Chapter 1

1

Black. Frigid. Relentless.

The Canadian Arctic night pressed against the hotel room's single, quilted window.

Kate Hackett shivered in her narrow dorm-style bed.

It wasn't the cold, though thirty-five below zero certainly qualified as a ridiculous temperature, even for a former black ops agent used to all of the Earth's extremes. Plus, the tiny room in the pre-fab hotel was seriously overheated.

This high in the Arctic, the sun wouldn't reappear until March. Midnight…twenty-four seven could get on anyone's nerves, but it wasn't the unrelenting cold, or the total lack of sunlight.

Nope.

It was the note.

She'd come back from dinner with the team to find it on her pillow. Written on a sheet of hotel stationary, it contained only one line. The threat itself was bad enough, but what really terrified her was the emotion behind it. The powerful pen strokes dug into the paper, almost tearing through in places.

Whoever wrote it knew about her past. Really knew .

She pulled the heavy blankets tighter, trying to ignore the snores bleeding through the paper-thin walls. Was that Tai or Bridger? She couldn't tell. The team had just completed an unsuccessful mission to locate their missing teammate, Jason, who had disappeared months ago while trying to track down the main players in the Consortium, a shadowy cabal of global multi-billionaires who wanted them all dead.

Despite the exhaustion that tugged at her eyelids, she couldn't sleep. Her mind kept circling back to the note. The words were seared into her memory.

Loaita Cay, June 24: Time's up. Payment due.

How could someone who knew about that disaster of a mission twelve years, and sixty full degrees of latitude away, have found her here, at the literal end of the earth? There were more polar bears than people in this unforgiving landscape, accessible only by plane, boat, or snowcat. The nearest actual road was fifty miles to the south, and even that was little more than a frozen track through the tundra.

Her heart raced as the crushing guilt she'd buried for over a decade came rushing back, stealing the breath from her lungs.

No one but the handful of operatives on the ground that day, and the government minders tracking them from the aircraft carrier a hundred miles distant knew about the disaster at the remote cay. The South China sea was a soup of contested territories, a tinderbox where the superpowers tested their enemies' resolve, all of it on the down low.

Not even her team knew. Blackout Squadron had been formed a year after the incident. She trusted Bridger and Tai and the others with her life. Literally. But she'd never been able to bring herself to confess what she'd done that horrible day.

She'd prayed it would never be necessary.

But now was not the time. She wouldn't let her past mistakes endanger the team. They'd already lost Jason; she wouldn't be the reason they lost anyone else. She had to handle this alone, to face the consequences of her actions without dragging the others into the mess she'd created.

The thought brought a small measure of comfort, easing the tightness in her chest. She was in control now. Whatever the writer wanted, she'd do whatever it took to keep her team safe.

No more running from the past. No more hiding from the truth.

She rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. The tip that got them all the way out here turned out to be a bust. They'd combed the frozen landscape for a week, but turned up no sign that Jason had ever been in the area. Tomorrow morning, she and Bridger were supposed to fly the team home. Even if she told the team about the note, there was no way they could delay. A storm was forecast to break over the region by 1800 hours. To be safe, they needed to be wheels up—or skis up, out here in the Arctic—by no later than 0800. No way she'd keep the others stuck here for days.

Except now she couldn't leave. She had to finish this fight.

And then she needed to confess the whole, horrible tale to her team. Her found-family of fellow warriors.

The very thought made her shudder. Unlike this predator from her past, the team would forgive her for what she'd done.

But they'd view her differently. There'd be no escaping that.

Might as well add one more deception to the list. As the wind howled outside, she threw off the blankets, switched on the bedside light, and suited up, preparing for the sub-zero temps outside.

It wouldn't take long to make the necessary preparations to keep the team safe.

In a few hours, it would be just her and her mysterious tormentor. Before heading out the door, she slipped a tactical knife into each boot and double-checked her M18.

Bring. It. On.