Rules of Re-engagement

“What do you mean!”

“You need specialized equipment to remove it. You need the antidote at hand…in case something goes wrong.”

Blood drained from her head.

“You’ll be fine, as long as you cooperate with me.” He hesitated. “As long as I can trust you.”

“I…I don’t believe this is happening. What made you like this, Jack?” She held out her wrist. “You loved me once! How…how could you do this to me?”

“How could I hold one life against a billion others?” He gazed at her, hard, his eyes narrowing.

“One life versus world peace? What would you do, Olivia?”

23:59 Romeo. Manhattan.

Tuesday, October 7.

A green dot flared onto Grant McDonough’s screen and began to pulse. Bingo. He flipped open his satellite phone, punched the number for the FDS base on São Diogo Island off the Coast of Angola. “He’s in. GPS cuff has been activated.”

“You have a detonator?”

“Affirmative. We both do. Antidote as well. Everything’s in place.”

“Good. Now we sit tight and wait for Sauvage’s direction.”

McDonough hesitated. “Any word on December?”

“He’s been airlifted from Djibouti to the hospital here on São Diogo. His condition is critical, but stable. They still have him on life support.”

McDonough flipped the phone shut, stared at the pulsing green dot. December had been shot in the gut by a mysterious pale-skinned man while helping evacuate Rafiq Zayed and Dr. Paige Sterling from the shores of Hamān. December sure as hell better pull through—for more reasons than one. They’d dubbed the shooter the Achromat because of his absence of pigment, and if he was found to be somehow affiliated with Killinger—McDonough shook his head. He didn’t want to begin to think of what Sauvage might do to Killinger’s daughter if December didn’t make it.

He punched in a text message, letting Sauvage know that the vehicles outside Olivia Killinger’s apartment had been traced to an outfit owned by one of the Venturion Corporation subsidiaries. It was a group that Samuel Killinger used for his personal protection and security detail. The maniac was having his own daughter tailed.

He pressed the button, sent the details.

Chapter 3

00:06 Romeo. Olivia Killinger’s apartment.

Manhattan. Wednesday, October 8.

She stared at the silver cuff, her face sheet white.

Jacques hated this. His mouth felt like ash. His chest hurt.

“You said someone hired you to do this? Who?” Her voice was strangely flat.

“The president.”

“President Elliot?”

He nodded.

She reached for the back of the sofa, steadied herself. “That’s…ludicrous,” she said quietly. “If…if the president really were threatened he’d go through regular channels—Homeland Security, the Secret Service, the military, CIA, FBI. Why on earth would he hire you?”

He studied her, searching for a sign, something that would betray her knowledge of this. He couldn’t see it. Her reaction had been visceral, her shock too real. Unless she was damn good—unless she had learned from her father.

But he didn’t think so. She was still wearing the small Saint Catherine’s pendant, and that told him something.

He’d given it to her for her nineteenth birthday when they were both prelaw students. Saint Catherine was said to be the patron saint of lawyers, barristers, jurists, and according to legend, had been prepared to die for her belief in good. Jacques had never been as big on faith as Olivia’s family, but the locket had been a symbol of what they both shared—a joint vision for justice, a dream of the future, a goal for their careers—a goal that had defied her father’s insistence she become a corporate lawyer for one of his transnationals.

Instead she chose to work for the UN. And she still wore his pendant. It made a fierce kind of pride burn inside him.

And the fact she’d rejected Forbes fed him with a hot flare of hope that she was not so intimately involved with the vice president as to be a part of his scheme to take control of the White House. It also made a dark part of Jacques wonder if there might still be a place in her life for him.

He sipped his drink, welcoming the way it dulled the edge of his guilt, the pain this caused him.

“He can’t use any of those organizations, Olivia. The president’s own Secret Service has been infiltrated. Elliot is being held hostage by the very system designed to protect him, his every move watched, every conversation recorded. If he so much as even thinks of engaging any agency traditionally at his disposal, those bombs will go off.”

He paused, still watching her keenly. “Your father’s corruption and connections go so deep that they root into the very foundations of the nation. This so-called Cabal of his has managed to infiltrate almost every level of government, commerce and the military over the past three decades. Elliot’s only option was to try and secretly enlist an organization free of all U.S. overseeing or restriction, something outside the system. Way out.”

“You?”

He nodded. “And if your father gets even a hint I am here, he will release those bombs instantly.”

Olivia sank slowly down onto the white sofa. She leaned back, closed her eyes, her lashes dark on bloodless skin. She let her hands rest limp in her lap.

She was in shock.

She had to be clean.

But he could take no chances. Even if she knew nothing about what her father was doing, he must never underestimate the power of a blood bond. Especially under duress. It had destroyed him once before.

As much as he hated the idea, she’d have to wear the bracelet.

His satellite connection vibrated in his pocket. Jacques took it out, checked the text message from McDonough. So it was Killinger’s men tailing her. He returned the phone to his pocket, wondering how she was going to take this news.

He’d already dealt her two severe emotional blows in a matter of minutes—coming back from the dead and accusing her father and Forbes of treason.

She was going to need time to process this. If he hit her with too much too soon, she could crumble or resist without thinking first. If she really was innocent, he wanted to get her to a point where it became her choice to turn in her father. He checked his watch. Unfortunately, time was a not a luxury he could afford.

She opened her eyes suddenly.

His heart quickened.

“Why should I believe you?”

“Because it’s the truth.”