Prologue
Georgetown, Virginia
Six Years Earlier
Alex McKay’s feet pounded against the concrete as he raced into the hospital. A week. She’d been in that monster’s hands for a week. All he’d been able to do was pray, and he wasn’t fucking good at praying.
He nearly slid on the slick tile of the ER floor, his heart beating a rapid rhythm in his chest. For seven days, two hours, and seventeen minutes, his heart hadn’t beat at all it seemed. From the moment his wife went missing, he’d been in a nauseating purgatory of guilt and fear.
Please let her be alive. Just alive. I’ll take living and breathing.
Because he knew damn well she wouldn’t be whole, and it was all his fault.
All he could see was the way his living room looked. That sight seemed to be imprinted on his brain. The room where he and Eve made love and cuddled and watched TV had been desecrated, their pictures cracked and broken, their belongings treated like rubbish. He’d hated that.
He’d really hated the bodies that had been strewn around that room. Bodies and blood.
“Alex!”
He stopped on a dime. God, he didn’t even know where he was going. He’d gotten the call that she’d been found and he’d just driven like a madman toward the hospital without asking a single question. His partner was up ahead. Right in that instant, Warren Petty looked like an ocean of calm. He’d been right at Alex’s side since the moment he’d walked into the home he shared with his wife and found it violated, their whole lives in pieces as surely as their possessions had been vandalized.
And Eve had been gone.
“Alex, she’s alive.”
He nearly fell to his knees. “Where?”
Warren didn’t seem to need more than that one word. They’d been partners for years. His face grew grim, and Alex felt himself flush with fear. That was the face Warren used when he told people bad news. As FBI agents working the worst of crimes, he and Warren had been forced to deliver bad news more than once. But Alex never thought he would be on the receiving end of that look.
Warren had been standing beside him when he’d discovered that the guards he’d left behind were dead and his wife was missing. Warren was the one who’d told Tommy and Leon’s wives they weren’t coming home again.
“The cops found her walking along 29.”
Alex took a long breath, processing the information. She’d been in the area? God. He’d been searching every hour of every day and she’d been close. “Did she escape?”
“Evans dumped her on the highway. Alex, I talked to the doctors.” Warren’s eyes closed briefly. “They’re going to run a rape kit when they can, but they need to deal with her injuries first. I’m so sorry you’re going through this. You have to know that I’ll do anything to help you and Eve. She’s strong. She’s going to come through this. I believe it. If anyone can survive this, it’s Eve.”
His wife. His sweet, smart, precious wife needed a rape kit. A million memories splashed across his brain. The first time he’d kissed her. His hands had been shaking because he’d known she was the one. The first time they’d made love. He’d had sex before, but he’d never worshipped a woman until he’d moved inside Eve, her body becoming his temple to love and protect.
They’d been trying to have a baby. Two months. Two months without condoms or birth control. God. What if she was pregnant now? How the hell would he deal with that?
Alive. She’s alive and you will take it. She is alive and that is all that matters.
“Can I see her?” He needed to see her, to be in the same room with her. All he’d wanted for seven days was one more minute with her.
Warren shook his head, glancing down the long white hallway. “No, I’m sorry. She’s in surgery. They couldn’t wait. Stay calm. She’s going to be fine. He pushed her out of a moving car. She’s got a little internal bleeding and her left arm has to be reset. Most of the surgery they’re going to do is cosmetic. He cut her up, Alex.”
Alex was well aware of what Michael Evans was capable of doing to a woman. “Oh, god.”
Warren sat down, his body slumping as though he couldn’t stay standing a second longer. His head fell forward. “Alex, if I’d only…”
“This is not your fault. This is mine. She told me what would happen.” His wife was a brilliant profiler and what had he done? He’d ignored her work because he’d been so much smarter. He’d arrogantly told her she was wrong on this one. “She told me not to do that interview. She told me to keep this little war between us private, but I thought I could get him to come out of hiding.”
He’d been an idiot, going on a national show and basically calling the man out as a coward. He’d been tracking Evans for years, and after the last clinic bombing took the lives of four people, Alex lost all patience. Evans’s latest target was in Alex’s backyard, right in DC. He’d felt impotent, useless, so he’d tried to call the man out. He’d been willing to try anything.
“He came out of hiding all right.” Warren shook his head, his face pale.
“I thought he would come after me, damn it. He was supposed to come after me.” His hands were shaking. He couldn’t stop shaking. He needed to get himself under control. “Michael Evans was supposed to want to kill me. I was the bait.”
But Michael Evans, homegrown terrorist extraordinaire, hadn’t gone for Alex’s throat. Oh, no, he’d gone for something much worse. The man Alex had been hunting for the majority of his FBI career had raped his wife and tossed her to the side of the road like garbage.
Evans is likely to play with his prey. He prefers to cause the maximum amount of pain to his enemies as evidenced in the brutal deaths of several men he believed to have betrayed him, but there is a certain honor to the games he plays. Up until now, he hasn’t come after you personally because you’ve kept this in the Bureau. If you do this interview, he’s very likely to come after you. He’ll see it as a declaration of war. Please don’t do this. You can find another way to catch him.
He could still hear her pleading with him. She’d been terrified that Evans would kill him. She must have been scared when she realized Evans hadn’t come for him. He’d come for her.
Warren turned his head up. “I’ve called Eddie. He said if there’s anything he can do, any way he can ease the way for the two of you, he won’t hesitate to call in a couple of favors. We can get her the best room in the hospital. We can make sure the press stays off her. We’re here for you.”