PROLOGUE
Prague, Czech Republic, two months ago…
Seven minutes until handoff…
The shot cut the night like a whip. Sharp. Finite. The supersonic round sparking off the HVAC stack as Nick Colter slammed into his partner, Sloane Hart, driving her clear. She stumbled against the bulkhead, another round jumping off the steel beside her cheek, as Nick shifted again, blocked any further sightline from the high rise across the river.
He searched the windows, caught a flash off the sniper’s optics before the third shot caught his left side — the hit to his ballistic vest hard enough to bruise his ribs. He rode the pain down to one knee, rifle still notched in his shoulder, scope tracking the sniper’s angle. He fired, hit the frame next to the asshole’s head, forced him to recoil into the shadows.
Sloane muttered something about him being too damn reckless — always taking the hit — before grabbing him by the collar, dragging his ass behind some cover. She shook her head, gave him a scathing side eye, then fired off a series of controlledbursts, kept the sniper nest quiet. “Bird’s ninety seconds out. Try not to die before it gets here.”
Nick pushed to his feet, pain burning up through his ribs as he moved in beside her, alternating trigger pulls. “Vest took the brunt of it.”
She paused for a moment. “Mine could have, too. And you might have gotten a quicker bead on the bastard if you hadn’t been pushing through the pain in order to fire.”
He snorted. Cold day in hell before he’d let her take a round he could intercept. Not just because they were partners — because he’d spent several years in Delta Force before moving over to the CIA’s Clandestine service — but because somewhere over the past several months, their missions had felt different. Heavier. As if he’d just realized he’d been carrying extra weight. Had more to lose, with her being at the top of his list.
Not that he’d acted on it. He’d dated operatives before, and those relationships had ended the way most of his missions did — bloody, with his ass in a sling. But he couldn’t deny that something had shifted between them. An urgency he wasn’t sure he could contain much longer.
A whimper sounded off to their right. Their asset, Julian Kessler, hunched inside a protected alcove, clutching the bag with the ledger files like a shield. Proof his company, Armatus Logistics, had washed embargoed weapon components into government-owned shell companies. The kind of intel that ended careers was often accompanied by wet squads and entire teams being systematically erased.
Not that the end result played into Nick’s objective. He kept Kessler breathing because it was his job — he kept Sloane breathing because the weight of his feelings had become too heavy to push aside.
A deep rumble thundered in the distance, the helicopter’s sleek silhouette misting out of the clouds. Sloane launched agrenade onto the tarred roof, red smoke coughing out a second later. It sheered sideways as the wind cut across the rooftop, carried it downwind.
The chopper came in hot, rotor wash whipping the smoke into a funnel, when tracer fire stitched across the fuselage, a spray of brass eating up the cowlings a heartbeat later. The pilot banked hard, dipped down behind the building, then backtracked, that constant beat slowly fading.
Sloane tapped her comms, cursed. “Bastards are bailing. Pilot won’t risk hovering long enough to get us up on the winch with all the gunfire. Like he didn’t know there’d be resistance when he agreed to take the op.” She changed her mag, patted down her vest. “Looks like we’re making an audible — Plan B.”
“The van? Really?”
“You got a better idea?”
He ran his fingers through his hair.
She smirked. “Thought not. Regardless, we need to move before that asshole’s reinforcements show up because we both know they will.”
“Fine. We’ll use the access door — see how many flights we get down before we’re dodging more bullets. We can reassess if we actually make it to the ground floor alive.”
Sloane stepped in close, looking as if she wanted to kiss him before tsking. “Wow, one hit to your vest and you’ve already lost faith.”
“One of us has to be a realist.”
“That’s definitely you because you are, without a doubt, arealpain in my ass.” She scanned the surrounding buildings, focusing on the nest. “Try not to get hit again before we’re in the thick of it. That vest can only take so much, and I’m not carrying your ass.”
Nick motioned her on, ribs burning, the hairs on the back of his neck prickling as a familiar pressure built between hisshoulder blades. Something seemed off, and he had a bad feeling it wasn’t simply paranoia this time.
They cleared the area, darted behind a few more units before popping out next to Kessler. Ashen skin, eyes like white saucers, the man looked as if he was on the brink of a nervous breakdown.
Nick nudged his foot. “You good?”
Kessler wheezed out his next breath, sweat dampening his skin, hair more than a bit wild, as if he’d been threading his fingers through it for the past hour. “They shot you.”
Nick tapped his chest. “That’s why we’re all wearing vests.”
Kessler clutched the bag tighter. “This is crazy. I never should have agreed to the deal. I?—”
“Would still have bastards hunting you. The only difference is that at least now, you’ve got a chance at walking away still breathing.” He sighed. “Just keep it together, though, there’s been a change of plans. We’re heading back inside?—”
