Chapter Two

Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland

One Week Later

Marcus hadn’t planned to divulge his new intel to the team. He’d wanted to take on Haly alone—spend some quality time with the murdering son of a bitch. But when the team got back from Seth’s wedding and found out what he’d been up to while they were gone, HORNET’s commanders, Gabe Bristow and Travis Quinn, threatened to kick him out if he attempted the takedown on his own. It was either the team participates in the raid on Haly’s cabin with him, or they’d go without him. There would be, in Quinn’s words, “no more fucking Rambos” on the team.

So here he was, crunching through the knee-high snow, decked out in full winter gear, completely, horribly sober for the first time in weeks, and wondering how the hell he’d interrogate, then kill Haly without his teammates knowing.

Up ahead, the cabin was mostly camouflaged by the blanket of snow. Its weathered wood front peered over piles of virgin snow, its two dark windows like eyes, the doorway a gaping mouth. The A-line roof sagged. The cabin looked like an old man bundled up for winter in a scarf and pointed hood.

It also looked abandoned.

No lights inside, no smoke puffing from the chimney. Nobody had cleared a path from the doorway to the woodpile stacked under the eaves along the left side of the cabin. A car sat in the driveway, but it, too, was buried.

The team moved as quickly and silently as they could, given the snow. They kept Marcus in the middle of the line, and he knew they’d positioned him there on purpose. They wanted to keep an eye on him. They didn’t trust him.

Probably for the best. He didn’t trust himself.

Nearby, something crunched through the icy top crust of the snow.

At the front of the line, Lanie Delcambre, field team leader, held up a fist. Everyone crouched, tense and alert. Across the yard, at the tree line, a deer moved into view. The team stayed still for a moment longer to make sure it had been only the deer they’d heard.

Lanie motioned them forward, and as one, they approached the cabin’s door. It hung open, and snow had invaded the house. Fresh animal tracks led inside, and judging by the size of those paws, that was no deer.

Tank, HORNET’s resident bomb-sniffing dog, trembled a little at his handler, Ian Reinhardt’s, side. Yeah, he didn’t like those tracks any more than Marcus did. Something that size could rip through a dog and person or two before their M4s took it down.

They lined up single file on each side of the door, weapons ready for whatever waited inside. Marcus didn’t think they’d find Sebastian Haly. The place felt empty, devoid of human life. If Haly had been here, he was long gone now, but nobody was ready to let down their guard just yet in case whatever made those huge tracks was still making itself at home.

They breached the door, one after another, weapons up. Lanie and her husband, Jesse Warrick, HORNET’s medic, in front. Seth Harlan, sniper, and Harvard, computer geek extraordinaire, next. Jean-Luc Cavalier, linguist, and Marcus followed. Ian and Tank brought up the rear.

The cabin reeked of death, rot, and decay. Marcus knew the scent even before he spotted the body.

“Shit,” Jesse said under his breath.

“Clear the house,” Lanie commanded, even though they all knew they weren’t going to find anyone.

“Clear,” Jean-Luc confirmed.

“Clear,” Ian and Seth said at the same time.

Everyone shuffled back to the living room. The body lay strapped to an overturned chair and was unrecognizable as male or female. Most likely male, going by the clothes that still hung on him. Animals had scavenged most of the soft tissue, and what was left had putrefied into an ugly blue-gray.

“This our guy?” Ian asked.

Jean-Luc picked his way past the body and grabbed something from a dish on the narrow counter that separated the living room and kitchen. A wallet. He flipped it open, studied it with his flashlight, then held it up for the group to see. Inside was an American driver’s license for Samuel Hall, the alias under which Sebastian Haly had bought this property.

“Looks like it.” He slid a glance in Marcus’s direction, and there was no mistaking the worry there. “Sorry, mon ami. Someone else got to him first.”

Marcus lowered his weapon and stared at the corpse. It was over. He’d found Danny’s killer. During the many long sleepless nights he’d spent envisioning this moment, he’d thought he’d feel relieved, exhilarated, triumphant…

Something.

But the ache of his best friend’s loss still throbbed inside him, empty and insistent. Nothing had changed. Knowing Sebastian Haly’s name, knowing he’d pulled the trigger on Danny, and knowing that he was no longer drawing breath himself changed nothing.

He’d never get answers now. Haly had been only a hired gun.

With a shout of rage and frustration, he tightened his finger on the trigger, emptying his clip into the body.

“Jesus Christ,” someone said. He didn’t know who, didn’t care. It sounded like they were miles away.

“Stop him,” another voice ordered. Female. Lanie.

A heavy arm locked around his neck from behind. Hands yanked his weapon free of his grip. He struggled against them, fought blindly, so full of pain and anger and hatred, he didn’t care that he was hurting friends.

A needle pricked his arm, and a moment later his limbs grew heavy. His vision wavered. The hands holding him back let go, and he staggered, dropped to his knees.

“There now, mon ami,” a familiar voice soothed close to his ear. Jean-Luc. The Cajun had caught him and was lowering him gently to the floor. “Go to sleep now. It’s okay. We gotchu.”

The worried faces of his friends floated over him. He looked away, ashamed, and found his gaze landing on Sebastian Haly’s gaping maw of a face. Haly looked like he was grinning, all white teeth and bone.

The killer’s body was the last thing he saw before the sedative in his system swept him into unconsciousness.

…

Los Angeles, California

Leah Giancarelli used to love her nighttime routine with her kids. Yes, they were wild, her six-year-old twins running her ragged while her nine-year-old daughter laughed at them.

But that was before.

Maya didn’t laugh anymore. She’d withdrawn to her room and hardly ever came out.

Cooper and Colton still put up a fight at bedtime, but the antics were no longer cute or innocent. Cooper had thrown a shoe at her tonight, and it had been all she could do not to break down into a sobbing mess in front of the boys.

She didn’t know how to handle them without Danny.

She shut herself in her room and leaned against the door. She needed a moment. Just a moment to breathe, and then she’d resume the battle. She heard the boys screaming at each other, heard something crash, and exhaled a breath that was half sob, half exhausted laugh.

She couldn’t do this. How some women managed to raise their children as a single parent was a mystery. Three months of single parenthood and her nerves were shot. She couldn’t take Cooper’s angry outbursts anymore, couldn’t deal with Maya’s refusal to acknowledge the world outside her iPad or Colton’s morbid fascination with death.

She needed help or she was going to break.

She had to fix her family before they fell completely apart.

Therapy. After the funeral, a friend had suggested she seek grief counseling for her and the kids, but she’d originally balked at the idea. Now, as she heard another crash from the boys’ room and more shouting, she’d take any help she could get. She lunged for her phone on the nightstand, looking for the text message Marlena had sent her with the name of a renowned family therapist.

As she scrolled, the screen lit up with an incoming call, and her stomach twisted. Marcus. The last time she had seen his name on her caller ID, she’d received the worst news of her life. Last time she’d seen the man himself—the night of Danny’s funeral—she’d kissed him. Or he’d kissed her. Maybe they’d kissed each other, but it didn’t matter. The memory of it filled her with so much shame.

She should ignore him. He’d extracted himself from her life, made it quite clear that he’d help her financially, but he was staying away. And that was for the best.

So why was he calling now?

Against her better judgment, she thumbed the answer icon and raised the phone to her ear. She didn’t say anything for a handful of beats. Neither did he. They just sat there in silence, listening to each other breathe.

She started to shake and clamped her other hand around her wrist to steady herself. “If you’re calling to talk about what happened after the funeral, I can’t right now. I—”

“There’s nothing to talk about.” It sounded so final. The door had shut and locked on that conversation, and he had tossed away the key.

“I know you don’t want to acknowledge it. I don’t, either. I’m so ashamed, but—”

“Stop. I didn’t call to talk about that.” His words slurred and crashed into each other.

“Are you…drunk?”

“Not yet,” he muttered. “And not for lack of trying.”

Yeah, she could tell. Maybe he didn’t feel drunk, but he was definitely not sober.

“Marcus…” At a loss, she trailed off. She was a fixer. Always had been. But she didn’t have the first clue how to fix him. And, honestly, she couldn’t spare the mental time or energy for him when her own life was falling apart. She sighed. “Then why did you call?”

“He’s dead.”

And just like that, she was thrown back in time to the morning phone call that had shattered her life as she knew it.

She’d woken up early to enjoy her coffee in peace before the kids got up for school. The sun was only thinking about rising, staining the horizon with a pale glow, but hadn’t decided to show its face yet. She sat at the kitchen island with her steaming mug, enjoying the quiet, and idly flipped through a glossy tabloid she’d picked up at the grocery store the day before. Just as she stood to refill her mug, her cell phone rang. She’d always remember the first thought to cross her mind: It’s too early.

Nobody calling at 5 a.m. had good news.

Dread had already been coiling around her spine as she reached for the phone with Marcus’s name flashing on the screen. He might have said a greeting. She didn’t remember. All she’d heard were two words: “He’s dead.” And she’d known. He didn’t need to elaborate. If anyone other than Danny had died, Danny himself would have called her, not Marcus.

Her limbs had lost all feeling. The phone and mug had fallen from her hands, crashing to the sleek tile floor she and Danny spent hours picking out. The mug had shattered, cracking into jagged pieces, like her heart. The phone had landed screen up, still connected. It had mocked her with its slowly ticking clock and Marcus’s name on the screen. She’d grabbed the island to keep from collapsing, and the scream that tore from her was so elemental and animalistic it left her throat and chest aching.

Pain cleaved through her now at the memory, the blade of it as hot and brilliant as it had been that morning. Even after three months, the wound was still too fresh, too raw. Why was he doing this to her again? Why was he making her relive the worst moment of her life?

She wanted to yell at him, I know he’s dead! I know every morning when I wake up alone! But when she opened her mouth, only a numb “oh” came out.

“I wanted to kill him for you.” Marcus’s voice was tight, and she heard him take a swallow from whatever he was drinking. “I wanted to avenge Danny for you, but he was already dead. He was already dead when we got there.”

“Oh,” she said again, understanding finally sinking in as the fog of grief cleared from her mind. They were thinking of two different dead men—her of her husband, him of the man who killed Danny.

The man who killed Danny.

It still seemed so surreal. Danny only ever made friends, not enemies.

She made herself ask the question she knew Marcus expected, even though she wasn’t positive she wanted to know the answer. “Who was he?”

“His name was Sebastian Haly.” He spat the name like it left a bad taste in his mouth. “He was a hired gun.”

She gripped the phone so tightly her fingers went numb. “And he’s dead? You’re sure?”

“Don’t get much deader,” Marcus said. The laugh that followed was caustic. “But, yeah, I made damn sure.”

Chills raced over her skin at the ice in his tone. This man wasn’t the Marcus she knew. The one who always joked around and made her laugh. The one who had held her the night after she buried the love of her life. The only man other than Danny who had ever stirred desire in her—

No. She shut down that line of thought.

Kissing him the night of the funeral had been a colossal mistake. She’d been desperate for a connection and delirious with grief and lack of sleep. Yet something had sparked between them. Something that terrified them both. He’d been right to walk away, but the man who left her that night was not the same one she spoke to now. In the weeks since, he’d changed, and she didn’t want to know this new Marcus. She wanted the old Marcus back.

“I’ll find who hired Haly,” he promised.

“Marcus, don’t—”

But he was already gone.