White Dawn: A Military Romantic Suspense Novel

Copyright © Tracy
Cooper-Posey

Home is where the heart is.
After escaping the presidential palace, Carmen Escobedo
is trapped on war-torn Vistaria. She shelters with a rogue
resistance unit led by a medical doctor with a mountainous chip on
his shoulder, and no time for Carmen’s city-soft sensibilities.
Neither does he care that she’s the daughter of the assassinated
President of Vistaria.
Garrett Blackburn is scarred, scruffy and indifferent to anything
but the need to pay back the pain and suffering in his life in a
very big way. But he pummels, trains and molds Carmen into a good
fighter for the sake of the unit…or so he says.
While the Loyalists try to coax the United States into supporting
them, the Insurrectos secretly extract silver from a United
States-owned mine, and use it to buy themselves support. Carmen and
Garrett learn about the silver and pass the news to the Loyalists
and the American corporation which owns the mine. Suddenly, the
outcome of the war against the Insurrectos hinges on one simple
silver mine, and who controls it.
WARNING: This erotic romantic suspense contains frequent,
explicit and frank sex scenes and sexual language. Don't proceed
beyond this point if hot love scenes offend you.
No Vistarian Loyalists came to harm during the making of this
book.
This book is part of
The Vistaria Affair Series
Book 1:
Red Leopard
Book 2:
Black Heart
Book 3:
Blue Knight
Book 4:
White Dawn
…and more to come!

Praise for The Vistaria Affair
series:
If you enjoy romantic suspense mark
this series as a must have.  Tracy Cooper-Posey has outdone
herself on this series.
A great read that will have you glued to the pages!!!
The characters, the setting, and even the storyline are unique and
fun.
It combines a political thriller with an erotic, sensual read that
builds and builds, and — well, you get the picture
With a good, strong plot, the reader is thrown into a fictitious
but surprisingly realistic Latin American country that is dangerous
and politically unsafe; in short, a perfect setting.
Pros: Fresh new idea. Cons: none.
Not just a love story, but the story of political intrigue, true
love verses duty, passion, honor, great dangers and intensely loyal
people. I would not only highly recommend this book, but will
anxiously be awaiting this author’s new work.
Another great aspect …
was the political intrigue. Danger
surrounded every character and I steadily feared for their lives.
The drama never stopped and it was great.

Carmen stopped hating Garrett long
enough to dig into the backpack hanging off her shoulder and hand
him the wad of Vistarian currency. He took it from her silently,
then handed it to the man sitting on the other side of the
table.

Hernandez Garcia took the cash and
looked at it. “Are you sure, señor?” he asked Garrett. “I am a
loyal Vistarian. I would give you these things if you must truly
have them.”

Carmen scowled at Garrett and turned to
look out the window of the small house they were in, standing next
to Efraín, who was their sentry this time. Efraín had his rifle
cocked and the butt resting on his hip as his gaze flickered from
point to point across the landscape outside.

“Still okay?” Carmen asked in a
murmur.

“Still okay.”

Behind her, Garrett spoke to Hernandez
patiently. “It’s better that you have some way to explain to the
Insurrectos why you lost your phone and your laptop. This way, you
can tell them that some strange people paid you a lot of money for
them.”

“Why can I not say that they were
stolen? It’s such a lot of money, señor!”

“Because if they were really stolen, you
would have reported the theft to the community station as soon as
they went missing and you would tell the telephone company, too.
That would make the phone and the laptop useless to us much more
quickly that we would like.”

“Then I will tell the Insurrectos
nothing!” Hernandez declared.

“Garrett,” Carmen said warningly. They
had been in the house far too long already.

Garrett shot her a glare with his flint
gray eyes and turned back to Hernandez. “If you say nothing you
will be declaring yourself a Loyalist and they’re still hanging
anyone they think is a Loyalist without benefit of a trial.” He
shook his head. “Take the money, Hernandez. Then you will merely
look like an enterprising Vistarian.”

Hernandez nodded. “I will do what you
say, señor. But it troubles me to do so.”

“Troubled is a condition I can deal
with,” Garrett said, standing up. “Dead, I cannot cure.”

“Garrett,” Carmen urged him once
more.

“Take a pill,” he snapped at her, in
English. He picked up his rifle and slung it over his shoulder,
then dropped the grubby serape over the top and donned the straw
cowboy hat he favored. The scrubby growth on his cheeks and chin
that he never bothered to shave grew in much darker than his blond
hair, so with the hat, at first glance he didn’t look foreign.
Foreigners were unknown on the streets of Vistaria’s cities and
towns these days.

The beard also hid most of the scars on
his face, which would make him memorable.

The serape was an indeterminate
gray-green color. The stripes of wool would once have been brighter
and more varied, but time, dirt, smoke and sweat had turned the
serape into this muted, grubby disguising garment. It didn’t look
like camouflage, but it worked just as well to hide Garrett among
the trees.

Carmen stuffed the laptop and cellphone
into her backpack, then tucked her own rifle back over her shoulder
and checked the safety on the Smith & Wesson. She wore a light
jacket that came down to mid-thigh and hid the gun on her hip.
Efraín kept his gaze on the window while they prepared.

“Efraín?” Garrett asked softly.

“Clear.”

With a last nod at Hernandez, Garrett
stepped out of the house, taking the lead. Carmen followed him out
and moved to his right flank, quartering the area without turning
her head. It was clear as advertised.

Relaxing a bit, she hurried after
Garrett. He was already striding down the steeply sloping hill.
They had left the rest of the unit on the outskirts of town, in a
tucked-away glade on the edge of the tree line. Only three of them
heading into the town had been a risk, but larger numbers would
have drawn attention.

It was an overcast day, with an
iron-gray sky that promised rain. The heat had not let up for a
week or more. It was the dog days of summer. Until she had moved to
the States to study, Carmen hadn’t known what that meant. Now, she
thought the name was perfect.

They maintained silence all the way out
of Cerro Ciudad, which suited Carmen just fine. She glared at
Garrett’s back occasionally. He was busy watching their route ahead
and for all she knew, also watching through the back of his head
and sideways. Garrett had instincts that had saved them on any
number of occasions, so she tended to monitor him to see if he
twitched.

There was hardly anyone on the streets.
It was siesta time and although a town this high up in the
foothills wouldn’t need to sleep away the heat of the day, the
habit was ingrained. They made the clearing without any alarms.

Angelo moved across the clearing when
they arrived and touched Carmen’s shoulder. That was all he did,
but Carmen could almost feel Garrett’s scowl in reaction.

The eight of them moved through the
trees, skirting the town. Their progress was mostly silent, but
Carmen was still learning how to place her feet and avoid branches
that could snap. She was a city girl, while all the others, Angelo
included, had grown up in this area. Hiking silently through the
scrub was built into them. Garrett, of course, was a freak of
nature. He never made a sound when he was moving.

When Carmen stepped on leaf litter that
was drier than it looked and crumpled loudly, he glared at her over
his shoulder.

She stuck her tongue out at him when he
turned back.

The current camp was a mile south of the
rail line and almost directly due east of the town, Cerro Ciudad.
It was too close to Cerro Ciudad, but it was in an unexpected
place. They had been camped there for nearly two months and hadn’t
seen a single patrol. The Insurrecto patrols swept farther east
into the flatlands and didn’t seem to think a Resistance camp at
higher elevations was possible. Either that, or they were too lazy
and didn’t want to scramble around the knees of the mountains
looking for them. It had made life a touch easier for the
Resistance.

As they drew farther away from the town,
they relaxed their guard. Angelo fell back to the end of the line,
where Carmen was checking their rear. He smiled at her. He was a
very typical Vistarian—tall, with clear olive skin, black hair and
eyes and a nice smile. Carmen smiled back at him. He was a good
fighter and he took care of her in bed. It wasn’t his fault that
sometimes she felt fifty years older than him, even though they
were about the same age.

“I found some coffee in that village we
passed yesterday,” he said. “I thought we could make some spiced
coffee when we get back.”

“We don’t have any nutmeg. Or ginger or
cloves,” Carmen pointed out, keeping her voice low. Because hers
was pitched higher, it travelled farther, or so Garrett had warned
her, more than once. “But I like it straight.”

Angelo grimaced. “American style,” he
said, with a sniff.

Carmen laughed softly. “American style
coffee got me through five years of college.”

“Miss Brainiac,” Angelo teased, using
the English word. It was one of the few he knew.

Garrett whistled softly to get their
attention. He held up his fist and they came to halt, listening
hard.

After forty seconds, Carmen heard what
Garrett had heard. There was a train coming from the south.

“Unscheduled,” Angelo breathed.

She nodded. An unscheduled train could
mean many things, but for sure, the Insurrectos were behind it.
They didn’t let anything run on the tracks without their
say-so.

Garrett waved them closer, so he could
talk without shouting. They gathered around.

“Let’s hitch a ride and find out what’s
on that train,” Garrett proposed. “
Go
.”

Carmen began to run at as close to a
full sprint as she could manage, through the trees and heading
downhill toward the tracks, which were glinting through the trees,
just ahead. There was no danger of being heard, now, with a train
clanking and groaning through the trees.

The others were doing the same,
spreading out as they went. This was a familiar task to the unit.
They had hitched and raided many trains, usually at a profit.

It felt good to be able to move freely
and Carmen leapt and scrambled down the hill, enjoying the feel of
her body working hard. She was fitter now than she had ever been in
her life, thanks to hiking, running, fighting and climbing hills.
For the first few weeks with the unit, everything had felt like it
was uphill. Now, she barely noticed the inclines.

They were going to time it nicely, she
realized, as the train pulled around the wide bend and came into
view. She angled her approach to the tracks, starting to head north
so that she was running alongside the train. It would let her
emerge into the open once the engine’s driver had passed.

There were only two cars attached to the
train, both of them boxcars. They were harder to latch onto, but
not impossible. She leaned in toward the first one, aiming to grab
the long handle on the door.

“Above! Above!” Garrett cried.
“Duck!”

Carmen already had a grip on the door
handle and it was pulling her along. The train was only going about
eight miles an hour because of the slope, but it was faster than
she could run on the rocks that lined the tracks. She was
committed.