Mac cracked one eye open infinitesimally and groaned in agony. Satan’s hellfire shot through his skull. Night had fallen outside. Shame coursed through him that he hadn’t even waited till suppertime to get stinking drunk.

To hell with sobriety. He lifted the whiskey bottle to examine its contents. Empty. Damn. Even drinking himself senseless hadn’t helped. Susan Monroe’s innocent, wounded eyes still haunted his dreams.

He’d been in Ops when her call came in yesterday afternoon, and the sound of her honey-sweet voice over the speakerphone had done him in. He’d come an inch from reaching over and taking the phone out of the communication specialist’s hand, to ask her what her problem was and if he could help. Hell, just to ask her how she was doing. If she ever thought of him the way he still thought of her.

But he’d promised Tex that he would leave Susan alone. Give her space to find a man who would be there for her, who wouldn’t hare off to war zones on a moment’s notice, and who wouldn’t be in constant danger of dying and leaving her a widow.

He’d gotten drunk on Jack Daniel’s that night, too. After he ripped out her heart, stomped all over it, and then watched her nearly die at the hands of Ferrare’s personal assassin, Ramon Ruala.

Ferrare was a man he’d love to get his hands on. An international crime boss who dabbled in everything from stolen art to terrorism. The Blackjacks had been after the bastard for years. But for what he’d ordered done to Susan—the guy needed to die for that.

Mac gripped the neck of the liquor bottle convulsively. God, he’d been a fool. Why had he followed Foley’s orders that fateful night, anyway? His boss told him she would be safer somewhere else, far away from their mission to capture Ferrare. And so, like a good little soldier, he’d followed orders to the best of his ability and run her off.

He’d been so head-over-heels in love with her he could hardly see straight. The thought of her in danger had damn near made him freeze up. And he couldn’t afford to do that when they jumped Ferrare and took him out. He could’ve at least gone easy on her when he drove her away from the op. But no. He’d done the job to the best of his ability and torn her heart out.

It wasn’t Tom’s fault that Susan had bolted right into the middle of the damned op when she’d fled. Nope. That was on him. He was the asshole who’d upset her so badly she hadn’t paid attention to where she was going.

Of course, he could’ve just told her the truth and asked her to leave for her own safety. But that had seemed too easy. Not likely to work. He’d been too damned inexperienced back then to realize that sometimes the easy way was best. It was a miracle she lived through the whole fiasco.

He would never forget the sight of Ramon Ruala walking right up to the driver’s side window of the surveillance van, looking in at Susan, then lifting that rifle and blasting at her from point-blank range. Mac would also never forget Susan covered in blood and moaning in pain as he pulled her out of that van. He’d lost it completely. Had to be dragged away from her himself.

He snorted in disgust. Dutiful soldier and damned fool that he was, he’d done such a great job of breaking Suzie’s heart and wrecking her life that he couldn’t ever go back to her, no matter how low on his belly he crawled.

Just his luck. No more whiskey left to drown his regrets. To drown himself. Thankfully, the liquor already in his system spun him away toward oblivion. For tonight. But one of these days he wasn’t going to win the fight to beat it all back. God help him when he lost.

Some hours later, Mac jerked awake, swearing. His skull pounded like little men with jackhammers were hard at work in there, doing their best to crack his head open. What in tarnation was that noise? Something high-pitched caterwauled incessantly in the background.

Damn! It was his cell phone. His work cell phone. He staggered to his feet and stumbled into the kitchen, following the source of the earsplitting noise.

“Yeah,” he growled into the receiver.

“Foley, here. Get into base, ASAP. The secure briefing room. We’ve got a situation.”

Aww, hell. He felt like death warmed over. He cleared his throat. “I’m on my way.”

He squinted at the clock on the stove—2:30 a.m. Why did the world always have to go to hell in a hand basket in the middle of the damned night? He tipped a jar of instant coffee over his mouth and poured the dry granules down his throat. He chased it down with a quart of water and headed for the closet and a uniform.

Mac made it to Blackjack Ops in under a half hour, but he was still the last to arrive. A handful of aspirin and more coffee, in liquid form this time, knocked back his hangover to manageable proportions. But he still felt like road kill.

His boss, Colonel Foley, nodded at him when he entered the room. “Seal the door. Everybody’s here, now.”

Mac pushed the heavy hatch into its soundproof casing. A green light went on over the doorframe, indicating the room was locked down and being bombarded with radio and electromagnetic waves to prevent eavesdropping.

He took a seat at the conference table beside Dutch, one of his fellow teammates. Howdy and Doc, two of the team’s other members, sat across from him.

A bulky rifle lay on the long table in front of his boss. Mac recognized it as the prototype of a high-tech sniper rifle The Blackjacks had acted as the military consultants for it as it was designed.

Were the Blackjacks finally going to be allowed to take the RITA rifle and its high-tech targeting system into the field to try it out? Tex Monroe, the Blackjacks’ absent member tonight, had gotten a chance to play around with the weapon in a South American jungle a few months back. Reported that it worked like a charm. Tex was on leave at the moment, helping with last minute details for his upcoming wedding. Poor bastard. Not that his fiancée, Congresswoman Kimberly Stanton, was anything less than fantastic. But wedding planning? Talk about Tex losing his man card...

Colonel Foley opened a file folder lying on the table before him. Mac leaned forward intently as the adrenaline rush of picking up a new assignment hit him, and he reveled in the light, hungry feeling tingling through his gut.

Foley spoke without referring to the file. “This is classified at level Tango One, gentlemen.”

The tingling in Mac’s extremities became a storm of anticipation. That was the highest classification they dealt with. This mission was a big one.

The briefing continued. “You know the drill. Don’t reveal anything you hear in this room to anyone for any reason. No notes, no conversations among yourselves…”

Mac and the other men nodded impatiently.

Without further ado, the colonel said, “Less than an hour ago, our command post received this phone call.” Foley pushed a button on the audio-video console beside the table.

Mac listened as a clearly terrified woman whispered into the phone, reporting that her house had been broken into. Something about the timbre of her voice rang a bell, but he couldn’t put his finger on it before the tape continued. Like everyone else in the briefing room, he jolted when she murmured the name Ramon Ruala. He’d made it his personal mission to find and kill that bastard someday, but he had yet to make good on that silent promise to Susan.

He blinked when a series of heavy thuds abruptly came across the tape. It sounded like the woman had fallen down. Hard. Maybe down a flight of stairs. Then the sound of rushing footsteps and two men shouting in Spanish. The woman screamed.

Then a sharp crack of flesh on flesh. The woman cried out. Mac winced along with every other guy at the table. They were in a cold, violent business, but that didn’t mean they listened easily to a woman getting hit.

Another distinctive sound—the thud of a fist connecting with flesh.

Mac’s own fists clenched. Every protective impulse in his body screamed to do something to save this woman. He sagged in relief as the sound of police sirens became audible. A single gunshot rang out. Sirens became audible, and then footsteps pounded as if the attackers were fleeing the scene.

Colonel Foley pushed the stop button. His voice was grim. “She dodged as the shot was fired and was only grazed by the bullet. Paramedics treated her at the scene. She wasn’t seriously injured.”

Mac felt sick to his stomach. He could slit a guy’s throat without the slightest twinge of discomfort, but listening to a woman get roughed up like that was almost more than he could stand. He frowned. As unpleasant as it had been, why would a house robbery and assault launch a Tango One mission? There was something familiar about that woman’s whisper…. The sick feeling in his gut intensified.

The colonel spoke. “She’s convinced her assailant is Ramon Ruala, surgically altered and operating under a new identity.”

Mac frowned. He felt another even bigger bombshell coming.

On cue, the colonel dropped it. “I’ve run the name she gave me and had a preliminary forensic comparison made between photographs of this David Ford guy and Ramon Ruala. The plastic surgeon I spoke to believes they could be the same man.”

Holy shit. Mac leaned forward aggressively. “How did this woman recognize Ruala? Since when does he leave anybody alive who recognizes him? We better move fast before he comes back to her home to finish off the job. Damn, I want to get my hands on that bastard.”

Colonel Foley answered, “I think you’re the best person to talk to her. See if this lead is legit.”

“Put me on the next plane,” Mac declared.

“Before you get on that plane, here’s the woman you’ll be speaking to.” The colonel dimmed the lights with a switch under the edge of the table, and a picture flashed on the screen behind him.

Mac jolted as if fifty thousand volts of electricity had just shot through his chair. Bloody hell. Susan Monroe.

Ramon Ruala had attacked Susan again?

In a flash, his blood boiled and a vein pounded in the side of his neck. Sonofabitch. He was going to kill the bastard for laying a hand on her! A surge of protectiveness raged through him. His need to keep Susan safe overrode every logical, reasonable bone in his body.

Warning bells clanged wildly in his brain. No operator went out into the field in this agitated emotional state. Not if he wanted to come back alive.

He ought to beg off from this mission, ought to leave well enough alone and stay away from her. They hadn’t seen each other in ten years, and he should leave it that way. But then the sound of that gunshot cracking echoed through his head. The room went red before his eyes.

Blood rages got people killed. The name of the game was to stay calm and detached. Keep one’s brain engaged at all costs.

The litany from his training rolled through his head, gradually forcing back the crimson haze. Not far back, but far enough for him to breathe. Far enough for him to snarl, “Ruala’s going to pay for touching her.”

Colonel Foley watched him intently. Sympathetically, even. He asked calmly, “And why’s that?”

Mac caught the hint. The colonel wouldn’t take kindly to him letting his emotions get the best of him. Might not even allow him to help Susan if he didn’t get his shit together in the next, oh, millisecond.

He spoke with forced calm. “Besides the fact that she’s Tex’s sister, you know damned good and well that she and I were close.” He added belatedly, “Sir.”

“How do you feel about her now?” the colonel pressed.

Like he fucking didn’t want to talk about her. He understood why the colonel had to ask the question, but didn’t have to like dredging up the answer. He shrugged with fake unconcern. “I haven’t seen or spoken to her in ten years. It’s ancient history.” He ignored the little voice in the back of his head calling him a goddamned liar.

Colonel Foley gave him a long, considering look. “History has a way of coming back to haunt you. Maybe it’s time you made your peace with her.”

Mac suppressed a mental snort. Susan haunting him? That was putting it mildly. But make peace with her? Foley didn’t know what he was asking. And if he explained it to his boss, there was no way the colonel would let him work on this op.

No way was he getting left behind if Suzie Monroe was in trouble. Wild horses couldn’t keep him away from this mission.

“I can handle our past history. Emphasis on past. I want in on this one. I want Ruala.”

The colonel stared at him for upward of a minute. Heavy silence stretched out between them. Maybe the colonel did know what he was asking. Finally Foley spoke. “I think I’d rather send Dutch to talk to Susan and retrieve the footage of Ford that she reports having.”

Mac retorted, “Dutch wouldn’t know Ruala if the bastard punched him in the nose.”

It was an exaggeration, of course. Every member of the team had studied the assassin thoroughly and would recognize him without trouble. But Mac knew everything there was to know about the guy. Every gesture, every nuance of expression, the way he walked, talked. He’d committed to memory every visual image, moving or still, ever made of Ramon Ruala.

Colonel Foley replied, “I don’t need any distracting, kissy-face reunions here. I need a focused, competent professional to protect Susan Monroe until we nail Ruala’s happy ass.”

Mac rocked back onto the rear legs of his chair, violently displeased with the idea of Dutch going in his place. If anyone was going to save Susan Monroe, it should be him. “I can be objective about this,” he insisted.

Colonel Foley still frowned at him.

Mac spoke as calmly as he could. “Susan’s going to be traumatized as hell by Ruala’s reappearance. She knows me. She’ll work better with me than with some scary stranger who shows up on her doorstep.”

Dutch protested. “I’m not scary.”

Mac grinned. “Sorry, man. I keep forgetting you’re the Easter Bunny.” Jim Dutcher was six-foot-five of sheer Nordic brawn. With his short, brush-cut hair and square jaw, he looked liked a cyber-soldier from a future century.

Everyone around the table grinned.

Mac’s immediate urge was to push his case even harder for going. It was a Tango One mission. He was the one who wanted Ramon Ruala the most. Susan Monroe had been hurt and was in need of saving. He bit back the arguments rushing to his lips. Colonel Foley would make him sit this one out for sure if he acted desperate.

But as the silence stretched out, Mac couldn’t hold his tongue anymore. “Look. It’s been a long time. Susan and I have both changed a lot. She’ll barely remember me.”

* * *

Susan sighed her relief when, as dark fell the next evening, the last policeman finally left. She’d barely managed to talk the sheriff, Bill Franks, out of taking her into protective custody. Thankfully he’d had a crush on her since the sixth grade and gave in when she pleaded emotional trauma and a desperate desire to stay in her own home and sleep in her own bed.

He’d wanted to keep a cop inside her house, but the idea of a strange man in her home, even if he wore a police uniform, freaked her out. Bill had agreed, reluctantly, to post a cruiser at the end of her driveway and put a pair of roving foot cops on patrol around her house. Apparently, Colonel Foley had asked him to guard her around the clock until his men arrived.

The Blackjacks were coming here. To her home. The thought sent whispers of excitement and terror down her spine. The most thrilling time in her entire life had been helping them out with a dangerous surveillance mission against Eduardo Ferrare ten years ago. Right up to the part where Mac inexplicably turned on her—and, in her ignorance and anguish, she’d stumbled into a sting operation and escaped death by a hair.

She never spoke of him with her brother, Tex. Surely, Mac had moved on to some other assignment after all this time. She was an idiot to get all worked up about seeing him again when he was undoubtedly long gone from the team.

The silence of the vast ranch slowly wrapped itself around her, not nearly as comforting as usual. Exhausted, but too frightened of what lurked her dreams to go to bed, she headed for the back of the house. Echoes whispered off the vaulted ceiling of the darkened living room as she passed through it. Something creaked and she jumped nervously.

Mostly by feel, she made her way to the kitchen. She made a cup of hot chocolate from scratch on the stove and poured herself a big mug of the creamy drink. She sipped at it until it went cold and a skin formed on its surface. Finally, with no enthusiasm, but with no reason to delay any longer, she headed for bed.

She’d just started up the stairs when a loud ringing noise made her jump. The front doorbell. Her heart slammed against her ribs until she remembered the police outside. They’d probably forgotten something. She flicked on the porch light and peered through the peephole. Four elongated figures, their faces hidden in shadows, stood there. They didn’t look like cops. Although she did see a uniformed officer standing behind them at the bottom of the front steps. Whoever they were, they’d passed muster with him. Were the Blackjacks here already? Less than a day to muster a team, equip and brief them, and fly them halfway across the country to west Texas? Not too shabby a response time.

Leaving the chain on the door, she eased it open a few inches.

“Hello?” she asked suspiciously.

One of the men answered back form the shadows, “Colonel Foley sent us. We’ve come to protect you until we can apprehend Ramon Ruala.”

She unlatched the chain and threw the door open. A tall, blond Viking stood on the far left. An Omar Sharif look-alike stood beside him. The third guy was fair in coloring and lean of build, and the fourth guy…

She started.

It couldn’t be.

She blinked and looked again.

It was.

She stepped forward, drew back her clenched fist and let fly with it as hard as she could.