Surrender Read Free

his hair and laughed in disbelief. Spoke to the sky. “She wants me to help a killer.”
    “Your sister,” she corrected. “Is that a problem?”
    He laughed again, a sound that was rusty from severe underuse.
    Avery had been secreted away with her mother before she’d been born, the relationship between her mother and Darius brief once she found out what Darius’s livelihood was. But after that last mission, everything S8 related seemed to die down. Until Darius went missing. Until Dare was almost killed.
    Until Adele showed up on his doorstep, dragging the past with her like an anchor.
    “She’s a known fugitive and I’m supposed to hide her?” he asked now.
    “She’s family—and she needs your protection.”
    He turned swiftly, fighting the urge to pin her against a column of the porch with an arm across her neck. The animal inside him was always there, lurking barely below the surface, the wildness never easily contained. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
    Adele hadn’t moved. “Don’t make me spell everything out for you, Dare. You know you’re still wanted. Why wouldn’t she be?”
    “I can’t do this. Find—”
    “Someone else?” she finished, smiled wanly. “There’s no one but me and you, and I’m about to buy the farm, as they say. Cancer. The doctors give me a month at best.”
    “I’m sorry, Adele, but—”
    “I know what happened to you. But we protect our own.”
    “I didn’t choose to be a part of your group.”
    “No, you were lucky enough to be born into it,” she said calmly.
    “Yeah, that’s me. Lucky.”
    “You’re alive, aren’t you?”
    He wanted to mutter,
Barely,
but didn’t. “Where’s my father, Adele?”
    She simply shrugged. “He’s gone.”
    “Yeah, gone.” Darius had been doing that since Dare was six years old.
    “They’re all gone—the men,
their families
. All
gone
over the course of the last six years. Do you understand?”
    He had known. Dare had kept an eye on the families left behind by S8 operatives. Even though Darius had growled at him to stay the hell out of it, he’d found a line of accidents and unexplained deaths. They were all spaced widely enough apart and made enough sense not to look suspicious to the average eye.
    But he wasn’t the average eye. This was an S8 clean-house order, an expunging, and Dare knew he was still on that list and there was no escaping it.
    For Avery, he would have to come out of hiding.
    “Hiding won’t stop your connection with Section 8,” Adele said, as if reading his mind.
    “I’m not hiding,” he ground out.
    “Then go to Avery—show her this from Darius.”
    She handed him a CD—the cover was a photograph of Avery. He glanced at the picture of the woman, and yeah, she resembled her father—the same arctic frost blue eyes—but her hair was light, not dark. She was really pretty. Too innocent looking to have committed murder, but he’d learned over the years that looks could never be trusted. “And then what? I’m no good for this.”
    “You’re better than you think.”
    “Bullshit—I’m just the only one you’ve got.”
    She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes.
    He looked at the picture stuck into the clear CD case again, and something deep inside him ached for his lost childhood. He hoped Avery had had one. “I’ll think about it.”
    With that, she walked away, turned to him when she was halfway to her car and stood stock-still in the driveway. The back of his neck prickled. “Best think fast, Dare.”
    It was part instinct, part the way Adele paused as if posing. She gave a small smile, a nod, her shoulders squared.
    He sprang into action, yelled, “No!” as he leaped toward her, Sig drawn, but it was too late.
    The gunshot rang out and he jumped back to the safety of the house, cutting his losses. Adele collapsed to the ground, motionless. A clean kill. Sniper.
    She’d made the ultimate sacrifice—going out like a warrior to force him to get off his ass