by Elise Faber
“Focus,” I ordered. “What’s your name?”
“Dominic.”
“Okay, Dominic, it’s very important you listen to me,” I said, making sure to hold his gaze. “It’s not safe. You need to leave right now and get someplace safe.”
“But you’re—”
A groan had me glancing toward the driver’s seat, and I saw Daniel stirring. “Fuck,” I hissed, my side burning, my knee throbbing. I peeked in through the window but couldn’t see the gun anywhere. Fucking perfect.
“A-are you okay?”
No, I wasn’t.
This kid was in shock, and he needed to get away from Daniel.
“I’m fine.” I turned back to Dominic, recognized he wasn’t going to be capable of moving, so I took his arm with my bound hands and dragged him back toward his car. “See if you can drive it, and go to the police, the sheriff, just get your ass someplace safe.”
He got in, turned the key.
Nothing happened.
Fuck.
He got back out.
“Run,” I hissed. “Get the hell away from here. Get someplace safe and call the police.”
“I’ve got to get my bag.”
Another groan, movement in the car.
And I knew I had to move, had to get this kid moving, to put some distance between him and Daniel. Because I knew that once Daniel was conscious, he wouldn’t hesitate to snuff out Dominic’s life. A man like Daniel didn’t give a shit who he took down. If someone was in his way, they were easy collateral damage.
“Here.”
I glanced back, saw Dominic had emerged, backpack in hand. He held up a pair of scissors.
“Thanks,” I said and quickly held my arms up. He snipped, and I was free. “You got pen and paper in there?”
The boy nodded, pulled them out.
I wrote Laila’s cell on it. “You get to a phone. You call this number, and you tell them that you’ve seen Olive—” I looked around for landmarks to pass on in case my tracker was malfunctioning—
“I know where we are.” Dominic named the highway, then pointed behind me. “Mile marker twenty-two.”
“Good,” I said. “Tell them that. Now, go—”
“Bitch!”
I turned, saw that Daniel had straightened in the car, eyes arrowing straight for me.
And, of course, the fucker had the gun.
“Run!”
Finally, Dominic was unstuck enough to run.
Daniel fired.
But the glass was bulletproof and so it didn’t penetrate. Though the impact of the gun firing had made the glass splinter, the panel held, and I chanced a glance over my shoulder to see that Dominic had disappeared.
Good.
I ran the other direction, straight for the tree line, straight for cover, and as fast as I could manage. There were probably snakes in these fucking woods or poison oak or ivy or sumac, or whatever hell-inducing, rash-giving plants were native to these parts that I was running right through, but I’d take a rash over a bullet any day. Though, I’d like to avoid the snakes, or at least the venomous ones, because they’d kill me just as easily as Daniel.
Regardless of any of that, I ran straight out from the road as quickly as I could, leaving my path obvious and easy to follow until I hit a creek.
Then I used that to disguise my circling back.
Because backup was coming to mile marker twenty-two, and I needed to be close enough to be ready for it.
“I know you’re out here, you fucking bitch!”
I wondered how late it was. How long I’d been unconscious. How far from base I was. I tried to do all sorts of mental calculations to figure out how long I needed to hide out here.
But I didn’t know enough. There were too many variables, and as I heard Daniel’s footsteps getting closer, I worried that my plan to circle back had been incredibly stupid. I should have kept with putting distance between us, because he had the gun, and I had absolutely nothing with which to protect myself.
I hadn’t even found a big log I could bash him over the head with.
Quietly, I crept forward, moving up into the brush near the embankment, using the muted moonlight overhead to scan for Daniel.
But the man had gone quiet, along with his footsteps.
I hardly breathed, my ears straining to hear any sound of his approach. It was too quiet, not even a bird or the sound of the insects to break it.
And I knew that meant he was close.
Too fucking close.
I needed to move and do it quickly. Otherwise, I was a sitting duck out here. Carefully curling my toes beneath me, I prepared to bolt.
And that was when I felt the cold barrel of the gun at the base of my neck.
Chapter Eighteen
KTS Satellite Base
Western Georgia
22:52hrs
Linc
“Fucking bastard,” I said, staring at the screen as the pieces fell into place.
Is had led to Tom’s reports, which had then led to a flurry of activity to discover who might have access and the ability to change the report.
And one-by-one, I crossed people off the list.
Until only one remained.
I looked up at Laila, whose face clouded with anger. “Fucking bastard.”
Hannah, on the other hand, was already moving, though her words were clipped with fury. “We’ve got to get to his lab.”
I stood up so fast the chair tipped over backward, and I ran out of the room. I didn’t stop for weapons or wait for backup. Any of my typical planning and plotting weren’t on the table.
I had to get to the bastard.
I had to get to . . . Jack.
Jack, my teammate. Jack, a man who’d saved my ass more times than I could count.
And Jack, the only agent who’d had the technical know-how, the clearance, and the ability to manipulate Tom’s report.
The only one who had the skill to erase camera footage, who could clear keypad data, could alter card readers, and who could do it easily, seeing as he was the one who’d implemented the system in the first place.
No wonder we hadn’t discovered anything from the day of the bombing.
He’d hidden and erased anything that might have pointed us in the direction of the traitor—pointed at him.
As I ran, I remembered how he’d shown up after everyone today, how he’d responded after the rest of my team had already appeared at Hannah’s S.O.S., how he’d been the last to show up on the day of the bombing, hadn’t checked in afterward. I remembered the look in his eyes when I was with Olive, the comments, the ones I’d taken as teasing, but I now realized had been laced with darker meaning.
He was fucking neck-deep in this, and he’d taken Olive.
Fury filling my every cell, I swore to fucking God that the moment I got her back (because I wasn’t allowing my mind to consider the possibility of anything else), I was going to kill the motherfucker.
He’d hurt Olive. Twice. Scared her. Twice.
Too bad I couldn’t kill the fucker twice.
I jabbed my pin into keypads, barreled through doors, and then forced myself to slow as I approached the lab, trying to think, to plan—
Then just as quickly, I realized that wasn’t going to happen.
I sprinted forward again, kicked open the door, and—
The explosion threw me back against the opposite wall.
“Linc!” Hannah yelled.
I barely heard her over the ringing in my ears, the lingering rush of the explosion. Fire had engulfed the interior of the lab, was licking along the tables even as the sprinklers kicked on.
Hannah grabbed an extinguisher from the wall and raced into the room. I grabbed the fire blanket out of the case next to it, did my best to smother the flames, and we were quickly joined by Dan, Jesse, Ryker, and Laila, all of us working as rapidly as we could to stop the fire from spreading.
We were all coughing by the time the worst of it was out, and my eyes
stung like hell. Not to mention the pounding in my head, the cuts covering my arms, the burns on my hands.
And I couldn’t fucking hear.
Or not much, anyway. The ringing was loud, made Hannah’s words barely discernible.
“Out,” she ordered, nodding to the hall.
I surveyed the room, seeing that the sprinklers could handle the rest, along with the other agents who had responded to the alarm, and stepped out into the hall. Lily ran up to me and immediately made me sit down, checking my pupils, shoving an oxygen mask on my face.
But when I went to tear it off, to stand up and continue searching for something, to find some way to figure out where he was—maybe Jack’s tracker was working, or maybe—she grabbed my shoulder, forced me back down. “Sit, Linc. Now.”
I would have protested, but at that moment I heard Laila snap, “Who the fuck is this?”
Lily and I both turned to look, saw the statuesque blonde’s face go pale.
“Where?” A beat. “How long ago?”
This time, when I started to tear the mask off, Lily let me.
Laila’s eyes met mine. “Gear on. Now. Garage in five.”
Ryker and Laila sprinted in one direction, Jesse, Lily, and I took off in the other, followed by Dan and Hannah, stopping by the staging area to grab weapons and first aid supplies, working in rapid, efficient movements. Less than five minutes later, we were piling into the SUV, buckling in and prepping to tear out of the lot when Laila, Ryker, and Ava ran in.
I opened my mouth to protest, the doctor in me knowing she shouldn’t be running on that broken ankle, but she put up a hand.
“Yell at me later,” she said and got in the front seat, slamming the door behind her.
Laila jumped in the back, Ryker in the driver’s seat.
And we were off, tires squealing as we emerged from the underground garage.
Unlike a normal mission, there was absolutely no chatter in the car, no noise except the ringing in my ears, the sound of Laila’s clipped directions, and Ava checking and rechecking her sniper rifle as she assembled it.
It lay in her lap when Laila announced, “Park here,” she ordered. “Ten minutes. Full sprint.”
We piled out of the SUV, shouldered our packs, and followed Laila as she led us at a sharp clip down the road, though our boots didn’t pound. Even with her cast, Ava’s footsteps were barely audible, though she was trailing behind us significantly. Still, we’d been trained to move silently, and even though the ringing in my ears was only slowly fading, even though I could feel blood oozing down my arms, my chest, my right leg, I didn’t slow, didn’t move any different than normal.
Adrenaline and that training forced the majority of it to disappear.
Worry for Olive made anything else going on with me insignificant.
Heart pounding, lungs burning, I halted when Laila lifted a fist, studied the hand signals she gave, and then nodded, taking off through the undergrowth in order to follow the order.
Dan came with me, Ava limping up behind us.
“Go,” she hissed. “I’ll hunker down and cover your asses.”
Dan nodded, stroked a finger down her cheek.
And then we were moving again, creeping through the undergrowth and closing in on the bright lights in the distance.
Chapter Nineteen
Unknown location
Unknown hrs
Olive
“Up.” The barrel of the gun pressed more firmly to the base of my skull. “Now.”
Slowly, I pushed to my feet.
“Hands up.” Another jab of that barrel. “Walk.”
He should have killed me.
If what he’d said in the car was any indication, the moment he’d had a clear shot, he should have ended me.
That he didn’t . . . well, on one hand, that boded ill for me. It meant he’d thought of a use for me, and I really didn’t want to be useful to this man. On the other, it gave me a chance, so perhaps it boded well. Especially when that opportunity become slightly more than a mere chance as I crawled over a log and felt a pinch in my thigh. My gaze slanted down, saw the present Dominic had somehow left me. A present that might give me a chance to get the hell out of this.
“Keep moving,” Daniel snapped, pushing me forward and nearly making me trip.
I played it up, staggering, limping heavily on my injured knee. “I’m dizzy.”
“I don’t fucking care.” He shoved me again and this time, I let it take me down, catching myself on my hands, swiping the left one into my pocket as he roughly yanked me back up. “Keep moving.”
Now that I had palmed the small pair of scissors Dominic had somehow left in my pocket, I did just that, walking the rest of the distance between the undergrowth and the road weaving through it. My knee still throbbed, but despite my limping, I knew the injury wasn’t significant—it was more bruise than sprain or break. In the road, the lights from Dominic’s car were still on, illuminating the area like a spotlight on a Hollywood set, and as I made my way back onto the road, I saw what I’d been trying to ignore earlier—Jack’s dead body in the passenger’s seat.
First Daniel, and now Jack. Who knew how far this went, how deep the rot at KTS had burrowed? All I knew was that it wasn’t fucking good.
Jack had always seemed like a good guy, a little quiet, certainly, but never would I have suspected that he might turn against the agency and put agents’ lives at risk. And I sure as shit wouldn’t have ever expected him to drag me along with it, to declare some weird sort of unrequited love for me. I didn’t even remember him asking me out or showing the least bit of interest in me as a woman. I couldn’t even pinpoint the last time we’d spoken before that morning.
And now he was dead.
And we would never have the answer to why he’d gone rogue, why he’d thought to drag me with him, to what else he’d done to the base’s electronics.
If he could alter reports, erase security footage and keycard information, he could do a lot of damage.
A lot.
But that would have to be handled later.
Daniel grabbed my shoulder, yanked me to a halt, the gun back at my nape and resting there long enough that I felt a cold bead of fear trail through me.
I pushed it down, thought fast.
“KTS is probably already closing in,” I said. “They’ll be able to track me.”
Daniel snorted. “You mean with that little chip implanted in your arm?”
I didn’t confirm or deny that.
“No.” Daniel sneered when I didn’t speak. “They won’t be able to find you. That dumbass”—he nodded toward Jack in the car—“did one good thing. He had a backdoor into the chips. None of them will work for the foreseeable future.”
Well, fuck.
I had to hope that Dominic had made it to a phone.
“What do you want?” I asked.
Daniel moved in front of me, the gun pointed at my chest. “Is this where you want me to go all evil genius and start spewing out my plan to take over the world?”
I shrugged. “That’d be nice, yeah.”
He laughed, and though his expression was amused, I didn’t like the sound of his laughter. Not at all. It was wrong, as though there were something broken inside this man. Something that couldn’t be fixed. “I’ll give you the TL;DR, Ms. Prim and Proper. It’s not complicated.” He leaned close. “It’s for the money.”
I stopped myself from tilting back, just barely. “No.”
A frown turning the pretty-boy features of his face into a chilling rendition of what had once been beautiful but was now just filled with darkness. “No?” he asked, arching one brow.
“No,” I said again, mind spinning, trying to keep that gun from firing. As I was struggling to say something, I caught a flicker out of the corner of my eye, behind Daniel’s right shoulder. It might have been nothing . . . or it might have been a flicker of blond hair. Either way, I had to keep Daniel talking. “No,” I repeated, louder. “If yo
u were just after the money, you wouldn’t have gone after Ava and Dan after they escaped. You would have taken your payoff for giving them up to the Mikhailova clan and Toscalo family, and you would have gone on your merry way.” Another flicker, and I felt that deep pool of dread inside me relax slightly. That was definitely a flash of blond. “So no, this isn’t about the money. This is about more than that.”
He moved.
One second, he was sneering down at me, that creepy ass amusement on his face, and then in the next, his hand was wrapped around my throat, the gun was shoved against my jaw, and he was squeezing tight enough that black immediately crept into the edges of my vision.
“Bitch,” he said, continuing to squeeze. “Fucking think you’re going to play psychologist.”
“It’s true,” I whispered. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t be reacting like this.”
“They fucking betrayed me”—his fingers tightened—“they deserve to hurt, just like I did.”
“You were trafficking kids,” Laila said, her long, blond ponytail hanging down her back.
Daniel froze, head whipping around to see his former team leader, the woman he’d risen up the ranks of the military with, the woman he’d been best friends with . . . until he’d betrayed her by doing exactly what they were hunting the bad guys down for doing.
“You sold them off to the highest bidder,” she said, “and then you were selling the tapes of their sexual assaults.” Laila’s voice was quiet but absolutely deadly, a snake coiled to strike.
“Let her go.”
Linc.
My heart sped up.
Daniel spun the other way.
“Just call it, Daniel,” Ryker said, moving to stand next to Laila, drawing Daniel’s focus again. “This is enough.”
“Fuck you!” He whirled, yanking me back against his chest, the barrel of the gun sliding around my throat, not giving me an opportunity to break free. “It’ll be enough when I say it’s enough.”
Dan appeared behind Linc, and the group of four took a step toward us.
The safety clicking off was loud in the quiet of the road.
