Red Zone (Red Zone 1)

Her heart ripped in two. The pain made her stumble. But she couldn’t take him down with her. Her eyesight blurred, and she blinked hard to clear it. With a tiny moan, she released the rope and stepped back.

“No!” The fury in his word made her shake. Not from fear. From pain.

She fought to get the words out through her tightening throat. “This is for the best. You’re in danger with me. We both know we’ll never make it to New York in time, not now. Not with Kane at our heels. And even if we did make it, Enforcement would kill us both. This way, you live.”

“No.” He sprang to his feet. His hands on the rail, ready to jump.

“Don’t,” she snapped the word at him. “This is just a job. I hired you to get me to La Paz, and we’re here. Your job is done. Go home.” Her stomach roiled with the lies.

His eye turned black. “Fuck that.”

His arms tensed, ready to swing his legs up and over the rail, and then he froze. His body shook. His eye rolled back, and he collapsed into a heap on the balcony floor. Friday screamed. She scrambled onto the rail, desperate to get to the man she loved, Desperate to help him, somehow. An arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her back against a hard, immovable body. She kicked and punched and fought, shouting for freedom, begging for Striker’s safety.

A man’s face appeared on the balcony above her, the one where Striker lay motionless. “What do you want to do with him, Boss?”

“Bring him along.” Kane Duggan’s arm tightened around her.

All she could do was watch helplessly as the other man hefted Striker’s limp body over his shoulder. He wasn’t unconscious. The neural stun gun had rendered him temporarily immobile. His unpatched eye was open. It stared at her with equal measures of fear and fury. She turned her head in shame, blinking away useless tears. This was all her fault. All of it. She should have given up on life in Houston and let the poison take her. She shouldn’t have tried to find the antidote. No one would have missed her. No one would have mourned. And now, because she’d been selfish, Striker’s life was on the line. More than his life—his secrets, and the secrets of his team, were on the line. Because of her, his unique DNA was in the hands of CommTECH.

She erupted with the injustice of it all. “Leave him alone. Put him down. He’s got nothing to do with this. Nothing. I only hired him to bring me here. You don’t need to take him. Leave him!” She kicked back at Kane’s shins as she dug her nails into his arms. Panic was a ferocious beast, eating her alive from the inside out. Kane had to understand that Striker had nothing to do with her. He had to let the man she loved go free.

“You’re more fun than I thought you would be, little girl,” Kane said against her ear. “Now, for every kick you give me, I’ll make sure my associate kicks your smuggler.”

She went still in his hold.

“I knew we’d reach an understanding.” With a cold, hard laugh, he climbed through the window, back into the building, taking her with him.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Last Stop Bar

Munroe, Texas

No matter what time Mace walked into the Last Stop Bar, day or night, it was always filled with desperate losers trying to drink away their existence. Some days, he felt like he fit right in.

“I hate this place,” Sandi said as she strode beside him. “Reminds me of all the times I pulled my mom out of shitholes just like it.” Her face didn’t show any of the disgust Mace knew she felt. “I say we just shoot the traitor and be done with it.”

“Can’t.” The crowd parted for Mace. Mainly because he was huge and built of solid muscle, but partly because there was murder in his eyes. “We need to know what information he sold.”

“Then I can kill him?” Her tone held death.

“Then you can kill him.” One betrayal in a lifetime was more than enough and they hadn’t been able to exact retribution that time. This time, they could.

“This kills me. He was supposed to be our friend.” She faked a pout. “I need one of those Cosmo articles—Ten Steps to Help You Deal with Trust Issues. Otherwise how am I ever gonna meet a man and fall in love?”

“Cosmo doesn’t exist anymore, baby sis. You’re on your own.”

There wasn’t a romantic bone in his foster sister’s body. He was more romantic than Sandi, and that in itself said everything. She pouted again, but the humor fell flat. There was no getting past their reason for being in the Last Stop.

“He’s at the end of the bar.” Mace spotted their prey.

“Oh, to be unnaturally tall and able to see over crowds.”

They stalked through the room, aiming straight for the end of the bar. The owner spotted them and gave them a chin lift in acknowledgment.

Glen handed a beer to a local miner.

“Got a minute?” Mace said.