“You cut the comms. You saw the broadcast of the crash. You saw the cargo I exposed, and you panicked. You needed to lock me in a box so Erica could clean up the mess at my father’s house.”
Mercer sighed, his shoulders dropping slightly. “You’re too smart for your own good, Becca. You always were. But you’re out of your depth. You think you’re a decorated officer? You’re just a mascot. Your mother bought every medal on your chest with the blood of the people who got in her way.”
“Draw your weapon, Mercer,” I whispered, the rage finally bleeding into my voice.
“Be reasonable. If you stand down, they’ll let Jason go. They just need time to scrub the highway site and relocate the remaining inventory.”
“I said, draw your weapon.”
Mercer’s eyes hardened. He pulled his gun, but I was faster. The eighteen years of tactical training—training my mother had supposedly manipulated, but which I had physically endured—took over.
I fired twice. Center mass.
The crack of the gunshot was deafening in the concrete garage. Mercer slammed backward against the truck tire, his gun clattering to the floor. He slid down, clutching his chest, gasping for air.
I kicked his weapon away and stood over him. I felt no remorse. He had sold his uniform, sold my troops, and facilitated the kidnapping of my brother.
“Where did they take Jason?” I demanded, pressing the barrel of my gun against his knee.
Mercer coughed up blood, a grim smile forming on his lips. “You… you can’t stop her. She’s a goddamn ghost.”
“Ghosts bleed, Mercer. Where are they?”
His eyes rolled back. He was gone.
I cursed, holstering my weapon. I ran to the nearest tactical SUV, checking the ignition. The keys were in the visor. I threw open the heavy garage doors manually, the freezing Colorado wind instantly blasting me in the face.
As I climbed into the driver’s seat, my personal cell phone—which had been dead to the world due to the jamming—suddenly buzzed.
I froze. Mercer must have had a localized jammer on him, and with him dead, my signal had reconnected.
I pulled the phone from my pocket. A text message from an unknown number.
It was a picture. Jason, bruised, bleeding from his lip, bound to a metal chair in what looked like an abandoned, concrete hangar.
I stared at the image, my heart pounding. Then a second message arrived.
Ask your father who signed your commission paperwork.
I already knew. Erica and my aunt, Linda. The lie was absolute.
But it was the third message that made the breath freeze in my lungs. I did not recognize the number at first. But as I stared at the digits, a memory from a childhood long buried clicked into place. It was the old landline number to our house. The number that was disconnected the week my mother “died.” I had kept it in my contacts for twenty-six years because I could not bear to delete the last piece of her.
The message read:
You’ve played the hero long enough, Becca. Come home. I’m waiting.
Attached was a GPS coordinate.
I slammed the SUV into gear, the tires spinning on the ice before catching traction. I was leaving my post. I was going AWOL. I was likely driving into an ambush. But the woman waiting for me at the end of this road was not just an international terrorist. She was the architect of my misery.
