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places before they were leveled?”
    “Whole communities. Houses, people, animals,
children. You name it. Six tribes, sparsely populated by
traditional standards, fallen off the face of the earth. South
America, Central Mexico, Africa, and Australia. The fingerprint is
the same at each place.”
    She raised a brow but didn’t say anything
else as she looked through the rest of the documentation. She held
up a picture of a couple, both with pale blonde hair and the kind
of creases in their faces that said they spent a lot of time
smiling. “Who are they?”
    “John and Esther Norris. Missionaries with a
Tuareg Tribe in Africa. They came back to the states because she
had pregnancy complications four months ago. They arrived back with
the Tuareg last week and were greeted with this.” He pointed to the
aerial picture that showed nothing more than a flat square of
smooth dirt. “The U.S. Embassy told the Norris’s they’d check into
it.”
    “Which means they’ve decided to ignore it
for some reason.”
    “You got it.”
    “Which is where you come in, I assume. Who
hired you?”
    “Frank Bennett.” Deputy Director Frank
Bennett had been a mentor to Gabe for fifteen of his sixteen years
at the CIA.
    “Very funny, Gabe. Frank Bennett is dead.
Even I heard that news, and I was in a third world country with
very limited communications at the time.”
    “He’s dead because he had information he
wasn’t supposed to have.”
    “And now you have it?” Grace asked, holding
up the file in question.
    “That’s part of it. You haven’t seen the
rest yet.” Gabe unbuckled his seatbelt and went to the fridge to
grab a couple of waters. He handed one to Grace and sat back down.
“Are you curious enough to stay on board?”
    “You knew I would be.” Grace rotated her
neck and used her water to wet a cloth napkin. She wiped the grime
from her face and neck, and the action was unguarded for only a
split second, but it was long enough for Gabe to see a glimpse of
the vulnerability she kept hidden.
    “Good. Go take a shower, and feel free to
use whatever is in the closet. Everything you need is on board.
We’ll have plenty of time for me to tell you the rest on the way to
London.”
    “Why the hell are we going to London?”
    “Because that’s where The Collective
headquarters is.”
    “The Collective?”
    “Your new employer. The rest of the team
will be waiting for us there.” He held up a hand before she could
argue. “Yes, a team. A five-man unit all hand selected. The others
have been with me awhile. It took some time to track you down. Be
nice. You’re the new guy.”
    “Great,” she said, standing. “We’ll be one
big, happy family.”
    Grace went into the small bathroom and he
heard the shower turn on. He knew exactly what she looked like
naked, and the thought of her pale, wet body made him ache with
desire. He knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was tempting
fate in more ways than one. Grace was a different person than she’d
been two years ago—harder—colder—but he loved her still.
    He just had to prove it to her. And pray to
God that she might forgive him.
     
     

CHAPTER THREE
     
     
    London, England
     
    Gabe was exhausted—his thirty-eight years
felt closer to a hundred—but at least his life wasn’t tied to the
CIA any longer. He was free. Of course, the reason he no longer
worked for the CIA was that his life had turned to shit, so he
wasn’t sure the levels of bad canceled each other out in the long
run. Shit was still shit, no matter how you labeled it.
    If his cover hadn’t been blown two years
ago, he’d still be accepting missions. And he knew with absolute
certainty he’d be dead. He was used up. A man could only live that
way so long before he lost his soul or his life. He’d come close to
losing both.
    But now there was Grace.
    He spent the flight back to London trying to
keep his mind focused on anything but her, but it was impossible
when he could smell the