PROLOGUE
One week ago
“On my count,” Hawk commanded through his headset as he pressed against the wall. His team answered their confirmation, as did the FBI liaisons they were working with. He waited beside the stairwell door in the lobby, scanning to ensure he could give the all clear.
The private security firm owned by General Richard Smithers was a ghost town. Dead bodies and all. Other than the guards on the main floor, no one else had shown up for work. Whether that was because the General had ordered them to stay home, or whether the employees had known something was about to go down, Hawk didn’t know. But fewer bystanders during a mission made their job a hell of a lot easier.
His heart thudded as he glanced around, but there wasn’t a soul in sight. He swallowed once, clearing his head before entering the lion’s den.
“Three,” he breathed into his headset. “Two… one…breach.”
The building tremored as the breaching charge set by their weapons sergeant, Draco, exploded the stairwell door the floor below them. Hawk waited for a beat, letting the dust settle within the stairwell, before cracking the still-intact door beside him to peer inside. His ears strained to hear any movements, but there was only silence.
It’s go time.
“Clear,” he reported before pushing the door open wide.
“Down the stairs and to the right,” his teammate, Phoenix, offered over the headset as they ran. “We’ll be entering a hallway—a straight shot, no cover—so be ready.”
Phoenix had briefed the team on the way to their mission, so Hawk already knew what to expect when he got to the basement floor, including Phoenix and Callie’s last kill during their escape.
He bent low, ready to fire if necessary as he advanced carefully through the busted entry and across the metal splinters that used to be the door.
Another dead man sprawled in front of the steel door at the end of the darkened hallway. Hawk clicked on the tactical light hooked to his gun and blinked to adjust his eyesight. His booted steps remained silent in the thick carpet as he examined their surroundings. Glossy mahogany paneling and sensual paintings lined the unscathed walls.
“I thought you said you burned this hellhole into ash,” he muttered with a frown.
“The steel interior walls behind the paneling must’ve prevented the fire from spreading,” Phoenix whispered behind him, following closely on his heels. “All the doors are mechanical, so we’ll need to break them down.”
They halted at a black door and positioned themselves defensively in case they were met with resistance from the other side. Two of his teammates, Jaybird and Devil, lined up on one side with a battering ram in their hands, and Phoenix and Special Agent Callie Castellanos took the opposite. Their other two teammates, Snake and Draco, were back in the van, coordinating with the FBI agents waiting for Hawk’s “all clear.”
Hawk aimed his weapon at the door, prepared to meet whatever waited for them. He always took point. This time would be no different.
“Now,” he ordered.
Jaybird and Devil crashed the battering ram into the door. It caved inward instantly before collapsing to the ground. Hawk maintained a low stance as he barged into the room, preventing any potential center-of-mass shots that may come his way.
An acrid, familiar stench slammed into his nostrils before he could see inside.
Burned flesh.
He’d smelled it one other time before. That day still gave him nightmares.
The nearly pitch-black room only had a faint red haze emanating from the back corner. Apprehension crawled over his skin, but he shined his flashlight into the room anyway… and immediately wished he hadn’t.
Dripping, charred corpses were piled in heaps throughout the large room. His foot bumped into one of the dead, and he barely resisted the urge to jerk away at the hill of bodies. It looked like that particular group had tried to escape through the door his team had just forced down. They’d been burned to a crisp, making it easier for the broken door to push them aside, allowing his team to enter.
What had once been the General’s lushplayroom, where he’d used sex trafficked victims toentertainclients, was now full of stinking death and soggy ash.
“Looks like the sprinkler system was too late to combat the fire,” Jaybird pointed out as they investigated the scene.
“Thank fuck for that,” Phoenix cursed.
A metal table in the center of the room had warped from the heat. Sharp edges gleamed on top of the table, and his flashlight revealed what looked like a stockpile of medieval weaponry and torture devices.
“That’s what they would’ve used on me,” Callie whispered behind him. “I was just a toy to them. Athingto be broken.”
Callie had been a prisoner in the General’s underground bunker for over two years. It was a miracle she’d made it out alive. From the looks of what those monsters had planned for her, she almost didn’t.
