Double Tap

Book 2: Helen Warwick Thriller

by Cindy Dees

Genres: Spy Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

A government assassin. A sociopathic killer. Both hunters—and both hunted—in the ultimate game of deception, double-cross, and death. Former CIA agent Helen Warwick returns in this electrifying thriller by USA Today bestselling author Cindy Dees. . . .

She craved the shadows. Invisibility. Seeing but not being seen.

As an elite assassin for the CIA, Helen Warwick was trained to keep a low profile. To blend into the crowd. To eliminate her targets swiftly, silently, and efficiently. But now that she’s retired, Helen is forced to take on a very different, and very public, role—as the proud mother of a rising young politician. At a DC press conference for her son’s campaign, she sees the ominous green light of a gun laser fixed on her son’s head—and her CIA training kicks in. She jumps into action, pushes her son down, and saves him from a sniper’s bullet. In that moment, Helen realizes she will never escape the secrets of her past—or the deranged man she thought she killed. . . .

He is still alive—and coming for her family.

His code name is Scorpius. A Russian mole embedded in the CIA, he recruits dangerous sociopaths ejected from the military and trains them to kill at command. None of his CIA colleagues—including Helen Warwick—know his true identity. But when members of his kill team begin to disappear, he realizes his entire operation may be at risk. His greatest threat, Helen Warwick, has agreed to rejoin the CIA to help expose Scorpius after the assassination attempt on her son. She suspects that Scorpius may be one of her colleagues, part of a vast conspiracy that reaches the highest levels of government. And now that her family has been personally targeted, she’s willing to break every rule in the CIA handbook to stop Scorpius and his trained killers. Unless, of course, they kill her first. . . .

Release date: May 21, 2024

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 416

Sample

HELEN WARWICK SQUINTED AGAINST THE GLARE OF SPOTLIGHTS pointing at the stage. She couldn’t see a thing past them. Not the reporters she knew to be out there nor the friends and family here to lend support.

She viscerally hated standing in front of a crowd like this, on display like some prize cow. She craved the shadows. Invisibility. Seeing but not seen. Yet here she was.

Being exposed was bad enough, but being blind was even worse. It went against every fiber in her hunter’s soul to be so exposed, so helpless to spot an incoming threat and protect herself.

Her son, Mitch, stood at a podium center stage with his wife, Nancy, at his right elbow. Her other two children—middle child Peter and his husband, Liang, and her youngest, Jayne—lined up behind Mitch. Her husband, Gray, the lucky dog, was in South America trying to save the rain forest and had dodged this miserable event.

On the other end of the line of family was her mother, Constance Stapleton. It was just as well that they were on opposite ends of the stage. Her indomitable mother, veteran of dozens of Henry Stapleton’s runs for Congress, would’ve told her to stop fidgeting and smile for the cameras.

With a sigh, Helen pasted a fake smile on her face and suppressed an urge to tug at the collar of her silk blouse. She felt the caked-on stage makeup cracking on her skin and dialed down the smile a little. No need to add more wrinkles to her face than she already had.

Somebody on the other side of the spotlights called out a thirty-second warning before they went live on the local news. Mitch, acting district attorney for Washington, DC, after his boss had been gunned down three months ago, was announcing his candidacy today for the permanent DA job. Hence the command appearance by the whole Warwick clan in their Sunday best at his press conference.

The heat of the lights made Helen sweat under the makeup, and the odd jumpiness she’d been feeling ramped up even more. Pressure built in her chest until she could barely breathe. Every instinct in her screamed to get out of the light or die. To move. Now.

Mitch would kill her if she ruined his big moment. Must. Stand. Still.

A drop of perspiration rolled down her temple and slid down her cheek. She tried to breathe, but her entire chest felt paralyzed. Adrenaline surged through her, making her body feel hot and cold, weak and strong, coiled to spring. She trembled from the effort of forcing herself to stand still. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t stand here exposed and unable to defend herself.

Stop it. Stand still. Do. Not. Panic.

Nope. The urge was too much to control. She’d spent too many years listening to her instincts, backing out of situations where she suddenly felt as if she were lined up in somebody’s crosshairs, to ignore the warning screaming in her mind.

She eased to the left edge of the raised platform erected in the middle of a much larger stage and turned sideways. She slid to the forward-most edge of the dais where she could stand beside those blasted spotlights and not in front of them any longer.

Ah, better. It took most of the remaining TV countdown for the dancing spots in front of her eyes to clear. But as the stage manager held up his fingers and flashed three, two, one, she could see again.

Mitch had always been a handsome boy, and he was in his element now, glowing with pride and excitement. Even Nancy looked especially good today. Normally, the girl was so bland in temperament and appearance that Helen found her gaze sliding over her daughter-in-law and barely noticing her. But as Nancy stood dutifully at Mitch’s right elbow, slender and elegant, Helen began to understand why Mitch always said she was the perfect political wife. She was attractive to look at but did nothing to pull the spotlight off him.

Mitch launched into his declaration speech, opening with a joke that made the reporters crowding the flat orchestra area below and in front of the stage chuckle. He flashed one last charming smile and started into the meat of his speech about what he planned to do to address crime and corruption as the new district attorney.

Helen tuned out. She’d heard her father deliver so many campaign speeches over the years that all stump talks blended together in her head—pretty oratory, catchy sound bites, and empty promises.

She tried to be subtle in searching for the source of her panic attack, gazing out across the theater with that stupid smile still pasted on her face. It was starting to make her cheeks ache.

Attached to a swanky hotel and built in the Gilded Age, this theater was pretty in a gaudy, self-important way. Not her taste. Way too many nooks, crannies, and columns for a sniper to hide behind. Not to mention a thousand sight lines to the middle of the stage, exactly where Mitch stood. Methodically, she catalogued where she would and wouldn’t set up shop to take out a target.

There weren’t really any good angles to target a person standing behind a podium from the floor of the theater. The VIP boxes lining the sides of the space above the orchestra level were too cliché. Although this wasn’t the Ford Theatre, Lincoln’s assassination was still a stain that this town’s theaters bore with a certain shame. Plus there would only be a single narrow hallway to access the boxes or leave them in a hurry. Too much chance of getting trapped by hotel security.

Maybe the balcony stretching across the back of the space? She could lie on her stomach behind the last row of seats near an exit door. Use the seats for cover and shoot around the end of them. Egress would be a breeze. Out the exit and straight down a wide staircase into the usually crowded hotel lobby, where she could blend in and simply walk out the front door—

Something flickered at the edge of her vision, and her attention snapped back to Mitch. Or rather to the brilliantly lit space directly in front of him. The spotlights were so bright that individual motes of dust visibly floated in the beams of light.

There it was again. A flicker of lime green. If this were a warm summer evening, she would attribute it to a lightning bug looking for a mate.

But this was no backyard barbecue, and that flash of green no innocent insect.

Her gut shouted a warning even as her brain identified what she was seeing.

Surely not.

But a little voice in the back of her head began chanting fearfully, No, no, no, no, no . . .

Not here. Please, no. Not her family. Not her child . . .

She had to be wrong.

But what if she was right? What if that was a targeting beam from a laser gun sight? In the past few years, green and blue lasers had supplanted red ones as the preferred colors in daylight conditions.

She reached for her purse and the handgun she always kept inside, then swore under her breath as she recalled too late that Nancy and Constance had insisted she leave her purse with theirs on a table backstage. Frantically, she looked around the theater in search of the threat. She had no way to fight back. No way to protect her children.

That laser targeting beam had been slightly above Mitch’s head. It was coming from the balcony, then. She looked up at the second-story protrusion and its dozen rows of upholstered seats. The whole balcony was dark, shrouded in shadows. No way to spot a shooter up there without specialized night optical equipment, even if she could make it to her own weapon in time to suppress the would-be killer’s fire.

Her gaze snapped back to Mitch.

The laser beam flashed again, steadily this time. From her vantage point to the side of the stage, she saw the tiny green dot flash on his chest and then rise toward his face. Time stopped as she lurched forward.

Not Mitch.

Not my baby.

She bolted forward with speed born of a mother’s terror, a special speed of pure panic. The green dot landed on the spot between Mitch’s eyebrows. It wavered, then steadied as Helen launched herself airborne, leaping at her son with the intent to take the bullet for him.

Must get between my boy and that laser.

She slammed into her muscular son, who had multiple inches on her in height. Mitch staggered into Nancy, and all three of them went down in a pile just as a quiet, oh-so-familiar spit sounded beneath the exclamations of surprise from the crowd. The accompanying whoosh of disturbed air as a round flew past—close—made her blood freeze in her veins.

Time resumed its course, and more shocked cries erupted around them.

“Are you okay?” she asked Mitch urgently from a range of about six inches.

“What the hell, Mom?” he demanded.

“Someone tried to kill you,” she grunted, winded by falling that hard. “You two stay behind the podium. I’m going after the shooter. Stay down.”

She rolled off Mitch, untangled her legs from Nancy’s, and pushed clumsily to her feet. God, she hated tight skirts and high heels. She never wore them in the field for this exact reason. She ran awkwardly in the stupid stilettos to the far edge of the stage and the table with her purse. Her hair had come out of its carefully coifed granny bun and tangled around her face.

Someone tried to kill my son.

That truth roared through her like a wildfire and, where it passed through, left blackened certainty in her heart that this was somehow her fault.

She grabbed her bag and ran for the steps at the side of stage leading down to the floor of the theater, reaching inside the bag to grip her Ruger SR40c, a compact but powerful handgun. The shooter would race down the stairs to the lobby any second. She had to get there first. Spot the shooter and follow him or her. Take them out. Nobody shot at her boy and lived.

A strong hand grabbed her arm, spinning her partway around. “Have you lost your mind?” her mother hissed.

“A gunshot. At Mitch. Have to go—” She yanked her arm free from her mother’s grip and bolted forward. Except as she emerged from behind the heavy velvet curtains onto the stage itself, she abruptly saw hundreds of eyes riveted on her in avid interest.

The press. All those video cameras. No way could she pull out a highly customized shooter’s weapon and flash it in front of all these people. Even she wasn’t that suicidal. Thirty years of iron discipline, of always—always—maintaining her cover, belatedly kicked in. Reluctantly, she let go of the pistol still in her purse and drew out her empty hand.

A rectangle of light up on the balcony flashed and then disappeared. The shooter was getting away. Swearing luridly under her breath, she skidded to a stop.

She wouldn’t catch the shooter now if she tried. And if she sprinted out of here, it would no doubt make the evening news. Supremely frustrated, she glared at everyone and no one in particular.

“Someone just tried to shoot my son,” she said grimly.

Except it was just as likely the shooter was her enemy and not his. Not that she dared to say those words to the press. Or to Mitch, for that matter.

An excited buzz went up. The more savvy reporters in the bunch, likely the ones with combat experience, ducked away from the glare of the lights and looked over their shoulders warily.

A pair of hotel security guards aggressively stepped out of the wings of the stage, and one of them said, “Ma’am, nobody shot at your son.”

Irrationally enraged, she glared at him. “Oh, yeah? Let’s go look for the bullet I heard fly over our heads.” She pointed at the other one. “You. Do your job and protect my family. Get my son and his wife under cover. Now.”

One of the men peeled off to where Mitch and Nancy crouched behind the podium.

Still furious, she stomped for the back of the stage, glaring the other security guard into following her. She glanced over her shoulder to track the rough trajectory of the bullet from balcony to podium to back here.

“Do you have a flashlight?” she asked the dubious guy following her.

He dug a small penlight out of his pocket and handed it to her.

It took a minute, and the hole was lower than she’d expected—the shooter must’ve rested his weapon on the back of the last row of seats in the balcony instead of shooting around them from the floor the way she would’ve—but she found the finger-sized round hole in a wood panel. She felt the hole, and sure enough, its margin was still warm to the touch.

Someone tried to kill my son.

This time, when the wildfire of panic passed, steely determination to find the shooter and take him out rolled through her. Nobody messed with her family and walked away from it alive.

The security guy’s eyes widened as he, too, touched the hole and felt the heat. He pulled out a cell phone to talk urgently into it.

“The shooter’s long gone,” she told him in disgust. “Your people won’t find him. But I would like to take a look at the security footage of the hotel lobby for the past few minutes.”

“That’s a job for the police, ma’am.”

She rolled her eyes. Sometimes it purely sucked being a woman of a certain age. The worst part of getting older was that nobody took her seriously anymore. Most of the time it was the perfect cover. But now and then it was a huge pain in the butt.

“Do me a favor,” she asked the guard. “Go out there and tell the press I’m not crazy.”

“I’ve got to clear the room anyway,” he said officiously. “We need to evacuate the theater.”

“Maybe, instead of ushering my son out into the lobby where the shooter could be waiting to try again, you should keep him and everyone else inside the theater until you know the shooter has cleared out of the hotel?” she suggested gently.

The guy shot her an irritated look. Didn’t like being told how to do his job, did he? Tough. She’d forgotten more about how assassins operated than he would ever dream of knowing.

The guard stepped forward to the podium and said into the microphone, “We’ve had a security incident and need all of you to stay here until we clear the hotel.”

Skirting the back of the stage as far from the spotlights as she could go, she made her way across the stage to the other side where Mitch and Nancy were embracing tightly.

“Are you two okay?” Helen asked them. “I’m sorry I had to knock you down.”

“Why?” Nancy demanded in a rare outburst of anger. “Why do you always ruin everything?”

Helen sighed. “I saw a laser gun sight trained on Mitch. I thought it might be a good idea to get between him and the shooter.”

Mitch stared at her over his wife’s head. “You were trying to jump in front of me?” he asked blankly. “Take a bullet for me?”

“Yes, dear. It’s what mothers do.”

“Not regular mothers,” he snapped.

“Well, this one protects her children with her life,” she snapped back. “And it might be nice if my children showed a little gratitude from time to time. I know I was a terrible mother when you kids were little, but I’m doing my best to make up for all the times I wasn’t there for you.”

“You didn’t have to jump in front of me,” he said more mildly.

“Yes, Mitchell, I did. You’ll always be my baby boy. No one was shooting you on my watch.”

“We don’t even know there was a laser. Or a gun,” Nancy said peevishly.

“Actually, the security guard and I found a bullet hole in the back of the stage just now. The wood around the edge of the hole was still warm. Someone did, indeed, take a shot at Mitch.”

“Ohmigod!” Nancy gasped. But even in her distress, the girl kept her voice down and didn’t draw attention or cause a scene. Helen didn’t know who had trained her to be a political wife, but whoever had done it had been darned good at it.

Mitch blurted, “We need to get out of here—”

Helen cut him off. “We need to stay put. The shooter has undoubtedly fled by now. This is the one place he or she won’t be. After the hotel is cleared, we’ll have the security guards, and the police, who I expect are en route to the hotel, move you out to a car and get you home.”

“At least it’ll ensure that my announcement makes the evening news,” Mitch said pragmatically.

“Really? Someone tries to kill you and all you’re thinking about is the publicity it’ll get you?” Helen demanded.

Mitch shrugged.

Politicians. They were all the same. Annoyed, she asked, “Who wants to kill you? Have you received any threats recently?”

“You do know what my job is, don’t you?” he replied dryly. “I get threats every day, and I put criminals in jail all the time. The list of my enemies would fill a phone book.”

She sighed. He was not wrong. “I’ll speak with the police. Arrange full-time protection for you. And I know a few guys who’ve gone into private security. I’ll give you the names of the very best—”

“I can take care of it, Mom. Don’t you worry about it.”

Lord, she hated that placating tone he took with her.

“I can help, Mitch—”

“I’ll let you know when I need help.” His voice was firm.

“Fine,” she added, grumbling under her breath, “but if you die, it’s on your head.”

Even as she turned away in disgust, though, she knew that wasn’t true. No way could she sit by and do nothing if someone was out to kill her child.

IT TOOK LONGER FOR THE SECURITY TEAM TO CLEAR THE HOTEL than she’d expected, and Helen was antsy as she waited for the all clear. She wanted to take a look at the balcony for herself. Check out the shooter’s nest. Get a feel for the style of shooter she was up against. Was he a pro? An angry amateur? Sloppy? Obsessively neat?

The press and guests at Mitch’s announcement milled around on the floor of the theater, and Constance imperiously signaled Helen to come down from the stage and circulate among the potential supporters and donors.

Ugh. She knew how this game was played, but that didn’t mean she had to like it. Now was the moment for damage control. Spinning the narrative away from “a DA so controversial that people were trying to kill him” to something like “courageous young attorney stands up to crime and is willing to risk his life to uphold the law.”

She shook hands and answered lame questions, saying modestly that she’d had no intention of being a hero. She added breathlessly that when she’d seen that laser dot land on her son, she’d just jumped for Mitch, acting totally on instinct. It was a mom thing, apparently. She threw in a little hand wringing and pearl clutching for good measure and prayed they bought her act.

For the most part, the reporters seemed to swallow her line of bull. Which privately amused her. Seriously, how many middle-aged housewives knew on sight what a laser designator looked like? Thankfully, nobody thought to ask her that question.

She’d made one full circuit of the theater—thankfully, the positive spin on the shooting seemed to be taking hold—and was girding herself to make another circuit when a hand touched her elbow purposefully from behind.

A low male voice said from the shadows, “Don’t turn around. I need you to follow me.”

“Why?” she muttered, not moving her lips.

“Someone needs to speak with you. If you want to know what happened here, back up behind the curtain and slip through under the stage access door.”

Oh, she bloody well did want to know what had happened. Somebody was going to pay for taking a shot at her kid.

The fingers fell away from her elbow, and the voice fell silent. Moving casually so as not to draw attention to herself, she turned around. Nobody was there. She peered behind the fall of heavy velvet hanging to the floor. Nobody was there. But the faint outline of a hidden door cut into the paneled and painted wall was visible behind the curtain.

Looking around to be sure nobody was watching her, she reached into her purse to grip the pistol inside, pushed on the door, ducked through its low opening, and slipped into the darkness. She shut the door and leaned her back against it, waiting tensely for her eyes to adapt to this inky blackness.

A flashlight lit a circle of grimy floor in front of her. “Follow me,” the man murmured.

This was insanity. He could be leading her into a trap. Heck, he could be the shooter. But her instincts weren’t sending her any more urgent warnings, and the guy turned away from her, giving her his back.

Worst case, she could shoot this guy through the leather of her purse. Although she hated the idea of destroying another beautiful designer purse so soon after she’d destroyed her last one.

The man pointed his flashlight at the floor behind him, lighting a path for her to pick her way over thick ropes, electrical cables, and a canvas tarp. If he was a would-be killer, he was a polite one.

A second low door opened in front of him, and her guide ducked out into a well-lit, full-height hallway. It looked like a service corridor for the hotel, with a tall rack of folded bath towels parked along a wall.

The man was muscular. Short hair. His suit fit well and was perfectly neat. She knew the type so very well. This guy was government all the way. It only remained to be seen which alphabet agency he worked for. His hair was short enough for the FBI, but the suit—it was expensive enough for the CIA.

He moved swiftly down the hall, and she had to hurry in her stupidly tight skirt and high heels to keep up with him. She would be twice damned if she complained about his speed, however. They reached a steel exit door, and he threw it open. Daylight flooded in. She smoothed her hair as best she could and stepped out into a rather grungy alley.

A sleek black town car was parked only a few feet away, and her escort was already reaching for the back door handle. He swept the door open and gestured for her to get in.

As if. She never got into an unidentified car with strangers.

She did, however, move cautiously out of reach of the big guy and bend down slightly to peer inside, all the while keeping her pistol inside her purse trained on the man holding the door. One aggressive move in her direction—a mere flinch to suggest he might try to shove her into the car—and she was turning him into Swiss cheese.

“Hello, Helen. Thanks for coming out to speak with me.”

She straightened in exasperation. “Oh, for the love of Mike, James. Why didn’t you just text me and ask me to come out here? Why all this secrecy and sneaking around? I nearly shot your thug here.”

The thug in question scowled at her. “I didn’t say or do anything threatening!”

“Other than covertly pull me out of a crowded room minutes after someone tried to shoot my son.” Rolling her eyes, she turned sideways to slide into the Town Car. She prayed her skirt wouldn’t twist so badly around her legs that she was paralyzed once inside.

It did. Irked that she couldn’t politely lift up her rear end and yank the stupid thing back into place, she resigned herself to being immensely uncomfortable for the duration of this conversation.

James Wagner, the director of Central Intelligence, opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off. “Did you order a hit on my son?”

His eyes popped wide open in what looked like genuine surprise. However, the man was a consummate actor. She wasn’t about to believe him because of that wide-eyed look.

“Why on earth would I order your son sanctioned?” James blurted.

“I don’t know. You tell me.”

“No, Helen. I did not order a hit on Mitchell nor on any of your other children. I want you to come back to work for me, not go to war with me.” He snorted to emphasize his point.

It was a good point. She would, indeed, go to war with anyone who messed with her family. And anyone who’d known her more than two minutes would be fully aware of that.

If not James and his merry band of murderers, then who? Who wanted to kill Mitch? Her mind raced with possibilities. She had to talk to her son—

James interrupted her train of thought with, “Don’t make me ask you, Helen. You know why I’m here.”

She leaned back, arms crossed. “You’re the man who forced me out of the agency. Why would I come back to work for you?”

His gaze narrowed. “Because I need you.”

She pursed her lips. After their last meeting, the one wherein he’d explained she was too old to be a hired gun for the CIA any longer, she’d said a few rather sharp things to him in return. Sharp enough that she’d been fairly sure this day would never come.

“I’m retired, James. Retired. It means having left one’s job and ceased to work.”

He exhaled hard. That was the same sound her husband made when he was expressing long-suffering exasperation with her.

“As I recall,” she drawled, “you made it clear the last time we spoke that you would work with me again on a cold day in hell.”

James huffed again, this time in definite irritation.

Not her problem. She had no reason to make this conversation any easier for him than she cared to. And she didn’t care one iota to help him.

“Fine,” he bit out. “Hell has frozen over.”

“Has it, now?” Against her will, a flicker of interest tickled her breastbone. No! She was not getting sucked back into that world! She’d been lucky to make it out alive in the first place, and she’d been doubly lucky to survive a gambit by past enemies to take her out after the CIA removed its mantle of protection from her last winter.

She was not going back. Ever. She’d promised herself that, and more to the point, she’d promised her husband she was done.

Wagner rolled his eyes. She hoped he was truly, deeply hating every moment of having to grovel like this.

“It’s snowing in Hades as we speak, Helen. I need your help. I need to reactivate you.”

She tilted her head to study him. “Or else what?”

“There’s no ‘or else.’ I need you back. That’s all.”

“There’s always an ‘or else,’ James.”

Another theatrical huff that privately amused her. He must’ve have been quite the drama queen as a child. “I didn’t want to have to use it,” he said earnestly. “But there is a file. On your son. The one running for DA.”

Of course, there was. The bastards.

“Is it real?” she snapped. Lord knew, the agency had the resources to fake some terrible scandal in Mitch’s past guaranteed to tank his political aspirations. It was exactly the sort of dirty trick the CIA excelled at.

Wagner looked her in the eye. “Yes, it’s real.”

Well, fudge. He didn’t give her a single tell of a lie. He probably did have a file on Mitch. And whatever was in it was damaging enough that Wagner thought it would bring her to heel.

Of course, there was also the fact that the agency’s nearly limitless resources could come in very handy as she hunted down whoever had taken that shot at Mitch.

“Please, Helen. Your country needs you,” James pleaded.

Damn it. That was the other argument without blackmail to back it up that might sway her to come out of her well-earned retirement. She hadn’t been raised by a US congressman for nothing. Service to country had always ranked above all else in her life.

“What’s going on?” she asked tiredly.

“I can’t tell you until you agree to come back.”

“Then it’s been lovely seeing you again, James. You might want to lay off the sweets and carbs a little. You’re going a little thick around the middle, there.”

He glared coldly at her, showing her a glimpse of the steel required of any DCI.

Tired of needling him, she said, “Seriously. I’ve been keeping secrets for you people for thirty years. You know I won’t repeat anything you say. What’s going on? Talk to me.”

The rigidity about his shoulders collapsed, and profound exhaustion abruptly wreathed his features. Now that she looked more closely, a certain gray cast tinged his skin. “When’s the last time you got a good night’s sleep?” she blurted.

“Before I took this damned job.”

She waited him out, and he finally said, “That guy you shot in the woods by the barn—you know the one.”

She did indeed. She and Yosef had found a man artistically crucified inside the barn in question. It had been the most sickening thing she’d ever seen. And in her line of work, she’d seen things that would make most people quail in utter revulsion.

“You know how we all thought the guy you shot was Scorpius?” Wagner asked.

“What about it?” Alarm jumped in her belly.

“Turns out it wasn’t him.” Again, James’s gaze didn’t waver.

“What?” she cried out, horrified. No! She’d killed the mole in the CIA, the same mole who’d been named by the crucified man as his killer. The mole who’d nearly managed to kill her.

Crap. Was Scorpius behind the attempt on Mitch’s life today?

“The only hit we got on the dead man’s identity shows him to be a contract killer known to work out of Cartagena. Probably an American. Not only can we place the dead guy in Venezuela during the last known sighting of Scorpius, but Scorpius sent a message to Moscow this week. The bastard’s definitely alive. Worse, he’s still active inside the agency.”

She leaned back hard against the plush cushions. Every fiber in her being protested that it couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t. If it was, her family was in grave danger. She was in danger. And yes, her country was in danger.

She had no choice but to accept Wagner’s blackmail-shrouded offer now.

But that didn’t mean she had to like it.

Reluctantly, she made eye contact with Wagner. “Let me make this clear, James. I wouldn’t come back to help you. I would hunt Scorpius purely to protect my family. That’s all.”

Wagner sagged in relief. “That’s good enough for me.”

“So what