Julians jeopardy, p.1
Julian's Jeopardy, page 1
Julian’s Jeopardy
Dawn Endeavor
Marie Harte
Julian’s Jeopardy
Dawn Endeavor
As leader of the Dawn Endeavor team, Julian Hawkins takes his responsibilities seriously. With two of his Circs now mated, life for his team is evolving. As if personal strife wasn’t enough, an old enemy has Jules in his sights. Kidnapped and held prisoner in the remote Amazon jungle, Jules nearly dies before a woman made of light saves him. When months after his rescue, she’s introduced as a new part of the team, he can’t believe it. Can he trust what he sees? Or is the woman there for another reason entirely, one that will put his team, and his heart, in dire jeopardy?
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NOTE: This book contains content readers may find fascinating: group play with a central m/f relationship. Expect government conspiracies, a mad scientist, and wild and sexy shifters. This book is not for the faint of heart. Enjoy!
Dawn Endeavor Series
Fallon’s Flame
Hayashi’s Hero
Julian’s Jeopardy
Gunnar’s Game
Grayson’s Gamble
RELATED SERIES
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CIRCE’S RECRUITS
POWERUP!
CIRCE’S RECRUITS 2.0
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and plot points stem from the writer’s imagination. They are fictitious and not to be interpreted as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locations or organizations is entirely coincidental.
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JULIAN’S JEOPARDY
ISBN-13: 978-1642920499
Copyright © November 2020, 2010 by Marie Harte
No Box Books
Cover by EDH Graphics
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All Rights Are Reserved. None of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without express written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations used for reviews or promotion. http://marieharte.com
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For exclusive excerpts, news, and contests, sign up for Marie’s newsletter. https://bit.ly/2Mk5Tqz
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
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Epilogue
Also by Marie Harte
About the Author
One
Somewhere in the Amazon
Julian Hawkins clenched his jaw tight as he strained at the cuffs chaining him to the stone wall. A thin trickle of water fell down the wall across from him, lit by the lone ray of sunlight that shone through a small opening in the ceiling, some twenty feet up. Sweat rolled down his naked body; the nearby water teased, making his dry throat even drier. He would have thought a cave would be cool, but here, in this godforsaken jungle, it felt like a sauna. Just one more piece fitting into the puzzle of where the hell he’d been taken.
He yanked his right wrist again but couldn’t break free. The chafe of metal irritated his raw and bleeding wrists and ankles. The fuckers who held him knew what they were doing. He could have broken his way out of simple iron cuffs, but they must have reinforced the metal holding him, because it withstood Circ strength.
Julian swayed—from lack of food, pain, or the drugs they gave him, he couldn’t be sure. Hell, he didn’t even know how long he’d been in this hellhole, away from his team. But it would have been long enough to turn Tersch into a raving berserker, and Fallon, Olivia, Hayashi, and Morgan crazy trying to find him.
He wondered if Alicia Sharpe, their illustrious leader and a woman he didn’t trust one damn bit, cared where he’d gone. His vision blurred, and his hearing suddenly centered on the pulsing of his own heart. Flashes of his time as a SEAL mixed with past missions as a Circ, muddied with the present. Shit, more hallucinations. He tried to shake them off. Then his mother was there and seemed to be calling out for him, warning him to wash the mud off the dog before his father returned. Man, Dad would be so pissed. Before he could answer her, though, he suddenly found himself standing over his parents’ caskets in a stale funeral home, baffled at their sudden deaths.
Grief, rage, and confusion tugged at him. And then the sticky-sweet smell of tropical flowers and the sweltering humidity of the jungle pulled him back to the present. Swearing under his breath, Jules wondered how the hell he was going to escape when he had trouble making sense of what was real and unreal.
The echo of footsteps beyond his cell sounded overly loud as his superior hearing gradually returned. As a Circ, a man enhanced by the genetic experiments of an overzealous government, Jules had enhanced senses, increased speed, the capacity to regenerate tissue, and an intuitive sense of survival. Which didn’t explain how or why he’d been chained up in this cave like a fucking pincushion for the dickheads in white lab coats, dickheads who didn’t speak English. He shook his head, hoping this bout of lucidity would last. A sudden thought hit him.
Mrs. Sharpe was right. We assumed we’d found that drug lab, but we didn’t find the real place manufacturing the drugs… Drugs? What drugs? A sharp pain interrupted the flow of thought, and then something inside him seemed to push through the drugs again, clarifying his memories. The drugs that had been aimed at disabling Admiral London’s new psychic warfare program. I’d bet everything I own that I’m in their shitty lab as we speak.
The footsteps grew closer, and Jules forced himself to relax. He wouldn’t give these fuckers a thing. Not rage, not one damn emotion that would tell them what he was feeling. He’d been stonewalling them since he’d woken up in this hellhole. Not until they answered some of his own questions would he respond with anything more than silence or insults. If I can stay conscious enough to ask them.
A lock turned, and the thick, wooden door of his cell grated as it opened. He’d mentally broken through that weak door a dozen times over. He only needed to be released from the chains imprisoning him to the wall.
The open door allowed a warm breeze of air to flow through. The uplifting sweet, floral smell was so at odds with the treatment he currently suffered. That scent and the lack of coolness typically associated with a cavern told him that, though he might be in a cave, he was aboveground, not under.
Four men entered. Each held a gun equipped with specially tipped tranquilizers—not bullets, as he’d learned when he’d first arrived however long ago. That they seemed to have no intention of killing him bothered him more than if they’d come at him with machetes. They wanted something. Jules had a bad feeling he knew just what that something was.
His body trembled, and he forced himself to hold on. A subtle shifting beneath his skin, a sentient presence not quite his own, reinforced his will. He wouldn’t let the drug take him under again, not until he’d faced the enemy and tried to get some answers.
Behind the armed guards, an older man he’d had the misfortune of already meeting, Dr. Manoel Eduardo Melo Silva, approached with a stranger. Jules squinted. No, not a stranger. The asshole stepped closer, and Jules blinked past the haze in his vision.
Colonel Ricardo Montaña, in the fucking flesh.
A tall, muscular man who looked to be in his late forties, Montaña had short black hair, a dark complexion, and a thick mustache that curved over thin, bloodless lips. He wore a military uniform of camouflaged khaki. His eyes were dark, mean; a sadistic gleam showed through as he stared at Jules. But it was the scar that identified him. It ran down the left side of his face, from his eyebrow to his jaw.
Montaña—the murderous asshole they’d been looking for the past year.
The swarthy male muttered to the soldiers, who quickly surrounded Jules.
Jules remained silent, understanding he was in a hell of a lot more trouble than he’d assumed. He and his team had been after Montaña for months, ever since the psychotic colonel had joined forces with Jules’s ex-commander. Now dead ex-commander, Jules thought with grim satisfaction.
Thanks to Jules and his partners, that dick had died four months ago at the hands of a mutant Circ, a monster no more human than the natural predators that thrived in the Amazon. Unfortunately, Montaña had escaped before Jules could nail him too. They’d thought Montaña worked for the Circs’ ex-commander, but now Jules had to wonder. Perhaps Montaña played a larger part in the enemy’s organization than they’d assumed. Jules meant to find out.
One positive in this fucking nightmare, at least.
“Ah, Julian Hawkins. I’ve so looked forward to meeting you.”
Montaña’s deep, husky voice aggravated the beast that lived just beneath Jules’s skin. He forced back his animalistic impulse to bare his lengthening fangs and remained quiet while Montaña continued to talk.
“I watched you destroy William Delancey—your old captain, no? Impressive. Using his own mutant to kill him was genius. The thing fucked him to death before the yacht blew. Did you know that?”
“So quiet.” Montaña nodded at Dr. Silva. “O doutor tells me you’re not being very cooperative, Lieutenant Hawkins. Or do you no longer go by naval rank, now that you’re not officially a SEAL? That ended four years ago, eh? When you first entered the Circ project?”
Montaña stepped closer and nodded for Silva to approach.
As usual, Silva stank of fear when near Jules, and Jules’s beast thrived on the stench. He didn’t take his eyes from Silva when the doctor stabbed the needle into his arm, a needle made especially to penetrate thick Circ skin. Normal instruments didn’t work on him, even when he was in his human form.
“I know much about you, Julian. I know you’d do anything for your team. I know more about the people you work for than you do.” Montaña’s voice lowered. “Think of it. Instead of all of this nonsense, you could work with us. Why continue to help a government that tried to kill you? Dr. Pearl had the full sanction of the Department of Defense to experiment on sailors and soldiers, and he sold you out to the highest bidder.” Montaña spread his arms out. “At least here, we’re honest about our means and methods.”
Silva had been trying to sell Jules this same bullshit since he’d arrived—when the good doctor wasn’t taking his blood or shooting him up with something that fogged his mind. Jules remained quiet, his gaze on the doctor so intense that the men near him grumbled and stepped closer.
Montaña yanked his head back by his hair and snapped, “You look at me when I’m talking to you! I’m willing to make you a part of my team. Just show me what I want to see. Make yourself disappear. I know you can do it; I saw you and Delancey moments before his death. Video captured it all. Show me, Julian.”
Montaña leaned close, the scent of evil so strong, Jules couldn’t help growling in warning.
“There’s a hint of the animal, eh? Good. You’re still in there, even after all of Manoel’s tinkering.”
Montaña released his hair and laughed at the doctor. “You see, Manoel? You just need to know how to push his buttons.”
Silva shrugged. “I’ve been trying. He hasn’t responded to the controls that work on the other Circs. He doesn’t seem to care about his own life, and he’s not too worried about his teammates’ lives either. I don’t think he believes we can get to them.”
Jules noticed the grim line of Montaña’s mouth and stifled a smile. I know you can’t, or you wouldn’t be so obsessed with me. Take that, motherfucker.
“But then, you always were too soft on our prisoners, Manoel. Perhaps we are feeding Julian too much. Making his life too comfortable here.” Montaña waved at the room. “He has a toilet, a bed, chains long enough to allow him room to move. Get rid of the bed.”
Hell, the cot was too small to fit Jules’s frame anyway.
“And tighten the chains. I don’t want him to be able to sit or sleep without feeling pain.”
Jules kept silent, though he gave Montaña credit for trying to make his life more miserable. Sleeping on the floor, going without food or water—those things didn’t matter. Being chained without the ability to move freaked him the hell out, but he refused to show any concern.
He simply stared at Montaña, plotting how to kill the bastard in the most painful way possible.
Montaña frowned back at him in uncertainty, as if feeling Jules’s malice. With a push of energy he really shouldn’t have used, considering his weakened state, Jules studied Montaña’s aura—a dark, cloudy energy of wrongness—and allowed himself a smile.
His fangs peeked through, and Montaña’s fear smelled sweet.
“You stink of terror,” Jules rumbled, his voice hoarse. He smiled wider, ignoring his cracked lips and burning blood, now completely polluted with whatever Manoel had given him. “I can’t wait to suck the marrow from your bones.” As if he’d lower himself to touch more of Montaña than he needed to kill him. But the threat worked all the same.
Montaña’s brows rose, and his eyes widened. “You think to threaten me? You’ve got balls. I’ll give you that.” Montaña sneered at him and nodded at his groin. “Perhaps I should cut them off, make you less a man?”
Jules continued to smile, letting his beast memorize the features of the man he planned to break in half.
Montaña must not have liked his expression, for he muttered something in a mixture of Spanish and Portuguese before he slammed a fist into Jules’s face. When Jules failed to turn away or even flinch from the broken nose, Montaña hit him again. And again. And then the colonel went crazy. He screamed and swore, pummeling Jules everywhere, on every part of his body he could reach.
When Jules next blinked into consciousness, it was to see several of the guards and Dr. Silva holding Montaña back. They swam in and out of focus like psychedelic balls of color on a black- velvet frame. But the pain returned, and with it, Jules’s vision.
“You cannot hurt him like this!” Silva yelled. “You’re killing our only source, Ricardo. Por favor, amigo. Stop.”
“Dose him with the formula.” Montaña’s evil smile didn’t bode well for Jules. “Then we’ll do this all over again tomorrow. And the next day. As often as it takes. Being nice doesn’t work. We’ll see how tough this Circ really is after I have a go at him.” Montaña waved a knife and pushed past the doctor. He snarled at Jules, “How does this feel, amigo?”
He stabbed Jules squarely between his legs, and Jules passed out, no longer able to function past the pain.
Two
Sheridan hustled down the corridor, knowing she didn’t have much time before someone spotted her. This whole trip had been one unpleasant surprise after the other. Working for the Vida Verde organization had been a dream come true, until she’d found out that the scientific environment she now worked in was a haven for questionable scientific activity. Despite Jaime and Belinda Esteves’s agreement that she would fare much better doing her research deeper in the jungle, Sheridan couldn’t help wondering if they’d been pressured into sending her to this particular establishment.
Hell, she couldn’t even pinpoint her location on a map. She had no idea where she was. She only knew that the flowers she needed for her experiments were suddenly plentiful and at hand. Eager to continue with her work, she’d tried to ignore her misgivings. The research facility had, at first glance, looked legitimate. The few scientists she’d met and spoken with had credentials. Some were botanists or chemists, and like her, they’d been closemouthed about their work. At least here, being antisocial was the norm. A place where she finally fit in, she thought, on the verge of hysterical laughter. She looked around nervously.
Man, I have got to get moving before they see me.
Ricardo Montaña was a problem and had been for years. Living in Quebec, far away from South America, had ensured that she dealt with him very little. She’d had a bad feeling about Ricardo from the beginning. The way he looked at her, as if she were his next meal, made her more than uncomfortable. For years he’d been watching her, visiting out of the blue, bringing her gifts she always, nicely, returned. Instead of upsetting him, her refusals spurred him to bring something even better each time he returned.
