Shane backed out of the dark office to the tune of Lacey’s deep, even breathing. She’d fallen asleep in his arms, and while he wanted nothing more than to hold and comfort her, he had a job to do. Their clients were gone, and Lacey’s life was in danger.

He held his breath until the door was fully closed.

Only once the catch settled did he sigh with relief.

His relief was short lived. Isaac’s angry tone carried through the office suite.

Shane steeled himself for the worst and strode toward the conference room where everyone had gathered on their arrival at the FBI offices in downtown Atlanta. He was disappointed that Travis, one of the company’s best private investigators, hadn’t arrived yet. Travis was a man who’d been tempered under the toughest of conditions and still retained a level head. They needed him, the sooner the better.

The FBI agents were nowhere to be seen, just the Aegis Group Alpha Team members. It was early still, so he could see how they might be there before most people were at work. Which was a good thing since Shane was tempted to mop the floor with Isaac’s ass already.

“All I’m saying is, we were hired to do a job.” Isaac didn’t glance Shane’s way, he just kept staring Kyle down. “We were hired to protect the Basus. Not Lacey. If they want her, why not give her to them? Use her as bait or a...a Trojan horse or something. Protecting her isn’t doing our job. We’ve lost sight of what we were paid to do.”

Shane stared at the side of Isaac’s face, his blood pressure rising, his vision hazing.

“The hell we are,” Shane spat. He thrust his finger in Isaac’s face, staring him down despite Isaac’s refusal to look at him. “Our mission, in case you forgot, is to bring the victims home. We work within the bounds of the law to ensure that happens.”

“Yeah, well, we haven’t brought them home, have we?” Isaac turned, finally meeting his gaze. “They want Lacey? Give her to them. We’re only doing our job.”

Shane stared into Isaac’s eyes. It was easy to lose sight of how cut throat Isaac could be under the smiles and laughs. He was a good soldier, he followed orders, but sometimes he didn’t see the people under the job. Maybe it was how he coped with loss, or just a part of Isaac that was permanently broken, but Shane hoped he never saw the job as more important than the people.

“Back it up.” Kyle shoved his arm between them, shouldering them apart.

Shane didn’t budge an inch, but Isaac took several steps back.

Because deep down he knew he was in the wrong?

“We are not bartering human life. That’s not what we do.” Kyle stared Isaac down. “We’re about protecting people. We do not negotiate with people like Marcus. Period. I think you need to take a walk and cool down before you say something you’re going to regret, soldier.”

Isaac glanced from Kyle to Adam and Felix, as though one of them might back him up, except the other two were more interested in their coffee cups than anything else.

“Fuck this,” Isaac muttered.

He stalked out of the conference room, back straight, hands curled into fists.

Shane turned after him.

“Let him go,” Kyle said.

Shane ignored it.

Letting shit go was how they’d gotten here.

He followed Isaac through the suite to a corner office.

Isaac had his hands braced on the windowsill overlooking the Atlanta skyline, the sun bathing the horizon in brilliant colors.

“Fuck you,” Isaac said without glancing over his shoulder.

Shane crossed to the armchair a safe distance from Isaac and sat down, prepared to wait the other man out. Losing Cisco the way they had, it’d shaken them all, but Shane didn’t have the luxury of losing himself in the guilt. Did he feel responsible? Yeah. Every time he looked at Felix and remembered why he was there, Shane could feel the jab of guilt.

While feeding his own demons, Shane had become blind to how losing Cisco had impacted the others. He hadn’t just been Shane’s best friend, they’d been a family.

“We can’t save everyone,” Isaac said, enunciating each word with force.

Hell, wasn’t that the truth? Shane scrubbed his hand across his jaw, feeling that statement like a kick to the gut.

“We had a job to do, and we deviated to rescue a woman we were not supposed to rescue.” Isaac’s voice grew strained. He fanned his fingers out, shoulders bunching.

Where was this going?

“Then you. You prioritized this woman over the team. You divided us over some piece of ass?”

Shane bit his tongue and pressed his knuckles to his mouth. Lacey was so much more than that, but if Isaac needed to air his grievances Shane would give him this one opportunity.

Isaac turned, his face creased in confusion.

“I pointed her at you because I thought it’d be funny to see you, of all people, tangle with a wild cat. But she got to you. Sunk her claws in and...what happened? Are you going to abandon us like you did Cisco?” Isaac spread his hands.

Ouch.

Shane opened and closed his mouth.

What did he say to that?

He’d left Cisco’s back unprotected, and he’d gotten shot.

“We can’t save everyone, Shane. We can’t.” Isaac shook his head.

“No, we can’t, but we can try.” Shane braced his hands on the arm rests and pushed to his feet, feeling far too old and worn for this job. “In hindsight, I should have realized that kid was a lookout, not a prisoner. I should have, but all I saw was a kid in trouble. So yeah, I went back for him, because that place was going to hell and I couldn’t leave a little boy in the middle of that. When he pulled out that gun and shot at me? It was too late.” And the kid’s aim was crap. He’d missed Shane entirely and got Cisco instead.

“She’s changed you, man.” Isaac folded his arms over his chest. “Used to, you wouldn’t even look at her.”

“You’re right, Lacey has changed me.” Shane could feel it, deep in his chest. It wasn’t just caring for her or about her, it was different. He felt as though he’d had binders on, and now they were off. Now, he could see the value behind doing their damnedest to save every person they could.

“I’m not sure who you are right now.” Isaac shook his head.

“I’m still me. I’ve still got your back. Someday, I hope you understand, but you’ve clearly made up your mind about how things are, so... Have at it.” Shane turned and strode out of the office.

Arguing with Isaac was useless. He was so entrenched in what he believed to be right, in the way things should be, that he couldn’t see the bigger picture. He couldn’t until...until he let his own guilt go. Shane still felt the stab of it, but not as bad.

He was learning to forgive himself and see a future beyond shooting at the bad guys, because of Lacey.

“There he is.” Kyle gestured for Shane to take a seat.

“Was wondering where you were.” Travis glanced his way. He still had his suitcase at his side and looked pretty awful from having just made the cross-continental trek.

The agents were present, too, and a fresh batch of coffee was brewing in the pot at the door.

“Well, let’s begin, shall we?” Susan said. “You want to go first, or should we?”

It was going to be one hell of a long day.

Lacey rolled over. The muscles in her neck and shoulders screamed, aching so bad her eyes snapped open. She’d woken up with worse pains, but not many.

She pressed her hand to the back of her neck and shifted so she could lie flat on the sofa.

Where the hell was she?

It wasn’t an unusual question for her to ask after waking up, though judging by the sterile walls and minimalistic decor; it wasn’t her usual crash pad.

So where was she?

She massaged her aching neck, hissing as she worked knots out.

There’d been a wreck.

Shane and the others...

The chase. People firing guns in the middle of suburbia. And then...the morgue. There was stuff in between, but her mind went back to those moments when she’d laid eyes on Josh.

She closed her eyes and focused on breathing.

The others wanted to tell her it wasn’t her fault Josh was dead, but she wasn’t so sure about that. It was the ripple effect, a butterfly beating its wings that created a hurricane. Only, in this instance, Josh was the one who paid the price for the foolhardy way she’d lived.

She swallowed and pushed up, needing to stretch the rest of her body.

The cold floor and hours of crouching hadn’t done her any favors following the wreck, that was for sure. She had walked away from the accident. That was important.

She opened the office door and peered around, orienting herself.

The agents, they’d brought them all back here, hadn’t they?

Raised voices grabbed her attention, drawing her across the suite to a long, narrow conference room. Besides the people she knew, there were new additions. A few people with badges on their hips and a man she assumed was one of Shane’s.

Her gaze went to Shane though, leaned up against the window, watching the conversation. Their gazes met, and some of the tension tightening her body eased. She wouldn’t have made it through this without him.

“They won’t stay in the country now that they have the couple,” a man with dark, curling hair said.

“They were pretty clear that their objective now was Lacey.” Kyle gestured at her. “Take a seat if you’d like to join us.”

“Look, we tracked their vehicles to an airstrip. They’re gone,” the same curly haired agent said.

“Marcos likes airports,” Lacey said.

Everyone in the room looked at her.

She swallowed and straightened. She’d observed Marcos, how he operated, the things he did over and over again enough to see the pattern. It was like reptile behavior. Put the animal in its environment and it would react in an expected way.

“He’s done it a number of times.” She cleared her throat. “I’ve seen his plans for snatching people mid-travel. He uses the busiest parts of airports to...hide in the crowd. You’d be shocked what you can get away with in broad daylight because no one expects that sort of thing—like a kidnapping—to happen right there in a crowd.”

“But that wasn’t in America,” the agent said.

“Yes, actually, he’s done it in Miami and Houston that I know of. I think I even got still shots of the map laid out for the snatch and grab.” She’d known what she was doing in those first days, that the key was evidence.

Americans couldn’t be tried in the States for a crime they’d committed overseas, so documenting what Marcos had planned—and executed—on American soil was vital to her getting justice.

“The footage.” Susan snapped her fingers at the curly haired agent. “Bring me a laptop.”

“Now that you’re up, we can go through the people we have identified.” Will opened a file in front of him.

“Actually, I also have something to add to that,” the man Lacey assumed was Travis said.

Shane pushed off the window and circled the table, pulling out a chair and gestured for her to sit. Lacey didn’t want to sit at the table, she wanted to be by him. With all eyes on her, she opted to slide into the chair. Shane took the seat on her other side, his hand closing over her knee under the table.

Lacey breathed a sigh of relief while the others began talking.

She’d wanted justice, for something to be done about what’d happened to her, and here they were. It was hard to think that a few days ago she was rotting away in that compound, praying for a way out.

“Marcos—he was honorably discharged after his wife’s death to care for his son.” Susan flipped through pages as she spoke. “We have a list of former residences for them, spanning the first three years he was out, but nothing recent and nothing on the child. Did you ever see a little boy while you were with them?”

“A kid?” Lacey blinked at the woman. “No. He never spoke about a son either.”

The idea that Marcos—the man who’d held her prisoner and ransomed children—could also be a father was so conflicting she didn’t know how to view those two pieces of him side by side.

“We have an address that’s more recent,” Travis said. “We also have some intel on the kid. Looks like he was diagnosed with a rare blood cancer, and because of his preexisting conditions, hasn’t been able to get the kind of treatment he needs.”

Travis pinned a few photographs of a red-headed toddler to the timeline taking up most of the wall.

Dear God...

“If the kid’s alive, he’s got to be getting treatment somewhere.” Susan leaned forward.

“That’s where this last address becomes...interesting.” Travis tapped a note card against his palm. “Using third parties, Marcos bought a place in Delhi a few years ago.”

“Dev Basu’s company makes cancer drugs,” Lacey said. She’d heard them talking about it as something to pass the time, get their minds off what was going on.

“That could be motivation. Kidnap the young, up-and-coming CEO of the pharma company that makes your kid’s drugs.” Susan shook her head.

“Are we sure that’s connected though?” Lacey glanced at Shane. “Not to...be rude, but Marcos didn’t seem quite that far sighted. It seemed like, just from what I saw, he took on clients for jobs. He didn’t pick people out. He has a team of people that aren’t going to work for free just for his kid to get meds.”

“Then we keep going. What else do we have?” Susan asked.

Lacey studied the cork board.

“You have most of his team.” She chewed her lip. “Were you able to identify that one visitor?”

“Visitor? What visitor?” Susan frowned.

“The man on the last page of my notes? Light brown suit, wore a hat, darker complexion?” Lacey bit her lip.

“I never made it that far. You’ve kept us pretty busy.” Susan turned toward the conference room door. “Where’s that laptop?”

“Coming.” The curly-haired agent jogged through the open doorway, a laptop under his arm. “Took me a second to dig this one out.”

The agent set the laptop up in front of her.

“You won’t have network or Wi-Fi access because of clearance issues, but we do have the footage on this machine,” he said.

“Thanks.” Lacey took a deep breath and focused on the numbers.

Last time it’d been hard enough to tab through the footage with just Shane watching her. Now she had an audience.

“Can we get this on the projector?” Susan asked.

Great, just what Lacey needed, her whole nightmare blown up, larger than life.

She focused on getting through to the right time code while the same agent as before attached a cord for the projector and got the system running. Lacey slid down in her seat a little more, her mind blanking out, watching the actions as if it were someone else going through it. Someone who had blonde hair just like her—but wasn’t her. She couldn’t even hear the room, she was just that good at playing pretend.

“This should be it.” Her voice was too loud, the room still too quiet.

She glanced up at the white, stricken faces of the men and women gathered around the table.

Shane still clenched her knee, but it was less of a comforting gesture and more holding onto her as if she might slip away.

The things Lacey had endured were bad, but they could have been worse. She’d been threatened, scared and humiliated, but no one had ever laid a finger on her other than Marcos, and he valued the price she could fetch unharmed more than he wanted to do anything to her.

“Here he is, coming up on the left side of the screen.” Lacey glanced up at the projection, the image a bit fuzzy and not quite focused. “He’ll come into range better...there.”

She paused the video, her mouth going dry.

She knew that face.

She’d comforted that face.

Told that face everything would be okay.

“Oh...my...God,” Susan said.

“I didn’t...” Lacey sat back in her seat. She’d been so tired and just focused on logging all the people she hadn’t really looked... “Whenever he was talking to his dad...it wasn’t that man.”

“Get me what you can on Varun Basu. Now,” Susan snapped. “That must be the con, Dev’s biological father, ransoming his son to his replacement. His wife’s new husband. The ultimate way to stick it to your ex.”

All the agents who weren’t Will jumped to action.

Dev’s dad.

“Shit,” Susan whispered.

“Well, now we know why Mr. Basu wouldn’t talk with us,” Kyle said.

“How...? Why...?” Lacey couldn’t wrap her head around it.

“Dev Basu is worth millions.” Susan sighed and shook her head. “It’s always the family. We’ll know more about Varun within the hour.”

“I can tell you what we know,” Travis said. “Varun Basu, second generation American, he went back to India, married there, and has split his time between the two countries. His wife divorced him, took custody of their son and has done well for herself—and the kid. Her second husband is how Dev got into pharma. Her new husband owns one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in India, and they never had any other children. The guy treats Dev like his own son, brought him into the executive leadership, paid for his school, gave him equal ownership of the company. That’s a lot of motivation for the divorced husband.”

“You were already looking at him as a suspect,” Shane said.

“My money was on him.” Travis shrugged.

“We’ve got plainclothes officers sitting on Mr. Basu. I’ll send them in to arrest him,” Will said.

“So...” Lacey leaned forward. “Varun hires Marcos to extort his son for money—and what? How would he think this ends? Not well.”

“Greed blinds people,” Shane muttered.

Lacey couldn’t wrap her head around that. Maybe it was because she’d lived out of a backpack for her entire adult life, or maybe it was because she’d never truly wanted anything she couldn’t get through hard work and determination. Putting money above family, even family she didn’t always like, wasn’t something she understood. Marcos made more sense to her than this man did.

Varun Basu was running out of time. He’d paid that mercenary to do a job he couldn’t handle.

His cell phone chimed.

He picked it up and frowned at the alert from the alarm company.

He tapped the security app on his phone that allowed him to view the cameras hidden throughout his home. Sure enough, two people with FBI hats on were creeping through the living room.

Well, let them creep on. He wasn’t there, and there was no physical evidence linking him to Marcos—except the girl. Lacey. If Varun could shut her up, then there was nothing they could do to pin this on him. Marcos would go down for it, and Varun could be on the scene to welcome his son and daughter-in-law back to safety.

At this point, Varun saw little chance of getting the money. Wasn’t that always how it was? A day late, a dollar short, that seemed to be his fate.

This time he wouldn’t need a dollar, just a death.

A man wearing a hoodie and black pants ambled toward his borrowed car. The rental was serving its job as bait, while Varun took care of matters.

He peered at the man.

In the crowded, supermarket parking lot, he could be going anywhere, but the guy’s movements were too loose, too casual.

Sure enough, the guy walked three cars down, hooked a right, and then came toward Varun’s car between the two rows of vehicles. He tugged at the passenger door, waited while Varun unlocked it and he climbed in.

“This chick must be special if you and Marcos both want her dead.” The Hispanic man glanced at Varun, a quick look, as though he didn’t want to remember his face.

“Are you Pedro Torres?” Varun asked.

“Yeah, Alex said your money was good.” Pedro regarded Varun with sharp eyes.

“It is. Where is she?”

“Some friends of hers picked her up this morning, they visited the new morgue, then got in a cab. My brother is tracking them, but it’s taking time.”

“Where are they now?” Varun wasn’t paying to know where Lacey Miles had been—he wanted to know where she was. Now.

“Chill. My brother’s on it.” Pedro stared through the passenger window at the vehicle next to them. “Your payment came through. I don’t usually turn on my clients, but Marcos is in too deep on this. He bit off more than he could chew. What do you need her for, anyway?”

“I don’t pay you to ask questions. Get out. Contact me when you know where she is.”

Varun scowled at the man’s back.

This was about revenge. If his son wouldn’t acknowledge him, wouldn’t honor where he came from, then Varun would make him pay. Him, his fake father and that whore of a mother.