Drew
Cold gray skies blanketed the horizon, while a heavy mist saturated my dark wool peacoat. A fitting day for a funeral. The juxtaposition of the death of my best friend against the life of her newborn son snuggled closely in my arms was jarring. A harsh reminder that life must go on, and it would go on, only without Zoe Gaines.
It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.
Zoe was supposed to live a long, full life, not die in a hospital days after giving birth to her son, Hunter James.
She should be here, nursing Hunter, holding him, delighting in his little coos, the pursing of his tiny baby lips, meeting his every need and desire. Instead, I held him tightly, a counterfeit mother. Not the one he wanted, not the one he’d never get to know.
A fraud. A sham. A phony.
I knelt by the gravesite, scooping up a handful of dirt and sprinkling it across the coffin. Blinking rapidly, I tried to work up the pain bottled up inside me and allow it to burst from my eyes. Only, the tears wouldn’t come. For days, I’d tried to feel, to hurt, to mourn, but it was no use. My heart was broken. Dead. A brittle, dusty thing that might never be whole again. I had nothing left to give, and yet, I would be forced to give it all.
Zoe had always wanted to be a mother. Since we were little girls, she would pretend to fall in love, get married, have babies. It was her dream. Not mine. No—I pretended to be a doctor. A pediatrician. I had a life plan. A plan that did not include losing my best friend and raising her newborn son as my own.
But when Zoe had been diagnosed two years ago with a rare disease, one without a cure and that would take her life at twenty-six, she’d decided to make her dreams come true on her own. It was fitting that the one thing she couldn’t die without experiencing was motherhood. Had she known achieving that dream would kill her sooner? Had that mattered to her? Probably not.
She’d sat across a table from me in our favorite restaurant, her chin held high. The picture of health and life. The disease had yet to ravage her body, but the signs of stress were there in her eyes.
“You’re not going to talk me out of this,” she’d said. “I’ve already got the appointment at the fertility clinic. I’m going to have a baby, and you can either be there for me and be supportive, or say goodbye now. Either way, I’m not missing out on this.”
Who could talk her out of it? No one. We’d thought she’d have a few years with her son, but the pregnancy wore her body down quickly, and she’d had days. Mere days to hold and nurse Hunter. Moments to live out a lifetime of dreams and desires.
I’d snuck into her hospital room late one night after Hunter had been born. Zoe could barely keep her eyes open, barely lift her limbs, but she’d held Hunter in the crook of her arm, never putting him down.
“How are you feeling?” I’d asked as I sat down on the bed beside her, taking her hand.
“Tired. But all new mamas feel that way—right?”
Right. They did. Zoe knew she was dying. She put on the façade for those around her, but resignation shone in her eyes. Strong. Determined. Stubborn. No one would ever call Zoe Gaines weak.
“Of course they do.” I pushed back a lock of her limp hair that had stuck to her damp forehead.
“I need you to do something for me, Drew.”
“Anything.”
She tugged Hunter a little tighter in her arms as tears trickled down her cheeks. I choked back the emotions that threatened to explode out of me like a geyser. But if I let the tears fall, they’d never stop.
“I need you to raise Hunter for me.” I opened my mouth to protest, to tell her she’d raise her son herself, but Zoe shook her head. “Don’t. Don’t patronize me. We both know I’m never leaving this hospital.”
Her breath hitched as she inhaled past the sobs. “I promise it was worth it. Holding this tiny human. Knowing I created him. The love that I feel. I’m so glad I got to experience it, even for a few days. But I need to know he’s going to be loved like I would love him. And you’re the only person for the job.”
“Zoe, I don’t know what to say.”
“Just say you’ll do it. I know it’s not a part of your ten-year plan.” She smiled. The differences between us were like night and day. I had a plan, a very detailed outline of what I wanted my life to be like. Children didn’t even come into play for another five years. But Zoe? She floated through life as if she had no predetermined destination. She jumped from one thing to the next, no rhyme or reason, just pursuing whatever joys life brought her way.
We were opposites, and yet, we were the same. We loved each other more than anything else in the world. We were the same in our love.
“Of course I will.” I gave her the vow that would change the course and direction of my life. I’d changed it once before for her. When she was diagnosed, I’d turned my attention to the study of diseases rather than pediatrics as I’d planned for my entire life. I’d likely never work the inside of a doctor’s office or hospital. Instead, I’d spend the rest of my years in a lab behind closed doors, hoping to save some person’s life. Especially since I wasn’t able to save Zoe’s.
Her face lit up, and I leaned in to kiss her forehead. She was sweating, but chills racked her body.
“Thank you.”
Zoe closed her eyes, and in her exhaustion still somehow managed to pull Hunter even closer.
“Do you want me to take him?”
She shook her head. “Not a chance.”
The next day, Zoe’s lawyer had arrived at the hospital to write up the will that would leave Hunter in my care. Zoe had been raised by her grandmother, who’d passed away when she was sixteen. She’d come to live with me for our last two years of high school. There was no one in her life to contest the will, but it would be more efficient to have it clearly spelled out in writing and would hopefully make the adoption process easier for me.
Zoe had thought of everything.
Everything except to tell me how I would live in this big, cruel world without her.
***
Levi
The atmosphere at Shadow Force was suffocating and a bit depressing. Okay, fine, I guess it was just me that felt suffocated and depressed. Everyone else seemed to be floating on cloud nine.
Too many couples. Too many pregnant females. Too much happiness.
It was nauseating.
I thought back to the dream I’d had the night before, one of many I’d had since Oscar and Ivy had mentioned the woman who’d helped them during their time of captivity by Los Caballeros del Camino, The Knights of the Way. It was unclear why this one particular woman was entering my dreams at night. I’d never met her. Didn’t know her. And yet, over the last week I’d had countless dreams of my angel.
I’d been standing in a clearing in the middle of the woods. My angel had appeared to me, with different-colored eyes. One royal blue, one black brown. Her skin had been pale, a peaches-and-cream complexion against a shocking veil of luxurious long, dark hair. She’d smiled at me, then crooked her finger, beckoning me to follow her. I’d been quick to oblige, trailing after her to the edge of a cliff, a waterfall roaring below us, the mist spraying up into our faces.
“What are we doing here?” I’d asked her. She’d laughed, throwing her head back in pure, unadulterated joy.
Then she’d taken my hand, glanced down at the river rushing below us and grinned wider.
“We’re living.”
With those words, she’d jumped, taking me with her over the edge.
And I woke up.
I had the weirdest sensation that somehow this woman held a key to my future. It was ridiculous, of course. Who was she? Where did she come from? Why was she important? I had no way of knowing.
All I knew was she was somehow involved in this mess with Los Caballeros, but I didn’t know how or why. Was she held against her will? Or had she been an eager participant in The Vicar’s evil games?
I shook off the dream and leaned back in my chair, steepling my fingers over my chest. We needed a break in this case. And we needed it yesterday.
A knock sounded at the door, and Ryder stood there, excitement radiating off him in waves.
“Whatcha got?”
“Intel on this Dr. Bellamy.”
He sat down in the chair across from me, and I leaned forward as he pecked at his keyboard.
“Well, what is it? Who is he?”
Ryder shot me an eat-your-heart-out grin.
“Don’t know. But I found this information in a secret chat room. Apparently the guy is some sort of recluse scientist. He has several contracts with big pharmaceutical companies. The people who work for him all had to sign an NDA about his identity and location. We know nothing about him. Only his name. And that he went missing six months ago. His employees are getting antsy.”
“That’s coincidental.”
“Yeah—exactly what I was thinking. I think this Dr. Bellamy was taken by the Cabs to create the virus and who knows what else.”
“I think you may be right. So, if we find Dr. Bellamy, we find out what this virus is and how it works, and that puts us one step closer to discovering what the Cabs are planning.”
“Exactly.”
“Any leads on where the other bunkers might be located? We agree that’s the best place for a lab—right?”
“Yeah. I’ve got several locations, but one that really stands out. It’s about an hour outside the city. And it was put on the market a year ago. It was a cash sale.”
“Nothing says fishy like someone paying cold, hard cash for an underground bunker.”
I’d bet my last dollar the Cabs were using the bunker for something, but it was always good to have as much knowledge as we could under our belt before we went in half-cocked and someone got hurt or, worse, killed.
“Get Ortiz and Cruz on reconnaissance. See if we can get a feel for how many guards are there. If it’s underground, it’s going to take us a few days to gain an idea of how many people might be down under. In the end, we’ll be going in pretty much blind, unless you can get us a detailed schematic of the property.”
“I’m on it. I’ll search the sale records and see what I find.”
“Have Oscar take note of what might work explosives-wise. We may need to have them come out to us rather than go in to them.”
“He’ll love that.”
I returned Ryder’s grin as he stood and left the room.
Each of the operatives who worked at Shadow Force had a troubled past of sorts. Cade Montgomery and Piper Collins Montgomery had been foster kids in the system, raised during their teen years by the same foster father. Ryder Blake was raised by a single father and a multitude of stepmothers after his mom died when he was young.
Cruz Ortiz had been taken prisoner during his time in the army by Chavez and then while undercover had had trouble with Chavez, losing his identity of sorts in the process. Oscar Cortada’s parents had died in a car accident when he was in his senior year. Jolie Phillips Blake, Ryder’s wife, was pretty well-rounded, and she and I had a lot in common with our families. Middle-class, well-meaning parents who loved and cared for us.
Besides the deal with Chavez, which ended my career with the DEA, and the disappointment my family, primarily my father, felt towards me afterwards, my life had been pretty easy. I’d been raised by two parents who loved me and wanted the best for me. My dad was a cop, and my mom was a teacher. We didn’t have a ton of money, but we never went without. I had two sisters who were married, and several nieces and nephews.
All in all, my life seemed pretty perfect, except for that one little smudge on my record.
Cade and I had taken the fall for bad intel from Julio Varga almost three years ago. Cade had blamed himself for the mishap and the death of several of our team members, but it had been a mole inside the DEA and Varga’s double-crossing that had been the cause.
Henry Washington, special advisor to the president of the United States, had recruited us to start Shadow Force, a black ops group that took the cases that needed to be handled off the books. Most of our assignments dealt with drugs and human trafficking, and our current case had been one huge, messed-up puzzle from the beginning.
Juan Carlos and Chavez had been tied in with Los Caballeros, a semi-religious organization where the leader, Matias Vicario, had set himself up as the messenger of God. What God was he worshiping? Well, no one knew that exactly. It seemed The Vicar had a deity of his own making, whose rules and virtues were quite distorted. Also evil. There was that. Add in the Russian Mafia for good measure and it was a mighty tangled web of sin and carnality.
The race to get the Cabs before they released a deadly virus that targeted millions of young American people was now front and center at what we were hired to do. But ferreting out their exact plans or even what kind of virus we were dealing with had been a difficult task.
My mind flitted back to the image of the angel in my dream. Was she somehow the key to bringing down the Cabs once and for all? Or would she be a sacrifice in this deadly game?
It was unclear what her role was—only that she was merciful in a place where there seemed to be little compassion. That had to speak to what kind of person she was—right?
I shook my head. Dreaming of a woman I’d never met or seen or had any interactions with whatsoever. I was losing my mind.
And that was definitely something I didn’t have time for.
The cell phone lying on my desk rang with a number few people in the world had.
Henry Washington.
“Slater.”
“Where are we with these damn Caballeros? Any leads?”
“Yes, sir. We have a name, a scientist, but we’re not exactly sure how he plays into things. And we think we may have a location. Ortiz and Cortada are heading out there today to do some recon.”
“Good. The president wants the situation resolved ASAP, especially now that our cover has been blown to hell.”
“We’re on it.”
“I know you are. Listen; there’s something you need to know.”
I sat up in my chair. Washington’s voice had fallen lower than his normal tone, and I had a feeling whatever he was about to tell me wasn’t good.
“What’s that?”
“I know I don’t have to tell you that this is confidential information, but I can’t stress enough how confidential it is. I’d prefer you keep this to yourself for now—even from your team.”
Yep, definitely wasn’t good.
“Of course.”
“Vicario’s name is an alias. We had a suspicion of that, but until recently no one could pin down who he is. Our people got a hit last night. The president has a connection with Vicario.”
“What kind of connection?”
“The very, very bad kind.”