Chapter One
Twenty
years later
D
are O’Rourke belie
ved in ghosts because they visited him regularly.
He woke, covered in sweat, shaking, and immediately glanced at the clock. He’d slept for fifteen minutes straight before the nightmare. A record.
The screams—both those in the dream and those that tore from his own throat whenever he allowed himself the luxury of sleep—would stay with him as long as he lived, wrapping around his soul and squeezing until he wished he’d died that terrible night.
A part of him had, but what was left wasn’t a phoenix rising from the ashes. No, Dare was broken bones and not of sound mind. Might never be again, according to the Navy docs, who said the trauma Dare had faced was too severe, that he wasn’t fit for duty. He had no doubt those doctors were right, wasn’t sure what kind of man he’d be if he
had
been able to go the business-as-usual route.
He’d never be the same.
The CIA felt differently.
You’ll survive. You’ll recover. You’re needed.
And even though he knew the world needed rough men like him, no matter how fiercely the government would deny his existence if it came down to brass tacks, he told them all to fuck off and went to live in the woods. He was no longer a SEAL, the thing that had defined him, the job he’d loved for ten years.
Dare had prayed for many things that night in the jungle, including death, but none had been answered. And so he’d stopped praying and holed up alone and just tried to sleep through the night.
Three hundred sixty-three days and counting and not an unbroken sleep among them.
Three hundred sixty-four was a couple of hours away, the day giving way to the dusk, and the car coming up the private road couldn’t mean anything but trouble.
Three hundred sixty-three days and no visitors. He saw people only when he went into the small town monthly for supplies. Beyond that, he remained on his property. It was quiet. He could think, whether he wanted to or not.
As for healing . . . that would all be in the eye of the beholder.
He rolled out of bed, flexed the ache from his hands before pulling on jeans and a flannel shirt he left unbuttoned. Barefoot, he went out to greet his guest.
He met the car with his weapon drawn, put it away when the car got close enough for him to see the driver.
Adele. A member of the original Section 8—a black ops group of seven men and one woman recruited from various military branches and the CIA. All loose cannons, none of them taking command well. All of them the best at what they did. A real life A-Team, except the reality wasn’t anything like it was portrayed on television.
Dare’s father—Darius—had been a member, was MIA and presumed KIA on a mission last year. At least that’s what Adele had told Dare.
All Dare knew was that S8 had officially disbanded when he was thirteen, and for years, its members worked black ops missions on their own steam. Until they’d gotten a call—that call—the remaining six members and one last job. Back into the jungle they’d sworn not to go back into.
A mistake to go,
Darius told him.
We’re too old.
But they were still strong, with plenty of experience. And they went anyway.
Four men never returned. Adele and Darius did, but they were never the same. Refused to talk about it and went off on more unreachable missions until they’d both disappeared more than a year ago.
Dare had wanted to assume that the secrets of the group were all dead and buried with them.
Fucking assumptions would get him every time. He knew better. His father and Adele had come back from the dead more than once.
Adele took her time getting out of the car. She was stately looking, at one time considered more handsome than pretty, with short hair and kind blue eyes, a thin frame that belied her strength. It was hard to believe she was as deadly as the men she’d worked with.
“I have a job for you,” she said when she reached the porch he refused to leave. No preamble, all business. The only thing contradicting her deadliness was the frail frame she now carried.
She was sick—he could see it in her pale coloring, the darkness shading the skin under her eyes. His heart went out to her; she’d been the closest thing to a mother he’d ever had, even though she’d been far more like a mother wolf than a nurturer.
But it had been enough. “I can’t.”
“You’re not broken, Dare.” Adele sounded so damned sure, but why he wanted her reassurance, he had no idea.
He jerked his gaze to her and saw her own quiet pain that she carried, kept so close to the vest all these years. “It was all a setup.”
Adele neither confirmed nor denied, but the truth of his own words haunted him.
It was a setup . . . and you were supposed to die.
A Ranger had received a dishonorable discharge for rescuing him against a direct order. Dare would never forget the soldier’s face, and he doubted the soldier would ever stop seeing his.
Two men, bound by pain.
He closed his eyes briefly, thought about the way he’d been found, nearly hanging from his arms, up on a platform so he could watch the entire scene being played out in front of him.
The villagers. His guides. American peacekeepers. His team. All slaughtered in front of him.
The fire came closer now . . . and he welcomed it. Had prayed for it, even as his captors laughed at his predicament, spat in his face. Cut him with knives and ripped his nails off one by one. There was nothing he could offer them, nothing they would take from him.
He’d offered himself multiple times. They refused. He must’ve passed out—from pain, hunger, it didn’t matter. He clawed at the wood, his wrists, forearms, fingers, all broken from trying so hard to escape chains not meant for humans to fight against. It hadn’t stopped him—he’d been nearly off the platform, ripping the wood out piece by piece, when the worst of the rape happened in front of him.
It would’ve been too late.
Could’ve closed your eyes. Blocked it out. Let yourself pass out.
But if they were going to be tortured, the least he could do was not look away. And he hadn’t, not even when they’d nailed his hands to the boards, not for twenty-four hours, until everyone was dead, the village was razed, the acrid smell of smoke burning his nose, his lungs. The sounds of the chopper brought him no relief, because he knew they’d save him before the fire reached him.
The group of Army Rangers had been going to another mission, stumbled on the destruction by way of the fire. They’d come in without permission, the Ranger who’d saved him taking the brunt of the blame, or so Dare had heard later.
Dare hadn’t gone to the hearing for that soldier who’d saved him. It wouldn’t have helped either of them. In the next months, Dare was sure the soldier would be found dead under mysterious circumstances, another in a long line of men who’d interfered in something S8 related.
He turned his attention back to Adele, who waited with a carefully cultivated pretense of patience. “Why come now?”
She hadn’t seen him since right before that last mission. Hadn’t come to the hospital. Hadn’t called or written. And while he’d told himself it didn’t bother him, it had.
“Your sister’s in trouble.”
Half sister. One he’d never met before out of both necessity and her mother’s insistence. He didn’t even know if Avery Welsh knew he existed. “I thought she was well hidden.”
“We did too.”
“Where is she?”
“On her way to the federal penitentiary in New York—or a cemetery—if you don’t hurry.”
“Are you fucking shitting me?”
She twisted her mouth wryly. “I assure you, I’m not.”
“What did she do?”
“She killed two men,” Adele said calmly. “The police are coming for her—she’s about forty-eight hours away from being sent to jail for life. Of course, there are other men after her too, and they make the police look like the better option.”
So the men who were after her had tipped off the police. “She’s what—twenty-two?” A goddamned baby.
Adele nodded. “You’ll have a small window of opportunity to grab her in the morning at the apartment where she’s been hiding.”
“You want me to . . .” He stopped, turned, ran his hands through his hair and laughed in disbelief. Spoke to the sky. “She wants me to help a killer.”
“Your sister,” she corrected. “Is that a problem?”
He laughed again, a sound that was rusty from severe underuse.
Avery had been secreted away with her mother before she’d been born, the relationship between her mother and Darius brief once she found out what Darius’s livelihood was. But after that last mission, everything S8 related seemed to die down. Until Darius went missing. Until Dare was almost killed.
Until Adele showed up on his doorstep, dragging the past with her like an anchor.
“She’s a known fugitive and I’m supposed to hide her?” he asked now.
“She’s family—and she needs your protection.”
He turned swiftly, fighting the urge to pin her against a column of the porch with an arm across her neck. The animal inside him was always there, lurking barely below the surface, the wildness never easily contained. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Adele hadn’t moved. “Don’t make me spell everything out for you, Dare. You know you’re still wanted. Why wouldn’t she be?”
“I can’t do this. Find—”
“Someone else?” she finished, smiled wanly. “There’s no one but me and you, and I’m about to buy the farm, as they say. Cancer. The doctors give me a month at best.”
“I’m sorry, Adele, but—”
“I know what happened to you. But we protect our own.”
“I didn’t choose to be a part of your group.”
“No, you were lucky enough to be born into it,” she said calmly.
“Yeah, that’s me. Lucky.”
“You’re alive, aren’t you?”
He wanted to mutter,
Barely,
but didn’t. “Where’s my father, Adele?”
She simply shrugged. “He’s gone.”
“Yeah, gone.” Darius had been doing that since Dare was six years old.
“They’re all gone—the men,
their families
. All
gone
over the course of the last six years. Do you understand?”
He had known. Dare had kept an eye on the families left behind by S8 operatives. Even though Darius had growled at him to stay the hell out of it, he’d found a line of accidents and unexplained deaths. They were all spaced widely enough apart and made enough sense not to look suspicious to the average eye.
But he wasn’t the average eye. This was an S8 clean-house order, an expunging, and Dare knew he was still on that list and there was no escaping it.
For Avery, he would have to come out of hiding.
“Hiding won’t stop your connection with Section 8,” Adele said, as if reading his mind.
“I’m not hiding,” he ground out.
“Then go to Avery—show her this from Darius.”
She handed him a CD—the cover was a photograph of Avery. He glanced at the picture of the woman, and yeah, she resembled her father—the same arctic frost blue eyes—but her hair was light, not dark. She was really pretty. Too innocent looking to have committed murder, but he’d learned over the years that looks could never be trusted. “And then what? I’m no good for this.”
“You’re better than you thi
nk.”
“Bullshit—I’m just the only one you’ve got.”
She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes.
He looked at the picture stuck into the clear CD case again, and something deep inside him ached for his lost childhood. He hoped Avery had had one. “I’ll think about it.”
With that, she walked away, turned to him when she was halfway to her car and stood stock-still in the driveway. The back of his neck prickled. “Best think fast, Dare.”
It was part instinct, part the way Adele paused as if posing. She gave a small smile, a nod, her shoulders squared.
He sprang into action, yelled, “No!” as he leaped toward her, Sig drawn, but it was too late.
The gunshot rang out and he jumped back to the safety of the house, cutting his losses. Adele collapsed to the ground, motionless. A clean kill. Sniper.
She’d made the ultimate sacrifice—going out like a warrior to force him to get off his ass and into action—ending a life that was almost over anyway. His father would’ve done the same.
Now there was nothing to be done here but get away and live. A hot extract involving just himself.
He shot off several warning rounds of his own to buy himself time. He took a quick picture of Adele with his cell phone camera and then went inside, grabbed his go bag and the guitar, then ignited the explosives he’d set up for a just-in-case scenario because, as a kid of a Section 8er, he was always a target.
That entire process took less than a minute, and then he took off in the old truck down the back road, the CD still in his hand.
Adele was too good not to know she’d been followed. She’d trapped him by bringing the trouble literally to his front door.
He cursed her, his father and everyone in that damned group as he motored down the highway, even as another part of his brain, hardwired for danger, made lists of what he’d need.
New wheels.
Guns.
New safe house with a wanted woman.
He threw the CD on the seat next to him and fingered the silver guitar pick he wore on a chain around his neck.
Goddammit, there was no escaping the past.
C
hapter Two
A
very Welsh knew the end of the line when she saw it, but it had never been in her nature to surrender.
This time would be no different.
She’d been questioned by the police after the second murder. They hadn’t had enough to hold her, so she’d left the small upstate New York town that very afternoon without looking back and headed for someplace in Manhattan where she could disappear.
Having no ties to anyone or anything made that so incredibly easy, it actually made her chest ache to the point where she could’ve sworn she was having a heart attack.
Now, in this shitty one-room apartment on the third floor in a building in the middle of Hell’s Kitchen, the pain started again. Her bags were packed on the floor in front of her, but an unmarked car had staked out the front of her building all night. But maybe she was more suspicious than ever, because they didn’t act like feds or cops—either group would’ve just come in and kicked down the door. She was wanted—there was no reason for such surveillance. She didn’t know if that was better or worse and decided that, either way, it was bad news.
The only way out was down the condemned, rickety fire escape, but her fear of heights hadn’t let her work up the nerve to head that way. Yet.
Another deep breath. Her hair stuck to the back of her neck despite the freezing-cold apartment. The heat wasn’t working, but complaining wasn’t an option since she wasn’t an official tenant.
When she knew there were most-wanted posters of her in the local post office, discretion and a low profile were warranted.
Mom, I’m sorry, but I had to . . .
She felt a sudden gust of air and whirled around, gun pulled. The man who stood silently in the middle of her living room seemed unconcerned about the weapon.
He must’ve come up the fire escape, but she’d sworn she’d locked that window.
“You picked the wrong place to rob,” she told him as she took in the handsome face and military posture.
“Avery, I’m here to save you.”
He knew her name. Undercover? PI? She tried to pretend he hadn’t thrown her. “I gave up on the prince-and-white-horse fantasy when I was seven.”
His mouth twitched. “Good. But now it’s me or the guys coming up the stairs.”
Guys, not cops or feds. She hadn’t been wrong
. Shit.
“Who are you?”
“I know your father,” he said. “No time to explain further. Come on.”
The man was unblinking. The honesty coming from him could be an act, but she prided herself on her bullshit meter. Right now, this guy seemed the safer of the two options.
Another bounty hunter? Repo? He looked capable of anything, but she couldn’t afford not to take risks. So when he slung both her bags over his shoulder, she followed her only way out. She’d been looking for information on her father—a man named Darius—for as long as she could remember, but it was like tracking a ghost.
When the past came knocking, she knew she had to answer the door.
“I’m scared of heights,” she told him when he’d gotten down to the level of grating below hers.
“You should be more scared of jail. They’ll eat you up in there.” His comments both scared and infuriated her, so much so that she followed him out onto the rusted stoop and down the stairs and was threading her way down behind him.
She hadn’t realized how fast they’d been going until her feet hit the ground with a hard thump on the concrete. She found herself looking down the barrel of a mean old Sig. “I’m already following you.”
“Just making sure.” He motioned for her and caught her arm, hustled her to a waiting truck. She’d barely scrambled into the seat when the man was in his, cranking the old vehicle out of the alley.
She turned to see the unmarked car starting to make chase but she felt the truck speed up under her, as if there was something extra under the hood. Whatever it was, she was more than grateful. Maybe her mother really was looking out for her. “Who are you?”
He didn’t answer as he edged the car through traffic, winding along the side roads, and finally zoomed along the ramp toward the highway.
She turned to check the trailing car’s progress.
“Don’t bother—I lost them,” he told her.
“You’re that sure of yourself?”
“I’m that good.”
That should’ve sounded cocky, but instead it came out like a simple truth from a handsome man who was no doubt a warrior.
Like your father . . .
At least that’s what her mother had always said about Darius. Avery wanted to believe that, felt like she had some of that warrior inside her.
Now revenge ran too hot in her blood and she was discombobulated. But she was free—for now. “Who are you and how do you know my father?”
“He’s my father too.” He glanced at her for a second before his eyes were back on the road. “My name’s Dare.”
She couldn’t speak for a long moment, the surprise stealing her breath as she stared at Dare’s—her brother’s—profile. His hair was dark, strong cheekbones . . . a full mouth. He had blue eyes, nowhere near as light or cold looking as she’d always thought hers were.
Her mom used to tell her with affection,
They’re just like your daddy’s.
“Are you sure?”
“You knew you had a half brother?” A question for a question—from that alone, she could see the resemblance between them.
“I knew. Mom always said I’d never meet you.”
“You weren’t supposed to, but you’re in a hell of a lot of trouble.”
As she stealthily wiped away a tear, Dare asked, “Why are you wanted?” and handed her the paper with her picture on it.
She studied it as the truck barreled down the road. “It says ‘wanted for murder’ right here.”
“I don’t believe everything I read.”
“It’s true.” She wondered if she should just surrender. Explain. But those men she’d searched out were the ones who’d hurt the one person who’d kept her safe all her life, and she’d hurt them.
She’d felt indestructible. Lethal. An angel of death no one saw coming.
Afterward, she’d felt angrier, not better. She had to make things right, had to balance out the bad deeds with some good ones.
“Why’d you do it?”
She glanced at Dare and wondered if he knew what it was like to live with a heavy burden of guilt. “I hunted down and killed the men who tortured, raped and killed my mother. Think a jury of my peers would understand that?”
“I have no goddamned idea what drives most people,” he muttered. “You’re going to have to fill in the story.”
“My mom did bail bonds.”
“She was a bounty hunter?”
“Yes—she owned the company and had men working for her. She wouldn’t go out alone—but she was the one who usually talked the fugitives into surrendering.” Both tough and tender, her mom could bring out the best in anyone. Avery had worked in the office for as long as she could remember, typing up files and helping to keep things running as she got old enough to get her own bounty license. Learning things both legal and illegal from the men and women her mother employed as she helped them try to turn their lives around. “One night, she got a call from a woman she’d helped in the past. It was late and she wanted me to go with her, but I’d been up all night doing paperwork—I’d fallen asleep on the couch and she’d left me a note.”
It had been four hours later when she’d woken. Avery had tried to call and got voice mail, so she’d driven to the address her mother had hastily written on a pad of paper by the phone. Luckily, it was on carbon copy paper used for messages.
The fast, smooth motion of this truck was nothing like the way her drive had been that night, her arms jerking the wheel, fear knotting her limbs.
“I found her in the alley. She’d tried to fight—that was obvious. But they just . . .” She put a hand up to her eyes like that could stop the tears. Didn’t want to show the kind of emotion she felt to a relative stranger, but revisiting the image was something she did daily. When she got control back, she continued. “They’d cut her. Raped her. Then they stabbed her and let her bleed out. And I had no idea why. Before the police got there, I took fingerprints and samples from under her nails and went to a friend who worked in a lab to run them later that day. I was thinking about meting out my own brand of justice—it was the only thing that got me through.”
“You were supposed to be with her,” Dare said simply.
Why that was so hard for her to admit to herself, never mind out loud, she didn’t know. She nodded, knew now there was no turning back from all this.
“That same woman called again—tried to lure me back to that spot later that night,” she said. “I didn’t tell the police anything about that. I already knew how to shoot criminals. To track them. To think like them. It took me three weeks to find them—twenty-one days of following that woman around until I got a lead.”
“Did they say anything?”
“I didn’t give them the chance. I thought they went after her because of a jumped bounty or something. There was paperwork, but I found out later that was all stolen from another bounty hunter. I never suspected . . .” She brought a hand to her throat, and there was silence in the truck for a long time, even as darkness fell and they put more distance between her and the men who’d come after her. She assumed he was bringing them to a safe place for the night. If there was such a thing. “I think her murder was part of something bigger.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because you and I both know that those men back at the apartment were hired hits, not cops or feds.” And now it was her turn for questions. “Where’s our father?”
“There’s a CD he made for you in the glove compartment.”
“I have a laptop in my bag,” she said after she pulled the CD out.
“Crank the volume.”
She found the CD and then took the small computer from her bag and prepared to watch it.
She drew in a sharp breath when the first image of her father came on the screen, and she paused it for a long moment so she could stare. Traced a light finger around his cheekbone.
There was no denying her parentage.
As Dare turned onto the highway and got lost in the blend of traffic, she hit “play,” and the voice—
her father’s voice—
filled the truck. Warm, dulcet tones that belied the ice in his eyes—her eyes. She felt at once comforted and sad that this would be their only contact.
But she’d never thought she’d even have this.
“Avery—doll—I’m sorry, but your momma and I decided a long time ago that it was much safer for you if I wasn’t involved in your life. But if you’re watching this, you’re in trouble because of me and things I’ve been involved in. If you’re watching this, you’re with Dare, and you’re both in trouble—and a man named Richard Powell is the one to blame.” A heavy sigh, a shake of the head. Fingers rustled in the short growth of beard on his chin before he continued. “Stay with Dare. Do whatever you have to in order to stay safe. Because the men Powell sent after you will not give up. Ever. Go home—you’ll find grace there.”
Go home . . .
She’d seen a magic show once, and what interested her the most were the interlocking circles—silver and shiny; they made the coolest noise when the magician separated them and hooked them back together until they made a long, interconnected chain.
Her mother had bought her some and she learned the trick behind them easily. Wished she hadn’t ruined the magic for herself, but she’d been too curious not to understand.
She was connected to this man, but not locked to him—not really.
Not yet.
“Do you know where home is?”
He nodded. “Buckle up for a long ride.”
* * *
Avery didn’t push him for an ex
planation, was too busy staring at the computer screen, and Dare took those blessed minutes of silence to decide what the hell to reveal to her.
All or nothing. That had been Darius’s motto.
His earliest memory was of his father playing his electric guitar, the music ringing through the house. Darius would turn up the amps and let it blast at top volume until the walls and floors shook.
Dare’s mom had given Darius a silver pick on a chain, engraved with the date of their wedding, since he wouldn’t wear a ring. Darius gave it to Dare after Mom died, maybe when he was about twelve, and Dare couldn’t remember the last time he was without it.
He never liked being a slave to a talisman, but he was. Held the pick between two fingers and rubbed it like a worry stone.
He was never without Darius’s guitar either, although he hadn’t played it once this year. He could see it in the backseat if he turned his head, but he refused.
Maybe he’d never play again, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave it behind.
Avery touched the computer screen one last time and then closed it with a quiet click. “What happened to Darius?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is he . . . dead?”
Dare shrugged. “He’s been MIA for a year, but that doesn’t translate to dead.”
“Have you looked for him?”
“No.” The past had reared its ugly head, and there was no turning away now. At least he wasn’t dealing with a shrinking violet here. Helpful . . . and in some ways worse.
“Don’t you think you should?” she persisted.
“I’ve lived with his fallout my entire life,” Dare told her. “If you’d like to take up the mantle after we find out who’s trying to kill us, be my guest.”
The first time he’d been taken from his home was when he was six right after his mom had left them. Dare had lived with Adele and her then husband for eight months before his dad came home. It continued like that until Dare was fourteen or so and would stay at home alone during his father’s missions.
“What is he a part of?” Avery asked, and Dare knew she had every right to know.
“They called themselves Section 8 because that’s the discharge they’d all been given by the military.”
Technically, it was called something else now, but the intent was still the same. Mental defect. Unfit for duty.
“Were they?”
“Crazy? In one way or another, yes.” He glanced at her. “You worried you inherited some of it?”
“I know I did,” she muttered, and he felt his mouth quirk up a little despite his attempts not to smile.