LITMIR.BIZ

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he expected them to be dead soon.

      Jen took one last look around the huge, well-stocked room they’d entered. To Evelyn, it seemed like the domain of a group who planned to ride out a rough winter in hard terrain, not a terrorist plot in the making.

      She nodded and the two of them spun back toward the hallway. In a pair of gym shoes and with longer strides, Jen made it down the hallway and to the back door faster.

      Evelyn was still a few feet behind her, heart thudding and toes aching as she tried to run silently, when the back door opened from outside.

      Framed in the open doorway was Ward Butler, holding his AK-47 in one hand and Jen’s car keys in the other. There was shock on his face, followed by rage.

      As Evelyn slid to a stop in the center of the hallway, Butler calmly shook his head. Then he lifted his machine gun and fired.

      * * *

      “We’ve got a problem.”

      The words echoed through Kyle McKenzie’s earphones as he slithered through the hole they’d cut at the bottom of the six-foot fence surrounding the Butler Compound. That definitely wasn’t what he wanted to hear at 6:00 a.m. as he snuck up on a group known to have stockpiled weapons.

      Dampness seeped through his HRT-issued flight suit, and he fought back exhaustion. After arriving in Montana after a last-minute flight from Quantico, they’d joined the rest of the team in setting up an immediate perimeter around the Butler Compound. Now he and his partner, Gabe Fontaine, were tasked with getting closer.

      “A problem. What else is new?” Gabe muttered, close behind him.

      It had been nonstop since they got to Montana. They couldn’t confirm that Special Agent Jennifer Martinez, a twenty-three-year veteran with the FBI, was in the Butler Compound at all. The place had no working phone, and the leader, Ward Butler, had no cell phone registered in his name. So far, the cultists had ignored the battle phone the negotiator had tossed over the fence, as well as the requests to talk through the bullhorn.

      For all they knew, no one was even here. The place looked like a ghost town, with the compound shut tight and no response at all to the FBI’s arrival.

      Basically it was a clusterfuck. No one knew anything useful, they couldn’t talk to the cultists—who might or might not be terrorists—and they couldn’t storm the place.

      As he stood, Kyle swept the area in front of him, using his night-vision goggles. Fog had crept in, meaning his NVGs were set to Active, so they could bounce an infrared light off any objects in front of him.

      Without that, he couldn’t see much of anything. But if the cultists had their own NVGs—which was entirely possible with a group of survivalists—they’d be able to see the beam. They’d be able to see him.

      Worry about what you can control, Kyle reminded himself as he inched slowly forward through the dry, stiff pine needles and a layer of frost. Every step was precise, careful, silent. The survivalists might have the equipment, and they might be practiced at living off the land, but they didn’t have his training.

      Snipers were in position on the peak behind the compound, with eyes on the tower, which had remained empty so far. HRT was acting on the assumption that no one knew they were trying to get a closer look.

      “We think we’ve got another agent inside.” That was the voice of Sam “Yankee” McGivern, the Assistant Special Agent in Charge who ran HRT. His tone was dire and he paused long enough that Kyle froze.

      “Mac,” Yankee continued, “the warden over at the prison just called BAU. Evelyn’s rental car is still in the lot. One of his guards saw her get in Jen’s vehicle hours ago. She never made her plane.”

      Dread rushed over him, but he shoved it back and kept moving, until he was behind the cover of a pathetic-looking fir tree. “Anyone been able to reach her?”

      “No. We’re not getting anything from Jen’s phone, but Evelyn’s cell pings off a tower around here, and we’ve got a lock on Jen’s vehicle, a few miles away from the compound. We just sent agents to check it out.”

      “Okay,” Kyle said, instead of the string of curses he wanted to let loose. Mind on the mission, he reminded himself.

      He understood why Yankee had wanted him, in particular, to know. Every one of his teammates, listening on the call, would realize why Yankee was telling him, too. From the second he’d met Evelyn, a year and a half ago, he’d been drawn to her. Initially it was because she was so serious, so focused on work and nothing else, that he couldn’t help teasing her. But her allure had soon become very different.

      It had gotten so bad that even his boss knew he was interested—how could he not, when Kyle found regular excuses to jog over to the BAU office at Aquia to see her? What none of them knew was that, finally, Evelyn was interested in return.

      She was the one who’d wanted to keep the fact that they’d started seeing each other three months ago a secret. Agents in the Bureau could date, but they couldn’t date and work in the same squad. And although BAU and HRT were different units, they traveled together regularly for critical missions.

      The rules there were murky; Evelyn’s determination to protect her job above all else was not.

      Or at least it hadn’t been, for most of the time he’d known her. Ever since they’d returned from solving her friend’s case, she’d slowly begun to lose the intense drive that had drawn him in from the second he’d met her. Her boss had been giving her bullshit assignments, but the old Evelyn would have fought him on it. The new Evelyn just took them. Lately, he hardly recognized her.

      “Keep us updated,” Gabe said into his mic, which reminded Kyle that he’d gone silent for too long.

      “Let’s move,” he whispered, treading carefully from the cover of one scraggly, snow-dusted tree to the next. They didn’t know exactly what they were dealing with here, but what they did know was that survivalists were talented at making booby traps, and cultists were notoriously paranoid. Not a good combination.

      Kyle kept up his painfully slow, steady pace until they were close to the large building at the back of the compound. Behind him, Gabe moved just as silently; the only reason Kyle knew he was there was from years of working together.

      Finally, Kyle’s hand grazed the solid exterior of the building. Was Evelyn in there? Was she okay?

      “Technical coverage coming up,” Gabe whispered into the bone mic at his throat. He slipped a hand into one of the pockets in his flight suit, and then pressed it against the building wall, leaving behind a sophisticated eavesdropping device that actually looked like a fly.

      The communications technicians who worked with HRT were not only geniuses, they also had a sense of humor. Too bad that, right now, Kyle didn’t find much of anything funny.

      Gabe tapped his arm and Kyle moved around the corner, toward the side where they’d be at the highest risk of being spotted. Kyle watched every step, and nodded his NVGs at a set of deep tire tracks that rounded the bend and stopped near a steel door. Big tracks, probably from a large truck.

      He couldn’t keep himself from looking back at the door, and his desire to test the lever made his hands tense around his MP-5. His feet seemed stuck in place as his need to search for Evelyn intensified.

      Then Gabe was beside him, pointing forward because this close to the compound they didn’t even want to whisper.

      Forcing himself to move, Kyle passed the door, rounding another corner. He almost wished someone would appear outside and engage, so he’d have an excuse to go in there and get Evelyn out.

      But the compound remained eerily silent.

      Still beside him, Gabe pressed another bug to the wall, moving a little faster now. They needed to place two more bugs, then go back the way they’d come. It would start getting light soon, and they had to be out of here before anyone inside woke up.

      Assuming

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