Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

February 5 th

9:09 P.M.

This was wrong.

The worst thing she’d ever done.

A betrayal of three of the people she cared about the most in the world.

Yet Ella Whitlock didn't stop what she was doing.

She couldn’t.

She’d made this decision and had to finish what she’d started even if she was having second thoughts.

Or third.

Or, heck, thousandth thoughts.

The truth was, she didn't really have a choice.

As much as it pained her to know that her three Prey Security Athena Team members would forever hate her for turning on them, Ella knew that this was something she had to do.

Besides, she comforted herself, it wasn’t like she was going to walk away from this alive.

Raul Castillo didn't leave loose ends, and she was a major loose end.

Shoving thoughts of her three best friends, Scarlett Madden, Lucy Elrod, and Cassidy Caddel, from her mind, she punched in the code for the safe where the four of them had hidden the only vial of the Reactivator that existed. The drug was a wonder drug that she and her team had been working on creating for the last four years. It worked to dull pain receptors, slow bleeding, encourage faster healing, and give the patient a much-needed burst of adrenalin.

They’d intended for it to be used to save the lives of men and women serving in the American armed forces. Intended for it to save lives. Ella was confident that it would have as well, but now everything was ruined, messed up beyond repair, and she was stuck sneaking out this vial from Prey’s lab.

No one knew that this small safe existed. They'd hidden it in the back of a little fridge they kept in the lab. Unless you knew it was there you would never suspect what it really was. Which had made it the perfect place to hide this vial of the drug when it became clear that they were getting close to perfecting it.

Not that any of them had imagined the disaster of the last month happening.

Who could have predicted it?

As Ella slipped the vial into her pocket, snatched up her purse, and hurried from the lab, she felt like her heart was being ripped in two. Loyalty to her friends warring with her need to do this.

There was no easy choice.

There was no choice at all.

When she’d taken the first step down this road, she’d committed herself to it.

To treason.

Because that’s what it all boiled down to.

She was taking a drug that had been intended to save the lives of her fellow citizens to hand it over to a Mexican weapons trafficker. Raul Castillo was at the top of the food chain in the weapons smuggling game. No one even came close. With all his money and the stellar reputation he’d built, he was on several countries’ wanted lists, but so far the man continued to evade capture.

Now she was going to meet him.

The address she’d been given felt like it was burning a hole in her mind.

No trail.

That had been impressed upon her in the most painful of ways. In fact, each step she took reminded her of how important it was that she made it out of there without anyone stopping her. Then all she had to do was take a cab to the airport, hop on the flight to Mexico, and disappear for good.

And it would be for good.

This wasn’t something she would be able to come back from.

Didn't even want to, not really. Because coming back from it would mean facing the people she had betrayed, and she was too much of a coward to do that.

So instead, she walked through the halls of Prey’s West Coast offices for the last time. As she did so she tried to commit everything to memory. The crisp white walls, the heavy oak doors to each room. All the fun times she’d had there, giggling and laughing with her friends, and all the good work she’d done examining evidence that helped Prey catch and eliminate dangerous targets.

Here she’d done a lot of good, and Ella hated that it was ending the way it was.

But she’d made her choice and had no option but to stick with it. What was done was done and now she had to live with the consequences.

At this hour the building was quiet. The six former SEALs who ran this branch of Prey were all at home with their wives and kids. Scarlett, Lucy, and Cassie were all home with the men they had fallen in love with. All three of them were still healing from the injuries they had received at the hand of Raul, and she hated that they had been hurt. She wished there was something she could do to change what had happened and what happened next.

“You can't,” she whispered aloud.

It was true.

It sucked, but it was true.

Rounding the corner, she stifled a scream when she walked headlong into someone. Panic thudded through her body.

No.

She couldn’t get caught.

Not yet .

She’d been sure that she would have enough time to make it to the airport and get on that plane before anybody realized that she’d taken the vial of the Reactivator and disappeared.

Someone would figure it out. She knew that. There were cameras everywhere inside the building, even more had been installed after Scarlett had been abducted at the beginning of the year.

Almost exactly a month ago.

How had so much changed in one month?

“Ella? Is everything okay?”

Relief washed over her at the sound of the voice. It was one she recognized but didn't belong to one of her teammates, one of the guys, or any of the SEAL teams working with Prey on this mess.

“Dora,” she said, pressing a hand to her chest to try to calm her racing heart. “You scared me. I thought you went home already.”

“Catching up on some paperwork,” Prey’s receptionist replied. “With everything going on, we’ve gotten behind on some other things, and I've been trying to get us caught back up.”

“Oh, umm, that’s good, a good idea,” she mumbled. Dora was a nice enough woman, but right now, Ella just wanted to get out of there. Her nerves couldn’t take any more of this, it was too stressful, and she wasn’t cut out for this kind of life.

Why hadn't she listened to her parents?

Why hadn't she followed the rest of her family into music?

If she had, she never would have gotten herself into this.

So many people hurt, so many lives still hanging in the balance. She just wanted this to all be over, even if that meant losing everything.

“I was just doing a little research myself, but I'm heading home now,” she said, trying to infuse as much normalcy into her tone as she could but pretty sure she failed. Failed abysmally.

“I’ll see you tomorrow then,” Dora said with a warm smile and Ella’s confidence rose a little. If she’d fooled the receptionist, then maybe she could pull this off.

Maybe.

A huge, gigantic maybe.

After waving goodbye to Dora, she did her best to keep her steps even and slow. If she went running out of there, she’d only tip her hand and give away what was tucked inside her purse. If she wanted any chance at pulling this off, she had to play it cool, not alert anyone who might be watching the security cameras that anything was wrong.

Thankfully, no one on Athena Team was a suspect. That was the only thing she had working in her favor, and that was only going to last a little longer. As soon as one of her teammates checked on the safe and found the drug gone, they’d know. Know it was her. Know she was a traitor.

Betrayal was bitter on her tongue as she stepped out into the cold night. Since the whole subterfuge thing wasn’t her strong suit, she already had a cab waiting. The quicker she got out of the country the better.

The ride to the airport felt far too long. Even though she tried her best to fight against the urge, Ella kept failing and glancing out the windows, constantly expecting the shrill wail of sirens and flashing lights as police cars converged on the cab. Unless she could get out of the country, she was looking at spending the rest of her life locked up in a tiny cell.

If she was lucky.

If she wasn’t, she’d be shipped off to some CIA black site that hardly anybody knew about. There she’d have no rights, no way out. Her life would just be surviving torture after torture until, eventually, her heart gave out and she died.

She’d be praying for death if that was her future even though it was one she would deserve.

Because she deserved whatever she got, she wasn’t so far down the path she had chosen that she wasn’t painfully aware of that fact.

But even though she knew she was doing the wrong thing, she paid the cab driver, entered the airport, and checked in. Right or wrong, nothing was stopping her from getting on that plane and fleeing the country.

Nothing.

February 5 th

11:52 P.M.

Of all the ways Miguel Aguilar thought this whole mole at Prey mess would play out this was absolutely at the bottom of the barrel.

The only person at Prey who was less likely to betray their country than Ella Whitlock was possibly Cassie, and that was only because the woman was so young and so innocent it was impossible to believe that she had a single bad thought in her head. Ever.

But Ella was a close second.

Long blonde hair, dark lashes framing wide green eyes, the prettiest smile he’d ever seen. Ella was gorgeous, sweet, and smart, exactly the kind of woman he usually loved sweet talking into his bed. Not to hurt them, he was always clear that he wasn’t looking for a relationship, nothing serious or permanent. He was a playboy and lived up to that reputation, but he also liked a challenge. Putting in the work to woo a sweet woman into his bed was always harder than going after the ones who wore their sexuality confidently.

If things were different, if his brother hadn't fallen head over heels for one of Ella’s teammates, then maybe he would have tried his luck with her. See if he could have convinced her to give him one night, where he’d make her feel things she’d never experienced before.

Call him arrogant, but he was good in bed, knew his way around a woman’s body, and knew every button to press to make them lose their minds to bliss-filled pleasure. He would have done the same for Ella, only now things had changed.

Drastically.

“Are we sure about this?” he asked, looking around the conference room at Prey where no less than three SEAL teams were crammed around a table, along with six former SEALs who now ran Prey’s West Coast office. There was a lot of testosterone in the room and a lot of anger, too.

All of it was directed at a woman who wasn’t even there.

Who had fled the country supposedly with the only vial of the Reactivator in her possession.

Her plane ticket said she was bound for Mexico, and they all knew that Mexico was where the weapons trafficker who had bought the Reactivator from a mole at Prey was based.

It all looked so simple on paper. Ella had taken the drug and left the country. She worked for Prey, had been in the know from the beginning, and had the opportunity to alert Raul Castillo every time he was about to be raided, which was the only explanation of how the man constantly managed to evade capture.

He’d seen the empty safe with his own two eyes. All three other Athena Team members claimed that was where they kept the drug, the only other person aware of its location was the great Eagle Oswald himself. CEO and founder of Prey Security, the man had been a SEAL until an injury forced him into retirement. A billionaire, he’d decided to use his money to create a security firm that was the best of the best. There was no way a man with more money than he could ever use would need to sell a drug his company owned anyway for a measly five million dollars.

Five people knew where the drug was. One had been on the other side of the country when it was taken, the other three were at their homes with their boyfriends, so that only left one person who could have taken it.

One person who was here in the building.

Who was seen in the lab slipping it into her purse.

Who was seen walking through the halls.

Who was seen climbing into a cab.

Who had gotten on a flight out of the country.

Ella Whitlock.

It was her.

They knew it.

There was enough proof to have her locked away for the rest of her life for that alone, aside from everything else the mole at Prey had orchestrated.

Yet …

Miguel couldn’t shake the feeling that something didn't feel right. Something didn't sit right about this whole thing, he just couldn’t figure out what it was.

“Don’t see any other option,” Owen “Fox” LeGrand muttered. As the leader of the SEAL team and, by default, the leader of the West Coast offices and the two teams that worked out of it, it looked like he was taking this the hardest.

Although none of the others looked much less angry.

This was a hard betrayal for all of them to swallow.

Ryder “Spider” Flynn, Eric “Night” McNamara, Logan “Shark” Kirk, Grayson “Chaos” Simpson, and Charlie “King” Voss looked like they were seconds away from jumping onto planes and heading off to Mexico themselves to drag back their little traitor. It was a blow they would never really recover from, Miguel could only imagine how hard it would hit if one of the men on his team betrayed them.

Scarlett, Lucy, and Cassie all had red-rimmed eyes. All three of them sat with their men by their sides, a mixture of shock and anger on their faces. Of everyone, they had been betrayed the most. Not only had they trusted Ella as part of their team, worked with her every day, and created the drug with her, but they had all suffered unimaginable horrors at the hands of Raul Castillo.

Horrors they hadn't even had a chance to recover from yet.

Now they were faced with this and seeing the pain in their faces ignited a powerful anger inside him.

His big brother Luis had fallen in love with Cassie, which made her a little sister to him, which made her two teammates feel like family as well.

Nobody messed with his family and got away with it.

“Ella knew about the drug from the beginning,” Fox continued, addressing Tate Laurier—who had fallen in love with Scarlett Madden when she had been set up as the one who sold the drug to Raul in the first place—and Luis’ SEAL team, and a team led by Blake “Rocco” Wise, as well as Miguel’s own team. “Those emails that had Scarlett’s name on them, the other name on some of the others was hers. We all thought it was just the mole trying to set up the entire team so whoever ended up being kidnapped would take the fall.”

Now they knew differently.

The emails with Ella’s name were the original ones, the ones with Scarlett’s name were the plants.

“Her computer skills are top-notch, almost comparable to Raven and Olivia’s,” Fox added. Raven was Eagle’s sister, and Olivia was his wife, both were computer geniuses. “So she would have been able to set up the bombs, plant the emails, hack our systems, and tamper with the plane that almost killed Zander and Lucy.”

At that, Zander Madden, Scarlett’s twin brother and a former Delta Force operator who had supposedly died, tugged Lucy closer, wrapping his arms around her. Anger marred the man’s features, and there wasn’t a single person in the room who didn't mirror that same expression.

“When I was watching Scarlett, when I was struggling with my own doubt about what happened with my dad, I wondered if she could have been coerced somehow,” Tate said, leaning in to touch a kiss to Scarlett’s temple. “I wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice. As soon as we got the call that Ella was seen on camera taking the Reactivator, I made sure that someone was sent around to check on her family. They’re all fine. They haven’t been threatened in any way, so Ella didn't take the drug to protect anyone.”

“She took it because she’s the one who wanted to sell it all along,” Fox said, disdain in his tone.

“But I don’t get why Raul would go after the others then,” Miguel said. That was what was bothering him. While they didn't know for sure, they suspected the mole had sold the drug under the provision that they would help get one of the Athena Team members abducted since the mole themselves didn't have the formula. But if the mole was Ella, then surely she knew the formula, so why the need for all of this … drama?

Abductions, plane crashes, bombs, it was all so much for someone who could have just taken the vial and the formula and gotten on a plane to Mexico, handed it all over to the weapons dealer, and then taken their payout and disappeared.

By the time anyone realized what was going on they could have been in the wind.

They could have gotten away with it.

Instead, Ella—if they were to believe the evidence—had hung around, orchestrated abductions of each one of her teammates, only to then disappear with the drug.

It didn't make sense, and Miguel didn't like things that didn't make sense.

“We did wonder if perhaps there was more to it than that,” Fox replied. “Wondered if it was personal. If the mole had a grudge against Athena Team and wanted revenge of some sort and not just the money from helping Raul get his hands on the drug.”

If that was the case, Ella wasn’t just a traitor, she was an evil psycho who enjoyed inflicting pain and terror on the people who cared about her.