Squinting to see through the smoke, he searched the sea of running bodies. And caught sight of her on the ground, fifty yards away.

Panic closed in. Panic that she was already dead. That he wouldn’t get the revenge that had been driving him. That she’d never have to pay for what she’d done.

He pushed his way through the crowd. Screams and sirens echoed in his ears, and burning smoke filled his lungs. The heat of the flames singed the hair on his arms as he drew close to the point of impact. Someone knocked into his shoulder, sending him spinning. He stepped on a chunk of cement with his bad leg and nearly went down. Blinding pain shot to his skull, but he pressed on, pulling his T-shirt up over his mouth to stop the smoke from pouring into his lungs.

He felt like he’d been dropped into a war zone. When he finally reached Eve, she lay motionless on the ground, covered in a layer of dust and bleeding from multiple scrapes and cuts across her skin.

He knelt at her side, leaned in close, and listened for her breathing. Hoping, praying.

There!

She wasn’t dead. He checked her body and found—luckily—that the wounds weren’t life threatening. She’d have a hell of a headache when she awoke, and a few of her cuts needed stitching, but she wasn’t dead, just unconscious. Relief rippled through him. Relief and a pressing reminder that they needed to get the hell out of there before the situation changed. Glancing around, he spotted her bag five feet away, covered in soot. He reached for it, then hefted her into his arms.

She was dead weight as he carried her past rescue vehicles now flooding the street, past police and fire crews racing to the devastation. The burn in his leg flamed all over. A paramedic called out to him, motioning for him to bring her to him. Zane ignored the guy and darted behind a burning car lying on its side.

He didn’t doubt the explosion had been for her. As he shifted direction and headed down a side street for the waterfront where he’d parked earlier, he ground his teeth together. Someone was obviously sending her a message. But then, what the hell did she expect after dealing with terrorists and selling out her country? He’d caught her red-handed, and even that hadn’t stopped her. The woman should have known it was only a matter of time before her actions caught up with her and someone put a hit out on her.

Someone besides him.

3

Every inch of Eve’s body hurt. She tried to roll to her side but couldn’t. A moan echoed somewhere close. A moan, she realized, that had come from her.

“You’re finally awake.”

Eve stilled at the sound of the voice somewhere close. She tried to pry her eyelids open, but they weren’t working. And doing even just that made her whimper in pain.

Something soft brushed her forehead. A haze had descended on her brain. She couldn’t place the voice, but she recognized it. And she still couldn’t move. Why couldn’t she move?

“Don’t try to get up, beautiful. Wouldn’t want you hurting yourself so early now, would we?”

Little by little, her brain came back on line. The haze slowly dissipated, clearing from her mind in wisps and curls. She gathered her energy and was finally able to break her eyelids apart. Pain radiated through her skull, but she focused on the fuzzy orange light ahead. Tried to see through it.

“Always were an overachiever,” the male voice said. “Guess that hasn’t changed.”

Who was he? Why couldn’t she answer him? And why weren’t her arms and legs working? She struggled. Managed to move her foot, just a fraction of an inch, but at least it was something. Footsteps echoed, fading in the distance. Eve stilled, squinted to see more clearly. A dark shape seemed to move somewhere ahead. Then the shape grew larger, and the sound of footsteps increased in intensity.

“Here,” he said. “Drink this.”

A straw pressed against her mouth. Her throat suddenly dry, Eve drew the straw between her lips and sucked.

Juice. Apple.

She moaned at the taste. Sucked again. God, that was good.

The straw was pulled from between her lips before she was ready to let it go. A click echoed as the cup was set down. Eve rolled her head from side to side. Her neck was moving now. And the orange blur was sharpening. The dark shadow in front of her becoming clearer.

“That’s it,” the man said, his voice closer, the heat of his breath sliding over her cheeks. Mint and musk. Those were the scents that bombarded her. Familiar scents. She just didn’t know from where. “You’ve been out for quite a while. Thought maybe I’d been wrong and that I should have taken you to a hospital. Glad to see now that I wasn’t. A hospital would just cause all kinds of problems we don’t need.”

Eve stilled at the bite she heard in his last words. A bite that indicated he was not friendly.

Dread curled in her stomach. She didn’t know where she was, but she needed to get away. Basic instinct told her staying would lead to something bad.

She tried to reach for her gun, only her arms weren’t working. Her legs, yes. Her head, yes. But not her arms. Why weren’t her arms working?

“It amazes me you were this careless, beautiful.” Fingers brushed over her temple, pushing hair back from her face. “After all, you trained with the best, didn’t you?”

Everything inside Eve went cold. Those words were familiar. She tried to focus the blur into a single image. Could only see dark hair, dark eyes, and a fuzzy face. Tried to remember where she’d heard those words before.

“Of course,” he went on, “you don’t work with the best anymore, do you, Juliet? Should I even call you Juliet anymore? No, why don’t I call you by your real name? What do you think, Evie? Think that’ll work? Yeah, I think it will. I think for what I’ve got planned for you, tossing out all the old shit is the best way to go.”

Eve’s pulse shot into the stratosphere. Her hazy vision cleared just as the sound of his voice registered. She sucked in a breath when Sawyer’s—no, Zane Archer’s—face came into view. A tanned, scraped, and extremely pissed Zane Archer.

“You,” she managed in a raspy voice. “How . . . ?”

“How is irrelevant, isn’t it?” His brow lowered, and a dark look crept into his eyes. “What you should be concerned with is the why. But then, you know the why, don’t you, Evie?”

Memories of her phone call to Zane nearly a year before spiraled through her mind. As did the weeks and months they’d spent together on that op in Beirut.

“Some of it’s coming back to you now, isn’t it?” He eased away. Behind him, dark wood beams came into sight. “I have to run out for something. I’ll let you think long and hard until I get back.”

He leaned close again, and she sucked in a breath. Something sharp stabbed into her arm where it was pinned above her head. Metal jingled. His fingers rubbed the stinging spot on her arm, and then his face came into view once more. “This should work pretty quickly.” Before she could turn her head, he slapped duct tape over her mouth. “I’ll be back in a few, beautiful. Don’t get into any trouble while I’m gone.”

Footsteps echoed. Keys clinked, followed by clicks. Three.

A door pulled open but didn’t close.

“By the way, sweetheart,” Archer said from a distance, “you look good. Better than I expected. Even banged up, you’re still beautiful. My damn luck, huh?”

The door snapped closed, the sound echoing in Eve’s mind, followed by three clicks again as she was locked in. She didn’t know how she’d gotten here or why she was with Archer, but something in the back of her head told her she needed to remember before it was too late.

She struggled, tried to sit up, still couldn’t. Metal clanked behind her head. Pain raced along her wrists. Her hands were cuffed above, she realized, and . . .

Her vision grew dark along the edges. The wood beams above blurred once more. Her heart raced as she drew deep breaths through her nose and tried to calm herself. He’d drugged her. The son of a bitch had drugged her.

Pay attention to your surroundings. Think, dammit.

She was lying on a bed. The room was big. She could tell from the way sound echoed that it was larger than a regular apartment and that there were no carpets on the floor. Was she in a barn? A loft apartment, maybe? A warehouse?

Before she could decide, darkness spiraled in, and that fuzzy, light feeling that signaled her time was almost up fogged her brain.

She had no idea where she was, but one thing was clear. If Archer was here, it was someplace she shouldn’t—couldn’t—be. Her stomach twisted, hard. Considering how much he hated her, she’d be safer with a group of jihad terrorists than she was now with him.


Zane wanted to give the drug time to work. And he needed to get away from Juliet—shit, he had to stop thinking of her as that and call her by her real name—before he forgot what the hell he needed to do next.

Evelyn. Eve. Fitting name considering a temptress with the same name had been Adam’s downfall in the Garden of Eden.

His leg throbbed as he leaned against the dreary hallway wall, tugged a bag of M&M’s from his pocket, and ripped off one corner. Shaking a few into his hand, he popped them in his mouth and chewed. Not the pain pill he wanted, but enough. For now. And at least out here he didn’t have to listen to those sex-kitten mewing sounds she’d been making when she’d awakened. The ones that reminded him way too much of the sounds she’d made when he’d been inside her. God knew, the last thing he needed to remember right now was how good that had felt. How tight she’d been. How—back then—she’d been the only thing he’d wanted.