Cade was deep undercover and Mick was gambling that Cade would be able to protect Ella. She was the link to Diavolos. They had the tracker, and Mick had been adamant that they’d follow her, but Linc knew she’d be scared.

And he’d promised he’d keep her safe. How safe could she possibly feel, running for her life from three big thugs? One of them was a good guy, but she wouldn’t know that.

Linc was in the back of the black Lincoln SUV that Frank had secured for the team. Cory was there, loaded for bear, and Linc knew his friend wanted Ella back too.

Mick had been smart to send them to the car, the mood Linc was in, he would have gone after his boss and not let up until one of them was down for the count.

“She’s in good hands,” Cory said.

He’d been saying words to that effect for the last five minutes, ever since Frank had ditched his position and met with them at the SUV.

“She doesn’t know that. She was chased down the street by three men,” Linc said between gritted teeth. “This wasn’t the plan.”

“The plan was fucked the minute Diavolos hacked your network. How did he even do that? I thought Dirk was his hacker,” Frank said from behind the wheel. He was following Ella’s GPS signal. They were about three minutes behind her.

“One here. Six is tracing it right now. We still aren’t sure. There might be someone else in play,” Mick said.

Kaylee had been typing her fingers to the damn bone trying to figure out how Ella had been jacked over. Linc knew that Ella thought of Kaylee as her friend but she’d still let Mick—

“Two, you cool? If not, you’re off the mission. I don’t need you going in like some crazy hothead.”

“I’m not cool, but I’ve got this. You know I’m not going to lose it,” Linc said.

“Three?”

“He’s fine,” Cory said.

Linc took a deep breath and let it out. Calming himself down. He wasn’t going to be able to save Ella if he went in there full of rage. “What’s the plan?”

“As soon as we have the location, we move in, rescue Ella, and take down Diavolos,” Mick said.

Sure, that would work. Every plan they’d made tonight had gone so smoothly. “In case that doesn’t work, what’s our priority?”

“Four has Diavolos,” Mick said. “Two, you get Ella out. She’s helping us out, but she didn’t volunteer to be used.”

He had known that would be the answer, Mick had played the hand he’d been dealt, and Linc was honest enough to admit he would have done the same.

“She’s stopped moving,” Cory said.

Linc pulled his weapon from his holster and checked his clip, more to keep his hands busy than because he felt like it needed checking. He had an extra clip in the webbing he wore strapped to his chest. He had brass knuckles in his pocket, because his hands were raw from all the fighting he’d done tonight, and he needed to be able to take the opposition out with one punch, if necessary.

“Four, I’m coming up on you,” Mick said. “Take the first left and we’ll figure out our next move.”

Frank pulled off where Mick had advised him to, and Linc knew that planning was necessary, even though his gut said to grab Cory’s GPS tracker and go toward Ella’s location on foot.

Frank stopped the SUV and turned off the lights. Cory’s hands were moving over the keyboard of his high-tech laptop, and a few moments later he reached into one of the storage containers in the back seat and took out a drone.

Linc took it from him and started to power it up. The silent drone was excellent for surveillance. He got out of the SUV as Mick approached them. They had turned down a country road with no street lights and very little traffic.

The low rumble of traffic from the highway made its way across the open landscape toward them. The air was cold and clear as he tipped his head back and looked up at the night sky. He wanted this night to end. He wanted Ella back in his arms and safely in her loft apartment.

But there were still a lot of hours before dawn, and a lot of work to be done before then.

He flipped on the drone and used the switch to send it flying to the coordinates that Cory had sent. He pulled out his smartphone to watch the progress of the drone and the video it sent back.

Mick clapped him on the shoulder but didn’t say anything, for which Linc was grateful. Linc was pretty sure his boss had guessed that he wasn’t feeling any objectivity where Ella was concerned.

“Here’s the plan,” Mick said as Frank got out of the SUV and Cory joined them. “Kaylee has had a look at a topographical map of the area. We think they’re at Reece Hammond’s country estate outside of Mount Vernon. It’s ballsy for him to use it.”

“Do you have a line on the hacker yet?”

“We haven’t found them yet. Kaylee will be focusing on the code as soon as she’s able.”

Linc had forgotten Kaylee was injured earlier in the night.

“Is she okay?”

“Yeah, she’s a trooper. She feels responsible,” Mick said.

“She shouldn’t. I’m the one who had the network that was hacked,” Linc said.

“We’re going to get her back,” Mick reminded him. “Frank, you want to take the vehicle and head to this location?”

Mick had brought an actual paper map with him. Normally Linc was amused by his team leader’s problems with tech, but tonight he just wanted Frank watching with his sniper rifle, keeping Ella safe.

Mick was pointing out a location on the map, and Linc glanced at it so he’d know where Frank was located, in case Linc needed extra backup when he got Ella away from Diavolos.

The drone was starting to pick up something. Cory had an infrared camera on it, and it was able to see through walls. There were four people on the second floor of the farmhouse, all in one room. Another two people were on the first floor, in the corner.

“Take a look at this,” Cory said, bringing his tablet over and putting it on the hood of the SUV so they could all see it.

“Two locations,” Mick said. “That’s not too bad. We can hit them both. Cade’s got to be in one of them.”

But which one? And where was Ella?

“Should I go in with you?” Frank asked. “If I’m on watch that means one of you has to go alone.”

Mick shook his head. “We’ll hit the bottom and then move up. If Ella is downstairs, Linc will get her out while we go after Diavolos, and if it’s her and Diavolos, we’ll get him too. Cory, do you have those body cams ready to go?”

“You know I do, boss,” Cory said.

He left them for a moment to go back to the truck and pull out more gear. The director had been explicit when he’d said they needed to tie Reece Hammond to Diavolos with more than just online tracking. The director wanted to see him getting his hands dirty.

Linc wanted to see him dead.

Linc had been focused on the team, but he’d been at dinners where Reece Hammond had been feted for his charity work. And it made his skin crawl to realize how he’d duped the world into believing he was a good man.

Anger and fear were warring inside of him. Linc knew that he’d get Ella back, he had made a promise and wouldn’t break it. There weren’t that many people he cared about. And from the moment he’d seen Ella in her bathroom at her loft apartment, she’d carved a spot for herself in the locked chest where he kept his emotions.

But emotional men made dumb mistakes, so Linc turned away from the team and took a few steps. Calmed himself, and went over the encounters he’d had tonight. He had a little bit of soreness on the right side of his body, and he stretched to see if it would impede his range, and was happy to see it didn’t. It hurt like a mother, but he could still move.

“Here you go,” Cory said, bringing the body camera gear over to him.

Linc took it from him and watched as Cory took the gear to Frank and then to Mick, and they all attached the small cameras to their collars. The camera itself shot only black and white footage, but it was a sharp image.

The cameras worked independently, and recorded and saved the data until they were connected to the tablet. The digital files would be downloaded and analyzed later.

“I think this is going to go quickly. The last time we were this close to Diavolos he escaped by chopper,” Mick reminded them all.

“That’s why I packed the RPGs,” Frank said. “I’m ready for whatever the bastard throws at us this time.”

Linc was too. It felt like they’d been chipping away at Diavolos and his empire for years, but now they all knew that those chips hadn’t even dented his operation. Men like Cockram and Quentin were a dime a dozen, and every time they took out one street-level operative Diavolos found two more to take his place.

“It ends tonight,” Linc said.

“It does,” Mick agreed. “Director Truehart wants him out of the equation, that means either we have enough evidence to prosecute and put him away forever—”

“Or we take him out,” Frank said. “You know which one gets my vote.”

“Yeah, I know. But we aren’t vigilantes.”

“I could be,” Linc said.

Cory clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Not until we know what’s happening to her.”

He was tired of fighting of the good fight and always coming up against stuff like this. It didn’t seem right that they had worked this hard to bring an end to the dark web marketplaces and the kingpins, only to find out that…they hadn’t.

“Let’s go. We’ll take the vehicles as close as we can and then continue on foot. I want radio silence once we’re on the move,” Mick said.

The drone picked up another vehicle heading toward the compound where Ella was being held.

They all watched the tablet as three people got out of the car and went into the house, moving toward the first-floor room.

“Let’s move, so we can stop anyone else from entering the house,” Mick said.

Frank drove again, and this time when they stopped they all moved into position. Frank would go high, find a spot where he could see the house and the grounds.

Linc ran across the open field, carefully keeping to the shadows where he could. His breathing was easy to control and he felt himself slipping into warrior mode. He ceased thinking about anything except the mission.

“Rear left-side entrance clear,” Frank said via the earpiece.

* * *

Then man who had found her had bound her hands and feet after she’d punched him twice in the nose and tried to kick him in the balls. They’d also put something over her head so she couldn’t see where they’d taken her. She knew she’d been put in a car trunk and was now inside a building somewhere.

It was warm, and she had been tossed on a hard surface, and as she moved around she realized it was some sort of ladder-back chair. Her self-defense training had all been learned on the streets, and she’d never been in a situation like this. She had no idea if Linc was dead or alive. She couldn’t get to the gun he’d insisted she take. She didn’t know if he was coming for her, so she had to figure this out for herself.

She moved her feet back and forth, trying to see if there was any give in the binding at her ankles. She’d lost her shoes somewhere between the run from the house and this place. Her feet were cold, her toes numb as she rubbed them on the floor…it was carpeted.

“Stop squirming,” a man said. Not Diavolos. This was a different voice that brooked no challenge.

“Why? Are you going to tie me up some more? Chase me down and make me bleed?” she asked sarcastically.

“Yeah, and this time I won’t go so easy on you,” he said.

She didn’t answer him, turning her attention to her wrists. The knot on the rope holding her hands together was tighter than the one on her ankles, and as she tried to twist and turn them, she felt the rope cutting into the skin of her wrists.

“I’m not going to fetch very much money with all these scrapes and bruises,” she said, aiming for pissed-off and hoping her fear wasn’t apparent in her tone.

“We’re not auctioning you off,” the man said.

“Then why take me?” she asked. She didn’t know what she hoped to accomplish by talking to this stranger, but she needed a distraction. She hated being blindfolded. Like Diavolos’s voice over the speaker, this triggered the worst sort of memories.

“The boss wanted you, and I follow orders. He believes you have something of his,” he said.

“I don’t know what else I have to give,” she said.

“Don’t you?” the man said. She heard him move, coming closer to her, and she stiffened in the chair, chills running down her spine. “He knows that the Dark Twin is still alive. He wants her.”

Of course he did. Diavolos had been fixated on Bri from the moment they’d been brought in. She could still remember the way he’d treated Bri, kept her for himself. And though she and her sister had never talked about what happened when she was taken out of the room, Bri’s eyes had told a story of horror.

“She’s not alive.”

Ella knew she was going to die tonight. There was no way she was going to give her sister’s location to the man who’d tortured and abused her.

“Well then, it’s going to be a very long night for you,” the man said. “Because Diavolos wants that information, and he’s not going to stop until he has it.”

“It already has been a long night,” she admitted.

“I’ll bet.”

The man didn’t say anything else, but she knew he was still in the room. Now that he’d stopped talking, she could hear other things, like the central heating clicking on and the ticking of a clock somewhere in the building.

She heard the man get up and leave, and tugged as hard as she could at her wrists. She felt the skin tear, and her wrists stung as air touched the scrapes, but she didn’t care. She needed to get out of here. She shook her head, trying to dislodge whatever was on her head.

She realized her hands weren’t tied to the chair. She leaned forward and the cloth on her head fell off. She glanced down at the pillowcase and then sat back and looked around. She was in some sort of game room. There was a pool table that dominated the room. She was seated on a chair that had been turned away from a poker table.

Scooting forward on the seat of the chair, she stood up and looked around as she heard footsteps and voices in the hallway. The door was open to the hall and she kept her eye on it as she hopped and tried to keep her balance, moving toward the corner and the closed door there. It was probably a closet. There was a window, but it was waist-high, so getting through it would be difficult.

But not impossible.

The voices got louder and she threw herself on the floor and pulled herself into a ball underneath the pool table. Worst hiding place ever.

“She’s spunky,” the man who’d been talking to her said. She wanted to see his face, but didn’t want to reveal her hiding place so she stayed still.

“She’s a survivor.”

That voice she knew. Diavolos. He was here. She knew that had been the end play as far as Kaylee and the Ares Team were concerned. They wanted him, and they needed to catch him breaking the law. Doing the awful things that they knew he was capable of.

“She can’t have gone far,” the man said. “She’s tied up.”

“Come out, Pale Twin,” Diavolos said. “We know you’re here.”

He crouched down next to the table and she stared into his round face, that innocuous face that had graced the cover of Time magazine. He reached under the table and grabbed her arm, jerking her out from underneath it and then stood, lifting her up.

She struggled to find her balance and he had no patience with her, shoving her toward the other man.

Who caught her and held her so that she faced Diavolos. Even knowing his real name, he’d never be anything other than the devil to her.