Suzanne Brockmann - Kings Ransom: (Tall, Dark and Dangerous Book 13)

For the other 80,957,452* of you who voted for truth, empathy, kindness, compassion, equality, equity, justice, and inclusion.

Its time to show the world what light and love can do.

*As of December 2, 2020

* * *

Special thanks to my kick-ass team of beta readers, and to all who supported the Kickstarter campaign for my latest LGBTQ rom-com movie, Out of Body.

The book that readers have been waiting for.

In Frisco's Kid, Tasha Francisco was a strong-willed, independent child, thrown into the temporary care of her Navy SEAL uncle, Alan "Frisco Francisco.

Years older, but still just a kid himself, Thomas King lived nearby. Tasha took one look and declared she'd marry him someday. Thomas wasn't quite so sure about that.

Now Tasha's a strong-willed, independent young woman, and Thomas is an officer and a hospital corpsman with SEAL Team Ten.

When Tasha's Uncle Alan asks Thomas for a favorto help keep his niece safe as she travels to a remote ski lodge with her wealthy boyfriends royal familyThomas grimly accepts his role as Tasha's bodyguard. But things go horribly, terribly wrong, and Thomas and Tasha find themselves alone together in the freezing wilderness, on the run from the dangerous men who want her dead.

Thomas knows only one thing for sure: He'll sacrifice everything and anything to keep Tasha safe.

Timeline: Kings Ransom (TDD #13) is setboth in the pre-pandemic present day, about a year after SEAL Camp (TDD #12), and about two and a half years after the end of Night Watch (TDD #11). Please embrace the time warp!

He came to with a gasp and a splash, coughing and hacking brackish water out of his lungs as he pushed himself up onto his hands and knees.

He was in a ditch.

Icy rain pounded down around him and on his head, his bare shoulders, and back. He slipped in the mudhis arms were ridiculously weakand went down, face-first, into a rapidly growing puddle.

This time he rolled to get out of itdrowning in two inches of water was not even close to a proper death for a U.S. Navy SEAL. Not that he had plans to die any time soon.

Except...

Hed been certain that he was going to die.

He remembered that clearly, even though he didnt remember much else. An assault rifle aimed at his face as a voice screamedNo!before the world went painfully dark.

Not again!

He remembered thinking thatNot again!but nothing about this place was familiar.

He reached up to touch the throbbing back of his head as he lay there, still choking and coughing, on the side of that ditch. Rain streamed down his face and onto his bare chest and...

What the hell...?

He was naked.

And hed definitely been hit from behind. His hand came back red with still-fresh blood.

Theyd stripped him of his sidearm and his clothes, whoever they were, before rolling him into this ditch, no doubt hoping hed drown when the skies opened up. It couldve been worse. They couldve left him with a double-pop to the head. Thered be no coughing that out of his aching lungs.

Why they hadnt killed him outright, he didnt quite know and...

Tasha!

Thomas King sat up fast, and the world spun around him, even as he scrambled up and out of the ditch to look at the road.

The road was emptyhe was alone.

It was Tasha whod screamed no, right before hed been hit.

Not again...

But she was as gone as the cara black SUVtheyd been riding in.

As gone as the roadblock that had stopped them.

As gone as shed been that distant, long-ago day, back when they were both still kids, before hed joined the Navy, before hed gone through BUD/S and become a SEAL. He hadnt been able to protect Tasha then, either.

Not again!

Todays clusterfuck rushed back to him then, in herky-jerky bits and pieces.

Tasha, a grown woman now, laughing at something hed saidsome joke hed made to try to cut the tension as they sat together in the backseat of the SUV. The brightness of her quick smile; a flash of her golden-red curls...

Riding with Tasha Francisco, not quite ninety minutes into the three-hour trip from the remote airfield in northern New Hampshire to the even more remote mountain enclave in western Maine where the crown prince and his family were spending the week, skiing on artificial snow because the month was unseasonably warm.

Thomas shivered now. The forecast had been unusual for winter in New England, with lows in the mid-fifties, which felt far less warm in this cold, soaking rain, without his jacket or pants or boots.