Chapter 1
Shaking the devil”s hand
March 27
Wednesday morning
The harshnessof the heat presses down on me. Sweat slips from my forehead, drips over my brow, and into my eyes. Can’t move to wipe the sweat away. Can’t blow my cover. I don’t even dare blink as I site my target through the scope of my M16. My spotter, Keets, remains as motionless as I do.
The mission is its own version of hell. Ever since we landed in Nigeria, a crawling sensation along my spine has told me that something is off about this whole setup. Something desperately wrong.
When I told Captain Williams, the bastard blew me off. He doesn”t like the fact I’m one of the first women snipers in the history of the US Army. And I’m damned good at what I do—
Killing terrorists, saving American lives.
Captain Williams—what a dick. But a soldier follows orders.
My spotter, Keets, gives me the signal that I’ve got the best shot possible.
Target in my sights. I squeeze the trigger of my M16.
At the same time, Keets gets some chatter over his comm. He shouts, “Wait!”
But it’s too late. I see the spurt, the telltale arc of blood from my target’s forehead before he goes down.
One shot. One kill.
My heart thunders as I look at Keets, who says, “Oh, shit.”
Something has gone horribly, horribly wrong.
I’m running.
Bars—I’m behind bars. Everything’s so close. Tight. Damp. Pain riddles my body and I can barely keep consciousness. I’ve been beaten so badly I have a hard time grasping what’s real and what’s not. Was I captured? I was following orders. What happened to my team? What happened to Keets?
The pit of hell. How long have I been here? Why am I here?
The urge to claw my way out of the pit makes my arms and fingers ache as if I’ve already tried.
Oh, God, not again. The whip draws blood through my shredded camouflage and I try not to scream. The pain—I hold onto it, make it a part of me, pretend I want it. If I don’t, they’ll break me.
Fists slam into my face, my temples, my belly, even my breasts. I want to scream but I make my mind retreat into a private place where I embrace the pain.
Four men, maybe five surround me. Huge men. Their faces, so dark, so shadowed. Are they human? Their forms sway and distort.
One man steps forward, but I still can’t make out his features.
Fear tears through me. Fear like I’ve never felt before. Fear worse than the agony threatening to cripple me. The man—he’s the one. The one to introduce me to pain like I’ve never known.
I don’t have the strength to recoil as he slides his palm down the side of my face, through the blood running down my cheek. What is he going to do to me now? Put a cloth sack over my head again, nearly smothering me? Then submerge my face in a water tank until I nearly drown? Shock me with electricity a second time while I’m soaking wet and feeling half dead already?
“Now will you?” he says in a tone that tells me he’s ready to dose out every bit of torture all over again.
Can I survive any more of this?
“Will you?” His voice is harsher, angrier, and I know I’ve lost.
Tears flow down my cheeks, mixing with my blood as I force myself to say those horrible words.
“Yes. God, yes.”
I woke with a hard jerk. Heat seared my chest. My heart was beating so hard it felt as if someone was kicking my ribcage from inside. Cloth bound my legs and wrapped my body like a giant python. The more I struggled the tighter it got.
I was back in hell. I would do anything to be free. Anything. My bindings grew tighter. My breathing became more frantic. I kicked and kicked while clawing at my bindings.
The taste of salt was on my lips and in my mouth from sweat dripping down my face. I scraped my own arm and felt the sting when my nails raked my skin.
I gasped. Arched my back. Opened my eyes.
Reality hit my consciousness. I was in my room. My own room. I wasn’t tied with rope while being beaten in that dark cell. I wasn’t attempting to force myself into that dark corner of my mind where I tried to pretend that pain was pleasure to escape the agony.
Cloth, soaked with perspiration, bound me. I was tangled in my own sheet. Sweat slicked my damp palms as I rubbed my face. I pushed back my chin-length dark hair that was plastered against my cheeks.
My face grew hot then cold. Over the years I’d been beaten, stabbed, and shot so often that I’d developed a coping mechanism that helped me focus—trying to turn pain to pleasure to escape what my body was going through. But having the shit beat out of me wasn’t optimum for that kind of mental retreat.
Acid burned my throat as I held back the urge to throw up.
Moving air from the ceiling fan cooled my sweating body as I kicked the damp sheets the rest of the way off. I stared at the ceiling. It needed a new coat of paint. I’d have to let Marty, my super, know.
The nightmare was nothing new. The nightmare that would probably never leave me.
The mission gone wrong.
My so-called court-martial.
The prison.
The beatings.
The ultimatum and later the killings.
Was it even possible to atone for my sins?
The nightmares, my past—no one at the Recovery Enforcement Division would believe that I wasn’t nearly as strong on the inside as I am on the outside. The other RED agents think my last name suits me. Steele. All they know is that Lexi Steele can totally kick ass. As a Team Supervisor for the Human Trafficking and Sex Crimes Division of RED, I have to be tough. And that’s not a problem. Not at all.
It’s when I have to acknowledge the past and all of those nameless, faceless people I’d assassinated, that I unravel inside.
I wished Gary was here. He’d tuck me against his big, hard body, kiss me on the top of my head, and tell me to go back to sleep. It didn’t chase away all of the bad things I’d done, but it was so much better than lying there, shivering in the dark.
I’d met Gary at a Red Sox game a couple of years ago, and I loved his big, hot muscular body and the way he held me, kissed me, made love to me. Gary was wicked hot.
He liked my petite frame and had said how amazed he was that dynamite came in a small, five-foot-four package. He always said how much he loved green eyes too, and would slip his fingers through the silkiness of my dark hair that I kept shoulder length. He always said I was beautiful and I told him he was delusional. Well, I’m not bad looking and I do have my moments.
Unfortunately, his bodybuilder competitions and my job as an undercover operative often kept us from spending time together.
It was so difficult not to tell Gary the truth—that I wasn’t really a foreign language interpreter, although I do speak several languages.
Keeping my true career hidden from everyone in my big, messy, Boston Irish family was probably the hardest. No one had any idea except for one of my five brothers, Zane, who was an undercover RED agent, too.
My friends and neighbors—of course they had no clue about what I really did.
Sometimes I didn’t like it, didn’t like it at all, having to lie to everyone but Zane because I had no choice. As a special agent for RED, a clandestine branch of the NSA, I lived a secret life.
RED was an offshoot of the National Security Agency (NSA) that only a short list of bureaucrats knew existed: RED’s Director; the Deputy Director; a federal judge; a federal prosecutor; the head of the NSA; Senator Jeannette Shelton; and the President. Not even the VP or his cabinet members knew we existed.
And definitely no other branch of law enforcement or civilians had a clue we were protecting them, saving countless American lives.
But that hadn’t been the case up until five years ago. Prior to that I’d been a killing machine, an assassin who didn’t even know the names of her targets or why she was killing them.
Before I was an assassin, I’d been an overly confident but first-class sniper for the Army Special Forces. Then everything was blown to hell when I’d been court-martialed for a mistake I’d made. A mistake caused by following my captain’s orders, but it all came down on me. I was the one who’d pulled the trigger.
It’s not easy to break a Special Forces Officer, but “FAS” did a damned good job of it. I didn’t even know the real name of the organization that had abducted me moments after my court-martial, so that’s what I called them—Fucking Asshole Sonsofbitches. I do have even more choice, appropriate words for the bastards, but I’ll leave it at that.
One of the men had distracted me while another managed to inject an animal tranquilizer with just one stab in my thigh. Next thing I knew I was sitting in front of the FAS. They talked about “saving me” if I did their dirty work.
Assassinate people.
I was half dead from all of the countless beatings and the whippings. Then they’d nearly drowned me before electrocuting me. It was when they started breaking fingers in my left hand that I knew I’d lost.
They’d broken me, then programmed me.
It wasn’t until one powerful woman took me out of hell that I had a life again. RED became everything to me. Only my family was more important than the organization that had saved me.
There’s a lot of blood on my hands. But then I was given the opportunity to turn my life around. Only RED and my family kept me sane.
The sound of something vibrating against wood came from my nightstand. Box springs creaked as I rolled onto my side and I picked up one of two cell phones which I’d set to vibrate. When I flipped open the cell for RED, the caller identification screen said “Unknown.” No big surprise there.
“Yeah?” The word came out in a croak, my voice still rough from sleep. What time was it?
“Steele.” Karen Oxford’s voice had me sitting straight up in bed and all trace of my sleepiness vanished. If the Assistant Special Agent in Charge was calling, then it had to be serious. My gut clenched as she said, “Get to HQ, immediately.”
I glanced at the clock. Seven-fifteen. I normally got in around eight-thirty. And why would Oxford call me herself?
“What happened?” I asked as I swung my legs over the side of the bed and planted my feet on the worn carpeting before I stood.
“It’s Randolph.” Oxford’s tone turned weary and the feeling in my gut notched up tenfold.
I’d made Team Supervisor six months ago and Stacy Randolph was one of my agents working on Operation Cinderella, a probe into a local-turned-international sex slave ring.
I went rigid as Oxford continued, “She was raped and murdered. Her body was found just after midnight in Boston Harbor.”
Numbness crept over me as I tried to assimilate Oxford’s statement and I closed my eyes.
Randolph had penetrated one of the inner circles of the organization that would ultimately bring us to whoever was responsible for auctioning off young women to the highest bidder.
And now she was dead. One of my team members had been murdered.
“You will notify the other TSs, then your individual teams once I brief you,” Oxford said.
A burning sensation gripped my throat and I opened my eyes. This was supposed to be Special Agent Stacy Randolph’s last op.
It had been her last op.
At twenty-five, tough, smart, and filled with enthusiasm for her job, Randolph had been one of our best. She’d also been just days from leaving RED to become a civilian to marry and start a family. She’d been so excited and almost always wore a smile when she was at HQ.
And now she was gone. The first agent I’d ever lost.
More blood on my hands. I knew I wasn’t being fair to myself, but I felt like Stacy Randolph was yet another life that could be laid on the altar of my sins.
“Yes, ma’am.” I tried to draw an even breath. “I’ll take care of informing all TSs and agents.”
“Our contact in the BPD is notifying next of kin.” Oxford said. “I’ll brief you in my office. The other TSs will be assembled in conference room one by the time we’re done.”
I gave a stiff nod even though she couldn’t see me. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Randolph’s partner notified us,” Oxford said. “Their backup never saw it happen.”
“Deseronto is too deep to come in and the targets didn’t know they were together.” I gripped one hand into a fist. “I’ll arrange for a new partner and more backup.”
“Fifteen minutes, my office.” Oxford clicked off and I dropped to the edge of the bed, my chest aching from the blow of Randolph’s death.
It was RED’s standard protocol to provide the BPD with a fictitious story because no one could know what any of us really did.
Some stranger would be going to the Randolphs’ home and lie to them about how their daughter had died.
Her family would never know their daughter was a hero and not just a victim.
I got back to my feet and headed for the shower.