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CHAPTER ONE
Where in the hell is he?
Hammer slammed his hand on the steering wheel, nearly knocking the automated driving system out of gear. He’d been scouting Capitol City for the last hour, searching for the damned high-target journalist who’d disappeared off the face of the planet. It irritated him to no end that he didn’t have eyes on Jack Spanner. Just this morning at HQ, a pencil-pushing mid-level agent who had no business peeking over his shoulder to see the schematics spread across Hammer’s desk, let alone speaking to him when he was in a mood, had pushed his luck. The asset had pounded him on the back and said, “Relax, Hammer. All the homeless men in the city were rounded up by Senator Smith’s goons and dumped across the border. Surely, Spanner is in Mexico eating churros as we speak.”
Two things Hammer hated: when people used the word surely and when they told him to relax. In his experience, the moment operatives took both eyes off the game, all holy hell broke loose. Hence the reason he was in a black SUV, scouring the streets for the missing Spanner. It was his job to keep operatives and informants out of hell and in the game.
A message dinged in his aviator sunglasses.
He tapped the edge of his frames. “Speak,” he commanded.
Raven’s voice came on. “Where are you?”
“Driving south on H Street. What’s up?”
“I’m going to need you to pull over and see this,” she said.
His gaze flicked to the rearview to assess the traffic behind him. Was he being followed? Not likely since his equipment ran constant algorithms to assess traffic patterns around him. If a vehicle drove too slowly, erratically, changed lanes when he did, or emitted the telltale electric frequency that most PDs used when tracking assets themselves, alerts went off. Still, he always looked in the rearview. Agents couldn’t be too careful in the Patriot Union. He turned into the nearest parking lot and parked behind the building.
“Go,” he said.
A video popped up and projected into his sunglasses’ lenses. From the angle and graininess of the scene, it was clear that Raven had tapped into a camera mounted on a building somewhere in downtown Capitol City. He watched a man stagger down the street. Hammer thought for a second that the guy was drunk. He tapped the corner of his glasses to zoom in closer on the figure. No, not drunk… The man was injured.
Who was he? Why did Raven think he was important? “What am I watching?”
“Just wait,” she said.
The staggering man lifted his arm as if waving to someone off the screen. No, not waving. Signaling. By the stress in his body, it was clearly a warning signal. The guy wanted someone to stop or maybe to back off. Who was he warning? Hammer couldn’t see the person who was off-screen.
“Raven, what is this?” Hammer began. “I don’t have time to—”
Gunfire on the video stole the words from his mouth. Hammer’s mind quickly assessed what he saw—four o’clock, rooftop, multiple shots—all this before the staggering man collapsed on the sidewalk with blood pouring from his chest.
In the before days, when the United States was a country and the second civil war wasn’t a thing, Hammer had been an officer in the Navy. He’d seen only a few clean shots from such a great distance like the one he’d just witnessed. This sniper was a pro.
“Shit! Do we have visual ID on the victim?” Hammer asked.
“Keep watching,” Raven said. “This is important.” Notes of worry tightened her voice.
He squinted and studied the scene. What was he missing?
And then he saw her. A woman dressed in caramel-colored slacks and a peach blouse stepped into view. She seemed more out of place in the picture than the man with a bullet in his chest. It startled Hammer when the woman started running toward the dying man. Who would do that with a sniper on the roof? No Patriot would run toward the danger. But she was. Why? Was she the man’s lover? Relative? Partner in crime?
None of that mattered now because the PDs were on their way to collect the dead or nearly dead man. The woman would get picked up and questioned too. Still, she ran to the man. Seemingly unaware of the dangers, she scooped the man’s head up and held it in her lap. Leaning forward, she put her ear to his lips as if she had all the time in the world. Why didn’t she get out of there already?
He zoomed even closer and saw…
“Oh no. Hell no! Raven, when did this happen? Where is she?”
“They shot Spanner two minutes ago, a block down from Becca’s Best. Can you get there before they do?”
There was no choice. He had to.
Agent Slade was in the line of fire and about to get captured by Patriot Defenders.
“Tell Becca to hide Heather’s car. It’s too easy to spot. We can’t have her tied to this in any way. Do it now!”
“Roger that. Be careful, Hammer. You know what happens to her if they capture her.”
Yeah. He knew. It was the one thing that scared him the most. “They can’t capture her.”
He burned rubber out of the parking lot.
Heather sat on the sidewalk with Jack Spanner’s head in her lap. Her heart pounded with worry for the man. I-Q-T needed to send help fast. She tore a piece off of her blouse and pressed it to the hole in his chest.
“Stay with me. Help is coming. You’re going to be okay,” she lied to him. Spanner was bleeding out.
He lifted his hand. She took it in hers and squeezed. “I’m here.”
His eyes were full of pain and terror.
“Why didn’t you go home?” she said softly.
She’d arranged safe passage straight to Mexico for him to release his story. Why hadn’t he taken it?
“Had…to talk…to mole.”
“Did you?”
His head barely moved. Yes. He’d made contact.
Understanding rushed through her. He got all of the story! “Please, give me the intel, Jose. Trust me.”
She squeezed his hand again. He didn’t squeeze back. They were running out of time. His ashen face tipped up to hers. His lips moved. She bent over and put her ear close to his mouth.
“Camp,” he choked.
The elusive camp! Was this what the Patriots didn’t want anyone to know?
She held her breath. “Tell me your story. I promise to get it to the right people.”
He didn’t nod. His lips hardly opened when he whispered, “Patriots holding…quarter of a million…in labor camp.”
“Quarter of a million people? Where? Tell me where the camp is.”
He was silent.
“I need the coordinates. Give me the location.” She lifted her head and looked closely at him. “Jose?”
His eyes were unblinking. His body was still. His hand was limp in hers and his blood coated her blouse. Jack Spanner’s story was left unfinished. She’d come so close, but now it was lost forever.
She ground her teeth to keep the anguish from exploding from her mouth. The journalist with the scoop to end Blockwell’s authoritarian presidency had died with his head in her lap. Two hundred and fifty thousand people were being held captive in a Patriot labor camp. Was the father of her child locked up there? Was her daughter? Where was the damned camp?
Grief, like a hot knife, stabbed and twisted in her chest. She couldn’t contain it a second longer. She screamed in rage and sobbed in frustration as she cradled his head. Emotions, raw and paralyzing, pinned her to the sidewalk with the dead man’s head in her lap as time slipped away. She should have run minutes ago. A pickup team was most likely mobilizing to collect the body and any witnesses.
Patriot Defenders were coming for her.
Her head was spinning. What to do now? She glanced up to the roofline again and couldn’t see movement. Did the shooter have his weapon trained on her? Had he left the scene? She had to act before the PDs arrived to grill her. If only she were wearing her comms glasses, she could tap the frame and text Mike. Knowing him, he’d want to take the body back to Mexico to be buried properly. If the Patriots got ahold of the body, they’d defile it horrifically on prime-time news, like they had to the last Mexican spy. Like they would do to her if they caught her.
As if on cue, an Army jeep pulled up next to her and three Patriot Defenders jumped out.
“Ma’am, we’re going to need you to step over here,” a PD said.
Heather blinked the tears out of her eyes. She had to figure out a way out of this. For some scary reason, her brain seemed to be slow, as if slogging through muck.
“Ma’am, did you hear us? Step away from that man,” the PD said louder.
“But…he’s…he’s hurt,” she said softly. Hurt? They’d murdered him in broad daylight.
“Ma’am. Do you know this man?” the second officer said.
“No,” she lied.
“You need to come with us, ma’am,” the third PD ordered.
Every warning bell in her head was going off. She needed to get up and run. And yet she still couldn’t leave Jack to these men. She wouldn’t let these bastards take him. She felt a strange loyalty to Jack and wanted to protect his body. It was unusual to be so connected to him since she’d talked to him for less than an hour that night in her house, but she felt a sort of kinship to him now. They were siblings, both fighting for the cause.
“I don’t want to leave him,” she said.
“So you did know him.”
“No. I told you that I don’t… I didn’t…know the man.” She was on thin ice. If they arrested her, what story would she have for why she tried to save a man she didn’t know?
Just then a black SUV came screeching to a stop by the jeep.
A car door slammed. “Move away. The woman and the body are coming with me,” a deep male voice growled.
“Who are you?” the first officer said.
“Your worst nightmare if you impede my investigation.” He flashed a card quickly and then repocketed it.
The second officer muttered, “He’s I.C.”
“We’re here to clean up. We didn’t hear anything about a change in the orders. What do you want with the body?” the first asked.
“You dare question me? I want it. That’s all you need to know. Load it into the back.”
One of the PDs yanked Heather to her feet and held her by the wrist. The other two men tossed Jack Spanner’s body in the back of the SUV.
“What about her?” the PD lifted her arm.
“She’s coming with me,” the man said.
“No way. I’m not going anywhere with you,” she huffed.
“Don’t test me, lady. We have questions that you need to answer. Get in the front so that I can keep an eye on you,” he said to her.
“What if I don’t want to?” she challenged.
He narrowed his eyes at her, angry waves rolling off his large frame. That thin ice she was treading on was full of cracks. “Get in the damned car, or I will pick you up and toss you in!”
She lifted her hands in surrender. “Fine. I’m going.”
Heather stepped inside and got situated in the passenger seat. Her hands were still shaking. A PD slammed the door behind her and patted it twice.
The driver didn’t even wait to make sure that the PDs were in their jeep before he drove away. He hadn’t engaged the driver assist system and was accelerating significantly over the speed limit. They rode in silence for a moment. She wondered how much trouble she was in.
He finally broke the silence, his voice a low rumble. “What in the frigging hell, Slade?”
She thumbed toward the back. “That’s Spanner, Hammer. They murdered him.”
“No shit,” he snapped. “What were you thinking? You could’ve been captured. Your kill device would have gone off, and it would have been game over for you. You can’t tempt the system like that, Slade.”
He was yelling at her inside the SUV now and starting to piss her off. She couldn’t talk to him when he was like this. Didn’t he understand? She had intel that was going to change everything.
She lifted her chin. “Where’d you get the I.C. card?”
“I borrowed one from Senator Smith’s house, made a replica, and returned it before anyone noticed.”
She smiled. “Clever.”
“Yeah. I’m a flipping genius. My turn for questions. What did Spanner tell you?”
Finally, he was ready to listen. She swiveled in her seat and faced him. “The camp. I know what it is.”
End of Excerpt
