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the scar on his left cheek. No, she wasn’t naïve. She’d taken away the only thing he’d ever truly cared about. Made him the killer he was today.
    He shut out the memories and emotions he no longer felt. His training had hardened him into nothing more than a machine. And it had saved him.
    He stood. “We go now.”
    Busir glanced up. “But the weather—”
    “We go now,” he said again. They’d been sitting on their asses too long as it was, holed up in a motel in the middle of bum-fuck America, and he was sick of it. Sick of waiting, of watching. Of planning. “Take care of the clerk while I contact Usted and Wyatt. They’ll go in from the north side. We’ll take the south.”
    Their partners on this excursion were hired American thugs, but Minyawi didn’t care. He’d been at the auction house looking for Kat when she’d gotten the jump on Busir and Wyatt. Morons that they were, they’d let her slip through their fingers. But Minyawi still needed them. At least a little longer.
    “Aten—”
    He turned hardened eyes on Busir. The man quickly closed his mouth.
    Indecision brewed in Busir’s eyes. He was debating whether to ask a question or bite his tongue.
    Minyawi relaxed his jaw. Though he ran the show, he liked that this unlikely brother-in-arms had a brain and knew how to use it. It could be an asset in the future.
    Busir closed the laptop and slowly rose from the metal chair. “We’re two hours from her location. With the snow yet, it’ll take us twice that. Usted and Wyatt are an hour behind us. She’s not going anywhere. If we wait—”
    Of course, there was using a brain, and then there was overkill.
    “If we wait,” Minyawi said through clenched teeth, his accent punctuating each word, “she could decide to leave. We’ll secure the perimeter and hold for the others. Now do as I say.”
    Busir’s lips thinned, but he didn’t press the issue. With a frown he pulled the semiautomatic from the holster at the small of his back and screwed on the silencer. His footsteps echoed across the tile floor, followed by the muffled sob of the night clerk bound hand-to-foot in the back room.
    Minyawi glanced at the GPS one last time before pocketing the instrument. He wouldn’t let her get away. Not this time.
    A muffled pop echoed from the back room. Then…silence.
    Loose ends.
    In the military when he’d been nothing more than a boy, he’d learned to consider all his options. Prepare for the unexpected, never underestimate your enemy. He’d overlooked Katherine Meyer the first time he’d met her.
    He wouldn’t again.
    He now knew her weakness. A weakness he no longer had. She had no family left, no friends. Nothing. But she was loyal.
    And that loyalty, luckily, was going to lead him right to her.

C HAPTER S EVEN
    Present day
Northern Pennsylvania
    Kat straightened from the doorjamb where she’d been leaning. Okay, Pete had been gone for thirty minutes. Enough was enough. She was going out to look for him.
    In a closet off the kitchen she found several parkas, gloves and a flashlight. The exterior garage door opened just as she reached it.
    Pete shivered as he stumbled through the opening. Snow covered his body. Ice crystals stuck to the shadowy beard on his jaw. As she took in his nearly white skin, shecouldn’t help but think he looked like a well-dressed popsicle.
    Relief and irritation warred inside her as she grabbed him and helped him inside. “Smart move, Indiana.”
    “F…f…freezing out there,” he chattered as he stomped snow off his feet.
    “No kidding. It’s called a blizzard. What were you thinking? You could have been killed.”
    “Looking for…h…house.”
    She used one arm to close and lock the outer door, made sure to flip off the exterior light and then led him into the apartment. After easing him into a chair in front of the register, she took his frozen jacket, wrapped one of the heated blankets around his shivering shoulders and rubbed his arms to stimulate