Hope had fled the neighborhood and everyone along with it. Not even the desperate were willing to squat in the rot, and that meant there were no dealers, no addicts, no homeless, no police.
Bumper to bumper, the vehicles escorting them sped through the pockmarked streets in tight formation. They had no reason to stop at intersections or slow for traffic; there wasn’t another living soul around for miles. Lou Petrova’s men had scouted the area and mapped the route in advance.
“These guys are good,” Chase said. He’d insisted on driving, and they were in the middle SUV. A calculated move and a smart one. Chase didn’t know these men or their abilities, and if they were being set up, having control of their own vehicle gave them the slightest chance of making it out of an ambush alive.
“Petrova doesn’t leave anything to chance,” Adam said.
“Neither do I. Target is two blocks north of our location. You up for a scout, Z?”
“Let me out by that shithole on the right.”
Chase slowed the vehicle and Zander had boots on the ground before the wheels stopped rolling. The soldier disappeared into the shadows before the car in front of them could brake. Another smart move.
Even though they were on the same team, Adam and the rest of the JTT had been working opposite sides of the fence for the past two years. For mission-critical purposes, they hadn’t known about his existence as an operative. It meant Chase knew very little about him at this point. He, on the other hand, had access to every scrap of information available on the colonel’s handpicked team.
A former sergeant in the US Marine Corps, Chase’s specialty was tactical reconnaissance and planning. The man was cautious by nature. Add to that his level of training and experience, and he was the guy you wanted to follow into situations the rest of the world ran away from. Reason enough to respect him. Toss Adam’s sister into the mix, and the respect level went through the roof.
Chase had volunteered for a whole lot of ball-busting when he’d fallen fast and hard for Gray. But apparently, he was the only man on the face of the planet equipped to deal with her. If Adam needed additional evidence, the fact she hadn’t argued with him about coming to Detroit after Chase got his hands on her offered him proof enough.
Grace Grayson was a force to be reckoned with. Strong minded and strong willed, Adam’s sister was used to getting what she wanted. When cancer took their mother just after his fake death, Gray had been mad at the world and blamed the colonel for a lifetime of leaving, but the truth was—she never had the full picture when it came to their father.
Alone and determined to stay that way, she’d gone wild, drowning her sorrows with vodka and throwing herself at every dangerous freelance photography assignment to come her way. She’d spent more time dodging bullets in the Middle East than most combat-ready military units. It had scared the hell out of the colonel, and there hadn’t been a damn thing he or Adam could do about it.
When she’d been shot and almost killed by Jonas Johnson Junior after photographing the US marine stealing ground-to-air missiles from a pre-deployed cache in Jordan, the colonel had turned the Department of Defense inside out trying to discover what happened.
The cover-up had been almost perfect. Jonas Junior wasn’t much of a soldier and never should have made the Marine Corps, but a powerful father and a distinguished name had a lot of pull when it came to the military’s recruiting practices.
“Cut left, we’ll come at the target from the south,” Chase said, directing Petrova’s men via the two-way radios provided. Back in formation, the trio of Escalades made a detour around the church they were heading for.
The circuitous route would allow Zander the time he needed to scope out St. Agnes’s perimeter prior to their arrival. Petrova’s men weren’t complaining. They were being paid a significant amount of money to take orders and staying alive was to their benefit.
As they rounded the corner to come at their objective, Zander’s voice came through the earpieces Adam and Chase were wearing. “Perimeter’s secure. Petrova has guns all over and a team out front to meet us. I hooked up with O’Reilly. He’ll take us in.”
Dax O’Reilly was Petrova’s right-hand man and every bit as thorough as Adam when it came to personal protection. If he had been put in charge of perimeter security, there was nothing within a ten-mile radius that was a threat to Adam or the two men he’d brought on this mission.
Despite his conviction they were safe, at least for the moment, the trigger finger on his right hand twitched twice. Adam was eager for this to be over with, and his alter ego Sam Black looked forward to the reunion, however short, with Tom Hood.
CHAPTERFIVE
Don’t be scared.Eyes squeezed tight, Eve saw her mother’s face on the backs of her eyelids. The image was hazy, any sharpness of feature lost to the passing of time, but she recognized the smile.
Always the smile.
Her father’s image was less clear. A defense attorney with great ambition, he’d spent more time in court than he did at home. She remembered his booming laugh though, and the way he called her princess.Love you, princess. See you soon.It had been the last thing he said to her before getting into the car with her mother.
She’d lost everything that day, her parents, her friends, her school, her home. What she had left of her life before her tenth birthday filled a small cedar chest. The family pictures, her mother’s bottle of perfume, the spare set of keys to her father’s 1970 GTO.
An only child of only children, Eve was the last living descendant of both her parents’ bloodlines. Their memory, their heritage, their dreams all died with her. At twenty-eight, she had few friends and no partner. As alone now as she had been at the age of ten, she had no one left to miss her or mourn her passing. Her life a spark that would wink out unnoticed.
She hadn’t isolated herself on purpose; she just preferred to keep things simple. Her friends were mostly the males she worked with. Her female acquaintances few and her lovers even fewer.
The one man she thought she might have a future with had let her down, and they’d gone their separate ways over a year ago. There hadn’t been a man since.
Longing filled her.
Despite knowing better than most how fragile and fleeting life could be, she’d always assumed she had more time. More than assumed. She’d known and taken comfort in the conviction her knight in shining armor existed, and when the time was right their paths would cross.
She’d clung to the belief she would one day be someone’s princess again.
