Rescue Me

By Velvet Vaughn

Following a date with an interesting man, COBRA Securities computer expert Sloan Lorince wakes up to discover she’s being held captive in a strange place with no memory of what happened.

Undercover FBI Agent John Cruz has infiltrated a rogue terrorist group plotting a major uprising. When the leader brings Sloan into their lair, John vows to protect her, even if it means blowing his cover.

With Sloan’s help, John discovers the plot is bigger and more dangerous than he imagined. With their lives on the line, they race to stop a madman before it’s too late.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Velvet Vaughn
• Release date: Oct 27, 2022
• ISBN: 9798986230948

Velvet Vaughn

Velvet Vaughn was born in Indiana and spent fifteen years in communications, public relations, marketing and executive management in amateur sports. Articles she has written have been published in several magazines and reprinted in most major newspapers across the country. She served as editor, writer and designer for five sport magazines including one that was distributed to over 140 countries around the world, and one that was displayed in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. To learn more about Velvet or sign up for her newsletter, visit her at http://www.velvetvaughn.com or http://www.facebook.com/authorvelvetvaughn.

Book preview

Rescue Me

Velvet Vaughn

Copyright

Copyright © 2022 VELVET VAUGHN LLC

ISBN: 979-8-9862309-4-8

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Visit Velvet’s website at www.velvetvaughn.com and her Facebook at www. Facebook.com/authorvelvetvaughn.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to Paulyn A, one of my first fans and biggest cheerleaders. I appreciate you so much. Thank you for your unwavering support. Mahalo, Paulyn!

And, as always, to my mom, Lana.

Acknowledgments

A writer is nothing without readers. I want to sincerely thank all of you who purchase my books. You are the reason I do this, and I’m so grateful. A special thanks to those who reach out to me—I love hearing from you.

I would also like to thank my original Street Team members and those of you who leave reviews. They are so crucial to a writer, and I appreciate you taking the time to do so for my books.

A special thanks to my awesome editor, Megan. And I would be overwhelmed without my fabulous social media guru, Kristy. Thank you so much!

Table of Contents

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Epilogue

Prologue

Sloan Lorince fit the mold of an absent-minded computer geek. She could get lost for hours working on code, finding a backdoor into a super-secure website, or creating thrilling games. Conversation could go on around her—heck, a bomb could go off—and she would still be happily tapping away on the keys. Computers were her life and had been for as long as she could remember. Her parents liked to joke that her first word had been Apple, as in the multinational technology company, not the shiny red fruit. That’s why she was forcing herself out of her comfort zone and going on a date.

Sloan hadn’t worked for COBRA Securities long, but in that time, she’d discovered that her coworkers loved to throw a party, and there was no celebration bigger than a wedding. During her short tenure, she’d attended several: Quinn Billings and Vanessa LaCroix; Gage Monahan and Brooklyn Fontana; Ryan Marx and Dr. Harper Hillman; Owen Durant and Melanie Delgado; and in a rush ceremony since they’d just met a week ago, Kaiya Quillen and Chase Corrigan.

Media around the events had been preposterous. Brooklyn was a former supermodel turned reality television host and designer, and Chase Corrigan was one of the most famous actors on the planet. Despite the paparazzi, the events had gone off without a hitch. Sloan had cried at each ceremony—she was a romantic at heart—which was why she was letting Melody and Layla Colton, Jade Bradley, and Taylor Costa subject her to a makeover. She wanted a relationship. Even her bosses, Peter Dennis and Tyler Redmond, were happily coupled.

Sloan usually pulled her long red hair into a messy bun, held in place by whatever she could find, including pencils, chopsticks, and even a letter opener in a pinch. She always thought it was too frizzy to wear down, but Melody had washed it with a new line of shampoo that she’d developed for her cosmetics company, Harmony!, and once Layla had blown it dry, it was shiny, bouncy, and beautiful. Sloan had no idea the carrot top, as she’d been called many times in her life, could look so good.

Jade was now applying makeup. Gone were the chunky black frames she wore to stare at a screen for hours a day. Her green eyes were accentuated by shadow, liner, and mascara, and her lips were a dewy peach hue.

You are going to knock his socks off, Taylor declared.

I don’t know about that, Sloan demurred. She was still a nerd, after all. Her topics of conversation centered on buffer overflow, logic bombs, trojan horses, zero-day threats, and the best monitors with the highest definition. She’d been getting better, though. Case in point: she’d accepted a date with an attractive man.

Sloan had gained a reputation as one of the best hackers in the country in college. The government had heavily recruited her throughout school, but when she’d received a call from Tyler Redmond, that had been it. He was her hero, and working with him was a dream come true.

Along with Tyler, Sloan had been invited to speak at Tech-Con, a prominent technology convention held in Indianapolis, about an hour north of the COBRA Securities compound. She’d just finished her talk and had been conversing with some attendees when a man approached. He’d been adorably shy and had acted as if meeting her was a tremendous honor. Then he’d introduced himself as Jerry Smith, the person who had emailed her over the last few months, asking knowledgeable questions about different aspects of cyber security.

When Jerry had asked her out, she’d been flummoxed. He was cute, with curly brown hair and light-gray eyes, and the thought of going to dinner with him had her stomach tied up in knots.

Sloan had latched onto the most convenient excuse to decline—she had ridden to the convention with Tyler, the keynote speaker, and they were heading home. It hadn’t deterred Jerry. Even though he’d told her he was from Carmel, which she knew to be a northern suburb of Indy, he’d offered to meet her at a restaurant in her town. That had left her with no excuses. So here she was, getting dolled up to spend a few hours with an interesting man.

You look stunning, Sloan, Jade praised.

Jerry won’t know what hit him, Melody agreed as she spritzed fragrance into the air. Walk into it, she instructed.

Sloan did, appreciating the floral scent of one of Melody’s signature perfumes. It felt absolutely surreal to be getting a makeover from an Oscar Award-winning actress, a Grammy-winning singer, a best-selling author, and a budding business mogul and cosmetic company founder. If they couldn’t make her presentable, no one could.

The outfit the foursome had decided she would wear wasn’t something she’d have picked out for herself. They’d started with underwear, and Sloan thought she might die of embarrassment at the lacy black