Midnight Fire Read Free

Hector’s wives—after she’d lost her folks. She’d been a funny looking little thing, eyes and mouth too big, a messy mass of reddish-brown hair sitting on her head like a bird’s nest. Stick-thin and quiet as a mouse. It was the summer he’d had the crazy idea of training for the Olympics as an archer but it had turned out to be too much work and interfered with his social life. Life had been really good back then. He’d been pretty busy all that summer training and competing and partying and hadn’t really paid her much attention.
    Then she disappeared. People were appearing and disappearing from his life constantly in those years because he was too clueless and self-involved to pay attention.
    And then in his senior year at Harvard he’d run across her and—whoa. Her face had grown so the eyes and mouth were sexily big without looking weird. She didn’t have a rat’s nest at all, but a smooth auburn bob and had filled out nicely. Very nicely.
    He’d barely recognized her and had been able to place her thanks to her voice. She’d grown up abroad, dragged to a thousand places by her hippie parents. She spoke beautifully but with a tinge of an exotic accent that had made him smile when she’d been twelve and made him sweat when she was eighteen.
    And then he’d fucked her and left her. Which was what he did on a massive scale in those years, thinking with his little head and not his big head.
    It felt like ancient history, something you’d study in a textbook. The Years of Fucking Around: 1997—2001.
    He had to get out of here, fast, because Summer would follow her instincts and try to catch him.
    His years in the CIA’s National Clandestine Service had taught him to walk really fast without appearing to hurry. He just lengthened his stride and made sure he wasn’t pumping his arms.
    He didn’t really have to worry about anyone other than Summer, because no one noticed him, except to draw back or even cross the street to avoid him. Down the hill from the Cathedral and four blocks away was a black SUV with mud on the license plates and smoked windows. It looked exactly like every other official vehicle in the city.
    Jack jerked the passenger door open and sat down.
    “Well that was fun,” Nick Mancino said as he started the engine. Nick wrinkled his nose. “Man, you smell.”
    “That’s the point,” Jack said. “Now drive.”
    The SUV pulled out and headed for Jack’s safe house. “So?”
    “I think I was made,” Jack said sullenly. Six fucking months without being made in a city full of intelligence operatives and government agents and one girl—woman—made him in an instant.
    “Well...fuck,” Nick said, driving fast. Nick, a member of the FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team, was under unofficial cover. Only one person knew he was here investigating the Massacre, the Director of the FBI. With possible CIA involvement, it was the hottest of hot potatoes and so far, the investigation was off the grid.
    Officially, Nick was on leave from the FBI and would stay on leave until they unmasked the conspiracy. He was almost as driven as Jack to find the fuckers responsible. Almost.
    Jack had lost his entire family except for his sister, Isabel. He was going to find out who was responsible or die.
    “Who made you?” Nick’s eyes swept the side view mirrors and the rear view mirror in a constant rotation. Jack was a good driver but Nick had taken combat driving training at Quantico.
    Jack clenched his teeth. “Summer Redding.”
    Nick’s eyes widened and he flicked a glance over to Jack. “Summer Redding? The blogger?
Area 8?
”
    Jack nodded.
    “Well, hell.” Nick shook his head. “That is very bad news. Redding is one sharp lady. Are we going to read about you being alive after all in today’s blog? If so, we’re fucked.”
    They
were
fucked. If Summer posted that he’d been seen today—alive—the entire mission was endangered. It wasn’t just a question of himself. Jack knew that