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Summer took a deep calming breath, letting the first hot words that bubbled to the surface go. “Please. I majored in political science and I run an online blog dedicated to politics. Domestic and foreign. Of course I know what the Fourth Directorate of the PLA is.”

Jack held big hands up, palms out. “Whoa, whoa. Sorry. I’m used to dealing with civilians who don’t have a clue.”

“Well, I’m a civilian, and I do have a clue.”

“I guess you do.” An expression flashed across Jack’s face, intense and fleeting and Summer had no problems at all deciphering it. It was pure sex, just a flash of it, like an oven that popped open then closed again immediately.

Heat shot through her. She tingled down to her fingers and toes and it lit her up, exactly like walking in front of a blast furnace.

Or stepping into hell.

Because getting hot and sweaty with Jack would definitely put her in hell. That moment fifteen years ago when she realized that bedding her had been life-changing for her, but just fun for Jack? And there was a lot of fun out there in the big wide world and he was moving on? That moment had nearly crushed her. She’d been convinced he was the man for her, that all her years of girlish yearning hadn’t been in vain, that he’d been secretly waiting for her, just as she’d been secretly waiting for him. What had rocked her world had been a great roll in the hay for him and she watched miserably as he took her dorm roommate out a week later. She’d cried herself to sleep for months.

So. Been there, done that. Not going there, ever again. Focus.

She had, potentially, the story of a lifetime sitting at her dining table, looking like an ex con, scruffy and rough, with explosive knowledge in his shorn head. There was no bigger story than the Washington Massacre and Jack had unknown information. She could ride this story for weeks. It could bring Area 8 to an entirely different level, make it more a newsmagazine than a political blog.

This was important, so she needed to pay attention.

But oh, God. The man himself was such a distraction. Summer was used to bringing total focus to bear when it came to her job. Being thrown off-course by a source of information was new to her. But how could she focus when this big man sitting across from her was so fascinating?

He shared features with the Jack she’d known. His eyes were still that amazing ocean blue, the nose still straight, mouth beautifully defined. But everything else about Jack the golden boy was gone. Those blue eyes were bloodshot, the flesh beneath bruised-looking. Though he was much heavier than when he was young—and it seemed to be all muscle—his cheeks were gaunt hollows, as if he’d recently lost a lot of weight. That thick mass of sun streaked hair—often gathered in a careless ponytail—was light-colored stubble. Even his hands were completely different. No longer elegant, long fingered, beautiful—almost works of art. Now they were still long-fingered but not beautiful. Not works of art. They were something a physical man used a lot—huge, callused, tough, scarred.

Before, women looked at Jack and thought of trysting in a sun dappled field. Now, if anything, he evoked thoughts of being taken brutally, against a wall.

Summer mentally shook herself. Sex with Jack was something she no longer thought about and sex with this new, tough Jack? Impossible.

She leaned forward and looked him straight in the eyes. “So tell me how you’re still alive and roaming the streets pretending to be homeless. Tell me why you never announced that you’d lived through the Massacre and pretended to be dead. Tell me everything. And if it is truly important that I not write about it, I won’t. I will hold off. But remember this. Every single day I have people telling me that I would harm national security if I write about something, but usually it’s them covering their asses. So if all of this is you covering your ass, then you’re shit out of luck with me.”

Jack’s jaws clenched. “Not covering my ass, believe me. And I want all of this to come to light just as much as you do, but at the right time. The people involved are ruthless. So far, a number of very good people have died after the Massacre and I don’t want any more on my conscience.”

“Fair enough,” she said. “So convince me. You said you had an informant who died on you. From the Fourth Directorate.”

He nodded sharply. “That’s right. There’s a separate power structure in the Fourth Directorate, headed by General Chen Li. From what my CI told me, that power structure has put in place a plan for a soft takeover of the US. Military forces are only tangentially involved in the planning. This cabal inside the Fourth Directorate developed a plan to destroy us, or if not destroy us, weaken us to the point where we’d be easy to pick off. According to my informant, the plan involved minimal violence, not a full scale invasion, certainly not applying major military power. Conquest by stealth. So my mole was sending me intel over an encrypted line and we were beginning to get a feel for the plan. It was supposed to unfold in several stages or phases and stage one was coming up. Then my informant’s body was found in the Huangpu River. Right after sending a message that the first attack would be in Washington DC.”

Summer had trouble breathing. Washington. “The Massacre,” she whispered.

“Yeah.” Jack lowered his head without taking his eyes from hers. “The file was corrupted but there was enough intel to indicate an attack on Washington was imminent. My boss and I thought—the White House. The Pentagon. Congress. We passed on word to appropriate channels and security was beefed up in those three places and the airports. I was coming back to Washington anyway. My boss and I were keeping our eyes and ears open.”

“You came back because your father was announcing that he was running for president. Your undercover career was over.”

“Yeah.” Jack’s face tightened. “It was. I couldn’t even tell Dad that he was messing me up because my family didn’t know I was CIA. But it was Dad’s dream and he would have made—” Jack’s voice grew thick and he looked to the side.

“He would have made a great president,” Summer finished softly.

Jack nodded and swallowed heavily. He drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “I think Blake was behind the Massacre,” he said finally.

“But—but he barely escaped the Massacre with his life. And he was there supporting your father! And I had it on good authority that your father was going to choose Hector Blake as his vice president.”

Summer had found it hard to believe Alex Delvaux would have chosen Hector Blake as his Veep but that’s what her sources told her. Didn’t make much sense to her, given that Hector was universally disliked, at least among Washington insiders, people who knew him personally. Outside the circle of people who knew him personally, however, he had the reputation of being a thinker, an innovative politician. Respected, even. And of course, Hector and Alex had known each other all their lives.

Jack shot forward, a ferocious look on his face. With difficulty, Summer managed not to jerk back but she could feel her heart slam inside her chest, an animal reaction to a powerful, angry male. “That man was responsible for the extermination of my entire family, for the deaths of over seven hundred people and for the chaos that followed. I know this but I don’t have enough evidence to bring to court.”

She swallowed. “I understand what you’re feeling, I really do. I loved your family, too.” And for way too long, I loved you as well. She didn’t say that, though. “But to feel that Hector was involved in the Massacre, you have to have something to go on. Do you have any proof?”

“Nothing that would stand up in court.” Jack’s mouth twisted. “More like circumstantial evidence. I’ve been trying to gather evidence for a while. That’s what I’m trying to do, to get hard evidence against Blake and whoever is backing him. But now he’s dead and the leads are gone.”

As she’d said, Jack didn’t have sharp analytical skills. He was bright and intuitive, but she needed more order in this story. “Go back to the beginning,” she said. “Tell me in order what happened, starting from the night of the Massacre.

“In the days right after the Massacre there was pure chaos. No one has written a comprehensive account. But you were there. Tell me how it went down. And tell me how you think our guys might be involved.”

Jack’s eyes widened. “I never said I suspected American involvement. Just Hector Blake’s.”

“Jack.” Summer was used to being underestimated. And certainly in their short time together as a couple, she hadn’t given Jack a reason to admire her smarts. She’d spent their entire week together having explosive orgasms and being tongue-tied around him. “You had, by your account, prior warning of the Massacre. If you weren’t afraid that there was home-grown involvement you wouldn’t have disappeared. And since you did, you think that someone in the CIA was involved.”

His face tightened. “I do. I think Hector had backing from rogue elements in the CIA, an agency I dedicated my life to.”

That was the part she found almost impossible to believe. She’d spent her entire adult life in politics and thought she could no longer be surprised by anything but…this surprised her. Shocked her, even, though she’d have said she was unshockable.

Maybe if Jack had said that the Washington Massacre was organized by purple aliens from Aldebaran, she’d have believed it. But the CIA?

If that was true, she was about to get the scoop of a lifetime, but it didn’t excite her. If it was true, it made her sick to her stomach. If it was true, it made her want to take a month-long shower then move to a remote hilltop and take a vow of silence.

Jack shook his head sharply, as if getting rid of unwelcome thoughts. “My boss analyzed the data I sent and was quietly carrying out an internal investigation. I stayed in Singapore as long as I could, but of course I had to come home. Dad was announcing his candidacy. I arrived the day before the Massacre. Mom was a little miffed that I cut it so fine, but not too much.”

Jack smiled sadly and Summer understood. Mary Delvaux had spoiled Jack rotten. She wouldn’t have stayed mad at Jack for long. She couldn’t.

“What did you tell her?”

He lifted a massive shoulder. “That I was in the middle of negotiations of an important deal.”

“And the truth?”

His lips tightened. “The truth was that we had just lost our informant as I said, and we were trying to backtrack his movements. I infiltrated Shanghai, stayed as long as I could and flew back on a CIA private jet, though officially I was on Singapore Airlines flight SA 327.”

“So you landed and went straight to the Burrard Hotel?”

“No, I landed and was debriefed by my boss at a safe house. My informant was clear that the Fourth Directorate had moles in the CIA so we had to operate outside the lines of command.”

“You trusted your boss?” Summer asked.

“Absolutely.”

That was good enough for her. Jack might not be an analytical thinker but he grew up in a huge family network and he understood people on an instinctive level. Much better than she did, actually.

“Okay. So you holed up in a safe house. What then?”

“We went through a list of people who could conceivably be moles. Traitors.”

“What were the criteria used?”

“I guess the same for every traitor since the beginning of time. Money. And ideology. Money was the easiest. We found a list of people whose lifestyle had suddenly taken an upward swing.”

Summer frowned. “They spent off-the-books money openly? That’s not smart.”

“No, it’s not.” Jack sighed. “And in most cases, with a little digging we found that most of them inherited some money when their parents died, or they married someone richer than they were or they’d made some decent investments.”

“Not too many good investments in this climate,” Summer said. She had some money from Area 8 she wanted to put in a safe place and she couldn’t find any. Not one. Not one place where she could swear to the investment not being rigged.

“No. But we found people whose extra money made sense. Flipping a good piece of property. Bought shares just before a successful IPO.” He shook his head with a half-smile. “One analyst had starred in five bestselling porno films.”

“Whoa.” Summer tried to wrap her head around that. Around a CIA analyst good-looking enough to star in pornos. Most looked really nerdy—pale and hunched and furtive. Not porno material at all. “How much was she paid?” She bit her lips. “Purely out of curiosity.”

“He.” Jack smiled into her eyes. “And a cool million.”

“Wow. I’m clearly in the wrong business.”

“No.” Jack’s big hand shot out and covered hers, squeezed lightly, then let go. Crazily, her heart gave a massive thump. “It’s a terrible world, like a swamp.”

“As opposed to the good clean fun at the CIA,” she replied testily, angry that her heart would thump at a touch of his hand.

“Touché.” Jack hung his head for a moment and suddenly he looked a thousand years old. Summer was ashamed. He’d lost his family and he’d been through hell. And he’d dedicated his life to an agency that might have betrayed his country.

“Okay.” She blew out a breath, preparing herself for whatever was coming next. She had no doubt that it would be devastating for her and even more devastating for Jack. “So tell me about that night. You and your boss—I’m assuming that would be Hugh Lownie. D/NCS.”

Jack sighed. “The name of the Director of the National Clandestine Service is classified info.”

Summer rolled her eyes. “Jack. Please.” Just because the D/NCS wasn’t on the CIA website didn’t mean that everyone and his dog didn’t know his name.

He sighed again. “Yes. Hugh Lownie.”

Summer nodded. “He died the day after the Massacre. Of a heart attack.”

“He was murdered the day after the Massacre,” Jack responded angrily. “I never got near the body so I don’t know how they faked it, but there was absolutely nothing wrong with Hugh’s heart, in any sense of the word.”

Wow. If Hugh Lownie had been murdered… “The Washington Massacre. Seven hundred dead. And the next day the Director of the National Clandestine Service, who presumably is always well-protected, is killed. This is scary.”

He shot her a glance. “Yeah. Why do you think I’ve been in hiding these past six months? Do you still want to investigate this?”

“Yes.” And she did. “It burns to think of people getting away with the Massacre and with all that followed.”

“The blackout.” Jack nodded. “Going to Defcon 3.”

“Yes, but that’s not all of it. Over three trillion dollars were drained from the US economy after the Massacre. That’s not well known, but it almost collapsed several major industries and plunged us into another recession. You’ve been undercover and probably missed it.”

“I haven’t missed it,” he said grimly. “If ever there was a time to go undercover as a homeless person, it’s now. You have no idea how many formerly middle class people are begging on the streets. The couple of times I slept in shelters I slept next to teachers and nurses and office workers who’d lost their jobs and couldn’t find another one.”

It was another reason she couldn’t let go of the Massacre story. Not only had so many died, but so many suffered economically. “Okay. Let’s backtrack a second. Whatever your Chinese CI told you wasn’t enough to stay away from the rally?”

Jack stiffened, sitting up ramrod straight, staring narrow-eyed at her. “Do you honestly think that if I’d had a clue, even the slightest intimation, that they were going to shoot down everyone at my father’s rally and then blow up the Burrard, I wouldn’t have stopped the whole thing? Forced my father to call it off?”

She was ashamed of herself. Of course. Any idea at all of the real plans—plans that included his family in the crosshairs—and he’d have intervened. “I’m sorry, Jack,” she said sincerely. “That was amazingly stupid of me. Of course you would have.”

He blew out a breath and narrowed his eyes. “You’re still seeing me as the skirt-chasing asshole who wasn’t thinking much beyond the next woman and the next beer. I hardly remember him.”

Bingo. Well, he certainly looked different from the lightweight womanizer she’d known. Different gaze, different vibe. Almost a different person. “So tell me about that night,” she said quietly.

“My parents fought right up until they arrived at the Burrard. The rumors that they were fighting were right. But they were fighting because my mom was terrified of losing my dad. The parallels to Jack Kennedy were startling.”

Including the enormous, attractive family. Summer nodded. “But on the podium your mom looked thrilled.”

He smiled faintly, sadly. “She was a real trouper. Once he declared, she was going to ask for leave from her job and work like a mule for him. She said if she couldn’t change his mind, then she was going to do her damnedest to see he got what he wanted. And she would have smiled every minute of every day of his presidency and then heaved a huge sigh of relief when his term was over.”

Alex Delvaux, President. Summer was more aware than most of the forks life took and she’d trained herself to never look back, ever. So with Alex Delvaux dead, she’d simply carried on. But now she took a moment to imagine him as president. He’d been a good man, an honorable man. But really smart with it, too, and deeply dedicated to the protection of the environment. It wasn’t just lip service. He’d have battled the coal and oil lobbies with every fiber of his being and he’d have swayed people. He had the gift of communication. He’d have left the country a better place. Right now, the loss of his presidency shook her.

“He’d have made such a great president,” she said quietly.

Jack nodded, eyes glistening. “He would have, yes. And the country would be a different place. So believe me when I say that I will find who was behind the Massacre or die trying, because I lost not only my father and my entire family except for Isabel, but the country lost a great leader. A man who would have made a difference.”

“That night,” she reminded him, throat tight.

He nodded. “Okay. That night. I arrived late. My mom had called twenty times. I ended up just switching my cell off. But not my work cell. Hugh and I had spent the day going over possible traitors and it was sad how many people in the Company I wouldn’t put a hand to the fire and swear that they were loyal. At the last minute, I called a cab to pick up me a few blocks from the safe house. I knew they’d be running late at the Burrard anyway. My dad was many things, but punctual wasn’t one of them.”

“The announcement was slated for 7:30.” That had been in the press briefing.

“Yeah, but like I said, they were running really late. I got to the podium, hugged my parents and Isabel and the twins and my phone started ringing.”

“Presumably the one Hugh gave you and not the other one.”

He dipped his head. “The one Hugh gave me. I felt it vibrate and I knew something was up. I’d left him less than an hour before, why would he be calling when he knew I was at my dad’s rally?”

Summer could see it. She leaned forward on her elbows. “He’d just found something out. Something that you had to know as soon as possible.”

“He’d discovered something, that was for sure. I walked out of the auditorium because I couldn’t hear him. There were people shouting and the rally music was playing really loud on speakers. Not even my goddamned ear buds could filter out the noise. We couldn’t hear each other, so he switched off and sent me a text.”

“You remember what that text was?”

He speared her with his glare. “You think I could ever forget? He texted Get out of there. Run. Hide. Now. And then the phone went dead. But whatever Hugh thought was going to happen, I wasn’t leaving without my family. I was running back to them when I heard shots fired. AK-47s. A lot of them. A firefight, in a crowded auditorium. Hugh had insisted I attend unarmed. I broke land speed records trying to get back to my family.”

Summer was watching his eyes, brilliant blue, blood-shot whites. “So you saw—” she whispered.

“Everything.” His jaws clenched. “I saw fucking everything. They doused the lights but there were candles everywhere. I saw. Men in ski masks opening fire on the crowd, working from the back to the front. They took care of security first. Amateurs, I don’t know who hired them. My dad wouldn’t have Secret Service protection until he declared so some bozo on his staff hired some clowns. They went down immediately. The attackers just mowed them down. They were the first to go. The rest—it was like shooting fish in a barrel. Ridiculously easy. The fuckers met with no resistance at all.”

She held her breath. She could almost see the scene, smell the blood.

“People were screaming. The assaulters were efficient. In the time it took me to run into the auditorium, their work was almost done. I was running flat out when they got to the podium.”

The podium. Where his family was. Not only his close family but aunts, uncles, cousins. God.

Jack’s head hung down. She saw the stubble on the top of his head, the sharp blade of nose and jutting cheekbones as he stared at the tabletop.

“In a few minutes it was over. I couldn’t see Isabel. I saw my father and mother turn to shield my brothers, arms outstretched. But it was useless. They fell in a heap. A bloody mass of flesh and bones exploding. Dead in an instant.”

He stared at his hands, still and calm, though a vein beat fast in his temple.

He was silent so long she finally spoke. “And then?”

“And then the whole place blew up. I found out later charges had been placed around the ballroom. No one knows how that could have happened.”

Summer knew. “Hector Blake was a silent partner in the Burrard. He owned a controlling share. Personnel later testified that there was a lot of unscheduled maintenance work the week before.”

Jack’s head lifted. “Is that true?”

She nodded somberly. Something else to lay at Blake’s door. “It was hushed up. One of the waiters spoke to me and I recorded his testimony but when I checked back with him, he was nowhere to be found. When I asked, no one knew where he was and there was no record of his ever having worked there. The Burrard staff was let go, of course, the hotel simply shut down. Someone said they thought my waiter had gone back to Costa Rica but no one was sure. I don’t publish supposition. The rule of Area 8 is that nothing is published without two pieces of corroboration. And all I had was the video of the interview. I didn’t even realize what I had until later, when I started putting the pieces together.”

Jack’s jaw tightened. “When I woke up in the rubble it was pitch black and I was completely disoriented. I couldn’t remember where I was, who I was. At first I thought I’d died, but not gone to heaven.” A corner of his mouth lifted. “It didn’t occur to me that I might have gone to heaven, not after the last fifteen years in war zones. And it felt like hell, too. Hot, black, stinking of cordite and blood and death.”

Her heart hurt to think of Jack stumbling in the darkness, covered in rubble, disoriented, grieving. “Were you wounded?”

“Concussed. Broken wrist. Lacerations and contusions. I’d inhaled a ton of cement dust.” He looked down at his left arm and for the first time she noticed scar tissue and a slightly crooked wristbone. Had he had no medical treatment at all?

She had a sudden vision of him, having watched his family mown down by machine gun fire, wounded in the blast, lurching out of the Burrard into darkness. Tentatively, she touched his wrist, feeling ropy scar tissue and hard muscle.

Jack sighed and put a big hand over hers. He looked weary beyond belief. She remembered in a rush that just a few days ago he’d been in Portland, that he’d been there as Hector Blake had drowned.

So many questions.

Jack had gone silent, staring at his big hand over hers, a million miles away.

Summer understood trauma, understood bad memories. They had to work their way through your system, like shrapnel works its way out through the skin from deep muscle tissue. She said nothing and waited.

Finally, Jack stirred.

“What happened after the Massacre?” she asked quietly. “How did you get away?”

“There was the blackout.” Jack’s mouth tightened. “And our cells were jammed. You had to get a hundred yards away before reception started. It was total chaos outside the Burrard. The only lights were the ambulance headlights but they had overestimated the survivors.”

“They had to ship body bags up from Fort Detrick,” she said. A source had told her that. There had been pitifully few survivors. “Did you see Isabel?”

He nodded. “Yeah. With that last message from Hugh I knew I had to get out, but first I made sure that the medics loaded Isabel onto an ambulance. I was covered in dust and I kept my head down. Security cams had been taken offline.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and swallowed. “I thought—” His voice had gone tight and he waited a moment. “I thought at first she was dead. She was on a gurney and she was so…white. And still. God.”

He’d seen his entire family killed. Isabel would have been his last family member. “I can imagine how you felt,” she said quietly. She herself had never had anything like a family structure around her and her parents had never paid her much attention. They’d been feckless druggies. But she’d lived among the Delvauxs and she’d seen happy families. They were like multiple organisms with one beating heart. The Delvauxes had been closer than most families. “But she wasn’t dead.”

“No.” Jack shook his head. “She wasn’t. Though she was badly injured. The medic said her pupils were unresponsive to light. I made sure I knew where she was being taken and left her in the ambulance. Hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

“You needed to investigate,” Summer said. “Particularly when you knew something was coming and the Massacre was it.”

“Yeah. I needed to disappear. No one looks for a dead man. Once out of range of the jammer, I called Hugh and he said to meet him at the safe house. That he had proof of who was behind the Massacre.”

“Proof?” Her journalist part of her brain pinged. “He had proof? Why didn’t he?—”

“Because he was killed,” Jack growled. “With the blackout and all traffic lights out, the streets were jammed. I ended up running to the safe house through the dark city. Took me four hours. When I got there I waited for Hugh, but he never showed up. He was killed right after the Massacre, right after talking to me, in fact. They said it was a heart attack but it wasn’t. His body was never autopsied, either.”

Summer had kept her ear close to the ground but she hadn’t heard about any of this. “So, among many other things, we’re talking about the murder of a senior officer of the CIA.”

“His body was found two days after the Massacre, in his basement. Nobody came looking immediately. All law enforcement was tied up in the aftermath of the Massacre and dealing with the blackout. But I knew something was wrong when I got to the safe house and Hugh wasn’t there.”

“That’s when you decided to disappear?”

Jack’s face tightened and a dangerous shadow passed over his features. “There was nothing on earth that could have kept Hugh from meeting me there except death. And I was Hugh’s protégée. So being presumed dead at the Burrard was a gift. If it was known that I’d survived, I’d have had a target pinned to my back. I’m good but I’m not good enough to evade the kind of resources the CIA can bring to bear. Whoever the mole or moles were, they’d have enough autonomy to fake evidence that I was involved in the Massacre and put out a hit on me.”

“Evading them for six months is amazing.”

“Not if they thought I was dead. The bad thing was I couldn’t be with Isabel. I had some off-the-record credit cards and hired private detectives to stay in the hospital while Isabel was in a coma and to watch over her apartment when she was released. When she decided to move to Portland it was a huge relief. I kept an eye on her via computer.”

Six months underground, posing as a homeless vet. Not many men could pull that off. “Have you found anything in these six months?”

“Yes.” His jaws clenched. “Hector Blake was definitely involved. He made a vast fortune off the Massacre and parked the money in offshore accounts. He could never have made that much money without prior knowledge. I was keeping an eye on him. I was terrified when Isabel called him. In Portland, she fell in love with a good man, Joe Harris. Former SEAL. He works for a security company and one of their IT people found out that Blake had made a shit ton of money. Isabel called him to accuse him. I was in Portland already. I was there when Blake showed up.” His mouth twisted. “I arranged things with Isabel’s fiancé and his security company. They called in a good guy from the FBI. The FBI is the only agency I would swear is not involved in the conspiracy.”

Summer studied him. “So you saw Hector Blake die. In Portland. That’s a huge story right there.”

“It is,” Jack said steadily. “But not one I’m going to tell you, not yet anyway. But I’ll make you a deal. Work with me and at the end, you’ll be the one to break the story. But not before we figure out who the moles are in the US government. Any hint that you have some information and you won’t live out the day, Summer. And I won’t have your death on my conscience. So we work together and you stay under the radar and we crack this thing. I have allies in government. There’s that clean FBI agent we’re working with and to a limited extent we can use FBI resources. So let’s team up. What do you say?”

And he held out his hand. Huge, long-fingered, scarred. Not the long, slender flawless hand that had once stroked her to ecstasy.

Summer stared at that hand. Teaming up with Jack Delvaux. It would have been her fondest dream fifteen years ago. Something she’d secretly hoped would happen. That the Golden Boy would choose her to be his partner.

And here, fifteen years later, that not-so-golden man was asking her to partner with him. Not romantic partner, of course. Summer was never going there, ever again. But he was asking her to team up with him to break the biggest story ever. Pulitzer Prize material.

But more than the career boost, Summer wanted in on this because her country had been attacked. And if what the darknet said was true and what Jack said was true, her country had been attacked by Americans . For money. And the plot wasn’t over. More was to come.

The Massacre had nearly brought the country to its knees.

The streets were teeming with the homeless, unemployment was near Depression-era levels, there was talk of Social Security going bankrupt. The country was dispirited, worn down, having absorbed blow after blow.

They had done this, whoever they were. Americans had conspired to bring her country low.

Summer loved America. She’d grown up in hellholes around the world. The only criteria for her parents for settling in a place had been cheap drugs, and Summer had seen hopeless despair, chaos, dictatorships. Coming to America as a teenager had been like walking into paradise. Not because it was richer than other places but because it was better . With all its problems, the underlying ideal held. Of the people, by the people, for the people. They weren’t empty words. She’d embraced America with all her heart and she was prepared to fight her country’s attackers with all she had.

Jack was still holding his hand out, waiting for her. “Deal?”

She took it, trying not to react to the feel of him. Such a different hand from the one she’d known. Hard and callused and hot.

His hand felt electric in hers, a massive burst of energy and heat.

“Deal.” She pumped his hand then let go, happy not to be touching him. Pleasure at his touch had absolutely nothing to do with the pact they had just sealed. She had no business being affected by his touch, none. “We start by you showing me all the information you’ve gathered.”

Jack’s mouth turned grim. “It’s not much, unfortunately. A lot is rumor and supposition. We were expecting to catch Blake, not bury him. We were going to make him talk and then we’d have enough proof to go to the Attorney General with the intel. We weren’t expecting a corpse. Now I don’t know where to go, how to follow the thread.”

“Well.” Summer stood and, startled, Jack stood, too. “It’s a very lucky thing you have teamed up with me, Jack, because I do know where to go next.”

“Where?”

“Hector’s house. I have the keys.”