Prologue
Today
The black-garbed, anonymous soldiers who picked them up and dragged them back to the team moved forward. Three stood next to Poppy, the other four were beside Titanium.
How the fuck is he even alive?
“It’s time,” Titanium announced.
One by one, the Ghosts removed their hoods—revealing face after familiar face.
Silence.
As if a nuke obliterated all thought in the room, everyone stood frozen. Waiting to wake up. Maybe waiting for the shock to sink in.
Zinc, Tungsten, Tin, Nickel, Thallium, Lithium and Uranium were alive. Everyone who had “died” in Russia stood side-by-side. Everyone but Gold.
Tungsten stared at Copper. Their eyes locked before he slid his gray-green gaze to Gabriel then back to her.
Gabriel palmed Copper’s shoulder, the weight of his fingers grounding her as the world seemed to slip sideways. Merc moved in front of her a half step. Brad? Her mind couldn’t process the data she’d received. Brad. Alive.
Alive.
Brad isn’t dead.
No. He died. When she’d stood inside the casino and an explosion tore it apart, silence accompanied the roar. A silence so profound, it threatened to swallow her. She remembered the first time the world swallowed her. When it spit her back out, Brad and so many others were dead. The second time, she’d woken beneath rubble and debris atop Cobalt—alone in the dark with a dead man.
No fire accompanied the second detonation, but the silence exploded all around her. Merc shifted more, breaking her line of sight, then the sound rushed in, flooding her. She couldn’t breathe.
She couldn’t be there.
I can’t do this.
Chrome’s voice pulled the pin on the grenade. “What. The. Fuck…”
Jerking her shoulder away from Gabriel’s touch, she turned on her heel and walked away. Someone called her name, maybe Gabriel. Maybe Merc. Maybe the dead men. Who knew? She kept walking. A hand landed on her arm, but she twisted free.
They grabbed her again, but she slammed her foot down on the instep and then her elbow against the face of whoever it was. She couldn’t see anything. Didn’t hear anything. Didn’t care.
She had to go.
As soon as she hit daylight outside the hanger, she turned to her Triumph. One minute walking, the next she all but ran. Her heart hammered like bullets fired from a modified Remington 700.
Somehow, the engine started, and she burned rubber accelerating.
The dead man suddenly blocked her escape. She swerved to avoid him then continued through the gate and to the main road.
The world swallowed her again. It had to have.
A year ago
The door to her crummy apartment had a single lock. She could have added more, but who gave a fuck? If one of the drug dealers on the first floor tried to get in her place for a piece of her ass, she’d hand him his. A part of her hoped someone would break in—if nothing else, it would give her something to do.
Hell, she left the key over the doorframe on purpose. Everything she owned worth keeping was in her backpack. Her dog tags, gun, a couple of treasured, dog-eared photographs and Brad’s t-shirt. It had long since stopped smelling like him, but when she put it on, she could almost remember his scent.
After unlocking the door, she let herself inside. She bumped it closed again and turned the tumbler. The apartment came furnished with a broken sofa, a ratty chair and a mattress she’d thrown out the first day. When Uncle Sam kicked her to the curb, they’d tried to cushion the blow with a hefty bank account and a new name. She barely remembered the name and only used the account to buy herself a brand-new mattress. Considering some of the places she’d slept in the past few years, the new mattress was a true luxury.
As she carried a single plastic bag into the kitchen, she paused after three steps. Something was off about the room. She scanned the sagging sofa, the scarred coffee table and the ratty chair. They were unremarkable pieces of furniture in an unremarkable room—the walls off-white, more dirt than paint, and the carpet a dingy brown.
Carpet. Her gaze riveted to the depressions in the carpet where the furniture rested. She could see the spaces made by the chair.
The chair had moved.
Her world narrowed to a singular focus. She swung her backpack around, releasing the bottom pouch where her .45 rested. Three seconds passed—from the slide opening to the gun’s grip being in her hand. The veneer of don’t give a shit powered away under the surge of adrenaline. Months of wandering through a half-life hadn’t eroded her skills, but it had her attention span. She should have booby-trapped the door.
The windows were closed, and she had a full view of the living room and kitchen. Whoever was in her apartment waited for her in the bedroom. Thumbing the safety off, she made her way down the hall and pushed the door open with her foot.
One mattress on the floor, bed coverings—such as they were—tightly made. A single lamp, also stationed on the floor, sat precisely where it should be. The blinds were closed.
So is the bathroom door.
Nothing waited for her behind the bedroom door, and the sliding door of the closet gaped wide open. Her lack of clothing or accessories—what the hell did she need them for in the bullshit job she currently occupied?—meant it was also clear.
They were in the bathroom.
Sighting the door, she tossed her backpack on the bed and made a half-yawn, half-groan of a noise, as though she’d walked into the room per normal.
The door stayed closed.
Instinct had her look her up in time to see the black masked figure drop.
Fuck.
He’d been above, braced on the corner of the wall. The bastard struck hard. He locked his grip around her right arm, over-extending her elbow. The nerves went numb in her fingers and the gun fell.
Slamming her free hand into the figure’s face, she heard a faint crack and a grunt. Then he caught her left and locked her arms, one over the other. Fuck Red Wolf or whomever this bastard worked with—she wasn’t going down without a fight, not even if dying meant seeing Brad again.
She let herself go limp, and he lunged forward trying to hold her up. Sliding her leg between his, she hooked his knee and jerked him off his feet. They went down in a tangle of limbs. In a pure wrestling match, he outweighed her. So she used leverage to keep tumbling and tucked her knees to her stomach and shoved at him. Flipping him, she regained the use of one arm. Fingers locked together, she jabbed for an eye then his throat. He blocked the first and missed the second.
Taking advantage of the choking sound he made, she dug her fingers into the pressure point of his wrist until he released her right arm. Tumbling back, she struck out with a foot and caught him in the solar plexus. Instead of going down, he wrenched her ankle and flipped her just as she closed her hand around the gun grip.
A sting burned the side of her neck, and she swore. The paralytic poured into her system. Some distant, active part of her brain recognized the drug—she’d been trained to resist them for years—but it powered through her as though fed by her adrenaline. Her fingers refused to cooperate. Her legs buckled. Her vision wavered.
Fuck.
Sorry, Merc…I’ll wait for you on the flipside.
Maybe Brad would be there.
The non-existent padding in the carpet didn’t do a damn thing for her knees when they slammed into it. The world wobbled, tilting, and she fell forward. Damn, she was going to break her nose. The odd little thought hissed through her brain. The figure caught her, his arm across her chest.
“What the fuck? I told you to let me do this…” The deep voice sounded oddly familiar. Impossible, really. But then she could hear what she wanted to at this point, couldn’t she?
“You aren’t supposed to play with her. Just bag her.”
Bag her.
Bagged. Tagged. Finished.
A black hood cut out her vision, and the drug sucked her under.