Rush: A MacKenzie Family Novella (The MacKenzie Family) Read online

  Rush

  By Robin Covington

  A MacKenzie Family Novella

  Introduction by Liliana Hart

  Rush

  A MacKenzie Family Novella

  Copyright 2016 by Robin Covington d/b/a Burning Up the Sheets, LLC.

  ISBN: 978-1-942299-38-7

  Published by Evil Eye Concepts, Incorporated

  Introduction copyright 2016 Liliana Hart

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or establishments is solely coincidental.

  Book Description

  Rush

  by Robin Covington

  From Liliana Hart’s New York Times bestselling MacKenzie family comes a new story by USA Today bestselling author Robin Covington…

  Atticus Rush doesn’t really like people. Years in Special Ops and law enforcement showed him the worst of humanity, making his mountain hideaway the ideal place to live. But when his colleagues at MacKenzie Security need him to save the kidnapped young daughter of a U.S. Senator, he’ll do it, even if it means working with the woman who broke his heart …his ex-wife.

  Lady Olivia Rutledge-Cairn likes to steal things. Raised with a silver spoon and the glass slipper she spent years cultivating a cadre of acquaintances in the highest places. She parlayed her natural gift for theft into a career of locating and illegally retrieving hard-to-find items of value for the ridiculously wealthy. Rush was the one man who tempted her to change her ways…until he caught her and threatened to turn her in.

  MacKenzie Security has vowed to save the girl. Olivia can find anything or anyone. Rush can get anyone out. As the clock winds down on the girl’s life, can they fight the past, a ruthless madman and their explosive passion to get the job done?

  About Robin Covington

  USAToday bestselling author, Robin Covington loves to explore the theme of fooling around and falling in love in her sexy books. When she’s not writing sizzling romance she’s collecting tasty man candy pics, hoarding red nail polish, indulging in a little comic book geek love, and obsessing over Chris Evans. Don’t send chocolate … send eye candy!

  Robin’s bestselling books have won the Golden Leaf Award and finaled in the Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice, the Book Seller’s Best and the National Reader’s Choice Awards.

  She lives in Maryland with her handsome husband, her two brilliant children (they get it from her, of course!), and her beloved fur babies - Dixie Joan Wilder and Dutch.

  Drop her a line at [email protected] - she always writes back.

  Also by Robin Covington

  A NIGHT OF SOUTHERN COMFORT

  HIS SOUTHERN TEMPTATION

  SWEET SOUTHERN BETRAYAL

  PLAYING THE PART

  SEX & THE SINGLE VAMP

  PLAYING WITH THE DRUMMER

  DARING THE PLAYER

  TEMPTATION

  SALVATION

  REDEMPTION

  THE PRINCE’S RUNAWAY LOVER

  ONE LITTLE KISS

  SECRET SANTA BABY

  Acknowledgments

  Special thanks to Liliana Hart for asking me to be part of this project and for being a friend.

  Hugs to Liz Berry and MJ Rose for being so wonderful to work with and making this such a blast.

  A shout out to Christopher Rice, Cristin Harber, Avery Flynn, and Kimberly Kincaid for stepping up my game. Yeah…I’m fan-girling a little bit over here.

  To the Main Man, Little Man and Lulu – huge hugs and kisses for your unwavering support. How blessed am I to get to spend my days and nights with you?

  An Introduction to the MacKenzie Family World

  Dear Readers,

  I’m thrilled to be able to introduce the MacKenzie Family World to you. I asked five of my favorite authors to create their own characters and put them into the world you all know and love. These amazing authors revisited Surrender, Montana, and through their imagination you’ll get to meet new characters, while reuniting with some of your favorites.

  These stories are hot, hot, hot—exactly what you’d expect from a MacKenzie story—and it was pure pleasure for me to read each and every one of them and see my world through someone else’s eyes. They definitely did the series justice, and I hope you discover five new authors to put on your auto-buy list.

  Make sure you check out Troublemaker, a brand new, full-length MacKenzie novel written by me. And yes, you’ll get to see more glimpses of Shane before his book comes out next year.

  So grab a glass of wine, pour a bubble bath, and prepare to Surrender.

  Love Always,

  Liliana Hart

  Available now! Click to purchase.

  Trouble Maker by Liliana Hart

  Rush by Robin Covington

  Bullet Proof by Avery Flynn

  Delta: Rescue by Cristin Harber

  Deep Trouble by Kimberly Kincaid

  Desire & Ice by Christopher Rice

  Table Of Contents

  Book Description

  About Robin Covington

  Also by Robin Covington

  Author Acknowledgments

  An introduction to the MacKenzie Family World by Liliana Hart

  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

  Epilogue

  Discover the Liliana Hart MacKenzie Family Collection

  Discover the World of 1001 Dark Nights

  Her Secret Lover by Robin Covington

  Special Thanks

  Chapter One

  “You’ve got five seconds to get the fuck off my property or I will bury you on it.”

  Atticus Rush had zero patience for people who just showed up on his doorstep. Sure, he should probably give the trespassers props for finding him lodged deep in the heart of nowhere Montana, but he couldn’t muster up the enthusiasm when he resented the hell out of their very existence.

  And he deeply resented the large man currently standing on his porch.

  He’d tracked the truck coming up the long driveway, watching as they pulled into the yard under his trees and cut the engine. Uneasy when anyone showed up at his house uninvited, he’d exited his house through the back door and then circled around the side yard and waited in the bushes as the unwelcome trespasser got out of the vehicle and mounted the front porch steps. As the man rang the bell, Rush had silently crept up behind him and pressed the muzzle of his gun to the back of the man’s head. His visitor had raised his hands in the air without being told.

  “Dammit, Rush. Put the gun down. If you kill me, Darcy will be royally pissed off.”

  The voice was familiar, friendly, so he lowered the gun a little bit and used his free hand to nudge the man around. One look at his face and Rush engaged the safety on the weapon and lowered the muzzle to face the ground. Brant Scott wasn’t exactly unwelcome but if he was here unannounced, it wasn’t a good thing.

  “Scott, what did you do? Join the Jehovah’s Witnes
ses or something?” he asked as he shouldered his way past his old friend to get to the door.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Being hit by the sudden urge to save my eternal soul is the only thing I can think of that would make you come here without letting me know first.”

  “We both know you don’t have a soul to save.”

  Unable to argue with such blatant truth, Rush pressed his palm against the lock pad and shoved the door open to get inside. He strode across the stone floor of the entryway and entered the large open space housing the kitchen and living room. The back wall was almost entirely made of glass, the view of the mountain range behind the house the only rival for the attention normally commanded by the two-story stone fireplace.

  Sliding the clip out of his gun, he placed them both on the counter, reached into the fridge and emerged with a solitary beer. Brant leaned against the island and stared at him with narrow eyes as he took a long, deep swallow.

  “What?” he asked, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, glaring across the kitchen.

  “You’re not going to offer me a beer?”

  “Are we going to pretend this is a social call?”

  The stare-down continued for a few long moments and Rush took another swig of beer before Brant broke first and advanced forward, jerking the door to the fridge open with a curse. Rush barely bit back a sharp bite of laughter as he watched him slam the door and viciously pop the cap off the bottle.

  “How long are you going to bust my balls?” Brant asked on a swallow and then pointed at him across the island. “You could have blown my head off, asshole.”

  “It’s my land. My porch. I’m sure you saw the multitude of No Trespassing signs I posted.” He shrugged. “You trespass and I shoot you. Seems like a very easy concept to grasp.”

  “No wonder you live out here in the middle of nowhere. Nobody can stand you,” Brant grumbled, giving him the evil eye. “And what the fuck is up with your hair?”

  At that, Rush did let a small laugh get past his lips. Seeing the usually collected Brant lose his shit even just a little bit was fun. The only person that could get him ruffled was his wife, Darcy. That was fun to watch too. Or at least it was until they started with the kissy-kissy love crap. That’s when he usually made himself scarce and high-tailed it back to his mountain.

  “It’s long,” he answered, shrugging off Brant’s skeptical raised eyebrow. “I have no problem catching tail with it.”

  Brant stared at him, lifting his hand to make an “anything else” movement with his fingers. “That’s it?”

  “Is there anything else?” Brant opened his mouth and Rush could almost hear the lecture about how “great marriage was with the right woman.” Blah. Blah. Blah. He was not the marrying kind…not again, at any rate. The women he met for occasional weekends to blow off steam were fine when his right hand and Astroglide weren’t cutting it any longer. Marriage? Once burned, twice shy…or something like that. He’d risked his heart once and he wouldn’t do it again. “Are we at the point where you stop pretending that you’re here because you missed me?”

  Brant eyed him across the short distance, clearly weighing whether he would go through with what he’d come here to do. Rush waited him out, but each passing second convinced him that this was not a proposal he was going to like.

  “MacKenzie Security needs your help.” He paused as he pulled his phone out of his jeans pocket. “I need your help.”

  He thumbed the screen and tapped a couple of times before turning it to face Rush. A young girl, smiling huge and hugging a Labrador Retriever. She was about twelve years old and she looked familiar. Very familiar.

  He put down his beer on the counter and reached out for the phone, pulling back at the last minute. He looked at Brant.

  “I know her.”

  “You do,” he answered with a nod. “That is Katrina Hickman. Senator Alan Hickman’s daughter. You met her four years ago when the president pinned another medal on your chest.” Brant’s voice took on the cadence of a very patient teacher who would keep adding facts until the student understood the lesson. “She was at the ceremony and followed you around the entire time. She had quite a crush on you, as I recall. Was devastated when you showed up with a bride six months later.”

  Boom. All the memories came back like a wave. He did remember her.

  “She was cute. Loved telling awful knock-knock jokes. She wrote me for a year, included drawings in the letters.” He swallowed hard, already dreading the reason why Brant was holding up her picture. “What happened to her?”

  “Someone took her this morning.”

  Rage replaced the dread and coated his veins in ice. Katrina’s attention had embarrassed him at times; her crush was obvious to anyone who saw how she looked at him. He’d tiptoed around the minefield of little-girl feelings and worked hard to make sure she didn’t get the wrong impression. In spite of his best intentions, his marriage to Livvy had broken Katrina’s heart.

  The thought of her in the hands of anyone who might hurt her was goddam unacceptable.

  “When? How?” He barked out the questions.

  “All I know is that she was on her way to school and they took her on the sidewalk. Disabled her security so effectively we can’t discount an inside job. They left a note in the guard’s pocket stating they would call later with their demands.”

  “So why do you need me? You’ve got an entire security firm at your disposal.”

  “The senator asked for you.”

  Oh fuck no. He reached out and minimized the photo on the screen and pushed it back toward Brant. He’d promised to never do any more work for that man. Yeah, he was a mercenary but he had his principles and Hickman violated all of them.

  “Put your guys on it. I don’t do this anymore.”

  Brant’s snort was derisive. “Really? You don’t sell your skills to the highest bidder? Navy SEAL for sale. Throw enough money at him and he’ll ignore how dirty you are or…”

  Rush moved fast and Brant was spun around and slammed against the fridge before they could take another breath. It was no small feat to get the jump on Brant. He was highly skilled but Rush was bigger at six feet five inches and had about forty pounds on him. He pressed his forearm against Brant’s throat, enough to make it hard for him to talk, enough to make him rethink the next words out of his mouth.

  “Listen, I don’t need to justify to you how I make my living. I’m very selective. I get to choose. Which is a hell of a lot more choice than I got when I worked for the senator.”

  “You worked for Hickman? Doing what?” Brant’s expression was clouded with confusion, his fingers pulling at Rush’s arm until he relented and loosened his grip. They both backed away, staring each other down across the kitchen. Rush racked his brain for what he could tell him. What came out was true but trite.

  “That’s classified.”

  Brant gave that two beats before he nodded. “Classified?” He ran a hand over his face in exasperation. “Rush, what the hell have you been doing since you left the Navy?”

  “You really don’t want to know.”

  The silence stretched out between them and Rush exhaled slowly when Brant turned toward the front door, but his breath caught in his chest when his friend grabbed the phone off the counter and thumbed it on again. The screen lit up with Katrina’s smiling face.

  Her innocent face. Her father was an ass and quite possibly a criminal, but she was just a kid. It was like Brant could read his mind.

  “She’s just a kid, Rush. We don’t know who took her or where she is but you and I both know that if we aren’t prepared to act when we get the demands, death will be the lesser of many evils. Our intel says her father has been dealing with people who make young girls disappear and make a tidy profit at the same time. A young white woman with her pedigree would be a prize and you know it.”

  He didn’t need to be told the horrible things that could happen to a pretty girl these days.


  And yes, death would be the least of these.

  He had no choice. Not really. He was a dick but he wasn’t heartless. But he also wasn’t stupid and he had his own demands.

  “I want you, Elena, Jade, and two more of your best guys. If they have ex-fil experience, that would be ideal. I won’t have time to train any newbies on this field trip.” He moved past Brant, headed back to his office to gather the equipment he’d need. “No commercial flights. I need to take some shit that would ensure both of us getting multiple cavity searches from TSA. I don’t mind a little ass play but not from a ham-fisted guy named Bob at the security checkpoint.”

  Brant followed close behind and Rush grabbed a duffel bag and moved toward his weapons safe, keying in the code and yanking the door open when the lock released.

  “How fast can we get to the location? I’ll need scans of the area, topography, plans of the structure. You know the drill.”

  Brant’s voice was low. “We don’t know where she’s being held.”

  “What?” Rush stopped his inventory of ammo and guns. “It’s going to be hard for me to get her out if I don’t know where she is. My specialty is extraction.”

  “Understood. We’re short on time, so we need someone who can find anything…or anyone.”

  “And?” Brant did that look-away thing again and Rush tensed, his gut telling him he already knew what was coming.

  “We need you to ask her for help.” Rush didn’t have to ask the obvious question. “We need you to ask Olivia to help us out on this one.”

  “No. You’ve got to find someone on your staff to find Katrina.”

  “My best guy is out-of-pocket and I don’t have time to pull him back. I would never ask you to contact her if it wasn’t important.”

  Rush bowed his head, his heartbeat loud and rapid in his ears. It was the sudden rise in his blood pressure, the twist in his gut, and the stab in a spot under his left ribs. He looked down at his hands, white-knuckled with a slight tremor where they clasped the magazine full of bullets.