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Prologue

Roman

The streets of Atlanta are quieter after midnight.

There’s always the distant hum of traffic. Music leaking from a club that should have closed an hour ago. A dog barking somewhere behind a fence. But compared to the chaos that fills the city during the day, the night feels almost peaceful.

I pull my truck into the parking garage beneath my building and kill the engine. I sit behind the wheel for a moment as I let the silence settle around me. My knuckles ache, and there’s blood on the side of one hand that doesn’t belong to me.

I climb out of the truck, roll my shoulders, and head toward the elevator. Tonight was supposed to be simple. But nothing about the work the four of us do is ever simple. A few hours ago, River had gotten information about a man who had been making a habit of targeting teenage runaways.

The bastard had a system. He found kids who had nowhere to go, offered them a place to sleep, food, money, whatever they needed. Then he made sure they understood that nothing in life came for free.

By the time we got enough information to know exactly what he was doing, we knew the police wouldn’t be able to touch him quickly enough. So we did.

I step into the elevator and press the button for my floor.

Royal would probably say we’re doing the city a favor. Raiden would say we’re making sure the people who fall through the cracks have someone willing to fight for them. River would make some sarcastic comment about how he simply enjoys watching terrible people have terrible nights.

Me? I don’t need a reason.

I’ve spent enough years as a Navy SEAL to know there are men in this world who survive because everyone else is too busy following rules to stop them. I believe in rules. The Navy drilled enough of them into me to last a lifetime. But I also know when they aren’t enough.

The elevator doors open, and I walk down the hallway toward my apartment, my boots heavy against the floor. I unlock the door, step inside, and immediately lock it behind me before checking the security panel beside the entrance.

Habit. Some things never leave you.

The apartment is dark and quiet, exactly the way I left it earlier tonight. I toss my keys onto the counter, pull my jacket off, and head toward the kitchen to grab a bottle of water. My phone rings before I reach the refrigerator.

I stop. Almost no one calls me this late unless something is wrong. I pull the phone from my pocket and glance at the screen. Dan Ryke. My exhaustion disappears.

I answer immediately. “Dan.”

“Roman.”

Something is wrong. I can hear it in his voice.

Dan has always been a calm man. Even when I was younger and serving under him, I could count on him to keep his head when everything around us went to hell. He was the kind of commanding officer men respected because he never asked anyone to do something he wasn’t willing to do himself.

Over the years, our relationship changed. I stopped being the young Navy SEAL under his command, and he stopped being Lieutenant Commander Ryke. But he never stopped being one of the few men I trusted.

“What happened?” I ask.

There’s a pause. Just long enough to tighten every muscle in my body.

“I need your help.”

I lean against the kitchen counter. “You’ve got it.”

He exhales. “I’ve been working on something.”

My eyes narrow. Dan left the military years ago and moved into another government career, eventually becoming an NCIS investigator. He’d always been good at seeing the things other people missed, and retirement had apparently never been in his vocabulary.

“What kind of something?”

“An investigation. It’s off the books.”

I straighten. “Talk to me.”