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CHAPTER ONE

There had to be something here.

Charlie Acker shoved a stack of folded clothes to the other side of the dresser. The flashlight shook with the tremors in her hand. Unstable. “Come on. Come on.”

Her fingernails scraped against cheap wood. Nothing in this drawer. She moved on to the next and the one after that. Coming up empty. Facing the rest of the bedroom, she took in the four-poster bed neatly made up with handmade quilts and crocheted throws. The bed itself had been carved by hand when her sister was old enough to sleep on her own. Charlie’s heart squeezed too tight in her chest at the thought of her father giving it away to someone else. But that was how it worked in Vaughn, New Mexico. Nothing really belonged to the individuals living in this town. Everything was done for the benefit of the family.

“Talk to me, Erin.” Charlie lowered the flashlight to keep from attracting outside attention. No matter how much she wanted answers, she couldn’t risk exposing herself to the people of this town. Bad blood tended to stain more than anything else.

Her little sister had been dead for two days. Already buried in the family cemetery, but there were still pieces of her here. In the knickknacks Erin had collected as a kid sitting on the bookshelf, even that gross old snail shell she’d picked up while weeding rows of corn when she’d been around five years old.

Charlie closed the distance between her and the nearest nightstand. In truth, she and Erin hadn’t talked in years, but she’d known her sister suffered as much as she had after what they’d done.

After what they’d helped their father do.

There was no reason for her sister to start talking now, but that didn’t mean Erin hadn’t left something behind for Charlie to find. Because no matter how many years they’d gone without staying in touch, Erin had never given up on her. And no matter what anyone said, Charlie knew the truth. Erin hadn’t died in a hunting accident, as she’d read in the papers.

Her sister had been murdered.

And she was going to find out why.

She slid onto the edge of the bed, careful not to let the box spring protest from her added weight. The nightstand drawer stuck on one side as she tried to slide it free. Her heart rocketed into her throat as she stilled. Listening. She wasn’t supposed to be here. If the family—if her father—caught her within town limits, he’d make sure she never walked out again. Though her final resting place wouldn’t be in the family cemetery. Not unless he’d reconsidered labeling her a traitor. Henry Acker: judge, jury and executioner. Had he been the last person Erin had seen before she died?

She couldn’t think about that right now. Charlie pulled a handmade bound journal from the depths of the nightstand. Loved, worn, soft with oils from her sister’s hands. A ribbon marked her sister’s last entry, and she set the flashlight on the nightstand at the perfect angle to wash across the pages. Thick, uneven pages pried away from each other as Charlie opened the journal and read the perfect cursive inside. It was all too easy to imagine Erin sitting right here, penning her final entry. Her sister would’ve taken her time. She would’ve made sure to document everything about her day to give an accurate picture of life in Vaughn at this very moment. Acting as historian had been Erin’s job. Just as stocking and inventorying food and supplies and taking care of the house had been Charlie’s growing up. And their eldest sister… She didn’t want to think about that right now.

Tears burned in Charlie’s eyes as a lavender flower—compressed between the pages—slipped free. Erin’s favorite. There had to be a dozen in this journal alone.

She swiped a hand down her face. She was wasting time. Her father could realize she’d broken in any second. Shoving off the bed, Charlie knocked into the nightstand.

The flashlight hit the hardwood floor with a heavy thud.

A creak registered from somewhere else in the house. “Who’s there? You’re trespassing.”

Heavy footsteps charged down the hallway. Growing louder with every step. Erin’s bedroom door rattled. At least she’d thought enough ahead to lock it, just in case. But now she was out of time.

“Damn it.” Charlie backed toward the window she’d come through. She’d broken her only rule for coming back into this house. She’d let emotion distract her.

“You have three seconds to identify yourself.” Her father’s voice drove through her in a mixed battle of love and fear. “One. Two.”

She clutched Erin’s journal as she threaded a leg through the window. The flashlight rolled out of reach. She’d have to leave it.

The door crashed open.

It slammed against the wall.

A massive outline filled the doorframe, rifle aimed at her. “You’ve got a lot of nerve breaking into my house—” His booming voice caught. The gun wavered for just a moment as cold gray eyes narrowed on her through the darkness. “Charlie?”

Her fight-or-flight response pulled her through the frame in a panic. Gravity dragged her down, and Charlie hit the ground. Hard. Air knocked from her chest as she lost her hold on Erin’s journal.

Those same heavy footsteps echoed from inside the house.

She had to get up. She had to run. Oxygen suctioned down into her lungs as she heard the front screen door scream on its old hinges. She clawed into the frozen ground to get her bearings and pushed to her feet. Stumbling forward, she scooped up the journal and pumped her legs as fast as she could.

A gunshot exploded overhead.

A warning shot.

It singed her nerves to the point her skin felt as though it were on fire. Spotlights flared to life as she ran down the dirt driveway. Wire fencing corralled her on either side to the end, and she cut to her left at the end. Her feet failed to absorb the impact of her boots against asphalt as she raced toward the neighboring farm where she’d left her car.

Another shot filled the night. Closer than before.

“Charlie! Stop where you are!” Henry Acker’s voice cut through the night as clearly as one of the air raid sirens he’d had installed throughout town.

She wouldn’t. She couldn’t. Because no matter how much her body wanted to, the moment she surrendered, she’d lose any chance of proving her father and this town had a hand in the terrorist attack that’d left four people dead. Ten years. She’d been an outcast for every single one, had left her sister to die here alone. No. She wasn’t going to stop. She was the only one who could fix this. Who could prove Erin had been murdered.

Charlie dared a glance over her shoulder to gauge the distance between them. Too close. Even in his late fifties, her father had kept himself ready for a war he’d prepared them to fight. The road inclined up, and the toe of her boot caught. She fell forward, hands out to catch herself.

Gravel cut into her palms and knees. The journal protected most of one hand, but the pain was still a shock to her system. She ordered her legs to take her weight.

A strong grip fisted the collar of her jacket and spun her around. She slipped the journal into her waistband a split second before she slammed into a wall of muscle. Forced to look up at the man she’d always feared. Feared to disrespect. To oppose. To disobey. Henry Acker had always been bigger than her. Harder. With no patience for the three girls he’d had to raise on his own. He pulled at her collar with one hand, leveling the rifle in the other straight toward the sky. “I told you what would happen if you came back here.”

“I was never good at following orders, was I, Dad?” She tried to wrench out of his hold. Only she wasn’t strong enough. She never had been. Not against him. “Never a good enough soldier for you.”

The dark brown hair that’d once matched hers had whitened to the point he could’ve subbed for Santa at the mall. Heavy bags took up position under his eyes, as though he hadn’t slept—not just in days, but weeks, months. Years. And she hoped like hell he’d suffered from whatever kept him up at night. “Hand it over. Whatever you took. I want it back.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Charlie rocketed her arm into his and thrust out of his hold. And he let her. She added a few feet of distance between them, but it wouldn’t do a damn bit of good. Vaughn, New Mexico, wasn’t some small town dying off from lack of tourism. It was a safehold. The birthplace of Acker’s Army, where outsiders weren’t allowed. This place? This was Henry Acker’s kingdom, and she was nothing compared to the resources he held.

“You didn’t break into your sister’s room for nothing.” Movement registered from her right as her father leveled the gun back on her. A shadow broke away from the tree line protecting her father’s property. Then another from the left. He was having her surrounded. Cutting off her escape. “The journal. Hand it over or these two will take it from you by force.”

Charlie took another step back. She could run, but there was no place in this world she could hide. Not anymore. “Why? Is it because you’re afraid of what Erin wrote about you? About this place? Are you afraid she might expose you for what you really are?”

“And what is that, Charlie?” He countered her pitiful attempt to add distance between them.

She couldn’t say the words. Couldn’t accuse him, no matter how many times she’d thought of his dark deeds. Of what he’d made her and her sisters do. Her voice shook. “I know Erin didn’t die in a hunting accident.”

“Enough! I’ve given you a chance to cooperate, but as always, I’m going to have to force my hand with you.” Her father’s jaw flexed under the pressure of his back teeth, a habit he’d always had when she’d dared to defy his command. “Get the journal and bring her to my house. We have a lot to talk about.”

The men waiting for her father’s orders, like the good soldiers they were, moved in. She was out of time, out of patience waiting for Henry Acker to do the right thing. To prove he cared about her.

“I’m not going anywhere with you.” Unholstering the small pistol stuffed on the front of her right hip, she took aim. At her father. Both men pulled their own weapons. “And I’m going to prove you had something to do with Erin’s death. No matter how long it takes, Dad. Because she deserved better than you. Better than this place.”

“You’re making a mistake, Charlie.” Seconds ticked by, each one longer than the last, as he leveled that bright blue gaze on her. “As always, you’re only thinking of yourself instead of your family.”

She took a step back, closer to the vehicle she’d stashed off the side of the road. Far enough away not to garner attention. One wrong move. That was all it would take, and she’d lose this game they’d been playing for so long. “Someone has to.”

Charlie moved slower than she wanted to go, prying the driver’s side door open. She lowered her weapon and collapsed into the seat as both gunmen ran to catch up. She started the engine as the first bullet punctured through the windshield. Low in her seat, she shoved the vehicle into Reverse and hit the accelerator, heart in her throat.

And knew Henry Acker was going to tear this world apart to find her.

* * *

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Former counterterrorism agent, Granger Morais, memorized the surveillance photos sprawled in a haphazard pile on the desk. It didn’t take long. He’d been studying this subject for nearly a decade. The chestnut bangs that framed an oval face, dark eyes the color of coal, a sharp jawline that always seemed to be set in defiance. Granger checked the date on the surveillance. Yesterday. He rifled through the rest of the stack. “Where did you get these?”

Ivy Bardot—Socorro Security’s founder and CEO herself—refused to give any hint as to how they were going to proceed with this new intel. This wasn’t Socorro’s case. His former life was coming back to haunt him, and she knew it. “Our source inside Sangre por Sangre sent them over an hour ago.”

Sangre por Sangre. A bloodthirsty cartel hobbling on its last legs thanks to the men and women of Socorro who’d put their lives at risk to stop the infection spreading through New Mexico. Bombings, executions, drug smuggling, human trafficking, abductions, torture—there were no limits to the kind of pain the cartel could inflict, and they’d done so freely up until a year ago. Before the Pentagon had realized the threat and sent Socorro in to neutralize it. Now the cartel lieutenants were running with their tails between their legs. Hiding.

Granger reached out to test the glossy surface of the photos—to make sure this wasn’t some kind of nightmare he’d gotten caught in for the thousandth time. Hesitation kept him from making contact. Ivy wasn’t FBI anymore, but there was a reason she’d risen to the top of the Bureau’s investigators in under a decade. She saw everything. He tensed the muscles in his right shoulder. “She wasn’t at her sister’s funeral three days ago. These were taken somewhere else. Who else knows?”

“You, me, our source.” The weight of Ivy’s gaze refused to let up. She was studying him, trying to break through his armor and get something that would tell her he was too invested in this, and hell, she was right. But he wasn’t going to give her anything to use against him. “And we picked up radio chatter from Henry Acker.”

The name sucker punched him harder than he expected. Henry Acker had a tendency to do that in the counterterrorism world. The unspoken decision-maker of a small angry militant group out of Vaughn, New Mexico was a man with his fingers in a lot of pies, but not a whole lot of evidence to prove it. Someone who prided himself on getting away with murder by having others do his dirty work. Including his three daughters, two of whom had paid for his sins with their lives. And now Charlie was back. After ten years of hiding. Why? “You said these came from inside Sangre por Sangre . What would they want with a woman who blew up a pipeline ten years ago?”

“I don’t know, but they’re not wasting time trying to find her.” Ivy shifted in her seat, the first real sign of life from Socorro’s founder. “I’ve got a report that says they want to use her for something big. Something that may tip power back into Sangre por Sangre ’s hands. Though my source couldn’t tell me what, exactly.”

“You want me to find her.” It made sense. Granger was the only one on this team who had experience with homegrown terrorism and the painful aftermath people like Charlie Acker inflicted on bystanders who got in the way.

“There’s a reason Charlie has chosen to show her face after all this time. If she’s working for Daddy again, I want to know what Henry Acker is up to. Before we have another national incident on our hands,” she said. “You’ve studied her behavior. You know what kind of resources she has at her disposal. Where would she go?”

Charlie Acker had managed to stay off his radar for a decade. There was no telling how many skills she’d picked up in that time or how many favors she’d called in, knowing she had to come back here. “Back in the day, I learned Charlie had a safe house outside of Vaughn. From what I could tell, nobody in Acker’s army knew about it. There was a code members had to stick to, especially the general’s daughters. Loyalty is prized above all else. You stick with your kind, stay in the confines of town, but she managed to slide one by them. Bought it under an alias. She was careful whenever she went out there. Only reason I discovered the place was by accident. It’s been abandoned since the bombing.”

“You think she’d chance going back there?” Ivy asked.

“If she was desperate.” He collected the photo from the top of the pile. A side-angle shot of Charlie Acker. “And something tells me if she’s back, she’s desperate.”

“Take Zeus. Check it out.” Ivy Bardot rose to her feet with a grace that shouldn’t have been possible for a woman of her skill set and gathered the surveillance photos. “If Charlie’s there, bring her in for questioning. I want to know what the hell Sangre por Sangre is up to before it’s too late.”

“You got it.” Granger tossed the photo back on the top of the pile and headed for the door.

“And, Granger,” Ivy said from behind. “Be careful.”

He didn’t have a response for that. The work he and his team did didn’t come with kid gloves. More like as many blades as they could carry. They wedged themselves into unwanted dark places and pried secrets from shadows that never wanted to be exposed. They took down cartel lieutenants, demolished hideouts and drove evil back to where it came from—all to protect the innocent lives caught up in the violence.

He let the office door swing closed behind him and carved a path through the building’s rebuilt maze of hallways and corridors. White cracks still stretched down black-painted walls as contractors worked to systematically patch the damage done by Sangre por Sangre ’s attack three weeks ago. Though Granger suspected it would take more than drywall and mud to erase the past.

He rolled his aching shoulder back as he shoved into his private room. Dr. Piel—Socorro’s resident physician—had gotten most of the bullet he’d taken during the attack, but not even she’d been able to get the last piece of shrapnel out without disabling his arm for good. He made his way to his private quarters and kicked the door with the toe of his boot. Quiet. Too quiet.

Scanning his room, he stilled. Waiting. “I know you’re in here, and the fact you’re being quiet makes me think you got into something you shouldn’t have.”

A low groan registered from the other side of the bed.

Granger took his time as he rounded the built-in desk and cabinets and the end of the messy bed he never bothered making anymore. He sat, noting a single camel-colored leg sticking out from beneath the bed frame. “Zeus.”

The four-year-old bull terrier pulled his leg out of sight.

“I can see you.” Keeping his weight off his right shoulder, Granger slid to the floor to get an idea of what his K9 had gotten into. “You ate the entire pack of beef jerky, didn’t you?”

Another moan and the scent of teriyaki confirmed his suspicions.

Of all the K9 companions, he’d been the one to end up with a bull terrier suffering from a binge eating disorder. Granger dragged a handful of wrappers from under the bed. Bitten through. Not a single piece of meat left. “The only way you could’ve gotten to these is if you somehow learned how to fly, man. I’m going to have to install a camera in here.”

He grabbed onto Zeus’s back legs and pulled all eighty pounds of dog from underneath the bed. Granger scrubbed a hand along the K9’s side. Yep. Twelve full beef jerky sticks. “We had a deal. One a day if you follow your diet.”

A bright pink tongue darted out as though to communicate the dog wasn’t the least bit sorry about anything other than the upset stomach that was coming his way.

“Come on. We’ve got an assignment.” Granger shoved to stand and collected his gear. Within minutes, he and Zeus were descending to the garage. The K9 sniffed at the duffel bag with oversized black eyes. “No. These are my snacks. You already ate yours for the entire week.”

The elevator pinged, and the shiny silver doors deposited them into Socorro’s underground garage. Pain flared in Granger’s shoulder as he left the confines of the elevator car. The bloodstains had been scrubbed out of the cement, but his memories of facing off against a dozen cartel soldiers alone would stay with him forever.

Zeus hopped into the rear of the SUV as Granger tossed his gear into the back. In seconds, noonday sun cut across the hood of the vehicle, and he directed them northeast. Toward Moriarty, a town with at least fifty miles distance between it and Vaughn. Granger had driven this route four times since the Alamo pipeline bombing, each time knowing he wasn’t going to find what he was looking for. Each time not wanting to believe Charlie Acker had died along with her oldest sister in the terrorist attack that’d killed four others.

Except now they had proof she was still alive. That she was here in New Mexico. Granger’s hands seemed to flex around the steering wheel of their own accord as the miles passed, Zeus’s stomach growling the entire trip.

Breaking the borders of a town no one but two thousand people knew existed, he followed Route 66 to the opposite edge. Just far enough out of reach of nosy neighbors or unwanted guests. Scrub brush, cacti and dried grass swayed with the breeze, cutting across twenty-two acres purchased under a dead-end alias. In cash. Property taxes had been paid up front with a ten-year old money order sent directly to the city from a bank that no longer existed.

No way to trace it.

The house itself wasn’t much. A single-level rambler that looked more like a double-wide trailer than a home. Bright teal wooden handrails stood out against the white siding and led up to a too-small covered porch. Bars on the windows. Oversized boulders funneling visitors in front of the largest window out front. Charlie Acker might’ve bought this place to escape Vaughn and her father’s prepper army, but old habits died hard.

Granger threw the SUV into Park and loaded a bullet into the barrel of his sidearm before pushing out of the vehicle. Zeus huffed in annoyance as he hit the gravel driveway. Nothing but the sound of the wind reached his ears, but he was experienced enough to know silence hid all kinds of things from human perception. He took his time, moving slow to the north side of the house. The breaker box opened easily. All switches were active. The place had power.

No point in going for the front door. That was where she would’ve put most of her security measures. Granger and Zeus rounded to the back. He tested the laundry room door and twisted the knob. The door fell inward. No explosives. Nothing poised to spring out of the dark.

A low growl rumbled in Zeus’s chest.

Granger ventured a single step inside, weapon raised.

The barrel of a gun pressed against his temple from the left. “Toss your weapons. Now.”