Sam

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I SAW THEM COMING UP the driveway as my head began to bob with their numbers. I hung up my phone before I made my way back to John, counting their bodies again. We were seated in the forest that blanketed the side of Derek’s driveway. I wanted to count the heads of the men going up to the meeting with John, double-checking my numbers.

Fuck. This wasn’t good.

“Sam, get over here and count now,” John said.

I shoved my cell phone into my pocket and raced to where he was standing.

“I know. I did,” I said.

“Count again. This is serious,” he said.

My eyes darted along the men walking up the driveway. I felt my breath hitch in my throat as I counted them again. I counted and recounted, making sure I had the number right. But every time I counted them, I got the same number.

Fourteen.

There were fourteen men heading up to the house.

“On the count of three,” I said. “One, two...”

“Fourteen,” John and I said together.

“Shit. Who the fuck is missing?” I asked.

“The new guy. Reggie.”

“New guy? There’s a fucking new guy, John?”

“I just hired him on today. Remember the guy with the hives?”

“Ah, the one allergic to the pesticides. What happened? You never gave me an update on him.”

“Still in the hospital. I needed to employ someone to take his place.”

“Did you run his background?” I asked.

“Yes. Just like the company does.”

“But did you run it the way I do it?” I asked.

“Sam, for fuck’s sake I ran the man’s background.”

“And how did it look? Because right now, he should be heading for a team meeting. He’s new. He’s going to want to make a good impression, so where the fuck is he?”

“I don’t know, all right? But do you really think the new guy’s trying to kill Mr. Steele?”

“That was the whole fucking point of this meeting, John. We have to figure out where he is. We have to assume the worst,” I said.

“So, what’s the plan?”

“I’m following all the guys in. I’m waiting for Derek’s head count to come through my phone. Then I’m supposed to go in and start questioning the guys. You backtrack and see if you can spot Reggie. With him not being here and this threat looming over Derek’s head, he’s going to need backup he can trust.”

“He’s got fourteen fucking men in there he can trust.”

“Right now, I don’t trust anyone,” I said.

“Not even me?”

I turned my gaze to John as I drew in a deep breath. I did trust him. With my life. But this situation was spiraling out of control, and now we had a missing new guy who was nowhere to be seen. For all I knew, Jacob was the one who put Reggie up for the job by paying someone off in the fucking company.

That man could get anywhere if he wanted to. He had already proven that.

“Now that we know who’s missing, we need to call the police and get them on their way,” I said. “I’m heading up to the team. I want you to backtrack and case the perimeter of the building. See if you can’t find Reggie.”

“Do you trust me?” John asked.

“With my life,” I said. “But right now, I’m on a special sort of high alert. Now go. This stops today. We all need to get on with our lives like you said.”

“Finally, something I can get behind. Keep your radio on you. I’m heading out. And Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“Be careful.”

“You, too, John. You too.”

Once the last body was in the house, John and I parted ways. We hurried from the forest as I made my way for the house, listening as John’s footfalls ran down the driveway behind me. I shook my head, snickering as I bit the inside of my cheek. It was disgusting to me that someone could be a traitor like this. Our line of work was important. Substantial. People’s lives were on the line every damn day, and we were saving innocent people from harm. How could someone jeopardize that for a little money? Jacob was wealthy but not like Derek. And most of his accounts were frozen. Even if he had some sort of secretive account he was drawing from, it couldn’t have been much.

I had a hard time thinking these men were being paid millions of dollars to betray anyone, much less me.

This was going to be a huge hit to my reputation. Word would circulate quickly that I allowed a traitor to sneak in onto my team. I personally vetted everyone before I hired them. I used tactics other companies didn’t use to learn about the other person. I drew up psychological profiles and ran their bank accounts. I looked into their medical history and fucking found out who their parents were. Why John would suddenly rip that from me just to hire a new guy quickly was beyond me.

It was very unlike John to do something like that.

But even though my reputation would take a hit, losing a client would be even worse. So whoever the fuck this Reggie guy was, he had to be found and neutralized. Losing Derek was not an option today.

Not for my professional life, and not for my personal life.

My phone vibrated on my hip, and I stopped to pick it up. It was a message from Derek, and the number made me cringe. Fourteen. Just like John and I had counted fourteen men walking up the driveway, Derek only had fourteen men in his office.

Down one guy.

One lone threat who could ruin this for everyone.

But then, I heard footsteps falling quickly behind me. Heavy boots and panting breaths running at a tremendous pace. I put my hand on my gun and whipped around, watching as a man decked out in full tactical gear came racing up the driveway. He was sweating bullets, and his face was red, but he seemed familiar.

I picked up my phone and rifled through the pictures I’d sent Derek until I landed on the one for Reggie.

Him.

The man running up the driveway.

He was man number fifteen.

“So sorry,” Reggie said. “It’ll never happen again. There was a wreck. Had to run here to get here on time. I don’t think we’ve met.”

I stood there, flabbergasted as I eyed the man closely. This was the new guy. This was body number fifteen.

This was the threat I thought had been posed.

“Reggie,” I said.

“Yes, ma’am. You must be Williams. Honor to meet you. It’s gonna be great working with you,” he said.

All fifteen were accounted for. The entire team was here. My mind started to spin as the world started to tunnel. If the threat was on this property, and everyone had shown up for the team meeting, then it only meant one thing.

John.

John was the one who was betraying us.

“Do me a favor, Reggie. Get upstairs as fast as you can and relay a message to Mr. Steele.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “What’s the message?”

“Tell him mission accomplished. Then, whatever you do, don’t let him leave that room,” I said.

“Mr. Steele? But I thought—”

“Show me you can take orders,” I said flatly. “Or I’ll have your job.”

“Yes, ma’am. Going now.”

I turned around, watching as Reggie ran up the driveway toward the house. My head felt like it was in a vise grip. My heart felt like it was shattering into pieces. It was the only logical explanation. We had ruled out everything else. All of the fifteen team members were accounted for, and now John was nowhere to be found.

John was the only person on this team no longer accounted for.

How the fuck had I been so stupid? It was so simple. So easy to see now that I had removed my own personal biases. If John was being paid by Jacob, then that was how Jacob had been attacked in the garage. He paid his own bodyguard to attack him. John would’ve had access to the boat. To the luggage. To the security guard he knocked out and stuffed in that closet. For all I knew, that security guard had caught him planting something. Wrong place, wrong time.

That would also explain how I was unable to see any of this. John wasn’t simply being paid by Jacob to run his plan, he was probably being paid to cover his tracks using his knowledge of my own tracking skills he’d acquired over years of service to me and using it to blind me. He was being paid to use my own tactics against me, tactics he had been privy to on jobs because he had always been my second-in-command.

How the fuck could I have missed this?

I know exactly how I missed it. I didn’t fucking vet him like all the other guys. I relied on our past history, on my trust in him, to stand instead of running a background check. Instead, I relied on the fact that the company kept hiring him and substituted the rest with all the jobs we had taken together, all the lives we had saved together, and all the good we had done together.

I had to find John.

I had to figure out where the fuck he went.

I was buried waist deep in my thoughts when I heard it behind me. The sound of a car accelerating before my body went flying. There was a searing pain my side as my body came crashing down, my head bashing against the pavement. My ear was aching, and my head was ringing. It felt like my body was on fire as I lay there on the concrete, stunned and confused. I tried to get up. I tried to push myself upright as the world spun around me. The ground was undulating, my hands were trembling, and I felt like I was going to throw up all the contents of my stomach.

Then a searing pain ricocheted up my leg.

A gunshot rang out, piercing through the ringing in my head. My trembling hand reached for the gun on my hip, but another gunshot rang out. It ricocheted off the gun I was holding up, tossing it to the ground and out of reach. It was a dented, mangled mess, useless to me as I lay there on the ground bleeding from my leg.

I slumped, my morning breakfast rise up my throat as a dark shadow loomed over me.

“I’m really sorry about this,” John said.

I tried to focus my eyes as the barrel of a gun came into view.

“I’ve always liked working with you,” he said. “Getting to know you. Watching you do all the things you know you’re good at. It’s inspiring, really. But I can’t let this go any further.”

I squinted my eyes, my head hammering with pain as John’s face came into view. The traitorous fuck whose windpipe I wanted to crush. My body was surging with anger and shock and sadness. My friend. John had become my friend.

What the hell was my friend doing pointing a gun at my face?

“John, please—”

“Don’t do that. Don’t beg. It’s not a good look on you,” he said.

I swallowed down the sour bile, grimacing as I tried to roll over.

Derek.

I had to get to Derek.

“Once the FBI finds Jacob,” he said as he cocked his gun, “I’ll be implicated. It’ll be easy to find the paper trail that leads back to me. I have to finish the job and get my last paycheck so I can get out of the country before anyone catches me. So sorry, but it’s nothing personal.”

“You traitorous son of a bitch,” I said.

“I figured you’d be angry,” he said as he kicked me back over. “But that’s how the game goes. It was a good one too. I knew the moment Jacob went off book that night that you’d start seeing me in a different light. But that’s always been your downfall.”

I closed my eyes, waiting for my end as I lay there on the pavement.

“You’ve always been too trusting of those who save your life,” John said.

“Just get it over with,” I said with a groan. “You’ve never been good at last stands.”

I heard him chuckle as I drew in heavy breaths. My body was aching, and my vision was tunneling. It felt like someone was splitting my skull open with an ax. My ribs hurt, and blood was pooling around my leg, and all I wanted was for this nightmare to be over.

I wanted this shit to be done with.

I braced myself for death, prepared myself for the inevitable loss I would become. I conjured Derek’s smile in my mind, his warmth pouring over my body as I waited there to die. I felt his lips on my neck and felt his hand curling around mine. I smiled at the memory, waiting for John to finish what he had started.

Then, a gunshot rang out.