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CHAPTER ONE
“Gregory, no!”
Heather’s heart pounded, her legs pumped. Faster! Faster! Gregory had the detonator and was about to press the button. She wrapped her arms around the closest tree and buried her face in the bark.
The world blew apart.
Time came at her in broken segments. Mike yelled at her, or was he calling out to Claire? It was all so confusing and loud. So damned loud. The explosion from Gregory’s house sent her flying backward through the air over the neighbor’s fence. Her back crashed violently on the neighbor’s fake turf. The air in her lungs shot out of her mouth like a canon. Her head smacked down a split second later. She couldn’t breathe. Her ears screeched. Shooting stars lit up her vision. It all felt familiar, as if her body remembered what her brain couldn’t grasp. A sudden and excruciating pain started at the back of her head where the kill device was implanted.
Oh God!
Bolts of lightning shot through her.
God, oh God, oh God!
Electrocution. That’s what it felt like. Fire bolts exploded in her brain, raged throughout her nervous system, and flew straight into her heart like fiery arrows. Squeezing her eyes shut, she screamed over and over again. I’m dying. Please, please… She begged for it to end. If only she could see Mike one last time and tell him—
“Hey, hey, bella. You’re okay,” a familiar voice said, followed by a gentle press to her forearm. “You’re safe.”
“Wake her up, man,” another voice said.
“No, dude. You can kill a person like that. Never wake me when I’m having a nightmare,” a third man said. “I mean it. I will kill you.”
“Fine. But if I’m ever being murdered in my sleep, you shake the shit out of me. I mean it.”
“Heather,” the first voice whispered in her ear, it was calmer than the other two and caring. A soft kiss was pressed to her cheek. “I’ve got you. Wake up, querida.”
She opened her eyes to see Mike leaning over her. Again.
Mike’s expression was full of concern. “You’re safe.” Why did he repeat that? Safe from what?
“Are you okay?” she whispered.
“Sí, querida. It was a dream,” he said.
But it wasn’t a dream, was it? Gregory really was dead.
Over Mike’s shoulder she could see Rat, Roman, and Raven all staring at her as if she’d had her face ripped off again.
Oh crap, have I?
She reached up and touched her cheeks and nose. Feeling only minor scratches, she exhaled her relief. Her face transplant was intact. The inhale came as a painful shock.
“What’s going on?” Heather asked. Her voice was hoarse as if she’d inhaled a pound of explosion dust.
“Oh, shit. Has she lost her memory again?” Rat asked.
“What is the last thing you remember?” Mike’s gaze seemed to pour over her.
“You mean after Gregory’s house exploded?” she asked.
She did remember that and being knocked on her ass. Whatever happened with the kill device was pretty memorable too. The pain had been beyond excruciating and then…nothing. Darkness. Had she passed out? Next came momentary flashes of Hammer and Mike taking her to the delivery truck. She’d put her head on Mike’s shoulder and wanted him to take her away to somewhere warm and peaceful. Somewhere she could call home. That was the last thing she remembered: Mike holding her while she slept in his arms in the back of the truck.
“Do you know who you are? Where you are? Who we are? Why we’re here?” Mike asked in rapid-fire succession. He had that worried crinkle between his eyebrows.
“I know you are Mike, the man of a thousand questions.”
Rat snorted. “She’s fine.”
She shifted and groaned. “Fine? Feels like a mule kicked me.”
Mike winced. “Sorry. That burro was me. I gave you CPR on the scene.”
CPR? My heart stopped? That’s why it hurt like a son of a gun to take a deep breath. She tried to sit up and hurt even more. The last time she’d felt this sore was in spy training, fighting three men at once. The men had been highly trained and had used an assortment of weapons against her: whips, crowbars, nunchucks, throwing stars. She’d kicked their asses, but had, for a few days, felt like she did now.
“Here. Let me assist.” Mike tucked the pillows under her head so she could sit more comfortably.
Raven sat on the edge of the bed. “You’re bruised, but you’ll be fine. The doctor checked you out while you were sleeping. You’re scraped up, black and blue all over, but no critical internal injuries. No concussion. It’s a miracle. Miguel and Hammer brought you back from the dead.”
Heather looked around the room. She was in a bed that wasn’t hers. Hammer’s bed.
“Where’s Hammer?” Heather asked.
“He’s in the back office working with Worm. They’re scanning chatter to see if PDs know what happened at Lt. Col. Henkle’s house. So far, the PDs are baffled,” Raven said.
“Yeah, those idiots don’t have a clue. All they have are the badly mixed-up remains of four people. The PDs don’t know who they are. If we’re lucky, the evil senator and his two minions didn’t tell anyone they were going to see Henkle,” Rat said.
“Good,” Roman said. “It’ll be a big win for us if they never figure out why Henkle’s place went kaboom.”
Heather winced. “Gregory shouldn’t have done that,” she said softly.
“Heather,” Mike rubbed her arm, “if he hadn’t taken himself out, the PDs would have arrested him for treason, and you would have been next. They’d be searching for you right now.”
Rat nodded. “Damned straight. Guilty by association. PD assholes shoot first, hold a trial second, or never. You wouldn’t have survived the week, Slade.”
“I agree with that assessment. As long as Senator Smith didn’t tell anyone he was going after Lt. Col. Henkle for leaking the camp’s location, the explosion bought you a get-off-the-PD-radar card,” Raven said.
“Claro. It was Henkle’s plan, remember? He wanted to save you,” Mike said.
“He didn’t have to die,” Heather said softly. “He shouldn’t have—” The rest of the words caught in her throat.
“Oh, he did, one way or another. That’s the fate of moles in the Patriot Union,” Roman said. “At least this way, it was on his own terms.”
“Plus, because of his quick thinking, we have the recording of Senator Smith admitting to his crimes before Henkle detonated the bomb,” Mike said. “That was ingenious. The International Courts will use it as proof against Blockwell.”
“Yeah, Henkle did the right thing,” Rat said. “Who knew the bomb man would be the one to help save Revos? Weird twist of fate.”
“Roger, that. As long as the chatter is clean,” Roman said.
Mike’s head swung toward Roman. “What’s that mean?”
“Clean chatter? It’s regular PD bullshit and propaganda. Nonsense dribble. What we don’t want to hear is any hint that IC knew Smith and his stooges were going after Henkle because he leaked the camp’s location at the Mexican Embassy. If Hammer and Worm pick up a whiff of that shit?” Roman shook his head. “It’s game over, man. The prisoners could be moved elsewhere. We might never find them.”
“Yeah, moved or slaughtered. They could kill them all and cover their tracks,” Rat added.
Strangely, Mike stood up and, cursing in Spanish, walked out the bedroom door.
“What got his panties in a bunch?” Rat asked. “Was it something Roman said?”
Worm listened to the comms. Before today, he wouldn’t have imagined sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with the great Hammer himself in the man’s living room. Hell, Hammer was such a full-fledged company man, Worm half-expected him to live at I-Q-T. Surprisingly, his home was pretty sweet and fully equipped with state-of-the-art equipment. The computer system was almost as good as Worm’s.
Hammer lifted his headset. “Anything?”
“Nope. You?”
“Just bullshit. On Channel 98, they’ve floated two ideas: a gas leak under Henkle’s home or a retribution attack by Revos against the guy who created the bombs.”
“Idiotas. On Channel 72, they are guessing who the victims are. The only name they all agree on is Lt. Col. Henkle since it was his house. The other three bodies could be anyone.”
“One PD suggests Senator Smith head up a team to investigate what happened. He would be the right guy to solve the mystery.”
“Buena suerte with that hombre,” Worm laughed.
“Huh?”
“Good luck, you know, on account of Smith being blown into a billion tiny pieces.”
“Oh.”
Hammer removed his headset altogether. He looked over his shoulder toward the bedroom where the rest of the team watched over Heather, waiting for her to wake up. The man narrowed his eyes and lowered his deep voice. “Tell me about Claire.”
“Claire…?” Worm asked, buying time. He knew who Hammer wanted to know about. He just didn’t know why Hammer was asking.
“Robles’s old partner.”
“Partner?”
“Why are you repeating everything I say?”
Worm shrugged. “Trying to follow your crazy-assed questions, big man. Why in the hell are you asking about Claire?”
Hammer narrowed his eyes. “Tell me about her.”
“Why do you want to know?”
A dark look passed over the man’s face like it usually did before his big fists broke a man’s head. “Worm…”
“Fine. To start, she wasn’t his partner. She was,” Worm rubbed his jaw, “perhaps still is, Miguel’s wife.”
Hammer was a man who didn’t get surprised too often. From the look on his face, he currently was.
“Are you shitting me? Miguel is married?”
“Death do them part and all that.” Worm paused. “Claire was the love of his life. They were good together. Really good. I thought it would last, but she left him during the war to go back to America.”
“She’s an American?”
“Yes. They met in Mexico when she was there teaching art classes to kids. She’s a good artist, but her photography is amazing. Her pictures make you feel stuff, you know? Deep. Haunting. Reach into your guts and squeeze out the feels sort of photos. She had grand ideas that she could photograph the brutality in America and make a difference.” Worm shook his head. “You can imagine how well that went.”
“She was captured?”
Worm shrugged. “Or killed. Miguel never heard from her again.”
“Damn.”
“Why are you asking about her?”
“Robles said he had a flashback when the bombs went off at Henkle’s house. He remembered a moment at the Battle of Boulder.”
Worm sat up straighter. “He told you that? He remembered that day?”
“Yeah. He saw Claire before the bombs dropped. She was standing with a group of women holding signs protesting the war. ARTISTS FOR PEACE (AFP).”
“AFP? I’ve never heard of it.”
“They were bold during the war. Murals started popping up on military buildings, across bridges, that sort of thing. Revos loved the artwork, Patriots not so much.”
“Miguel and Claire were together at the Battle of Boulder.” Worm shook his head. “I am stunned. I thought he’d written her off. That mujer had broken his heart. Bad. Really bad. I tried to get him to move on and forget her. I hated her for what she did to my brother.”
“When Robles heard the bombs coming, he raced into the group of women protestors and threw his body over hers.”
Worm’s mouth opened. Closed. “So that’s what happened to him. Claire broke his heart and then scrambled his head. She ruined him. He should’ve stayed in Mexico and let her go like I told him to.”
“A man can’t control what his heart wants. Even when it might be the death of him, he’ll follow her to the end, try to save her heart and lose his.”
Worm cocked his head. Hammer getting poetic? This was the weirdest day ever. “Are we still talking about Robles? Or is that your story, Hammer?”
Hammer rubbed his palm over his jaw. Didn’t answer.
“Interesting. Who knew you even had a heart?” Worm said with a smile.
“Shut up. I want you to find out what you can about the AFP. Who are the women involved? Where are they? And above all else, don’t tell Robles you are investigating them.”
“Why are we hiding this from him?”
“You didn’t see his face when he told me. Robles is struggling. That memory screwed with his head. I can’t have him on the team if he isn’t able to focus.”
Worm felt his face heat up. “Robles is one of the best agents we have.”
“Maybe. I’ll be watching him. If he’s off his game, I will pull him. Finding the camp and rescuing the prisoners is the most important mission we got. No one can screw it up.”
Just then, Miguel came out of the bedroom and stomped down the hallway. He didn’t say a word. Didn’t acknowledge Worm before he walked past. He slammed the front door on the way out.
Worm looked at Hammer. “What was that about?”
End of Excerpt
