The day had been another cluster fuck and it wasn’t doing anything for my mood. Tomorrow, we were going on a partial mission, and doing it blind. If everything went as planned, I would have Sophie in my bed tonight, her long legs wrapped around me.

The problem was that my gut told me something was wrong. My instincts were screaming to pull back and take the mission slow. Brock was tracking the CIA agents who had attacked us earlier, and they hadn’t found our location. Nothing erroneous had surfaced. It was like the mission was too clean.

Being near to Sophie for the past week had my emotions running wild. I needed to go for a ten-mile run to release some of the tension that was building up. Taking out the CIA agents early this week did nothing to settle my nerves. My gut told me something bad was coming, and we hadn’t figured out what yet.

Brock was sifting through the data Sophie had stolen from the Russian Prime Minister’s computer. Nothing was connected to Yermushin, so far.

Antonio was sitting in front of the computer, talking to Brock. Brock was in his conference room, surrounded by operatives. The team was trying to dig up as much intel as they could on Yermushin.

Sophie’s fingers were flying across her keyboard. “This can’t be true. This can’t be true.”

I leaned over Sophie’s shoulder to see what she was looking at. “What can’t be true?”

Deep down, I knew whatever she found would change the course of the op. The op was a snatch and grab. The harder mission would be taking Sanchez out.

When I leaned over to see what she found, I heard Brock yell “Fuck” through the computer’s speakers.

A live broadcast of the director was running on the internet. “Turn it up.”

“Sometime last week, my niece Sophie was kidnapped from her apartment in Ft. Lauderdale. I’m asking anyone who has any information to help find my miss—”

Sophie turned off the broadcast.

“Brock, are you getting this?” Was what he was saying right? It made little sense. My pulse pounded. The director had put Sophie’s face across all the TV stations. She couldn’t leave the hotel or go to the charity event without someone seeing her.

“Yes. Sophie, did you have any clue he was your uncle?” Brock was pacing back and forth on the screen. His team of operatives were analyzing the newscast, taking down all the information as it flowed through the fucker’s mouth.

Sophie had gone pale since the director’s announcement. “If I’d known, don’t you think I would have told you?” she snapped at Brock.

I dropped into the chair and ran a hand across my face. “So, the director tried throwing us a curve ball. It’s time to find an alternative way to extract Kat from Yermushin.”

“Do you think he’s trying to stop us from going to the charity event?” Sophie asked, raising her eyebrows.

Antonio jumped from his chair and glared at Sophie. “We are getting my wife back tonight.” Antonio slammed his hands against the table. “I don’t care who comes with me. It’s happening at sundown.”

“Don’t give me attitude. We are in this together. I’ve been searching for Kat for a long time. I just found out the man I’ve wanted to kill for years is my uncle. Fuck you.” Sophie stormed out of the room.

“You need to watch it,” I growled at Antonio.

Needing to find Sophie, I headed to the bedroom in the hotel suite. She was sitting on the bed, staring at a picture in her hand.

“Care if I come in?” Emotions were running high. I didn’t want to upset Sophie any further.

Sophie waved her hand over the bed. “Sure. This is all my fault,” Sophie whispered.

“How do you feel this is your fault?”

Sophie crossed her arms and glared at me. “If I would have researched Sanchez, I would have realized our connection. Who even knows if what he said is true? I don’t understand why I never looked into him.”

“He helped you when your parents died. He was an adult, and you were a teenager looking for answers.”

Sophie’s phone buzzed. Unknown caller flashed across the screen. She swiped the smartphone and put it on speaker. “Hello.”

“You have nowhere to run. Time to come back. Everyone is looking for you. If you don’t come in in the next four hours, I will tell the public that Antonio and Brock are behind the kidnapping. It will ruin their lives.”

I motioned for her to keep talking and pointed to the living room. Sophie and I rushed back. Antonio and Brock were talking to each other on the computer. John was cleaning his gun.

“Why are you doing this?” Sophie asked, trying to keep Sanchez talking. “If you’re really my uncle, why did you put me in foster care?”

“I didn’t want to raise two brats. If you and your sister had been together, you would have caused me issues. The two of you might have figured out my plan.”

At the sound of Sanchez’s voice coming through the phone, the room went quiet except for the sound of Brock’s fingers flying across the keyboard. I had a good feeling he was working on tracking the phone call. More than likely, the director was bouncing his signal around the globe.

Sophie was vibrating with anger. “If she lived with you, why is she working for Yermushin? Why would you make her work for the men who killed our family?”

Sanchez chuckled into the phone. “For having the IQ of a genius, you’re pretty naive. She was too young to remember the faces. She is a trained killer. Ice does what I tell her.”

Before I could stop her, Sophie threw the phone across the room. It hit the wall and shattered. I hope Brock found what he was looking for.

Sophie lost it when she realized she had destroyed the phone with the link we were tracing. I looked over at the computer screen where Brock was working, and he shook his head. I had figured it would be a long shot to trace the call.

“I’m sorry. I messed everything up again.” Sophie was sitting with her head in her hands, crying.

I squatted down next to the chair. “Sophie, you need to pull yourself together. Yes, you are angry. You have every right to be. But, sitting here stewing over what ifs, won’t fix anything. Let’s go and talk with the team and see if Brock was able to trace the call.”

“Okay, I’m ready, let's get my sister back.”

Brock pushed his glasses up. “I couldn’t trace the call. He was bouncing his signal all over the place. Steve just arrived with the files I had him steal from Sanchez’s office. We have information on Kat.”

“What information do you have?” Antonio growled. He had been on edge ever since he’d seen the picture of Kat.

“Since the director has been out all day, Steve could sneak into his office and retrieve the files from his safe. We might need POTUS to help clear his name when this is over.

I was nodding my head already. Zack owed me tons of favors for the things I’d done for him. He would take care of anything I needed. But it might not be necessary. I planned on bringing down the director and any other dirty officials.

Brock uploaded the file of scanned information to our computer. There was one on Kat and one on Sophie. “We could tap into Kat’s phone line. The director called her right before he called you. Sanchez doesn’t know we have this information. He told her he found out you were alive and was trying to get you back. Kat is taking the first flight out in the morning. Sanchez must think you will do as you're told.”

Sophie shifted in her chair to get a better look at the documents on the screen. “We have to get her tonight and worry about Yermushin tomorrow. I want Kat back, and we can’t have her fall into the director’s hands.”

“That was my next thing to pitch. I think we need to get her tonight. She lives in a house outside of Manhattan. There is one more thing.” Brock paused as if he didn’t know how to say what else he had found.

We didn’t have time for games. “Spit it out,” I demanded.

“She has a kid.” A picture a beautiful four-year-old boy showed on the screen. He was the spitting image of his dad.

Antonio leaped from his seat. “You're telling me that low-life piece of shit kept me from my wife and son? I will rip his heart out and watch him die a slow painful death.”

“That was graphic. Before you go hulk and turn green, let’s talk our plan through. I agree we go in late tonight. We’ll have the dark as our cover. If someone is watching her, we’ll need to be quick.”

The mission to take Kat at the charity event would have been more straightforward. We planned to lure her into a hall or bathroom, explain the situation, and get the fuck out. Now, the mission was to go into a residential neighborhood. Her house was more than likely being monitored by Sanchez or her current employer, Yermushin.

Mia’s voice came across the computer. "From glancing over the file, Kat is a trained killer. She thinks she is doing jobs for the United States. Instead, she’s working the director’s hit list. Last month, she tried to get out. She told him she was done. He threated to take Antonio Jr. away and ruin her. If she wanted out, she had to do one last job. I sent you the schematics of the house and neighborhood.”

The address and map appeared on the monitor. Sophie worked on bringing up any cameras we could find to see if we could figure out our blind spots.

“Holy shit.” Brock sounded like he saw an alien.

“What did you find?” I asked.

“Sophie, you never told us who your family was.”

Sophie looked confused. “My parents were professors at a college. We were nobody famous.”

Two images appeared on the screen. I recognized Joe and Lexi Johnston. They had been the wealthiest oil family around. They had died in a car accident years ago.

“Your grandparents were Joe and Lexi Johnston. When they died, their fortune went to your parents. Nothing went to Sanchez. From the look of it, your grandfather had an affair, and Sanchez was the outcome. He paid Sanchez's mom to go away. When your parents died, everything went into an ironclad trust in your sister’s and your name. It looks like Sanchez has been taking the money from your trust. If you or your sister die, it goes to a charity, and then he wouldn’t get anything.”

“Mom said our grandparents were dead. I never thought to look into them. Sanchez has a different last name, and I never looked into my mom’s last name.

Now it made sense why he needed her alive, and keeping the sisters apart made it easier for him as well. They would’ve talked and maybe looked into their background. Instead, Sophie tried to track down her sister’s location, being fed intel from a man that didn’t want her to be found. Who knows what information he was feeding Kat?

Coming up with a game plan filled our afternoon. I didn’t want Sophie to come on the mission. It would be dangerous. But she wasn’t taking ‘no’ for an answer. I didn’t want her going off on her own and causing more problems.

We still had a few hours before the sun went down. I had an idea about how to keep Sophie’s and my mind off what was going on. There was something about Sophie that was irresistible.