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JD Maddox blinked in confusion at the motorcycle mechanic.

Although, he supposed having a gun aimed at his head was just the icing on the week’s shitty-assed cake.

Nothing had gone right since he told his superiors inside the cartel that it was time to move on the FBI’s assets. First, Cooper Greenlee’s sister had been at her brother’s house. Second, Fat Eddy had fucked up the hit by getting his jollies off before finishing the job. Third, Knox and Sabrina had escaped north. And finally, that damned blond bitch hadn’t left Knox Rollins alone for one second so that JD could inject him with the poison he had in a tiny syringe in his pocket.

And now this , he thought angrily, having reached his wit’s end.

He had no idea why the mechanic had suddenly gone batshit, but he had neither the time nor patience for it. He had to find a way to get that poison into Knox before the sonofabitch turned state’s evidence.

“Stop waving that iron in my face,” he called across the lobby to the mechanic. The air inside the cavernous space was so thick with tension that it was hard to breathe. “Have you lost your damned mind?”

“No.” Britt Rollins shook his head. “But you take one step in the wrong direction, and you’ll lose yours. I’ll splatter your gray matter all over the wall behind you, Wilkes.”

The name was spat across the tiled floor like a venomous snake. JD felt the impact of it like a pair of fangs lodged deep in his chest.

Wilkes…

Not Maddox.

How the hell does he know?

“Drop your weapon!” the guard at the front desk shouted at the younger Rollins brother again.

“He’s crazy!” JD hollered, pointing at the mechanic. His thoughts spiraled, a whirlpool of disbelief and panic. “Take him down before he takes one of us down!”

“No!” Agent O’Toole cried while Keplar yelled, “Belay that order!”

JD didn’t care for the speculation in his partner’s eyes when Keplar turned to him and asked lowly, “What’s he talking about? Why did he call you Wilkes?”

“H-how the hell should I know?” JD sputtered, turning back to find the weapon in Rollins’s hand was rock steady.

But it was the certainty in Rollins’s voice that terrified him more than anything. The certainty and the facts he stated. Facts no one outside of a handful of folks very high up in the drug trafficking syndicate knew. “Jordan Ray Wilkes. That’s your real name, right? The one your mother gave you at birth? The one you used before the cartel set you up to be their inside man?”

Sonofabitch!

JD’s meticulously constructed life was gone, obliterated in a single moment.

But how? How does the mechanic know when even the FBI is in the dark?

Of course, the answer to that question was of little importance. What was most important was what JD did in the next thirty seconds.

His cover was blown, and his true identity was revealed. The jig was up, and fifteen years of carefully crafted work now circled the drain.

Time to GTFO.

If he could make it out of the building, he had a chance. He knew the FBI’s protocols. He could beat them.

His pulse thundered in his ears as he looked to his left at Julia O’Toole. She might be just the ticket. He’d seen how she kept glancing at Britt Rollins on the flight from Traverse City to Chicago. The blond fed had a thing for the mechanic.

The question was, did the mechanic have a thing for her? And would that thing be enough to stay the bastard’s hand?

Only one way to find out.

Grabbing Julia’s wrist, JD yanked her in front of him. In the same move, he pulled the syringe from his pocket.

O’Toole gasped, but the sound was cut short when he pressed the cold steel of the needle against the tender skin of her neck.

“No!” Britt Rollins yelled at the same time Keplar snarled lowly, “You motherfucker!” His pudgy hand reached for his pistol. “It was you ? You’re the one who gave up my assets?”

“Don’t even think about it, Ryan,” JD spat, using Keplar’s first name. No point in standing on ceremony now. “You so much as twitch, and I’ll shove this shit into her veins. She’ll be dead in sixty seconds.”

“Why?” Keplar demanded, his face red as the proverbial beet. “Why would you turn on the bureau?”

JD snorted. “I never turned on the bureau, you idiot.” There was no use denying it. The cat was out of the bag, and it wasn’t getting shoved back inside. Besides, it felt good to inform Keplar he’d been partnered with a cartel plant. It felt good letting the arrogant asshole know he’d been duped from the jump. “Don’t you get it? I was never with the bureau. I was always with the cartel.”

Keplar blinked rapidly as if he couldn’t comprehend that one simple truth.

“You so much as prick her skin, and I’ll plant lead into your brainpan,” Rollins snarled, still steadily aiming in JD’s direction even though O’Toole now blocked a clean shot.

JD laughed, but there wasn’t a drop of humor in it. “You think you’re good enough to hit me and miss Little Miss Human Shield here?”

Rollins didn’t need to say anything. He didn’t pull his trigger, and that was answer enough.

“You knew Knox was innocent all along,” Keplar gritted through his teeth, taking forever to figure out what everyone else in the lobby had surmised when JD grabbed the blond. “You knew he was innocent because you were the one who blew his cover. And yet you were gung-ho to help me find him. Why ?”

JD chanced a glance at his former partner in exasperation. It was clear he needed to spell things out. “I knew if you didn’t find him and kill him in your hurry to mete out justice, you’d haul him in, and I’d get the chance to give him a heart attack with this lovely little elixir concocted by our own Central Intelligence Agency. I’ve been told it denatures in the body in under an hour and therefore can’t be detected on autopsy. So helping you catch him was a win-win for me. Either you’d do the dirty work, or I would. But the end result would be Knox Rollins in a body bag and unable to tell a jury what he knows.”

“You’re a sonofabitch,” Keplar snarled.

“Takes one to know one, asshole.” JD knew it was childish, but he couldn’t resist getting in a dig. He’d been eating the shit Keplar fed him for months, and, in an odd way, it felt good not to have to pretend to kowtow to the fat fuck.

“Get back,” Keplar told Sabrina and Knox, motioning with his meaty hand. “Back toward the guard desk and?—”

“I don’t think so.” JD pressed the needle harder against O’Toole’s neck, hard enough that she whimpered in fear. “I’m the one calling the shots here.”

His breaths came in short, ragged gasps, his mind flying through the next steps. The mechanic was armed. Keplar was armed. O’Toole and the guard were both armed. JD’s first order of business was to change all that, to restack the odds in his favor.

“Take out your weapon, Agent O’Toole,” he whispered close to her ear. “Two fingers only.”

She’d instinctively lifted her hands in front of her the moment she felt the needle at her throat. Now, he saw them shake.

“Nice and easy,” he coached her as she slowly reached into her jacket with one hand.

The lobby was so quiet that he could have heard a pin drop. He did hear the guard’s ragged breathing and the snick as O’Toole thumbed off the snap on her holster.

She used her thumb and forefinger to free the weapon.

“Very good,” he praised, wondering if that was her heart he was feeling beating hard or his own. Maybe both. “Now, drop it on the floor and kick it across the room.”

She did as instructed, and he felt a little spurt of satisfaction when the pistol came to rest against the far wall.

Keeping his eye on Rollins—the man’s finger hadn’t so much as twitched on the trigger —he turned slightly toward Keplar.

“Your turn, Ryan.” He did his best to regulate his breaths since he couldn’t stop the thundering of his heart. He needed to get out. And quick . Because he might have the situation under control now, but that could change in a heartbeat if one more person walked into the lobby. “Take out your pistol and send it over to join O’Toole’s.”

He could see the hesitation on his former partner’s face. He’d worked with Keplar long enough to know that taking orders from a junior agent—even in this circumstance—grated. But, eventually, Keplar pulled out his gun.

The older man’s knees cracked when he bent to place the six-shooter on the floor. They cracked again when he stood and gingerly kicked the weapon away.

It didn’t sail to the far wall like O’Toole’s had. But it was out of reach, and that’s really all JD wanted.

“Now you,” JD snarled at the mechanic.

“You’re not going to inject her,” Britt Rollins grumbled. “You know if you do, I’ll shoot you.”

JD’s galloping heart stuttered. Had he read the situation wrong? Did Rollins not share Agent O’Toole’s softer feelings?

Again, there’s only one way to find out.

“Is that a risk you’re willing to take?” he challenged as he subtly, ever so gently tightened his grip on the syringe.

The mechanic’s eagle-eyed gaze sharpened. JD knew he’d hit the nail on the head when, with a harsh curse, Rollins crouched and placed his gun on the floor before kicking it toward the far wall.

JD couldn’t resist getting in one good jab. “That’s a good little grease monkey.” He winked before transferring his attention to the guard.

He wasn’t actually concerned the man at the desk would shoot him. The asshole’s hands were shaking so badly that even if he squeezed his trigger, JD figured his shot would veer off in some crazy direction.

Still…the twitchy fuck would have the upper hand if he was the only one armed. And JD needed to be the one with the upper hand if this was going to work.

“You too.” He hitched his chin toward the uniformed man. “Drop your weapon.”

The guard glanced around as if looking for permission from the others.

“Don’t look at them,” JD snapped. “Look at me. And do as you’re told or any death that happens today will be on your hands.”

The guard’s large Adam’s apple bobbed as he gingerly placed his weapon atop the desk.

“Now, back away with your hands in the air,” JD commanded.

Once the guard obeyed, he glanced around the room at all the hands lifted in the air.

Progress , he thought, and then he moved on to the next stage of his plan.

“Right. Now, I’m the only one who will be moving, capiche? If one of you fuckers so much as blinks before I make it to the front door, Agent O’Toole gets it in the throat.”

“Go ahead and run like the rat you are, Wilkes,” Rollins taunted, his voice dripping with malice. “You won’t get far. Not from me.”

“Not from me either,” Keplar swore. His face was shiny with sweat.

JD figured his former partner was about ten seconds away from having a massive coronary. And that’d be just fine. One less shithead to deal with.

“I do enjoy a good game of cat and mouse,” he sneered as he shuffled sideways, keeping his back to the wall of windows and dragging O’Toole with him.

An SUV was parked out front. They had called for it earlier to transport Knox and Sabrina to a safe house. Now, it would be his getaway vehicle.

He’d need to ditch it within a mile or two. No doubt it came equipped with a tracker. But as long as he put some distance between himself and the field office, he could disappear into the city.

It was funny. Most people thought when criminals went on the run, they chose to vanish inside dense forests. But the truth was a big city—and the millions of faces inside it—offered far better camouflage.

With the cartel’s help, and with the money he’d squirreled away over the last decade and a half, he could cross an ocean and buy himself a new face, a new life, and a new name.

It wasn’t how he’d hoped to end his career as a federal. He’d hoped to keep playing his part until he could retire with a government pension and the cartel’s cash. But he’d always known discovery was a possibility. And he’d planned accordingly.

He just needed to escape this fucking lobby.

The glass doors leading to the street seemed a million miles away. He could feel the seconds ticking down, the world closing around him. His hands were clammy, his mind a blur of calculations. Each step toward the exit felt heavier than the last, but he couldn’t stop. He couldn’t falter even though Agent O’Toole wasn’t exactly cooperating.

She kept tripping over her duty shoes. Whether that was because she was being intentionally rebellious or because she was clumsy with fear, he couldn’t say. Either way, he snarled in her ear, “Pick up your damn feet, woman.”

What he silently added was, I refuse to die here. Not today.

He was almost to the door—and a bright burst of victory fired through his veins—when O’Toole suddenly became a dead weight.

He struggled to keep hold of her. She was just a little thing, after all. But even a little thing was too much for him to handle one-handed.

She hit the ground like a sack of rocks, and the room exploded into chaos.

Keplar and Britt Rollins raced for their weapons. Sabrina and Knox dashed toward the safety of the elevator bank with the auburn-haired behemoth hot on their heels. But it was the guard who, surprisingly, sprung into action and took the first shot.

Boom!

JD heard the pistol’s report at the same time he saw the muzzle flash from the corner of his eye. He immediately realized he’d underestimated the man.

The force of the bullet punched into his thigh like a molten hammer. The impact had the syringe flying out of his hand and sent him sprawling as agony shot through him, white-hot and relentless.

His hand instinctively pressed against the wound. Warm blood bubbled up between his fingers as a sticky, scarlet flood oozed down his pant leg.

His vision blurred. His head swam. Fragments of his life surged to the surface—fractured memories of his mother introducing him to the cartel’s kingpin, long nights spent hammering out his new identity, and the beautiful line of zeros stacked up behind the lead number in his offshore bank account because the cartel had been very generous to him over the years.

The wound wasn’t fatal.

He could still get to the money.

He could still make it out of this.

He pushed to his feet and… Boom! A second shot rang out.

Bracing himself for the impact, he blinked when it didn’t come. Instead, a scream tore through the lobby. He turned to see Agent Julia O’Toole grip her chest as a dark stain bloomed beneath her blouse.

The guard’s luck had run out. His aim was no longer true.

That worked out fine for JD since Britt Rollins roared his dismay alongside Agent Douglas. Both men ran for Agent O’Toole. Neither cared about JD or the fact he’d regained his feet.

He could count his heartbeats roaring in his ears, fast and furious. His fingers trembled as his blood-slicked hand found the door handle. Freedom was just a breath away.

I made it!

Another explosion shattered the air.

This time, when he felt it—the searing, devastating impact between his shoulder blades—he knew it was over. He knew he was over.

The bullet tore through muscle and bone before erupting out of his chest in a red mist. The iron-rich smell of his own blood filled his nostrils. And the force of the impact flung him forward.

He crumpled to the ground, half in and half out of the doorway.

The cool afternoon air kissed his cheek, mocking the warmth that quickly drained from his body.

Strange. From the very beginning, he’d known he’d been playing a dangerous game. From the very beginning, he’d known that game could end in his death. But call it vanity or arrogance or pride— hell, call it all three —but he’d truly believed he’d make it out alive.

How did this happen? How did I end up here?

He’d never know the answers to those questions. And as his vision dimmed, he barely registered the heavy footsteps pounding toward him. Then, a dark shadow fell over him, and he had just enough strength to flip from his side to his back.

The first thing his waning eyesight registered was the raised weapon. Smoke coiled lazily from the barrel. The second thing he saw was…

Ryan Keplar.

As his life’s blood ebbed away, mercifully taking his searing agony with it, he locked eyes with the man who had just signed his death warrant. Keplar’s face was a mask of resolve, devoid of any regret.

Not that JD expected any. Keplar was a heartless bastard, after all.

“Y-you’re a sonofabitch,” he managed to cough around the hot, metallic blood that filled his mouth.

The last thing he saw before everything tilted and his world faded to black was Keplar’s joyless smile. The last things he heard were his own words thrown back at him. “Takes one to know one, asshole.”