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She was trying to save her sister, but that didn’t stop the sick feelings swirling in the pit of her stomach.
    “I’m nonpartisan, Victoria. So long as the money comes in, I don’t care who pays me to do the job. And I don’t ask questions when it does.”
    She sank onto the chair again and rubbed her hands over her face. She was tired and heartsick and worried.
    “I just want my sister back. I’d take money from the devil himself if that’s what it took to find her.”
    “Go take a shower. Get some rest. I’ll see what I can find out.”
    She stood to go, but then she turned back to him. Her stomach was still churning over the idea that maybe it was a terror organization pulling his strings. She’d never wanted to know before. And maybe she didn’t now, either.
    Ian was looking at her with an expression of sympathy on his face. It was the first time she’d seen that emotion coming from him.
    “Go, Victoria. Don’t come back for at least eight hours—or I won’t tell you a damn thing.”
    *   *   *
    “The outfit she works for is called Black Security.”  
    Mendez dropped a folder on the metal table at the head of the room and stood there looking about as pissed as Nick had ever seen him. Which was never a good thing for anyone.  
    The rest of the guys shifted in their seats. It’d been a long few days, and no one was very happy at the moment. The mission had been a total bust, and apparently they had Black Security to thank for it.
    Nick suppressed a yawn. He hadn’t slept eight hours straight in days now. They were at a forward base in Qu’rim, near Baq, where the Qu’rimi army trained under the tutelage of US troops. The base was a temporary facility run and maintained by the US, and HOT had their own bunker where a few of the individual teams came and went. They’d gotten the message this morning that Mendez was flying in. Not a good sign. Nick had known instinctively that it had everything to do with the mission in the desert and Victoria.
    He hadn’t been wrong.
    “Victoria Royal has been working for Black for two years, and in that time she’s had sixty-eight confirmed kills. We’ve known about Black for some time, but he’s mostly gone after targets unimportant to us. Now he seems to be working for someone who wants to protect the Freedom Force.”
    Nick’s gut knotted.  
    “Someone is feeding Black—or the Freedom Force—intelligence,” Mendez finished.
    Around the room, the guys all sat up a little straighter. And Lucky MacDonald, their lone female operator, looked utterly furious. Considering what she’d been through to put a stop to the Freedom Force, he didn’t blame her. They’d all thought it was a done deal with the capture of Al Ahmad, but the organization was like a hydra. Cut off one head and more sprang up. None as powerful as Al Ahmad had been, but still nothing to dismiss lightly.
    “A mole?” Garrett “Iceman” Spencer asked.
    Mendez’s lips flattened. “Probably. Someone in the CIA is giving information to whoever pays Black. Or maybe to Black himself. We don’t know.”
    No one said anything at first. They all knew that when Gina Domenico had been in danger, someone in the government had suppressed the information that the man who’d kidnapped her baby and lured her to the Caribbean was still alive. Metaxas had come to DC and abducted her before they’d known—and he’d almost killed Jack Hunter in the process.  
    But HOT had never learned the traitor’s name, a fact that hung over their heads like a guillotine blade on a fraying rope.
    “Someone told Black we were targeting Zaran bin Yusuf,” Nick said. “And he sent Victoria to stop us.”
    Mendez turned dark eyes on Nick. “Almost, but not quite. They had intel that the opposition commander intended to have bin Yusuf killed. He was Royal’s target instead.”
    Nick blinked. “Why didn’t we know that information?”  
    Mendez’s gaze was steady. “We did, son. But we couldn’t take