Chincoteague, VA

2200 EST

Mick checked his watch, looked over at Cade, who nodded and walked over to the window.

“Kaylee? Ramona?” Mick called as he walked to the hallway. It was empty. Crap.

“The girls are gone. Spread out and find them,” he yelled, running toward the back door.

As soon as he stepped outside, he realized his eyes needed a moment to adjust to the darkness. He closed them to aid in the process and stepped away from the house. Then he listened. He was better in a street fight or in an urban setting, but he’d learned to hide and be quiet as a young child and he knew how to listen very carefully for the sound of footfalls.

He glanced down, squatted to examine the ground, and found the trace of a stiletto heel in the grass and dirt. He took his penlight, using it to follow the trail of the stiletto print. Ramona had gone this way. The fact that there had been no outcry from Kaylee worried him.

Ramona had already revealed herself to be capable of betraying them, and while Kaylee had the most obvious connection to Diavolos, she’d been the one time and again to save the day and move them forward.

He stood up, scanning the horizon. He couldn’t see anything, but he heard a thud and the sound of a car engine turning over. He ran as quickly as he could in the direction of the sound. He’d taken out his earpiece earlier, so he was on his own. When he got to the road, he saw taillights moving away. He couldn’t run down a car on his own.

He heard another vehicle approaching and turned just as it stopped next to him. The car was the same one he and Kaylee had used earlier to get to the house.

“Get in,” Frank said. “I think Ramona is playing us. I just saw the photo she showed you, and that kid…I was part of a mission to rescue him before you even joined Grimaldi.”

Frank put the car in gear and started following the other vehicle.

“Here’s your earpiece. Cade and Cory are scouring the grounds and Linc is interrogating Jeff.”

Mick popped the earpiece in and then turned back to Frank. “Tell me about the kid.”

“He was found in a crackdown on sex trafficking rings. We busted one of the cartels who uses the drug route up from Mexico. He was one of seven kids we found in a hole in the ground in San Clemente, California. It was disgusting.”

Mick’s gut tightened at the thought of what Frank had seen. Every time he thought his childhood was bad, he realized how much worse it could have been. And he knew firsthand how lucky he was to still be alive.

“Why didn’t you speak up sooner?” Mick asked.

“I didn’t have a chance to see the photo, since I was on over-watch. It was only when you called me in and Kaylee left the room that Cade caught me up,” Frank said. “Sorry, boss, but I think it’s pretty clear Ramona is playing us.”

“Damn straight, she is,” Mick said. “One here. Status report.”

“Two here, Jeff doesn’t know shit. He’s clean,” Linc said.

“Five here. The grounds are clean. Nothing around the house, in the house, or the surrounding area,” Cade said. “Three and I are going mobile and will back you up.”

“Negative. Clean everything out and take it back to headquarters, don’t turn it over to anyone but the director,” Mick said, ordering the men. “Once we have Six and Seven, we’ll be on our way.”

“Affirmative,” Linc said, and there was a tone in his voice that Mick knew signaled he wasn’t in the mood to be trifled with.

Mick muted his mic and turned to Frank, who did the same. The landscape flew by, but the other vehicle was widening the gap between them. A little bit was due to Frank’s tailing technique, but another part was the skill of the driver who’d taken her. “What kind of weapons do you have?”

“Sniper rifle, my knife, and there’s a rocket launcher in the backseat as well as two semis,” Frank said.

“Just what exactly are you expecting us to encounter?” Mick asked. Though he was glad that Frank had gotten so many options for them. Going in blind was one thing, going in under-armed was another matter altogether.

He shrugged. “Luck favors the prepared.”

Mick shook his head. “I wish I hadn’t called you inside.”

“Me too. Little bastard must have been waiting for me to leave my post,” Frank said.

“Do you think he saw you, or was he warned?” Mick asked.

“Ego demands I say he was warned, but the truth is, I don’t know,” Frank said in a wry tone.

“One, you here?” Linc asked over the earpiece.

He unmuted his mic. “Go ahead.”

“We’re picking up a signal from Six. Sending the location to you now,” Linc said.

Mick pulled his smartphone from his pocket and accessed the information that Linc had sent. They weren’t too far ahead of him and Frank. He tried to stay focused on the job. Kaylee had been taken and he would find her and get her back.

But he’d be lying if he didn’t acknowledge that his gut felt like he had a rock in it. He was worried about Kaylee. The signal was a sign she was alive, because she had to have turned something on in order for them to track it. He hoped like hell she was okay.

He’d always told himself he wasn’t the kind of man that women fell for, that he didn’t have relationships because he didn’t want one, but now he knew that had been dumb luck. He’d never met a woman he could care for, and that had been a damned blessing. He hated feeling this way about Kaylee. Hated fearing that he might be too late to save someone he cared for. Again.

* * *

Kaylee came to in the backseat of a car. She heard the low rumble of the engine and stayed as still as possible, looking around for Ramona and not seeing her, she hoped that she’d escaped.

“The boss isn’t happy that this took so long,” said a man in a rough British accent.

“Maybe he shouldn’t have sent those three idiots the first time,” Ramona replied.

Kaylee couldn’t believe it. She’d thought that she’d known Ramona. She was confused not just by her friend’s actions, but also why they’d taken her. She reached into her pocket where she’d tucked her cellphone earlier. Her hands weren’t bound, so it was easy for her to turn it on and put it back in her pocket. As soon as Mick realized she was gone he’d start searching for her, and Kaylee hoped that Cory would track her cellphone signal.

The vehicle turned off the paved road and onto a bumpier surface. Kaylee groaned as she bounced from the seat onto the floorboard in the backseat.

“Are you awake?” Ramona asked.

“I am,” Kaylee said, as she struggling to sit up in the backseat. “What’s going on?”

“We need the information you have on Diavolos,” Ramona said. “So I’m taking you to someone who will get it from you.”

“Why? I told you I’d find your brother,” Kaylee said.

Ramona laughed. “That kid’s not my brother. I found the photo in the Grimaldi Global database. He’s was just my backup in case you were on to me.”

Anger and betrayal warred inside of her. Anger winning. “Why? Why would you work for someone like Diavolos?”

“He pays well,” Ramona said. “Plus, he doesn’t answer to anyone. He has the best people working for him. You think that Ares Team is any match for what he has?”

Kaylee thought that Mick was a match for anyone he came up against. “I still don’t get it. If it’s so great working for him, why did you come work for Grimaldi? You’ve been working with me for more than three years. That’s a long time to be working both sides.”

“Not really,” Ramona said. “Diavolos is careful to make sure he has people in the positions he needs them in. He sent me to work for Grimaldi after the whole Wikileaks thing. Once it because clear that all secure servers were a liability, Diavolos knew he needed to be in control of what was found. So I was hired.”

Kaylee shook her head. “Have you met him?”

“No. Not yet. I hope to one day. But he’s very private,” Ramona said.

“If you’re done jawing,” the man driving said. “We’re here.”

“Thanks, Al,” Ramona said, then looking back at Kaylee. “Are you going to be difficult or cooperate?”

Kaylee shook her head in disgust. The fact that she’d exploited their friendship and Kaylee’s feelings truly ticked her off. Also, she’d almost revealed Ella’s secret network to Ramona, which would have led Diavolos right to them. “What do you think?”

Ramona turned in the seat and she had a small gun in her hand. “I think you’d rather I not shoot you.”

Kaylee put her hands up. “I’d rather not be shot.”

“Good.”

She had no plan and even less chance of actually escaping these two, but she wasn’t going to allow herself to be captured that easily.

As soon as Ramona stepped out of the vehicle, bringing the gun up toward her. Kaylee grabbed the hand holding the gun and jerked. She thrust all of her weight toward Ramona, shoving her against the car and slamming the hand holding the weapon against the hood of the car until the gun fell free with a clatter.

Kaylee kicked it out of Ramona’s reach and spun to grab the weapon. She was drawn up short when Ramona grabbed her hair and yanked. Hard. Tears burned in Kaylee’s eyes, but she ignored the pain.

For the first time, she thought it was a flaw that she didn’t carry a weapon or really even know how to use one. Street fighting, like she’d shown Mick, was all she could rely on now.

She spun to face Ramona, balling up her fist and hitting Ramona squarely in the jaw. The other woman’s head snapped back, but she didn’t let go of Kaylee’s hair. Instead she twisted the strands around her fist, drawing Kaylee even closer to her.

“Girls, don’t make me come over there,” Al said.

“Shut up, Al,” Ramona said. “I’ve got this bitch.”

“In your dreams,” Kaylee said, as she drew back her fist and punched Ramona again, keeping her body loose and torqueing her hips to keep her rhythm. Her head ached with each move, but she felt the other woman weakening.

A part of her knew if she kept Ramona busy long enough that Mick would get here and take over. But she wasn’t sure how much longer she’d last. Her arms ached and Ramona was tougher than Kaylee had hoped she was.

Ramona yanked hard on her hair. “In reality.”

Kaylee wasn’t interested in talking to Ramona. She needed to take control of this situation. Grabbing Ramona’s free hand, she pulled the arm over her left shoulder and toward her waist. Then she bent and flipped Ramona onto the ground.

Ha. Suddenly most of the skills she’d learned on the street were coming back to her.

“Ow!” she yelled. Ramona hadn’t let go of Kaylee’s hair and she felt strands ripped out by their roots. Kaylee grunted in pain, twisting her body around and slamming Ramona onto the ground again. Ramona kicked hard at the back of Kaylee’s knee, knocking her off balanced for a second.

Kaylee dropped to the dirt and grass next to her. She grabbed Ramona’s arm and twisted it hard behind her, forcing the other woman to roll over. She knew she had nothing to bind the other woman’s wrists with. Instead, she found the carotid artery, something that Ella had taught her. She’d learned it when she’d been working in one of Diavolos sex houses. Ella had said that some of the old men who’d come to see her were already drunk or high and one of the guards had shown her the move. Kaylee used what Ella had taught her and applied pressure until she felt Ramona go limp.

“You got her?” Al asked.

“Yeah, I did,” Kaylee said, standing up to run.

“Well, that’s too damned bad,” a new voice straight from her childhood said. “I was hoping you’d come easily, kid.”

“Dad?” she asked. Her heart sunk as she realized that all the hoping and praying she’d done had been for naught. Her father was working for Diavolos.

“Hiya, kid,” Dirk Thomas said.

His words might have been benign, but he held a semi-automatic handgun pointed right at her as Al came around behind her.

“I guess you’re working with Diavolos now?” she asked.

“Come inside and let’s talk,” Dirk said. “Al, take care of that one.”

Kaylee saw Al toss Ramona over his shoulder unceremoniously, and walk into the house. Kaylee stood there. Would her father shoot her? She didn’t know for sure. But she needed answers. Hell, they all needed answers. And he certainly was in a position to shed some light on the real identity of Diavolos.

She hoped Mick and the rest of the Ares Team was out there somewhere. Even though they’d fought and she’d said things to Mick that she knew had hurt him, she also understood the man he was. He wasn’t about to let anything happen to her.

And knowing that made her feel braver than she would have otherwise. Knowing that he was out there somewhere made it easier for her give her dad a sardonic look as she walked past him.

“I guess all that letting me be me stuff was bullshit, right, Dad? Otherwise, why would you be holding a gun on me now?”

“You always were too lippy,” he said, following her up the stairs and into the house. As soon as they stepped inside, he closed the door with his foot and used the gun to direct her into a room that was wall-to-wall servers. There was a low-level hum coming from the machines.

Diavolos’s reach had never been stronger. And she knew why. Her dad was a genius at code and the algorithm she’d hacked and decoded had his virtual prints all over it. Dirk was better off behind bars than leading kids from the safety of the web into the hands of people who would groom them for a life in underage porn, prostitution and drug smuggling.

She sat down and then realized that her father was waiting for something…or someone.

“What’s going on here, Dad?” she asked.

“My boss wants to talk to you,” he said.

A shiver of fear went through her as she realized that Diavolos was in the same building as she was.

* * *

Her father used the gun to direct her toward an even smaller room past the server farm. She wanted to scream at him. To ask him why he was doing this. She knew if she saw who Diavolos was, the chances of her walking away from this small house alive were slim.

Worse than slim.

She stopped and turned to face her father. “I’m not going in there, Dad. Kill me if you have to.”

“Don’t be stubborn, girl,” he said. “I don’t have time for this. I’m still ticked off that you even found this place.”

He was thinking about the job. She needed to keep him talking, and get him thinking about her instead. If she could get past the hacker extraordinaire to the father underneath, she might have a chance.

“It was probably one of the hardest puzzles I’ve ever had to solve,” she said. “I’ve been working on this project for a long time now.”

“You always did like puzzles,” he said.

“Only because you’d taught me to do them,” she said.

“That was a long time ago, girl. If you’d kept what you found to yourself, maybe things could be different,” he said, nudging her with the barrel of the gun. “Now get moving. Diavolos is a busy man, and he wants to deal with you now.”

“Dad, you know he’s going to kill me,” she said.

“Not necessarily. He needs to know who has the information you found,” Dirk said. “Seems you didn’t give it the director like everyone thought you would.”

Kaylee kept her expression neutral. She had given the info to the director when she’d met with him and Mick alone.

“How do you know that?”

“Diavolos has contacts everywhere,” Dirk said. “But what he doesn’t have is time for any more nonsense. Move it, Kaylee.”

Using her given name was a sure sign he was out of patience with her. She wasn’t sure what to do next, but she wasn’t going to just be led to Diavolos like a lamb to the slaughter.

“It’s too late for him,” Kaylee said. “If I found him, someone else can too. Also, I’m not as stupid as you seem to think I am. That information has already been passed along to a media source, and it will be shared widely if I don’t check in tomorrow morning.”

“So now I know you have to be kept alive until then.”

“You’d kill me yourself?” she asked.

“I didn’t even want a kid to begin with. It was only when I realized how good you were with puzzles that I decided you might be an asset.”

“An asset? I’m your daughter.”

He shrugged. “Let it go, kid.”

She heard a door open in another part of the house.

“Al? Get back here,” Dirk yelled.

Kaylee knew she had a small window to do something, so she remembered all the times she’d been alone and scared and wished that her father had been different. Channeled it into rage as she reached up and punched him the gut twice. He jerked back before advancing toward her. But she wasn’t backing down. She hit him in the face, snapping his head back. Then she just kept punching. She’d been wanting to hit someone since she’d left Madrid, and she was only surprised that it was her father who was taking the brunt of this. She hit him in the throat like she’d seen Mick do when he’d been fighting, and lifted her leg to kick him in the groin, but he caught her ankle and flipped her hard on the floor. Her entire body ached and she felt tears burning in her eyes. She rolled over and stood up, ready to hit him again, but Dirk smacked her hard with the butt of the gun.

Kaylee tasted blood as it dripped down her cheek into her mouth. She wiped it away with the back of her hand as Dirk stepped back to punch her again.

“Guess you’re not going to be father of the year,” she said.

“I never wanted that award,” he said.

She wanted to say the last of her affection for the man died just then, but a part of her wanted to cry. Wanted to find out what it was about her that had made her so unlovable.

Instead she stepped back and delivered a vertical kick to Dirk’s throat, trying to crush his esophagus, but he fell backward and then rolled to his feet, lifted his gun, and pulled the trigger. She moaned, struggling to stay on her feet as the bullet ripped through her thigh. God, it hurt so bad. Worse than the betrayal of her father. Worse than anything she’d felt before.

She saw stars and felt her body starting to crumble. She heard cursing and then felt nothing but blackness.