by Liliana Hart
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To Scott—Because I can’t think of a better love story than our own
PROLOGUE
The summer sun beat down with a vengeance on the day thousands would die.
Sweat glistened on pinkened skin, but the discomfort was easily forgotten with every crack of the bat. The air was stagnant—thick with humidity—and the scents of popcorn and beer mixed nauseatingly with the steam from the hot dog carts. Unforgiving metal benches blistered the thighs of those who were unfortunate enough to be seated on the east side of the stadium. The announcer said it was one of the hottest days on record for the month of June, like it was something to be excited about.
Ten-year-old Carrie Anne Fitzgibbon swatted at a horsefly as big as her thumb and shot her mother a scathing look. She didn’t see why they had to drive all the way from San Antonio to stupid Omaha, Nebraska, just to watch her brother play baseball. Brothers were the worst.
Curt had ruined everything. Julie was her best friend in the whole world and Julie would never ever have another tenth birthday party, even though Julie’s parents had promised her she could have post-birthday cupcakes with Carrie once they returned. It wasn’t the same. Her life was ruined.
“Stop pouting, Carrie,” her father said. “Look, Curt is up to bat next.”
She sat between her parents, her arms crossed over her chest, and tried not to show interest in her brother, who was currently taking practice swings inside the stupid little circle. She hoped he struck out.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” her mother said. “The Bulldogs have never made it to the College World Series before. This is history in the making.”
“Julie’s birthday party would’ve been history in the making,” she muttered under her breath.
Her mother reached into the small cooler at her feet and pulled out one of the icy washrags to lay on the back of her neck. Her blond hair was the same color as Julie’s, pulled back into a ponytail.
“Can you imagine getting to play in front of twenty thousand people?” her mother went on excitedly. “It’ll be something he can tell his grandkids one day. And there are pro scouts here. This could be his chance to get into the majors.”
Carrie’s denim shorts and royal-blue Bulldogs shirt clung damply to her skin, and she wished she’d listened to her mother’s suggestion to wear a baseball cap. The top of her head felt like it was on fire from the heat.
“Whoop-de-do,” Carrie said sarcastically.
“I’ve had enough of your attitude, young lady,” her father said. “You’ll straighten up right now if you want to see Julie when we get back home. Otherwise, you can be grounded for the rest of the summer.”
She kicked the back of the seat in front of her, but knew not to push it. Her dad had his angry face on, and the last thing she wanted was to be cooped up inside the house for the rest of the summer.
“Can I get some popcorn?” she asked, deciding to switch tactics.
“Good idea,” her dad said, whistling between his teeth as Curt was announced to bat. He took his wallet out of his back pocket and pulled out a twenty without taking his eyes off of home plate. Her mother had her iPhone out and was busy recording.
They don’t even care about me, Carrie thought angrily. All they’ve ever cared about was stupid Curt and his stupid baseball. She’d heard her grandma say once that Carrie had been their accident baby. Her mom, her dad, and Curt had probably been perfectly happy before she came along.
They probably wished she’d never been born.
She shoved the money in her pocket and made her way to the aisle, apologizing to an old man for stepping on his foot in the process. And then she ran up the concrete steps all the way to the top, tears stinging her eyes.
It wasn’t much cooler in the shade under the covered area where the concession stands were, but at least she was out of the sun. The stadium was huge, and the covered area went the entire way around the ballpark.
Dad hadn’t told her to stay close or come back quick like he usually did, so she decided maybe she’d get her snacks from the other side. Maybe they had different choices. As she set off, her stomach felt squishy because she knew she’d get in trouble if they found out how far she was going. But she tilted her pointed chin and walked off defiantly. It’s not like they would notice she was gone anyway. They were too busy with Curt.
She heard the crack of the bat and the crowd go wild with cheers. Curt must have done something good, but she didn’t stop to try and see what was happening with the game.
It wasn’t until she’d been walking awhile that she realized she couldn’t remember what the number was for the section where their seats were. The butterflies in her stomach were fluttering harder and she really had to go to the bathroom, but she stood in line at the concession stand on the opposite side of the park, one that served the exact same food as the one she’d seen just by their seats.
Carrie ordered a hot dog with chili and cheese and a Coke, because she wasn’t supposed to have soft drinks. She figured she might as well break all the rules she could at one time. Once she had paid and shoved the change back into her pocket, she took her dog and her drink and started back the way she’d come.
A glimpse of the field caught her eye. She liked how green the grass was and that they’d cut it to look like a checkerboard. The sand was reddish, and she’d watched in fascination as they’d wet it down before the game started. Her dad always said there was nothing in the world like baseball—the people, the energy, the loyalty to the team whether they won or lost.
Carrie stood in the arched opening that led to a section of seats and looked at the crowd, swallowing hard at the thought of finding her parents again among so many people. She took a deep breath and tried to think about what she’d been told to do if she was ever lost. There was no policeman she could ask for help, at least not that she could see, and there was no way she was staying put and waiting for someone to find her. It would be hours.
She tried to remember what their section looked like, and then it hit her. They’d been sitting just behind home plate. And from where she was standing now she could see the front of the batter, and she had an even better view of the outfielders. All she had to do was make it back to home plate.
Carrie breathed a sigh of relief and took a sip of Coke, wetting her dry throat. And then something curious caught her eye. A huge puff of smoke went into the air just behind the dugout. Players and people sitting in the stands scattered, climbing over each other as they tried to get onto the field. It looked like they were having trouble breathing and many of them were crawling on the ground.
The concrete beneath her feet trembled, and her shoulder bumped the wall as she lost her balance. And then there was a giant boom in the air that was louder than any of the fireworks she’d ever watched. Her Coke and hot dog dropped to the ground. Chaos erupted, and the people around her were screaming and pushing as they tried to run. Her bladder released, and urine ran down her legs as fear overtook her. She didn’t know what was happening, but she stood in the middle of the fray alone, wishing for her mom and dad. She tried to run, but it felt like the ground was moving beneath her feet.
A man bumped her as he ran by, and she fell, landing inside the door to one of the restrooms. She hud
dled in a ball on the ground and screamed for her daddy as the earth fell apart around her. The people who’d been running seemed to fall away as the floor disappeared and the ceiling caved in.
A man leapt toward her and the opening of the bathroom, but she was too afraid to scream. She didn’t want to die. She wanted her mommy and daddy. And she wanted Curt.
The man crawled in next to her, blood trickling from his head. Something huge crashed behind her, and the man screamed as the ceiling in the bathroom caved in. The entire lower half of his body was buried in the rubble, and Carrie just made herself as small as possible, her whimpers going unheard as everything crashed around her. The space in the doorway was getting smaller and smaller, and she couldn’t see as clouds of dust filled the air.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I’m sorry, Daddy. I want to watch Curt play baseball. I’m sorry.”
Carrie felt the hand of the man lying next to her as it reached for her, and she put her hand in his. She held on for dear life. And kept holding. Even as he took his last breath.
CHAPTER ONE
There was something about the time between three and four o’clock in the morning. When people with good intentions were tucked safely into their beds. When those without them crept into the alleyways like rats. And when warriors got shit done.
For Deacon Tucker, that meant it was time to get dirty.
The rain slapped against Deacon’s face like tiny daggers. Lightning flashed—followed by sharp cracks of thunder—and the smell of ozone, wet dirt, and urgency lay heavy.
Deacon pushed his shovel deeper into the soggy ground, the muscles in his back straining as he lifted a mound of dirt and tossed it onto a pile over his shoulder. The four other members of his team did the same, each one stripped down to nothing but black cargo pants and combat boots, covered in a thick layer of mud. They worked in silence, an unspoken communication and familiarity between them.
The cemetery was old. It was a place where the oldest headstones told stories and the newer ones told a person’s worth. It was where generations of those who shared blood now rested—a place for the elderly who had lived long and full lives and the young who had been taken too soon.
Heavy iron gates closed it off from the public after dark, and towering oaks had been planted in rows some hundred years earlier. Gnarled roots made the ground uneven, cracking the drive that snaked between the rows of headstones.
They worked by flashes of lightning and the sliver of moon that peeked around thunderheads. Everything was cast in shades of gray—from the pale marble of the headstones to the silver shimmer of water droplets as they collected on leaves and rained down on them. Black trunks speared menacingly from the ground—the branches creeping over them like bony arms.
The clank of metal on something solid made Deacon stop and look up at his brother in arms.
“I’ve got something,” Axel said, letting his native Australian accent slip through. He pounded the tip of his shovel a couple of times against the top of the coffin.
Deacon nodded. “Let’s get him uncovered. He’s been here two days already. He doesn’t have much longer. Grab the chains,” he instructed Colin.
Deacon returned to the task at hand, doubling his efforts to clear the mud and water rapidly filling the hole. It was fortunate the casket was waterproof and had a rubberized seal around the lid. The rain had come steady for more than twenty-four hours, and changed their original timeline of removing Levi Wolffe from the ground the night before.
A man’s life was at stake, and Wolffe had already been through more than most. It was going to be traumatic enough for him to wake up in a different country, surrounded by faces he’d never seen before, and unsure whether he’d been captured by the enemy. Fishing through the lies to get to the truth would take time.
Deacon knew exactly how Levi Wolffe was going to feel.
“Fuck me, this is a never-ending battle,” Axel complained. “There’s no way we’re digging this thing all the way out of the muck.”
“All we’ve got to do is uncover the handles on the sides,” Deacon said. “We’ll let the Bobcat do the rest.”
“Got it, mate.” Axel tossed his shovel out of the hole. “Give me a boost, will you?”
Deacon steepled his fingers together to make a sling and braced himself against the casket so he wouldn’t slip. They were close to four feet down into the hole, but with the rain and mud, getting out wasn’t going to be easy. Axel put his hand on Deacon’s shoulder and his foot in the sling, and then grabbed for Dante’s hand as he was boosted up.
The casket was an upper-end model—they had to be, for what they were used for—made of glossy oak and brass. Colin tossed Axel the chains, and he looped them through the handles on each side, using a carabiner to hold them together.
“Elias is ready to roll with the Bobcat,” Axel called out, extending his arm to help Deacon out of the hole.
Deacon was two hundred and thirty pounds of solid muscle and a couple of inches over six feet. His boots and knees couldn’t find purchase in the mud, and his grasp of Axel’s hand was slipping. He finally grasped Axel’s arm with both hands, hoisted his feet onto the coffin, and used his legs to push off, launching himself out of the grave.
Axel moved out of the way at the last second, and Deacon flew right into the pile of mud they’d dug up. He heard the snickers from Dante and Colin and took a fistful of mud in each hand as he got to his feet, launching it at them in quick succession. Elias’s howls of laughter could be heard from inside the Bobcat.
“They’ll both be out for vengeance now,” Axel said, lips twitching in as close to a smile as he ever gave.
“I hope so,” Deacon said. “I’d hate for things to get boring around the office.”
The rain was coming down hard enough to rinse some of the mud from his torso, and he lifted his face to the sky to wash it from his cheeks. The thong tying his hair back had come loose and dark strands clung to his face. Thoughts of a hot shower and a beer were becoming a priority. Right after getting Levi Wolffe out of the ground.
“It was my understanding that Winter wasn’t bringing any more of us in,” Dante said as they hooked up the chains to the Bobcat and moved back out of the way. His accent was English, but he had the Italian genetics of his namesake. Dante was as refined and suave as any man Deacon had ever known. His clothes were always tailored, his haircuts expensive, and his knowledge of the finer things in life unparalleled. Standing in the pouring rain, covered in mud, was probably grating on him immensely.
“That’s what she said, but who the hell knows what her plans are.” Deacon had been wondering the same thing. “She only tells us what she thinks we need to know.”
“Which isn’t a bloody thing,” Dante said.
It was a sore spot for certain. Deacon had served his country for most of his life. He’d been recruited by the CIA during his third year of college, the high scores on his aptitude tests and his skills for languages having alerted interested parties. His course in life had been clear from the moment that recruiter had left him. He’d gone on to get a master’s degree and the necessary field training, which he’d also shown an exceptional aptitude for. In twelve years of covert ops, he’d never had a sleepless night after completing a mission. He’d gotten the job done. Until Eve Winter had gotten ahold of him, and everything he’d thought he’d been fighting for was turned on its head.
He didn’t like being kept in the dark. He understood the hierarchy of a rank structure and the necessity of secrets. You couldn’t survive in the CIA without that understanding. But his handler had once told him, “Rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men.” Deacon had never been a fool.
Eve Winter had saved him, and for that he was grateful. He’d never be anyone’s pawn again. But here he stood, in a cemetery in the middle of the night, digging up a man who was about to have his entire life turned upside down.
Elias reversed the Bobcat, and mud spewed beneath the w
heels as the chains drew taut. Inch by inch the casket was dragged out of the grave. The rain was relentless, the thunder a continuous rumbling growl. And the men stood in the middle of it, like marionettes on a string, doing the bidding of people who sat warm and comfortable and safe in their homes.
Once the casket was free and the chains unhooked, Deacon, Axel, Colin, and Dante got two to each side and lifted. Their boots slurped and sludged as they made their way to the black panel van that was owned by the Last Stop Funeral Home. A magnetic cling with the funeral home logo was attached to each side of the van.
The whole setup was bizarre, and Deacon had wondered more than once if he really was dead, only to be caught in limbo between one world and the next. But several years had passed since his own revival, so he guessed he was here to stay.
Until The Directors decided he wasn’t.
They slid the casket in the back of the van and slammed the doors shut.
“Poor bastard,” Colin lamented, shaking his head hard enough that water droplets flew into the air. “He has no clue what he’s about to get into. That the life he knew is over.”
“Dead men don’t talk,” Deacon said.
“Yet here we are.” The anger in Colin’s face was palpable. His eyes blazed with hatred for the government machine that had confined him.
“Save your anger, Col,” Axel said. “What’s done is done. It’ll get easier over time.”
“Is that what you tell yourself as you watch your wife from afar? As you wait for her to find someone new to take your place?”
“Enough, Colin,” Deacon said. “We all do what we have to do to cope. Our only focus right now should be getting this poor bastard back to headquarters.”
Elias used the Bobcat to push dirt back into the hole, and the others tossed their shovels and other equipment into the back of the van. The burial site for The Gravediggers was at the far corner of the cemetery, next to a thick copse of trees and two plots of unmarked headstones where paupers had been buried more than a century before.
