by Paige Tyler
Copyright © 2014 by Paige Tyler
Cover and internal design © 2014 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover design by Dawn Adams
Cover art by Craig White
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Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Back Cover
With special thanks to my extremely patient and understanding husband. Without your help and support, I couldn’t have pursued my dream job of becoming a writer. You’re my sounding board, my idea man, my critique partner, and the absolute best research assistant any girl could ask for.
Love you!
Prologue
Grozny, Chechen Republic
Ivy Halliwell studied the dilapidated warehouses across the street, her eyes narrowing in the darkness. Casualties of a decades-long war, the buildings were mere burned-out husks of their former glory. Not to mention the perfect setting for an ambush. She scanned the broken windows and overgrown landscape. There wasn’t anyone in sight, but that didn’t mean someone wasn’t hiding somewhere. She sniffed the air, trying to pick up a scent, but all she could smell was the sickening exhaust from the crappy rental car’s idling engine.
She glanced at her partner. “I know you don’t care what I think, but something’s off about this.”
Dave snorted. “Why? Because your Spidey senses are tingling again?”
Her feline intuition—the one that told her danger was lurking in those warehouses—wasn’t one of her recognized skills, so Dave didn’t put much stock in it. No, check that. Dave didn’t put much stock in her, period. He didn’t like working with her kind.
God, she was so sick of his attitude.
“I’m not asking you to trust my instincts because I know you won’t. Going in there without checking the place out first is beyond stupid. It’s dangerous.”
He pulled into an alley between two abandoned buildings, put the small car in park, and opened the door. “That’s your professional opinion, based on years of field experience, right?”
She got out and followed him to the back of the car. “It’s a good idea to be a little cautious on this one, okay?”
Dave checked the magazine in his .40-caliber automatic, then shoved the weapon back in its holster. “If I want an opinion on what kind of cat food to buy for my ex-wife’s tabby, I’ll ask a freak like you. Until then, do us both a favor and keep your mouth shut.”
Ivy clenched her jaw to keep from growling. Literally. She was so close to losing her cool and ripping her partner a new one. But a rat-infested street in the middle of a dangerous crime-ridden, war-torn country wasn’t the place to do it, no matter how much Dave might be asking for it. When they got stateside, though, she was done with this sham of a partnership. She was going to her boss and requesting a new partner because this one sure as hell wasn’t working out. Teaming her up with a chauvinistic former jarhead like Dave Graner had been a disaster from the start.
But first, they had to make it out of Grozny alive. A couple hours ago, that didn’t seem like it was going to be a problem. Now, Ivy wasn’t so sure. Something was not right about this op.
Dave opened the trunk and grabbed a pair of night vision goggles—NVGs—as well as a communication headset. “Stay with the car.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m coming with you.”
He gave her a hard look as he hooked the headset over his ear and adjusted the mic. “Stay here. That’s an order.”
Damn him! She was his partner, not his subordinate.
She stood and watched Dave jog toward the warehouses, then grabbed the other communication headset, hooked it over her ear, and turned it on.
“Dave, the plan was to watch the guy from a distance, then pick up the bag after he makes the drop.”
She heard him swear under his breath. “If the Russian can change the plan, so can I.”
Typical Dave. Always trying to prove he was in charge. “Let me at least come in and cover you.”
“Stay with the damn car like I told you to.”
Ivy bit her tongue. The moron was going to get himself killed. She shouldn’t care what happened to him, but she didn’t want him getting hurt. And every instinct told her that would happen if she didn’t stop him from going in those warehouses alone.
How the hell was she supposed to do that?
“Dave, please—”
“Dammit, just shut the hell up. I’m too busy right now to listen to your shit. I have eyes on our guy and the package. I’m moving toward the drop point now.”
Crap.
Ivy’s stomach twisted in the same gut-wrenching knot it always did when she attempted to ignore her body’s internal alarm system. The hell with standing around. Let Dave report her for insubordination when they got back to DC if he wanted to. She wasn’t going to be the one to let that jerk get killed. Pulling the 9mm from the holster on her hip, she ran toward the dilapidated warehouses.
The place was a pitch-black maze with twists and turns and dead ends left behind from when the building had collapsed at some point in the past. The darkness wasn’t a problem for Ivy. Her eyesight automatically adjusted to the lack of light. Within seconds, the dark corners and shadows disappeared as if someone had flicked on a lamp, except without all the distortion and depth-perception problems that came with night vision goggles. Maybe part of the reason Dave disliked her so much was because she never needed NVGs. He hated the damn things.
She didn’t use her heightened night vision to track Dave, though. She used his scent. It was strong on the air, too. Adrenaline mixed with fear did that.
“I’ll be at your location in less than thirty seconds. Don’t do anything stupid until I get there.”
“Do me a favor. Go. Fuck. Yourself,” he ground out. The radio clicked off.
“Dammit!” Ivy let out a growl and ran faster.
In front of her, she heard the pop, pop, pop of a small-caliber gun.
“Dave!” she shouted into her headset. “Dave, answer me!”
No reply.
Buildings blurred as she ran past them. She should slow down, check corners and alleys. She could be running right into an ambush.
&nb
sp; But she didn’t slow. She couldn’t.
The scent of blood hit her hard as she rounded the corner of a large stone building, and she immediately froze. Less than ten feet away, Dave and another man—probably the Russian—were lying on the ground, bleeding from gunshot wounds.
She started toward them but stopped when she caught movement out of the corner of her eye. Three men—she could tell they were men from their scent—were nonchalantly walking away from the bodies. One of them had a briefcase in his hand. Another held Dave’s NVGs. She darted after them, 9mm aimed and ready to fire, but all three of them spun around at the same time and raised their weapons.
There was nowhere to take cover, and Ivy was moving too fast to even try. Instead, she opted for surprise, leaping into the air as she swiftly closed the distance between her and the men. Their eyes widened as she went airborne. Their first salvo of rounds passed harmlessly underneath her, and while she was still in the air, she took out the most dangerous target first—the guy with the MP5 submachine gun. Two shots to the chest silenced his weapon and dropped him where he stood, leaving her free to turn her gun on a second target—the man with the .45. She put two rounds in him and he flew backward.
Taking out those men left her exposed to the last shooter—the one with the small-caliber pistol. He didn’t waste any time firing at her. She hit the ground and rolled, bullets zipping past her head.
The man redirected his aim to shoot her in the head. She knocked the pistol out of his grip with her free hand and leveled her gun at him. Before she could shoot, the bastard caught her weapon hand in both of his, trying to wrestle the pistol away from her.
Ivy set the animal inside free, letting out the growl that had been building low in her throat ever since she found her partner lying on the floor in a pool of blood. She didn’t know for sure if this was the bastard who had shot Dave, and right now, she didn’t care.
Releasing her hold on the gun, she let her fingernails extend until they became long, sharp, curved claws. The man stared at her, his eyes wide. With a hiss, she darted her right hand up and sliced open his throat.
He hit the floor, the gun falling from his useless hands.
Ivy rose from her crouch, her breathing ragged. All told, the fight had lasted less than fifteen seconds. If things had gone the way they were supposed to, she and Dave would have been in and out in that same amount of time.
Taking a deep breath, she retracted her claws, then turned and ran to Dave’s side.
She carefully rolled him onto his back. He’d been shot multiple times in the chest, then another in the head. He’d never even gotten his gun out of his holster. Whatever first aid she could have offered was too late.
She sighed. “Dammit, Dave. Why didn’t you just listen to me?”
She gently closed Dave’s eyes, then got to her feet to check on the Russian. He was dead, too, shot once in the head.
Ivy’s gaze went to Dave again and against her will, she found herself reliving the last few moments of her partner’s life. Could she have done something to prevent his death?
She shook her head. Now wasn’t the time—and this definitely wasn’t the place—to have this conversation with herself. Even in a blown out shithole like this one, someone was bound to come snooping around to see what all the shooting had been about. In her experience, people who snooped around shootouts were not the kind of people she wanted to deal with.
She walked over to the second man she’d shot and ripped open the briefcase still clutched in his hand. Grabbing the manila folder inside, she shoved it in her coat pocket, then took out her iPhone and snapped pictures of all three gunmen as well as Dave and the Russian. She wanted to have something to back up her story if there was an investigation.
When she was done, she retrieved her 9mm, then grabbed Dave’s NVGs. She didn’t intend to leave anything behind that might identify them. That included Dave. Bending down, she slid her arms under his body, then lifted.
“Come on, Dave. Let’s get you home.”
Dave was more than twice her weight and she grunted with the effort as she hooked one of his arms over her shoulder and dragged him to the car. It was slow going, but she didn’t care. Crappy partner or not, she wasn’t going to leave him behind.
Chapter 1
Two Months Later
The Mountains of Afghanistan—Nuristan Province
Landon Donovan checked his watch. It was so dark tonight he wouldn’t have been able to see his hand in front of his face if he wasn’t wearing NVGs, but there was just enough glow for him to make out the time. 0200 hours.
He and five members of his 5th Special Forces A-team had moved to the final observation point in the hills above their target an hour ago. A multifamily house surrounded by a high wall in the middle of a small village perched on a mountainside—the place didn’t look like much. Few places in this godforsaken country did. But it was bigger than any of its neighbors and supposedly housed the province’s most infamous resident, a high-priority Taliban leader and bomb maker known only by his first name—Qari. The son of a bitch was best known for insurgent training camps that specialized in turning children into suicide bombers, but he was also a major force behind the growing number of mortar and IED attacks on local Coalition Forces. He had money and power, not to mention technical knowledge out the ass and a fair amount of religious influence. Yeah, well, none of those things were going to help him tonight. Providing everything went as planned.
Landon glanced at his teammates, checking again to make sure each of them was in position. They probably wouldn’t get a peek at the compound’s occupants until morning, but they’d keep at least one set of eyes glued to the scopes the entire night, just in case. He and his communications sergeant Diaz were taking the first watch.
Big Tex-Mex—otherwise known as Sergeant First Class Angelo Rios—slipped down beside Landon. “I have Marks just behind us on the back side of the ridge. Mickens is about a hundred meters downslope. We’ll have warning if anyone tries to sneak up on us.”
Angelo was the senior weapons sergeant on the team, and Landon used him as his second-in-command when they were running split-team ops like they were now. Part Native American, part Mexican, and all badass, Angelo was as sharp as they came.
“Good,” Landon said. “Get the laser designator set up, just in case we get a chance to use it.”
Angelo nodded and slipped away as silently as a ghost. For a big man, the senior noncommissioned officer could be damn quiet.
While Angelo and the other weapons sergeant, Tredeau, broke out the portable laser designator and mounted it on a small tripod, Landon went back to scanning the compound four hundred meters below, switching from his long-distance night vision scope to the thermal one.
“Holy shit,” Diaz called out softly.
“What do you have?” Landon asked.
He motioned with his hand for Angelo and Tredeau to hurry up. Diaz didn’t use that particular profanity lightly, so it had to be something big.
“Check out the far left window, Captain,” Diaz said. “The one with the light coming through the curtains.”
Landon slewed his scope from the large courtyard area he’d been scanning over to the left, focusing on the house. It took him a moment to find the window Diaz was talking about, but the second he did, he knew why the commo sergeant was so excited. Sitting there at a table, bigger than shit, was Qari. The man’s beard was longer than it was in their most recent intel photo of the Taliban leader, but there was absolutely no doubt this was their guy. Landon and his teammates had studied photos of him from every angle for days on end, then quizzed each other by picking their target out of situational lineups. Every member of the team knew Qari’s face better than his mother probably did.
“That’s our man,” Landon confirmed. “Call in air support.”
Diaz turned to follow out his instructions, but then st
opped and pressed his hand to his earpiece the way he always did when he listened to something on the radio. He frowned as he spoke into the mic. “Say again, all after ‘abort.’”
Landon did a double take. Who the hell would be calling an abort now?
Diaz looked at Landon, a stunned expression on his face. “Captain, we’ve been ordered to break contact and immediately move back to the extraction point.”
“Did you tell them we have Qari in our sights and were about to call in air support?”
“Yes, sir, but it was the old man himself, and he didn’t give a shit. He wants us at the landing zone yesterday.”
Landon swore under his breath. The original plan was for his team to head to the landing zone once the mission was done, unless there was an emergency. There wasn’t an emergency and their mission wasn’t done, so why the hell would the battalion commander order them to bail? He and his team had been after Qari ever since they’d come to this country. To be pulled out now, when the big payoff was at hand, was nuts. Who knew what information they could find in that compound?
Resisting the urge to get on the radio and argue with the commander, Landon barked orders to get the gear packed.
They got to the landing zone two hours later to find a Black Hawk waiting for them, rotors turning. Landon immediately headed for it, only to stop when his executive officer, Major Bennett, stepped off the bird. Some serious shit had obviously hit the fan for the battalion’s executive officer to be out here.
“Major,” he said.
“Captain.” Bennett surveyed Landon’s teammates with a critical eye before turning back to him. “You’re the only one who’s going out on the Black Hawk. I’m taking over your team.”
He sure as hell hadn’t expected that. No formalities. No Hey, great job finding Qari. Just a harsh, straightforward I’m taking over your team.
Landon glanced over his shoulder to see his teammates looking at him in disbelief. He felt as if he’d just been hit with a ton of bricks. Well, he wasn’t going anywhere without some answers. That might take time, though, and he didn’t want his guys exposed out there while he got them.
