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A third man was waiting for him outside the open hatch as Keo hopped out of the helicopter. It was a mistake, and he grunted against a sudden surge of pain as he landed in a slight crouch. The still-spinning rotors swarmed the area with cold winds that made every inch of his exposed face sting.

They were in a field surrounded by grass that went up to his knees, but all he had to do was sniff the air to know they were next to the ocean. Keo breathed in the fresh breeze and tried not to think about the last time he was this close to the sea and who he had been with at the time.

One of his captors, maybe Beef Jerky Guy, pushed him in the back, and Keo stumbled forward. He ducked his head reflexively, the way people do without thinking when they exit a helicopter. Of course the rotors didn’t come close to slicing off his head, but it made him feel better anyway as he struggled across the hard ground, grass slapping at his legs.

He didn’t have to look far to see where the woman and the rest of his traveling companions had gone. They were up ahead, beyond the field and on a long stretch of beach. The men had spread out to stand guard while the woman had a radio to her lips, one hand shielding her eyes as she looked out into the ocean. He wasn’t sure what she was looking at because he couldn’t see anything out there except blue waters. Given that it was still midday, it didn’t take a genius to know he was staring at the Gulf of Mexico.

“Wanna go for a swim?” Beef Jerky Guy asked from behind him. “Wash all that crap off your face?”

“Sure. Maybe you can help me clean it off,” Keo said.

“Maybe if you had a pair of tits I might think about it.”

“You’re all heart, pal.”

“I’m not your pal, dude.”

“And I was saving up for that friendship bracelet, too.”

They were in a very isolated part of the coastline without anything that looked like civilization, much less houses, within sight on either sides of the beach. There were no hints of industry further inland and the beach was littered with seaweed and trash, along with fish carcasses. They were probably the only souls around for miles, which made it a pretty good spot for an extraction point.

The woman glanced over as Keo and his guards reached her. “Keep an eye on him. If he makes one wrong move, shoot him.”

Keo stopped next to her, the sunbaked sand sinking under his boots. “Now why would I do a stupid thing like that?”

“We should shoot him now, Erin,” Beef Jerky Guy said.

“Don’t say that,” Keo said. “What about that friendship bracelet we were going to get?”

“Shut up.”

“Is that a no?”

“Erin,” Beef Jerky Guy said, ignoring Keo. “This guy doesn’t know anything. Whoever he is, he probably killed Davis and Butch.”

“Not yet,” Erin said.

“Give me one reason.”

“I don’t have to give you a damn thing, Troy,” Erin said, and it was hard to miss the finality in her voice.

Troy grunted but didn’t press the issue.

Keo suppressed a smile, when the roar of a turbine engine revving up made him look back, just in time to see the helicopter rising slowly into the air. The man with the aviator shades sitting behind the machine gun waved at them, and Erin returned it.

“See you when we see you,” Erin said into her radio.

“Have a safe trip,” a male voice answered.

It didn’t take the helicopter long to turn into a small dot in the sky, and soon Keo could barely hear its
whup-whup-whup
.

“Where’s it going?” Keo asked.

Erin ignored him and said, “Looks like we’re early.”

“That’s a first,” the man standing next to Troy, whose name Keo had never caught, said.

“ETA twenty minutes. Until then, I want the area secured. The last thing we need is someone sneaking up on us again.”

“Definitely wouldn’t want that,” Troy said. “What about him?”

“He’s not going anywhere.”

Footsteps faded behind Keo, along with Troy and the second man’s presence.

In the next few seconds, Keo ran through all the possible escape scenarios, but each time he always came to the same conclusion: Mercer. Find Mercer. And the only way to do that was to let these people take him to the man.

Should be easy enough…as long as I don’t get killed on the way over.

“So who’s picking us up?” he asked.

“You’ll see,” Erin said.

“A boat?”

“Unless you can swim very, very far.”

“I happen to be a very good swimmer.”

She ignored him, said instead, “What were you doing back at the barn?”

“Hunting game.”

“With two semi-automatic rifles,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“I was hunting big game.”

“There is no big game. Not anymore.”

“I’m an eternal optimist.”

She smirked, though he couldn’t tell if that was amusement or annoyance. Maybe a little of both. “You had Davis’s iPod on you.”

“There’s a lot of iPods just sitting around out there. What makes you think the one I had belonged to this Davis guy?”

She fixed him with a long look, and he was mostly convinced she didn’t believe a single thing he was saying. “It doesn’t matter if you don’t want to tell me now. We have people who are very good at extracting information. You’ll be telling me everything anyway, including what you were doing back there.”

“I told you—”

“I know, hunting game.”

“I get the feeling you don’t believe me.”

“You know what I think?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“I think you killed Davis and Butch, just like Troy said. Maybe Luke and Bill, too, but that’s a bit of a stretch. What I can’t figure out is what you were doing out there at the barn. Alone. You had to have seen the others pushing the helicopter. That’s six people. And you still moved on us anyway.” She squinted her eyes at him. “You’re either the dumbest man alive, or you’re looking to get yourself killed. So which one is it?”

Can’t it be both?
he thought, but said with as much conviction as he could muster, “Neither. I was just curious what you guys were doing out there. If I had known people were going to start shooting at me, I would have kept going.”

“You’re going to stick to that?”

“It’s the truth.”

“Uh huh,” she said before turning back to the endless blue waters in front of them. “Of course, I’m not discounting the possibility you’re one of those guys with more balls than brain cells.”

“Have you been talking to my old girlfriends?”

She ignored him again, said, “You know how I know you were looking for us?”

“Even though I wasn’t?”

“You never asked who we were. That tells me you already knew.”

Well, shit
, Keo thought, and wondered how long he was going to be able to keep this up before Erin finally agreed with Troy that it wasn’t worth taking him with them.

E
RIN HAD SAID
the ETA was twenty minutes, but it was more like seventeen before the gray dot appeared in the horizon, followed by the slowly growing whine of twin outboard motors. Keo knew it was some kind of offshore fishing boat before it got big enough for him to make out its V-shaped hull. As soon as the boat appeared, the others began converging back on his and Erin’s location.

“Are we all going to fit in there?” Keo asked.

“We’ll make do,” Erin said. “And if not…”

“I know, I go over the side, right?”

She smiled but didn’t confirm or deny.

As the boat neared, Keo counted two guys onboard—one behind the helm and the other squatting at the bow with a rifle. On cue, the radio in Erin’s hand squawked and a male voice, almost entirely drowned out by the motors on the other end, shouted, “Any trouble?”

“You’re clear,” Erin said into the radio.

“Roger that,” the man answered.

Erin clipped the radio back to her hip. “I’m surprised you haven’t tried anything yet.”

Keo held up his bound hands. “Hard to try anything like this.”

“Still, knowing what you did, where you’re going, and what’s going to happen when you get there…”

“Maybe you’re assuming too much. Maybe I didn’t do the things you think I did, and as a result I have nothing to fear.”

“Sure, whatever you say, Keo.”

A hand clamped down on Keo’s shoulder, and he smelled the familiar odor of beef jerky in the air as Troy said, “Cheer up, buddy. It’s a nice, long trip back to The Ranch. Plenty to see and do on the way.”

“Hey, as long as you’re around I’m sure it’ll be a great time, Troy,” Keo said.

“That’s the spirit.”

Keo looked over at Erin, but she was busy watching a couple of the men slinging their weapons and stepping into the lapping waters of the Gulf of Mexico to wait for the boat. Keo focused on the moment—the here and now.

And right now, he was alive.

Hurt, sore, and bleeding, but alive. And as long as he stayed that way, he could still finish the mission: Find Mercer, then kill him.

Who’s Captain Optimism now?

This guy…

7

LARA

T
HERE WERE TWO OF THEM
, and they were olive drab, not black; though in the darkness of the night, they might as well be black.

“Jon boats,” Maddie whispered next to her.

“Jon boats?” Lara repeated.

“That’s what those are called. Looks like they have trolling motors in the back, but they’re keeping them quiet and rowing the old-fashioned way so they won’t make any noise.”

The better to sneak up on us
, she thought, watching the two crafts as they glided smoothly across the water. If not for the half-moon, she wouldn’t have been able to see them at all. It was pretty clear where they were headed—right toward them.

The
Trident
was anchored like it had been the last few days with its lights shut off, which was standard operating procedure, because despite their distance from shore, it wasn’t a good idea to be the only lights blinking out here. But SOP or not, they had been spotted and had been since last night, maybe even longer. These men approaching them now knew exactly where they were and how to reach them without being seen or heard.

Or they thought they did, anyway. They were about to get a very rude awakening.

“What are those things made of?” Lara asked.

“Usually aluminum,” Maddie said. “Sometimes fiberglass or wood.”

“Wood?”

“But usually aluminum.”

There were three figures in each boat, with one sitting forward at the bow while the two behind him slowly rowed them forward with paddles. They were likely armed, since you didn’t try to sneak up on an anchored yacht in the middle of the ocean in the dead of night without bad intentions.

The radio resting between her and Maddie squawked—it was just a small sound with the volume turned almost all the way down, but it still made enough of an impression that she flinched a little bit.

“Wonder what they’re doing all the way out here at this time of the night,” Blaine said through the radio. He was somewhere above and to the left of them, hidden by the darkness of the bridge. In case they needed to abandon the charade, she wanted him up there and ready. She wanted everyone ready.

Just in case, right, Will?

“Maybe they just want to borrow some sugar,” Bonnie said. She was positioned on the upper deck and tasked with watching the other side of the boat in case there were more surprises coming their way.

“I guess we should greet them all friendly like,” Carly said. She was on the main deck behind them, keeping an eye on everyone else. “That would be the Christian thing to do.”

“Fuck that,” Blaine said.

“Hey, there are children present.”

“Oops.”

“Sucker,” Carly said. “Everyone’s locked inside their cabins, snug as bugs.” Lara could hear a slight echo from Carly’s radio, which meant she was in the hallway outside the rooms, probably pacing nervously back and forth and doing her very best not to let it show in her voice. “Just make sure to keep the collateral damage limited to outside, okay guys?”

“That’s going to depend on them,” Bonnie said.

“Shoot first and never mind the questions; isn’t that the Ranger way?” Blaine asked.

“Sounds familiar,” Carly said.

Lara picked up the radio and keyed it. “That’s enough chitchat. We’re going radio silent from now on. Everyone, wait for my signal.”

She had let them go back and forth because they needed it; there was something unnerving about sitting (or standing) around in the dark waiting for men with guns to slowly, oh so slowly, reach you. All that anxiety needed a release, and talking or joking always seemed to do the trick. She’d seen it work for Danny and Will plenty of times.

Next to her, Maddie was peering over the railing. “I still just count six. All armed, probably. I don’t know about you, but I don’t believe they’re coming here to borrow some sugar.”

Lara gave her a wry smile, then picked up her M4 and checked that the safety was off for the third time since she arrived at the spot next to Maddie on the boat’s port side. They were almost exactly in the middle of the main deck, hidden behind a wall section of the railing that provided plenty of cover in case of a firefight. The better shooting position was on the upper deck, and she already had Bonnie and Benny up there right now.

Maddie fidgeted and switched up her grip on her own carbine. “It’s times like these I miss having the Ranger around.”

“He’ll be back soon enough. Then you’ll be complaining about his bad jokes.”

“Yeah, probably.” She paused for a moment, then, “Too bad Keo didn’t come back with you. We could sure use him, too.”

She shared Maddie’s regret and wondered what Keo was doing right now. The last time she saw him, he and Jordan were on their way back to T18 to get the oft-talked about but never-seen Gillian out of Mercer’s destructive path. Had they made it? Where were they now? He knew exactly how to contact her, so why hadn’t he?

You still alive out there, Keo?

She pushed the question away and peeked over the railing. Without binoculars, the boats looked more like two long, black shapes bobbing slightly up and down against the ocean currents. They were still far enough away that she couldn’t hear the
slosh-slosh
of their paddles moving against the water, but close enough that she noticed a slight pang of anticipation and maybe, just maybe, a little bit of fear, which was something she hadn’t felt in a long time since coming out here.