Dead Drop

DEAD DROP:

Book 4 of the Incognito Series by

Karen Wiesner

WHISKEY CREEK PRESS www.whiskeycreekpress.com

Published by WHISKEY CREEK PRESS Whiskey Creek Press PO Box 51052 Casper, WY 82605-1052 www.whiskeycreekpress.com

Copyright © 2007 by Karen Wiesner Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 (five) years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. ISBN 978-1-59374-754-1

Credits Cover Artist: Karen Wiesner Editor: Dave Field Printed in the United States of America

WHAT THEY ARE SAYING ABOUT DEAD DROP “…Author Karen Wiesner continues to demonstrate the enviable capacity to enrapture her readers within the first page or two of any story. DEAD DROP is no exception to this rule, for readers will find it a not-to-be-put-aside novel. As Book 4 in her outstanding Incognito Series about The Network, DEAD DROP works well as a series installment, but also as a standalone story. Readers, race to your nearest outlet and pick up DEAD DROP, then set aside a block of time sufficient to read it start to finish, because you will not be willing to put this book down until the end!” ~~Reviewed by Annie for EuroReviews “…The fourth Incognito thriller, DEAD DROP, is an exhilarating tale that grips the audience from the opening déjà vu sequence until the final confrontation. The lead couple makes the tale as this is no second chance at love since the Network stopped the first time and prepares to intervene again. Although Karen Wiesner’s latest book can stand alone as a terrific, character-driven action thriller, newcomers will want to read the previous saga (see NO ORDINARY LOVE, UNTIL DEATH DO US PART, and BOUNTY ON THE REBEL'S HEART) as these are some of the best novels around.” ~~Reviewed by Harriet Klausner, Independent Reviewer “…DEAD DROP is yet another great story to add to the Incognito Series by author Karen Wiesner. Characters within in the Incognito Series are as volatile as the potential terrorist attacks that unfold. Though the Network trains its operatives to a level of unemotional fighting machines, operatives’ hearts cannot be ruled. DEAD DROP is another story in the Incognito Series worthy of contemplation for a script for a ‘Network’ television series. An enjoyable read!” ~~Reviewed by Pamela Faye for Rolling Seas Reviews

Other Books by Author Available at Whiskey Creek Press: www.whiskeycreekpress.com “The Amethyst Angel” in Tales from the Treasure Trove, Volume I, A Jewels of the Quill Anthology “A Home for Christmas” in Small Gifts, A Jewels of the Quill Christmas Anthology No Ordinary Love, Book 1 of the Incognito Series “A Rose for Romeo” (Story 1 of the Adventures in Amethyst Series) in Treasures of the Heart, A Jewels of the Quill Valentine’s Day Anthology “The Amethyst Star” in Tales from the Treasure Trove, Volume II, A Jewels of the Quill Anthology Until Death Do Us Part, Book 2 of the Incognito Series Bounty on the Rebel’s Heart, Book 3 of the Incognito Series “Revenge in Amethyst” (Story 2 of the Adventures in Amethyst Series) in Tales from the Treasure Trove, Volume III, A Jewels of the Quill Anthology Dame Amethyst Treasures, including “The Amethyst Angel”, “A Home for Christmas”, “The Amethyst Star” and “Creatures of the Night” (bonus novella)

Dedication ~~Karen would like to thank her editor, Dave Field, for his vision and dedication to making the Incognito Series authentic and just all-around-better. I couldn’t do it without you, Dave!~~

The Network The Network is the world’s most covert organization with underground headquarters in Chicago beneath a front technology company called ETI. Having unchallenged authority and skill to disable and destroy criminals, the Network takes over where regular law enforcement leaves off in the mission for absolute justice. The price for that justice is high, requiring the life of every man and woman who serves. For them, there is no life and no love, only duty. ORGANIZATIONAL HIERARCHY Oversight Committee: #1 (1st in Command): Chase Giovanni, Head in Washington, D.C. Level 1 Operatives: #2 (2nd in Command): Captain Shannon McKee, Liaison between Oversight and the Network #3 (3rd in Command): Angelo Pluzetti, Head of Operations #4 (4th in Command): Captain Ron Blair, Master Strategist #5 (5th in Command): Roan Emory, Head Team Leader/Mission Coordinator Level 2 Lead Operatives: Jocelyn Dominica, Psychiatrist Rockwell “Vlad” Vlademar, Weapons Master Cara “Inspector Gadget” Ross, Technology Justine Fielding, Comm & Systems Analyst Dr. Celine Savage, Medical

Level 3 Field Operatives: Alpha Team: Kirsten Ulrick, Leader** Ashton Barnett, 1st Position** Beta Team: Noah Harlow, Leader Rhiannon Murray, 1st Position Gamma Team: Hunter Savage, Leader Level 4 Field Operatives: Kyle Vincent, Red Team Leader (MIA)* Dez Luttino, Green Team Leader Level 5 Field Operatives: Natalie Francis, 3rd Position, Green Team *** Level 7 Field Operatives: Reb Porter, 5th Position *** *No Ordinary Love, Book 1 of the Incognito Series **Until Death Do Us Part, Book 2 of the Incognito Series ***Bounty on the Rebel’s Heart, Book 3 of the Incognito Series

Chapter 1 Parris L’Engle jumped as the phone on her desk rang, then laughed slightly at her own deep focus in searching for a man who’d been lost to her for twenty-five years. She realized when she looked away from the computer screen that her office had become dark in the hours since her partner had left for the night. She should have been long gone herself. Her eyes felt dry, and her stomach reminded her how late it was with a hollow rumble. Taking a deep breath, she lifted her phone, murmuring, “Agent L’Engle.” “Hi, Mom,” came the sound of her son’s long-time girlfriend Aimee. “I knew I’d find you there.” Perry laughed a little sheepishly at how predictable she was to those who knew her best. She tucked back a strand of sleek mahogany hair that’d fallen out of the twist at the back of her neck. “You caught me.” Reluctantly, she pushed away from her desk, turning her back on her computer. “What’s up, sweetie?” “Actually, I was hoping you could do me a favor.” “Name it.” Perry could hear the affectionate frustration in Aimee’s voice when she said, “I haven’t been able to get that son of yours out of his office. He’s five minutes late for our date tonight. I know nothing short of the old Mom-Oust will get 1

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him away from there anytime soon. I’m going through withdrawal, I miss him so much.” Chuckling at the reminder of young love, Perry was glad to have an excuse to push herself away from her desk. She reached beneath it to get her discarded pumps. “I’d be happy to help. I’ll drop by the college on my way home and make sure he heads out to you pronto.” “You’re the best, Mom! We’ll see you tomorrow for lunch, right?” “I’m counting on it. You have a good night.” “Love you.” Perry smiled, straightening after slipping her shoes on. “Love you, too, Aimee. ’Night.” Replacing the receiver, Perry glanced back at her computer screen. In twenty-five years of searching, she’d found nothing to prove conclusively that Daniel might still be alive. Tonight surely wouldn’t see a change in that. She closed out the browser on her screen, then shut down the machine. Once she slung her purse over her shoulder, she walked through the empty halls and out of the Minneapolis FBI field office to her car. The drive to the university, where her son was up for tenure, was short and refreshing. Perry looked forward to seeing him. Though either Danny or Aimee called her every day and she saw them several times a week, she suffered from empty-nest syndrome. Living alone hadn’t been easy for her. She missed having a houseful of people. More than once, she’d considered asking Danny and Aimee to move into the house with her. She could present it as a way for them to save on rent, but knowing they both liked their independence too much kept her quiet. She was the one who could use a little less of it. 2

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In the habit of an experienced FBI agent, she walked lightly on her feet. Barely an echo sounded as she strolled down to the basement office Danny occupied. Her son taught microbiology at the university, but his real love was his research into strengthening the human immune system to resist multiple diseases. Danny had become interested in the massive body of work his father left behind early on, and it’d never been any surprise to Perry when he’d taken over Daniel’s much touted work in the academic field. At this time of night, the halls were dark and shadowed. An overwhelming sense of deja vu washed over Perry. The halls she’d walked to meet Daniel twenty-five years ago were similar to these. It seemed like yesterday. Relating to Aimee’s agony in wanting to be with the man she loved made it only too easy for Perry to remember. More than two decades ago, she’d been in the role of the girlfriend, desperately trying to get her workaholic, genius fiancé to come out and play for the night. Daniel had usually put up something of a fight before he could be coaxed into it, too. Perry recalled walking a hall similar to this one, knowing no one else but Daniel remained in the building. She remembered carrying a cassette player into the office adjoined to his laboratory, slipping out of her shoes so she wore only a thin, gauzy slip of a dress. She remembered pouring wine for them before turning on the sensual Latin music they both loved. She hadn’t actually gotten Daniel out of his office that night, of course... Her body alive with the memories, Perry felt tears behind her eyes even as her face burned. She shook her head as if to cool it, angry with herself for dwelling on the past, on bittersweet memories that only made her lonelier. Daniel was gone. She should move on. Had to. How to get 3

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herself to do that was the question she’d never been able to answer. As she neared Danny’s office, a strange male voice floated out to her. It didn’t belong to Danny. There was something familiar about it anyway. Some instinct—no doubt borne out of her years in the FBI and from growing up with parents who were both agents—made her stop short. She put her back against the wall outside her son’s office, listening intently. Danny said something in a soft, suspicious tone that had Perry reaching instinctively for her gun. Only uncertainty made her hesitate. The other man spoke authoritatively: “You have the skills we’re looking for, Daniel.” The very breath in Perry’s lungs halted. That deep voice. Now she knew where she’d heard it before. Outside of Daniel’s office at the college, a day before he disappeared. The day before he died. She’d overheard it then just as she was overhearing it now. Her heart thumping wildly, Perry silently eased herself closer to the door. The pebbled glass with gold writing showed her the blurred yet recognizable form of her son with his dark hair and tanned skin. He stood six foot two inches tall with a lean, muscular frame. The man with him was an inch or two taller. Blondish-brown hair, she guessed. Wide shoulders. Wearing a suit. No, he wasn’t someone she knew. Yet Perry didn’t second-guess herself. She needed to know about him—to use him to find out what happened to the man she loved. It was possible he was the only person alive who knew something about Daniel’s death, something more than vague answers that made no sense. 4

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She well remembered the details Daniel had confided to her about this man. Specifically, she remembered that he’d refused to give his name or the organization he worked for. He’d also insisted Daniel not tell anyone about their clandestine meeting—a meeting during which Daniel had been asked to join a covert government organization. Daniel had been promised the moon for his acceptance. The price? His life. This man had told him he would have to give up his life as he knew it voluntarily, even his family. Everyone he loved. Daniel had turned him down flat. He’d told Perry everything afterward. He’d even provided her with a detailed physical description of the man, much more than the vague glimpses she’d caught outside Daniel’s closed office door twenty-five years ago. Though Perry had only just completed her FBI training at that time and accepted a position at the Minneapolis Field Office, she’d spent a lifetime with two FBI agents. At the time, she’d assumed the fact that she came up with absolutely nothing on this supposed government recruiter the day Daniel was killed came down to her lack of skill, let alone clearance. Now, twenty-five years later, she’d discovered that the man was a cipher, a complete enigma. She had no idea who he was or how to locate him. Until this moment. Could there be some connection between this man and the car accident that’d supposedly killed Daniel? Perry had considered it numerous times before, in every possible scenario. If she approached him, would there be consequences similar to Daniel’s disappearance? Why was he approaching her son now? No, she knew she had to be careful. She couldn’t come up against this man face to face. She would have to follow 5

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him, investigate him. Until she found out something concrete about who he was, she’d have to trail him from a distance. “You’re saying you don’t know anything about my father’s death twenty-five years ago?” Perry heard her son demand. His tone sounded angry, and Perry tensed at it. The recruiter’s voice, on the other hand, flowed smooth and convincing when he said, “This has nothing to do with your father. Our interest is in you.” Danny sounded a little confused when he said he’d think about the recruitment offer only because the man insisted he think it over carefully—just as he had with Daniel. “I’ll contact you early tomorrow for your answer.” Perry ducked quickly back the opposite way she’d come, into a restroom. From there, she was able to peer out and see the man going out the way she’d come in. Her shoes in hand, she hurried after him. At the exit, she scanned the parking lot and the surrounding areas until she saw he’d parked on the street. He was getting into his car. Perry waited. Only after he pulled out did she run to her own car. She started it and pursued, staying just far enough away so as not to alert him to her presence. He stopped at a restaurant. A moment after he disappeared inside, she slipped out of her car, circumspectly coming up behind his rental vehicle to attach a tracer. Then she quickly returned to her car. While waiting for him to come out again, she called up the rental agreement for his vehicle on the laptop in her car. It’d been leased to a man named Samuel Crawford. His address was in New York City. When she’d entered what little data she had to call up more information on him, she used her cell phone to dial 6

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Danny’s phone at the college. She got his answering machine. Since Aimee’s machine also picked up a moment later, she knew the two of them were on their way to be together. Perry glanced over at the recruiter’s empty car, then past it into the restaurant. The scenario that stood out as the catalyst to her greatest loss was happening all over again. This time with her son. The thought of losing him the way she had lost Daniel filled her with terror, and caused a cold sweat to break out under her tweed suit. She couldn’t bear it. Dear God, she couldn’t even handle the thought of it. What could she do to prevent the tragedy that’d almost destroyed her two and a half decades ago? She would find out who this man was. If he’d had anything to do with Daniel’s death. And she’d discover how far he was willing to go to recruit her son. I’ll destroy him if he was responsible for Daniel’s death or disappearance. Without a thought, I’d kill him if he tried to take Danny. Somehow, I’ll make him pay for the misery he’s caused me.

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Chapter 2 Perry had parked far enough from the recruiter’s car that she wasn’t worried he’d spot her when he emerged from the restaurant over an hour later. She snapped a half dozen pictures of him before he got into his car. He made a phone call before pulling out of his parking space. At a discreet distance, Perry followed him to one of the best hotels in Minneapolis. After a few moments’ hesitation, she also followed him directly into the hotel, making sure he never had a chance to see her. When he entered an elevator and the doors closed, Perry waited, watching the numbers over the elevator go up. No surprise when it stopped on the penthouse floor. The man’s suit and watch proved he could afford the best. Not bothering to ask the personnel behind the front desk the identity of the man, Perry went back out to her car, logged into the hotel files and found what she was looking for herself. Samuel Crawford again. She crossreferenced with as many databases as she could, looking for basic information about him. She found with a simple search that his business was ‘emerging technologies’. He had no criminal records, nor was he married or a documented father. He seemed like a 8

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blank slate, and that brought all of her trained suspicions to the surface. Sighing, Perry wondered if her imagination was running away with her. After all, Daniel and his son were blessed with genius level IQs that had justifiably caught the attention of some of the largest intelligence networks in the world, including NASA and the American government. This man may have simply wanted to hire them for his emerging technologies business. But Perry had learned long ago to trust her gut. Her instincts were telling her something wasn’t right here. Why would this man have told Daniel not to reveal his visit to anyone else? Why would he tell Daniel he worked for a covert government organization and the price for joining it was forfeiture of everything he currently knew and loved? None of the white hat agencies she knew required that kind of extreme commitment. What kind of organization required the whole of a person’s life? No. Her gut told her adamantly that Samuel Crawford wasn’t who he seemed to be. Whoever he really was, his purposes weren’t on the up-and-up—that much she’d bet on. Not long later, Perry returned to her FBI office. After uploading the digital images she’d taken into her computer, she ran them through FBI databases. As she’d expected, they came back identifying him as Samuel Crawford. Same information, nothing new. Dammit, research won’t be enough. Calling up her browser, she hacked into airline manifests. Soon she found what she was looking for. Samuel Crawford had scheduled a flight out to Chicago evening of the next day. 9

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He wouldn’t be going alone, Perry decided in a heartbeat. She booked herself on the same flight. If he’d come to Minnesota on recruiting purposes for his emerging technologies company…or some other nefarious purpose…she would know soon enough.

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Chapter 3 The task of gathering all the information she could on her mystery man was one Perry knew she wouldn’t have time to do on her own before her flight. She wanted to stay on Crawford as much as possible. Her first choice was to ask her partner, Mike Reynolds, to get the information on Crawford. She and Mike had worked together for over twenty years. They’d graduated the FBI Academy together, she trusted him with her life, and she counted him as one of her nearest and dearest friends. With five sisters, Mike saw her as another sister, Perry knew. Never once had he let her down. Considering that Mike had been divorced once and was currently in the process of his second, she knew she wouldn’t wake him with her call. He’d lost considerable sleep over this one. Frequently, he came to work in the morning looking wrung out with so little sleep the night before. Despite the lateness of the hour, he answered his phone with characteristic gusto. “Don’t tell me you’re still at the office, Per?” he predicted. “Something’s come up, Mike. I need your help.” “Somethin’ came up this time of night?” 11

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She didn’t have time to engage in the usual, friendly byplay with him. “You know everything I know about Daniel’s disappearance,” she started. Her partner sobered in double-quick time. “His death, ya mean? Yeah.” Though Mike had never said it out loud, Perry knew he didn’t believe Daniel was alive. He, like her parents and other co-workers, thought she was obsessed or unable to face reality. Maybe it was true, but something concrete fed her obsession now. “You remember the recruiter I told you came to him the night before he died?” Mike’s tone sounded wary when he said, “Yeah?” She could almost see his eyes squinting until they looked all but closed. “Well, he was here, Mike.” Her voice sounded as shaky and out of control as she felt. “He was at the university. He tried to recruit Danny tonight.” The over-long pause her partner took made Perry antsy enough to want to demand some response. Normally cautious with his enthusiasm, Mike’s first thought was of protecting her. Perry didn’t doubt that. “I followed him, Mike. I’ve found a few things out about him, but none of it makes sense. I really want to keep on his tail as much as possible. I’m not going to lose him now that I’ve found him after all these years. I don’t have time to do the research I need to on him. Can you help me, Mike? I’ll send you everything I have so far.” “You sure this is the same guy, Per?” “I’d stake my life on it. I’ve just sent you an e-mail.” Mike took a deep breath, then agreed with a simple, “I’ll get on it, partner.” 12

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She heard the uneasiness he felt, and she waited for him to voice his predictable thoughts. ‘You’re overreactin’, Per.’ “You sure you wanna pursue this? I mean, geez, Per, you been obsessed about Daniel’s death since it happened. Maybe it’s time to let it go. Maybe the recruiter’s coincidence, and Daniel’s death really was just an accident.” Perry didn’t bother going into it with her partner again. She’d never been able to get herself to accept Daniel’s death as readily as everyone else did. Too many strange things didn’t fit together. The re-emergence of this recruiter had brought her doubts to the surface once more. Daniel’s car had been found—a charred hull on a rural road in the middle of nowhere. He’d been over thirty miles from home. What was he doing there? As far as Perry knew—and she had checked every angle in that regard—he hadn’t known anyone in the area. The most peculiar part to her was that he hadn’t told her where he was going before he left. She and Daniel checked in with each other several times each day. Besides, they’d planned to get together that very evening. He wouldn’t have left the city without talking to her. His teaching assistant had confirmed that a phone call came in at around four-thirty that day—a call that Perry hadn’t been able to trace, despite her countless attempts to do so. Looking extremely upset, the TA said, Daniel left immediately after the conversation. Perry herself had a last-minute doctor’s appointment around four-thirty. She’d tried and failed to get an appointment earlier in the week. The doctor’s office called her suddenly at four o’clock to say there’d been an unexpected cancellation, and they could see her after all. Knowing the next available appointment for her was weeks away, she’d accepted the canceled slot eagerly. 13

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She hadn’t had time to call Daniel to let him know where she’d be. Early as it’d been for the diagnosis, she suspected then what had indeed come to pass—she was pregnant. Since that time, Perry wondered easily a million times if Daniel tried to call her at any point before she left the field office for her appointment. Neither of them had cell phones back then. Because she’d been out of contact and he had no reason in the world to expect her to be at the clinic, she’d never found out the reason Daniel went God-knewwhere without telling her. She couldn’t find an answer for what caused his car to explode. Had a large farm or forest animal run out into the middle of the road, and he’d been driving too fast to stop and instead gone over the embankment? That’d been one of the many speculations by the police, but no evidence supported that scenario. Had another car hit his? Again, no evidence bore out the possibility. There was no way of knowing exactly what had caused the accident, since Daniel’s car blew up, leaving a smoldering shell that burned away any fragments of what he might have hit. Without the recovery of his body, the case had never been solved. The only clue that he’d been there and had been injured was the drops of blood they’d found beneath the driver’s side door. Everyone accepted his death occurred instantly, but Perry couldn’t reconcile in her own mind how an obviously injured man could leave the scene without help. Far too many unanswered questions kept her from letting it go. Everyone who loved her was aware of her obsession with Daniel’s death. They quietly considered her paranoid on the subject, or in denial of the only conceivable reality. She’d voluntarily seen an FBI psychiatrist so her 14

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parents wouldn’t worry about her, but years of counseling had done nothing to bring her to a place of closure. The fact was, nearly all of the scenarios she’d come up with pointed to Daniel Sands not being dead. Yet she’d been unable to locate him in the twenty-five years she’d searched for evidence that the only man she’d ever loved was still alive. Now the scenario that seemed like a catalyst to the ultimate tragedy overshadowing her life was taking place all over again. She had to prevent it. She had to see her son.

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Chapter 4 Perry waited impatiently after she knocked on Danny’s apartment door. His apartment was quiet, so she knew she’d woken him when he opened the door a few minutes later. Blurry eyed, he stared at her as if he couldn’t really see her. Behind him, darkness shrouded the whole of the room. “You should check who’s at your door before you open it,” Perry scolded gently, brushing past him inside. “I knew it was you, Mom. No one else would even consider coming this late.” She ignored the teasing in his tone. “Is Aimee here?” Shielding his eyes against the glare of the lamp she switched on in the living room, he nodded. He wore only loose sleep pants that accented his leanness and sheer height. Sometimes it was hard for her to believe her baby had grown into a man. One who looked so much like his father; it was times like these—when Daniel was at the forefront of her mind—that she could hardly breathe looking at her son. “She’s asleep. Where’ve you been? Aimee said she sent you over to get me out of my office tonight, but I never saw you.” He reached for his thin, wire-rim glasses on the mantelpiece before turning back to her. 16

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At this moment, she marveled at how much like his father he was. Not simply with his looks, build and brain, but his ability to sleep in a crisis. She’d lost sleep the night Daniel had been approached by the mystery recruiter all those years ago, but Daniel slept as well as ever. He’d been far too confident and sure of his own abilities to believe he could be made to do something he didn’t want to do. Her son was doing the same thing. Maybe if Daniel had taken the situation a little more seriously... Perry couldn’t control how tight her entire body felt, even the muscles in her face. All she wanted to do was grab hold of her son and never let him go. Danny frowned at her intense expression. “Is everything okay, Mom?” In one area alone was he a worrier—over her. He’d always been intensely overprotective of her. Perhaps with good reason, considering the danger of her career and how much she’d lost in her lifetime. Perry stepped closer to him. “I was there, Danny,” she said urgently, in a quiet voice that wouldn’t wake Aimee. “Tonight. I know that man tried to recruit you, just like he did your father. I heard you demand to know about your father.” Danny’s expression went rapidly into surprise and then to total lack of surprise at her knowledge. Conceding, he said, “Guy claimed he never met my dad.” “Did you believe him?” Danny shook his head soberly. “You followed him, didn’t you? That’s why you didn’t show up at the college tonight. So who is he really? Who does he work for?” Perry waved his questions away. “Later. Tell me exactly what he said to you from start to finish.” 17

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When he moved over to the couch and sat heavily, his elbows resting on spread thighs, she cleared a space for herself on the cluttered coffee table. She sat in front of him so she could see his face. “He said they’ve been watching my progress for years. Through college and grad school. Taken note of my considerable skills in a variety of areas. He said I had a great potential to discover more than I could have ever imagined to be possible.” Perry’s lungs stalled. Her throat tightened. What her son said was nearly verbatim what’d been said to Daniel twenty-five years ago. “What else?” she demanded hoarsely. “He gave me the old I-work-for-a-covert-governmentorganization bit. Couldn’t tell me which one, of course. He offered me money, carte blanche. Offered me everything I ever wanted. I could just name it and it was mine. He said he could provide me with the tools for my research that the college—or any other outside source—couldn’t give me. Anything would be mine, if I’d willingly give up the life I know. Give up everyone I love. I’ve got twelve hours to think about it, but I said I didn’t need a minute. I’m not interested, any more than Dad was. He insisted I think about it anyway—imagine the possibilities of what he offered—and he’d see me tomorrow morning.” A mix of emotions filled Perry—panic and pride. Danny wasn’t one to fear anything, just like his father hadn’t. In many ways, confidence had been Daniel’s downfall. “It’s just what happened to Dad before he was killed, isn’t it?” Danny asked, his tone sensitive to her pain. He knew exactly what she felt just by looking into her face. She nodded, joining her fists in front of her mouth, wishing Daniel’s brother Linc was here. She’d married him 18

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shortly after Daniel’s disappearance, for reasons that had all made sense at the time. Linc was always sensible, always knew what to do in a crisis. She’d relied on his strength, though she hadn’t lived together with him in a way typical of other married couples. What if this organization isn’t a white hat one? Why else would they presume to take away everything a recruit knows and cares about? “Maybe I should...ask to see the facilities he’s willing to give me,” Danny said. “Maybe we could find out something about Dad’s death. Maybe this guy knows something, but won’t admit it until I agree to join.” Perry grabbed hold of her son emphatically. “No! No, Danny. I don’t want you to have any further contact with him. He’s dangerous. I don’t need to know much about him to recognize that. He won’t want to hear no from you again. He’ll either kill you or take you, the way he may have taken your father.” Taking her hands in his, Danny spoke gently. “Mom, I know you’ve never accepted Dad’s death, but I don’t want you to set yourself up for disappointment. This recruiter coming to me doesn’t mean Dad’s alive. It just means these bastards are predictable.” “I know,” she said—but didn’t believe it. Danny ran a frustrated hand through his closely cropped, reddish-brown hair. He wanted to argue, but he knew she’d be devastated beyond healing if she lost him, too. “So what do we do? This is your area of expertise, not mine.” Soft footsteps padded toward them, and they both looked up to see Aimee appear in the archway between the living room and the bedrooms. She wore only Danny’s shirt, her short blond hair mussed despite the fact that her 19

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eyes were wide awake. After hugging Perry, she sat next to Danny and he put his arm around her protectively. Perry knew Danny’s girlfriend had spent the night worrying about the recruitment attempt, just as she had worried about Daniel’s years ago. She had a feeling Aimee had overheard them talking just now. “I was worried when Dan said he hadn’t seen you tonight, Mom, especially after he told me about this guy who tried to recruit his father before he died,” Aimee said softly, reaching for Perry’s hand. “What can we do? I have to admit, I never really thought there was anything to this. Not that I think you’re totally obsessed or anything, but it’s just that everyone else accepted his death except you. Even Linc accepted it. There didn’t seem to be a connection between his death and the random recruitment. That was just strange. How did you know there was a connection?” Perry didn’t want to dwell on the fact that everyone seemed to think she was crazy for not letting her uncertainty about Daniel’s death go all these years. She couldn’t allow herself to feel hurt over it. “I didn’t, and I don’t know it now. It’s just one of many possibilities. It’s the only lead I’ve had since it happened. It’s too great of a coincidence to ignore.” And maybe, just maybe, this was a replay she now had the expertise to derail. Taking a deep breath to rein in her turbulent emotions, Perry looked at the two of them. In her own way, Aimee was also protective of her. Danny and Aimee believed she could take care of herself. Their worry was more about the fact that she’d lost so much. They wanted to shield her from further loss. Overprotective as they were, she recognized instinctively that they wouldn’t like her course of action now. 20

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“Danny, I need you to do something for me. I can’t take the risk there’s any connection between this recruitment and your father’s disappearance...death. I want to put you and Aimee in protective custody for a short time. A week or two. Just until I find out if there’s any connection.” Predictably, Danny frowned. He didn’t like his independence taken from him, even willingly. “How are you going to find out if there’s a connection?” “I’m well-trained in finding people, honey. You know that. If there’s anything to discover here, I’ll do it.” “It’s dangerous.” “Working for the FBI is dangerous. I accepted that risk a long time ago. I can handle this.” Both Aimee and Danny looked worried despite agreeing she was quite capable of taking care of herself. Aimee’s wide blue eyes filled with fear. “Both of you get dressed. Pack a bag, Danny—light. You won’t need much. We’ll drop by Aimee’s apartment for a small bag, then we’ll go to Grandma and Grandpa’s to get everything set up.” Grateful to them both for not putting up a fight, Perry acknowledged their nervousness for her made them do what they normally wouldn’t agree to. Danny wasn’t the type to run and hide in the face of trouble, no more than his father had. Her son assumed he could face whatever came his way. He assumed he would prevail against it. Daniel had thought the same way. But she knew better. Just as Aimee reluctantly admitted she hadn’t believed Perry’s obsession was based on solid evidence of foul play, Danny had silently believed the same. He’d accepted, like everyone else, that his father died in a freak accident, which, admittedly, left a lot of question marks attached. 21

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He’d been willing to fit those question marks into the niche that came with nearly every tragic death. Perry hadn’t been willing then, and she certainly wasn’t now.

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Chapter 5 Because she couldn’t wake her parents in the middle of the night without alarming them, Perry immediately told her mother at the door that the same recruiter who’d tried to convince Daniel to join a covert government organization had come to Danny earlier tonight. Perry’s mother, the director of the Minneapolis field office, ushered the three of them in. She hugged Danny and Aimee, then advised, “If the two of you want to catch a little sleep, the guestroom’s made up.” They nodded. Then Perry followed her mother into her office. They sat down together, and Perry felt as though she looked into a mirror. Her mother’s unnaturally youthful face was tense with worry. Her dark eyes showed the same. When her mother reached over to push back her long black hair, Perry knew her chignon had fallen into complete disrepair in the hours since she’d gone to the university. “Tell me everything,” her mother said, in the nononsense voice Perry knew her best for. She wrapped her velvet robe around her closer. As she’d been taught all her life, Perry explained everything in a concise, matter-of-fact way. “I’ve come up with a plan. I’d like to put Danny and Aimee in protective 23

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custody for the next couple weeks, just until I can find out if there’s a connection,” she finished. “What exactly do you plan to do, sweetheart?” “I’m going to follow this cipher.” “If this man is as dangerous as you believe him to be, do you think that’s a wise course of action?” “It’s the only thing I can do, Mother. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to protect my child. You’d do the same for me. I know you would. I won’t let this guy get away this time. I can’t stand by when Danny’s in danger. I won’t allow my son to be taken from me.” “The fact that you were able to find out very little about this man who goes by the name Samuel Crawford is worrisome. Given enough time, I’m sure you could come up with something. But if you don’t, we’ll have to assume his presence signals that some covert organization is indeed attempting to recruit Dan.” “Are there actually covert government organizations, Mother? White-hat ones that the FBI doesn’t officially talk about? An organization that would take a person’s life away and make the people who love them think they’re dead?” Surprising Perry, her mother smiled, raising one dark, elegant eyebrow. “I couldn’t tell you if I did know, Parris. But I can say emphatically that it’s risky to interfere with such an organization.” “Are you saying I should just stand by and let them steal my son from me, the way they did the man I love?” Her mother’s shrewd instincts picked up on what Perry hadn’t intended to admit out loud—that she still loved Daniel as much as she ever had. She lifted Perry’s hand and held it in her lap. “Sweetheart, you don’t know that Daniel was ‘stolen’ by them. From all appearances, he died in a freak car accident. His blood was found at the 24

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scene. Despite this coincidence, there’s no evidence to disclaim that theory. You can’t go on living in denial, Parris. It’s simply not healthy.” “The blood could have easily been planted,” Perry murmured. It was no good to argue with logic. She’d known exactly what her mother would say because, in the same situation, she’d say it herself. She wasn’t her mother’s daughter for nothing. When she tried to look away, her mother drew her gaze back with a gentle but firm hand to her chin. “If you do find out that this man Samuel Crawford is exactly who his files say he is—just a businessman who has a very strange way of hiring new employees—could you let it go, Parris? Are you willing to accept that it’s possible Daniel really died in a car accident, nothing more?” How could Perry answer? She didn’t know herself if she could ever accept Daniel’s death as purely an accident. “I’m not saying that all of this isn’t highly suspicious,” her mother continued, “but maybe you’re chasing the wind looking for answers for why Daniel died. When will you concede that you may be looking for answers that simply don’t exist?”

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Chapter 6 “I don’t like this,” Danny said after Perry hugged him. “You shouldn’t do this alone.” Perry held her son fiercely to her again, knowing he didn’t want to lose her either. It’d been hard for him to lose the only father figure he’d ever known—Daniel’s brother Lincoln, who’d died of a heart attack three years earlier. In a sense, he’d lost two fathers because he’d always known his biological father had died before he was born. “Don’t worry about me, honey. I’m a professional with a stellar record of always getting my man.” Perry smiled when she drew back, but her son didn’t join her. “You should call your parents,” Perry told Aimee, drawing her into her arms. “Tell them you and Danny are going on a spur-of-the-moment vacation for a couple of weeks. Say Danny wanted it to be a surprise. There’s no reason for them to worry. We’ll arrange to have untraceable postcards sent to them and me from you.” She glanced at her son again. “Grandma will make the arrangements for your time off from the college, Danny, but your absence will be plausible. No one will suspect.” Perry’s own absence would be covered as workrelated. Her own partner had agreed to be part of Danny and Aimee’s safe house detail. Anyone asking about her and 26

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Mike’s absence would find only that they were on undercover assignment. Perry forced herself to leave her mother’s house without looking back. As she drove out, she auto-dialed her partner on her cell phone. “Still lookin’,” he told her. “This badass is intensely private. I should have somethin’ for ya soon.” “Thanks, Mike.” Perry drove to her 1923-era, craftsman style home, surrounded by fragrant woods and the explosively lush, colorful garden she loved babying throughout the year. She adored the cabin interior, with its knotty pine walls stained a warm honey; the beamed, twenty-foot ceilings; and the expansive rooms filled with plump, oversized chairs, generous tables, and a profusion of pillows and throws that helped create the informal coziness she prized. Before going upstairs, she stopped only long enough to run her hand over the polished Bosendorfer piano on which Daniel used to play elaborate classical pieces for hours. No one had played it since the last time he sat at it and lost himself in the music. She took a quick shower, then packed for her trip. In less than a half hour, with a full tank of gas, she parked at the hotel where Crawford was staying. She verified that the tracer on Crawford’s rental still worked and he hadn’t left the hotel. She should have been exhausted, but she felt just the opposite. Her stomach wove knots on top of knots. This was no ordinary case. So overwhelmed with emotion, she found she couldn’t think clearly. She asked herself the mirror image of what her mother presented: What would she do if she found a connection between this enigma of a man and Daniel’s death? What if she found Daniel himself? 27

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What if her instincts had been right all these years and Daniel was alive somewhere in the world? She wasn’t sure if she was terrified or hopeful at the prospect. But her mind returned to the logic her mother had instilled in her firmly since childhood. What if she found out not a shred of proof that Daniel was alive? She’d spent twenty-five years telling herself and everyone else that she couldn’t get over something without clear-cut answers. But how could she feel closure if she didn’t know exactly what had happened to Daniel that day? It’d been one of the most important days of her life and would have been the same for Daniel if only he’d shared it with her.

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Chapter 7 She woke suddenly as a soft beeping filled the confines of her car. Her mind became much clearer than it should have been following her cat nap. Crawford was moving. While scanning for and finding Crawford’s silver Ford Explorer as it left the parking lot, Perry started her own car. Rubbing her eyes, she began trailing him at a distance. In daylight, it’d be harder to follow him circumspectly, especially when the weekend traffic began. Crawford stopped for breakfast at a posh restaurant. After ducking into a shop to use the restroom, Perry grabbed bottled water and a bagel from a vendor near her parking spot. Once she returned to her car, she doublechecked, before she ate, that Crawford remained in the restaurant and that his car hadn’t moved. She wondered about Crawford’s agenda for the day. His flight out to Chicago wasn’t until evening. He’d attempt to make contact with Danny at some point, she knew. He’d mentioned an ‘early’ meeting for Danny’s answer to his proposal. What would he do when he was thwarted from every angle with his recruitment goal? Crawford emerged from the restaurant a while later. Perry waited until he was in his car and pulling out onto the 29

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street before she started her own. Keeping a full block between them, she realized exactly where Crawford was headed soon enough—Danny’s apartment. Surprising her, Crawford parked in front of the brick building and remained in the car. Perry eased into a space two blocks behind him and cut her engine. For several hours, nothing happened. She wasn’t at a good angle to observe exactly what the recruiter did inside his car, but she suspected he watched Danny’s apartment. Across the street, directly in back of the building, Perry knew Danny and Aimee’s cars remained parked in their usual slots. Perry had an inkling Crawford didn’t realize the two weren’t inside Danny’s apartment. Her suspicions were confirmed when Crawford suddenly emerged from his car. Standing next to the driver’s door, he looked up directly at Danny’s window on the north side of the apartment complex. Perry took the opportunity to snap a few pictures. The man still wore an expensive suit, though he’d relaxed today without a tie. His face was bearded and angular. He wore his dark hair closely cropped, the trim impeccable. Surprisingly, the man didn’t seem to have changed one iota from the one she remembered seeing glimpses of twenty-five years ago. How was it possible for him not to age at all? Unless he wore a flawless disguise. Crawford turned back to his car just long enough to lock the doors, then he started across the street. He knew, Perry realized. He knew Danny and Aimee weren’t inside, upstairs. If this recruiter had followed ‘Danny’s progress’ as closely as he claimed, he’d be aware that Danny usually worked in his office at the college most mornings, even on weekends. She’d parked near Danny’s building just a few 30

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minutes after seven a.m. Danny left by seven-thirty most mornings. Crawford disappeared inside the apartment building, and Perry’s breathing became shallow while she waited. Just as she expected, a few minutes later, she saw him in the window on the north side of Danny’s apartment. The one in Danny’s bedroom. The man was no ordinary businessman. He’d entered Danny’s security-access apartment with ease, as if he had every right. Instinctively, Perry started the engine of her car, anticipating that Crawford would pull out soon. A few minutes later, he appeared, a small satellite phone to his ear. After ducking into the rental, he eased out of his parking space. Perry waited until he was more than a block away to tail him. This time he went straight to Aimee’s apartment. Immediately, he got out of his car and went inside the building. Perry had no doubt he searched her apartment for evidence that she’d fled with Danny. They both packed sparsely—no more than a small duffel bag each. They’d need little, and the less they took with them, the less someone would suspect they left the city. Perry wanted to confuse Crawford, just until Danny and Aimee were settled at the safe house. She knew she’d succeeded when Crawford headed toward the university. Instead of remaining in her car, Perry followed Crawford into the building in which Danny’s basement office was located. Outside the door, she heard the man ask someone where Danny was, saying they had an appointment later today. Perry recognized the voice of Danny’s teaching assistant when she said, “He and his fiancée went on some secret, romantic getaway. I don’t know anything else.” 31

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“Did he mention having an appointment later today?” “No. He didn’t have any appointments that he told me about, and he usually tells me if he does. If you’ll give me your name, I’ll—” The TA broke off abruptly, and Perry knew Crawford was leaving, heading her way. She rushed back to her car. He emerged from the building, grimacing, his phone against his ear again. Back in his car, he spoke for a few moments. Now what will you do, sneaky Mr. Crawford? What are you thinking? A moment later, his car started and he drove, to her surprise, to Perry’s house. Seeing him enter her home, after disengaging her security system a bit too easily, was almost enough to make her blow her cover. But he emerged soon afterward and proceeded on to her parents’ home. This time, it seemed he didn’t dare enter. Instead, he drove slowly past without stopping, and did the same at Aimee’s parents’ house. Perry trailed him back to his hotel after that. She knew he was stymied by Danny’s seeming disappearance. The fact that it’d been planned beforehand—that Danny hadn’t just cut and run and everything was normal—must surely have given him a confusion headache. What would he do about it? The answer would tell her just what kind of organization she was up against.

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Chapter 8 After one in the afternoon, Perry saw her partner walk around the back of her car before slipping into the passenger’s seat. Hands full with a bag of food and a briefcase of the items she’d requested, he didn’t get a chance to hand her anything, let alone speak. She was so hungry, she grabbed the bag, murmuring gratitude as she tore into the food. She didn’t even care that Mike had forgotten to leave the mayo off the mile-high turkey sandwich. Watching her, he chuckled. “Crawford still takin’ that flight out tonight?” he asked. Perry nodded with her mouth full. “No change. Did you find out anything?” Mike was still grinning to see her transformed from polite elegance to ravenous beast. Reaching over with a napkin to wipe mayo from the corner of her mouth in a brotherly fashion, he grimaced. “Nah. Nothin’ ya’d care to know.” He handed her a file, and she had to set down her food to take it. “The guy’s perfectly borin’...and that’s what’s got all my alarms goin’ off.” Perry flipped through the file, seeing instantly what he meant. “It’s a perfect cover,” she said in soft surprise. 33

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“Exactly. This badass, whoever he works for, is good. Every ‘i’ is dotted, every single ‘t’ crossed. You’re gonna have your work cut out for ya, trackin’ down this one.” With the edge off her hunger, Perry slowed down and opened the diet soda. “How are Danny and Aimee?” She’d called her mother earlier. Everything had gone according to plan in getting them to the safe house. “I’ll be seein’ ’em soon,” Mike said, stroking his bushy moustache. “I’m goin’ in ’soon as I leave here.” Perry nodded, her mind at work on Crawford’s file. “Mike, if this guy is as good as you and I think he is—” She could see her partner knew what she was getting at without finishing. “Dan’s as close to a son as I’m likely to get in this lifetime, considerin’ my luck with marriage, Per. I’d protect him and Aimee with my life. You know that.” “I do. That’s what scares me.” “Just take care of yourself. Don’t worry ’bout nothin’ else. You’re gonna need to be icy for this one—’specially goin’ it alone. Ya know, I don’t like the idea of you doin’ it on your own, without someone watchin’ your back. I don’t like it any more ’an Dan does.” “But you know I can take care of myself.” “Yeah. Know it firsthand. Makes my job a little easier.” Perry smiled. He hugged her and kissed her forehead before ducking back out of the car. While finishing her sandwich, Perry read from start to finish the file Mike had worked up on Crawford. Samuel Crawford was three-dimensional—no doubt about that. His background was fully fleshed out and everything checked out. Which made it even more strange that he’d approached both Daniel and Danny in the strangest recruitment ever. In Crawford’s seeming business of 34

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emerging technologies, Daniel and Danny would have been ideal candidates to hire for the conglomerate. Even if his business and the offer to them to ‘discover more than they ever dreamed possible’ proved legitimate, there was no information in Crawford’s file about working for a covert government organization. That made sense. There wouldn’t be any evidence about it. Nevertheless, both Perry and Mike’s instincts had been honed by training and years of experience about things like this. Despite a flawless cover, something rang not quite right about Crawford. After gathering her trash, Perry slipped out of her car just long enough to stretch her legs, toss her garbage, and use the restroom in the restaurant next to the hotel. When she returned to her vehicle, she once more confirmed that Crawford hadn’t gone anywhere. Mike had reserved her a rental car and a hotel room for her stay in Chicago. She verified them along with her flight plans. The plane took off at six-thirty. A few seconds later, she confirmed that Crawford hadn’t changed anything about his plans since she last checked. Around five p.m., Crawford came out the main door of the hotel. By that time, Perry had inserted blue contacts and made a blond wig look flawlessly convincing. She tailed him as he made a quick, final search to see if Danny or Aimee had returned to their apartments or the college, then he went on to the airport. Her gut tensed, Perry knew it was about to begin.

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Chapter 9 Keeping out of sight while waiting for the flight to be called proved to be tricky, especially when she had to show her FBI credentials for carrying her gun onto the plane. If Crawford knew as much about Danny as Perry suspected he did, he’d know without a doubt what she looked like, which was why she’d donned a low-key disguise. She knew doing any more than using the contacts and wig would call attention to herself. To be on the safe side, she spent a good portion of her time away from her flight gate. After the flight was called, she held back until Crawford got in line and joined the back of the long queue. Once there, she read a fashion magazine to nonchalantly cover her face. Knowing his reservations were in first class, she’d deliberately taken third-class seating. She couldn’t take the risk of him recognizing her. The flight went uneventfully, and she spent much of the time catching up on her sleep since he couldn’t go anywhere. Crawford stayed in his section while she stayed in hers. She stood behind him again when the de-boarding took place, and she kept a newspaper in front of her face this time as she waited. 36

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Keeping him in sight once off the plane proved impossible. Her luggage was simply a small carry-on so she wouldn’t have to lose him in order to collect bags from the carousel. Even so, she hurried through the airport, scanning it as she worked on the assumptive hope that he’d try to hail a cab. She had to show her FBI badge to explain her gun while going through the metal detector, but luckily she wasn’t held up. Outside, she breathed a sigh of relief when she found Crawford once again. He stood with a handful of other flyers, attempting to catch a cab. Perry knew she had to make sure she didn’t lose him again, the way she was sure to do once he got in a cab. She wouldn’t have time to get her rental car before he got that cab, so she’d make sure she could follow him anywhere he went in the city. With a bug, on the tip of her index finger and curled gently into her palm, she kept her head down, her face averted and walked toward him. As she moved past him, she lightly attached the bug to his jacket. She proceeded further down to hail her own cab. For a long minute afterward, she kept her back to him. As soon as she thought it was safe to look back, she glanced casually over her shoulder to see him getting in a cab. At the last moment, his gaze met hers. There was no way for her to turn away quickly or naturally enough. Their eyes held for a heartbeat. Then he was shutting the door behind him. He’d seen her. Though there’d been no indication whatsoever that he’d recognized her, Perry cursed herself anyway. 37

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Grimacing, she waited until the cab disappeared from her sight before ducking back into the airport and into a restroom. After verifying that the tracer she’d put on his coat worked, she ditched her disguise. She had to get back on his tail immediately. Twentyfive minutes later, she found her rental car in the lot and began her pursuit in earnest.

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Chapter 10 The ground was baked brown. As far as the eye could see, patches of grass and weeds struggled for life in the desert setting. Network operative Roan Emory crept up the hill and looked down on the warehouse in the middle of nowhere. He grinned, despite the discomfort of the protective uniform and helmet he wore. There you are, honey. But not for long. The Network’s alpha mission for the past year had been to bring down the Revolutionary Echelon Defenders— R.E.D—the most dangerous terrorist group in the world. Roan had been undercover for almost eight years in an effort to infiltrate and then destroy the organization from the inside out. He had a contact in R.E.D. Someone who could be fed information. But the contact had failed to lead him to the next level within the group. He hadn’t gotten anywhere near the head of the group—the notorious figure aptly named the Black Pope—because their Remote Command Centers were self-contained. Only the most senior figures within the organization had access to the Black Pope. All the information Roan had passed to his contact had panned out for the Network. Correspondingly, Roan had 39

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been able to pick up valuable information such as the location of certain key RCCs, without his contact knowing. Nevertheless, the man had gotten suspicious not long ago for no accountable reason and pulled out of the deal with Roan. With no choice, the Network had descended on R.E.D., destroying with a vengeance one RCC after another. Their current mission was multi-layered. Phase one: retrieval of a suitcase nuclear weapon R.E.D. had developed. No presence, no noise at all. Nothing except the baking sun and the relentless cacophony of locusts filling the dry air. Roan waited, predicting exactly what came an instant later. Two armed guards appeared in front of the warehouse. “Hold,” he murmured into his headset, and he felt rather than heard the teams behind him hesitate on his mark. The sentries were well-trained. Their movements were unhurried, all their senses clearly on alert. When they disappeared separately around the sides of the building again, Roan gave the command to take positions. He led the way into silent formation. Without a breath of sound, he slit the throat of the left flank guard. Doubling back, he let out a grunt of satisfaction when the right flank landed at his feet. “Sound off,” he said without emotion. His teams gave affirmed positions in ranking order. “Proceed.” Like ghosts, they entered the warehouse. Though the guards were on code red for trouble at a moments’ notice, 40

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Roan wasn’t surprised by the continued silence in the building. Nearby, his 1st position, Kirsten Ulrick, brought out her body-heat sensing unit. His instincts could track an enemy without the device. Moving deeper inside the facility, he descended to the laboratory with his teams closing the net behind him. R.E.D. scientists filled the basement. Roan only used bullets when he had to. He walked through the lab, honing in on what he’d come for based on the thinning of scientists. He smiled cruelly when he saw it behind protective glass. Scientists wore protective suits and helmets as they worked on another like the battered suitcase safe inside the containment unit. “Gotcha, baby.” Sensing movement behind him, Roan ducked, swung around and nailed two machine-gun carrying scientists with the considerable force of his foot to their heads. One shot between the eyes finished off the first. He grabbed the other by the throat, slammed his forehead into the white face, then twisted the neck until a cracking sound told him his objective had been reached. By the silence he noted behind him, in the outer labs, Roan knew his teams had subdued the scientists and guards, cowing them to a corner and using special nets to secure them there. Roan went to the containment unit. After he placed a device on the lock and keyed a command to disable the security alarms that would otherwise go off and alert R.E.D. headquarters, the unit clicked open in a minute. Removing the innocuous-looking weapon from the unit, he placed it inside the protective shell case. “Alpha team, confirm charges in place.” 41

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“Affirmative,” Ulrick responded. “We’re ready to rock and roll.” “Evacuation in sixty seconds.” From the hill overlooking the RCC, Roan looked back only long enough to confirm what happened as he pressed the detonator. The warehouse exploded, huge sections crashing back to earth in flames behind him as he followed his team to the van. Once inside, heading for the airstrip, he called in his report. “Primary target secured. Location incinerated. Phase one complete.” He grinned without humor when his superior demanded, “Already?” **** Comm Central was quiet. Roan had just gotten back from the mission in half the time expected. Flirting with and tormenting Justine Fielding, lead Communications and Systems Analyst, no longer seemed fun the way Roan once considered it. Besides, he was already restless for something to do. A beeping forced the redhead to turn back to her console and tap the keyboard. The voice of Angelo Pluzetti, the Network’s Head of Operations, came through. “I’ve got a tail. She left a little something on my jacket at the airport. Have someone come and pick up the bug, then escort her elsewhere.” Justine sat up a little straighter. “Who is it?” “FBI.” She glanced up at Roan to see his eyes narrow. Angelo gave his location in a local restaurant, saying he’d left the bug in the restroom. “Understood.” Fielding murmured. “Fielding?” Angelo came back unexpectedly. “Yes, sir?” 42

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“Don’t send Roan. I need Savage on this one.” Roan immediately perked up, signaling Fielding not to give him away. “Why’s that?” she asked carefully. “We’ve got a problem with this one. She’s the mother of the target I was trying to recruit. She may have followed me to Chicago.” Angelo was deliberately being vague, and Roan couldn’t help wondering why. Justine asked his question for him. “I’d just rather have Savage. Roan’s still out on that retrieval mission, isn’t he? They’re not due to return for two hours.” Roan leaned over Justine’s console. He put a finger to his lips. She glared at him for a second, but, as usual, she could never resist him. “Yeah,” she muttered to Angelo. “Two hours left on the mission plan by my clock.” “Good. Send Savage right away.” Angelo disconnected, and Justine looked up at him again. “You better not do it, Roan. Angelo won’t be too happy if he finds out you went.” That was exactly why he planned to go, and she knew it. The Network was the most covert organization in the world with branches all over the globe. It was funded by a major technology corporation that designed innovative equipment both for public use—computers, cell and satellite phones, software and the like—and devices to which only the Network had access. The corporation, Expanding Technology Industries—ETI—functioned exactly as a real business did and was the perfect cover for the Network. Below the ETI skyscraper in Chicago, in an underground bunker deep in the earth was the Network headquarters, inaccessible to anyone without clearance. 43

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The American government sanctioned the organization, but only the highest officials knew about it, including the President and a select committee in the White House, called Oversight. In the half-century the Network had been in existence—formed by the then-President of the United States along with Captain Tom McKee, a career officer and a decorated war hero—it’d had surprisingly few bumps. Tom McKee had been the first Network head. When McKee had been killed unexpectedly, his daughter— who’d also had a lifetime of military training—stepped in. Just a year ago, Shannon McKee had filled the role of 1st-incommand—head of the Oversight Committee, which acted as liaison in Washington, D.C. between the government and the Network. In the past few months, the Network had gone through major re-structuring after the former #2 had been found guilty of treason. Giles Jameson had been properly disposed of for his unlimited crimes not only against the organization, but also against the American people he’d been in position to serve. Now Shannon McKee filled the role of #2, though Roan had discovered her original intention had been to hand it over to Angelo ASAP. Instead, Angelo had gone from Master Strategist (4th in Command) to Head of Operations (3rd in Command). For over fifty years, the Network had run at ninety-eight percent efficiency, and McKee was determined to continue their success—even if meant she was on the floor every day, personally ensuring operations went smoothly. Why wouldn’t Angelo want him to do this? Roan asked himself. It was a routine op, and he was the best. His superiors and his enemy didn’t dispute that. When Roan had heard not long ago that R.E.D. knew he’d taken the 44

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weapon right from under their noses, he felt immense satisfaction at hearing they were screaming for his blood. “Don’t involve me,” Fielding mumbled. Roan leaned down and stroked her pointed little chin. “Don’t worry, sweetcakes. I’ll make sure he knows I diverted your call out to Savage.” Her amber eyes all but melted at his mechanical flirtation. She made no protest whatsoever when he went to get the equipment he needed, then headed out. **** At the location Angelo had called in, Roan slipped into the bathroom without going through the main portion of the restaurant. His superior was hiding out there until he swatted the pesky fly far from him. Roan found the bug where Angelo said it’d be and examined it. Within a couple of seconds he knew the device wouldn’t function for too much longer because it didn’t have the battery life to do so. Which meant that the woman was most likely close by. She probably slipped the bug on to Angelo because she knew she’d lose him at the airport otherwise. Desperation. She wasn’t far away. Most likely in a car near the restaurant. He could reach her long before she thought to back-pedal out of there. Roan wondered again why Angelo hadn’t wanted him to do this. Why had he specifically asked for Savage and warned Fielding against sending him to do it? He’d never liked secrets—they made him edgy and determined to uncover the answers. He’d find out soon enough. Always did. Angelo should have known better than to try to keep something from him. He didn’t have much of a life left, but, by God, he’d live what was left of it on his own terms. 45

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Chapter 11 The bug hadn’t been disabled, and Perry was becoming more reassured that Crawford hadn’t recognized her at the airport. Much as she wanted to check for sure that he was indeed inside the restaurant having dinner—that he hadn’t simply planted the bug and slipped away—she couldn’t risk going in to confirm it. He’d already seen her once, albeit in disguise. Though he hadn’t necessarily recognized her then, he was a professional and double exposure could change that in a heartbeat. Her back was becoming stiff and cramped in the confines of the rental car. It didn’t help that the interior smelled like old socks and BO. A soft tone from the tracker told her the Crawford was on the move again, and she picked up the device to see where he was in relation to her position. The man was obviously out on the street, moving...fast! She realized he was closer. Much closer. The signal stopped abruptly, and her skin crawled. Had the bug died? Had he destroyed it? She was losing control of the situation—time to regroup. Perry dropped the tracker, started the engine of the rental car and backed out of her parking space. Abruptly the signal returned—she nearly backed into a concrete pillar 46

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she was so surprised. She reached for the tracker, then paused— No! No—there’s something wrong here! As she sped away, knowing instinctively she’d been caught, the passenger door flew open. A body landed in the seat next to her, and the door slammed hard behind. Perry cried out, almost losing control when the car swerved dangerously close to the center line. Every bit of air in her lungs stalled as she braced for attack. She’d fully expected Crawford to pounce on her. Slanting a quick glance at her passenger, though, she recognized it wasn’t him, despite similar heights and hulklike muscles around the shoulders. Taking quick looks from the road, she saw dark hair. Ebony black hair hung to powerful shoulders. Deeply tanned skin. A cheekbone in profile that could have been carved from stone. This man didn’t face her, seemed to be speaking to the night, when he said, “That’s right, sweet thing, let’s take a little drive.” The scent of sandalwood drifted to her, a scent so familiar, her heart squeezed in agony. She had to be imagining this. This man wasn’t...couldn’t be... “Daniel?” she whispered. The similarities were certainly there, yet the differences seemed so immense. “What brings you to Chicago, honey?” the man asked. “Do I know you?” He shook his head, still looking forward. “No. You seem to think you know a friend of mine, darlin’, but you’re mistaken.” Perry slammed on the brakes, causing a riot of horns around her. She dived into the first empty parking space she saw. With the rental off, she turned to study the man beside her. 47

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He faced her slowly, and Perry felt as though time in the world had dropped to a crawl. The same widow’s peak, narrow brown eyes as guileless as a fawn’s, a mouth made for kissing... Yet not the slightest recognition filled his expression when he stared back at her without speaking, without emotion. Daniel would know her. Even after twenty-five years, he would recognize her. Wouldn’t he? Or had he lost his memory? “I think you’re lost, darlin’. But you were easy to find—worried-lookin’ dame in a rental.” This man lowered his voice, the silky smooth tone turning husky as he took her throat in his hand. Letting her know gently how very easily his huge, strong hand could crush her windpipe and break her neck, he said, “You should go back home before you find yourself in trouble. Let’s call it professional courtesy, one that I won’t extend again.” For a long instant, his gaze bore into her, and he stroked her vulnerable throat in a sensual threat that left her trembling in mingled fear and shock. Just as abruptly, his hand left her. It came back a second later, taking her hand in his, opening it, and placing something cool against her palm. Even that gesture felt inappropriately sensual. And, dear God, familiar. He spoke once more. “If you wrap these things in a couple layers of aluminum foil, the signal’s blocked. Useful to know.” Perry couldn’t take her eyes off him once he left her car and disappeared down the street behind her. An unconscious sob filled her throat. She looked down into her hand. He’d left her with the bug she put on Crawford. And a little crumpled ball of foil. 48

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At that moment, she knew she’d lost the cipher...and any chance of finding out what he wanted of her son...for good. But had she found Daniel Sands at last?

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Chapter 12 Feeling like he could easily burst out of his own skin, Roan returned to the compound by a circuitous route, making sure he wasn’t followed. He entered on the main level in the west wing near Comm Central. The main level was easily viewed from the second with the open floor plan. Shannon McKee’s office, commonly called ‘the perch’, overlooked from above, through a wall of clear glass windows that could be darkened to maintain privacy. Roan noted that the office was black. Either Angelo was there and working with #2, or he hadn’t returned from the restaurant where he’d been holed up. Three hundred feet from him, Vlad had closed the weapons stock room. Technology section was also dimly lit, but he saw Cara Ross—‘Inspector Gadget’ to those on friendly terms with her—still working. He entered just long enough to drop his equipment unceremoniously on the worktable. Then he stalked past the center of the floor, where the primary communication systems were stationed, past the handful of recruits and operatives working. Fielding was no longer there. Taking the elevator up to the perch, Roan found Angelo studying mission debriefs with Level 3 field operative Kirsten Ulrick. Before Roan went undercover as a 50

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‘sanctioned’ mole and was believed to be dead by all but the highest ranking Network operatives, he’d been the Alpha Team Leader. When he resurfaced last year, he’d been glad to see Kirsten in his old position. In some ways, he saw it as forgiveness for the guilt he’d harbored for so long. The corrupt Giles Jameson had used and mistreated Kirsten in ways Roan hadn’t anticipated. Nevertheless, he should have been there when she needed him. Up until that point, he’d always done his duty to perfection. And, following the incident when he’d failed to protect Kirsten from the diabolical Jameson, he’d known he couldn’t do it anymore, especially when she unexpectedly came back to rescue him on the mission in which his death had been simulated in preparation for his double agent role. His orders had been to kill anyone who came back. He’d never believed he deserved the reprieve that’d saved him from having to take her life. Roan wasn’t surprised by the look on Angelo’s face when he saw him and quickly dismissed Kirsten. Nodding to her as they passed each another, Roan acknowledged again that, of those below Level 2 status, Kirsten was the only one who didn’t look at him like he couldn’t be trusted. Most field operatives believed he’d willingly and willfully betrayed the Network, though he’d been acting on orders at all times during the eight years he’d been undercoverpresumed-dead. Nothing had been the same for him since he returned to active duty a year ago. The part of him thriving on danger, the part that believed he acted for the greater good and that his life mattered, had died with the cessation of the double agent mission. He strode into the room, over to the credenza. “Why is she following you?” he demanded. Angelo had dropped the disguise he wore when 51

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recruiting—a task he would hand over to the new 4th in Command soon—and his normal, close-cropped, blond hair was back, as were his green eyes and arched brows. Angelo swore. “Let me guess, you batted your lashes at Fielding and she did whatever you told her to?” “Why is Parris following you?” Roan repeated in a hard tone. He’d recognized her instantly, but he’d spent almost three decades distancing himself from any semblance of a personal life. He hadn’t reacted until he left her. He felt like his head might explode then. The only way to contain it was to confront his superior. “I don’t know. She’s spent twenty-five years looking for you, Roan.” He hadn’t realized that. He’d assumed Perry would accept his death like everyone else had. “Why now? Were you in Minneapolis?” Angelo nodded, standing up and going around to the window seat near the glass overlooking Comm. “She must have seen me and recognized me from twenty-five years ago. Did you warn her off tonight? Did she recognize you?” Roan had had a lot of cosmetic surgery to alter his appearance, but certain things couldn’t be changed. He shook his head distractedly, slouching into a chair in front of Angelo’s desk. “How could she?” “I wouldn’t underestimate her. If she doesn’t leave Chicago within a day or two...” A reluctant threat bridged Angelo’s tone. Roan didn’t like it. “She’ll leave.” “What makes you so sure? I’ve rarely seen someone as tenacious as this woman. Unfortunately, she also has the training and connections to find us if she looks hard enough. God only knows how we’ve escaped her all these years.” “She’ll leave. I’ll make sure of it.” 52

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Angelo shook his head, gaze hard. “Whoa, tiger. I don’t want you involved in this at all. In fact, I’ve been thinking we should relocate you for a while to be on the safe side. Not simply because we can’t take any chances with your past coming back to haunt you in all its beauty.” Beauty. No, hell no, he’d never forgotten Parris L’Engle’s beauty. She’d been without equal twenty-five years ago, and she’d only improved with age. His mind played with the memorized image of her startled face, smooth and deep as caramel; those black, hundred-proof eyes filled with haunted fear, uncertainty, longing. Perry, his Latin beauty. “I don’t need to be re-located,” he muttered. It wouldn’t help him anyway. He was beyond help. Angelo’s eyes narrowed with concern. “Roan, your psych evals are getting worse. You must know that. Jocelyn believes you need some downtime. More than a couple months. Maybe getting out of Chicago would change things.” “I was on down-time. It didn’t help. It just made me restless.” “What is gonna help you then?” Death. His thought was immediate. He almost laughed. The thought of death caused him joy. No other escape from this place, and the pressure. Oppression. The lack of freedom. “I’ll report when she leaves Chicago.” Angelo stood up as he did and got right in front of him. At nearly the same height and a shared competence in skills, little intimidation existed between them. “You won’t see her, Roan. That’s an order. Don’t defy this one. I won’t let it go.” Roan knew his superiors had long ago accepted that 53

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they had very little control over him. He could disappear into thin air. He could kill with the stealth and precision of an otherworldly being. Even Angelo wouldn’t be able to find him if Roan didn’t want to be found. Sooner or later, someone would take over his role as the most elusive...and most dangerous man in the world. And he looked forward to that day. He only wanted out.

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Chapter 13 It couldn’t have been Daniel. Perry’s mind insisted that it couldn’t have been. She just wanted so badly to believe it could be him, alive and whole, right next to her again. Her mind twisted the memories to serve that desire. She pushed open the door of her hotel room, feeling like she might collapse as soon as the door closed behind her. Her mind could shatter, speeding in all directions the way it was. The man in her rental hadn’t looked exactly like Roan, though the undeniable similarities existed. The bottom line was, she couldn’t get herself to believe Daniel wouldn’t recognize her, despite twenty-five years apart. She’d had training. She would have known if there’d been even a hint of recognition in his eyes. There’d been none. Which left the possibilities that he’d either lost his memory after the accident, or at some point after his disappearance. Or he’d been trained to be an emotionless, calculating machine. The man in her car tonight had been exactly that, despite his silky-smooth, sensual manner. So completely Daniel, and so completely not him. Daniel had flirted constantly with every woman around him, whether the woman was attractive or not. He loved to make women feel good. It was something Perry adored 55

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about him. Grandmothers, little girls, beautiful women— everyone loved him. Effortlessly, he made himself irresistible to all females in his path. And Daniel was just plain fun-loving. While he’d been restless almost constantly, he’d also been happy. He possessed a seemingly endless supply of energy. Frequently, after a long day at the academy that exhausted her, he still had the tenacity to draw her into his perpetual excitement about life. Daniel Sands believed in world peace, love making the world going around, being a neighbor to everyone he met and doing good to everyone, including the wicked. The man in her car tonight had believed in nothing. Nothing except the mission that brought him to her. Perry sank onto the hotel bed, carelessly dropping her carry-all. She had no idea what to do now. She’d lost Crawford. She’d be a fool not to accept that he wouldn’t risk being seen by her again, especially while she remained in Chicago. They’d be monitoring her now—whoever they were. Until she went home and became harmless to them, they’d watch her every move. Would Crawford leave her son alone if she left quietly? Putting her aching head in her hands, Perry allowed herself to think the thought she’d been trying to push away since the Daniel clone had left her car. There was a good possibility she’d never really known Daniel Sands at all. There was an even better possibility Daniel willingly gave up his life to join this secret government organization. He’d gone along with the faked car accident, surrendered his very blood to make it look authentic. He’d willingly given her up, their love and life together. He’d conceded loss on all of it for the chance to discover more than he could ‘ever have believed possible’. 56

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As hard as she rebelled in her mind against it, there were plenty of reasons Daniel would give up everything. His research had been so important to him. His thirst for knowledge was unbearable even for him. He’d spent his life meeting problems head-on—problems that had been insurmountable for nearly everyone who came before him—and solving them. If this recruiter had given him an utterly compelling, impossible problem to solve and the resources to solve it...yes, Perry could imagine that Daniel would have given up his life as he knew it to discover what had been hidden from him in that life. His confident, almost cocky mind no doubt convinced him he’d return to his original life when he finished. For the first time, he may have met his match and discovered there was no going back. And so he’d become this man. This unemotional man who’d held her throat in his powerful hand and promised he’d kill her if she didn’t do what he told her to. A man who’d once held her heart completely in his sway. She’d fallen in love with him the day they met, and more each day afterward. She’d just moved to the city with her parents, after her mother accepted the position as director of the Minneapolis FBI field office. The Sands’ had been their neighbors. Her first order of business that summer had been to get the flower garden planted. Only a few days after everything began blooming heartily, Daniel appeared among the roses. He’d stared in awe at the lush, blackish-red blossoms, and she’d asked him if he’d ever seen a black rose before. In reality, the hybrid tea rose called Ink Spots wasn’t truly black, simply a very dark red. But Perry had always called it her most beloved black rose. That day, she’d startled Daniel into turning to her, and a slow, wide grin had crossed his 57

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face when he saw how dirty she was from weeding. He’d always said that was the day he fell for her, too. She would have followed him to the ends of the earth just to have him look in her direction. To have him give her that melting smile that made her feel all the love she’d ever need in the world. Dear God, how much water had crossed the bridge these past twenty-five years! So much Daniel didn’t know. Unless… She’d never gotten the chance to tell him she was pregnant, but that didn’t mean he didn’t know. His name was listed on Danny’s birth certificate. It would require very little for him to discover the facts. The man she’d loved was gone. He’d given up the life he knew twenty-five years ago, quite possibly voluntarily. And, if that was the case, then this man—Daniel and yet not the Daniel she’d known—might be aware the organization he worked for was trying to recruit his son. This ruthless man could very well be willing to do anything to see to it personally that his son followed in his footsteps.

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Chapter 14 Perry knew the instant she entered her hotel room the next afternoon that she’d had a visitor. She’d checked into a different establishment than the one she stayed the night before. Wisely, she’d decided not to leave anything in the room after she checked in. She’d gone to the airport to return her rental car and secure a new ride. Easing the strap of her carry-all off her shoulder, she instinctively sniffed the room. A terrible longing, mixed with agonizing uncertainty, filled her chest at the hint of sandalwood lingering in the room. Had the man who threatened her last night been here recently? Perry closed her eyes, unable to control the sob that jammed itself into her throat. Daniel, did you ever love me? Those years together meant everything to me. Even twenty-five years later, the scent of your cologne tears my heart in two. Trying to swallow down her grief, Perry recalled her mother’s parting words just yesterday: ‘When will you concede that you may be looking for answers that simply don’t exist?’ If this man was Daniel Sands, where did it leave her? If he wasn’t the man she loved, she was lost. Could she let go of the fragile hope that he was alive somewhere in the world? She didn’t know either way. 59

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A deep breath gave her the courage to set her bag on the bed, retrieve the electronic wand from it, and make a thorough sweep of the room. As she expected to, she discovered a tap on her phone along with a surveillance bug seamlessly integrated into the wallpaper behind the bed. This mysterious recruiter wanted her gone. No doubt about it. Yet he seemed to realize she wouldn’t give up so easily, even with muscle behind his threat. Perry pushed the wand into the inner pocket of her jacket. Taking the elevator instead of the stairs she usually used, she went down to the hotel parking lot. After popping the trunk on her rental to mask her true intention, she knelt behind the car. Only seconds of waving the wand produced a result. She found the tracer beneath the bumper, but she didn’t slide it out of its current position. They were watching her. She knew at least one of them watched her this very minute. She felt it the way any person did, but her experience as an FBI agent confirmed it as more than vague sensation. She slipped the wand back into her pocket and rose, slamming the trunk closed again. Her mind raced as she made her way back to her room. They were watching her, listening to her and following her. It was for this very reason she’d been careful not to contact anyone at home—Danny most of all—since she arrived in Chicago. Removing the surveillance devices they put all around her would be a waste of time, she realized. They’d be replaced soon after. “You should go back home before you find yourself in trouble. Call it professional courtesy, one I won’t extend again.”

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Professional courtesy. Did this Samuel Crawford and his henchman truly work for a legitimate—albeit covert— government agency? Perry sank to the end of the bed and covered her face with her hands. Could you really hurt me, Daniel? Could you get yourself to do that? If you are Daniel…how can you possibly hurt me any more than you already have? You let me believe you were dead all this time. You ripped my world from me, ripped me from the place I loved, where I was loved so well…where I had a future. These twenty-five years, I’ve cared wholeheartedly for our son and your memory while I searched for you. Would it be any easier to bear if you were dead? No! She shook her head to clear it. They wouldn’t stop watching her until she went home. Even then, they’d wait long enough to be sure she’d let go of this bone. How could she gain the upper hand here? How could she find out who the recruiter was, what he wanted with her son—and if his henchman was the man she’d loved for most of her life? If she remained in Chicago, any attempt she made to identify and locate Crawford or Daniel would be roundly thwarted. But if she left, she’d be giving up hope altogether. She wasn’t ready to walk away, nor concede defeat. Daniel himself had always said an intelligent person always found a way—sometimes only through sheer tenacity.

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Chapter 15 Roan lifted his gaze, followed by the microbinoculars, to Perry’s hotel room window facing the parking lot. Even if she looked down, she wouldn’t see him. She’d been a dozen feet from him not long ago and hadn’t marked him. But she knows I’m here. “She knows we bugged her,” he said into his satphone. “She just made flight plans out.” Yet the Perry he’d known, knew and remembered loving, wouldn’t give up so easily. She never had. Was the flight plan legit…or a means of throwing them off her scent? “When does she leave?” Something Roan no longer recognized filled his throat. He pushed the word ‘Tonight’ past the strange barricade. “Make sure she gets on that plane, Emory,” Angelo ordered, his voice soft and deadly. As if he he’s telling me not to get involved, especially with this one. Why? “Watch her carefully. Make sure she doesn’t pull anything. She’s certainly capable of it.” An unexpected surge of pride filled Roan at Angelo’s words. Everything Parris L’Engle touched turned to gold. He’d loved watching her succeed, too. 62

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He disconnected without a word. His superior realized her tenacity as well as he did. No, Perry wouldn’t go quietly. She wouldn’t leave until she’d gnawed every scrap of meat from this bone. But a part of him wished her fire had been extinguished. She’d be safe only if she didn’t make waves, create complications. The slow passage of hours, knowing Perry was nearby—watching her—had been utter torment for him. The past was gone. So why couldn’t he get the memories out of his head now? He recalled almost too sharply the softness of her skin. How his rough cheek felt cradled against her peach-soft forehead, her silken hair, through the hours of the night. A blessed dream world with her completely enveloped in his arms. How they’d slept so tangled up with each other. Ying and yang. Male and perfect female. Devil and angel. Ahh, hell, he couldn’t deal with the shit coming down on him. His old life was dead and gone. The life he’d had with Perry had flitted through his fingers… Flitted? Far from it. It’d been stolen from them, torn away, the way the chambers of a heart would sever under a scalpel. Only death had stopped his bleeding. Daniel Sands had died twenty-five long years ago. The man Parris loved was dead. A machine had taken his place. A machine without a heart. A machine-man who didn’t give a damn about anything or anybody. The truth didn’t explain the way his breath stalled in his throat when she emerged from the hotel an hour before her flight. She dropped her bag in the backseat of her rental, then slid behind the wheel. Roan started his car. He lifted the binoculars…needing to see her face. She wore dark shades covering the exotic, 63

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ebony eyes that’d haunted him. His teeth clenched in frustration. He didn’t need to feel. He didn’t need to see her eyes or any expression there. Dammit, why is she here? Swearing under his breath, he tossed the binoculars on the seat beside him. He followed her to the airport, barely able to control the unrest he felt as he kept himself hidden from her. She didn’t bother looking beyond her newspaper in the waiting room near the gate. Only occasionally did she glance up to check the status of her flight. In that time, Roan memorized her all over again. His hunger grew until it was almost unbearable. He couldn’t be sure when she might try to ditch him, or if she truly intended to leave. Her expression remained too cool and unruffled to read. Her flight was announced on time, and she boarded the plane with the other passengers. Why did you come, darlin’? What were you looking for? Roan entered the waiting room, then and went to watch the flight load and finally take off. He couldn’t get himself to believe she’d actually gone, yet he knew she had. He should have felt relieved. But all he could think was Angelo didn’t want him to know something. What? She’d come here for a reason, and she’d gotten so damn close to him, the pads of his fingers still tingled under just the memory of her silky skin. You come here for me, Parris? But what the hell made you follow Angelo? “She’s gone,” he said softly into his satphone. “Any incidents?” “None.” 64

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And that fact bothered him to no end. Perry—with her inextinguishable fire, her ambitious drive to keep plugging on until the answers eluding everyone else came to her through sheer force of will or seduction—wouldn’t give up so easily. Did she lose her fire when she lost me? Angelo’s voice brought him back to the present: “Good. I’ll watch her progress from here.” Roan hovered, indecisive. What don’t you want me to know? To find out? He decided to simply sign off. “Roan…” Angelo started, preventing him from disconnecting. “Yeah?” “I never had a say in the decision to recruit you. Jameson made that decision. He went ahead with the plan to bring you in before I could even disagree.” Roan’s eyes narrowed, his body tight with the words. What made his superior insist he was innocent now—after so many years of allowing him to believe otherwise? “I don’t wanna see your face for two weeks, Emory. Work all your shit out and come back ready to do your job.” And Angelo was gone, only an eerie, almost inaudible hiss telling him the satellite uplink was still open. He wants me out of the alpha mission for two weeks. My mission. Roan disconnected. All that remained was Parris, flying away from him when he’d had her in his hands for a few minutes again. He’d lost her a second time. But, dammit, he’d also lost the ability to care about anything. None of this mattered. So why couldn’t he forget it? **** 65

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He drove to the house he kept well out of Network surveillance. Only because his supervisors understood just how completely he could disappear without a trace and because of his 5th in Command status did they allow him this freedom. Freedom. The word burned like a lie, the worst of deceptions, in his mind. He’d never be free. The Network would never let him go. No matter what latitude they gave him, didn’t give him, he belonged to them without a choice. They comprehended the ramifications of giving him freedom in the world, same as he did. It’d be as dangerous for them as it would for him. In the Network, life was insular and one of constant alertness. But being the most dangerous man in the world came with a price tag. He’d been paying for it for so long, he barely remembered anything else until he saw Perry’s heartbreakingly lovely face yesterday. Even if the Network willingly let him leave and cut all ties with him, if they wiped his memory of all things Network, erased his years of service, even then their enemies would see him as collateral. His presence on the outside could cripple the organization in short order. And why would they release him? He remained much more valuable to them in than out. Gratitude won no brownie points inside a cage. No, only legitimate death would set him free. **** Roan touched a button on his stereo, and the sensual Latin music that haunted him began. He found himself sitting at the baby grand he’d never played. Not once. Each time, he opened the cover, but he hadn’t been able to put 66

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his fingers on the familiar, virgin keys. They reminded him too much of… His eyes closed against the image he’d trained himself to put away in the black hole inside him. Parris, dancing into his lab, wearing that sassy, swishy little dress. No shoes. No nylons. Her legs a mile long and then some. He’d realized before long that she truly hadn’t been wearing anything except her sassy, swishy little dress… Roan’s eyes snapped open on a negligible sound beyond the house. His gun filled his hand as if it was an old friend that’d put itself there. He eased the safety off and glided to the front window. He needed only to nudge the curtains to see out into the night. His expert gaze swept the grounds in the direction the sound came from. Nothing. Without a sound, he moved from window to window, checking all sides of the house. Even when he went to the front door, opened it a crack, and eased out into the night that enfolded him lovingly, he discovered no sign of disturbance. Still, his internal alarms continued to go off. Something wasn’t right. But he found nothing. Back in the house, he closed the door behind him. Was he just antsy about Perry being so close for a heartbeat, now so far away? Roan reached for the power button on the stereo, and that was when he heard it. The familiar, honey-smooth voice brushing the sensitive hairs in his ear with its sensual timbre. “So you still listen to our song.” Roan whirled with his gun drawn. Directly beside him, Parris stood with her own gun drawn on him, her stance distinctly FBI. She lowered her weapon a fraction, but he didn’t dare. 67

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“Hello, Daniel. You look amazingly good for someone twenty-five-years dead.”

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Chapter 16 “You got on that plane,” Daniel said without a hint of emotion. He took a step closer with his gun still dead center in her face. At this moment, she couldn’t believe she hadn’t recognized him easily the previous night, that she’d ever harbored a doubt this man was Daniel Sands. She’d never feared him. Perhaps foolishly, she told herself, she had nothing to fear from him even now. “You’re not the only one who knows how to disappear into thin air.” Tracking him hadn’t been easy, but she’d been careful and she’d stayed on him like a dog on a bone. Perry suspected she’d only been able to follow him today because he’d seemed distracted. “You should have heeded the only warning I’ll ever give you, sweetheart,” he said softly. “You’ve tracked the wrong man. You won’t escape me.” She shook her head at him, refusing to give in to the distress screaming through her head, demanding answers. Answers to forever. Was forever impossible? “No, I haven’t tracked the wrong man at all. You’ve changed your hair color and style. You’re more muscular. More nights in the gym than the lab, I’d say. But I know 69

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you, Daniel. I know you like a mother knows her child’s particular cry in a sea of crying infants and knows exactly what he needs. I know you like a woman has a sense of rightness in her heart when she’s with the man she loves again.” He showed no hint of caring about anything she said or did. Caring or recalling. She understood better than ever his training had made him a robot. Yet he still had the face of a fallen angel. “What part of ‘Get lost’ don’t you get? If you’re looking for some kind of lovers’ reunion, you really are lost, darlin’. You’re in the wrong place at the wrong time for all the wrong reasons. I’m not who you’re searching for. But you’ve gotten a hell of a lot more than you bargained for. The organization I work for doesn’t like exposure. We take precautions so that never happens. On the rare occasion it does, we have…procedures.” Daniel would never hurt me. I have to believe that, or I’ll never be able to go on again. Perry matched his unconcerned face, walked directly up to him and allowed the barrel of his gun to press against her forehead. Did she imagine the split second she thought he might instinctively pull the weapon away, out of the way of harming her? She looked directly into his wrong-color-but-right-man eyes. Unbelievably, she saw the tiniest flame there. Recognition? Remembrance of love? “Are you going to kill me, Daniel?” she asked in a whisper. “Could you?” “If I have to…yes.” His answer wasn’t as indecisive as she’d wanted. He didn’t want to remember, she accepted. He’d become a machine to survive. Devastation could drown a person if 70

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they let it. She knew that best and only too well. The memories of her own were never far enough away. But she wanted to call to his mind the love they’d shared. Across space and separation, they’d loved one another timelessly. How could he forget that? “I don’t believe you,” she said with more confidence than she felt. She continued to hold his gaze, unwilling to flinch at his unfamiliar coldness. When he backed away from her, lowering his gun, she forcefully kept herself from slumping in relief. He slid the safety in place. Daniel—he’s Daniel. “I’m not who you think I am, lady,” he insisted, “much as you might want it to be different. The only reason you’re still alive right now is because you work for the FBI. You’re out of your league, out too late, and unfortunately your FBI mother knows where you are. She won’t back off any easier than you have of late. I don’t need the hassle of her coming to look for you if you disappear suddenly.” “More professional courtesy?” she asked, acid on her tongue. How dare he try to make this professional? He merely raised an eyebrow to accept her explanation before he turned away from her and strode to the other side of the room to peer out the window. “What exactly are you looking for, Agent Sands?” he asked over his shoulder. Is he baiting me? He obviously had the ways and means to have looked into her life, inside and out. “I never took my late husband’s surname, but I believe you already know that. If you had any interest at all in looking back these years, Daniel, you already know I didn’t take your brother’s last name when I married him.” 71

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Over his shoulder, he glanced at her. She wanted to scream at his icy expression. Nothing fazed him. She couldn’t bear the thought that none of what they shared and lost meant anything to him. “I asked you a question. What are you looking for?” No, this wouldn’t be a reuniting of two hearts never wholly apart. But maybe she could shake him up a little. “I’m looking for the only man who can save my son.” Daniel’s eyes narrowed. No life burned there. Does his son mean nothing to him? How could he not? “What makes you think your son’s life is in danger, Agent L’Engle?” Perry took a deep breath before stalking across the room to him so he couldn’t ignore her nearness even if he wanted to. The scent of his cologne nearly undid her. “Twenty-five years ago, a man who called himself a recruiter came to my fiancé and asked him to join a covert government organization he’d have to give his life to. The next day, my fiancé was dead in a car explosion that, to this day, makes no sense to me. His body was never recovered from that accident. This past Friday night, that same man who tried to recruit my fiancé before his death—a man who goes by the alias Samuel Crawford—came to my son and asked him to join a covert government organization he’d have to give his life to.” Silence followed her words. Perry watched him closely, but he gave her absolutely nothing. Grief slammed against her chest from the inside out. She couldn’t hold it back much longer. Her teeth clenched, she hissed, “I won’t allow my son to be taken from me. Not the way Daniel was. I can’t protect Danny forever though. I know I can’t protect him on my own for longer than a few weeks. This secret 72

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organization is capable of finding him.” Tears filled her eyes and made her gasp for the final words of her spoken fears. “They could take him from me.” Her fears and anguish came second to her rage at the unfeeling machine before her. She wanted to pummel him until he gave her some clue what he thought, what he felt, if he felt anything. Oh God, maybe I’m wrong. I must be wrong. This monster without a heart, without a conscience, can’t be my Daniel. No one could be this cold. Daniel never cared so little for me. Yet she found herself pleading with him because she’d been left no other choice. On the final thread of her control, she whispered, “Can you help me? Will you help me?” Her heart skipped a beat as she waited and prayed she’d gotten through to her Daniel at last. Despite the sudden look of weariness that entered his eyes, he broke her heart with his head shake. “No. There’s nothing I can do, Parris.”

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Chapter 17 She’d been able to catch a flight back to Minneapolis an hour after she fled the man she’d hoped was Daniel. Based solely on looks and her own heart’s response, she’d been convinced he was Daniel Sands, the man she would love for all eternity. His coldness, his unwillingness to give her anything at all—not even for her son—had changed her mind. Even if biologically he proved to be Daniel, he was no longer the lover she’d known. For that reason, she’d held herself back from telling him Danny was his son. At almost five a.m., she let herself into her house. Like a stranger, she passed through her own home. It felt cold and unwelcoming to her. In her bedroom, she dropped her carry-all, her gaze on her nightstand. Beside the glowing picture of Danny and Aimee lost in each other’s eyes, was one almost identical—of her and Daniel over twenty-five years earlier. The sob that filled her throat was so big, so forceful, she felt choked by it. Angry tears slammed into her eyes. Wild emotions filled her, and she fell to her knees. I always believed. She crawled to the photograph, took it in her hands and crushed it to her chest. 74

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Couldn’t grieve. Wouldn’t. That would be accepting it was the truth. I wouldn’t let myself accept it. Whether or not that man had been Daniel Sands, she now realized her love was dead to her. Daniel Sands was dead. She let out an agonizing wail that ended in his name, half a scream, half a prayer that none of it was true. Daniel didn’t love her. Never had. Never gave a damn about her or the child she’d borne. If he knew Danny was his son…it made no difference to him. He’d stand back and willingly allow Danny to be swallowed up and destroyed by the same organization that had turned him into an unfeeling machine. “I loved you,” she uttered, the words torn viciously from her bleeding heart. With what strength she still possessed, she threw the photograph against the opposite wall. The sound of the glass shattering stunned her with its ringing finality. She launched herself at it, murmuring, “I love you. I still love you. I’ll always love you. Even if we mean nothing to you.” She dug the photograph out of the shards, not feeling the cuts even when blood ran over the photo. She curled into a ball, holding the memory captured in living color to her mouth. Her sobs wracked her entire body, turning her nearly inside out until there was nothing left. No hope. Too much pain to feel anything other than numb acceptance. **** With a start, she woke to the first rays of sunlight streaming in through her window while birds merrily chirped and sang. How could the world remain normal while hers had tilted right off its axis? She slipped her hands out in front of her where she lay on the floor. Blood and tears had mingled to warp the 75

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photograph. Daniel’s face was unrecognizable. It was as if he’d disappeared from the memory. She cast it away from her, knowing she wouldn’t be able to bear looking at it ever again. It drifted to the carpet, white side up. Grief couldn’t stop life. She knew that. Her son needed her. She had to make plans. Protect Danny. How? Her mother had done her a personal favor by putting Danny and Aimee in protective custody, but it could only be temporary. A temporary solution to a problem that wouldn’t simply fade away. She knew her son. No way would he live his life running, hiding, cowering in fear. Like his father, he’d want to meet the danger head-on. Danny still believes in justice. I don’t know if I can ever believe in it again. Helplessness crept over her at the memory of that man…the way he’d said he couldn’t help her or Danny. Couldn’t or wouldn’t? The organization he worked for didn’t concern itself with justice. Fairness. If they wanted Danny, they’d have him one way or another. Daniel had seemed so against joining. She remembered that. How did they convince him to do all he had to become the man he was now? No. Daniel was dead. The man she’d met in Chicago merely looked like him. He stirred a familiarity deep within her, but that was all. He wasn’t who she’d naively hoped he’d be. Perry sat up, noticing how heavy and uncoordinated her body felt. Unbelievably, a wave of anguish arrested all her movement. She hung immobilized and overwhelmed by her own stupidity. I wanted that monster to hold me. God, how I wanted him to 76

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touch my cheek, cradle me in his hand the way he used to. Say my name the way only he could to give my heart wings… For the first time, she wished she hadn’t pursued it. She wished she’d accepted Daniel’s death as easily as everyone else had. Grieved and then moved on. She wouldn’t have to discover the truth, paying for it now with her soul. Unwilling to admit her own weakness to herself, she pushed to her feet and stumbled to her phone with tears spreading down her cheeks in traitorous stains. One button dialed her mother’s cell phone. “Mom, how…” “Parris, I’m glad to hear from you. Everything’s fine. You don’t sound fine, sweetheart.” She closed her eyes. “You were right,” she said over the fresh sob barricading her throat. “I was chasing ghosts.” And I found the one I was looking for. “I’m so sorry, darling.” Perry pressed her fist to her mouth, telling herself all the things she knew to be true. Tears wouldn’t help Danny. The truth about his father wouldn’t help him. The only thing that could get them through this was clear, logical thinking. Might as well wish for the moon. I guess I’ve been doing just that forever since I lost Daniel. “Sometimes I wish Lincoln was still with us…with you,” her mother murmured nostalgically. “He knew just how to support you when you needed it.” It was the last thing Perry needed to hear. She’d always loved Daniel’s brother, but never the way he’d wanted and needed her to. And he’d loved her unconditionally through it all until his untimely death. “When will I see you?” 77

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“I don’t know, Mom. I…can’t talk now.” Her mother must have recognized the urgency in her tone and allowed her to bow out abruptly despite her need to know more. “All right. Take care of yourself, sweetheart.” Take care of myself. I can do that. I’ve always done that. Her gaze fell to the shattered glass lying on the carpet, like her life. Dear God, she couldn’t clean it up. Not now. She forced herself past it, into the bathroom, where she showered. When she came out, she couldn’t let herself look at the rubble that seemed so much her own making. Although she forced herself to dress and go down to fix something to eat, her mind refused to work the way she needed it to. All it wanted to do was remember things she couldn’t bear to recall. Why had the man she’d believed to be Daniel called her Agent Sands? She well remembered Daniel’s territorial nature. It hadn’t stemmed from a lack of confidence in himself or distrust for her. His possessiveness had been loving. He’d made her feel like the most treasured, loved woman in the world. She could accept that this robot had researched her to find out why she followed Crawford. He would have discovered she married Lincoln Sands less than six months after Daniel’s...death. How could anyone understand why she’d done it? Sometimes she didn’t understand it herself, though she had no regrets. Linc proposed to her to protect her from senseless gossip that surrounded her like a horde of killer bees back then. Unbelievably, given her pregnancy, she’d also had the misfortune of men showing unwarranted and 78

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unwanted interest in her. Linc offered a marriage that would stop all that nonsense. And he’d offered to be a father to her son. She hadn’t cared about the gossip and advances. She’d wanted her child to have a father. She’d wanted that so badly. Silly maybe, but she wanted her son to have the name Sands, the way he deserved to. Her parents, Daniel and Linc’s parents, had been so eager to see the two of them pair up. Linc had been an eminent surgeon. Certainly, he had a lot to offer her. She hadn’t been able to disappoint any of them, but she’d been brutally honest with him. She couldn’t give him everything a marriage promised—not right away, maybe not ever. She’d never quite understood what possessed him to agree to a union without romantic or sexual love. Yet he’d never asked for anything other than that she let him be a part of her and Danny’s lives. Linc was so unlike Daniel. Shy, he’d been content to love her from afar even when she met the two brothers and won Linc with just a smile. In all the years she’d been married to Linc his love remained unconditional. He’d been as close to selfless as a saint. What would Daniel think if he knew she’d married his brother so soon after his death? Would he believe she’d betrayed him then or even before that time—while he was still alive? Would he believe something other than the truth? That Daniel alone would always be the man who held her heart. No one who knew her doubted that Danny had been Daniel’s son. She’d never tried to hide it from anyone. No, she’d imagined any harshness or jealousy in the machine Daniel’s tone when he’d called her “Agent Sands.” That man couldn’t mean anything to her. He couldn’t 79

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help her. Nor was he the one she’d wanted him to be. The only thing that mattered now was finding a way to save her son from his father’s devastating fate.

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Chapter 18 “What about some kind of implanted homing device? A transponder?” Perry suggested in her mother’s office at FBI headquarters. “If we have it surgically implanted in Danny, we could find him wherever they might take him. And then we could threaten to expose them to the world if they don’t give him up.” She didn’t want to see her father’s headshake. After a week of trying to think of some way to save her son, she had nothing. “They would have thought of that already, poppet,” he said gently. “We know next to nothing about this secret service. The only thing we do know is that they possess skills and technology we haven’t even dreamed of having. They’ll have considered we might do something this drastic, and they’ll be standing at the ready to remove the transponder before Danny’s relocated to their headquarters.” None of the scenarios Perry came up with had been plausible. The facts always returned to this covert organization being three steps ahead of their every move at every turn. They couldn’t win against a faceless enemy all but invisible in the world. 81

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At the moment, Danny and Aimee were insulated. They’d had no surprises at the safe house. Perry could only imagine how stir-crazy her son was in ‘captivity’. Regardless of the quiet, Perry wasn’t foolish enough to entertain the notion the recruiter had given up on drafting her son into his service. Either they searched for him now, or they waited for him to emerge again. Her mother couldn’t keep them hidden for long. Sooner or later, Danny would rejoin them and she wouldn’t be able to stop what happened next. She didn’t know how to prepare for a day when he could disappear without a trace as his father had. Her mother reached for her hand. “I think we have to accept the strong probability that the connection between this recruiter’s appearance and Daniel’s death a day later was coincidental. Daniel died in a freak accident.” Perry stared at her in disbelief. Could her mother truly believe that? She hadn’t told her parents—anyone, in fact—about her meeting with the man she’d thought was Daniel. They’d never believe her, and they’d be disappointed in her, assuming she’d seen what she wanted to see in that man. Thinking with her heart of grief instead of a clear head. “What about the same recruiter coming to Danny? There’s no way that’s mere coincidence.” Her mother shrugged, her expression oh-so-logical. Perry couldn’t help her annoyance. “Why would it be, sweetheart? Certain skills run in families. Perhaps this agency accepted Daniel couldn’t join them because of his death. Why would they believe Danny might have no interest in what they have to offer simply because his father refused?” 82

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“You think they’re just going to drop it because he said he wasn’t interested in joining?” “I guess we’ll see, won’t we? If this Crawford makes no further contact, we’ll have to assume it was all coincidence, won’t we?” Perry couldn’t get herself to swallow that any more than she had Daniel’s death. It wouldn’t play out the way her mother expected. The coincidences were simply too immense. Perry straightened. “I still think we need to keep Danny on our sensors at all times. If he’s approached, we’ll be alerted.” “There’s no harm in doing that, poppet.” She nodded at her father’s smile of encouragement. Even here, with her loved ones, a week after she’d learned a truth that overshadowed the past, present and future of her life, she felt only half alive. “Why don’t you come over for dinner tonight, Parris?” She shook her head—far too quickly, she knew. She reached over to hug and kiss both of her parents in turn. “Maybe another night. I’m tired.” After ducking into her office to tie up a few details, she drove to Danny’s office at the university. She worked quickly and efficiently as she set up her surveillance net first there, then at his and Aimee’s separate apartments and in their vehicles. As soon as they came home, she planned to tell them she’d placed the bugs in their private and business spaces. She could talk them into accepting it for her peace of mind. She’d never rest if she didn’t know they were safe. Her mind blissfully emptied once she got home. All she could think about was a glass of wine and a hot bubble bath. 83

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Ignoring the broken glass and back of the photograph on her bedroom floor, she prepared for relaxation in the candlelit bathroom. The tub filled with steaming water and honeysuckle. Sensual Latin music temporarily drove her cares from her. She closed her eyes once submerged and let the wine, music and water absorb her senses. ‘We have to accept the strong probability that the connection between this recruiter’s appearance and Daniel’s death a day later was coincidental. Daniel died in a freak accident.’ Coincidence from start to finish, her mother wanted to believe. Maybe. An amazing coincidence. Ugh, maybe they’re right. Maybe I just can’t let it go. How often did Daniel, Linc and now Danny say I’m like a dog on a bone? Maybe what I really fear is what’ll happen to me if I buy the coincidence theory like everyone else wants to. This obsession had become her life for so long, she simply didn’t know any other way. Perry closed her eyes again, telling herself to let it all go, even for just one hour. For a time, she thought she might be able to do it. But then the music coming from her bedroom stopped so abruptly, her eyes snapped open. She sat up, fumbling to set down her wine glass. The house was so quiet, she could have heard a pin drop on the carpet. She wasn’t alone.

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Chapter 19 Perry drew herself out of the water soundlessly, gathering a towel around her. Her gun was in her bedroom. If she could reach the doorway, she might be able to get it from the dresser with minimal effort. Her back to the open door, she glanced across to the dresser. Her gun had been there before, still in its sheath. The sheath, she saw, was empty—her gun had been removed. Her gaze shifted down to the carpet. The glass shards and broken frame were gone. Cleaned up. The photo had disappeared. What kind of a thief broke in and cleaned up a mess? A sudden movement drew her head up again and, in the mirror at the back of the dresser, she saw him. The man she’d thought was Daniel, sitting on the edge of her bed. He held the warped photograph in one hand, another frame in another. She recognized the photograph in the elaborate frame as the one from her wedding. To Linc. It’d been on the mantelpiece downstairs. She should have ducked back into the bathroom, locked the door, found a weapon of any kind. But she couldn’t move as she stared at him through the mirror in mute shock. His gaze lifted to hers across the room without surprise, and she turned to face him. His eyes took a 85

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leisurely tour of every last inch of her body like he had a right to do so. His cold expression filled her head with pure white fire. “How dare you?” she screeched. “How dare you come in here? Let yourself in. Touch my things.” She lunged for the frame of Linc. He let her snatch it from him without resistance. “What are you doing here?” she demanded, trying to keep her towel in place. The way he looked at her nearly undid her. She wanted to slap him. Over and over. Beside him on the bed, she saw her gun. Could she shoot him if given the opportunity? “Where else would I be, Perry?” he asked in a soft, silky voice that put her even more on edge. She couldn’t take anything else. God, how can he my Daniel? How can he not be? Her heart knew him even when she didn’t want to accept it. She imagined him coming into her home, looking at her things. Taking her wedding picture off the mantle. Cleaning up the glass. The bloody, tear-stained picture he’d had a second ago. She hadn’t seen where he put it. The bastard. The bastard felt nothing about any of it. Her legs gave out on her unexpectedly on a sob that came from the abyss of her soul. As she sank to the floor, her towel fell from around her. She didn’t notice. The room began to spin around faster and faster. His movement came as blur. He was suddenly down on the floor in front of her, holding her by the shoulders so the world slowly melded back into proper focus. “Whose son is he?” he demanded. Her gaze wavered too much still to see his expression when he asked. She heard some emotion—desperation? 86

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anger?—in his tone. She never would have expected it of the machine he’d become. Perry closed her eyes and felt her strength tilt again. But he was there. She felt his chest against her forehead. It seemed right, familiar. She rubbed herself against him deliriously. Daniel. Daniel, how can you not love me? Not feel anything for me? How could you do this to me voluntarily? His fingers digging ruthlessly into her shoulders forced the answers he sought from her. “Yours. Always yours. How can you even ask, you bastard?” She knew how. Daniel Sands was merely an echo inside this monster. Daniel Sands, as he was, had disappeared like he’d never existed. “You wouldn’t lie to me.” He didn’t ask it. She heard no question in his words. Surprised, she lifted her head, expecting to see something…some ghost of love. He revealed nothing. “I would never lie to Daniel,” she confirmed hoarsely. “Whose son does he think he is?” What lurked behind the steel in his beautiful eyes? She would have given her last breath to know. “Danny knows you’re his father. He’s always known.” Giving this man what he didn’t deserve—the gift of fatherhood to the son she’d borne him alone made her lose a little more of her already shredded sanity. Her heart seemed to be trying to beat straight out of her chest while she waited for something. Any response at all would show her that blood, not acid, still flowed through his veins. She could hear her own heartbeat between them, as loud to her ears as a cymbal clanging. She knew he heard it, too, while he stared at her, gauging whether she’d lied to him. 87

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Abruptly, his gaze left hers. He shoved himself to his feet, away from her. When he turned his back on her, she gasped at the loss. Monster… But she noticed how utterly rigid his back looked. If I didn’t know better…I’d think he can’t breathe. That he’s standing there fighting the emotions he buried. Or tried to bury. She could only watch him while the minutes passed and nothing changed. Her mind refused to function. How could it? Daniel was alive. Alive. And everything she’d ever believed had been reduced to ashes. Treacherous lies. “When did…Crawford approach your son?” he asked softly without turning. No, she wouldn’t let him do it. Separate himself from her. Their past. Their son. If he faced the truth, she’d let him be every bit as unfeeling as he must believe he needed to be. She stood, ignoring her nudity and positioned herself at his back like an unwavering witness to reality. “Our son. I told you, Crawford came last Friday night.” “What did he say?” “Almost exactly what he said to you when he tried to recruit you.” I dare you to deny it. I dare you to say again you’re not my lost Daniel. “You overheard it again?” Perry swallowed her surprise at his inadvertent confession to his identity. She knew who he was. He wouldn’t lie to her again about it. “Part of it. The tail-end. Danny told me everything later.” She took a deep breath. “Can I assume you knew nothing about it? That you’re not in on it?” 88

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Waiting for him to relieve her terror about that left her feeling exposed and uncertain. She pivoted and bent to retrieve her towel. When she straightened, she found him facing her. Watching her as she covered herself. “What makes you think I’d be in on it?” Her gaze narrowed on him. “If you’re not dead, Daniel, then there can be only one explanation for your disappearance. You went along with the faked car accident. You helped them to make your death look real. You lied to me when you said you didn’t want to join this covert organization.” His lack of expression infuriated her. She deserved something for the past twenty-five years of torment! What right did he have to withhold her restitution? “I didn’t know anything about them approaching Danny,” he said simply. Her legs felt weak at his revelation, and they went out from under her again. Surprising her, he caught her. He set her on the bed, then grabbed her robe from the post headboard post. Perry felt her gun slide on the satin sheets, coming up against her thigh. “You used your FBI connections to put him in protective custody,” he guessed, glancing away in a strangely awkward way while she slipped into her robe. She couldn’t hold the towel and put the robe on at the same time. “Do they know that?” she asked. “Yes. If they don’t know exactly where yet, they will soon enough.” “You believe they’re capable? More capable than the FBI?” “You have no idea, honey.” 89

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Perry swallowed. She hadn’t wanted to believe his organization was so powerful, but it was obvious now they were so far above the law no one could touch them. “Isn’t there anything you can do to stop this?” He shook his head. “Though I imagine you’d give ’em the fight of their life if they tried to take Danny, you can’t stop them, Perry.” When she looked into his face, he quickly shifted away, striding to the window where he turned his back on her once more. He’d come to her, she realized in the silence that followed. Why? She couldn’t say for sure, but the fact was he didn’t have to come. He could have left it the way they had in Chicago, let her go, let her believe whatever she wanted. But he hadn’t done that. He’d come here. To what end? For what purpose? Did he feel anything about the past…future…stolen from them and their child? Perry knew she had to ask him the same question she’d asked in Chicago. She had to risk hearing his same devastating answer. She had every right to ask it. She could kill him if he didn’t give her what she wanted. At this moment, she didn’t care if she brought his entire organization down on her. It might be the only way to save her son. Her hand came down on her gun, but she hesitated to pick it up. Rising from the bed, she tucked her robe around her protectively. She put her hand on his arm when she stood beside him. She felt the tension running through him like a carefully contained live wire. With it came awareness of the instincts he’d honed in this secret place. He’d become a master at learning not to react emotionally—to anything or anyone. Correspondingly, no one and nothing touched him. This way had become his life now. 90

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“Will you help me save our son?” she asked again. He glanced down at her hand still on his arm, clutching it pleadingly. His gaze rose to meet hers. Still the robot, he shook his head. But then he said, “It’s not gonna be easy.” Something… “Will you try?” she persisted. Anything… “I’ll do what’s in my power to help him, Parris.” He’d given her hope. Manna from heaven. But somehow she knew even that wouldn’t satisfy her for long.

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Chapter 20 Everything in his power might not be enough to save his son from what he’d easily describe as a fate worse than death. Not that Roan had always felt that way during his time in the Network. The years between the first few and the last nine…he’d believed in his purpose. Now little remained apart from a black hole without purpose. Roan’s first instincts after leaving Perry the night before had been to go to Angelo and demand they stop. Stay away from his son. It was the least they owed him for the hell they’d given him in exchange for a life. The perfect life he’d shared with Perry. The life that would have included a child…children. His hands tightened on the aircraft’s controls. The memory of Perry’s words last night returned to him. She believed he’d voluntarily given his life to join the Network. God in heaven, nothing could be less accurate. He’d never had a choice about it. When Angelo came to ask him to join, it’d merely been a formality before the inevitable. If he’d accepted then or shortly afterward, he would have spent his life believing he had a choice about the whole thing. He would have served without bitterness. Now he knew better. He’d never had the option of refusing. Once they decided they could use his multitude of 92

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skills, everything had been arranged without his approval. They’d made sure Parris was out of contact that day so he couldn’t verify with her or anyone else who knew them that the work-related bullet she’d supposedly taken wasn’t real. By the time he discovered the truth, it’d been too late for him. The wheels were in motion. Originally, they may have planned to use him and his ground-breaking developments in the human immune system. But his unparalleled skills as an operative had changed all that. They’d taken his work and given it to their own microbiologists. In him, they’d developed a manmachine they came to fear they might never replace. Then they’d learned about his son, and his replacement had become clear. They figured they could turn Danny into another man-machine. He’d awoken in Network Medical, pain in his back from the implanted transplant he’d only learned of years later. His questions about Parris went unanswered as he began training. The only means of fighting their ruthless decision to rip his life in two had been for him to rebel at every turn. He’d spent his first few years making their lives hell, foolishly hoping they’d regret what they did to him. He figured death would be better. Once they got sick enough of him, they’d either let him go or put a bullet in his brain for wasting their time. He’d been willing to risk death…until Giles Jameson came to him privately and gave him the only incentive possible to make him work with them instead of against them. He’d revealed that Parris was indeed alive—and well. She’d married his brother only a few months after his death, with the dirt on his grave barely settled. The two of them had a child, a son, together. No one cried over him. 93

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Hearing of Linc’s betrayal hadn’t fazed him much— he’d always known of his brother’s borderline obsession with Perry. That he, Roan...Daniel…meant so little to Perry had filled him with a rage that made him into an unstoppable machine. He had an opportunity to make something of his life…or of his death, as it were. He could serve his country and be the best operative the Network had ever seen. No one could equal him. No other way to deal with his pain. Did it make a difference that Perry’s son was his, not Linc’s, the way Jameson implied all those years ago? Roan wasn’t sure. He couldn’t get past the fact that Perry had given herself to another man—his own brother—so soon after him. Why would she make sure Danny knew he wasn’t Linc’s son? That didn’t make sense either. Right now, he couldn’t let it matter. His son was in danger of the same fate Roan never had a chance against. Going to Angelo for help would be a mistake. Roan knew Angelo hadn’t been involved in the decision to involuntarily recruit him. Nevertheless, only in hindsight had Angelo come to feel Roan needed to know of his innocence in the matter of his recruitment. Angelo wanted to make Roan believe he could come to him if he found out they were now trying to recruit his son. Roan couldn’t trust Angelo, who’d always fought for him. No, Roan couldn’t escape the changes his recent, long-term underground mission had wrought in his life in the Network. He had no enemies, nor did he have any allies. The only safety Parris had was in him. The final phase of the mission that’d taken place a year ago revealed to his fellow Network operatives that he’d been a double agent from the start. He’d been working on 94

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orders from #1 and a select group of Level 1 operatives. Somehow, they knew Jameson would approach Roan about bringing the Network down—first disabling it, then destroying it. Jameson’s grudge—and trump card in getting Roan to agree to his scheme—had been that the two of them had been inducted into service without their consent beyond ‘Join or die’. Jameson led Roan to believe that Angelo wanted him and that he’d had nothing to do with the decision to bring him in against his will. Roan played both sides for the Network in those years—the longest of his life. The long-term mission had been a rousing success. Jameson had been caught in treason, disabled, and destroyed. Roan had brought down the Terranzo mob ring single-handedly, and he’d given himself a way inside the largest, most deadly terrorist group in the world. Each time, they seemed to expect him to take them apart a piece at a time. Regardless of his loyalty to the Network from beginning to end, attitudes about him had changed. No one trusted him. His own team members dreaded every mission he went out on with them. They expected him to turn on them and reveal his true nature. For that reason, Roan had refused when the Oversight Committee offered him Angelo’s former position as Master Strategist—4th in Command in Network hierarchy—as a reward for his service to them. Besides, the only thing that resurrected him temporarily these days was physical action. He’d lose even that if he let himself be relegated to what was essentially a behind-the-scenes job. He no longer doubted he was merely a drone to them. Never had he been more aware of that. His freedom was a joke. Amazingly, he’d been given more freedom than any other operative in Network history. Still, he amounted to 95

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no more than a machine they programmed at will. And now they wanted his son. Roan prepared his private plane for an almost-silent glide landing in the clearing behind the woods of Parris’ property. He told himself dozens of times, told Parris herself last night, that it was dangerous for them to meet beyond the dead drops he’d leave in her garden if he discovered anything about the situation. But still he slipped the STOL—short take-off and landing—aircraft in, and its specially-designed undercarriage soaked up the bumps in the rough ground as he slowed the machine and turned it, ready for a rapid take-off. He sat quietly in the Pilatus PC-6 for a moment with the door open, listening for any indication his arrival had aroused interest. Nothing. It would be a noisy departure, of course, but he’d be long gone before anyone could be on the scene. Darkness surrounded him as he glided through the woods like a shadow. Late as it was, he didn’t want to admit to himself how much he needed to see her again. No lights shone from the house Perry had lived in as a wife to his brother. Linc’s untimely but not unexpected death had been caused by a heart attack resulting from lifelong weight problems. Roan paused in the garden, letting his fingers trail over the black roses Perry grew. She’d always had a magical way of coaxing flowers to bloom heartily. These were the most beautiful he’d seen. Glancing around, he saw the peaceful night held the drowsing neighborhood in its sway. He disabled her security system in seconds and entered through the French doors leading into the dining room. The lingering scent of honeysuckle filled his nostrils. A slight movement from the cozy living room alcove made him realize she’d fallen asleep on her couch. All 96

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around her were open photo albums. In the soft glow of the nightlight on the stairs, Roan let himself look at the memories he’d buried of the two of them. Daniel and Parris. Parris and Daniel. Meant to be... After only a moment, he couldn’t bear anymore of the past. He picked up an album with pictures of Danny as a baby, then as a toddler, a teenager and finally a young man. All the years Roan missed with his son, years his own brother had taken for him. From him. Years stolen from Daniel and Parris. He set the photos aside after removing a single one of Danny—a recent one, he guessed—from the clear sheath. He put it in his pocket, then glanced back at Parris. In the shadows, her face looked utterly vulnerable. More beautiful than I let myself remember, he conceded. The present felt too far away and he moved to sit on the banded mahogany coffee table. Don’t feel anything. You didn’t come here to get anything back. Her hair was coming loose from the knot she wore it in for the office. Was it still long enough to flow down her back when she took it down at night? Roan slipped off the table to the carpet. Her thick lashes covered the dark circles she’d had under her eyes last night. Roan didn’t know it but she hadn’t slept much…in twenty-five years. Angelo inadvertently revealed recently that Parris had never stopped searching for him. She’d never accepted the legitimacy the accident the Network planned down to the smallest detail. They wouldn’t have left an iota of evidence for her to follow. What made her believe it wasn’t real? Hope? Or dread of accepting a life without him? 97

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He reminded himself that she’d married his brother. Without conscious deliberation before the fact, he lifted his hand and traced the overgenerous curves of her mouth. Perry’s glorious lips…hell, a man could get lost in them. He had. Every damn time. Though he kept his touch light as butterfly wings, her eyelashes fluttered. He backed up to sit on the table again. She woke with an expression of alarm. Struggling to sit up under the mountain of photo albums on top of her, her hair fell from the knot almost completely. “Is something happening?” she demanded, sleep making her voice husky. “Only last night you said we couldn’t communicate, expect by dead drops.” One by one, she closed the photo albums and set them on the floor before sitting up fully. Now that she was awake, he couldn’t look at her anymore without…hell, without wanting he didn’t know what. He shook his head, standing but not moving away. Her head lifted with his rise, and he saw the vulnerability in her ebony eyes. She wanted him to speak, tell her why he was here, why he broke into her house again. Why was he here? Looking at her, he could get confused about what he could and couldn’t have. He wanted answers about her involvement with his brother. Knowing would be dangerous, but he couldn’t walk away. Not now. Right now, he wouldn’t think about later. “Why did you marry him?” he demanded. She swallowed. He expected her to look away, to feel shame or something else. But she made no effort to avert her face. “It was the proper thing to do at the time. My parents were afraid I would grieve for you forever. Your parents wanted it, too. I didn’t want anyone to worry about 98

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me anymore.” “Is that all?” Sure, he could buy that Perry needed her parents’ approval like some people needed love. She’d wanted to be as independent and confident on her own as they were. “Danny needed a father, one who would love him almost as much as his real one would have.” She rose from the sofa, scarcely an inch from him, and his own unidentified needs immobilized him. “I wanted Danny to have your name, Daniel. Maybe that’s oldfashioned, but I did. He deserved it.” “You loved him,” he accused. “If you mean your brother, everyone loved Linc. Who couldn’t? He was completely unselfish. He loved you, too, Daniel. Your brother never fully got over your death.” Roan sneered. “He loved you. He would’ve taken any excuse to have you. My death was convenient.” Her cheeks grew pink when she shook her head at him. “You’re not being fair. Lincoln was a good man. He stood in for you. He never asked for anything for himself in all the years we were together. You have no reason to believe anything but that he did what he did out of love for you.” Something he barely recognized as shame nudged at him. He might have looked away if he hadn’t noticed how ragged her breathing had become. The pink in her cheeks grew more vivid. No way could he stop himself from reaching out, behind her head, to remove the clip barely doing the job of holding her hair up. With one hand, he tossed the clip. The other caught the heavy waves that cascaded down her back. He almost didn’t hear her halfgasp, half-moan. His only concern was to feel her silken tresses in his hands again. Closing his eyes, he willed away the alarm going off 99

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inside him, warning him that he was going too far. Not feeling… It was how he’d existed all these years in a place where self ceased to exist or even matter. He’d welcomed his training, training that turned him into his apt nickname ‘The Machine’. Better not to feel. Better not to take anything inside when you couldn’t change your circumstances. Better to learn to control everything so nothing could control you. “Daniel,” she whispered, leaning toward him—both tentatively and instinctively, he knew. Her cheek touched his chest, and he realized her face was wet with her tears again, like last night. Like each time since he’d come here in the past. It’d never been easy for her to reveal her pain until she could be alone. His death had taught her control, too. She’d learned the same vicious lessons he had. Something inside his chest stirred, threatening to break free. He’d held it back for so long, it’d reached tsunami proportions. The anger rose to the surface with such force, he knew he had to stop this before he couldn’t stop anything. The Network had taken it all from him. He could have shared his life with Parris and their children if they hadn’t selfishly robbed them blind. Her hands on his chest were unsure at first. But as she allowed herself her grief, her long, elegant fingers twined into his shirt harshly. Roan clutched her hair in his hands tighter—never enough to hurt her. He couldn’t hold her the way he knew she wanted him to so damn bad. This couldn’t be anything except another loss. He might be able to save their son, yet he could never save himself. He’d already been a witness to his own end.

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Chapter 21 Exhaustion, more emotional than physical, seemed to hit Perry as soon as she left work Monday evening. She pushed the button to unlock the doors of her car and slid in a moment later, tossing her purse and briefcase on the seat beside her. She didn’t have time for a nap or even a quick shower to wash away the toils of the day. Starting the car and pulling out into traffic, she listed in her mind the ingredients she’d need for— A shape emerged behind her, capturing all her attention. She let out a half-scream, her arms lifting instinctively to protect herself as a massive hand reached from the backseat to grasp the floundering steering wheel. “Daniel, how did you…” She could swear she hadn’t seen him in the backseat before she got in. “What are you doing here?” Her heart continuing to race, she took the wheel firmly again. He eased back. His expression in the rearview mirror was overcast but otherwise calm. He’s insisted on coming to me in person again. But he said meeting was dangerous... What possessed him to keep doing it rather than leaving her concealed messages in her garden? Yet a part of her couldn’t deny how desperately she longed for even a 101

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glimpse of him. “They were planning to relocate me to Germany. Next month.” “Why would they do that?” “So I’d never know Danny had been recruited. They would’ve said it was because of my dismal psych evals. I’m restless, and they know it. I never would’ve suspected the real reason, even if I’d somehow found out about his death. Like you know, they can easily make any death look legit.” Parris was appalled. Daniel was talking as though her son’s recruitment was a matter of course—a forgone conclusion—the Network would simply take him. And he was coming out of protective custody in a few hours. Did they know that? And they clearly realized Daniel was an obstacle to their recruitment of his son. “What can we do, Daniel?” “Roan.” “What?” “That’s my name now.” His beautiful mouth twisted into a line of bitterness. “Roan Emory, the most dangerous man in the world.” Perry swallowed the lump in her throat at his soft words. “Is that who you are?” she asked. The lover-not-afighter she’d lived for had become this machine. They’d made him into something he never wanted to be. “Check your databases, darlin’. Wherever you find a criminal who threatened national security and you couldn’t touch him… I’m the one who took him out. And then I disappeared without a trace.” “Are you one of the good guys then?” He snorted a laugh. “Depends on your definition of good.” Daniel had been the most highly principled, strong102

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minded man she’d ever known. Had he been brainwashed to perform without question and on call? Perry pulled into a supermarket parking lot, and Roan was immediately rigid. “Why are we here?” “I tried to leverage more time for Danny in protective custody, but I couldn’t persuade my mother. Danny and Aimee are coming home tonight. I’m cooking dinner for them. They’ll be home at seven.” “Aimee?” “Danny’s girlfriend since they were fourteen.” He couldn’t, and didn’t, miss the significance when he said, “Fourteen?” The same age they’d been when they fell in love, no turning back. “You’ll love her.” “I won’t be meeting her, Parris.” “You won’t come?” “No. Go shop.” Perry reluctantly went into the supermarket, certain that when she emerged twenty minutes later, no doubt with three full bags, he’d be gone. Instead, he’d moved to the front seat and put on a pair of dark shades that made her long for the unfamiliar coldness of his machine eyes. She got back on the road again without a word, unbelievably aware of how much smaller her luxury car seemed with him in it beside her. His shoulders were so broad, they touched hers across the gap between the seats. “Is there any way you can find out what they’re planning?” she asked. She needed to keep her eyes on the road, not on the mile-long expanse of muscular leg and panther-lean stomach within her barely-controlled reach. “I’m on leave. From the outside, I haven’t detected any 103

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activity. Anything discussed would’ve been in closed conferences with Oversight.” “I would love to know more about this organization.” He chuckled cruelly. “You and everyone else.” He wasn’t going to tell her anything. She could hear that in his tone. Even now, with their son’s freedom in jeopardy, he remained loyal to the would-be kidnappers. “I’m in the FBI. My mother is the director of the Minnesota field office. I find it hard to believe we don’t know anything about your existence, especially if the U.S. government sanctions your activities. I’m sure we could help each other without compromising your security.” “Our security is our anonymity,” he replied. “And we help you whether you know it or not. All those times an unexpected lead emerges or information just seems to fall into your lap, we dropped it. And you help us when we need it. There’s no reason the FBI needs to know exactly where information comes from, or who it’s going out to if the source mediator is legit.” His answer didn’t satisfy her one iota. He knew it, damn him, and she could see he felt absolutely no urge to change the situation. **** She’d frowned all the way home, and Roan accepted she desperately wanted to believe that any organization going to the lengths the Network had to draft him into service—and which was making plans to do the same with their son—had to be evil. Evil wasn’t an area the Network dealt with. Yeah, occasionally innocents got hurt, crimes—legal, moral or a mix of the two—were committed in pursuit of justice. The fact remained, the Network was above the law as most people understood it. But daily operations were subject to 104

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multiple layers of checks that, in theory, kept everyone accountable. Parris drove the car into her garage, and Roan knew he should leave—but he didn’t. She closed the garage door, dropped the controller on the dash. He took the grocery bags she held out to him when they got out of her car. She offered him a soft “Thanks” that dislodged something inside him. How often had Linc and Perry done these domestic chores together…the way he’d been meant to with her? “I need to change before I start dinner,” she said. He didn’t get a chance to react. She disappeared up the stairs too fast. Roan set the bags on the kitchen counter. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, he didn’t know what to do with himself Should leave… But he couldn’t get himself to do that for anything. Each time he saw Perry, he realized it wasn’t enough. He could spend a torturous lifetime watching her from afar. That alone would satisfy his empty soul. He heard her light footsteps on the stairs and looked up to see her in one of the spaghetti-strapped, slinky dresses he’d always loved on her. The dress she wore now followed her curves just well enough to hint at the perfection beneath. She came to him, her eyes beguiling, honest. More than he could take. “Will you stay, Daniel…Roan?” she asked, stopping directly in front of him. “I’d like you to stay for dinner.” Meet my own son. Her request killed him. He couldn’t give her an explanation for why he could never let himself be in that situation. Willing her to accept it, he only shook his head. 105

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Chapter 22 “I’m going back tonight. You might not hear from me for a while. I’ll be monitoring the situation from my end.” His all-business attitude made her concede her desires were impossible. Old dreams she couldn’t recapture. “If they make a move, I’ll know it.” “What if they try to transfer you?” she asked. “I can see you and Danny here regardless of where I am.” Maybe so, but would he arrive quickly enough to make a difference when trouble came knocking? “What then, Roan?” The name didn’t roll easily off her tongue, yet she used it to get his attention. “Will you let me know what’s happening?” “I told you before—I’d do all I can, but I have to be careful, Perry. If they suspect me, I make myself powerless. My communication between us after tonight will be dead drops. Check your garden. I’ll only plant something when it’s crucial.” “Danny’s my son, too,” she insisted, taking a dangerous step closer to him. The sandalwood cologne he wore beckoned her to take another. I don’t dare... Oh, I do dare to get closer! “I won’t stand by and let these people you work for 107

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take his life away. He and Aimee plan to marry next year.” She’d fight tooth and nail to see they achieved the dream she and Daniel lost. If things had gone differently for her and her man, they might have married sooner than the next year they planned when she found out she was pregnant. Roan’s gaze met her tear-filled one, and Perry nearly gasped at what she saw there. For the first time since he’d let her believe the truth of who he was, she felt she knew his thoughts. She sensed he wanted to touch her. Never before had he needed an excuse. Back then, he seemed unable to be in the same room with her without touching her. God, it was seared into her mind how she’d been the same with him. Perry threw caution to the wind and took the last two steps to him. Cradling one side of his face in her hand, she couldn’t be unaffected by the rigidness of his body. It matched all the other times he’d been in her home recently. The last time, when he’d taken her hair down. She’d wanted so badly for him to hold her again. To tell her the last twenty-five years were just some terrible nightmare she’d finally woken from. That none of it was real and not a day had gone by that they hadn’t been together since she closed her eyes. Last night, she would have believed anything he told her. “Thank you for doing this. For getting involved. I don’t know why, but I’ll never forget it.” His sage green eyes narrowed on her. “You don’t know why?” “What I mean is, I honestly don’t know why you would help us if you don’t have any intention of ever meeting your own son.” He averted his face from hers, yet made no effort to 108

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remove her hand. “My life isn’t my own, Parris. There’s nothing I can do about that. There never was anything I could do about it. They drafted me, and it was end of story for Daniel Sands. I’m Roan Emory now, and I’m their machine. Their monster.” He turned back to her. “But I won’t let them take Danny away from you.” She believed him. How could she believe anything else in the face of his unyielding determination? “But you’ll let them take him away from you?” she asked softly, ready to hold him if he attempted to flee. “I can’t change what has to be. What can never be.” “Your car accident was faked,” she insisted. He nodded only once. “I got a call. I thought it was from your superiors. Made me think it was official. Said you’d been shot in the line of duty. They told me where it took place and that the ambulance was en route to you. I went there. But only one car was there. No accident. When I got out, a guy I didn’t know at the time got out of the other car. It was the 2nd in Command of the organization. When I demanded to know where you were, he injected me with something. Told me I’d never see you again while I was going down. I woke up in Medical. Must’ve been a week or two later. They showed me pictures of my own funeral. Told me to forget the past. My life as Daniel Sands was officially over. Someday I’d be able to understand the sacrifice I had to make ‘for the greater good’. To do my part in order to achieve justice for all. It would’ve taken death to get me to leave you if they hadn’t taken me by force, Perry.” “Oh, God. I…I suspected I was pregnant then. Getting an appointment with my doctor wasn’t easy—do you remember that? So I took it that afternoon when the receptionist called to say they had a cancellation and I could 109

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come in right away if I wanted it. “I never believed you were dead, Daniel—even when I saw the car and the blood at the scene proved to be yours.” “Planted. But maybe you should’ve believed it. Would’ve been easier on you.” “Why?” she asked in horror. “Because I am dead, darlin’. Everything between us is residual memories of the past. I’m more machine than man now. That’s all I’ll ever be until some blessed stray bullet comes and rescues me from the life I’ve been handed.” She couldn’t bear his lack of emotion. His words proved the stark reality of his existence, yet his expression was uncaring. Terror she felt at knowing he’d never agreed to join filled her. He’d merely done what he had to do to survive. “Please…don’t say that. Don’t ever say that again,” she begged, reaching for him. The look on his face—so cold, so unmoving—made her desperate to change what he considered unchangeable. She kissed him, kissed his hard, unyielding mouth. Stunned awareness filled his expression. She knew she’d gone too far, but a part of her hoped he wouldn’t push her away. That he’d take it further, where it was meant to go. That he wouldn’t flee from her and his own reawakening emotions. She should have known she’d never get what she needed. **** Roan didn’t recall walking back to his aircraft with every intention of flying the hell away and handling the situation without ever seeing Parris L’Engle again. He didn’t recall breaking the stem of one of her beloved black roses. But he realized he was holding one when he arrived 110

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at the machine. Sinking to his knees, he focused on the beauty in his hands. Parris, in my hands. He pressed the rose to his mouth and instantly the memory of her beloved lips against his flooded him until he groaned from the weight, the agony. He couldn’t take any more. Screams of frustration tore from his throat. He opened his hand and the crushed rose petals rained down to the ground before him. The thorns left had embedded in his palm and fingers, but, as he’d expected, no blood flowed. A kiss wouldn’t resurrect him. He couldn’t let it. God in heaven, he couldn’t let it. He didn’t want to die again. Never again did he want to go through the slow torment of facing a life without Perry, knowing he’d never see her again, believing she didn’t love him, she’d betrayed him. He couldn’t face that his life had all been a lie, start to finish. He had nothing else to believe now.

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Chapter 23 When Aimee said she wanted to call her parents, Perry gathered the empty dessert plates and coffee tray, suggesting she avail herself of the den’s privacy. Her own solitude in the kitchen brought forth the tears she’d held back all evening, since Daniel…Roan…pushed her away and walked out with such an air of finality. Would she ever see him again? He wasn’t the man she’d loved—he possessed none of the enthusiasm for life Daniel Sands had exuded in spades. Yet this tortured warrior remained the essence of him. What he would have been with love, freedom, the opportunity to live his life! She found it harder and harder not to reach out to him each time they were together. What she wouldn’t give to break through and have him back for even five minutes, to discover whether he remained capable of feeling anything for her. Why was he prepared to help Danny if he felt nothing? A sound behind her made her quickly wipe her eyes. She knew it was Danny. No, she couldn’t give him any reason to worry about her. She started talking rapidly about anything unimportant that came into her head. While her son loaded the dishwasher, she rambled like she was detached from the fact that she was never meant for 112

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true love, that she’d never be happy or fulfilled in love again. “You never told me what happened when you followed that recruiter,” Danny said, halting her own senseless monologue with his question. “I know what you told Aimee is only partially the truth.” Perry closed her eyes, leaning on the counter she’d cleaned more than once in the last five minutes. She’d told her son and Aimee only what her mother seemed to want to cling to—it’d all been a coincidence. But Danny knew her too well to believe she’d accepted that unlikely assessment. Since her son and his fiancée arrived for dinner, Perry desperately wanted to tell him she’d found his father. To share that conflicted joy with him. Daniel was alive! All these years, Daniel Sands had been alive! The reality of the situation had cautioned her not to reveal anything. Roan Emory could never have a normal, picket-fence life. He’d said as much himself. Whatever this organization he worked for was, it wanted everything. It took all from those it ‘employed’. Roan couldn’t leave the life it required of him behind for any reason—especially not to return to his past. He couldn’t have a future, a family, love… Perry swallowed the lump in her throat. “I lost him, honey,” she said, not entirely a lie. “He disappeared. Samuel Crawford is an alias he uses, and it’s the perfect cover. There’s no way to find him.” “But he can find me wherever I go,” Danny said with a grimace. She glanced at him, compelled to offer him the comfort she didn’t feel herself. “Your grandmother believes he accepted your refusal to join. He hasn’t attempted to make contact with you since that night.” 113

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Only she knew why he hadn’t. But she had no doubt that when the cipher made a move for Danny, it would be unexpected to all. That much Perry understood of the organization Roan worked for. Preparing for that wouldn’t be easy. She knew she couldn’t do it without Roan’s help. “What do you believe, Mom?” Perry realized as she looked at her son why Roan had refused to stay tonight. There was no possibility that Danny wouldn’t recognize him on sight, recognize him as his longlost father, one he’d never even met. Danny was the very picture of his father in his younger days. “I don’t know,” she said, giving a defeated headshake. She turned back to the gleaming counter. “I don’t know, Danny. I’ll watch over you as much as I can. I won’t relax.” “I don’t like the idea of being watched, listened in on in my apartment. Aimee’s apartment. Especially by you, Mom. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but I’m a grown man.” He’d expressed his distaste for it earlier when she told him all the places she’d bugged for security, yet he hadn’t outright refused to keep her measures in place. For now, he’d accept them, but she knew he wouldn’t for long. “Then we have to consider a homing device, Danny. If it’s not surgically implanted, they’d get rid of it in seconds. With it implanted, it gives us time to find you before they remove it. Outside of that…all we can do is wait.” After shutting the dishwasher, he shook his head at her, taking a step closer. She wanted to wrap her arms around him and tell him no one would ever hurt him as long as she had breath in her body. But he wasn’t a child anymore. She had noticed. Sometimes she just didn’t want to face that he could usually take care of himself. “This doesn’t sound like you, Mom. You worry all the time, but you don’t wait around idly for bad news.” 114

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Danny’s deep brown eyes reminded her of Daniel’s. Of Roan’s green eyes that she knew couldn’t be real. “Danny, do you believe I…that I’ve spent too much time on the past?” she asked softly, already knowing the answer. True satisfaction had ceased to be possible for her since Daniel’s disappearance. Even the years with Linc…she knew her obsession with the past had wounded him deeply. He’d never begrudged her of it though. He just gave his unfulfilled needs over to food and provided her with the support she needed. “When a person loses someone they love as much as you loved Dad and there are no rational, logical explanations for the loss, it’s gotta be hard to heal.” “But if the man I loved has been gone for twenty-five years without evidence that he didn’t die…shouldn’t I let it go?” Danny put his hand at the back of her neck, squeezing gently. “I understand why you haven’t, Mom. I never met him, but you and Linc told me so much about him. Sometimes I think I’d do anything to find him, to know him. To see him and have him…see me. Maybe even be proud of what I’ve accomplished.” With a moan, she wrapped her arms around her son, forcefully thrusting down the instinct to tell him the truth. “While Aimee and I were in protective custody I thought a lot about what that recruiter offered. Whether there might be a way for me to meet Dad if I said yes—” Perry pulled back in shock, surprised at the reassuring smile Danny wore. “I’d never do it, of course. I couldn’t leave Aimee or you. There’s no way. I just wondered.” Of course he’d wondered. But she couldn’t imagine him doing anything impulsive or reckless to fulfill his 115

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curiosity. She hugged him again, vowing to never lose him.

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Chapter 24 Living in a picturesque neighborhood just outside the city had its advantages. Instead of traffic and sirens at midnight, she heard crickets and the wind’s breath. Tonight, both increased her inability to sleep. Increased her loneliness. All these years, she’d never truly been alone, yet loneliness had been her constant companion. What had Roan’s life been like? she wondered. Had he been lonely, too? Or had he found love or simply intimate companionship with someone else? The question cut her to ribbons even as she acknowledged that she couldn’t bear the thought of him being alone and unloved. Conceding that she’d experience no rest this night, she checked her command post to verify everything was safe at Danny’s apartment. She heard Aimee’s and Danny’s distinctive voices whispering together the way only lovers did, and she quickly moved away. She hated invading their privacy. At this moment, knowing they were safe together satisfied her. At the French doors, she turned on the garden lights before stepping out into the fragrant night. Dressed in her nightgown—no robe or slippers—she walked the path, stopping to smell some of the flowers she’d cultivated with her own two hands. 117

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Our lives would have been so different if we hadn’t had it stolen from us. We would have married sooner than we intended once Daniel found out about my pregnancy. In under five years, we would have had the three children we’d decided on. She couldn’t help realizing that Linc might have gotten the chance to fall in love with a woman willing to give him all Perry wanted to instinctively but couldn’t in word or deed. He might even be alive now. Daniel would have won a Nobel Prize, she felt sure, for research work on cures for many deadly diseases… The only danger to their happiness might have been her job, which carried a degree of risk that she’d accepted and even thrived on, just as had her own parents before her. Daniel hadn’t liked the danger, but he understood how her work fulfilled her. This selfish organization had taken everything away from them and, for that reason, she hated it. She wanted to bring it down. Did Roan hate the place where he worked? Did he want to punish his superiors for taking his life so thoughtlessly? Was there no way he could leave? Twenty five years was enough! Yet she knew he felt unwilling or unable to change his own life. A half hour later, Perry returned to her bedroom. With a sigh, she sat at her make-up table. Her face staring back at her looked lined and strange. I’m not who I was. Can I ever go back, even if I want to? If the organization lets Daniel go…is he capable of love anymore? Perry remembered his reaction when she kissed him that afternoon. He couldn’t seem to bear it. He couldn’t bear it when she merely touched him. At forty-five, she’d certainly aged. She’d never be that young, fresh-faced girl Daniel loved so well. Maybe the 118

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attraction was gone for him. Her face proved a lifetime of emotional turmoil. “When we’re both gray and wrinkled, I’ll still think you’re the most beautiful woman in the world. How could I not? Look at you.” “You love me.” “No one could ever compare to you in my eyes, darlin’.” As if in a dream or a vision of the past her mind replayed, Daniel appeared behind her without a sound. She didn’t start at his abrupt presence. He came so close, the scent of sandalwood enveloped her. I knew he was here. I knew he was with me. Why is the feeling familiar? Has he been here before? In my home? Watching me and Danny sleep? Did he come to us in the years everyone insisted he was dead? I felt him with me, so how could I ever accept what they wanted me to? This man’s presence is as familiar to me as Danny’s. Their gazes locked in the mirror. “How long have you been here?” “I never left,” he told her. Yes. Somehow I knew he wouldn’t. Couldn’t. “You said you had to go back tonight…last night.” “I will.” She turned to him, rose, and his gaze lowered in a lingering caress down her body. She said nothing, but her every nerve ending tensed in anticipation of a tactile touch from him. “I saw him, Perry. He looks just like me. Before.” “I know.” Daniel and Linc’s parents had been like night and day. His mother was dark and exotically beautiful while his father had been a husky, all-American blond. Daniel had gotten the best of both of his parents. He closed in suddenly, and she sucked in an inhale when he stroked the wide satin strap of her nightgown. He caressed it the way he used to caress her skin. Her nipples 119

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rose, harshly aware of him, against the gown. Yet he seemed distracted in a way she’d never seen in him, in this new man. “Have you seen pictures of him before tonight?” she asked breathlessly. “I wouldn’t let myself. I just…kept up with everything he did. Everything you did.” She couldn’t have been more sensitive of him and the implications of his words. He’d been haunted. He’d looked back as much as he could stand. His fingers brushed her bare skin now, beneath the strap. Down her shoulder, her chest, following the curve of one full breast. “What do you think of your son?” she murmured. His haunted gaze lifted to hers. “You’ve done a good job, Perry. You’re a beautiful mother, just like I always knew you would be. You and Linc did good.” “If you let yourself check up on him, you know he doesn’t simply look like you, Roan. He graduated college when he was eighteen. Tenured last year. NASA offered him a job. Government intelligence agencies approached him. Even professional football teams tried to recruit him, if you can believe that. All he ever wanted to do was follow in your footsteps and continue your research. He’s made breakthroughs that have provided him funding from leading medical facilities…” Perry shook her head. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised your secret organization noticed him. Everyone else has.” His fingers no longer stroked her hot, sensitive skin. He grasped her upper arms painfully. She didn’t protest, not when he whispered, “I’m sorry, Perry. God, I’m sorry.” Shocking her, he dropped to his knees before her and 120

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put his arms around her waist. His face pressed to her middle. Nothing could have stopped her from cradling his head and trying to sooth his pain. She couldn’t help wishing for the man she’d loved. Wishing that man hadn’t been destroyed beyond seeming recognition. “You shouldn’t have to apologize for being a genius or for being the best at every task you set yourself to. You shouldn’t be punished for those things. You passed your skills on to your son. They have no right to use and exploit those skills against your will, or against his.” His hands at her hips rose and fell. “You know how many times I wished I was some poor, stupid schmuck who didn’t know his right from his left? Maybe they wouldn’t’ve noticed me.” She could imagine life had taught him to feel that way. But it wasn’t the man she knew. Daniel had gloried in his intelligence. He hadn’t been conceited—more like confident. Neither did he allow himself to rest on his laurels. He’d felt a constant drive to learn and contribute more. He couldn’t have been happy any other way. “You were who you were. I loved everything about you because it made you you. None of what happened was your fault.” His hands ruffled the skirt of her nightgown, making already sensitized flesh long for more contact. His thumbs against her abdomen brought an arrow of desire to the core of her. Touch me. Let me see, feel, the man who loved me so completely. “Did you love my brother?” Tears slammed into her eyes at his unexpected question. He came to his feet when she begged him not to ask. 121

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“Tell me.” “I loved him, but never the way he wanted. Never the way he deserved. I couldn’t.” “You’ve never given yourself to any other man?” She swallowed. “No. But can you say the same?” His gaze lowered again to the neckline of her gown. “I do what they tell me to do. It’s all the job, darlin’. There is nothing else. No satisfaction, love…they create divided loyalties. They want everything. All of me.” She knew he was a man with far too much sexual drive to be celibate, even in captivity, but…he hadn’t loved. It was all she needed to know at this moment. She cradled his face tenderly. “Oh Roan, what have they done to you?” He closed his eyes under her caress. This was the same look he’d worn when she kissed him. Like he couldn’t bear it. Her hand tightened on him instinctively, unwilling to let him go this time. She didn’t expect it when he kissed her, finding the way as if he knew it by heart even with so many years of excruciating separation. After all the years apart, she’d imagined this coming together would be fierce, harsh, hurried. But his mouth opening hers was anything but. He kissed her leisurely, thoroughly, like he’d waited a lifetime and refused to be rushed now that he’d gotten the very thing he craved like an obsession. Everything about him was different, yet she’d never forgotten this. The dark taste of his incredible mouth. The firm pressure of his full, masculine lips covering hers. The way he used them with his tongue and teeth to make her want nothing more than him. More of him. Until she melted. On a sigh, she felt his fingers on her flesh again. He 122

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eased his index fingers under each strap again, sliding them down and riding the curve of her breasts to their very tips. Her gasp made him step back enough to ease the straps off her shoulders so he could see her. The untamed hunger in his face and eyes almost made her insane. The nightgown straps continued down her arms of their own volition, but one caught on her nipple, so deliciously hard. He freed it with a groan that ended with his mouth on the tip. The pain and pleasure mingled until she knew only his lovemaking would free her. He shifted to her other nipple, then stood back and looked at her, a look of pure satisfaction on his face as he viewed what he’d done to her so easily. She felt no shame whatsoever under his penetrating gaze. “How could I ever forget you, Parris? How could anyone else ever measure up to your perfection? Even my memories of you don’t measure up to you anymore. You’re so exquisite, I’d give my life to have you once more.” Her eyes filled with tears as she stepped out of the pool of her nightgown at her feet and into his waiting arms. “You don’t need to give your life. I’m yours. They took everything from us. We deserve this one night.” He seemed lost at that moment…helpless to refuse anything. It wasn’t something she expected from a man she’d known as a consummate lover. She loved him more for his momentary faltering. “I don’t know how anymore…I can’t feel. I don’t have it in me anymore, Parris.” “You can’t let yourself remember our love? Look into my eyes. You have to know you’re the only man I’ve ever loved. There never will be another.” He closed his eyes as if to block her intimate words 123

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out.

“I gave you my heart when I was fourteen, Daniel,” she persisted. “You gave me yours. They don’t have your heart. I do.” She put her hands on his chest, and he opened his eyes to her. “Let me love you, Roan. Isn’t that why you came here tonight?” “Yes,” he admitted without pause, without excuse, without shame. “I’m yours. Let’s make love.” The heat in his eyes was enough to leave her in cinders. His hand moved to her panties and slid inside. His groan of gratification at her wetness only increased her desire. She reached for him, made his mouth her own again. After so many years without, her body climbed the peak quickly under his teasing fingers. Roan lifted her against him as she cried out and shuddered against him. Her hands scrambled for his shirt, his zipper, his erection straining gloriously behind it. Perry kissed the hollow of his throat as she freed him, and he let out a reckless growl that made her a little crazier. His nipples contracted beneath her eager lips and tongue. He held her head as she laved them. Even as she did, she drew his shaft against her palm over and over. “Can’t take…” he muttered, his tone like gravel. “Touch me. I could die.” “I know,” she soothed, easing down his body. She shucked his jeans down. Nothing else stood between them. Cradling his hard buttocks in her hands, she opened her mouth over the head of his pulsing erection. His groans were guttural as she brought him to the brink. She felt mindless with his needs, her own needs, while his hands 124

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cradling her head guided her. Daniel. My Daniel. I would know you anywhere. I would love you anywhere. She’d never felt more joy than when his body gave up his satisfaction. Her name on his lips was so sweet, so perfect while she took all of him and they held onto each other in the center of her bedroom. She wasn’t surprised when he backed up to the bed and fell onto it. Chuckling softly, she finished undressing him and removed her own soaked panties. Daniel reached for her, murmured, “Come here, baby” when she crawled up him. The way his eyes glowed at the sight of her breasts swaying before him was so familiar and heady to her. She’d never get enough of him tonight. She knew that already. Every touch, every once-for-a-lifetime kiss felt like a blessing that wouldn’t expire until he left her. No way could she consider that now. She reveled in his taste, the familiarity of his consummate love. She felt it as he kissed her, as his hands remembered her in the most intimate ways, opening her, bringing the coil of passion higher. “I want everything again,” he whispered, and Perry could do nothing but offer herself freely to him. She let out a liquid moan when his tongue lapped at one nipple, enclosing the other in his hot, clever fingers. She watched him torment her breasts the way he used to, and her hips refused to be stilled against his. As she ground herself against him, building her orgasm, she wasn’t in the least surprised when she felt his resurrected shaft come up against her throbbing feminine mound. “Come inside me, Daniel, Roan, my love,” she moaned. “I want you inside me. Please.” 125

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His mouth left her nipple long enough for him to grin. “Soon, darlin’. I want you writhing first.” She gasped his name when he urged her up and over him. Could she have forgotten how lovesick and maniacal he always made her for him before he brought them together at last? He seemed to be touching every part of her at once when he brought her to a shattering climax with his beautiful mouth and fingers, inside and out, making her hot and unbearably wet. By the time he finally eased her tenderly onto her back and pushed her legs apart to enter the part of her contracting violently, she should have been without an ounce of energy. Yet she met his every thrust, his equally soul-deep kiss, weeping as she came deliriously over and over in his arms. Their bodies covered in perspiration, she wrapped her arms and legs around him, holding him as the cords of his neck strained with his fierce explosion inside her. He collapsed on her. She’d forgotten how much she relished his weight on her after they made love. Sometimes she thought only that kept her from floating away in bliss. But this felt different. It felt…dear Lord, no…like her last chance to hold him like this. She didn’t want to let go. Now or ever again. A sob rose in her throat. She gasped on it as it released of its own volition. Though he rolled to his side, keeping her firmly with him though, she noticed he couldn’t seem to look at her. She knew why when she coaxed his face out of hiding. Tears tracked down his cheeks. She let him hide from her. But she refused to let him run from this.

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Chapter 25 Perry had embraced him in a death grip throughout the hours they spent together. Roan wanted to hold her like it was the final time. It had to be, no matter what they’d stolen from a destiny that’d already decided they weren’t meant to be together. This wasn’t his life. It could never be again. But he’d never regret these hours. He didn’t know how he’d ever forget. He had to leave her. When he’d returned to his plane, and eventually composed himself, he discovered a message waiting on his comms system—his superiors wanted him back in the compound immediately. He knew the only reason Angelo would break his own orders for Roan not to show his face for a two full weeks was become something pivotal had happened with the alpha mission—either to put it in jeopardy or to move it forward. Last night, there was no way Roan could get himself to care. All that’d mattered was seeing his son and seeing Perry…touching her again. Even now, looking at her troubled face in deep slumber, he didn’t care about his orders. The only time he felt truly alive and safe was with her. 127

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His body tightened, hardening. It was a sensation he’d lost experience with in the last few years. He’d shut down nearly all personal aspects of his life. He looked at her tear-scoured cheeks, her love-swollen mouth, the red marks his facial hair had left on her tender breasts while they where taking each other. The need to be locked with her again nearly overwhelmed him. No matter how often he’d taken her last night, in every way he’d missed in their separation, he knew she’d open herself eagerly to him again if he woke her with an intimate kiss. If I leave…I don’t know if I can come back. I don’t know if I can live without her again. In the end, he knew he couldn’t reach for her, not even the slightest brush of his hand or a kiss. He’d want her too bad to turn back if he did. **** He flew back to Chicago, his mind only on Perry and the glimpses he’d had of his son. Their son. Roan entered ETI and immediately went to the restricted elevators. His internal transponder was recognized by the computerized security system, and his ride down to the compound went smoothly. He didn’t give a thought to his superiors knowing where he’d been and what he’d done—any part of it. Very few operatives could evade the Network. He could, despite the fact that every recruit was fitted with an internal transponder. Roan had built his own Sigblock unit to blank the transmission from his transponder when he chose to. He knew if they lost his implant signal, they’d come looking before long, and Roan had recorded it for hours. He retransmitted it when he wanted to disappear. As soon as he stepped out of the elevator, he felt a buzz—something was happening all right. He headed for 128

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Comm Central and Tactical a jog away, not surprised to see the team leaders of Alpha and Gamma assembled with Angelo and Shannon McKee. The only person he didn’t see and expected to was the Beta team leader. The new Master Strategist who’d taken Angelo’s place as #4, accepting the position when Roan refused it— Captain Ron Blair—stood behind the console looking right at Roan as he approached. Roan knew Blair was a highly decorated war hero and career military man who’d served with Shannon McKee as a Navy S.E.A.L. before she took over her father’s position as Oversight liaison between the President and the Network. Though he and Blair both knew he should have been back hours ago, Blair said simply, “You’re just in time, Roan.” Roan sat, accepting the respect Blair gave him with a nod, then waited expectantly. “We discovered two nights ago that R.E.D. is massproducing the nuclear weapon suitcases, like the one you retrieved from their RCC recently, Roan. We had our top three teams follow the trail to another compound where our intel told us they were being made.” “They were waiting for us,” Kirsten finished Blair’s report. Her expression was grim. “My team and Hunter’s team managed to make it back to the van with most of the Beta team.” Roan understood then what’d happened. That was why the Beta team leader, Noah Harlow, wasn’t present at this briefing. First position operative, Rhiannon Murray, had been captured with her leader. “Their bio stats fluctuated and couldn’t be traced. They’re obviously not dead, or they would’ve flat-lined. Then they just disappeared from our monitors.” 129

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“We’re sending in one team to extract them,” Blair continued. “They’ll have endured torture, but they’ve both held out twice as long in the field before. They’ll be intact if we can extract them soon.” “Why hasn’t a team already been sent in?” Roan asked. “They’ve been moved. We haven’t relocated them yet.” Blair gave him the answer he expected. No other reason they wouldn’t have gone in immediately. The longer they waited, the more chance the torture would grow worse and the Network would be compromised along with the lives of two of their best operatives. “I’ll lead the extraction team,” Roan said quietly. No one questioned him, or would dare, but he saw a cold look pass over Hunter Savage’s young face. Roan’s return to the Network after his time as a double agent had screwed the kid from start to finish. Savage had somehow managed to excel, reaching Roan’s previous position as Head Team Leader/Mission Coordinator—5th in Command—during Roan’s years undercover. Roan got his former position back when he returned. Savage, it was decided, wasn’t ready for 4th in Command, so he’d been dropped back to Gamma team leader. It wasn’t hard for Roan to imagine the kid’s deep resentment for him. Alpha and Beta Teams took Class A and B missions. As Gamma team leader, Hunter rotated through Class C missions. In truth, they were beneath him. Unfortunately, any other position but team leader would’ve been an insult to the kid’s significant skills. And the Alpha and Beta team leaders were too good to re-assign. By all standards, Savage had done surprisingly well as a Level 1 operative. He’d do well again—when Roan was gone. From Savage’s perspective, someday Roan Emory would no longer be the 130

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most dangerous man in the world. Savage didn’t know—or maybe didn’t believe—that for all Roan cared, Savage could have the title and his position. Roan followed Kirsten to Systems to search for the MIA agents. She told him they’d been searching with no luck. “It’s a good thing you came in. You’re the only one who can sniff them out,” she said without looking up from her holographic console and the map she scanned for the missing operatives’ transponder codes. “Where were you?” “Out,” Roan said without embellishment. He quickly went through the known R.E.D. locations. Long ago, before the double mission, he and Kirsten had been lovers, in the cautious, fairly distant way they both demanded for their own reasons. All another Network experiment. He never forgot how he failed her though. Never forgot the rage he felt when he saw Jameson raping her. He and Kirsten had never spoken of it after he took her out of that place and cared for her with the tender protectiveness she’d needed then. Even now, they both acted like nothing had happened between them. Better that way. He’d never been able to truly love her, or any of the other women who gave him more or less fleeting satisfaction. But his encounter with Perry had torn at him, opened scars over feelings he’d thought long shriveled away—he felt compelled to try to atone. The emotions surprised him after so long being disused. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you, Ulrick.” She shrugged it off, thinking he meant the recent mission that’d resulted in the kidnapping of two of their top operatives. “You had other things to do.” “No. I’m sorry I let Jameson hurt you the way he did years ago. It was never my choice.” She turned to him, and he saw the surprise in her eyes. 131

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“It’s over,” she said faintly, but he saw a flicker of something in her eyes. She quickly averted her gaze, and he felt the awkwardness of the seriously belated conversation. When Roan continued to look at her, she seemed unable to ignore him. “I knew you weren’t involved in any of that,” she managed. “You would never harm me. I know you always follow orders, too. No matter what some of these clowns around here think.” So rumors of his betrayal had been circulating widely. “Thanks,” he said. “Thank you, Roan…for saving me from…worse.” Roan nodded. Why the hell did he feel like he needed to make amends, say goodbye to the very few he’d any attachment to here in the Network? They both focused on their halovids. He found what he was looking for a few minutes later. “We should take into consideration that they may’ve separated ’em. And there’s some reason why we’re having trouble getting a lock. We need to get ground teams in as soon as we can to track them.” “If they separated them, it’ll make it harder for us to extract them,” Kirsten said. “Maybe.” **** Three hours later, Savage and Ash Barnett, 1st position on Kirsten’s team, came to relieve them in their search. Roan knew the time had come to do whatever he could to save his son. Getting into the black file consoles posed no trouble for him with his high level clearance. Accessing recent recruitment files provided a bit more of a challenge for him, but when he inserted the verification disk with Angelo’s 132

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fingerprint and retinal scan he had no trouble getting the active recruitment list. His finger let up on his scroll of the names when he saw his son’s name there. He fought the urge to delete it. He didn’t doubt Angelo would know who to come looking for when he discovered Danny’s name missing. Roan touched the B&A file and it opened on the screen. “Made contact with potential recruit, Daniel Sands, Jr. He knows his father was approached for recruitment twenty-five years ago and, like his father, he refused to join willingly. Mother is FBI agent with high level clearance. Potential red flag, as #2 requires pursuit of this one. Father will be relocated to our Munich facility within the month. Second recruitment approach will be attempted when deemed appropriate. Captain Ron Blair will enter the role of 4th in Command Master Strategist and Recruiter, but I’ll stay on this until this recruitment mission reaches the desired fulfillment. Angelo Pluzetti, Code 10001L1.” Roan grimaced at the log. The Network had begun the preliminaries of setting Perry as a potential breach in their security, dammit. Approach when deemed appropriate. In other words, as soon as they got him and Perry out of the way and when everyone else least expected it, Danny would be taken.

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Chapter 26 Perry knew before she fully awoke that she was alone in her bed. The hours she and Roan had shared had been stolen and therefore transitory. She’d known that going in. Yet the pain in her heart was almost more than she could bear when she opened her eyes and saw the cold, empty place beside her. The scent of sandalwood lingered as she reached her hand across to the black rose on her pillow. She pressed the delicate petals to her mouth. An eclipsing wave of loneliness crashed over her. She knew this was a reminder from Roan that the only contact they’d have after this would be in dead drops. He’d returned to the organization he’d given his life to involuntarily at first, but now served because he didn’t see any other choice for himself. As he’d said, their hours together were merely the residue of an unforgettable love that was history—not the stuff of either of their futures. When a sob filled her throat, Perry angrily forced herself out of bed and into a hot shower. She wouldn’t grieve again. It seemed to taint the beauty of what she’d shared with the only man she’d ever love. While she was drying her tender body, the phone rang. Perry shrugged into her robe before picking up the receiver from her nightstand. 134

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“Morning,” Danny greeted her cheerfully. “Good morning, honey. How are things?” “Fine. Can you meet me for breakfast?” While she usually had breakfast with her partner on the way in—to review their open cases—she agreed immediately to her son’s offer. She put in a quick call to Mike and told him she’d see him at work later. Dressing and getting ready quickly, she wondered why Danny wanted to see her so early. Danny liked to get to work as soon as possible on weekdays. No one could pry him away until dinner-time, if even then. Once inside the quaint—and busy—café, she located Danny. “What’s going on?” she asked. She kissed him, then slid into the chair across from him at the bistro table. “I ordered your usual. Coffee and a bran muffin.” “Thanks.” She leaned across the table and covered his hand with her own. “Is everything all right?” “Yeah. I just…I didn’t like being monitored last night.” She should have known. Perry flushed, realizing she’d equally shock and pacify her son if she told him how little monitoring she’d actually done the previous night. “I don’t mind it at the college, and I can handle having my car bugged. Aimee said she doesn’t mind all that in her apartment, but…we need at least one place we’re sure is private.” Perry was no stranger to the ways of a couple madly, passionately, eternally in love. Obviously, Danny and Aimee wanted to know Perry wasn’t listening in while they made love. Reluctantly, she nodded. She’d been expecting this, just not so soon. “All right. I’ll remove the surveillance 135

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equipment from you apartment today—” He handed the bugs to her, all six that she’d placed in his apartment. “You realize this makes you vulnerable,” she said softly, glancing at the devices before dropping them into her purse. “I can’t spend the rest of my life hiding from these people, Mom. I prefer a straight fight to cowering behind my mommy. I won’t live in fear.” His young, handsome face held both determination and the protective expression she knew so well. The picture of his father. “I don’t like to cause you more grief, Mom, but I won’t hide. If I’m not free, there’s no point to living. I plan to face them on my own terms.” “Do you think they’ll give you a ‘straight’ fight, Danny? Your father had the same fierce courage you do. I don’t believe he had a choice at all in any aspect of what happened to him.” Their breakfasts arrived at that moment, and Danny dug in with his usual, unaffected appetite. She could only manage her coffee and token bites of the muffin. ‘I do what they tell me to do. It’s all the job, darlin’. There is nothing else. No satisfaction, love…they create divided loyalties. They want everything. All of me. I don’t know how to feel anymore. I can’t. I don’t have it in me anymore.’ “You all right, Mom? You look like you’re on another planet this morning.” Perry struggled to focus on her son, feeling light years from where she wanted to be. I made love with your father last night. I’ll never see him again. He gave me everything last night, and it’s all I’ll ever have. A memory. Another memory that won’t save me. 136

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Blinking tears back, she shook her head, lowering her face to her hands. “You don’t have to worry about me, Mom,” Danny assured her. “I can take care of myself. You taught me a lot about doing that, you know.” “Did I?” “You’ve been a good role model. In every way.” Perry squeezed his hands between her own, knowing she could very well fail him today, tomorrow, at the precise moment he needed her most. “I’m so proud of you, Danny. You’re every bit the man I always prayed you’d be. Your father…he would be so proud of you. I know it.” He is proud of you. I wish I could tell you he’s alive. She’d seen pride and humility shining in Roan’s eyes each time he talked about their son. Yet she couldn’t tell Danny. She might never be able to tell her son the truth.

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Chapter 27 Perry stood up to stretch. She and Mike had been assigned to take shifts with another team to protect and watch over a key witness in an upcoming murder trial, one on shaky ground. It was one of the more boring duties she had as an FBI agent. Since she returned the bugs Danny removed from his own apartment, she’d been patently aware what the action could mean. He could disappear and no one would ever be able to find him again. While playing a mindless game of contract rummy, she’d considered her options in keeping her son safe. “This ain’t exactly a party, but you seem a million miles away today,” Mike commented as she started a fresh pot of coffee and he shuffled the cards in preparation for the next hand. “What’re ya thinkin’ about, Per? Or don’t I need to ask?” Perry glanced back at her partner. He’d raised the eyebrow that had a thick scar running vertically through it—getting scarred was an occupational hazard. Ten years ago, a perp had slashed him before Perry could successfully bring the bum down. She turned her whole body toward him, leaning against the countertop. “What if it’s possible to find this covert 138

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organization hunting my son, Mike? They must have a headquarters somewhere in the United States. Possibly others around the world in many different locations. More effective. I’m betting Chicago is the major location. Headquarters. We verified Samuel Crawford’s business— Expanding Technology Industries—is legitimate. It does real business all over the world. It’s a leader in technological advancements. What if the secret organization is somehow connected to this business? It’d be the perfect cover, wouldn’t it?” Cards forgotten, Mike ran his hands through his spiky, gray-streaked hair. She saw the wariness in his expression. “Thought you were gonna give this obsession up. You’re meddlin’ in things that ought not to be meddled in.” “So I’m supposed to just let my son disappear without a trace like Daniel did? Put up and shut up? That’s the answer, huh?” She pivoted and slammed an oversized scoop of coffee grounds into the basket of the automatic drip machine. Mike was just like her parents—so willing and ready to accept the too-well-polished explanation this secret agency had clearly wanted them to swallow. She wouldn’t. She’d lost Daniel once, dammit. She wouldn’t lose him or her son again. Not if there was any way she could save them. “And which of my many obsessions are you referring to, Michael Reynolds?” She knew he hated it when she called him by his full name, like his mother did when she occasionally still grabbed him by the ear and hauled him in line. Perry heard his chair scrape back and tensed at his nearing footsteps. “Perry, he’s dead. It was an accident. It’s long past time to let it go.” The hell she would. Not when she finally knew the 139

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truth after so many years of beating her head against the impenetrable brick wall this covert agency put between her and Daniel. “I’ve come to terms with Daniel’s death,” she said coldly. Though certainly not the way you or anyone else would expect me to. “My son’s in danger, Mike. You should understand why I can’t just let it go. I refuse to accept that there’s nothing I can do to save him.” Mike leaned a shoulder on the fridge. “What you’re talkin’ about here could be dangerous, Per. They’re covert for a reason. You pose a risk to their anonymity, and who knows what’ll happen to you for your trouble? Then it won’t only be Dan who’s caught their eye. I don’t want anything to happen to either of ya.” Neither did she, but Danny’s life—Roan’s—was worth any risk. If she could find their headquarters, she might be able to locate Crawford and talk to him, tell him she knew what happened to Daniel and she wouldn’t stand by and let it happen again—even if it meant publicly exposing them to keep her son safe. They couldn’t kill her. After all, she was a federal agent. She’d make sure plenty of other federal agents knew where she was going and what to do if she didn’t come back. The one thing that gave her pause was Roan believing she didn’t trust him to ‘handle things on his end’. He was in a precarious position, working for this place and helping their son. Would they kill Roan if he got in the way of their nefarious plans for Danny? They’d already taken his life away without apology. Why would killing him be a stretch after their current tally of crimes? Roan had told her they planned to relocate him to Germany before they brought Danny in. It wouldn’t be any harder to kill him as a means 140

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of permanent relocation. Exactly how valuable was the most dangerous man in the world to them? What choice did she have but to act? She needed to convince them to leave her son alone. With the leverage of potential exposure of their existence and of the evil they’d done to Daniel and planned to do to their son, she was in a better position to get results than Roan was. She had to try. For Danny. For love.

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Chapter 28 The location of the MIA operatives was pinned down during Roan’s shift at the halovid in the early hours of Tuesday morning. Roan led the intel mission to verify the separate locations. That evening, he was on point for the Alpha Team to extract Noah Harlow, deemed the most valuable of the two considering his status as their Beta team leader. Harlow’s own team, led by Hunter Savage, was set to get Rhiannon out. Though the original plan was to have one small team extract both operatives, Roan wanted a coordinated maneuver. Taking one out first, then going after the second, would alert the terrorists to their approach. They also needed to remain unseen before, during and after the extraction. For that reason, he assigned small teams to each operative, then put back-up perimeter teams in place in case R.E.D. was again waiting for them. As they approached the terrorists’s Remote Command Center, his blood felt molten-hot in a way he hadn’t experienced before. He wanted it over with, he wanted the least damage possible…and he didn’t want to care what happened either way. All he could think was that he wanted out. Nevertheless, he took out the unsuspecting guards surrounding their entry point to the building with silent, 142

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deadly skill. He glanced back at Kirsten. Harlow’s transponder signal had been uploaded to her panel. She nodded that she still had the signal, and he proceeded inside. His team moved like ghosts behind him. The RCCs were heavily guarded, but he knew this one was temporary. They’d been moving the enemy operatives every twenty-four hours since kidnapping them. They’d purposely chosen areas they’d never been associated with to better keep their captives under wraps until they got the information they wanted. R.E.D. couldn’t risk exposing a location important to their future operations. They hoped to break Harlow, Murray or both for intel they could use. Temporary command centers meant one thing to Roan— the guards had no time to know their location inside and out. They’d be unprepared despite their numbers. Guided by Harlow’s tracking signal, Roan’s team closed the net quickly, effectively dispatching the numerous hostiles they encountered. Roan had ordered radio silence once they passed the entry point of the abandoned warehouse. Their passage was quiet, so skilled, it was as though they were almost non-existent. They took the patrols by surprise—they were dead before they could fully process the intruders in their consciousness. No shots were fired until Kirsten gave the signal that they were within thirty feet of Harlow’s transponder. Roan gave hand directions to move in. He didn’t expect trouble and barely got it when they burst in. Rapid gunfire followed. “Keep two alive,” Roan ordered before moving over to Harlow. “They might be able to give us the location where the nukes are being manufactured.” Harlow had been strung up by his feet. His body was covered in blood, sweat, dirt and the outcomes of other 143

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bodily functions. Bruises, cuts and burns covered every inch of his exposed skin. He didn’t rouse until Roan and Kirsten freed him from his bonds and gently lowered him to the dirt floor. “Harlow, are you intact?” Roan asked after cracking smelling salts under his nose. Harlow twisted away, then weakly gave the hand signal that Roan needed to bring him back in. The Network hadn’t been compromised through his torture. Roan had seen other agents tortured within an inch of their lives, their sanity. He’d never been captured, though, so his only experience with it had been the excruciating training the Network put the operatives through. His fury this time kept him cagey even after he’d sent his team back to the van with Harlow while he and Kirsten searched the compound. “It’s clean,” she told him. He nodded and set the last charge to destroy the warehouse. When they returned to the van, he prepared the uplink to contact the tactical team back at the compound. Across from him, Harlow was now awake, sipping water, wrapped in a special blanket that would help protect him from shock. He said one word, “Rhiannon?” “The two of you were separated. Another team is extracting her as we speak,” Roan told him just as the connection with Comm was made. “It’s done?” Blair asked, his voice quiet, distant in Roan’s earpiece. “Success. Harlow’s intact. Beta team update?” “In progress,” was all Blair would say. Roan’s gaze met Harlow’s again. It wasn’t nearly good enough. “When’s the last time Savage checked in?” 144

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“Just before they passed their entry point.” Savage had chosen radio silence as well. Until he checked in, they’d be in the dark about the mission status. Roan’s team returned to the compound. He debriefed and received commendations he barely heard. The call came in just after he left his superiors and returned to Comm Central. Blair and Fielding were still there, waiting for mission status from Savage. Harlow had obviously been to Medical long enough to have his most serious injuries patched up, but Roan knew he’d be in Comm until his 1st position was extracted. “Success,” Savage reported after the uplink was established. “Murray intact.” “Alive?” Harlow barked into his radio piece. “Have Medical waiting at the airlock.” Murray hadn’t come through her ordeal as well as Harlow, Roan acknowledged in the little Savage offered about her injuries. Harlow’s expression resembled granite. Roan didn’t have to ask to know he was taking his team member’s capture and torture personally. While their superiors punished emotional attachments with fellow operatives severely, relationships were nevertheless alive— well hidden—in this place. “Network security?” Blair asked for clarification on whether Murray had compromised Network security at any point during her torture. “Intact,” Savage repeated. “Why the delay in mission completion?” Roan asked, adjusting his earpiece more comfortably. “Murray was…deep inside the complex.” “Explain.” “She was buried alive.” Harlow swore. 145

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Sexist attitudes reigned in terrorism. R.E.D. certainly assumed that a woman would break the worse the torture got. If Roan’s suspicions were correct that Harlow and Murray were romantically involved, then R.E.D. might have exploited that in their torture. They’d put most of their energies into getting something out of Rhiannon because she was a woman and emotionally vulnerable where her fellow captive was concerned. Yet she’d remained loyal to the Network. Roan waited until the team arrived with Murray, to satisfy himself that she’d be all right before he slipped into the black file consoles again. He swore when he saw that there’d been no change whatsoever in Danny’s status, or any addendums placed in the B&A’s. Until they took a step toward Danny, Roan’s hands were effectively tied.

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Chapter 29 Perry sat back in her office chair, a chill of certainty overwhelming her. She’d returned from her witness-babysitting shift with Mike that afternoon and holed up in her office to research ETI. While there were branches all over the globe, she first concentrated on the New York headquarters, supposedly where Crawford kept a permanent residence. Yet she kept coming back to the branch in Chicago. It was the only location that made sense. Clearly, New York had been designated as the main body of the corporation to keep suspicions off the extracurricular activities of the Chicago branch. It explained why Crawford went there. Why Roan had been there. Certainly Crawford could have sent for back-up when he realized she was following him, and received it from anywhere in the world faster than any other law enforcement agency. But she was a hundred percent sure Crawford hadn’t suspected her in the least until they’d reached O’Hare and she’d put the tracer on his jacket. Roan had arrived too quickly after that to have come from another state when Crawford called for his services. Chicago was the location of the covert agency, she decided. ETI was its front company but it actually did 147

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legitimate business. They would have been thorough about making sure no one could ever suspect. She just couldn’t be sure if this secret organization met somewhere near ETI or was actually within its same structure in Central Chicago. Would she alert them if she toured the ETI skyscraper for which she’d acquired the possibly false blueprints? Surely civilians had to be allowed inside the building. To make the business legitimate, they’d have to be open to the public. She’d go in disguise. Quietly. Observe the area for a day or two before she moved in close enough to see if she had viable reasons to be suspicious. But she’d need to find another means of travel besides by plane. They’d expect that. Again, she needed to go quickly. She’d secure a vehicle—maybe one of Mike’s. She’d drive there. Her mother would contrive to make her absence here look plausible, so no one would suspect anything. A shiver crawled up Perry’s spine. She’d prepared for this day for twenty-five long years. She’d prepared for the day that she might find a strong enough lead to carry through to the end. Foolish for her to be frightened now that the lead had come to her, yet she couldn’t talk herself out of feeling the dread that filled her.

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Chapter 30 Her hands were shaking, but Perry ignored them and continued packing. Her mother had proven to be an adversary this day when Perry revealed her plans to investigate ETI close up and personal. That hadn’t happened often. The few times it had, Perry always felt shaken right to her core. Her mother had, at first, outright refused to help her in any way in ‘this ridiculous quest for God only knows what’. Although she’d admitted nothing, Perry realized then that her mother might very well have been aware of this secret organization even before Perry suggested its existence. At the very least, she understood what they were capable of accomplishing. She believed Perry was heading for destruction. As such, her mother had flat-out refused to be a party to sending her daughter down that road. Perry had persisted, finally saying she’d do it with or without her help. Only then had her mother begun to cave. She agreed to relieve Perry of her witness surveillance duties on the Davenport case. The snitch they had in protective custody knew things about a local mobster that could give them the evidence they needed to arrest the don. Unfortunately, the evidence the guy’d given them couldn’t be verified. If they could get the confirmation they needed, 149

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they could convict. At the moment, the mobster knew the fence had ratted him out, and he was in danger even if they couldn’t come through on his evidence. Mike could pair with Ellers in the interim of Perry’s absence. Her mother would create a plausible scenario to explain Perry’s absence. Her mother knew exactly where she was going, what she planned to do there, and when she’d be back. If Perry didn’t contact her within the time-frame, her mother would have no choice but to act on the belief that her daughter had been taken by this organization. She had access to some of the highest level government officials. She’d be able to discover something where Perry hadn’t been able to. The phone rang beside her, and Perry took a deep breath. Don’t try to talk me out of this, Mom, was on the tip of her tongue when she picked up the receiver. Instead, her son’s greeting came. “Grandma called me. She told me you’re doing something dangerous. I don’t like this.” Perry experienced a moment of rage that her mother would be so foolish as to include her son, whose life was already in danger from these very people, in her plans. “What are you doing, Mom?” Danny demanded. “This isn’t like you.” “Trust me, honey,” she said with as much reassurance as she could muster. “I won’t do anything impulsive. You know me.” “But you would do something dangerous, something that might get you killed. You’d consider it worth it.” “I don’t think it’ll go that far, Danny. You have to understand that doing nothing, waiting, is exactly what they 150

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want us to do. They have more patience than we’ll ever have. Sooner or later, we’ll relax and then they’ll strike. They won’t expect this. It might turn the tables on their plans.” “What might? What are you planning?” She couldn’t tell him specifics, knowing him too well to expect him to sit on his hands waiting for her to come back. He’d follow her. She couldn’t risk that. It’d be like leading him right into the lion’s den. “I’ll make sure your grandmother calls you with updates whenever I can make contact. I’ll be back in a few days. I promise.” Was she lying? She couldn’t be sure, but she didn’t like the thought that her son might lose both father and mother. A sobbing Aimee came on the line to beg her not to go, and Perry had the unhappy task of calming and reassuring her, too. Why would her mother have involved them? It wasn’t logical, wasn’t like her. No more than running off with my heart on my sleeve is something I’d normally do. “Mike’s here,” she told Danny when he came back on the phone. She saw her partner’s truck approaching on the road. “Good. Maybe he can talk you out of this.” “Don’t do anything reckless, Danny. Please. Stay here and stay safe. I’ll be home soon. We’ll get together then.” After saying ‘I love you’ and hearing the same back, she hung up. With her bag packed and zipped, she went down to meet Mike. He’d agreed earlier on the phone to allow her to use his vehicle for a few days, though he said he didn’t understand why she needed it. “You ready?” he asked when he got out. He’d dressed in civilian clothes, same as her. 151

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Perry held out the keys to her car. Mike shook his head at her. “You might as well take them,” she insisted. “I won’t be using my car for a few days and it’ll save you the fare of having cabs come all the way out here to get you every morning.” “I’m comin’ with you, partner,” he said simply. “I talked to your mom. She told me everything. I said I was taggin’ along even before she suggested it, Per. Incidentally, thought we agreed not to cut out on each other so we’d never have to be paired with that ass Ellers? You’re renegin’ on a solemn pact.” His humor was lost on her. The thought of risking his life along with hers wasn’t a consideration. She wouldn’t allow him to come along. “I can’t let you do this, Mike.” “I’m comin’. Save your breath arguin’ with me on this one.” “I’ll be fine on my own.” “Maybe. But we always said back-up’s a given ’tween us. I’m gonna be there just like you’ve always been for me. I already made reservations for us at about the only swanky hotel in the Windy City that don’t know me on sight. Now shut up and get in.” She knew Mike’s pigheadedness. Short of knocking him unconscious, stealing his vehicle and trying to lose his tail when he followed in her car, she knew he was coming along. She wouldn’t put it past him to have a tracer on his own truck. Even if she instinctively wanted to do this herself, she couldn’t help being grateful for his presence. He took her carryall, and she got in the passenger’s seat of his truck. A long time after they got on the road, Mike said, “Somethin’ happened, didn’t it? Somethin’ happened last time in Chicago.” 152

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“What makes you say that?” she asked, edgy at his question. “I could tell. I’m your partner…what? two decades now? I can tell, Per. Now tell me what the hell’s got you so urgent?” Perry glanced away, out the passenger window at the world passing by in a blur. If Mike was coming with her…he needed to know everything. Was it foolish of her to want so desperately to share with someone? Share her joy. Her devastation. The fear she lived in day and night that she’d lose. Lose over and over to this goddamn heartless organization that’d ruined her life once before. “I saw him. I…Mike, dear God, I found him.” “What?” She turned back to him to see his uncertainty with an edge of shocked disbelieving dawning. “Daniel. I found Daniel. Exactly what I believed happened really did happen. This secret organization the recruiter worked for set up Daniel’s death. Made it look real. He’s alive. All this time, he’s been working for them. Now under the name Roan Emory.” “No damn way,” Mike said expressively. “I followed Crawford, but he was onto me at O’Hare. I tried to bug him, tracked him, and he sent him as back-up to shake me. I knew it was Daniel as soon as I saw who Crawford sent. But…Daniel acted like he didn’t know me then and the time after it, just before I came home. Then…he came to me. He’s come to me a few times since, Mike.” Heat spread upwards through her entire body, and she could barely stand it when her partner looked at her and seemed to see right through her. She knew he knew before she told him: “We made love. It’s Daniel. But he’s…no 153

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longer Daniel. I’m afraid he’ll never be the man I knew again. He’s a machine. They’ve made him into one. Yet I have to hope the man I loved…love…God!...is still somewhere inside him.” She was weeping the way she’d promised herself she wouldn’t after she woke up alone in her bed. Alone forever, maybe. Mike reached for her hand. He had to realize this quest wasn’t simply about saving her son anymore. She couldn’t lose Daniel again. “That’s why you’re doin’ this,” Mike murmured gently. He seemed to comprehend what she wasn’t even sure she understood. “You’d never leave Dan alone for any other reason, Per. Did this guy…this Daniel…know anything about your son’s recruitment?” Perry shook her head, wiped her cheeks impatiently. “No. He says he didn’t. But he’ll help me.” “How?” Perry swallowed. “I don’t know.” Mike would worry Daniel wasn’t the Daniel of her past. Mike would assume if he volunteered to help them, he acted under orders. Would Roan actually help the place he worked for take our son from me? Perry couldn’t be sure of anything anymore. Her entire world had tilted off its axis. The only thing she wanted to believe was that Daniel…Roan…loved her too much to stand by and let her be destroyed again.

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Chapter 31 ‘Mr. and Mrs. Mike Reynolds’, Roan read over and over on his screen. He’d been monitoring plane, hotel and car rental reservations instead of letting Angelo ‘handle it from here’. He knew there was a good chance Perry wouldn’t sit around and twiddle her thumbs until the Network made a move in Danny’s direction. He’d hoped she’d trust him. But he’d been checking anyway, just in case she got any insane ideas about coming back here and demanding they call off their recruitment plans. Mike Reynolds—Perry’s partner in the FBI. She’d met him when they were both training for the Bureau. With Mike’s then first wife, they’d double-dated a lot. Mike didn’t have romantic designs on Perry, Roan had accepted long ago. He saw her as his sixth baby sister. No, Mike liked his women blond and contradictorily petite and stacked. Roan typed in the required authorization code and verified that these hotel reservations were indeed for Mike Reynolds, FBI agent, Minneapolis citizen. Because he knew Angelo would also find the reservations if he didn’t, Roan deleted them from the hotel’s computer by remote. Perry was coming back to Chicago. Either her partner’s name on the registration was a front or he’d really be along with her. In any case, Roan knew of only one 155

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reason Perry would come. To find Angelo and try to talk him out of recruiting her son. He refused to let himself believe she was coming because she’d fallen in love with him again. He had to stop her. Closing out the screen on his monitor, he sent a command to eliminate all his recent keystrokes from Network Systems’ tracking. A minute later, he stalked across Comm Central toward the elevators. Justine Fielding had emerged from the perch elevator, disks in hand, and she called, “Hey, Emory, where do you think you’re going?” “Out.” “Out where?” she hooted, believing for all of a second he was joking with her again. Then she saw he was serious and, staring at him in shock, she stopped in the hall outside the elevators. “They’re debriefing Harlow and Murray in two hours, Roan! You’re on closed quarter stand-by.” Roan didn’t pause for an instant. “I’ll be back in time.” “Angelo won’t like it,” she called, softer, as he entered the elevator. His gaze met hers. “Angelo won’t know. Will he, sweet thing?”

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Chapter 32 “Hotel?” Mike said after a yawn, when they arrived in Chicago many long hours later. Perry felt stiff, but she hadn’t wanted to stop for more than a few necessary and brief calls of nature. “No. I want to see the building. We still have time before it gets dark.” She wanted to see ETI from all angles. Maybe they’d find a discreet entrance. She’d memorized ETI’s blueprints. If the building was open to public access the way she believed it would be, they could discover easily enough whether the blueprint was accurate. They parked several blocks away and walked a circle around the building—not too close—to view it from all sides on the ground. Nothing she saw made her think ‘secret’ or ‘covert’. While it was after office hours, they nevertheless saw a couple people come and go from the building over the next hour. “I think we could go in,” she murmured from their current location two blocks away, on the other side of the street, where they’d moved and parked the truck. “No way. You don’t wanna tip ’em off. Better to just watch tonight. See if Crawford…or Daniel…comes in or 157

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goes out. Tomorrow’s soon enough.” Not soon enough for her, but she knew Mike was right. She was too restless to be rational tonight. Why did she feel so close to…to something that would break wide open her suspicious? To something so dangerous she couldn’t begin to imagine the ramifications? Not long later, darkness fell and traffic thinned, both in vehicles and pedestrians. “Look, Per, maybe it’s time to go tonight. We’re not gonna see much now.” She shook her head. “Soon.” “Well, I’m gonna need coffee then. There’s a coffee shop right up the block. I’ll get us both a cuppa.” She nodded. He got out of the truck and started walking up the sidewalk. A few minutes later, she got out, too, and looked up at the ETI skyscraper. The top and several floors below it were lit up by more than emergency lighting. Someone was there. Did employees…inductees…live there? Or where those the headquarters of the secret organization? She couldn’t get herself to believe the latter. The top of a skyscraper was too visible. Vulnerable. If anything, their compound was underground. The blueprints certainly didn’t indicate anything like that, but the schematics they filed wouldn’t be accurate if this was the location of a covert agency. She suspected ETI Chicago branch was the place she was looking for. Instinct told her she was on the right track. It made sense that any entrances to the compound below would be so well-concealed, they’d be all but invisible. People without clearance wouldn’t be allowed within a hundred feet of the entrances without alerting security. Figuring Mike would instinctively know she’d want 158

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another turn around ETI before they left for the night, she started down the sidewalk toward the innocuous-looking skyscraper.

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Chapter 33 Roan slid out of his car on the deserted street in back of ETI’s skyscraper. He’d been watching Perry and her partner for the past hour, but made no move until Mike finally took a hike. Perry stood staring at an all but invisible entrance into the Network compound. True, she’d never be able to enter it even if she had the skills to break the security on the door. A half dozen steps closer, and she’d be detected and detained. Unfortunately, Perry wasn’t just some stupid passerby with overzealous curiosity. Soundlessly, he moved up in back of her and covered her mouth with his hand. She fought him all the way back to his car. Once there, he turned her to him and their stares met. Her struggle ended that quickly. “Get in. Don’t ask questions. I don’t wanna hurt you, Perry.” When she willingly got inside the car, he walked around to the driver’s side, his fury growing in proportion with each step. Without a word, he started the car and took off. “Roan?” she asked quietly, searching, he knew, for some confirmation. Perry wasn’t a woman who gave her body or her heart to anyone she didn’t plan to also give a 160

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single-focused, life commitment to. She wanted him to say he felt the same after those hours they shared in her bedroom. **** Roan only survived in the time since because he refused to remember it. He couldn’t be capable of…hell, anything she wanted. His life wasn’t his own. He saw recognition flood her face when he pulled into the garage of his secret home outside the city. “I can’t be here,” she murmured. “I’m not alone. My superiors…” “I told you I’d take care of things at this end. What the hell were you thinking, coming here? You’re gonna bring everything down on your own head. You’re lucky I found you before my boss did. Your son wouldn’t have a father or a mother.” She flinched when he said ‘your son’, as if she’d feared he’d try to distance himself from her and now he’d proved her fears valid. “You knew,” she managed. “How long have you known I was in Chicago?” “I’ve known you were on your way for six hours.” “What?” Her shock irritated him, and he got out of the car. He heard her following him inside the house. “How could you know?” she demanded. “I’m not an amateur…” He turned to find her directly in back of him. Neither of them stepped away. “Amateur? Mr. and Mrs. Mike Reynolds?” When she continued to be uncertain, he went on, “The hotel reservation. Your partner—who’s in the middle of an unfriendly divorce—made it six hours ago. Why would 161

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Mike bring the ‘Mrs’ on a trip to Chicago with him in the middle of a divorce? You can’t be this stupid, Perry. What the hell did you think you were gonna accomplish with this visit…outside of alerting my superiors? You’ve already been red-flagged.” He stalked away from her to sit on the piano bench. He put his head in his hands. “What does that mean?” she asked quietly. He lifted his gaze to hers. “It means you get in their way, they’ll remove you without blinking an eye.” “They wouldn’t dare,” she insisted, but her tone was strained and nowhere near as confident as her words. “I’m a federal agent. My mother is director of the Minneapolis FBI field office. She knows where I am.” Roan snorted. “You honestly believe that intimidates them or protects you, Perry? My agency can make you disappear without a trace. No one will ever have a clue what happened.” She had to know that. She’d seen their work before. Yet she’d found him. Somehow she’d found a dead man, one who should have been utterly elusive. She shook her head at him. “How can you work for a place that serves only its own purpose? Did they brainwash you?” “No.” Ironically, on days when he gave a shit, he believed in the Network’s mission and the necessity of its existence. “Then why have you gone against everything you used to believe in to work for them? Didn’t you used to say that death was better than compromising everything you believed in?” “It’s not that simple. Has the FBI ever handled a situation in a way that seemed unjust or even immoral to 162

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you?” He could see she didn’t want to admit it, but every organization—no matter how good—had its weaknesses. She knew it as well as he did. The problem with most of them was that they were too humane. “Yes,” she managed. “But you continue to believe in its basic goodness, don’t you?” She let out a frustrated sigh. “I understand what you’re saying, all right? But the FBI would never take away a person’s freedom. An agent’s life. It doesn’t ‘remove without blinking an eye’ a citizen who merely knows of its existence. That’s plain evil. You have to admit that.” “The FBI doesn’t have a success rate like ours either. No other law enforcement agency in the world can do what we do, in large part because we’re anonymous in the world. We don’t have to answer to a population basing its morality on current, personal or politically correct opinions. You wanna know why the entire world isn’t completely overrun with evil, lady? I’ll tell you why. There’s only one reason: Because of the iron fist of absolute justice the organization I work for offers.” “So it’s okay that they own people like cattle, take away any semblance of a life from them without their consent? Is their mission for absolute justice and anonymity worth the lives they’ve destroyed?” Tears streamed down her face, and she trembled violently as she stood so alone in the middle of his living room, hugging herself. “Most of the people who gave up their personal lives and identities did it voluntarily,” he told her gently. “Ninety-eight percent wanted what my superiors offered. They understood what they were getting into from the 163

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start. I’m one of the rare cases who didn’t get a choice. Most days, I believe in what they’re doing.” “Even if it means no life for yourself outside of serving this organization?” “The organization has been life for many. You can’t understand what you’ve never experienced.” “Why did they do this to you? To us?” she asked, swiping impatiently at her cheeks. “When I was brought in, there was a corrupt 2nd in Command. No one knew it then. He made the decision to bring me in against my will. Once it was done, even those who didn’t condone it couldn’t undo it.” “You just accepted it?” “What else can I do?” She moved over to him and knelt before him. “Fight. Fight for us, Roan. If you just accept it forever…we can never be together.” He now understand the source of her rage, her pain, why she’d come here. She was a woman in love with a man incapable of returning it. She wanted some reassurance that he felt something, too. He wasn’t capable. Why couldn’t she understand that? And why the hell did his entire body feel like it was being crushed inside by an invisible vice-grip every damn time he looked at her?

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Chapter 34 The fact he defended this evil agency that’d destroyed them horrified Perry. He should feel unequivocal bitterness toward them. She wanted him to hate them as much as she did. She wanted him to choose her side. Why wouldn’t he side against them? “You said some inside didn’t condone recruiting you involuntarily. Who? Can they help us?” “The head of operations…you know him as Samuel Crawford…claims he wanted no part of it but couldn’t change it once it was done.” “Do you believe him? Is he a good man? Will he leave Danny alone because he won’t involuntarily recruit someone who’s adamantly against it?” She could see what Roan wasn’t saying in his tight expression: Obviously it wasn’t as simple as she wanted to make it. Suddenly, his head came up, and she could see he was listening for something he’d heard to happen again. He put a finger to his lips, rose like a panther, and drew his gun. She did the same and followed him to the entrance they’d come in from the garage, holding her pistol two-handed, aimed down. Roan lunged, struck fiercely with the weapon and 165

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whoever had been about to enter went down by the car. Perry recognized him and grabbed Roan’s arm frantically. “Don’t shoot him! It’s Mike, my partner.” She couldn’t be certain what to expect from Roan, but she let out a sigh of relief when he holstered the gun. Perry put hers away and knelt by Mike. “He shouldn’t have come here,” Roan said. “He’s my partner. He must have seen us leave.” “Of course he did—I was watching him follow us as I drove here.” When Mike came to, he reached for his shoulder immediately, groaning in pain. Raising his head, he glanced first at her, then up at Roan. “Daniel Sands, I presume,” he murmured. “Mike Reynolds,” Roan greeted him coldly, walking away from them into the house. “You shouldn’t be here.” “You okay?” Mike asked as she helped him to his feet. “I’m fine. You really shouldn’t have followed us, Mike.” “What would you’ve done, partner?” She had no answer. When he straightened, she saw the front of his shirt and jeans were soaking wet. “What’s that?” she demanded. Irritably, he shook his head. “Coffee. Hot coffee.” Ahh, that explained it. He must have gotten back to the truck with the coffee and caught a glimpse of her getting in the car with Roan. In his rush to follow, he’d spilled the hot coffee down his front. “So what’s going on here?” he asked as they followed Roan. Perry knew Roan wouldn’t answer. He was as agitated as a predator protecting its kill. She didn’t want to involve Mike right now. Already, she’d endangered him too much. 166

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Roan was right—she should have come to Chicago alone. “All that, huh?” Mike said, uncomfortably aware moments later that neither of them wanted to talk to him. He shifted his gaze between the two of them as they exchanged furtive looks. “Mike…maybe you should go check into the hotel. I’ll be there soon.” “I canceled your reservations,” Roan spoke. “You need to make some better attempt to disguise yourselves. You go under real names and identities, you’ll be flagged in a heartbeat. Your best bet is to leave Chicago now…or pay cash for a room at any dive that won’t ask for ID.” Perry glanced at her partner. “Go ahead. I’ll call you later, Mike, and we’ll meet up.” “You sure this is safe?” No, she wasn’t, but she needed to be with Roan beyond the threat of danger. “It’ll be okay.” Mike nodded uneasily about it. He looked at Roan and started to say something but apparently thought better of it. He headed for the street. After they heard Mike’s truck pull out, Roan asked, “He’s still just a partner and a friend?” Why would he ask? she wondered. Sure, he’d been territorial years ago, but never over Mike. “You know he likes his romantic interests to be a lot less independent and much more voluptuous.” For a few minutes, Roan simply gazed at her, exhaustion in his eyes. She wondered if he’d slept for even an hour since they parted. He sat on the piano bench again, looking like the weight of the world had come down squarely on his mighty shoulders. 167

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How could she make his burdens worse when all she wanted was for him to take her in his arms and tell her he loved her? Tell her the hours they’d been apart had been hellish torment… “Play something,” she requested in a whisper. “Like you used to.” “I haven’t played in twenty-five years.” Yet he turned to the piano, tentatively lifted the cover…and played so beautifully, just like Daniel had every night. It was as if not a day had gone by since then. Tears filled her eyes at the emotion flooding the room in the connection between instrument and loving fingers. He stopped abruptly, as if the memories were too painful, and the silence felt almost excruciatingly harsh. She moved in back of him, wounded when her touch made him rigid. “It’s at an impasse.” “Danny’s recruitment status?” she asked hopefully. “Yeah. But Oversight wants him. I don’t know why.” “To ensure your continued loyalty?” she asked, and he glanced back and up at her. She could see that it’d never occurred to him that his organization might use his son to make sure he didn’t stray. The possibility was very real, his expression confirmed. “Choose life,” she urged. “That’s exactly what you don’t seem to get, lady. I don’t have any choices.” With that, he walked away from her.

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Chapter 35 He fully expected her to follow him. Even with his back turned to her at the window, the pain that washed over him at her approach was sheer agony. He felt every footstep like a dagger straight to his not-dead, notincapable-of-bleeding heart. “You can’t get involved, Perry,” he said between clenched teeth, poignantly imagining her reach for him halting inches from her goal. “If you do anything to expose them, they’ll make you sorry. Nobody does that better than they do.” Her voice was soft and uncertain—close by—when she asked, “Would you let them hurt me? Or worse?” Whether or not he got a bullet in his own brain for his trouble, his superiors would have to go through him to get to her. Not an easy task. “We’d both end up dead. You can’t leave Danny. You have to go home and take care of your Davenport case.” “How do you… What do you know about my case?” she demanded in surprise. Convinced he could handle it now, he turned to her, shaking his head. “If anything happens to change Danny’s recruitment status, I’ll let you know. Check your garden. For now, we’ll wait and see what they’ll do. Some potential 169

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recruits are never brought in for various reasons— appropriate at the time.” He didn’t believe that would happen with Danny. The kid had already accomplished too much of national interest for his superiors to discard the idea of recruiting him for their use. They were figuring Danny could be turned into the perfect man-machine, just as Roan had been. Dark circles hovered beneath her eyes, and he fought the need to reach out to her, to try to make them go away with his touch. Somehow he knew just his touch could make her lack of sleep and her constant worry go away. Damn that hers brought equal pain and pleasure to him. “You said your superiors want him, Roan,” she reminded. That part worried him, but he didn’t want her to know it. Shannon McKee didn’t generally make a decision and then not follow through on it. He suspected Danny’s recruitment had been temporarily set aside because they were allotting most of their resources in discovering where R.E.D. was manufacturing the suitcase nukes. As soon as the situation was neutralized, regular day-to-day functions would resume. The recruitment would come back around, and his superiors would move forward on it. She grimaced. “I hate waiting idly. Feeling so damn helpless,” she complained, dropping to the end of the bed. She looked up at him, her eyes intense. “I want to face this head-on instead of cowering in the dark. That’s what Danny wants, too.” Like father, like son. An unwilling surge of pride filled him. But his own confrontational arrogance had gotten him in trouble before. Trouble on a life-and-death scale. She leaned back on the mattress on her elbows, 170

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inadvertently making her breasts thrust forward. Roan wanted to resist the urge to sit beside her, knowing how distracted he’d already become by the way her expensive suit jacket bunched and opened in all the right places when she lifted her arms over her head and covered her face with her hands. “You don’t have to feel helpless, darlin’,” he said under his breath, as he rejected his own advice and sat next to her. He craned to look behind him. She’d uncovered her face. Roan leaned back with her, bringing his body around toward hers in the process. Helplessly, he ran his index finger over the shell of her ear, fascinated by the way the elegant curve of her neck met the small, delicate lobe. “Be his bodyguard,” he urged her. “Make sure he’s safe at all times. I know if anybody can do that, it’s you.” His caress had distracted her, too, he noticed when she prevented him from continuing to memorize her with his platonic hand. He saw the awareness—need matching his own—in her sultry eyes. Saw the way her nipples rose against the thin, cream-colored top she wore. Only Perry, he thought affectionately. Only Perry would and could wear jeans with silk and pearls. She rivaled a queen in them, too. “I can do that,” she murmured without breath when he reached for the long, knotted string of pearls. He brushed her nipple as he did, and she gasped appreciatively. Hell, what he wouldn’t give to make her his again. To undress her, play with her, pleasure her, make her writhe until she screamed for him. He wrapped the length of pearls around one rounded contour of her breast. A perfect, full, perky breast. Deliberately, he brushed the ever-more-hardening tip with the pearled knot. “How could you leave me?” she demanded, breathless 171

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again. “How could you?” A diamond sheen filled her eyes, and he brought his hand to her cheek. “I didn’t wanna leave you. I had to. I never wanted to.” She shifted her body toward him, asking him for something he knew he shouldn’t give her. Knew he wouldn’t be able to deny either of them. “I was never so lonely as when I woke and found you gone.” He’d imagined what her life had been like following his disappearance. Until he heard she married his brother, he’d bled for her every morning, every evening. His day didn’t move forward without seeing her beautiful face beside his on the pillow. Forget about sleep at night if she wasn’t curled up in his arms, after lovemaking more often than not, because she was an integral part of himself. “Never?” he asked. Her teary gaze remained steady with his. “Never.” Certainty hemmed the word in on every side. She slid the few inches to him, put her fingertips on his jaw, then rose up to kiss him. Just that quick, his body responded. Molten lava shot through his veins straight to his manhood. He grasped her face, aggressively opened her mouth beneath his and took her as deep as he dared. He knew then exactly why he’d brought her here, why she’d sent her partner away. He wanted her again. She wanted him. Neither of them was willing to leave it at a single, stolen night together. Not now that they’d found each other again. In minutes, he’d undressed both of them. She opened to him just as easily as before. More eagerly, if anything. He couldn’t get enough of her luscious mouth, her breasts, the hot, tight shelter of her femininity all around him, clasping 172

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him like a hot, slick velvet glove. Gasping for breath, fighting against the knowledge that he was losing every part of himself in her and to her, he clenched his teeth and tried to hold back. To save himself. But he knew that goal was impossible when her arms and legs encircled him, her gentle hands cradled his face and she kissed him. “I love you,” she whispered—his death sentence.

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Chapter 36 “I have to go, darlin’,” Roan murmured against her hair. He didn’t let her go one iota even when he added, “I’ll drop you off at your hotel. I want you out of Chicago in the morning.” She eased back to see his eyes. “You want me gone?” His hold on her tightened at her words, nearly to the point of causing her pain. “If anything ever happened to you…” he growled. “You’ve been there…” she said in dawning realization of what she’d only suspected recently. “All these years, you’ve watched me…even if you didn’t let yourself watch Danny…from afar. You’ve watched over me to make sure I’m safe. You’ve watched me…sleep.” He didn’t reply, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. He simply kissed her intimately again. She couldn’t help wondering if he was doing what he’d longed to then. Repeating that he had to go, that he was due at a mission briefing at once, he slid away much too quickly. “You were there,” she persisted, sitting up while he dressed. “You know you were the only one. Even when I was married to Linc.” He didn’t seem to want to answer. She forced herself to get up and dress, too, sensing his silence confirmed 174

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rather than belied her suspicions. Her tenderness with Linc might have confused him about the reality of the situation, but she’d cried herself to sleep most nights, alone—she and Linc always maintained separate bedrooms. If Roan was there, he knew that. If only I’d realized how close he was. She called her partner and got the location of the motel he’d booked for them. **** Expecting Roan to drop her off without a word, she nearly swooned when he instead reached for her as soon as he parked the car in the motel lot. He kissed her so deeply, she could almost feel him inside her again and she flushed with renewed arousal. “Check your garden,” he said on a gravelly note. He kissed her again and again, like he couldn’t let her go, and she didn’t have any doubt that he wanted something that would l