LITMIR.BIZ

       PROLOGUE

      “I SEE you’ve lost the hippie hair and the face stubble and the earring, Sheridan.”

      “Yes, sir.” Brand had been so deep undercover for so long, answering to his own name was difficult.

      “You don’t even look like him anymore,” his boss said approvingly. “Brian Lancaster is dead. We made it look as if his private plane went down over the Mediterranean under suspicious circumstances. No one in what’s left of the Looey’s operation will be questioning why Mr. Lancaster wasn’t one of the twenty-three arrests made across seven different countries.

      “Amazing work, Sheridan. None of us could have predicted this when you answered that ad on the Internet. You took FREES in a new direction.”

      FREES, First Response Emergency Eradication Squad, was an antiterrorism unit made up of tough, highly disciplined men with specialty training. Brand, recruited right after his first tour of active duty with the marines, had physical prowess and a fearlessness that had made him a top vertical-rescue specialist. But it was that gift, along with his knowledge of languages, that had earmarked him for FREES.

      Answering an Internet ad out of Europe that offered to buy highly restricted weapons had changed everything. Brand had found himself moving away from his specialty, immersed in a murky world where he was part cop, part soldier, part agent, part operative.

      But it had taken its toll. The truth was, Brand preferred hard assignments as opposed to soft ones—assignments where training and physical strength came together in a rush of activity, in and out, and over. It didn’t mess with your head as much as the past four years had. He longed for the relative simplicity of being an expert at something as technical as rope rescue.

      “Look, even though it looks like Lancaster bit the dust, we’ve got a bit of mop-up to do. Bit players, loose ends. You need to lie low for a while. Really low. As if you really did disappear off the face of the earth. Know any place to do that?”

      Brand Sheridan knew exactly where he could do that. The kind of place where no one would ever look for the likes of Brian Lancaster. A place of tree-lined, shady streets, where no one locked their doors, and the scent of petunias cascading out of window boxes perfumed the night air. It was a place where the big excitement on Friday night was the Little League game in Harrison Park.

      It was the place that had piqued his fascination with all things that took a man high off the ground, but it had also been the place his younger self couldn’t wait to get away from.

      And the truth was, he dreaded going back there now. But he had to.

      “I’ve got some leave coming, sir.” That was an understatement. Brand Sheridan had been undercover for four years. The deeper in he got, the less the assignment had lent itself to taking holidays.

      He’d been so good at what he did, had achieved the results he had, because of his ability to immerse himself in that world, to play that role as if his life depended on it.

      Which it had.

      His boss was looking askance at him.

      “I need to go home.”

      The word home felt as foreign to him as answering to his own name had done.

      “It’ll be safe there?”

      “If you were looking for a hidey-hole, the place where someone like Brian Lancaster would be least likely to be found? Sugar Maple Grove would be it.”

      “One-horse town?”

      “Without the horse,” he said wryly. “On the edge of the Green Mountains, Vermont. As far as I know, they still have a soda fountain and the kids ride their bikes to school. The big deal is the annual yard tour and rose show.”

      He hesitated. “My sister has been in touch. She’s afraid my dad’s not coping very well with the death of my mother. I need to go see if he’s okay.”

      Not that his father would appreciate it. At all.

      “Your mother died while you were out, didn’t she?”

      Her pride and joy the fact her yard had been on that annual tour of spectacular gardens, that her roses had been prize-winners. “Yes, sir.”

      “I’m sorry. I know we weren’t able to bring you in when it happened.”

      “That’s the nature of the job, sir.” And only people who did that job, like the man sitting across from him, could fully get that.

      His father, the small-town doctor? Not so much.

      “Good work on Operation Chop-Looey,” his boss said. “Exceptional. Your name has been put in for a commendation.”

      Brand said nothing. He’d lived in a shadowy world where you were rewarded for your ability to pretend, your ability to betray the people you befriended and led to trust you. Getting a commendation for that? At this point he had mixed feelings about what he had done and about himself. One of those feelings definitely wasn’t pride.

      He didn’t really want to go back to Sugar Maple Grove. His father was angry, and rightfully so. His sister had given him an unsavory assignment.

      So, at the same time Brand Sheridan dreaded going back there, he was aware something called him that he could not run from anymore…

      “I should be able to wrap up what I need to do in Sugar Maple in a week, two tops.” Brand asked.

      “Let’s give it a month. That will give us time to put some protective measures in place for you.”

      A month in Sugar Maple Grove? He hadn’t expected to stay that long. What on earth was he going to find to do there for a month?

      But Brand Sheridan didn’t have the kind of job where you argued with the boss.

      “Yes, sir,” he said, and to himself he thought, maybe I’ll catch up on my sleep.