Chapter 1

Chapter

One

February 13th

10:44 P.M.

He was getting too old for this.

That was what Rafe "Panther" Neal was thinking as he and the rest of his team swam through the cold ocean. The same ocean that, just three months ago, they had swum through on their way to find a yacht that supposedly had the second in command of a notorious human trafficker on board.

Leonid Baranov was wanted by almost every agency in every country worldwide. The Russian oligarch was richer than any person needed to be, and instead of contributing anything good to the world with his money, the man used it to buy and sell people. While he wasn't a major player in any specific human trafficking ring, he was a sick and sadistic monster who got a rush out of buying high-value victims.

Sons and daughters of politicians, royalty, and businessmen had joined his collection over the years. Of all the victims unlucky enough to pass through what had been dubbed the House of Horrors, only four of them had ever survived.

One had committed suicide shortly after being rescued. Another had been tortured and killed not long before Panther and his team—Prey Security's Bravo Team—had been set to meet with him. One had been snatched from the home she had been living in under a new identity, her young daughter murdered before her eyes.

The last was the wife of Bravo Team's leader, Axel "Axe" Lindon.

They were the team who had come so close to catching Leonid Baranov once and for all. The billionaire had bounties out on all of their heads, which had forced him and his team to leave Delta Force and move to the private sector, now working for the world-renowned Prey Security.

Beth was one of the three victims they had rescued the day they came so close to destroying Baranov. Something about her drew all of them in, and they had quickly adopted her as a little sister of sorts since she had no family to care for her. Or at least the rest of them had. Axe had known Beth was his from the moment he laid eyes on her. He had helped her heal, and the two had grown close. Once she was ready for more, he'd asked her out.

The two had married two years after they rescued Beth, and he'd never seen either of them happier.

Until nineteen months ago when Beth had simply vanished.

Like a puff of smoke, she was gone.

No matter how hard they searched for her, using every one of Prey's vast resources, they hadn"t been able to find her.

Then ten months ago, she reappeared with no memory of who she was or what had happened to her in the eight months she was missing.

Since then, they'd all had to stand by and watch Axe and Beth drift further and further apart. They needed answers, needed to know what had happened to Beth while she was gone, and to know that Leonid Baranov was no longer a threat.

Which brought him right back to why he felt like he was getting too old for this. He might be only thirty, but the things he had seen and done made him feel so much older.

Thirty, divorced, and a single father to an eight-year-old son he adored more than life itself, watching the guys on his team fall in love this past year had gotten him thinking. He'd always believed he was happy enough with just him and his kid, but Andy was growing up fast, and he couldn't help but feel that his son was missing out on something by not having a mother figure in his life.

Sure, the boy had his teammates' women who spoiled him rotten, and Mrs. Pfeffer, the babysitter who looked after him while Panther and his team were away was a great influence on Andy. But it wasn't the same.

Shoving away thoughts of his son and his future, Panther caught sight of what they'd been looking for.

"Found it," he said into his comms as he dove deeper toward the wreckage of the yacht.

Three months ago, when they'd been tracking Tomas Butcher, Baranov's right-hand man, the yacht had been blown up moments after they were able to bail off it so they weren"t taken out along with the vessel. That same night they'd gotten a glimpse of a woman with Butcher as the man boarded a helicopter and took off, seemingly disappearing as there was no record of where the helo landed or where the man had gone afterward.

Bravo Team was desperate for answers.

Desperate enough that they had come back to attempt to find the wreckage and see if any clues could be gleaned from it. Sarah Sanders had had a child. They might not know why the girl had been murdered instead of being taken along with her mother, but there was a chance that Sarah was the woman who had been on the yacht with Butcher that night.

It didn"t make sense, the timeline didn"t add up, but then nothing about this entire mess made sense.

So there they were, scouring the depths of the ocean in search of a wrecked yacht that probably wouldn't tell them anything they didn"t already know.

A shape appeared beside him in the dark, murky ocean water, the beam of a flashlight joining his own. "That's it. At least what's left of it," Axe said.

Even though he couldn't see his friend's face, it wasn't necessary for Panther to know that Axe's expression would be a mixture of pain and impotent fury. Nothing was worse than knowing the person you loved most in the world was hurting, and you couldn't make it better. Axe was a mere shell of the man Panther had always known since Beth had been snatched and then returned to him with no idea who he was.

Another flashlight danced about. "Doesn't look like there's much of it left," Sebastian "Rock" Rockman said.

"All we need is one clue to give us a direction to move in," Mason "Scorpion" Markson reminded him.

Reminded all of them.

They all felt lost and disillusioned when it came to Beth and her disappearance. All of them were feeling like they had failed her, and felt like they were running around like a dog chasing its tail. They were trying but they weren"t getting anywhere, and Panther could attest to the fact that it was beginning to feel like they never would.

"We do a quick search now, grab anything we can find, then tag everything so Eagle can send back a team to collect and bring it all up," Gabriel "Tank" Dawson told them. When Beth had first gone missing, Axe had stepped down as leader of Bravo Team and Tank had stepped up. Although Axe was back now, the two seemed to share the role of leader, Tank stepping in whenever it seemed like Axe was unable to.

"What exactly are we hoping to find?" Patrick "Trick" Kramer asked. "We know Baranov, the man is meticulous, there's no way he would have allowed Butcher to leave anything behind on the yacht. And even if he wasn't thorough because he was planning on blowing up the yacht, it's been three months, whatever wasn't destroyed in the blast has likely been destroyed sitting underwater for so long."

They all knew that. It was why they'd never searched for the wreckage right away. Baranov meticulously cleaned away any DNA, prints, fibers, or anything else that could possibly link him to a crime and be used against him. Whatever was on that yacht wouldn't be anything they could use to find out where Baranov was hiding.

But things had changed.

The information they'd gotten a couple of days ago had opened up a whole new world of possibilities, and so they had returned to see if they could find anything that might help, no matter how slim the chances.

DNA tests had been run on the blood they'd found at the farmhouse, blood that they initially assumed belonged to Sarah. Only the tests had proved that while it wasn't Sarah's blood there was a close DNA match. That was how they knew the blood had belonged to Sarah's daughter.

But they were able to get more from the DNA.

They were able to determine paternity.

The father of Sarah's child wasn't someone from the small farming community she had moved to, and it wasn't Leonid Baranov.

It was Tomas Butcher.

They had no idea what that meant, how old the child was, and whether he knew about his daughter. But a woman who fit Sarah's description had gotten onto that helicopter with Butcher the night the yacht exploded, and they were all desperate enough to clutch at straws and come back to search for the yacht in the likely vain hope that it could somehow lead them to Butcher, Baranov, Sarah, and the answers Beth needed—that they all needed—to move forward.

February 14th

6:38 P.M.

What was she going to do if this didn"t work?

Elle Cavey couldn't even allow herself to go down that path, because if she did, she was going to lose whatever sanity she had managed to cling to these last few weeks.

She already knew the answer to that question anyway.

If this didn"t work then it was over. She'd have no choice but to give up. This was quite literally her last chance, her only hope, the only possibility that she might get what she needed.

Elle had never experienced pain like this before.

Ever.

It wasn"t physical pain. That she could handle with relative ease. This was so very different. It ran deeper than just emotional or psychological pain. It was the kind of pain caused by having the thing most precious in your entire world ripped away from you.

Her sweet little girl was gone.

Abducted.

And it was all her fault.

Elle's seven-year-old daughter Ruthie was her whole world, her whole heart, and soul. It had been just the two of them since Ruthie was a baby, and Elle's now ex-husband had decided that fatherhood wasn't for him and walked away. He'd signed over his parental rights, not contested anything in the divorce, just walked away like the two of them meant nothing to him.

Other than school and Ruthie"s gymnastics class they were always together.

Just the two of them.

Two halves of a whole.

Now one of those halves was gone, and Elle was left all alone.

The pain in her chest was too great, and she swerved over to the side of the quiet country road, lowered her forehead to the steering wheel, and let her tears flow. How many tears had she shed since she walked into her backyard that bright winter's day to find it empty?

Millions.

Billions.

And yet, whenever she thought she must have cried herself out there were more.

Each tear that fell felt like a drop of blood leaving her body. It felt like sooner or later she wouldn't just cry herself out, she would cry herself dead. Because no tears meant no more hope, that she had accepted she was never going to get her daughter back.

Without her child, she had nothing to live for.

Each day she battled the desire born of desperation to just let go of all the pain and fear and end it all. It was only because she knew that her daughter was still alive, and without her fighting for Ruthie, her child would become just another statistic.

"You have to live, you have to fight, you owe it to your baby girl," Elle said aloud. These were the same words she'd uttered in her darkest moments when suicide seemed like the best option because living without her daughter was just too much. The same words she uttered every morning when she dragged herself out of bed after a fitful night of tossing and turning. The same words she uttered every night when she had to force herself not to climb into Ruthie"s bed because when she touched her nose to her child's pillow she could still get a gentle whiff of Ruthie's lavender shampoo, and she didn"t want to lose that tiny connection she still had to her daughter.

The words had saved her more than once, and like they always did, they saved her again now.

Somehow, she was able to get herself back under control. Take her pain and fear and shove it down just below the surface so she could function.

Functioning was about the best she could hope for these days. What she was doing certainly couldn't be described as living. It was surviving at best. There was no joy, no laughter, and no smiles. Most days she barely ate, which was now obvious when you looked at her, she'd lost a lot of weight in this last month. She was surviving on a couple of hours of sleep a night at best, and that was usually restless and filled with nightmares that were even worse than the waking nightmare she was living.

Elle was driven by only one thing.

Find her daughter.

Bring her home.

Worse even than knowing Ruthie was out there somewhere, scared and alone, begging for her mommy to come, was knowing that she had no one to blame but herself for her daughter's abduction.

It was her fault.

All hers.

No amount of empty words from the cops, or the shrink they insisted speak with her was going to change that. It was simply a fact. Ruthie hadn"t been taken out of opportunity, she wasn't in the wrong place at the wrong time.

No.

Her daughter had been targeted.

Taken specifically because she was Elle's daughter.

How was she supposed to live with that guilt?

Did Ruthie know it was her mommy's fault that she had been taken from her home, her friends, her school, her life? Did her sweet, little, baby girl hate her?

Another sob burst out, and although she did her best to get it under control, she couldn't. Elle wept until she could barely breathe, the pressure in her chest so severe it was slowly smothering the life right out of her.

"You have to get it together. If you don't, they won"t help you."

The words were enough for her to wipe away the worst of the tears flooding down her cheeks, and pull the car back onto the road.

If she got there and they wrote her off as just a hysterical mother whose daughter had been taken, then they wouldn't help her. If that happened, she knew it was the end of the road for both her and Ruthie. This was her only hope at getting her daughter back and she couldn't waste it.

Desperation had her coming to the only people she believed might be able to help her. The cops had done nothing, neither had the FBI. Oh, they had at first. A whole team of them had come out to her house, they'd questioned her, and treated her like a suspect. Elle hadn"t cared because as soon as they cleared her they could look for her daughter. So she'd given them access to everything, answered all their questions, and done everything they asked of her.

But in the end it hadn"t changed anything.

Just because she had been cleared as a suspect early on didn"t mean there had been any other viable ones. Everything they did wound up leading nowhere, and then two days ago they had sat her down and explained that they had exhausted their leads and there was nothing else they could do.

They'd told her they weren"t giving up. They would continue looking for new leads, but no one would be staying in her house waiting for a ransom call that had never come. No one would be calling with regular updates.

Ruthie would just fade into the background until she was just another cold case.

Not that they'd used those words, of course, but she wasn't stupid, she could read between the lines. They had already given up on Ruthie and didn"t believe that she was still alive or that they would ever find her.

Being told that killed her.

How could they give up on her daughter after only a month?

One month wasn't long enough to just give up on a child in need. It had been one hellishly long month that felt more like an eternity, but she hadn"t expected them to give up so soon.

Elle would never give up on her baby girl. Not for anything.

So she was there, ready to meet a group of men who, if she was honest, sounded incredibly intimidating and maybe even a little scary. But they were possibly the only ones who could save her daughter.

"I'll find you, my little unicorn girl, I promise. I won"t ever give up on you. Even if you hate me forever, I'll bring you home."

With that vow on her lips, Elle pulled up to a large gate. If you didn"t know it was there you'd never even find it. Thanks to the directions she'd been given she had located it and now, sitting there looking at it, she prayed it was like the wardrobe in The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe and was about to lead her to a magical land filled with people who could do what felt like the impossible and bring her baby back to her.

"Please do the impossible," she murmured as she climbed out of her car.

Drawing a deep breath, she shivered in the cold, realizing she'd forgotten to put on her coat when she'd left, and hurried over to the gate. She punched in the code she'd been given, praying it worked even though she had no reason to doubt that it would.

Still, when it beeped green, and she heard the lock disengage, she sent up a silent thanks, then pushed the gate open and walked back toward her car.

She never made it back inside.

A hand clamped around her mouth, silencing her scream before it could escape, and she was yanked up against a chest that felt carved from stone.