Surrendered (Heart of a Warrior Series Book 3)

HEART OF A WARRIOR SERIES / BOOK 3

Surrendered

Kariss Lynch

FaithHappenings Publishers

Copyright © 2016 by Kariss Lynch

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

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Cover Design ©2015 Chasya Lynch

Book Layout ©2013 BookDesignTemplates.com

Surrendered/ Kariss Lynch. -- 1st ed.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

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FaithHappenings Publishers,

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Endorsements

“There is something so authentic and relatable in Kariss Lynch's writing. From the opening pages of 
Surrendered
, I felt like I was hanging out with friends — ones whose journey of romance, healing, and hope settled in my heart. An absolute delight to read and a wonderful conclusion to the
Heart of a Warrior
series!” 

Melissa Tagg, author of From the Start and Like Never Before

“As Lynch rounds out the captivating story of Nick and Kaylan, she gives us what we want in the form of suspense, drama, and romance. She also gives us what we need . . . an image of surrender. It's a beautiful story of letting go of the things we cannot control, in order to whittle down to what matters most. A hearty well done to end this captivating trilogy.”

Heather James, author of
Unholy Hunger
and
Hands of Darkness

“
Surrendered
 is the fulfillment of anticipation, excitement, and mystery that stirred our hearts in the 
Heart of a Warrior
 series. Kariss has once again given the reader a glimpse into the clash of family, love, and military sacrifice in a thrilling love story that highlights faith within the fight.”

Navy SEAL

“Where is love when the battlefield of love demands courage, sacrifice, and forgiveness? 
Surrendered
 . . . will love survive the ultimate test of facing the truth about the past?”

DiAnn Mills, author of
Deadlock
– Tyndale Publishers

To the men and women who fight for our country and to your families . . . thank you for showing me what it looks like to have the heart of a warrior.

Note From The Author

The
Heart of a Warrior
series has come to a close and even now my heart is a little sad. I have loved sharing the story of the Richards family, Nick, and the SEALs. Over the course of these books, I have been able to meet and talk with several men and women who fight for our country, and every time I am inspired to fight harder, love stronger, and never, ever give up. Nick and Kaylan’s story may be over but my journey to developing a courageous heart is only just beginning. And I hope yours is, as well.

It amazes me that the Lord often brings our most rewarding journeys from our deepest struggles. In 2009, I graduated from college a week after I turned 21, wide-eyed and panicked about what to do next. Life had dealt tough blows my last semester of college, and my future seemed to drop off into a black hole with no end in sight. I was terrified.

But God knew.

A few weeks after I graduated, I packed the car and headed to the Colorado mountains where I lived for two months with forty-eight strangers while attending Focus on the Family Leadership Institute. I entered the summer incredibly broken and bitter with God. I finished the summer with lifelong friends, a humbled heart, and a start toward healing.

As I prepared to walk across the stage with my new friends to graduate and re-enter real life, my advisor pulled me into a hug. “Be bold, Kariss. Be bold,” she whispered in my ear. My feet hit the stage with my head in a fog as I contemplated her words. I felt broken, unable to be bold. Incapable of courage and a strong heart. Less than a year later,
Shaken
and the
Heart of Warrior
series were born out of this painful season.

Some days I still don’t understand what it means to be bold, but I do understand that it is closely tied with surrender—surrender to a loving Father who desires to give us good things. Even His “no’s” are out of His desire to give us better things than we know to ask Him for. I do know boldness is a choice every day. It isn’t something I can fail at. It is something I can continually grow in. And it is an opportunity to daily trust Him more than the day before. It is the decision to let my faith be bigger than my fear.

I can’t wait to share more stories with you. To stay up to date with all the latest book news, contests, giveaways, and my random thoughts, visit
karisslynch.com
or connect with me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. As always, I love to hear from you!

Until next time, my friends, I’m praying you continue to develop the heart of a warrior.

Be bold,

Kariss Lynch

It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines, it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. Because they were holding on to something . . . There’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.

―
Sam, Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien

Prologue

Anya Petrov pulled her legs to her chest and took deep breaths. The walls closed in more every second. If God existed, he hadn’t built her for prison. She shivered in the cold that seeped through the dull concrete walls. She was somewhere in the United States and somewhere with brisk air and a chill that burrowed deep into her soul. Or maybe that was more the result of captivity.

The orange jumpsuit irritated her skin, but she’d worn worse. As a child. As a young adult under Soviet rule. She was safer here than she had been behind the Iron Curtain. But she longed for her yacht, an expensive meal, and the rich taste of a bottle of wine.

A scratching sound caught her attention, and she jerked in the direction of the door. Funny how the smallest noises magnified in silence. Her thoughts seemed louder, too. Almost deafening. She crawled from her thin mattress and reached for the corner of a dirty off-white envelope slipped halfway beneath the metal door.

She stood on her toes and scanned the hallway just outside her one-room cell. She was tired of confinement. Tired of fear that ate away her sanity, tired of her jail mates. She dug deep, reaching for a calm she didn’t feel, but the longer her sentence stretched, the louder the roaring in her heart.

What happened to the cool spy who’d once stupefied the West? She ran her finger beneath the envelope lip and pulled out a single sheet of paper. The hand that had once fired a gun without hesitation began to tremble.

The familiar scrawl nearly stopped her heart. No.

Her legs hit the bed frame as she backed up. She tumbled back onto the mattress, the springs squealing in protest. She curled up against the wall, hugging it as she would her brother Andrei ages ago.

He’d found her.

The paper rattled in her hands despite attempts to hold the single sheet steady. It wrinkled beneath her tight grip and crackled where a single sentence sprawled.

I am coming.

But the signature, the single letter ending the note, made her blood freeze.

S

She was as good as dead.

Chapter One

The battlefield, pockmarked with old cars and metal remains, yawned before Nick Carmichael and his fellow SEALs. He’d never fought a battle quite like this before, nor faced a more formidable opponent.

He crouched behind a beat-up red pickup truck. The insides had disappeared at some point, leaving the shell to the mercy of enemy fire. Nick dug his boots deeper into the mud, evidence of rain the night before, although the deceptively blue sky showed no trace of it now. Despite the cool temperature, moisture seeped from beneath his armor. He hated feeling stuck and sweaty.

He folded his body behind the tire to avoid the peppered shots coming from the other side and glanced down the line to Micah Richards, his best friend and the brother of his fiancée, Kaylan. The enemy had them pinned for now, but Nick grew tired of waiting.

“I thought you said she knew how to shoot,” Nick shouted over the cacophony of paintballs striking the truck bumper.

Micah lifted his face mask and rolled his eyes. Yellow paint splattered above his head and dusted his nearly black hair. He ducked.

“Masks on!” shouted the referee from across the field. Micah slapped his mask down again just as a pink paintball splattered near his feet.

“I said we taught her. Not that she was good.” He shrugged, his voice muffled beneath the plastic. “At least they are hitting somewhat close to us.”

The San Diego paintball course affectionately named “The Fuel Depot” stretched the length of half a football field. It reminded Nick of a deserted old gas depot in some podunk Southern town. Nick peeked from behind the tire to get a better lay of the land. Old cars, painted to look rusted and long since retired, lounged scattered in something resembling a horizontal line formation from one end of the field to the other. Barrel obstacles sat stacked two tall and two wide throughout the course, providing the perfect cover for their wives and girlfriends currently regaling them with colored paint. The girls had insisted on playing with one fewer teammate, convinced they could still dominate.

Across the field members of their Navy SEAL Support Activity 1 team, Titus, Jay, and Colt, crept from obstacle to obstacle, avoiding fire until they finally huddled with Nick and Micah. David and Seth Richards—Micah’s brothers visiting for the week—joined from the other end of the painted metal line.

They could shoot. They just couldn’t aim.

“Come on out, fellas!” Titus’s wife, Liza, yelled as another barrage of fire peppered the air. Her frizzy black hair stuck out at odd angles beneath the elastic strap holding her mask in place.

“Yeah, don’t be chicken,” Megan, Kaylan’s roommate, hollered from behind a barrel. Nick had the sudden urge to add some color to her normally dark clothes.

“Says the girl at the back of the course,” Jay shouted back. He spat in the mud and crouched behind the truck with Nick. Self-titled team prankster, he clearly didn’t see the current predicament as challenge enough for his skills.

Nick pulled a piece of Juicy Fruit from his pocket and popped it in his mouth. “Colt, you got eyes on all the girls?”

Colt’s grin sparked beneath his mask. As team daredevil, taking on the ladies doubled as the perfect job for him. He’d even brought a date, Jia, a leggy redhead more skater girl than hipster. Where most of the guys dreaded the repercussions of shooting the girls and hearing about it later, Colt didn’t carry that emotional stake just yet. “Jia is to our right about fifteen yards behind the brown Chevy. Liza is the closest behind that jacked-up blue bug.”

“My sister is hiding out behind a couple of barrels off to our right and back about twenty yards,” Seth huffed beneath his mask. The single barrel he crouched behind barely concealed his tall, full University of Alabama linebacker frame.

“Anyone else?”

At their silence, Nick rolled over again, trying to gauge the direction of the paintballs with the locations he now knew. His sniper skills served him well in moments like these. Melody, David’s girlfriend, popped from behind a single barrel at the back right of the field to fire a shot. He grinned at her shoot-and-hide approach. That left one more.

“Jay, where’s your date, man?”

“My what?”

Micah bent next to him and slapped him across the chest. “Gorgeous blonde, successful lawyer, way out of your league, responds to Bree. Ringing any bells?”

“Oh, right.” His bored expression caused Nick to chuckle. “She’s got guts. She’s behind the car right next to Liza and sneaking pretty close to our line.”

A movement caught Nick’s eye, and he fired. A frustrated cry met his ears. Bree stood tall with her hands over her head, rounding one of the barrels. “I’m out. You happy?”

“Well, one down.” Nick rolled and sat up, wiping the drying mud from his cargo shorts. “Jay, if you don’t like her, why’d you bring her?”

“Because Megan won’t go out with me. Now, for the love of everything sacred, can we please put them out of their misery?” Jay begged as he readied his gun. “Whose idea was it to play paintball with a bunch of women anyway?”

“I can’t take much more of this. They think they’re winning,” Colt huffed.

“They have to be about out of ammo,” Titus said as he swiped a bead of sweat rolling down his neck. “Those guns only hold so much paint.”

The January sun hovered in the California sky, heating the metal around them. Nick sighed. “Kaylan bruises like a peach. I’m going to hear about it for the next two weeks.”

Jay flipped his mask up, his blue eyes incredulous. “That’s what’s holding us back? Man, forget this!” With a whistle, the men took off in twos and threes, taking cover behind the rusty-looking metal. Gunfire erupted in earnest. The SEALs were out to win.

Micah slapped Nick’s back. “She’s your problem now, my friend. No refunds or exchanges.” He chuckled as he scurried off.

“I haven’t married her yet,” Nick muttered. Feminine cries filled the air around him. He might as well help end this quickly. He rolled onto his belly beneath the truck and readied his weapon. He watched Kaylan creep closer and take cover behind two metal barrels fifteen yards away. She took aim facing away from him, her green eyes intent beneath her mask. Nick grinned.  Why not up the stakes a bit?

“Yo, Seth! Feel like picking on your big sister?”

Seth shuffled closer and leaned down to hear as the carnage continued, the SEALs now fully engaged and decimating the enemy. “What do you have in mind?”

Nick’s smile spread wider in anticipation, his breath heating the air in his face mask. “How ’bout a game of catch? Keep her distracted while I sneak up behind her. I’ll take her hostage, and we’ll force the girls to surrender.”

Seth smirked. “You do remember this is paintball and not BUD/S, right?”

Nick remembered well his days training to be a SEAL, but it’s what made this faux war even more fun. “You’re playing with SEALs, son.” He slapped Seth on the back and crouched low to take his position before Seth could toss another jab his way. He needn’t have worried. Seth trained his sights on his sister instead.

“Hey, Kayles, we taught you to shoot better than that.”

His taunt worked like a charm. Kaylan fired. The shot went wide, causing Seth to momentarily duck and snicker. His head popped up as he continued his teasing, fulfilling his role of little brother. Nick ran to the next barrel. A shot zinged from his right. He swiveled, aimed, and fired in a fluid movement. With a grunt, Megan lost her balance and fell rear first into the mud. There. Now he’d added a bit of color.

“Seriously?” Megan shrieked. She swiped at paint on her protective vest as she stood to her feet and stalked off the field. “I hate pink.”

Nick smirked, imagining her in the pink bridesmaids dresses Kaylan had picked in honor of Sarah Beth, her best friend who had died in the Haiti earthquake almost a year before. He shook his head. Only two barrels remained between Kaylan and him, but Kaylan only had eyes for Seth.

His shoes squished in the soft earth as he ran to the next barrel, assessing the scene. Bree, Megan, and Jia slumped off to the side, watching the guys clean shop. Jay stood fuming next to them, paint on the center of his mask and covering his thigh. “Let’s end this, boys,” he shouted. Only Kaylan, Liza, and Melody remained in the game. Nick knew just how to force their hand. With a final sprint, he pounced on Kaylan.

“Nuh-uh, gorgeous. Just drop the gun nice and easy.”

She squealed and tried to swivel around in his arms. “Nick Carmichael, this is paintball, not war games, and I am trying to shoot my smart-mouth little brother.”

“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that. He may be a smart-mouth, but he’s on my team.”

“I heard that, traitor!” Seth shouted.

Nick pulled Kaylan to her feet in front of him with his arm wrapped around her and his gun held at the ready in his other hand.

“All right, all right. Game’s over, ladies. Time to give it up,” Nick called across the field to Liza and Melody.

“Don’t think because you’ve got Kaylan, we won’t still shoot,” Liza hollered. Titus had married a spitfire. A spitfire he was about to extinguish from the looks of it.

“Liza, look out,” Melody and Kaylan yelled from different sides of the field.

Liza spun and fired at Titus just as Colt let loose a round that splattered against her back. A howl ripped from her mouth. The look she shot at her husband probably stung more than paintballs. Nick smothered a grin as Titus tried to appease her. David put a quick end to Melody with a shot to her toes peeking out from beneath an old, dented Cadillac, and the game came to a close.

Kaylan swung around in Nick’s arms, her green eyes sparkling. “That, my dear fiancé, was world-class cheating.”

Nick bit back a chuckle. He pulled her face mask off, placed a finger under her chin, and lifted her green eyes to meet his. “When you learn how to actually shoot, we might call it a game.”

“You jerk,” she squealed. “I grew up in the South. I can outride and outshoot most other people.”

Nick crossed his arms over his chest as Kaylan’s brothers and Melody joined them at the barrels in the center of the field. “First of all, not everyone in the South rides a horse, so don’t perpetuate the stereotype. Second, remember who you are playing with. You will never outshoot us. And third, your brothers epically failed to teach you how to shoot at anything.”

“Hey there, don’t blame us. We tried.” Micah popped Nick on the back of the head.

“She finally shot a coke bottle a couple of years ago,” David said as he threw his arm around Melody. The petite blonde folded her arms and leaned into him, her smile evidence of her familiarity with Richards’ family banter.

“Actually,” Seth interrupted, “I kind of shot that bottle and let her take the credit.” He ran a hand through his sweaty russet hair. His sheepish expression almost made Nick feel sorry for Kaylan. Almost.

“Seth Richards, I really am going to kill you.” Kaylan’s face went red as she took off after her brother. She was no match for the sophomore collegiate football star. He let her chase him before turning around and flipping her over his shoulder. He trundled back to his family as she screamed.

“Shall we?” he motioned to the parking lot where the rest of the guys and their wives and girlfriends waited.

“I’ll take her,” Nick responded, bracing himself as Seth dumped Kaylan into his arms. Nick swung her into a cradle position and followed David, Micah, Seth, and Melody to the gravel parking lot. Laughter drifted on the breeze, and Nick thanked God for the family he would join in just a short time.

He gently placed Kaylan on the ground and they hung back for some alone time, Kaylan’s eyes following her brothers. “You know, sometimes I hate that my brothers are all much stronger and taller than I am. I think God made a mistake by not giving me a sister.” A sadness stole across her eyes, tugging at Nick’s heart.

He pulled her into a hug. “You had one, babe,” he murmured, thinking of Sarah Beth. Joy. That word always came to mind when he remembered the bubbly blonde Kaylan had grown up with.

“I know.”

They walked in companionable silence and climbed into his Jeep. Nick allowed the quiet to linger as he pulled onto the road behind his friends and headed back toward Imperial Beach and the tiny house he lived in with Micah. Gravel crunched beneath the tires and a thin layer of trees lined the back road as they pulled away from the pop of other paintball games behind them.

“Speaking of sisters …”

“No, Kaylan.”

He felt her eyes on his profile but kept his gaze glued to the road. He added pressure to the gas pedal.

“Nick, we’ve got to talk about it. You’ve got to talk about it. It’s already been a couple of months since you learned of her existence. I know you’ve been busy with work and then Christmas and now my brothers visiting, but you need to meet her.”

He met her eyes. “I thought we were talking about Sarah Beth. When are we going to talk about her?”

“That’s not fair, Nick.”

He gripped the steering wheel, regretting the low blow. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“January twelfth is in four days. I can’t believe it’s been a year since the Haiti earthquake. A year since she  . . . you know. I’ll figure something out. It’s just hard. No one here knew her.”

“Your brothers are here and they did. And I met her too when we first started dating. Let’s do something to remember her while they are in town.”