Hidden Truth

“When can we expect your shipment?” Bayural pressed.

“First, I want my ten million.”

Bayural smiled. “Ten is too much.”

“With everything happening in Syria, prices have gone up for your standard RPGs. You know as well as I do that the market is at least two Gs per RPG. As for the ARs, you are getting a screaming deal. That’s less than two hundred a gun. We could get five if we went somewhere else.”

He nodded slightly. “I’ll give you a G per RPG.”

She laughed. Even if she had really had the weapons, there would be no way she would go for such a ridiculous deal, but she had to keep up the negotiation until her brothers arrived.

“Or we will give you two if you can have our shipment to us within the hour.” Bayural’s pitch rose, like he was growing more nervous with each passing second.

His bodyguard leaned in and said something in his ear, something far too quiet for her to hear. Bayural’s eyes widened and his brow furrowed. Whatever he said, it wasn’t good news.

Her chest tightened, and her Kevlar vest suddenly seemed all too heavy.

Her brothers should have been here by now, at her side. “We can do the hour, but I’ll have to talk to my team. Your order is larger than we were anticipating.”

This was falling apart. Fast. She had to get out of there. She scanned the room for her planned exit point. The door to the alley was closed, barred from the inside. There was nothing to use as cover. It would take at least three seconds for her to get to the location, two to get the door open. Five seconds. Basically, a lifetime if they opened fire.

He clicked off the safety, the gun’s barrel steady as it pointed at her. “Is something wrong, maybe you have something you want to tell us?” His voice threatening.

“No,” she said, trying to appear relaxed as she took a step back. “But if you wish to have the deal go through, you need to lower that gun.”

Bayural lowered the weapon slightly and motioned toward her with his chin. His guard took a step closer.

“What are you doing?” she asked as the guard grabbed her wrist and pulled her arm behind her. Her shoulder pinched as he lifted her hand higher, forcing her to submit.

Her instinct was to struggle and pull free, to launch into an attack. To get the hell out of there. But no, she had to trust her team. If they were waiting, there had to be a reason. They were trying to get more information. They must have needed more. She had to believe in her family.

“Back off,” she growled at the guard. “Let go of my arm or the last thing you will see is me ripping it off and shoving it down your goddamned throat.”

He lifted her wrist higher, forcing her to lean forward from the pressure.

“Bayural, get your man—”

“To stand down?” Bayural said, finishing her sentence. “Hardly. Who the hell do you think you are to command me?” He dropped the rifle to the ground and looked to his guard. “Break the stock.”

She looked at the base where she had just run her fingers. The imperfection suddenly seemed so much larger.

The guard picked up the gun and smashed it against the floor again and again until cracks formed in the plastic. He batted it against the concrete one more time, sending the small GPS tracker her team had planted in the plastic skittering across the floor.

“You, your brothers, your sister, your team… You’re dead.”

“You may get me, but you’ll never get the rest of them. We’re survivors.”

“Even if I have to spend the rest of my days on this earth hunting every one of your family members down, I’ll do it. When I’m done, you and your kind won’t even be a memory. You will be nothing.”

There was a smatter of gunfire outside the corrugated steel building. A round pinged against the metal siding, the sound echoing through her.

With her free hand she reached down and pulled the knife from her boot. She jammed it deep into the guard’s foot. The man screamed, letting go of her arm in a panic to remove the blade.

She grabbed her sidearm, taking aim at Bayural and pulling the trigger. The round ripped from the barrel, striking the man in the chest. Buyural didn’t seem to notice the hit. He must have been wearing a vest.

The guards around him pulled their guns as she turned to find cover. Anything. Anywhere. She had to get the hell out of there. Now. She rushed toward the door as the sound of gunfire rained down upon her. The first round struck her in the thigh, ripping through her muscle with a searing heat, but there was no pain. Her ravaged thigh tripped her, the muscles failing to follow her brain’s command. Her body fell to the floor, but she pressed on, dragging her injured leg behind her as she crawled toward the back door.

The door flew open, and standing in the nearly blinding light was her brother. “Trevor!” she screamed. “Get the hell out.”

He ran toward her in what seemed like slow motion, but as he took two steps, the next round struck. Wetness. Warmth. Something had splattered her cheek.

She stopped struggling as she pressed her fingers to her face and traced the spatter to the gaping hole in her neck. No. This couldn’t be real. This couldn’t be happening. Not like this. Not now.

She sank to the floor as the blood poured from her.

The concrete was cold against her face as she watched the pool of red grow. The world narrowed to a pinpoint until all she saw was Trevor. His face. He’d always been so handsome. So dangerously handsome. She’d miss her brother.

She’d miss them all.

Breathe. All she had to do was breathe. But as she struggled to fill her lungs, there was only a strange gurgling sound.

She had been wrong to think this operation would be easy. Nothing in their lives had ever been simple. And now that misjudgment—and her desire to trust—would prove fatal.

Chapter One (#u9f345e87-b006-5080-8800-4945bafafc53)

There was a single question that Trevor Martin hated above all others: “Who do you think you are?” It only ever meant one of two things—he was about to get slapped by a woman or he was going to have to knock some sucker out.

It wasn’t the question that bothered him so much. On the surface it was just some retort people came up with when they didn’t know what else to say, but when he heard it, he heard it for what it really was—a question of who he was at his core. And when he thought about that, about what made him the man he was, he wasn’t sure that he liked the answer.

That self-hatred was one of the reasons he had taken a leave of absence from his contract work with the CIA. His entire family needed a break from the family business, so they bought the Widow Maker Ranch in Mystery, Montana. It was supposed to be an escape he so desperately needed from the thoughts of all he had done wrong in his life. Instead, it was as if the rural lifestyle and the quiet mountain mornings only made the self-denigration of his character that much louder.

He’d only been there a few days, but he couldn’t help but wonder if maybe he’d made a mistake in coming to this forsaken place where he was constantly shrouded in clouds and imprisoned by the brooding mountains. Everything about the ranch made him long to stretch and push the world and his thoughts away—if only it were that goddamned easy. No matter where he went or what he did, his memories of the days he’d spent in his family’s private security business, one they called STEALTH, constantly haunted him.

And here he was the bearer of bad news once again.

If he were being honest, pulling the trigger and tearing down an enemy combatant was a hell of a lot easier than what he was going to have to do. He spun the motorcycle around in the dirt, kicking up dust as he screwed around and tried to focus on something he loved instead of something he was going to hate.

After a few more doughnuts, he got off his Harley and pushed the kickstand into place with his foot. Taking off his helmet, he set it on the seat, though a part of him wondered if it wouldn’t have been better for him to wear it as some kind of shield from the battle that was likely to ensue.

Running his hand over his too-long locks, he pushed them out of his eyes and tucked them behind his ears.

There were times, just like this one, that he wished he were back in a war zone and had a staff of people under him who could handle this kind of thing.

All he had to do was say his piece, give them the letter, and he could get the hell out of there. He just had to go in and do his duty. The moment he and his brothers and his sister had purchased the land, they agreed that this would be a part of the work that would need to be done. Unfortunately, he had drawn the short straw.

He had never seen a picture of the house in question, but the shack in front of him was a squatter’s paradise and far from what he and his family had imagined. The roof was a collection of corrugated steel in a jumble of different colors, and the siding, what was left of it, had started to rot and several pieces were only half-attached. Even the front door was cockeyed, listing to the left so far that there was at least a two-inch gap at the top.

Whoever resided there must be hard up. Maybe they had been hoping they were far enough out of the way at the farthest reaches of the ranch that they would go completely unnoticed. Thanks to the neglect of his cousins, the Johansens, whoever was living in this place had pretty much free rein—and their plan for disappearing in plain sight had worked. And from the state of the house, it was clear it had been working for a long time.