FINAL SIEGE – Scarlett Cole
Love Over Duty, Book 2
St. Martin's Paperbacks
ISBN-13: 978-1-250-12846-1
February 2018
Romantic Suspense
San Diego, California – Present day
Malachai “Mac” MacCarrick is an ex-Navy Seal and part owner in Eagles Securities with friends Six and Cabe, friends since they were children. There was a fourth member of their group, Brock, but he died on that fateful day fourteen years ago, along with Mac's relationship with Delaney, Brock's sister. They are all celebrating Cabe's birthday when Mac gets a telephone call from a military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany. When he hears Delaney has received some sort of injuries and in her lucid moments is asking for him he drops everything and takes the first flight out. Despite her slapping his face after Brock's funeral and saying she never wanted to see him again, he'll do anything for her.
Delaney resists coming awake until she hears a familiar voice—Mac. Her hatred of Mac for letting her brother Brock die hasn't lessened. When she finally awakens Mac finds out she was rescued from Kunduz, Afghanistan. Delaney is an investigative reporter following a shipment of arms from the United States to places they shouldn't go marked as agricultural supplies. But it's going to be awhile before Delaney can go back to work, so Mac takes her back to San Diego with him. Delaney doesn't want to be with Mac, but with nowhere else to go and her mother a heavy drinker, she has few options.
Unfortunately, while Delaney is recovering she sees strange men following her-has the story she was after followed her back to San Diego and brought trouble to Mac and Six and Cabe? When it turns out that the main man she is after was also involved with Six's girlfriend Louisa last year, Eagle Securities is backing Delaney whole heartedly. They add their investigative tools to investigate not the moving of arms, but a new biological weapon whose formula was stolen from Louisa's lab the year before by a man named Lemtov.
Scarlett Cole again brings the nail-biting anxiety to FINAL SIEGE and gets involved in Delaney's life and relationship with Mac. The death of Delaney's brother Brock and Mac's involvement in the accident and not being able to rescue him after he jumped off a cliff into the rocks below still haunts Delaney every time she sees Mac or thinks of how her brother's life was cut short.
Secondary characters are Mac's friends and fellow owners of their company, Six and Cabe, and Six's girlfriend Louisa. But behind everything is Delaney's brother Brock, and how his death affected all of the friends.
FINAL SIEGE continues the story of Eagle Securities, and finishes the loose ends in the first LOVE OVER DUTY series, UNDER FIRE. Behind Delaney and Mac's relationship is the quandary of how Delaney wants to find evidence against wrongdoers, and Mac realizes that sometimes a bullet is the best way to deal with evil men. The road to acceptance of Brock's death will involve Mac telling Delaney the truth of what happened that awful day and how he has spent his entire life trying to make amends for what happened. Emotion and action are the earmarks of FINAL SIEGE, take your blood pressure medicine before starting to read this page turner!
Carolyn Crisher
