rapport, calming fears and making consequences acceptable. But talking sometimes wasn’t the solution. This hostage taker wasn’t in the mood for rapport. The instinct to save his own sorry hide was putting two innocents at risk. And with three consecutive life sentences to serve, he had nothing left to lose.
The Special Operations Group was twenty-six hours into a situation with the escaped felon. He’d taken his ex-girlfriend and her four-year-old boy as live body armor to buy his freedom once the deputy marshals tasked with bringing him back to prison had cornered him.
Luci was five hours into her second six-hour shift with only snakes, spiders and scorpions for company as she lay in the tall grass on the hill overlooking the house.
And Joe Bob Grigsby, the piece of garbage who’d started the whole thing by flying his coop, had thrown the phone out the window half an hour ago and traded it for a shot of something that had him wired and his hostages blubbering in utter terror.
This couldn’t go on much longer. If Dom couldn’t talk this guy down, then no one could. Which would rev up the assault team. Cole had to be chomping at the bit to knock down the door and kick some butt.
Dom and Cole. The mule and the thoroughbred. Each excellent at his job. Each as opposite as black and white. Each the best of friends. One was her confidant, the other her lover. No, make that her brand-new husband—though no one else on the team knew. The thought of her elopement brought a small smile to her lips. She and Cole and Dom had all competed and bonded in the same training class and, although like tended to mix with like, their odd circle of friendship had endured.
Together, they worked magic.
She’d punched holes through thousands of targets, but because of Dom’s smooth-talking ways and Cole’s take-no-prisoners daring, she’d never had to make that split-second decision to plug a bullet through anyone’s brain stem and end a life. Knock on wood, so far, all of their operations had ended without a shot fired.
“TOC to all units, stand by to copy.” The voice of the Special Operations Group leader boomed through Luci’s earpiece. Something was up. A shot of adrenaline spiked through her veins, brightening the crown of sun spearing through the fog.
“Sierra One, ready to copy.” The other units, assault and sniper, keyed in.
Her father had once told her that a pilot’s life was long hours of boredom punctuated by seconds of sheer terror. A sniper’s life wasn’t much different. Hurry up and wait. The U.S. Marshals Service hadn’t promised her glamour, but they had promised her a chance to prove herself. Four years ago, that had seemed like more than she’d gotten out of life so far.
Twenty-six hours of trying to end a situation peaceably had come down to the next few seconds.
One second. One shot. No second chances. A miss meant a failure. A hit, two lives saved. Are you ready, Luci? Can you do it? Can you take a life? Can you finally prove you’re good enough?
She centered the crosshairs in the scope tube. Her index finger rested on the trigger guard. She looked into the living room, one hundred and ninety yards away, with an intimacy that was deceiving. Joe Bob hadn’t shaved since he’d run. The five o’clock shadow had grown into a short beard. His skin was oily with sweat. His brown eyes were wild and the whites spidered with red. She could almost smell the sourness of his body, the alcohol on his breath, the desperation in his rage-spiked pulse.
“Hotel One to TOC. We’re at Yellow.” The assault team had reached the forward rallying point, the last position of cover and concealment.
“Copy, Hotel One. I have you at Yellow.”
Luci aligned her body with the recoil path, pressed her hip against the ground and spread her knees for stability.
Slow and easy.
She raised the elevation to compensate for the high humidity. With air this still, she didn’t have to accommodate for windage. The crosshairs in her scope fluxed slightly as a wake of adrenaline flowed out of her muscles. She settled back on Joe Bob’s face.
The assault team waited for the order to breach.
“TOC to all units. You have compromise authority and permission to move to Green.”
The group leader counted down the launch sequence. “Three…”
The world blackened and narrowed to that third window on the first floor. To Joe Bob’s crazed face as he buzzed back and forth across the window, brandishing the petrified child like a sack of feed. Just a few more seconds, baby, and we’ll have you out and safe.
“Two…”
Concentrate. Calm yourself. Slow the heartbeat. Her heart pumped with a trained rhythm that fed her brain oxygen but didn’t interfere with her shot. She settled the crosshairs on the tip of Joe Bob’s nose.
“One…”
Then came the pause that seemed to hang in the air forever before the world exploded into action. The assault team, clad in black, blew down the door—no flash-bang devices because of the kid—and raced in. Every move was a well-practiced choreography. “Drop the gun! Drop the gun!”
The woman screamed. The child howled.
Joe Bob stopped his mad pacing. He dropped the rifle and stuck a pistol under the boy’s chin.
Luci sucked in air and eased it out.
Committed, she increased pressure on the trigger.
The world shattered, spewing chaos into the air like Fourth of July fireworks.
Her ears rang.
Bodies dropped.
And the ground ran red with blood.
Chapter One
Seven years later
His mind seventeen miles away from where he sat in the basement bunker of the Aerie in Wintergreen, New Hampshire, Dominic Skyralov paid little attention to the morning briefing as he carved a bite out of the almond coffee cake on his plate and washed it down with warm green tea.
“That’s all, gentlemen.” Sebastian Falconer, head of Seekers, Inc., closed the top file in front of him. The briefing was ending, and Dom wasn’t quite sure how to bring up the subject of his quandary. “Check your PDAs for updates.”
Dom pulled what was left of the almond coffee cake on the platter toward him. “I need a word with you.”
Falconer nodded and leaned back into his chair, the picture of patience.
Sabriel Mercer, dark and brooding, peeled himself off the shadows of the wall and left without a word. Nothing new there. Dom often wondered what had scarred the man so deeply he couldn’t trust himself to speak.
Noah Kingsley halted his swift unplugging of snakes of wires attached to his various computer accessories. Looking from one man to the other, he snapped his red suspenders and said, “I’ll get his later.”
Hale Harper, usual glower in place, gathered his notes. “Hang on, Kingsley. I need some information from you.”
“Follow
