"Of course not. You can call me whatever you like," she murmured.

"Well, Sa.s.sy, let's dispense with the charade. I don't like explaining myself. But I'm going to make an exception because . . . you amuse me. I have many business a.s.sociates and contacts around the world, many of whom would rather not be 'known.' Opening that door so publicly-for instance, with a news story-into the private workings of my a.s.sociates . . ." He let the words hang for a moment. "Let's just say it would be bad for everyone."

The time for game playing was long past, and Sa.s.sy knew she had to lay everything on the table here or risk Trey's freedom. She swallowed hard. "But Ford Johnson betrayed you. Why wouldn't you want him exposed in the most public forum possible?"

Rivera's laugh was chilling. "Oh, don't worry. I have plans for Ford Johnson."

Sa.s.sy's mind raced. Quashing the story went against everything she believed in as a journalist. But for Trey, she'd do this, and more. Bryan and his team would be abandoned, though, with zero support against false allegations in the press. She hated that.

But for now, she didn't see a way out of it. It was Bryan's team in a U.S. jail for a few weeks until this was all unwound or Trey in a Mexican prison permanently. She closed her eyes and made the only choice she could.

"I can stop the story." If I desert Bryan and the others. "How soon can you speak to the judge about Trey?"

"I'll take care of it immediately." She saw his smile flash in the glow of the dashboard. Perhaps it was because he was doing something for Trey, but she wasn't nearly as put off by the smile as she had been earlier.

She took a deep breath for the first time since she'd sat in the car. Rivera handed her a phone. "It's clean. No one can trace it. Call your editor," he instructed.

Sa.s.sy didn't hesitate and dialed Howard's number to leave a message: "Hey Howard, it's Sa.s.sy. I'm not coming up with any more sources on that story. I'm going to table it for now, but I'll keep digging. I'm sorry. I'll call you if I find anything."

She hung up and handed the phone back. Rivera stared with a raised eyebrow.

"If I announced I was dropping the story completely, he'd suspect something was wrong," she explained.

Rivera nodded as he dialed, then began speaking in rapid-fire Spanish. Sa.s.sy recognized Trey's name and understood just enough of the language to grasp that Rivera was doing what he'd said he would. He was telling the judge to let Trey go.

Could it be that easy? She could scarcely believe it. After all these months, the man responsible for her brother's incarceration was negotiating his release.

Euphoria overrode her anger in a dizzying rush. She was glad she was sitting down, or she might have fallen over. Rivera was talking about the judge's family.

Jesus, was he threatening them? She didn't have it in her to be disgusted. This was about getting Trey out of a snake pit, where his life was threatened on a daily basis.

She glanced out the window. The moon illuminated a deep ditch running along the right-hand side of the road and a several-hundred-foot drop on the left. She'd been so sleepy yesterday, she hadn't noticed the ravine on the drive with Bryan and Bear.

Bryan . . . G.o.d, what was she going to tell him about all this? She'd gotten Trey out of jail, but would Bryan ever trust her again?

Rivera ended the call. "It's done," he announced.

"Thank you." The relief had her feeling as if she was swaying from side to side.

It took a moment to register that this wasn't only relief but real motion on the road. The car had been swaying from side to side and now began to swerve violently from one shoulder to the other in broad, evasive maneuvers.

Rivera leaned forward to shout at the driver. "What the h.e.l.l is going on?!"

Sa.s.sy fought to hold herself still long enough to peer through the front windshield. Something was floating in front of the car. She blinked hard.

What was that? Tiny helicopters?

It didn't make sense. How was that even possible?

She was wearing a seat belt, but the action of the car's swerving didn't stop her head from hitting the window as they continued to careen from one side of the road to the other-running off one narrow shoulder, swerving sharply back up onto the highway, then sliding off on the other shoulder.

The driver cursed vividly in Spanish. Once more they slid to the left side of the road and off onto the shoulder. Rivera shouted; Sa.s.sy cried out. This time they didn't make it back up onto the asphalt. Instead, they were airborne in a stomach-clenching, weightless free fall before hitting hard.

Air bags deployed, but the car didn't stop rolling. Tumbling end over end, the Town Car fell down the embankment at a terrific rate of speed. After the third flip, all Sa.s.sy could hear was a roaring in her ears and the screech of tearing metal.

She felt a final, tremendous jolt, searing pain, then nothing.

Chapter Twenty-four.

December 30 Morning IT WAS 7:30 AM and a thick fog clung to the interstate, obscuring the road and the sky as Bryan sped back to Bear's house. Surely the sun would burn through it soon. Cold as h.e.l.l, Bryan was as exhausted as he could ever remember being. But his fear over what was going on with Sa.s.sy kept him wide awake while he chewed through a pack of Dentyne he'd found in his backpack, the gum Sa.s.sy had bought for him in New York.

He was two hours out from Kingstree and had to stop for gas and coffee. He pulled the motorcycle helmet off but replaced it with a baseball hat pulled down low over his forehead. He had multiple missed calls from Bear and dialed back as he filled the tank on the bike.

Bear answered on the first ring.

"It's me, what do you have?" asked Bryan.

His friend didn't answer.

"Bear, you've called me eight times. What the h.e.l.l?"

"Not great news, Hollywood. There's been an accident." Bear's typically laid-back tone was fraught with tension, and his voice broke on the word accident.

"What is it?" A cold ball of horror settled in Bryan's stomach as he stared unseeing at the gray sky. He didn't want to hear this. Somehow he just knew that whatever Bear was about to tell him was going to change everything.

"A car accident, about ten miles out from your favorite diner. Rivera's dead."

"How do you know this?" Bryan squeezed his eyes shut, dreading the details but pushing forward anyway.

"I have a police scanner. The accident happened on a big embankment, the car went off into a ravine. From what I could tell, there was some kind of freak explosion."

The breath swooshed out of Bryan's body, but he held onto the handle of the gas nozzle with numb fingers. He had to force those roiling emotions away for now. This was a time for facts only.

A freak explosion was entirely too coincidental when they were talking about the drone technology Johnson had access to. It took more courage than he thought he had to ask the next question. "Was Sa.s.sy in the car?"

Again, Bear hesitated, his silence telling Bryan everything he needed to know.

"I'm so sorry, man. The scanners reported that the driver and pa.s.senger were burned beyond recognition. They didn't say who was who. I haven't heard anything else since they cleared the road. They must have switched to another frequency."

Burned beyond recognition.

Bryan swallowed hard and struggled to focus on Bear's words, instead of the stupefying pain exploding in his chest. But the pounding in his head was overriding everything, building to an unholy crescendo.

And Bear was still talking with that flat voice. "I called the diner. My truck is in the parking lot. I'll . . . I'll try to find out more." It was obvious that he thought Sa.s.sy was dead.

Bryan wasn't wrapping his head around the concept yet, even as the burn of hot tears stung his eyelids. The frigid December wind gusted through the gas station. He'd felt this kind of overwhelming pain once before. Two years ago, when he'd lost his team in Afghanistan, he'd been swallowed up in an abyss of hopelessness. He'd never thought to experience that kind of misery again. He'd closed himself off from relationships to guarantee it.

So why did this hurt so much?

Without realizing how exposed he'd been, he'd clawed his way out of that hole these past months, inch by miserable inch-ever since he'd started working with Sa.s.sy last summer.

Why was this. .h.i.tting so hard?

The answer was simple and f.u.c.king heartbreaking at the same time. He was still in love with her, after all this time. But he'd waited too d.a.m.n late to figure it out. Too late to tell her anything except how he wasn't looking for anything permanent.

Was she really gone?

He couldn't believe that. Not yet. A paralyzing chill swept through his body, and he sagged against the gas pump. He was going to be sick.

"I'm going to have to call you back, Bear. Find out what you can and let me know." He ended the call without waiting for a reply and shoved the gasoline nozzle back in the pump.

He headed for the bathroom at a sprint. It was an older station, with restrooms outside the building. The heavy door opened with a teeth-setting screech, and he pushed through to lock himself in. He'd barely made it to the dingy toilet before his stomach revolted.

Afterward, he leaned back against the cinder-block wall, hot tears rolling down his cheeks. If Sa.s.sy was dead, he was done.

Over.

Everything he thought he'd been digging himself out of these past two years was through. He'd been fooling himself all along. He hadn't been able to protect her. Just like when he'd left her in Mississippi all those years ago. He'd been lying to her and to himself by thinking he could keep her safe.

He wasn't sure how long he sat there with his head against the wall, crying like a baby. His legs were stiff by the time he got up. He flushed the ancient commode, went to the sink to rinse his mouth out, and splashed some water on his face. The hand dryer sounded like an airplane taking off. When the dryer shut down, the silence was deafening. The wind whistled outside as he gazed into the dingy mirror.

His eyes were bloodshot from tears and lack of sleep, plus his nose was Rudolph red. He looked as if he'd been kicked in the head. He stared at his reflection, desperate to pull himself together despite the bleakness in his expression.

"Snap the f.u.c.k out of it!" He spoke the words aloud, but his voice sounded rusty. Even if Sa.s.sy was dead, it didn't change what had to happen next.

Who the h.e.l.l was he kidding?

Sa.s.sy's death changed everything. He'd waited too late to tell her how he felt, and now it was much too late for anything. He was alone, without even the memory of telling her the truth to warm him. The world was a cold place and about to get colder still.

The hum of the ancient fluorescent light fixture grew louder as he continued to study his reflection in the dirty gla.s.s. The tears dried, and his cool gray eyes cleared to the soulless stare he'd honed in Afghanistan. The man responsible for this, Ford Johnson, would pay.

No matter what it took. No matter what it cost. If Bryan had to die himself to make it happen, Ford Johnson would pay.

A LONG SERIES of black skid marks tattooed the lonely stretch of highway where Rivera's car had careened over the embankment and down into the ravine. Bryan slowed as he pa.s.sed the flame-blackened slope. Bear had texted him the exact GPS coordinates at the gas station, along with the admonition not to lose hope, since they didn't know for certain what had happened . . . if Sa.s.sy was alive or dead.

But Bryan was miles beyond lost hope.

Everything in the media about the accident had been locked down and shut up tight as a drum. The police scanners, even the ones Bear could access, were strangely silent.

Bryan had ridden for another hour and a half to get here, trying not to think about what he would find once he arrived. To keep himself from howling at the insanity of it all, he allowed himself to focus only on finding answers. Even revenge would have to take a backseat to that for now.

Marissa remained in Atlanta, working to cut the AEGIS guys loose from custody, along with Anna, Zach, and Jennifer. The red tape occasionally required more time to hack through. The crazy thing was that even with the evidence the Justice Department had against Johnson, an indictment wasn't a slam dunk. In the current political climate, the U.S. government wasn't too concerned about the illegal use of drones in Mexico against drug dealers.

The narrow highway along the ravine was unremarkable except for those stark black marks and the remains of flares where the emergency vehicles had set up earlier to investigate the wreckage. Following the skid tracks, Bryan could see that Rivera had fought hard to stay on the road for several hundred yards before ultimately losing the battle.

He stopped the motorcycle a few feet beyond the last burned-out flare canister and gazed over the bleak hillside, forcing himself to look toward the bottom of the ravine. Tree limbs rattled in a steady north wind that had picked up throughout the day. The temperature was dropping. Most likely there was a front coming through, but he was beyond caring.

If there were tears in his eyes, they were only from the frigid air gusting across the road. Beyond feeling, he was numb. He had been since he'd walked out of that restroom at the gas station. He wasn't sure he'd ever be warm again, and right now he didn't give a d.a.m.n.

His phone vibrated in his pocket with an incoming text message. He ignored it, a.s.suming it was Bear. Again. He'd been texting Bryan more information after finding another way to access the police scanners.

Investigators were puzzled by the wreckage. Something about the burn marks was off. Two people were confirmed dead at the scene, but no names had been released.

Bryan didn't need names. He knew Sa.s.sy was gone. Despite the punch to the gut at seeing that blackened slope, he was morbidly relieved to view the accident site for himself-to confirm what he had felt in his bones when Bear had first told him the news.

He walked back to the spot in the road where the skid marks abruptly stopped, then he carefully picked his way along the burned path that Rivera's vehicle had taken. There was a ma.s.sive boulder at the bottom of the ravine, blackened across one side and split on a corner.

He swallowed hard. He wasn't sure what he'd been expecting to see. He wasn't an accident investigator himself, but one thing was clear from the scorched earth leading from the road at the top of the embankment to the bottom of the steep slope: The vehicle was on fire before it left the road and flipped several times on the way down.

He stared at the soot on the boulder and chewed at his lower lip. A mult.i.tude of things could have caused the car to catch fire before it left the road, but only one made sense. The same thing that had taken out the train he and Sa.s.sy had been on three nights ago.

The phone buzzed once more. This time it was a call. Bear was going to keep at it until Bryan picked up. He reached for the phone, but the screen showed a D.C. area code.

"Who is this?" Bryan demanded.

"That's not a very pleasant greeting." The voice had a sharp Boston accent. "Besides, I think you've figured that out by now. But just in case, my name is Ford Johnson."

Bryan swallowed the fury clogging his throat. "What do you want?"

"To make a trade."

"What do you have that I could possibly want?" asked Bryan.

You've already taken everything.

"What an interesting question." Johnson laughed, and Bryan wanted to reach through the phone and kill him. "Check your sources, Mr. Fisher. I'm sure you know by now that there's been a tragic accident. But what you may not know is that there was also a survivor . . . Do I have your attention?"

Bryan gripped the phone but said nothing.

"I have someone that I believe you want very much," said Johnson.

Bryan exhaled. "She's alive?"

"For the time being. Yes, Sa.s.sy Smith is alive."

Bryan felt his knees start to give way and put his hand on the boulder to catch himself. Sweet Jesus. She was alive. But Johnson had her. So how long she would stay alive was entirely dependent on what happened next.

He squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed the lump in his throat, willing his mind to clear as he slipped into combat mode. "Is she okay?"

"A little banged up. But she's alright. She's tough for such a little thing."