Love Lost Read online

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Legal

  Social Links

  Series List

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Authors Note

  To Family, Friends and

  Those Who Love

  To Read.

  May We All Enjoy Grace

  To Live The Life We Are

  Called.

  DO YOU HAVE A PREVIOUS VERSION?

  I will have the edit history (editing and story additions / corrections) on the books Amazon page (so you can always tell). Unfortunately, Amazon doesn’t automatically download the latest version, you have to delete and re-download yourself.

  EDIT HISTORY:

  Release 1.0 : 11/25/2015

  Version 1.1 : 12/18/2015 (Edited by James Coyle)

  This book is a work of fiction, All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

  Copyright (c) 2015 Michael T. Anderle

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

  Cover art by Michael T. Anderle

  Want more?

  Join the email list here:

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  https://www.facebook.com/TheKurtherianGambitBooks/

  The email list will be sporadic with more ‘major’ updates, the Facebook group will be for updates and the ‘behind the curtains’ information on writing the next stories. Basically conversing!

  Since I can’t confirm that something I put up on Facebook will absolutely be updated for you, I need the email list to update all fans for any major release or updates that you might want to read on the website.

  I hope you enjoy the book!

  Michael Anderle - Nov 23, 2015.

  Series Titles Include:

  Death Becomes Her

  The Kurtherian Gambit 01

  Queen Bitch

  The Kurtherian Gambit 02

  Love Lost

  The Kurtherian Gambit 03

  Bite This

  The Kurtherian Gambit 04

  Never Forsaken

  The Kurtherian Gambit 05

  (Early Jan 2016)

  Under My Heel

  The Kurtherian Gambit 06

  (Late Jan / Early Feb 2016)

  Kneel Or Die

  The Kurtherian Gambit 07

  (Late Feb 2016)

  CHAPTER ONE

  Washington DC - USA

  Martin Brennan finally closed down his laptop for the day. Working for an agency which stayed off the political and reporting radar could be nerve wracking. His group wasn’t totally black, but they often came close to the boundaries. He stretched his arms up above his head and heard his back pop. It was past 10:00 pm on a Friday night and he had been working since 6:00 AM. The last four of his agents working late stuck their heads in his office to say goodnight before they went out for drinks together. That was well over two hours ago.

  He glanced up and looked at the single Christian Louboutin shoe that he had placed on his ‘awards’ shelf. It had arrived out of the blue. All of the guys gave him shit about it. Two ladies had guessed what it meant but he never confirmed their guesses one way or the other.

  He had received the shoe a little over two weeks ago from a shop in New York City. He had made a bullshit excuse to pull the video recordings from all of the shops on that street. He had received the edited clips just yesterday.

  He found the woman he thought had purchased the shoe and sent it to him. He was expecting to find the face of a ghost, a lady who should be dead. He wasn’t quite sure he didn’t see the dead, living.

  The lady who was the closest match for the date and time of the purchase was taller than Bethany Anne Reynolds. He wasn’t sure if the lady on the video was Bethany Anne, but she looked remarkably like her. Well, if she had surgery that increased her height, had breast augmentation, and been working out for the whole time she was absent.

  It wasn’t that Bethany Anne wasn’t in shape when she worked for him, but rather the lady in the video was beyond athletic looking.

  He had one of his hackers go into the company’s database and check the time of the purchases for credit card info, but the shoes were paid for in cash.

  He rubbed his face. Whether the lady in the video was a changed Bethany Anne or not, he was sure that the box with the single shoe was Bethany Anne letting him know she was alive. He had no other agents he had spent even ten minutes discussing fashion with. However; he had spent one whole evening discussing Bethany Anne’s fashion choices including Coach Purses and Christian Louboutin shoes and therefore was very acquainted with the red-soled shoes.

  After that dinner, he had recognized the shoe brand every time she wore them. The shoe he had on his shelf was very similar to a style she often wore. It was a very unique way to pass a message to him that she was alive. No one else would know to send him that specific shoe.

  Bethany Anne was like a daughter to him. If he could have had her working for him for a few more years, there would be no telling what amazing results she would have accomplished. She had come to him for advice when given a doctor’s opinion that she had an incurable disease and had less than a year to live. He quietly helped her find two more doctors who were literally on the cutting edge of blood diseases. Unfortunately, the only help they accomplished was to confirm the original prognosis and refine how fast she was dying.

  His wife, Mary, found him late that night with tears just streaming down his face. She wasn’t allowed to ask too much about his work. She knew it was better to not know in case he ever was called in front of congress. She couldn’t be used as a pawn if she didn’t know anything. But she hurt for her husband, she felt his pain. Whatever he was releasing through the tears had to be ripping him up inside.

  Martin got his briefcase and slipped his laptop into it. Grabbing his coat and keys, he locked his office door behind him and went to the elevator.

  The agency offices were in a pretty plain multi-story building in Washington D.C., or at least the outskirts. The elevator took him directly down into the parking garage. He never made it to his car.

  His wife Mary called Martin’s second in command, Brandin Couter, at 2:00 AM when she couldn’t raise her husband on his cell phone. She had used the phone’s Find a Friend and it confirmed Martin was supposed to be at work.

  Brandin called her thirty minutes later with the news that Martin was dead.

  What Brandin didn’t tell Mary was that Martin had been tortured and his throat had been ripped out.

  Washington D.C. - USA

  Frank Kurns wasn’t planning on staying long in the office this morning. It had been at least eight months since he had a weekend where things were kind of quiet and he was looking forward to a book and hot soup. Each time he went into the basement of his building, he felt as if he was go
ing into a crypt.

  He wanted to pull some notes together and get with Bethany Anne later that day. He was getting up in age, again and he needed to find a viable replacement. Almost a hundred years old, Frank had been rejuvenated somehow by Michael in the past, dropping him at least twenty to thirty years younger. However; he was almost a sprightly centenarian now and good genes or not he could feel his age every day.

  Bethany Anne had been his personal previous pick to succeed him. He hadn’t had the time to really continue his research when everything just blew up after Bill was killed.

  He made it to his office door and punched in both his security code and provided a hand print. His room here would practically melt if the security was breached. He took no chances with the information inside. It wasn’t so much that the paranormals would be upset, although they would, it was more that he didn’t believe the world would be ready to know this much.

  It was truly Pandora’s box.

  He got inside the office and hit the lock button. He preferred to know that there was no way someone was going to sneak up behind him while he focused on his tasks.

  Hitting his mouse, the computer screens immediately came on. He could have requested a semi-sentient AI from the military think-tanks. However, he just wasn’t that comfortable with them so far. He had kept up the research and it looked very promising. However; when you dealt with problems that required favors owed and favors due as much as he did he then felt a computer brain wouldn’t understand how to help.

  He had two computer screens side by side. The left monitor he used for activity, the right was where his Spook Dashboard was. Since he created it, he got to name it whatever he wanted.

  Right now, he was surprised that one of the tabs was red. He sat down in his squeaky chair and clicked on the tab.

  The tab in question was a notification script which looked through all of the major databases for police, fire, and emergency services looking for names of interest. He had accumulated a large set of names over the years. Sometimes, he got a hit when someone passed away that he hadn’t been actively tracking for more than a decade.

  He frowned when he saw Martin Brennan’s name highlighted in red. Clicking on the report, he read the transcript from the emergency 911 call. Frank got to the part of the transcript where Brandin Couter described Martin as having a chunk of his neck missing, Frank now understood why it had been quiet for the last couple of weeks.

  The Forsaken must be searching for Bethany Anne. He picked up his phone and dialed a Miami phone number.

  He wasn’t sure how she would take this call. He knew from his research that she loved Martin Brennan as a surrogate father for her time here in Washington D.C. He wasn’t sure what would happen when she found out that he was killed, most likely by the Forsaken. However; he knew that there would be hell to pay. He hoped his old bones would be up to the task.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Miami, FL - USA

  John Grimes was bench pressing 380 lbs while his team worked out around him in the new gym. Their operations commander, Dan Bosse, had requested that Bethany Anne turn the three car garage from her latest house purchase into a weight room for the tac-team. Eric was spotting John.

  “Alright hulk, it looks like your finally maxing out. You haven’t gone past that one 390 lb rep from the other day. But if you freaking drop this all I can say is goodbye!” Eric smiled. John just had to push through the humor and dropped the weight on the bar, finally getting a chance to laugh out loud.

  The whole team was paying attention to the changes John had gone through in the past couple of weeks. Bethany Anne had given John her blood to heal him on an operation out in the Everglades. He had been mortally wounded. It healed him of the knife wound and broken arm he suffered while fighting Nosferatu . It also healed his old scars and it seemed to help him become more physically fit as well.

  John was a huge man at 6’ 4” and arms the size of trees, as Darryl liked to say. They couldn’t use the term ‘illegal in three states’ because that was actually Scott. Scott was much shorter than John but Darryl just thought Scott’s arms were freaks of nature.

  They all were happy to be working out again and together. Before Bethany Anne had changed everything, they were seconded as a temporary team to take on the Forsaken. Now, they called themselves TQB and they had finally received special patches that Darryl and Scott had designed. The patches had a skulls head, woman’s hair and vampire teeth with the term “Queen Bitch” over the top and “Aeternitatem” under the skull. These guys had signed up to be the Queen’s guard and they felt they needed to be the baddest humans they could be.

  Half of Bethany Anne’s problems out on the street never materialized when she was surrounding by these four. The only wolf whistles she heard were from half a block away and usually so low a human couldn’t hear them.

  As an incredibly wealthy woman who had her own eccentricities, like flying around in a Black Hawk helicopter, she was becoming a source of news in the local Miami community.

  Bethany Anne just called the team her bitches. They didn’t care. She could call them worse, and she had, whenever they sparred against each other. Even when she didn’t vamp out, they couldn’t get her in a lock. She admitted she had been proficient in martial arts before she was transformed. Now, with the changes to her body she would explode into action and often whoever she was training against found themselves on the floor.

  She didn’t give in to their complaining to ‘go easy on the humans, super girl.’ She replied that she would go easy on them as soon as the next Nosferatu agreed to let them just slit its neck.

  One time, when Darryl goaded her into ’showing him some muscles’ she casually went over and picked up the bar bell John had been bench pressing and calmly did one armed curls while looking at him. All he could say was “fuck me.” She had placed the barbell back down while rolling her eyes. She didn’t hate cussing, she hated uninspired cussing.

  She made Darryl drop and give her 15 pushups while she stood on his back. Each rep required a new and creative use of cussing. He doubled up one he had already said on the twelfth rep and she made him start all over. So, fifteen reps became twenty-seven. Darryl had been careful with uninspired cussing since that day.

  John finished his reps and he pulled 15 lbs off of each side as Scott got on the bench. John’s phone started playing ‘Barracuda’. He picked it up and hit the button to take the call. Looks like the boss was calling.

  “Yes BA?” Lately, John was trying little ways to annoy his boss. She had completely got his goat when he had been listening patiently to the former owner of this house.

  That morning had started by receiving an ass chewing from the former owner, Ms. Joshwood. She had been complaining about delivery trucks which had blocked her driveway and neither of them noticed Bethany Anne slip up behind John. She had slipped an arm around John’s waist and then got into a ‘spitting catfight’ with Ms. Joshwood. Those two went at it with him caught in the middle.

  Then Bethany Anne blew his freaking mind. She got pissy with the older woman and decided to act like a hussy.

  Bethany Anne told Ms. Joshwood that all of the noise was because she needed time to make sure which of her 9 rooms were good for sex. John’s face was already red. Then she continued and acted as if John was the guy she used for testing the rooms. At that point in the completely fabricated story, the blood had completely drained from his face.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t think she was attractive, he certainly did. However; there were two important considerations. The first was that she was his primary and boss. He had always felt there should be a line between boss and high level employees like himself. The second was that he absolutely had seen her when she was her fucking scariest. He didn’t trust himself in any relationship where instead of sleeping on the couch, he might have to get his arm attached at the hospital if he pissed her off.

  That kind of concern can get in the way of a man’s libido.

  She was q
uick on the request this morning, “Hey, are you guys ready to go for a run?”

  He held his phone with one hand, “Can you give us five minutes?” He circled his fingers to get everyone ready to put away their weights and prep to leave. He pantomimed running with two fingers.

  “Sure, I’ll be there in five.”

  The guys prepped fast. When Bethany Anne said five minutes, you didn’t want to be ready even one second past five. She could just ‘pop’ over and start walking for the door. They all got their running outfits on. She had decided to see what kind of stamina she had while pushing her team’s training as well. They needed to be in shape as she planned to get Wechselbalg teams and she didn’t want any comments about ‘out of shape humans’ protecting her.

  She would often walk into the workout room and play the AC/DC song ‘Big Balls’. She told them it was to remind them just who they represented. In fact, the team rather enjoyed a lot of AC/DC songs and they had an impromptu awards ceremony to officially make AC/DC the team band.

  Five minutes became six. Six minutes became seven. John told the guys they were going over to her house as something had to be wrong.

  They closed up the front door and jogged next door. Here in Key Biscayne, they made houses big. That is, when you paid almost $10 million for them.

  John hit the front door and knocked. While he could have just gone in, he also had responsibility to work with Pete.

  Pete was the son of a Were Alpha in Colorado. Pete had screwed up and his father Jonathan had asked her if there was anything Bethany Anne would be willing to do to help fix the situation. She did and in payment Pete had to work with her team for three months.

  John had worked with Pete for an hour and a half this morning starting at 5:00 AM. When John found out that Pete was a late night partier who never found a morning he couldn’t hate, it was the first bit of poison John made Pete swallow.