PROLOGUE
Armenia
Lana Hancock prayed for a swift death. The hood over her head made it hard to breathe, as did the smel of her friends’ bodies. Through a tiny slit in her hood that her captors didn’t know was there, she could see Bethany’s lifeless eyes staring at her.
Lana tried to turn away, but even the smalest movement sent pain screaming through her broken limbs. The man who had broken them, Boris, came back into the cave, and she knew this was the end. Whatever her abductors told Boris to do, he did. She’d heard them order him to kil her right before they left, and she’d been lying here, waiting for the end, for what seemed like days.
She was going to miss her family. Her friends. Her fiancé.
She wanted to see her nephew grow up and spoil him with loud presents that would drive her sister crazy. The little drum set Lana had bought him for his birthday was tucked in her closet. She hoped they’d find it and give it to him when her family cleaned out her apartment.
Boris puled out his gun and crossed the dusty cave to where Lana lay. He was a skinny man with bright blue eyes and dimples that made her stomach turn. A sadistic kiler shouldn’t have dimples.
His booted feet stopped only inches from her face. Part of her was afraid, but most of her was simply grateful he was using the gun instead of the pipe again. At least this way would be fast. She hoped.
She saw a shadow cross the mouth of the cave, then another and another. Maybe her abductors were back to watch it happen. Maybe she was halucinating. Lana couldn’t bring herself to care. She was too tired. Too weak.
He reached down and ripped at the tape that was holding her hood closed around her neck. The movement caused broken bones to grind, and her dry scream echoed against the cave wals.
She must have passed out, because when she opened her eyes, her kiler was looking down at her with a concerned frown, patting her cheek as if to revive her. When he saw she was awake again, he nodded once as if satisfied and stood up again. Apparently, he didn’t want to kil her if she was unconscious.
His gun aimed for her head, thank God. Like with the others he’d kiled, it would be a head shot. Quick and painless.
A thick arm appeared from nowhere and wrapped around Boris’s head, puling it back while a second arm sliced his throat open with a knife. Blood spewed from the man’s neck, and his gun clattered to the hard ground.
Lana tried to figure out what was happening, but she couldn’t move her head. Couldn’t keep her eyes open.
“We’ve got to get you out of here,” said a deep, tight voice she’d heard somewhere before.
Pain sliced through her, and she realized she was being lifted. Her broken legs dangled painfuly over a man’s arms, but she kept herself from screaming. She couldn’t alert her captors that she was escaping.
Lana forced her eyes open just as he carried her out of the cave. Light seared her retinas, but she welcomed it. Light meant freedom—something she thought she’d never again experience.
He laid her down and spoke in a quiet voice to someone nearby. “She’s the only one alive.”
“Not for long, she isn’t,” said a second man. “And not if they find out she made it out alive.”
Lana’s body throbbed in time with each beat of her heart. He was right. She wasn’t going to last much longer. She could feel herself growing weaker by the second.
Maybe she was bleeding somewhere.
At least she wasn’t going to die in that cave.
“Our team took down three of them.”
“How many were there?”
“I don’t know. I only saw two, and not closely enough to ID them. I got orders from that skinny bastard, Boris. There could be another dozen for al I know.”
“You took care of Boris?”
“Yes.”
“Our men are in the hils. They’l find anyone who got away,” said the second man.
“They’d better.”
Lana wasn’t sure what that meant, but she knew she should. What they were saying meant something to her, but her brain was too foggy to figure it out. She was using al her strength just to keep from screaming.
If she screamed, they could find her.
A shadow fel over her face, and Lana looked up into the face of Miles Gentry—the man her abductors had hired to bomb a U.S. elementary school.
Lana couldn’t breathe. She wasn’t safe. Not with him. He was a monster—a man wiling to kil children for money.
He must have seen her fear, because he smoothed her matted hair back from her face and said, “Shh. It’s okay. I’m a U.S. soldier. I’m not going to hurt you.”
Liar! Lana tried to pul away from his touch, but her body wouldn’t move, wouldn’t cooperate.
“Back off, Caleb. You’re scaring her,” said the second man.
Caleb, or Miles, or whoever he was moved away. Behind him, from high in the rocky hilside, she could see twin flashes of sunlight reflecting off glass. Binoculars.
With a painful stab of clarity, she realized she was being watched.
She tried to tel the men, but her lips were swolen and stuck together with dried blood and she couldn’t seem to form a coherent word.
The wind kicked up and dust choked her lungs. She tried not to cough. Someone puled a sheet over her head to keep the dust out. It didn’t help. She couldn’t keep from coughing, and as soon as she did—as soon as her broken ribs shifted—the pain ricocheted inside her until al she could do was gasp for air.
All the pain and going without food or water for days was too much. She had to give up and let go. She couldn’t take any more.
Lana’s mind shut down, and she welcomed the oblivion as it came to claim her.
CHAPTER ONE
Columbia, Missouri, eighteen months later
Caleb Stone had no business being this close to the woman he’d nearly kiled eighteen months ago. Just the thought of having to face Lana Hancock again made him break out in a cold sweat. This assignment was going to be as much fun as taking a bulet in the gut.
Lana’s office at the First Light Foundation was nestled in the middle of a run-down line of smal one-story leased office spaces, between a walk-in clinic and a print shop.
The long prefab building was cheaply constructed and badly in need of a fresh coat of paint. Early morning sun filtered through the line of trees adorning the front of the parking lot. It was late July in central Missouri, and even with the shade the decorative trees offered, Caleb’s car was already beginning to grow uncomfortably warm.
He didn’t shift to crack a window or turn on the air. With al the mistakes he’d made, he figured he was headed for hel, anyway. Might as wel get used to the climate.
Another car puled into the lot and parked. It was Lana Hancock’s white Saturn.
Caleb’s body tensed and his stomach flooded with acid. This was not going to be fun.
She got out of her Saturn, putting Caleb no more than fifty feet away from her. It was too damn close, and every corner of his soul screamed for him to back away slowly before she got hurt again. But backing away wasn’t an option. Colonel Monroe had ordered him to come here. The bastard.
If Caleb had thought for one second that Lana was in danger, he would have been the first one in line to play human shield, but that wasn’t the case. Monroe was just being paranoid over a bit of random chatter the CIA had intercepted. Monroe was worried that the Swarm was back, but that couldn’t be true. That particular terrorist group was gone. Caleb had been on the team that took them out six months ago. They’d made sure no one survived.
Monroe was convinced something was going on, so here Caleb was, up close and personal with the only living reminder of the worst three days of his life. Lana Hancock.
She looked a lot different now than she had the last time Caleb had seen her. She stil had the same rich brown hair, but it no longer fel down her back, tangled and matted with blood. She’d cropped it shorter so that it swung in a shiny wave that ended just above her shoulders. Her face was no longer swolen or bruised from repeated beatings, and he found himself staring at her, drinking her in, trying to replace this new, healthy image of her with the horrible one he’d held in his head for too many months. He hadn’t been able to tel when she’d been lying unconscious in that army hospital bed, but now he could see how pretty she was, and that the fulness of her mouth hadn’t been totaly due to sweling.
A man puled his Honda into the lot and waved at Lana. She smiled and waved back, and Caleb caught a glimpse of deep twin dimples in her cheeks. He’d never seen her smile before, and until now he hadn’t realized what he’d been missing. The only expressions he’d seen on her face were ones of terror and pain. He’d stayed by her bedside for three long days and even longer nights, and neither the terror nor the pain had lessened. When he’d been forced back to work, every day he’d expected to hear that she had died, but that word never came.
Even though he’d kept tabs on her recovery, this was the first time he’d seen her since, and watching her walk around was like witnessing a miracle. It soothed him and eased some of the tension that had been growing in him ever since he’d been ordered to come here.
Caleb watched with a mixture of respect and awe as she crossed the hot asphalt to her office. Her walk was smooth and steady, her hips swaying slightly beneath her faded jeans. If he hadn’t known for a fact that it had taken her months to learn how to walk again, he’d never have believed it by watching her move. There was nothing hesitant in her stride, no hitch of pain or jarring movement. She was al roling grace and swaying strength.
Her functional white T-shirt and matching tennis shoes were completely without frils, and there wasn’t a single glitter of jewelry on her body or a speck of makeup on her face. She used a green canvas backpack instead of a purse, and that looked like it had seen better days. But even without the bels and whistles, even though she was nothing like the glamorous women he usualy dated, she stil had more pul on him than al the women he’d known combined.
And if that wasn’t fate’s way of slugging him in the gut for fucking up, he didn’t know what was. No matter how much she appealed to him, she’d probably rather spit on him than look at him. Which was probably safest for both of them.
Caleb forced his breathing to even out into a steady rhythm while he wiled his heart to slow its pounding pace. He’d known that seeing her again would affect him, but until now, he hadn’t realized just how strongly. He’d never known anyone who’d come back after being that close to dying, and he’d known a lot of strong, highly motivated men.
Lana was one hel of a woman. If only he’d met her under other circumstances, things might have been a lot different between them.
If only. Caleb squashed that line of thinking before it could gain a foothold. If onlys could get a man kiled.
Lana hadn’t even had time to pour a cup of coffee before the first crisis of the day hit. She rubbed her temples in an effort to stave off the tension headache that was growing by leaps and bounds with every passing hour. But headache or not, she had a fundraiser coming up in two weeks and it wasn’t going to plan itself. “Are you sure he said canceled?” she asked Stacie Cramer, her assistant and friend.
