CHAPTER 1
The Messenger is loyal only to the Message.
Loyalty was something Ruby Jones understood. Loyalty was the backbone of honor, and honor was the backbone of worth.
So when it all went south, there was no question.
The Message, always.
“That’s what little girls are made of,” the man repeated, words so right, they were wrong.
All wrong.
Which was a first for her. She’d never had a recipient fail to complete the code correctly. Ever. The man who awaited delivery of the message tucked safely into her pack was the first.
And now she stood on one side of the door, while he stood on the other.
“That’s what little girls are made of,” he said again, but the third time was not the charm.
Because this time she heard something she didn’t appreciate: menace.
But threats were nothing new; she’d been threatened before. Never like this, never by a pick-up during a drop, but a threat was a threat. Old hat. So in spite of the leap of her heart and the adrenaline that speared through her like cheap vodka, she was calm. Steady. And ice cold.
Messengers were prepared; they had to be.
An inaccurate response terminates delivery of the Message. The Messenger should evacuate immediately. Any attempt to detain the Messenger and confiscate the Message will be viewed as a defensible breach of contract.
Defensible was a broad word. Some Messengers viewed it as permission to attack; others to defend. But Ruby had no desire to fight.
Not when she could run.
“That’s what little girls are made of!” the man snarled.
But Ruby was already gone.
Running soundlessly at full speed down the long, dark, narrow hallway of the abandoned apartment complex, toward the window at the end. A window without glass; a tall, wooden-framed avenue of escape. It was only a six-foot fall. She knew, because she’d dived through it before. The ground was hard but clear of debris, and her bike was parked just a few feet away.
Prepared. Always.
Footsteps pounded the hard oak floor behind her. Fleet, like her, but Ruby knew the ancient building like the back of her hand. Where the floor lifted; where it sagged. Where the piles of crumbling plaster hid holes the size of bowling balls. The encroaching darkness steeped the narrow run in shadows, but Ruby didn’t need any light.
She could do this blindfolded. Had.
And the window was close. So close—
A hand snagged her leather pack and jerked her to an abrupt, painful halt. Her head snapped back; the center strap of the pack cut into her chest. Her breath hissed out, and her blood went hot.
He pulled her backward, toward him.
And she thought: this is where it all goes to pot.
Because she didn’t want to fight—not because she couldn’t, but because she could, too well—and he made it inevitable. As soon as he touched her, any thought of running faded, and anticipation licked through her. Excitement flared; hunger growled in the pit of her belly. Euphoria. Flooding her veins like the most illicit of drugs. The need for violence beat in time with her heart, so loud and vibrant, it was all she could hear.
His fault.
Because he shouldn’t have tried to take something that wasn’t his; he shouldn’t have chased her.
And he definitely shouldn’t have touched her.
“Just give me the fucking thing,” he growled. His hand yanked at her pack, and Ruby’s vision bled red.
Detonation.
She unclasped the pack’s center strap and slid down, freeing herself from its narrow nylon straps. Then she turned and drove a closed fist into the man’s belly; a straight, hard, powerful punch that slammed him back into the wall. She caught the pack as he dropped it and stood, lifting her knee—
“Jesus Christ,” he snarled and shoved her leg aside. “I don’t want to hurt you. Just give me the goddamn thing.”
She’d give him something all right.
Her fist shot out and punched into his throat. He hit the wall, bent over, and sucked in a harsh breath. She turned toward the window and took a step, ready to launch through it, but he caught the pack again and hauled her toward him.
“Let it go!” he rasped.
Her elbow rammed into his sternum; her booted heel found his instep. Joy raced through her veins. She couldn’t see him; it was too dark. But he was at least a foot taller and twice as broad. And she was kicking his ass.
Nimble, fluid, quick.
It had been so long—
“Goddamn it,” he said again, and arms like iron bands suddenly clamped around her. He yanked her from the floor, back into the hard, unyielding plane of his body. The collision stole her breath.
Heat. Power.
Danger.
For a heartbeat, she hung unmoving in his arms, the scent of evergreen and something dark and earthy flooding her nostrils, his body heat burning through the thin denim of her jacket.
Way too close.
She kicked backward, and he grunted when her heel connected with this shin. But he didn’t release her.
“Calm down,” he ordered, his breath hot in her ear.
A fierce, unexpected wave of goosebumps rushed across her skin. “Screw you.” She kicked him again. “Dickhead.”
“Knock it off.” His mouth pressed against her. “I told you: I don’t want to hurt you. Just give me the message and you can go. No harm, no foul.”
Ha! Like she’d ever be given another delivery if she just freaking handed it over.
“Asshole,” she told him.
She wiggled and squirmed and tried to worm her way free, but there was no give in him. Nothing soft; nothing weak.
“I don’t have time for this,” he growled. A rough, bristled chin rubbed her cheek, and a streak of something hot and wild and terrifying tore through her. “You’re going to make me do something I don’t want to do.”
“Passive-aggressive bullshit,” she retorted. “Grow up, spy boy.”
Then she head-butted him. The back of her skull crashed into his face, and he swore. His hold loosened, and she shimmied free and landed on her feet. Gripped her pack, swiveled toward the window, right there—
A big, booted foot tripped her; she slammed into the filthy wooden floor and rolled, but he was suddenly on top of her, his massive girth squeezing the air from her lungs and pressing her bones into the hard oak. She didn’t waste time trying to get free; instead, she went for his eyes.
Hard, merciless hands caught hers and wrenched them to the floor. A face loomed above her and she made herself go still. Calm. Cold.
Wait.
Because the opportunity would come. It always did.
Just wait.
“It didn’t have to be like this,” he grated.
“You made it like this,” Ruby told him, unmoving.
He snorted. His head tilted; light from the window slanted across his jaw and slid up to highlight his eyes.
One of which was black as night. But the other…the other was a glinting swirl of brown, blue, and green.
Shock slapped through her. Her heart fluttered painfully, and she blinked, certain she was wrong.
It couldn’t be.
Those odd eyes narrowed on her. He stilled, and they stared at one another, a mantle of stunned silence falling around them like a shroud.
“Ruby?” The word burst from him like a gunshot, rusty, grated, as if he hadn’t said it in all the years that separated them.
Her knees went weak. For a moment, she felt everything. All that he’d left behind: grief, pain, hate. Anger. Volatile and consuming and endless.
It was the anger that saved her. That turned the mass of emotion gathering like a storm in her chest into a wall of opaque, impenetrable ice.
“Get off of me,” she replied coldly.
But her heart was beating triple time, and her blood was surging through her veins, and the need for violence had morphed into something else, something far more treacherous.
“Ruby,” he said again, his hold unyielding. He stared down at her, and there was no escaping him, this man who’d become of the boy she’d once known.
Rafferty Humboldt.
He’d been ten years old the last time she’d seen him, short and slender, his features an echo of his mother: delicate, beautiful, far too perfect for a mere mortal. But the boy had hardened into a man, his softness bled away. Now he was tall, broad and hard, all sharp, carved angles and wide planes. A full mouth and a straight nose and winged brows; those goddamn eyes, so unique and piercing they haunted her dreams still.
“It is you,” he whispered, his voice raw.
His gaze stroked over her, as palpable as a touch.
“Get off,” she hissed.
But the hold on her hands flexed. Tightened. “How?”
“You’re going to make me do something I don’t want to do,” she said, throwing the words back at him. “Let go, Humboldt.”
“Blackheart,” he said. “It’s Blackheart now.”
An ugly laugh escaped her. “Too perfect.”
His hands squeezed hers. “Tell me this is coincidence.”
“Because it might be fate?”
“I don’t believe in fate.”
She only arched a mocking brow.
“Who sent you here?” he asked sharply, and she didn’t like how he was looking at her, too close, too deep.
As if he wanted to see one thing, but expected another.
“Get the fuck off of me,” she told him, “or I will carve out your spleen and feed it to you.”
He blinked. “What happened to you?”
What, indeed.
“You have ten seconds,” she added.
But he didn’t move. Of course, he didn’t.
“You’re the Messenger,” he said. He looked as dumbfounded as he sounded. Which just made her angrier.
“Let me up.” He was too heavy. Too hard and too warm and the smell of him—fresh, biting evergreen—was seeping into her pores. Rafe. Here, now. It seemed impossible. And yet… “Get. Off.”
He only continued to stare at her, unmoving. “How?”
“We’re not having this conversation.”
“Oh, we are. I promise you we are. But not here, and not now.” Unexpectedly, he lifted himself off of her and hauled her up with him, one hand wrapping around her arm like a manacle. “Let’s go.”
But Ruby didn’t move. She reached down, found the side pocket of her cargos, and slid her hand inside. “I warned you.”
He loomed over her. “Easy or hard. You decide.”
His eyes glittered as he looked down at her, her pack dangling from his hand, and she suddenly realized he wanted it to be hard. That she was not the only one who felt like she’d touched a live wire; that everything they’d once survived together was not owned by her alone. But she didn’t care. She wanted nothing from him.
Nothing but escape.
“You’re an arrogant bastard,” she told him conversationally, wrapping her hand around the small, hand-held Taser in her pocket. The only weapon she carried, just enough kick to give her the time she needed to ditch him.
The dick. He deserved every volt.
His gaze followed her movement, still glinting.
Excited.
The realization made her falter. The hunger that lived within her recognized the same in him, and something even more dangerous awoke. Stretched, smiled, reached for him.
Shit, shit, shit!
“And you’re stunning,” he replied softly, watching her.
More goosebumps. Because that look, it was all predator. Which both horrified and thrilled her.
What had he become?
“No,” she replied, just as softly. “I’m the Messenger.”
Then she slapped the Taser against his ass and pulled the trigger.
CHAPTER 2
Tased.
Again.
For an eternal moment, Rafe Blackheart couldn’t move. Current forked through him; his limbs trembled, muscles locked in spasm. But it wasn’t as strong as it should have been, and the paralysis didn’t last long. A personal weapon, not a professional one.
Thank Christ.
He staggered to his feet just in time to see Ruby execute an alarming dive roll through the window at the end of the hall. Her boots disappeared, and he lunged after her; his brains sloshed in his head and nausea surged up his throat. He hit the edge of the window and gripped the broken sill hard in an effort to stay upright.
She hit the ground and rolled. In one fluid motion, she was up and running; before he could even get one leg over the sill, she was landing on a sleek black motorcycle, firing it to life, and streaking away.
Gone.
Just like that. With his Message.
“Shit,” he snarled.
For a variety of reasons. First, because…Ruby.
The girl who’d once been his only friend, the one he’d abandoned, but never forgotten.
Here.
Which gave life to a whole host of unpleasant questions he didn’t have time to answer. But worse was the riot igniting in his chest. The sudden, unwelcome explosion of memory; fury and pain and sharp, breathtaking fear. The boy he’d been stirring to life, terrified and enraged and hungry for vengeance. Damaged.
An existence he’d deliberately shed. But the sight of her had flung him right back into that place, that time. That him. Because he could still see her staring at him as he walked away: the sharp, angry grief in her soft brown eyes; the tears that shook her shoulders and slid down her cheeks.
Ruby.
“Get a grip,” he growled.
Because second, he’d lost her and the Message.
The Message, which was a matter of national goddamn security. Of life and death. And the very thing for which Jack—his partner and friend—had died.
Gone.
“Shit!”
Why had she refused to hand it over? He’d given her the second half of the message—
What you assumed was the second half of the message, jackass.
Clearly, he’d been wrong in that assumption.
And now she was gone, and his last hope of locating the weapons manufacturing plant Jack had died trying to expose had gone with her.
That message was everything. There were no other leads. Rafe didn’t know the name of Jack’s informant inside the plant or how to contact them; he had no clue who they were or what the message contained. Hell, he didn’t even know where the plant was located. In what country. On what continent.
Who was responsible for building it.
And the Agency—his employer, to whom he’d given the last six years of his life— was actively working against him finding out.
He turned away from the window and leaned against the sill. His nerve endings continued to sizzle; his legs trembled.
Shit.
He deserved this, he thought.
For believing he could make a difference; for trying to exorcise his own ugly history through an act he believed might wipe the slate clean.
Stupid bastard.
Because nothing erased the past.
And now all he had was a dead partner—a man whose death was Rafe’s goddamn albatross—and a weapon manufacturing plant he couldn’t find.
Along with an employer who wouldn’t hesitate to put him out of commission once they realized what he was doing.
“Brilliant,” he told himself harshly.
Because if he couldn’t get that message back, he was thoroughly, unequivocally fucked.
Which meant there was no other option. He had to track Ruby down.
Ruby…the last person he’d ever expected to see again, let alone find here at this moment and place in time.
A Messenger.
How in the hell had that happened?
Messengers were thoroughly vetted and highly skilled; most were former military or law enforcement, people with nerves of steel, and the ability to handle the unpredictable and inherently dangerous nature of passing communiqués between the most unscrupulous of factions. Messengers were reputed to be fiercely loyal and unwaveringly committed to their own internal code.
Which explained why—when he’d failed to deliver correctly the second half of the message—she’d refused to give it up.
Ruby was a Messenger.
He couldn’t wrap his head around it.
He’d left her in the seediest, most dangerous part of Milwaukee in the care of her neglectful, abusive mother and a brother whose cruelty Rafe had never forgotten. She’d been a slip of a girl, too thin, too hopeful, and too stubborn for her own good.
Her future had already been written, simply by virtue of geography.
Hadn’t it?
“Goddamn idiot,” he said.
Because she’d gotten out—just like she’d said she would. A claim he’d dismissed every time she’d spoken it aloud, derisively and with much scorn.
More fool him.
She’d done it.
But to find her here, now, at this moment in time….
Blindsided, he thought.
And it couldn’t be a coincidence. A highly implausible reunion; he would be a fool to think it a fluke.
And yet, she’d been just as surprised as he was. There’d been no mistaking the shock that had frozen her beneath him, or the flash of emotion that lit across her features like a flare of lightning briefly illuminating a dark sky. Recognition, disbelief, joy, pain. Hate.
He’d seen it all, felt its echo burn through him.
Shit!
Because this blew his current course of action straight to hell.
Get the message. Find the weapons plant. Rig the joint with enough C4 to turn it into rain, and blow the shit out of it.
Avenge Jack; save the world. Or at least, some of it.
And Rafe didn’t much care what it took—even if he had to go with it. He was okay with that.
The last decade of his life had been wasted in a fruitless effort at purpose, and nothing he’d managed to accomplish in that span of time could alter the fact that he’d been little more than a sacrificial foot soldier whose life meant nothing to those who played the game.
So, he was done. No more toeing the line; no more obeying orders without question; no more pledging allegiance to an organization that had no intention of doing the same. A decision he’d made even before the discovery of Jack’s body, twisted and tortured and burned almost beyond recognition in the rubble of Damascus.
But the Agency’s apathy toward the death of one of its own, and their deliberate obfuscation of what that agent had died trying to bring to light, had sealed the deal.
Rafe was out.
He was going to locate that plant and send it to hell. And if he survived…well.
Cross that bridge then.
But first…first he had to find Ruby.
You’re going to make me do something I don’t want to do.
Sharp, biting words; mockery he hadn’t anticipated. Just like the punch she’d delivered.
Twice.
A kick; a vicious head butt.
Not to mention tasing him.
Christ. He felt like he’d been struck by lightning.
And part of him was…electrified. The sight of her was a violent blow, wholly unexpected and utterly life-changing.
But his deeper self was uneasy. He had no desire to resurrect the life he’d fled when he’d left her behind. It was a time he did his best to forget, and seeing her again would only drag him deeper away from now into then. That volatile, chaotic, fucking painful place to which he’d vowed never to return.
He’d escaped, and he hadn’t looked back. Not even for her.
Recognition, disbelief, joy, pain. Hate. Something she clearly didn’t forgive.
A sharp, piercing blade of regret sliced through him. Which was stupid. He’d been ten years old.
What the hell could anyone expect of a ten-year-old? But he knew that was a crap excuse.
He could have held on. She’d been all he had; she’d saved him. And he’d walked away without so much as a backward glance, so relieved he’d almost run.
He deserved that hate, he thought.
What’s a little more?
And now it had come full circle. Now the reckoning.
Which shouldn’t have filled him with a painfully heightened sense of anticipation.
It shouldn’t have excited him.
But it did. And it had been so long since he’d felt anything other than cold, hollow rage that his soul latched onto it like a drowning man clinging to driftwood.
“Shit!”
A lost Messenger; a lost Message. The unwelcome, ugly specter of his past. A mysterious weapons plant; a government agency bent on a cover-up.
And a man who had nothing left to lose.
What could possibly go wrong?
The sound of a car door slamming made Rafe straighten, turn, and look out the window. A black SUV was parked across the street; two men were striding toward the building. Men with long trench coats and scuffed combat boots and shiny black gloves.
Agency. Even though he didn’t recognize them, they were easy to make.
Takes one to know one.
He stood there for a long, motionless moment, watching them get closer. He should go; he needed to hunt Ruby down and lay hands on that message. He needed to focus on his end goal, not get sidetracked by the scent of blood.
But they tempted him.
He was not above seeking retribution. He was hungry for vengeance and furious at those to whom he’d pledged both his loyalty and life, only to find they valued neither. And the adrenaline and anticipation that fired through him at the thought of venting his displeasure was a seductive relief from the chilling fury that ruled his days.
Blood. Violence. An outlet he hadn’t understood until he’d found himself at war. A part of himself he’d never met until it had saved him.
No. Go get her.
Ruby.
Who’d watched him with cold, hard eyes; who’d spoken to him in a tone so devoid of heart, it had enraged the boy he’d once been.
For one brief moment, he’d forgotten everything. Everything but her. For one brief moment, all he’d thought was I missed you.
And something within him had sighed deeply. In relief. In joy.
Goddamn it.
Vibrant, visceral energy was riding him like a second skin, and he couldn’t do a damn thing about the thrill of her that had sparked to life.
Because walking away wasn’t an option.
Ruby was now his lynchpin; he couldn’t move forward without her. A thought that shouldn’t have seared him on the deepest level, and yet did.
The men entered the building.
Rafe slid out the window and into the night.
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