A Father's Sacrifice

He took a step back, and Natasha recognized the instinctive move—he was putting distance between himself and his victim.

“Last chance, Hutchins. Drop it!” she yelled.

His grimy finger tightened on the trigger.

She fired.

Hutchins staggered and blood blossomed on the front of his dirty T-shirt.

She scrambled up, her head spinning.

He recovered and rushed her. Before she could get off another shot, he head-butted her in the gut and her back slammed against the banister. With a loud crack, the railing broke.

Then she was falling—falling. She hit the stairs. Splinters rained around her as her weight broke through the rotten charred wood. Frantically she tried to cushion her landing, but a piece of wood stabbed her hand and her head slammed against a step’s solid frame.

A section of floor disintegrated under her weight.

Then with a jarring thud she hit bottom. The impact knocked the breath out of her. A ridge of hard-packed dirt dug into her back.

She looked up. She’d fallen through to the basement. Two floors above, Hutchins raised his rifle. Natasha tried to roll out of his range of vision, but a massive board pinned her legs.

She watched in horrified fascination as his finger tightened on the trigger. She spotted a board she could use as a shield, but she couldn’t reach it.

She felt the impact as the bullet slammed into her. The report was deafening. Her stomach lurched at the feel of hot sticky blood pooling in the hollow of her shoulder, and she wondered why it didn’t hurt.

Then it did. Pain ripped her in two, stole the last of her breath. Hutchins raised his rifle again. Instinct took over and her fingers tightened on the trigger. She looked down at her hand, surprised she still held the gun.

Gathering the last of her strength, she lifted her arm. Aiming the gun at Hutchins’s leering face, she pulled the trigger.

A horrible rumbling filled her ears. Dust and wood and drywall rained down on her. She struggled to move, but her body wouldn’t cooperate. The cold dirt beneath her and the heavy, suffocating debris on top of her threatened to crush her. Dust and grit filled her eyes. She couldn’t see.

She was trapped. Buried alive.

She screamed and pushed at the jagged boards and piles of drywall and broken glass weighing her down. A sharp edge cut into her palm. Drywall dust coated her throat. Soot caught in her nostrils.

Buried.

Panic threw her into insanity. She screamed until her throat swelled and her mouth was full of soot and dirt. Tears soaked up the dust and caked like concrete on her cheeks.

Terror crowded all rational thought from her brain. The past welled up to suck her into childhood horrors.

She was back in the mangled smoking car, the air thick with the moans of her dying parents, her face and body slick with their blood, her little arms and legs pinned beneath twisted metal.

Her screams mixed with the echo of explosions and gunfire.

But no matter how loud she screamed, nobody came.

Chapter One

Dylan Stryker looked down at his sleeping son. He’d been working with the virtual surgery program and missed Ben’s bedtime again.

In the dim glow of a caterpillar night-light, he watched his little boy’s lips move slightly with each gentle breath. He looked so small, so innocent—so vulnerable.

Dylan’s heart squeezed with guilt and grief and stinging regret. Looking away, his gaze landed on Ben’s leg braces in the corner. In stark contrast to his son’s softly lit face, the ultralight titanium sucked up the light greedily, shining with the stark whiteness of bones. They mocked him, a constant reminder that his child’s handicap was his fault.

Irony twisted his gut. He’d been named a hero for inventing the computer-driven leg supports. Now his own child couldn’t walk without them, and it was because of him. He knelt and kissed Ben’s cool cheek.

“I love you,” he whispered. “I’d die for you if it would change the past.”

The bedroom door opened. It was Alfred.

Dylan’s senses went on full alert. His chief of security never interrupted him when he was with his son. He slipped quietly through the door to the hall.

“Sorry,” Alfred said shortly.

“What is it? Another breach of the fence?” Next week was the third anniversary of the suspicious car crash that had killed his wife and injured his child. The vehicle that had run her off the road had never been found. And despite his and the government’s best efforts to cover up Ben’s survival, this time each year the tabloids always rehashed the sensationalistic rumors surrounding the crash.

HORROR IN THE HAMPTONS.

Mad Doctor Hides Hideously

Maimed Son In Airless

Underground Dungeon.

Alfred shook his head at the latest headline, his weathered face grim. “Campbell called me,” he said. “We’ve been hacked.”

Dylan cursed. “How bad?”

“In and out within a few seconds, according to Campbell. I should have waited until morning. Should have let you sleep.” Alfred’s face was lined with worry.

“No. I wasn’t asleep. I need to know as soon as anything happens.”

“What for? So you have something else on your mind to keep you from sleeping? You couldn’t have stopped the hacker.”

Dylan headed for the back stairs. “I could have tried.”

Alfred followed, laying a hand on Dylan’s arm. “He’s gone now. Go back to Ben. Try to get some sleep.”

“I can’t sleep. You know that. I might as well work.” Dylan rubbed his burning eyes.

“Son, this is almost certainly a domestic terrorist cell. Why don’t you take NSA up on their offer of protection?”

Dylan sighed. “I talked to them today.”

“You’ve decided to move to a secure location?” Hope tinged Alfred’s gravelly voice. As proud as the ex-military man was of his security measures, he’d made it clear that he’d prefer having Dylan and Ben under the government protection.

Dylan shook his head and rubbed the back of his neck. “We’ve had this conversation. I’m not sending Ben away. And I can’t go with him. The interface hardware is at a critical point—too delicate to be moved, and we’re still debugging the software. I can’t afford to lose even a couple of days….” He heard the desperation in his own voice. Alfred knew as well as he did the real reason he was working night and day.