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  Oh, shit!

  “There’s five now in the living room. One has to be Sam,” he stated. “They have Sam!”

  Dante tucked a spare gun into the back of his pants before glancing over at his husband.

  “Steele, lock the door.”

  “I’m good with a gun, and I can…”

  He kissed his husband to shut him up. There was no freaking way he was giving his husband a gun.

  NO.

  WAY.

  Greyson had a solution.

  “When we go down the stairs, get to Emma,” Greyson stated. “She’s in our bedroom resting. Keep her safe. There are spare guns in there. We may need ours.”

  He could do that.

  The three men headed out.

  “Today would be a good day to have Dimitri here,” Curtis stated.

  “Yeah, or Chris,” Dante added.

  He was aware, but it looked like the family was going to have to protect its own from here on out. There were only Croft men left standing.

  “Sam is mine now since Dimitri bailed on him. We’ll take care of this. Shoot to kill.”

  That was how bad this situation had become. Greyson wasn’t screwing around. They’d bury the bodies in the desert if he had to. This was a new day, a new battle, and someone was in his fucking house.

  He was getting dogs.

  BIG.

  MEAN.

  DOGS.

  As they headed down the stairs, they heard Steele creep past them and toward the master bedroom on the other side of the house.

  They were halfway down, and they could hear someone talking in Russian.

  Oh, holy fuck.

  That was exactly what Greyson had assumed. Viktor Marchenko had sent people.

  The shit just got real.

  As they got closer, they could hear Sam talking. Greyson couldn’t make it out, but he knew he was alive.

  “Let’s get him back,” he whispered, pointing in different directions. There were three ways into the living room, and Curtis and Dante went the safer way. Greyson wouldn't risk them.

  Instead, he was going in through the main access.

  When he got closer, he swore he knew the voice. It sounded so damn familiar.

  As he approached, he saw her.

  It was Elizabeth Blackhawk, and she was sitting on the couch with Sam and they were holding a book.

  “What the hell?” he asked, lowering his gun just as Dante and Curtis came through the other two doors with their guns up.

  Only, Wilcox and Heath were waiting for them, and both, Curtis and Dante, went out like lights.

  Greyson cringed.

  That was not going to make them happy when they woke up.

  “Was that necessary?” he asked.

  She laughed.

  “Well, they were pointing guns at me while I was just helping Sam here with some Russian, so he could talk to his father,” Elizabeth said, leaning back on the couch.

  Yeah, that was great, but he had a million questions. Greyson would start with the most important one.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Well, Greyson, I’m here to bail your ass out. It seems you still have a sex trafficking ring going on, and a Russian dickwad who wants you dead.”

  He lifted a brow.

  “You’re here to help?” he asked, as the two big men dragged Curtis and Dante toward the couches. He noticed they’d taken both of their guns.

  That was probably a good thing.

  “Don’t worry about them. They’ll be fine, and, yes, it looks like I’m the cavalry.”

  In that moment, he knew two things.

  They were saved. Here was his miracle.

  And he was going to kiss Ethan Blackhawk on the mouth.

  They might survive after all.

  * * * G R E Y S O N C R O F T * * *

  FBI

  Las Vegas

  When his wife and her security detail dropped him off, most of the media stayed with him. If he was arriving in Las Vegas then something big was going on, and they knew it.

  Oh, they were right.

  It was time to get down to business.

  When he’d walked into the building, security didn’t stop him, and that said it all. They knew he was coming, and they were even afraid to confront him.

  That meant that Robert Lee knew he was heading his way.

  Well, there was a couple of ways he could know that—the media coverage or someone had called ahead and spilled the beans to his partner in crime.

  Yeah, it looked like his suspicions were right. He was warned by a certain commissioner.

  Well, that was over.

  As he walked right past security in his pricey suit, his gold badge on his belt, and a gun beside it, no one came near him. This was the office corruption built, and if it were up to him, he’d burn it down and start all over again.

  Miles Lane had been a disaster in FBI West, and here was his proof. He’d hired someone incapable of running the Vegas office.

  It took a special kind of person to do it, and that was why Gabe had originally picked Greyson Croft to handle it. While Gabe knew Croft was clean, they had to play along.

  For now.

  As the elevator opened, out came Robert Lee, and he looked just as freaked out as Commissioner Raye had when Elizabeth had rolled into the office.

  That spoke volumes as to what was going on in his mind. As a profiler, he could see the wheels turning.

  There was some dirty shit going down between the two men, and he was going to stop it.

  NOW.

  “Deputy Director!” Lee stated, offering him his hand in greeting.

  Ethan stared down at it, and then back up at the man, but still, he didn’t take it.

  That said it all.

  “We need to talk. Let’s go up to your office to take care of business.”

  The man didn’t argue. That was probably the best thing for him. Ethan was not happy.

  Not at all.

  All the way up in the elevator, neither man spoke. Ethan was calm, cool, and collected.

  Robert Lee…not so much.

  Ethan was going to get to the bottom of why the man was so worked up over all of this. If he wasn’t guilty of something, he shouldn’t be worried.

  This would just be another spot check.

  If he was guilty, he would panic.

  Like now.

  As the elevator doors opened, he signaled the two federal agents he’d spoken to earlier. They were sent from DC to work there to be his eyes and ears over the last few months. They weren’t even Feds, but they were damn good at ferreting out the bullshit corruption.

  Well, they’d seen plenty of that. This seemed to be the epicenter of it in Vegas, and behind it was the LVPD.

  Well, that was done.

  When he headed toward the man’s office, his secretary, Linda something-or-other, stood. She looked exhausted and a little worried herself.

  He knew that former look.

  Ethan got it when he was tired from running an office. That spoke loudly to him about what the hell was going on there. Someone was having his secretary pull more than her own weight—she was pulling his too.

  “Linda,” he said, “have coffee brought in,” he stated. “I’m fond of the one they sell in the cafeteria. Black, please.”

  She headed away from her desk, and that was exactly what he wanted. He didn’t prefer the coffee. He preferred to have his employee alone, so he couldn’t reach for a lifeline from someone doing all the work.

  Heading into the man’s office, he took a seat behind the desk that used to belong to Greyson Croft.

  That man had run the place with integrity.

  This man…not so much.

  “Sit.”

  He did.

  “Tell me about a case.”

  Robert Lee looked worried the second he said it. He wasn’t up to speed on all the cases.

  “Which one, sir?” he asked. “We have a few…”

  He cut h
im off.

  Ethan would always be respectful to the people who worked beneath him, but he wouldn’t tolerate someone not doing their job. He had to work ten times as hard to get the same respect because he wasn’t a rich, white man.

  He expected the men who fell into that category to at least pull their own weight.

  Lee hadn’t.

  He was dead weight, and Ethan was about to lighten the FBI load by about two hundred pounds.

  “I want to know about the Gideon woman who was blown up in that car bombing.”

  He swallowed.

  “Sir, that’s not one of our cases. That’s the LVPD’s case. I don’t know much about it other than what I’ve seen on the TV. I can’t give you more.”

  He leaned back in his chair.

  Ethan didn’t buy that for a second. It wasn’t his first day at this rodeo either. It was time to teach the man in front of him just that.

  Blackhawk played a little game his wife had taught him. This was in honor of her interrogation style.

  “True or false?”

  The man swallowed.

  “Sir?”

  “True or false? Is Dimitri Gideon being watched by this office?”

  He swallowed again as Ethan waited.

  “True.”

  “True or false? I told you to back off of Greyson Croft and his ‘family’.”

  “True.”

  Ethan didn’t give up.

  He kept going, giving the man more rope to hang himself with in this case. In his world, Ethan would toss you a rope. You either used it to save yourself or hang yourself. He knew exactly how Robert Lee was going to use it.

  “Can you explain to me why that wasn’t done, Robert?” he asked.

  “When you left, there was talk that something was coming. I put surveillance on them after the police…”

  He stopped him.

  “Clearly, you don’t get the term cease and desist. We have some complaints. When my boss tells me something, I listen to him. This isn’t the case here. I do believe I told you to knock this kind of jackassery off.”

  The man swallowed.

  “Complaints?” he asked.

  The fear was there.

  Ethan was glad.

  The complaints were from the Crofts themselves, but this man didn’t need to know that.

  It wasn’t a lie.

  Exactly...

  “You’re violating their rights. You’ve violated them for months. You’re making the FBI look bad and since I’m part of that, I don’t like it.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. It won’t happen again.”

  Oh, he was aware.

  That was the first thing the man had gotten right in a long damn time.

  “Next case.”

  “Yes, sir?” he asked, trying to stay calm.

  “What do we have on the sex trafficking going on in Vegas? It’s been brought to my attention that we still haven’t located the FBI mole, Storm St. Clair, who had gone missing a year ago. Where is she, Robert?”

  “Sir, I don’t know. We can’t find her. We think she was moved out of the state.”

  “You realize that she’s one of us, and is likely being abused or worse, right? You realize that she’s out there, and she’s in danger. We have an obligation to locate her and bring her home. If she’s dead, we have an obligation to her family to find her and bring her body home.”

  He nodded.

  Ethan was about to get to the point.

  FAST.

  “If it were you, would you want a man such as yourself looking for you?”

  He shook his head.

  Well, at least he didn’t lie.

  “Give me the files. I want everything you have, and if you withhold anything, there will be hell to pay.”

  The man went to his file cabinet and pulled out a stack of papers. He kept pulling them out, and then finally grabbed a thumb drive from his desk.

  “Is that all?”

  He hesitated.

  “I said all, Robert, and when I go over them, if I find out there’s anything fishy in them, you and I shall be having a little talk in an interrogation room. Am I clear?”

  He nodded.

  Good.

  “Sit.”

  He did.

  “Have you been breaking the law in Las Vegas?” he asked. “Am I going to find that you’ve been implicated in anything that’s below the scope of your position?”

  The man shook his head in a panic.

  “No! We’ve put illegal tails on the Crofts, but sir, they are the mob. We’re trying to keep track of them. I’m trying to protect the city.”

  Yeah, well, that was over.

  “Who has been tailing them?” he asked. “I want to know who was privy to this jackassery and why it’s gone on when I said it should stop?”

  He rattled off some names.

  Ethan scribbled them down.

  “Is that all?”

  He nodded.

  Well, then it was time to get this show on the road. He was pretty much done with all of it.

  Then he whistled.

  The door opened, and the two Feds, who had been waiting outside, headed into the office. They were big, they were two of the people Ethan had planted there through HR, and they were ready to do his dirty work.

  “Remove him.”

  Robert Lee stood and the look on his face was priceless. He actually looked shocked even though Ethan told him last time if he had to head there that heads would roll.

  “What?”

  “As of this moment, you’re relieved of duty. This is coming down from Gabe and the president. You’ve let this city go to shit, Robert, and now I have to sit my ass here, not in my own office, and clean up your mess.”

  “But, sir?”

  “Agent, remove him. Take his gun and his badge, get his clearance revoked, and get him out of this building. He’s no longer part of the team.”

  Ethan stood.

  “Robert, my suggestion for you is to leave this office, be glad you’re not being indicted, and find a new line of work. Your buddy, Miles Lane, put you in this mess. I know all about how you’ve sworn allegiance to him and are working to discredit me to get him my job. If Vegas falls, that’s on me. Your emails have been intercepted.”

  The man looked shocked that the truth had come out. Oh, Robert wasn’t the only one who could have people watched and stalked in the privacy of their own homes.

  When in Vegas, play dirty.

  And he did.

  “Yeah, I’m that damn good.”

  They took his gun and badge.

  “Mr. Holloway, contact HR and make sure he’s no longer able to access any systems, anything with clearance, and that includes this building.”

  The man nodded.

  “You had agents watching me?” Robert said, finally getting it. “You had people spying on me?”

  He laughed.

  “No.”

  “But they are my agents…”

  He leaned forward and gave him that grin he gave everyone who thought he wasn’t nearly as smart as them.

  “They aren’t agents. They are Capitol security working for me. They have been watching you, and imagine the stories they’ve come to me with, Mr. Lee. Imagine.”

  He didn’t have to.

  He’d tried to keep it above the law, but this was Vegas.

  It was sink or swim.

  “My lawyer…”

  “Call him. Call whoever you want, and in fact, call Commissioner Raye and tell him you’re looking for a job. I hear he has a captain position open in his homicide unit. You’ll do better working for him than me. I like to do things the legal way. I’m crazy like that.”

  The man looked horrified.

  “Oh, I know everything that you don’t want me to know, and I’m going to learn everything else. I’m sure you’ve made it a hard trail to track, but you know how we Natives are. We are really good at finding things like that.”

  Yeah, that shut him up.

  “Tak
e him out.”

  They led him out, and Ethan pulled out his phone. He sent his wife a text. It was time to get her the information that she needed to work this case.

  If there was still sex trafficking going on in this town, they’d find the snake and cut off its head. They had to find Storm St. Clair, the missing undercover agent. They also needed to end Viktor Marchenko.

  Vegas wasn’t going down.

  Not on his watch.

  He’d make sure of it.

  * * * G R E Y S O N C R O F T * * *

  Mountain

  In Nevada

  He was at the point where he thought he was deep inside the forest and safe from his brother. Dimitri suspected that Viktor was going to box him in.

  There were tracks ahead of him. There was someone coming from behind him.

  He was trapped.

  It looked like he was about to make a stand and pray for the best possible outcome.

  His demise.

  Dimitri made camp, setting it up while he knew he had eyes on him. There was just a tarp over a tree and a small blanket to stay warm beneath it. He’d build a shelter out of the foliage once he figured out who was coming near him. While there was a cave nearby, that usually meant wildlife.

  He didn’t want to tangle with a bear.

  Pulling his smaller nine-millimeter, he made sure it was locked, loaded, and ready to go.

  He was going to end this once and for all. It was going to be brother versus brother, and only they’d get hurt. The innocent people in his life were safe.

  That was all that mattered.

  He heard a murder of crows from the location he’d just traversed. The animals were alive in the forest, alerting him to what was coming. If you listened, you could tell they were giving off their warnings.

  Ahead.

  Behind.

  He didn’t doubt that this would be a double-sided attack, and he was ready.

  Hiding in the foliage, he got ready for whoever was coming.

  They were dead.

  Even if he had to go down.

  The detective headed up the incline, glad that she’d worn her hiking boots to this little party. Poppy was no stranger to nature. She loved to be out in it, but this was ridiculous. The man was up to something.