CHAPTERONE
As fast as he was,Adam Grayson couldn’t outrun his own thoughts. With each footfall, the names of the dead rang in his ears. Jackson Lowe, Tara Pisani, his father—Colonel William Grayson, all of them victims of the Joint Task Team’s botched attempt to bring down a domestic terrorist.
Guilt. Regret. Anger.
Punch after punch, memories of his failures pummeled him square in the gut.
Adam hadn’t lived up to his father’s expectations, and now the colonel was dead.
He increased his speed, redirecting his fury into energy. Despite the temperature hovering around zero, he wore nothing but a black T-shirt and nylon running pants as he cut a path through the trees.
Above his head, the freezing rain fell heavy and loud against the canopy of leaves, and near to dusk, Montana’s Flathead National Forest hovered on the verge of being consumed by shadows.
The tendrils of mist swirling around his calves grew thicker as he approached the end of his descent. Smack dab in the middle of bear territory, if Adam ran into one, he wouldn’t see it or hear it before it was too late.
And the guns holstered under his arms wouldn’t do much to stop a seven-hundred-pound male grizzly if he tripped over it. Then again, unlike him, most bears probably had enough sense to stay warm and dry inside their dens.
An hour into his run, the ground leveled, and the slivers of ice striking sharp against his skin increased in number. Without breaking his stride, he emerged into the meadow separating his rustic mountain cabin from the private hunting lodge the rest of the JTT had taken refuge in.
Across the distance, the spiked angles of a pitched roof floated above the ground, dark and disembodied in the billowing fog. The golden glow of light from one of the second-floor dormers offered a beacon and a promise of shelter from the cold rain.
Lengthening his stride, he increased his pace. His leg muscles strained, his lungs burned, and the names of the dead were replaced by the names of those who needed to die next.
At the top of his list of people to kill was a formeremployeeand all-around sadistic fucking prick. With each heartbeat, Tom Hood’s name whispered through his veins like a poison invading his bloodstream.
While working as an undercover operative with his father’s special operations unit, Adam had sent Hood to Florida to watch what should have been an empty condo, the job meant to keep him occupied with a pointless task.
No way he could have anticipated Tara Pisani.
After abducting and beating the young woman, Hood had cashed in his paycheck and disappeared. That had been three weeks ago. Two hours earlier, the men Adam had looking for him apprehended the bastard. By morning, he’d be dead.
A killer of killers by training, Adam looked forward to pulling the trigger.
The index finger on his right hand twitched twice as his boots pounded across the short bridge spanning a gurgling stream, and a few short minutes later, he arrived at the lodge’s front entrance.
The door opened before he reached it. Not a surprise. The security around the lodge was top notch, and the surveillance cameras would have captured his approach the moment he came into the clearing.
After the disaster of their last mission, the JTT were wanted men. All of them. And they were taking no chances.
Keeping his pace, he hurdled the wide steps to the porch, and greeting Grant Kincaid with a crisp nod, he dashed across the foyer and took the main stairs two at a time. He’d catch up with Grant and the rest of the JTT later. Right now, he needed a shower and some time to get his thoughts in order before he came face-to-face with his sister.
On the second floor, he veered right and jogged to the end of the hallway where he hesitated for a moment on the threshold of the bedroom originally earmarked for the JTT’s leader. The colonel had never been inside the lodge, much less the room designated as his, and never would be.
Adam’s fault.
He’d had one job. Uncover the identity of the man threatening to unleash an unprecedented amount of devastation and destruction on the people of the United States.
He’d failed. His mission. His team. His sister.
As a result, his father had paid the ultimate price.
Adam shook his head. No time to dwell on the mistakes he couldn’t fix. He needed to get his shit together. Stepping into the room, he closed the door behind him, shrugged off his shoulder holster, and left his Berettas on the bedside table.
He stripped off his drenched T-shirt on the way to the bathroom, and moments later, his boots, socks, and pants made a heap of wet clothes on the tile floor.
With a twist of the handle, he started the water, and when it reached his preferred temperature, he stepped inside the glass enclosure and shut the door. The hot spray pricked against cold flesh, making his skin tingle.
Shower stocked with a razor and shaving cream, he scraped the rough beard stubble from his face before he did a quick lather of hair and body. Quick because he could already hear the incessant knocking on his bedroom door.
