Matthew: Stone Security Volume Two, #5

By Glenna Sinclair

This is the fifth book of Stone Security Volume Two and contains over 50,000 words of romantic suspense.

Matthew Pearce was a member of the Guardians, the militant religious group responsible for the death of Harry Cravits. He hadn't been able to save Harry, but he did what he could to help Jack Stone put his killer in jail. But that guilt never went away and wouldn't until he could stop the Guardians from the darkness they were spewing on his hometown. He has to return and take up arms with the Guardians again to take them down from the inside. But why does she have to pick this moment to come home? Whit Ellington is the girl of Matthew's dreams, but she is also a reporter threatening to spill everyone's secrets. Can he protect her and take down the Guardians?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Glenna Sinclair
• Release date: Nov 8, 2017
• ISBN: 9798224808175

Glenna Sinclair

Experience the heart-racing novels of Glenna Sinclair, the master of romantic suspense. Sinclair's books feature strong male protagonists, many with a military background, who face real-world challenges that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Books2read.com/GlennaSinclair Facebook.com/AuthorGlennaSinclair GlennaSinclairAuthor at Gmail dot com

Book preview

Prologue

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Six Months Ago...

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There he is.

I sat up a little straighter in the seat, watching as the truck passed us on the highway. Tyler started the car, pulling onto the asphalt so fast that the back end of the car fishtailed, and a spray of rocks burst up in our wake. We caught up to the truck in seconds, Tyler flashing his lights and honking his horn, laughing almost hysterically as he drove recklessly around the back of the truck. I could see the driver’s face as he glanced back at us in his rearview mirror. It was a familiar face. We’d been following him, harassing him, for months.

It was for a good cause. We were ridding our little city of unwanted influence. This man was protecting a woman who was selling sex toys to members of our church, members who were vulnerable to corruption, members who were being exploited, allowing a crack to open where the devil could find his way in and darken their souls.

We were protecting our own.

We were protecting innocents, like my sister. My beautiful, kind, generous sister, Ruth. One of these men was sniffing around her, threatening to corrupt her just as the sex toy lady was corrupting our men. We couldn’t allow it.

But it still caused me to pause when I saw the fear in that man’s eyes.

Slow down, Tyler. You’re going to get us all killed.

Not us. God is protecting us.

God can’t protect us if you run the car off the road!

Tyler ignored me, gunning the engine and then slamming on the brakes as we came within just a few inches of the tailgate of that truck. I grabbed the dashboard, holding on for dear life. Another brake like that, and one of us would go through the windshield!

Tyler, you’re getting too close.

Shut up, Matthew!

Tyler stomped on the accelerator, driving up close to the side of the truck, moving his car so close that we nearly swapped paint. The driver of the truck swerved, nearly going into the ditch, but getting control just in time. But Tyler wasn’t done. He purposely swerved the car into the truck, slamming into it until he had to struggle to gain control.

We were going eighty on the open road. The impact was horrendous, the sound one I would never forget. I know I screamed, and I knew it was something Tyler would make fun of me about for months to come. But he was laughing, maniacally, in loud bursts that were clearly the sounds of an insane man.

Tyler, I think he gets the message!

Smythe wants him off our backs. This is the best way to do it.

Tyler slammed into the side of the truck again. I caught sight of the man’s face, saw the naked fear in his eyes. It was the first time, after months and months of harassment, that I’d seen this man truly frightened. But we’d never done anything else quite this insane.

Tyler!

He went to slam into the truck a third time, but I grabbed the wheel and shoved it back the other direction. Tyler cried out, his fist flying into my nose as he struggled to regain control. I let go, and we hit the truck. Seconds later, we were facing the ditch, stopped just inches from going over, dust choking everything around us. My nose was gushing blood, my head growing a knot where I’d hit the dashboard when we slid to a stop. Tyler was slumped over the steering wheel.

Tyler?

And then I remembered the truck.

I twisted in my seat, searching the road for signs of it. I didn’t see it at first, but then...the wheels were still spinning.

The truck was upside down in the ditch.

I reached for the door handle, my only thought to get to the truck, get to the driver and help him. But Tyler grabbed my arm.

What the fuck are you doing?

I have to go check on him!

It’s too late, brother. What’s done is done. We have to get out of here.

But he could be hurt!

Let’s hope so.

Tyler started the engine again and slammed the car into gear, peeling out of there just as quickly as he had been driving before. I twisted in my seat, staring at the truck, willing the driver to crawl out of the ditch.

There was no sign of him.

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I stood against a far wall, invisible in the busy hospital. He was standing with a cop, talking animatedly about something. I knew it was probably the accident, his need to find out what had happened, but I knew that cop, knew he wouldn’t tell him anything. Most of the deputies at the sheriff’s office were in Smythe’s pocket. I knew that cop in particular was working for the Guardians.

There was so much I could tell him. But that would require going against everything I’d believed since I was a small child, everything that had been drilled into my head since before I could remember.

A doctor approached the woman, the sex toy lady. She visibly broke as the doctor spoke. He joined her, holding her up as the doctor again explained what had happened. And then they turned into each other, dissolved in grief.

A cold finger danced in my belly, along my spine.

He was dead.

A man was dead, and I was responsible.

I’d killed Harry Cravits.

Chapter 1

I’m an observer.

I stand back, watch as others interact. I learn more from watching than I do from interacting.

I used to be a man of action. I used to be the first to volunteer for things, the first to rush into the fray, the first to take up arms against those I believed with all my heart were a threat to my religion, to my congregation, to my family.

Not anymore.

You can’t be a man of God and just sit back and watch! my father was telling me now. Or, perhaps more accurately, yelling at me. You can’t say you believe, and then do nothing to prove your beliefs.

I had no answer to that.

Matthew! he cried, clearly exasperated. How can you work for that man and still believe in our church? How can you watch his people take down a good man like Lloyd Truesdale and do nothing? How can you pretend that none of the things he’s done matter?

He’s Ruth’s husband.

That’s not a marriage I acknowledge. It was not sanctioned in our church.

I inclined my head, aware that this was a poor argument with my father. But how could I explain to him that working for Jack Stone was the only thing that had kept me sane these last months? How could I tell him that I wasn’t sure I still believed in the church? How could I tell him that I couldn’t reconcile what the Guardians had forced me to do with what the church taught?

He would consider it all blasphemy.

You were such a good boy, Matthew, he continued. A top student, a peer leader in the church. A Guardian! But now...what changed, son? Why are you like this? You didn’t even go to meeting Wednesday!

I’m sorry, Father.

Sorry is not enough anymore. I need explanations.

I shook my head. I had no explanation.

You will stop working for Stone, and you will recommit yourself to the church, do you understand me? You were on track to become a leader, to be a bishop one day. I want you back on that track.

I shook my head. I can’t do that.

You’ll make nice with the Guardians, ask them if they can see it in their hearts to allow you back among their ranks. I want you back where you belong, boy. I want you back in the church, back in the glory of God’s army. I want you to remember your core beliefs, and I want you to embrace them again. Forget this nonsense with Stone, and get back on the right path.

Sadness filled me like a well. No.

My father stared down at me, his eyes widened with hurt and shock. It was painful to see.

You choose that man over the church? He was clearly flabbergasted. I understand your sister. The sins of the flesh are hard to overcome. But you? He shook his head, raising his hands to hold his clearly aching temples. I don’t understand.

I’m sorry, Father. I just—

If you choose him, then you go live with him in sin like your sister. Get out of my house!

Father—

Now, Matthew! Get out of my house!

I lowered my head, feeling as though there were a massive weight on my shoulders, too massive to hold my head up. I went to my childhood bedroom and packed a bag, waiting for my father to change his mind as I slowly made my way to the door. But he didn’t say a word.

Neither did my mother as she watched me go from the kitchen door.

I sat behind the wheel of my car—Jack’s car, really, since it belonged to Stone Security—still waiting. A part of me still believed that my father would choose blood over anything else despite the fact that I’d sat back and watched him ignore my sister’s pleas for him to have dinner with her and Jack, for him to meet her husband and to love him the way she did. She wanted to have a proper wedding in the church, wanted to include her family and her friends. But Father froze her out, not just out of the family, but out of the church, too. She was no longer welcome inside its doors.

Yet, I still believed he would come out of the house and tell me it was a mistake, that we could talk this out. That he would listen to my side of things, that he would help me with the struggle in which I’d found myself since Harry Cravits died.

But he never came out.

I drove slowly out of the neighborhood I’d lived in all my life, past homes whose owners I’d known since I was a small child. I’d played with their children and knew their grandchildren. This was my home, the only place I’d ever known.

Was it time for me to go find another home?

Maybe it would be better if I left town. I wasn’t welcome here, not in most corners. The Guardians wanted nothing to do with me because I betrayed their members months ago when I had told Jack Stone what I knew about Tyler’s part in Cravits’s death, when I had told him where their compound was and how to get to Smythe. The church didn’t trust me because of my betrayal of the Guardians. I’d found a place in Stone Security, but the other operatives didn’t trust me because I was once a Guardian.

My father had just underlined what I’d already known.

I had no place in this town anymore.

I had nowhere to go.

I ended up at Stone’s temporary offices downtown. There was always paperwork to do related to the cases I was given to work. Those were mostly just glorified bodyguard jobs, just following out-of-town execs around as they looked at real estate or attended boring meetings. Not my idea of excitement, or even remotely what I’d expected when Jack offered me the job. Like anyone else, I had assumed security meant James Bond sorts of things. But...it was a job.

I dropped my bag by the desk, not sure why I had bothered to bring it in. I wasn’t sure why I did much of anything these days.

Fifteen minutes into a boring report, I happened to glance up and see Quentin Forrester come into the office with the lady from the bank, Ms. Gray. She was the one who’d taken down Lloyd Truesdale, not Jack or any of his operatives, though there were rumors that Quentin was behind a video of Truesdale’s wife that had gone viral locally. If only my father knew the truth about Truesdale, that he’d been doing rotten deals for the Guardians for years. Then again, my father so deeply believed that the Guardians were God’s army, that he might not see those deals as bad. He might see them as sanctioned by God’s blessing.

All I saw was the dirty, greedy work of men.

Forrester and the woman disappeared into Jack’s office. I finished my report and another one after it before they came out again. There’d been a fire in California a week or so ago that had ended in Truesdale’s death. His daughter’s, too. I wondered how much that had had to do with Forrester and that woman.

I heard things, sitting back and observing. But the original operatives—Forrester, Crispin Sullivan, Patrick Shaughnessy—were often very careful about what they said around me. Jack, too, but he wasn’t as obvious about it.

I was working on a third report, finishing up what was left of the overdue work on my desk, when Jack walked by.

Hey, Matthew, he said, pausing behind my cubicle. Did Crispin talk to you about the Lunar Oil execs that are coming to town this week?

Yes, he did.

Jack lowered his head. Good. You’re okay with it?

No problem.

Okay. He glanced at the bag sitting on the floor in front of my desk, his eyes slowly moving back to my face. Ruth’s making pot roast for dinner tonight. You should come by.

It’s fine. I was going to—

What? Eat at the diner? Jack smacked my shoulder. Your sister is an awesome cook. Come eat pot roast with us.

I didn’t want his pity, but Ruth was a good cook. And she was one of the few people in this town I could still be myself with. I lowered my head in agreement.

All right.

Good. About six, I think. She likes to make it an early night these days, what with the pregnancy making her so tired all the time.

No problem.

Jack slapped his hand on my shoulder again and moved on, talking animatedly to one of the Memphis operatives a few cubicles down. I watched him, wondering if he’d ever be that relaxed around me. I knew he had only hired me on because of my sister, knew he only spoke to me because of the information I’d provided on the Guardians. If not for that, he probably wouldn’t give me the time of day.

I couldn’t really blame him. I wouldn’t befriend me, either, if I were him.

I was in the car that had caused his friend’s death. I’m sure every time he looked at me, he wondered why I hadn’t done anything to save Harry. Hell, I wondered that every time I looked at myself in the mirror.

I kicked the bag, wishing I hadn’t brought it in. I didn’t want anyone feeling