Chapter One
October 2nd
6:19 P.M.
“We’ve got eyes on us.”
Great.
Just great.
Damn, he hated this place.
Not the market specifically but the country they were in.
Every time they came here something went wrong.
Dominick “Domino” Tanner would be perfectly happy never to set foot in Somalia again. Not even four months ago, he and his team had been captured, held for two weeks, and tortured before finally being rescued. Then only weeks after that, they’d been back in this hellhole rescuing a teammate’s woman who had been abducted and tortured.
In his mind, death and pain ruled this country, and he couldn’t wait to get out of it.
“Domino, on your five o’clock,” Luca “Bear” Jackson—Prey Security’s Alpha Team leader—added.
This wasn’t his first rodeo. At thirty-four, he’d spent most of his life serving in the military and then working hard to become a member of the elite Delta Force before moving to the private sector and joining Prey. The military had been the only way out of the life his family had planned for him, and he took his job seriously.
Many would say too seriously.
He might keep people at a distance, but there was one thing everyone knew about him; he was fiercely loyal and protective of those he considered his.
The weapons trafficking ring operating out of Somalia had been responsible for almost killing his team and almost killing Prey’s psychiatrist and was linked to a plot to overthrow the American government. That plot had almost gotten Bear’s wife killed, and Asher “Mouse” Whitman’s wife and daughter abducted.
There was nothing that would stop him from destroying anyone and everyone involved in this entire mess. If whoever was watching his team was one of them, Domino would gladly make sure they suffered, but not before he got every ounce of intel out of them that they could.
By whatever means necessary.
He was completely done with this. Every time they thought they had the pieces of the puzzle clicked into place, they found a whole other box they hadn’t known about full of pieces that needed to be figured out.
Domino would love a chance to expel some of the anger that raged inside him. That fear that he would turn out like his family had been festering ever since the head injuries he’d sustained when he and his team had been held captive here in Somalia. Fear that he was one moment of lost self-control away from being everything he had spent so long fighting to get away from.
Maybe it was time to just embrace his genetics and stop fighting against them.
Starting with whoever was following his team.
Bring it on.
“Description?” he asked into his comms. If he turned to scope out whoever was watching them, he’d tip the person off to the fact that they were on to him. For now, he wanted the guy to think he had the upper hand.
“Hard to tell, they’re in a vehicle,” Antonio “Arrow” Eden replied, his voice tight with barely controlled anger. Antonio’s girlfriend was Piper Hamilton, Prey’s psychiatrist who had been abducted by a former Prey operative turned weapons dealer and brought to Somalia where she was tortured and almost killed before they could get to her.
Piper was the sweetest woman, brave and strong. She’d fought through so much and reminded him of someone he used to know. Another sweet woman who had fought through a lot of horrible things, only to wind up gone far too soon.
This was the first time Arrow had been away from Piper since they’d rescued her almost eight weeks ago, and it had been hard for both of them. If someone was tailing them, ready to cause more trouble for the couple, they had to be stopped.
“Vehicle description?” he asked.
“Black SUV,” Arrow replied.
“Been on our tail since we hit the market,” Christian “Surf” Bailey added.
“What’s the plan?” Caleb “Brick” Quinn asked.
They were here following up on a lead on a couple of the men who had escaped the compound when Prey raided it to rescue Piper. Thanks to an undercover Prey operative who had access to the weapons traffickers, they had made it through the explosives and guards lining the perimeter without losing a single man. The traffickers hadn’t been as lucky.
Nathan Miller had been working undercover, building his rep as a source of weapons for almost two years, yet when he’d recognized Piper, he had risked everything to help get her out. He had paid for that choice with his life.
No one else was dying.
“One of us circles around and moves in from behind. The rest of us keep doing what we’re doing,” Bear said.
“I’ll move in,” Domino said without hesitation. They’d been here for three days already, and so far, there had been no sign of the men from the trafficking ring who had supposedly been spotted here in the market.
Three days of waiting, watching, and he was about ready to lose his mind. He needed to be doing something. Needed to try to work out the anger that was always simmering just beneath the surface before he lost control of it, and it bubbled over.
“We want him alive,” Bear said, and it ate at Domino that his team no longer seemed to trust him the way they used to.
His fault.
Right now, his anger wasn’t under control.
“Understood,” he muttered, frustrated with himself for being annoyed at Bear all but calling him on the anger his entire team knew he was battling with.
Moving casually wasn’t an easy task for a man like him. Not just because of his size, but because he was an intense guy, overly focused, it was hard for him to relax and let go. Scratch that, it was all but impossible.
Purchasing whatever it was he had in his hand, his attention was already so focused on the mission he couldn’t even remember which stall he was at, Domino slipped it into his pocket and strolled forward. The market was made up of dozens of stalls and hundreds of people, men, women, and children all buzzed about. It should be easy enough to fade into the landscape, especially since he knew his team would make sure they drew the tango’s attention.
Since he had to move cautiously and look like he was just another man with nowhere he had to be, it took much longer than he would have liked to circle through the market and around to the other side of the road.
As soon as he turned the corner, he saw the black SUV. It was parked toward the end of the market, but there were enough people around that there was no way he could grab the person and disappear.
“Going to get in the backseat, get them to drive out of here,” he said into the comms.
“Abandoned apartment building about three klicks away, it’s remote,” Mouse said.
Strolling down the street, Domino slipped into the backseat of the vehicle like he belonged there at the same time that he covered his face and palmed his weapon.
Before the driver could even process what was happening, he had his weapon pressed to the back of their head.
“Drive,” he growled.
A very feminine gasp caught him by surprise.
Not what he’d been expecting at all.
Not that women couldn’t be every bit as evil as men, but there had been no indications there were any females involved in this particular weapons trafficking ring.
“Drive,” he repeated when she didn’t move.