man whose life is danger?

  Scarlett Hathaway isn’t sure what future she wants—not when she suddenly has to care for her little brother. Maybe she should quit the Navy and start a life with the man she can’t seem to get out of her heart. So yes, she’ll help Ford find his sister. And maybe, along the way, figure out if they have a future.

  But finding RJ somewhere in the vastness of Russia with the FSB chasing them will push Scarlett beyond even her courage and make her question everything she thought she wanted…including Ford. What will it cost her to love a man who saves the world?

  And when Ford is asked to choose between saving his sister, saving the world from a war, and rescuing the woman he loves…can he live with his decision?

  * * *

  The third book in the Montana Marshalls series will leave you breathless!

  Contents

  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

  What Happens Next…

  About Wyatt

  A Note from Susie May…

  Also by Susan May Warren

  1

  If Ford didn’t get his head in the game, they were doomed.

  People were going to die.

  Probably him.

  And maybe his teammates, fellow SEAL operators with Team Three, right here on the rugged shoreline of the Caspian Sea in the democratic Muslim state of Azerbaijan.

  The team had dropped in sometime before zero-dark-thirty, making their way toward a cluster of buildings that made up Vigeo, an international boarding school perched on the seaside cliff. By the time the sun rose, Ford was crouched in the shadows beside the gymnasium doors.

  It might have been a beautiful July morning. Striations of crimson and burnt orange casting over the dark rolls of the Caspian Sea—if it wasn’t for the smoke that billowed from the still-burning chapel, the terrorists’ first stop in their takeover of the school. It soured the air, and the longer Ford waited, the more his gut roiled with the fact that children had died inside that chapel.

  Twelve more children remained hostage in the gymnasium of the ancient stone and marble building.

  The team’s job? Get in, eliminate the hostage takers, secure the packages, and evacuate.

  A mission that demanded his full attention.

  Except, he shouldn’t be here, not right now.

  Right now he should be finding and extricating his sister from the clutches of the FSB—former KGB—somewhere in Russia.

  So maybe his imagination had run a little wild with the word Russia, but two days ago, CNN had reported the attempted assassination of Russian General Boris Stanislov. Providentially, the accused—still at large—shooter was caught on a fuzzy street camera, and the image looked insanely like his twin, Ruby Jane.

  Right.

  Not. For. A. Moment.

  And sure, he hadn’t talked to her—really talked—for years, but she was a travel agent. So she’d probably taken some hapless tourists on an excursion and ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Crazy.

  Still, the thought of naive RJ now missing and on the run from the FSB was enough to tangle his brain.

  Where was his sister, and was she—please, God—still alive?

  The question felt like enough of a basis for personal leave as anything he could conjure up, but according to Chief Nez, the last thing the US needed was a Navy SEAL running across shaky borders and into a country that was getting chillier by the moment.

  So instead of rescuing his sister, Ford was stuck waiting for the go command from one Lt. General Mohammad Shanin, the leader of the Interior Guard.

  Yay.

  Ford had a bad feeling from the moment his SEAL team set down in Azerbaijan. First, they were told that they had to work in tandem with the brute arm of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Then, that they’d be taking their commands from Shanin.

  And, finally, worse of all, although the chief had outlined the mission specs to Lt. Gen. Shanin, the general wanted to insert his team into the soiree.

  Nope, Ford couldn’t escape the clench in his gut that children were going to die.

  Chief Nez came on the line. “Delta Three, IG team is in place. Wait for Shanin’s go.”

  Perfect. Hurry up and wait. And wait.

  Hostage situations demanded stealth, urgency, and in his view, no negotiations. People simply couldn’t fiddle around when kids were involved.

  It could have been, well, not exactly easy, but perhaps over if Shanin had been of a mind to let the US Spec Op team actually do their job. Without interfering.

  Save American citizens. At least three of the children inside the gym were children of diplomats, another two missionaries’ kids, and the final one—a ten-year-old girl—the daughter of Tyrone Stavros, Greek-American billionaire. He’d video-conferenced into their meeting right before they climbed onto the C-130. Stavros had some sort of political pull as well because the CIA had actually let him listen in to the operational briefing.

  But it didn’t matter who their parents were, really. Children deserved to be saved, period, full stop. Regardless of their nationality or the size of their parents’ bank account.

  Although apparently nationality and probably bank accounts had everything to do with the attack on the international school by the Army of Jihad, a Sunni supremacist group out of Pakistan, whose MO was to attack expats and hold them hostage.

  The US still didn’t negotiate with terrorists, but they did send in men like Ford.

  The teams’ objective was to take out the four still-breathing hostage takers in the gym via Cruz’s and Levi’s expert marksmanship.

  Infiltrate the gym after Sonny and Kenny C, their explosives and weapons experts, blew the doors. Then he and Trini would grab the twelve children, all under the age of ten, and exfil them
to the waiting arms of their parents.

  Hooyah.

  The SEAL team would fly back out to their temporary base in Bahrain, and maybe, just maybe, Ford could get back to the other breaking news that he couldn’t think about at the moment.

  The thing that settled in his gut like a burr and now, as the rescue mission progressed, only dug in and burned.

  Scarlett had left him…okay, so maybe he was being a pansy. Truth was, he wished her well in her training as a Rescue Swimmer. Really hoped she’d make it. But he still hated the fact that she’d left for training without even talking to him. That she’d walked out of his life without a second glance at their friendship—one that, okay, yes, felt like something more, at least from his end.

  But what did he expect? It wasn’t like he’d told her how he felt.

  Shake it off. She clearly hadn’t felt the same way about him, and he just had to put on his big boy pants and get over her.

  Problem was, Petty Officer Second Class Scarlett Hathaway had been the voice in his ear for the past two years as the assigned radio combat services support to their unit. He’d relied on Scarlett’s instincts, the way her calm voice kept his heart rate a notch lower. Knowing she was watching his back via the drones overhead always felt like having a guardian angel on his side.

  For Pete’s sake, he was getting dramatic. But being on the op without her only raked up the hollow places and put a knot in his gut. Ford didn’t believe in talismans, like fuzzy feet or dirty socks, but he couldn’t escape the sense of doom.

  Worse, every time Petty Officer Third Class Berkowitz, Scarlett’s replacement, opened his mouth to relay op information, it simply grated in Ford’s ears.

  “We see at least six heat signatures in the building, besides the ones in the gym,” Burke said now.

  “Copy,” Ford answered and relayed the information to his chief, Master Chief Chester Nez.

  “That puts us at a total of ten targets,” Nez responded.

  If Nez thought that deploying Ford into a hot spot of drama and heartache might make him forget—

  Boom!

  The gymnasium shook with the force of an explosion. Ford ducked as stone work shattered down around him. Next to him Trini, their Trinidadian-born maps and logistics expert, also ducked, and Sonny and Kenny C pasted themselves to the wall of the building.

  “What the—” Ford said.

  “Shanin deployed his men!” Nez shouted. “Execute! Execute! Execute!”

  Sonny blew the door.

  Smoke fogged the huge gymnasium, fire dropping from the ceiling, and Ford gulped in fresh air a moment before he followed Kenny C inside, pieing out with his Colt M4A1 assault rifle to Kenny’s flank.

  Trini mimicked him beside Sonny, and Ford fought the smoke to find the targets. A man in a long beard and white turban lay bleeding near the door, an AK-47 lying outside his reach. He grabbed for it, but Ford took two steps and kicked it out of the way.

  Two quick shots sounded somewhere in the smoke. Screams pierced the air. The far wall of the gymnasium was rubble—the bomb must have detonated on the other side of the wall, in the hallway. Maybe some suicide bomber detonating his pack when he saw the rush of Shanin’s guards. Fire where it licked through the walls, roaring.

  A boy ran toward them, his face bleeding, and Trini caught him up in one arm and dragged him out of the building. Sonny disappeared into the smoke, and Kenny C dropped another target. Through the clutter, Ford glimpsed a huddle of three girls, and Kenny straight-lined for them.

  “Sit rep!” Nez said.

  “Two targets down in the gym,” Ford said as Cruz and Levi called in their shots.

  Four down, maybe more in the hallway.

  Nez was coming in with Lt. Gen. Shanin. “We have three targets down here. Two children evac-ed.”

  “I have one hostage,” said Trini.

  “Add three more,” Sonny said.

  A scream alerted Ford, and he caught sight of a girl dressed in the blue uniform of the school being dragged into another hallway by a man wearing a black and white keffiyeh.

  That left five hostages still at large, and three Tangos, one of them in Ford’s sights. “I have a squirter going out the back of the building. I’m on him.”

  “Right behind you, Delta Three,” said Kenny C.

  Ford headed toward the gap, eyeing the corridor. He found it empty. “Moving,” he said.

  “Move,” answered Kenny behind him.

  Ford proceeded through the hole, weapon out, fighting for vision through the smoke. “What do you see, HQ?”

  “Two bodies, fifteen feet ahead of you and still moving down the hallway,” came Berkowitz’s voice.

  Ford slammed against the wall as bullets peppered past him.

  Kenny fired back, secured behind some fallen rubble. “Go!”

  Ford sprinted to an open doorway and found himself inside a science room. Another door led to the next room.

  More shots spiraled down the hall, and then shouts.

  “I’m pinned down, Marsh,” Kenny said. “I’ve got extra Tangos on my six.”

  “Delta Six and Delta Four, take out those targets,” Nez said, sending Sonny and Trini back into the fight. “We found four more children.”

  That left just the one—and Ford wasn’t letting her die at the hands of some jihadist.

  He headed to the door and eased it open. The firefight in the hallway had the attention of the man who’d backed into the next room—also a science room given the lab desks and Bunsen burners.

  The hostage taker had shoved the frightened girl against the wall, his fist to her chest, and was firing one-handed down the hallway.

  Aim small, miss small. Ford sighted him, pulled the trigger.

  The terrorist slammed against the frame of the door and collapsed as the little girl screamed.

  Ford crossed the room in seconds and pulled her up, against him, away from the dead man.

  “You’re going to be okay.”

  She was crying, of course. Big brown eyes, long black hair, and she looked at him with so much hope and awe and fear that the old wounds just broke open and poured out.

  I’ll save you, RJ!

  Not now. He shook the past away and pulled the little girl tighter against his body armor.

  Shouts and gunfire burst from the hallway.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Anastasia.”

  “Okay, Anastasia, get behind me. And don’t move.” Because he hadn’t a clue how he was going to get her out of here.

  And then it didn’t matter because as he turned toward the hallway, a two-shot punch slammed into his body armor. He stumbled back and dropped, wheezing against the fire that ignited inside him.

  Breathe—he just needed a breath.

  His mouth worked, his lungs didn’t, and Anastasia was screaming.

  Don’t leave her alone. Another voice from the past, this time his own, but it thundered into his bones, and his breath rushed out in a shout.

  He rolled to his knees, found the girl, and scrambled behind one of the lab tables. She pressed her hands over her mouth, her eyes wide as she stared at the door.

  He turned, spied the Tango entering, his weapon sweeping the room.

  Ford palmed his Sig Sauer handgun and pumped two shots, center mass.

  The man fell, but right behind him, his buddy entered the room, shooting.

  Ford pulled the trigger, but the piece misfired.

  No! He slapped the bottom of the handle to reseat the magazine, racked the slide, and dropped the bad round. Released the slide to load the next round and fired again.

  Nothing.

  Scarlett, where is he?

  Gunfire sprayed the room. The shooter headed toward their position, shouting at Ford in Pakistani.

  Right back atcha.

  Ford pulled the girl behind him as he dropped the magazine, reaching for a fresh one.

  A shot ricocheted off the counter, chipping shrapnel over them. The magazine went spin
ning out of his hand, beyond his reach.

  The shrapnel kept flying.

  “Delta Three under attack. I could use some backup.”

  Anastasia was screaming in his ear.

  He reached for his Windsor, hoping he got a second before the bullets hit. But he would die before he’d let the Army of Jihad take him. He wouldn’t be the guy who made the evening news with a knife to his neck.

  Anastasia got up, and he turned, grabbed her arm to yank her down.

  The window, the sunlight streaming through, called to him.

  Just a few days ago, his big brother Tate had saved the woman he loved from a bombing by leaping out a second floor window.

  Ford was on the first floor.

  Ford ripped a grenade from his belt, pulled the pin. A pop, and Ford had three seconds, tops.

  He lobbed the SOHG across the room.

  As it flew, he turned and scooped up Anastasia. Pulling the girl against him, Ford ran for the glass, turned his back to it and flung himself backward through the pane.

  The grenade detonated as he dropped.

  Except, he wasn’t on the first floor—not when the building edged the cliffside, a fact that clicked in as he fell through the open air.

  Anastasia was still screaming, and a big part of him wanted to do the same.

  Because as he fell and fell, clutching her to his chest, he braced himself to hit the boulders below, very, very hard.

  He just knew this op was doomed.

  She should at least shed a few tears.

  Scarlett was simply tired—too tired—to feel anything but a feeble pang as she stood in the cemetery and listened to the preacher she’d hired for her mother’s final sermon wheedle on about grace and the next life and an eternal hope that Scarlett felt pretty sure her mother hadn’t earned.