A gunman. Five hostages. And her ex. Trapped. On a train.
A disgraced police constable
Luella Brayshaw is a great cop. Until she isn’t.
Dumped on desk duties and stripped of her firearm, Lou’s first task is a civilian role in a covert training exercise for WASP. But when that exercise goes horribly wrong, she’s stuck on a train to Fremantle with five terrified hostages – and the man who broke her heart more than a decade ago.
An elite tactical operator
Nate Rivers has dedicated his life to his career. That meant making tough choices – including walking away from Lou. But he’s never doubted that decision… until now.
Twelve years on, Nate is shocked to discover the connection between him and Lou is as electric as ever. But first – they need to get off this train.
A desire they never forgot
The gunman has no idea he has two cops on his train – but unarmed, can Nate and Lou keep everyone alive all the way to Fremantle?
And if they do, Lou knows she can’t make the mistake of trusting Nate with her heart again. But faced with a new threat, they must work together to survive as their passion ignites – and this time, there’s no way Nate is walking away.
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I loved this book, it kept me up til 2am, because I just had to know what was going to happen next – Claire’s Reads & Reviews
Read an excerpt
Surely bombs were planted amongst dark shadows and beneath threatening skies? And not on a perfect cloudless Perth day, while the Swan River sparkled and the sun beat down on the hundreds of tourists that meandered around Elizabeth Quay.
And yet, today Luella Brayshaw was planting a bomb.
Admittedly it was only a fake bomb – or rather – the concept of a bomb. This was a training exercise, after all, and the backpack she carried contained no more than the clothes she’d so painstakingly chosen for her first day at WASP Headquarters – only to discover that she would not simply be answering phones today.
But still. It felt like far too nice a day to even be thinking about blowing anything up. After twelve years in the police force, Lou should know more than most that awful things happened despite a postcard-worthy backdrop. In real life, bad guys certainly didn’t need murky camera angles or a foreboding soundtrack. Shitheads just did shithead things.
And sometimes during those shithead things, experienced police officers make stupid mistakes.
And ended up on desk duties at WASP – or rather, not on desk duties, but instead walking around aimlessly at Elizabeth Quay, pretending they had a bomb in their backpack.
Honestly, it would be difficult for this situation to be any more humiliating.
Her entire career, Lou’s colleagues and sergeants had encouraged her to consider a move to the elite Western Australian State Protection team. A constable with her talent and track record would surely aspire to work with the best of the best, right? WASP had everything: a tactical response team, dignitary protection, covert surveillance, bomb technicians, negotiators, snipers – every specialist team in the police had been brought together under the WASP umbrella.
But Lou had never been interested. It had always been grassroots policing that had been her passion: being a part of the community she protected and served. She wanted to help with everyday problems that rarely got the attention they needed, and certainly never ended up in the news: like the young woman who’d finally felt safe enough to press charges against her abusive partner, or the elderly residents being scammed by unscrupulous door-to-door salesmen. No one wrote a front-page article when she let an impressionable first-time twelve-year-old shoplifter off with a warning – and a tour of the lock-up and a sombre lecture of exactly how their life would pan out if they continued to make such stupid, selfish decisions.
By contrast, barely a week went by without the WA media lauding some huge WASP-led success story. There were, of course, countless other success stories that never made it public.
But that didn’t appeal to Lou. You needed great cops to deal with the big stuff that WASP dealt with daily. But you also needed great cops to deal with the small stuff left to everyone else.
Except – now no one thought Lou was a great cop.
One day, one mistake, and she was reduced to this.
A fill-in for an actress who’d called in sick. Wearing one of the female WASP operator’s spare clothes: jeans that were just a bit too big, a white tank top that was just a bit too small.
But it would have to do. The one day she’d ever rocked up to work in heels, a pencil skirt, and blouse (hey, if she was going to be relegated to desk duties she was going to look good doing it), she’d had to get changed out of her beautiful new clothes almost immediately.
Thankfully she’d had a pair of sneakers in her car she could wear – dark blue suede with pink stripes – so yeah, fashionable rather than practical, but certainly better than walking through Perth in her heels or a stranger’s work boots. And she had a lot of walking to do today.
Just act natural, her sergeant had said, after he’d dropped her off beneath the glinting glass and copper of the Bell Tower. Wait for my call.
Acting natural had taken her for a walk from the Bell Tower and Barrack Street Jetty, and across to the small man-made island that jutted out at the mouth of the quay. Children laughed and shrieked as they swarmed a wooden tower-dotted playground, and the small kiosk at the island’s centre tempted her with the allure of caffeine – but she had no idea if purchasing a takeaway latte was allowed. Do fake bombers carry coffee cups?
Old Lou would’ve asked her new sergeant all about the exercise in the short drive in from WASP headquarters to the city. But this new version of Lou had felt the weight of derision and reluctant obligation emanating from Sergeant Peters. Lou had no idea why or how she’d been dumped at WASP, but clearly Peters wasn’t a fan.
So, she’d sat silently like the gutless loser everyone now thought she was, and now had no idea what was going to happen today, or what she was actually allowed to do, other than wait for Peters’ phone call. After that, she’d make her way to an unknown destination, covertly followed by who knew how many WASP operators.
As she left the island via the swooping, dramatic curves of the pedestrian bridge that traversed the gently rippling Swan River, her skin prickled with awareness. Were eyes on her now? They must be, the operators on this exercise couldn’t have been too far away.
Self-consciously, she tugged at the too short hem of her tank top as she passed yet another couple taking selfies on the bridge, Perth’s collection of glass and metal sky scrapers rising above the quay behind them.
Her phone rang just after she stepped off the bridge and onto the western promenade, and Lou tugged it out of the back pocket of her borrowed Levis.
Peters didn’t bother with hello. “Perth Train Station. Don’t walk straight there, act like someone who doesn’t want to be followed. Reckon you can do that?”
His lack of faith in her was palpable.
“Of course.”
Peters grunted. “Pay attention to anyone you notice following you. If you do, try to lose ’em. Got it?”
“Got it,” Lou said, but he’d already hung up. “Arsehole,” she added, to the black screen of the phone before shoving it back into her pocket.
Then, she took a deep breath, tucked the escaped strands of long brown hair she’d so carefully braided this morning behind her ears, and straightened her shoulders.
She’d do anything to change what had happened two weeks ago, to change the decision that had landed her here. But she couldn’t.
She had mandated counselling and training to complete before she got her firearm back and life went back to normal. She might not like it – and based on Peters’ reaction, WASP might not like it either – but for now, she was stuck at WASP.
And so, because Luella Brayshaw never did anything half way, she was going to be the best damn fake bomber they’d ever seen.
Nate Rivers held his long-empty takeaway coffee cup to his lips as he waited for the target to exit the arcade behind him.
He kept his gaze on the window display directly in front of him, the glass providing a clear view of the narrow arcade in its reflection. To a casual onlooker – or to a target being followed – he looked like a typical suit in between meetings.
Although, he hadn’t quite stretched to wearing the jacket part of the navy-blue suit he kept back at WASP headquarters for CBD-related surveillance. It was just too hot in Perth in March to wear a jacket. Nate figured that in this scenario, he just worked somewhere with a fairly relaxed dress code. And in that spirit, he’d also tossed his tie and popped open the top few buttons of his shirt – although not so many as to expose the narrow, paper-thin band of the microphone collar beneath the crisp white fabric.
“Target about to enter Murray Street Mall, heading west. White singlet, pink stripes on shoes, dark hair in plait.” The voice in his hidden earpiece was clear and succinct.
“Got her,” Nate said, as the woman stepped from the darkness of the arcade into the bright sunlight of the pedestrian mall.
“All yours, mate.”
Nate waited a beat before turning, watching the woman pause and retrieve her phone from the back pocket of her jeans. But she wasn’t really looking at the phone. As he watched, she subtly glanced up and down the mall and then over her shoulder. Her gaze didn’t even skim over Nate; there were at least twenty people between him and the woman at any moment in time. The wave of shoppers, tourists, and workers was constant and effectively camouflaged him from view.
He couldn’t see her all that clearly in the window’s reflection either. About all he knew was that the woman was about average height, slender without being skinny, and her hair was in a thick, brunette braid.
Apparently satisfied with her survey of the mall, the woman turned left, towards Forest Chase, stepping into the wake of a large group of teenage girls. As Nate watched, she moved through the group, and then he lost her as they walked between a café and its alfresco seating and market umbrellas, his view obscured.
A moment later, when the girls continued down the mall, the woman wasn’t there.
This was new. As he’d listened to the target’s progress along the kilometre journey from the quay to Perth train station – only a few hundred metres beyond where he stood – she’d taken twists and turns – doubling back on herself, alternatively ducking into shadows and walking in plain sight, and even travelling a short distance on one of the city’s zero-fare buses that constantly looped through the CBD. She’d almost lost her tail then, but knowing the fixed route of the bus the team had deployed operators to all upcoming stops and picked her up again as she’d alighted. But still – if this exercise had involved a smaller team, the manoeuvre might have worked.
Of course, the guy on her arse should’ve worked out what she was doing before she’d got on the bus – but then, that was the point of this exercise. The team today was made up of tactical operators, including himself. They didn’t normally do a lot of surveillance, they were more about taking targets down once all this work had been done: like waking up pieces of shit at three in the morning with red dots on their foreheads for arrest warrants, stopping some gun-toting arsehole from shooting people, or intercepting million-dollar meth hauls.
But like all the operators at WASP, they needed to have a working knowledge of everything WASP did. He might not be a bomb tech or a negotiator or whatever, but he knew a hell of a lot more than the average beat cop, and he needed to, never knowing what the next job would bring.
So, yeah, he wasn’t about to lose this target.
Nate crossed the mall to drop his coffee cup into a bin located near the café. The woman only had two options – she was either in the café, or the adjacent accessories shop. All they needed to do was cover the exits – each had only a single door in and out, which he had covered – and he spoke quietly into his microphone to direct the nearest operators to cover any exit out the rear.
Then, he simply walked straight past both shops and took a seat on a bench in the centre of the mall, facing away. Then watched the opposite shop windows to see what happened next.
Minutes later, she reappeared.
This time, she didn’t pause. She was out the door of the accessories shop, then off, walking briskly towards Forest Chase.
Nate hesitated before following her. Partly because he couldn’t be that obvious, but mostly because something about her walk triggered something … reminded him of something. Of someone.
The way the woman walked – the neat posture, the determined strides, even the swing of her arms – he knew that walk.
But that was impossible.
Actors were always used for these exercises, and the woman she reminded him of, was – last time he checked – still a cop.
Not that he kept tabs on her, or anything. Just occasionally, he wondered how she was doing after all this time. Curiosity, nothing more.
Nate stood, and began to follow the woman down the mall.
Lou had to admit that the WASP guys were good.
Despite knowing she was being followed every step of her walk from the quay to the train station there’d been only one time she’d been pretty sure she’d spotted an operator. A guy in board shorts, singlet and thongs – his outfit in itself nondescript, his ripped deltoids and biceps not so much. Even then she’d been unsure, he certainly hadn’t been obviously following her. It was more a feeling. Yet when she’d jumped on that bus, she was almost certain she’d seen what could only be described as an Oh Fuck expression on his face as the bus zipped away.
She had to admit, it’d been rather satisfying.
Now, as she crossed the overpass between Forrest Chase and the double-storey train station, she wasn’t entirely sure what to do. Was the exercise over the moment she stepped into the building?
As she did exactly that – a bakery to her right, and the station information and ticket stand to her left – nothing happened.
Lou grinned. What had she expected?
She came to a stop just in front of the ticket gates, then turned around, imagining the final operator who’d been tailing her would be behind her and could tell her where to go next. Or maybe Sergeant Peters would call her, as surely, he’d be well aware she’d reached her destination.
Or maybe she should call him? She reached for her phone, only to go absolutely still as she recognised a man not even ten metres away from her.
A tall man with dark, army-short hair and dark blue eyes. A man with broad shoulders and tanned skin revealed from wrist to elbow by the shoved-up sleeves of his snowy-white shirt.
The planes of his face were different – harder, which made sense. It’d been more than ten years. Nate Rivers had gone from young man, to man. He’d been gorgeous back then, but now, 100 percent grown up? He was devastating.
Nate’s gaze met hers.
She watched as his eyes widened, and as his gaze swept up and down her body. Was he cataloguing her changes, too?
Longer hair, better make-up, a few extra kilos from when she was twenty-one. How did she stack up?
Why did she care?
She didn’t. She didn’t care at all what Nate Rivers thought of her.
What was she doing? Nothing had changed. They had nothing to say to each other.
Without thinking, she turned away. She needed to move, to get away from him.
Stupid, unwanted prickles tightened her throat, stung her eyes.
Hell no. She was not going to let Nate see her tears.
That horrifying possibility propelled her forward, into the crowd of commuters.
Why would she waste tears on him? Where had they even come from? She was over him. She had to be – it had been forever.
A lifetime ago.
She realised she was at the ticket gates. With no ticket, of course. Around her, card readers beeped merrily, while she held up the line. What to do?
“Luella?”
No.
Even his voice sounded older. Richer.
And too close to her, definitely too close to her.
Beside her, a mother was waved through a wider gate with a pram, and Lou simply stepped in behind her.
The transit guard either didn’t notice or didn’t care, and grateful, she almost ran to the escalator that would take her down to the platforms below.
She didn’t look back as she jogged down the moving steps, springing onto the platform without looking back, her gaze darting about. Where to go now?
“Lou,” Nate said, even closer now, but she wouldn’t turn around. “Wait, please.”
A train sat, doors open, at the platform. Before she could think, she was on the train. Surely, he wouldn’t follow her onto it?
She collapsed onto one of the chairs near the front of the carriage, one that backed against the wall and faced another line of empty seats before her.
Lou had gone to great pains to know nothing of what Nate was doing now. She’d never Facebook stalked him, never Googled him.
Given his clothing, he’d clearly left the police – she never would’ve expected that. He had a whole new life she knew nothing about, cared nothing about.
Liar.
Suddenly – far too belatedly – the idiocy of what she was doing crashed down on her.
Sergeant Peters would surely call her any moment. Or a WASP operator was about to ask her what the hell she was doing.
She needed to get off this train and pull herself together.
She rushed to her feet, but it was too late.
The doors closed before her, and immediately her gaze went to the network map printed on the carriage wall. She’d just get off at the next stop.
No problem. She’d sort this out.
“Lou,” Nate said, right beside her. “What the hell are you doing?”
And that was when what should’ve been blindingly obvious hit her.
Hit her, just as she forced herself to meet his gaze.
Nate had not quit the force to work in an office.
He was not following her because he desperately needed to talk to her or see her again, or something equally unlikely and fantastical.
No. He was a WASP operator.
It was his job to follow her.
That was all.
“Fuck,” she said.