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      About the Author

      ALLISON LEIGH started early by writing a Halloween play that her grade-school class performed. Since then, though her tastes have changed, her love for reading has not. And her writing appetite simply grows more voracious by the day.

      She has been a finalist for a RITA® Award and a Holt Medallion. But the true highlights of her day as a writer are when she receives word from a reader that they laughed, cried or lost a night of sleep while reading one of her books.

      Born in Southern California, Allison has lived in several different cities in four different states. She has been, at one time or another, a cosmetologist, a computer programmer and a secretary. She has recently begun writing full-time after spending nearly a decade as an administrative assistant for a busy neighborhood church. She currently makes her home in Arizona with her family. She loves to hear from her readers, who can write to her at PO Box 40772, Mesa, AZ 85274-0772, USA.

      This is for all of you who’ve kept asking for Ryan’s story. Thank you for your patience!

      Prologue

      “This isn’t an assignment like anything else you’ve ever done. That we’ve ever done.” The silver-haired man watched him steadily from across the small table. “There are even fewer guarantees than usual.”

      Around them, the small backwater pub was crowded with people. No one seemed interested in what any of the other patrons were doing. Or discussing. This wasn’t the kind of place where people came to be seen.

      It was the kind of place where people came to remain invisible.

      Which was why it was a perfect meeting place for Ryan Clay and his boss.

      He eyed the older man who’d just outlined the dicey undercover scheme and slowly twisted his glass in the ring of sweat the ice had left on the scarred wooden tabletop. “I can handle it,” he said, since Cole seemed to be waiting for some sort of response.

      “It’s not going to be easy,” Cole warned.

      Needlessly.

      Nothing to do with the agency had ever been easy. It hadn’t been for any of the agents on Hollins-Winword’s very secretive payroll—several of whom came from Ryan’s own family.

      And it was family that had grabbed his interest when Coleman Black gave Ryan the rundown. How many families were being destroyed by the trafficking ring he was being assigned to infiltrate?

      “I can handle it,” he said again. A little impatiently, because if his boss hadn’t already known that point, he wouldn’t have chosen to offer Ryan the assignment in the first place. Coleman Black was a hard-as-nails man. But he was also practical. He didn’t like losing good agents. They were too hard to come by.

      By the time an agent got to the level Ryan held within the organization, assignments weren’t doled out by demand. They were offered. And always with the expectation that it was no sin for the agent to decline.

      Mostly, because some agents never made it back.

      Ryan easily pushed the thought out of his mind and met his boss’s sharp gaze. “Let’s just get on with it.”

      Coleman watched him for a moment longer. Measuring.

      Then he nodded. He sat forward. And then their low talk began in earnest.

      Chapter One

       Five years later.

       He couldn’t handle it.

      Ryan Clay stared into the black depths of his coffee mug, wishing it were whiskey—except he’d given that up a year ago—and thought about all the ways he could escape.

      The simplest way, of course, would be to just disappear. Again.

      It had worked before. For a while. The fact that he still felt guilty for letting everyone who loved him think the worst was beside the point. Better for them to have thought he’d perished doing the honorable thing—living up to the Clay family standards—than knowing the truth.

      That he’d walked away from a mission without finishing it, and he’d done it with blood on his hands.

      But if he really believed that, then why the hell had he come back at all? He could have stayed right where he was…in a corner of the world surrounded by people equally miserable as he.

      He hooked his boot heel over the rung on his counter stool and lifted the coffee mug. Grimaced as he swallowed.

      “You sure you don’t want a refill?” Tabby Taggart stopped on the other side of the counter, holding the coffee carafe aloft. “You’ve been nursing that cup for an hour now, Ryan. Gotta be cold.”

      It was.

      Cold and bitter.

      Pretty much just like he was.

      “No. Thanks,” he tacked on. The last time he’d seen Tabby, she’d been a high school

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