Agent Cate Creighton is in love. Unfortunately, as the Agency honeypot, she is knee-deep in an assignment that tests the bounds of her new relationship. It seems eight socialites have gone missing, all wealthy twenty-somethings with influential parents. No one seems to care until a former vice president's daughter disappears.
When
the vice-president shares a tale of false arrest, a broken promise of
deportation, an illegal diversion into a private prison, and an alleged trip to
an unwater habitat called Martimus, Cate and her colleagues must find a way to
follow the same path. In other words, they must enter the right prison, meet
the right fixer, wind up on Martimus, and hopefully return in one piece. And it
looks like Cate is the perfect bait.
That
doesn’t sit well with Cate’s lover, former U.S. Navy Seal Warren Hazelton. He
intends to protect her until death ‘til do they part.
Fortunately,
another possibility appears, in the form of an MISix agent who has interfered
in one too many Agency operations. Tillie Henderson owes them and they are all
too willing to serve her up on a plate. It’s race against time as the Agency
attempts to lure their adversary out of hiding and into their somewhat
ambiguous trap. Maybe then Cate can finally focus on love.
Excerpt:
Warren gazed at Tom. “That environment is more hostile
than a prison. You may not be in danger from other inmates, but you are putting
your life at risk. Three months sounds like way too much time to be stuck
underwater though, especially if you’re not leaving the station for deep sea
diving on a regular basis. They must be breaking up the time somehow, otherwise
they’d have a pretty tough situation on their hands. A lot of contract workers
would be headed to a rubber room. It would be extremely difficult to survive a
month, much less three, down there.”
“Could they be treating the inmates like guinea pigs?”
Hope asked. “Testing their limits? Tracking actual survival rates?”
Warren sighed. “Possibly. It’s not like they have to
answer to anyone. They are located in international waters. No country in particular
has legal oversight. I imagine they could be doing anything they want without
recourse. Unfortunately, when the prospect of a reduced sentence is dangled in
front of some people, they grab it, damn the consequences. If one or two
inmates suffer some sort of harm or die along the way, they chalk it up to
collateral damage.”
“And who’s going to know?” Cate shook her head.
“Someone dies, they probably flush them down a chute into the deep sea and they
become shark chum. No evidence left behind.”
Hope cringed. "God, that's kind of evil. But that still doesn't answer our original question. Where the hell is Fuzzy? Has he already served out his sentence? Has he been released, and if he has, where the hell is he? He's the one we need to find. He could have a lot of the answers."
“That lack of
governmental oversight is troubling,” Tom said. “If Cassie McIntyre is down
there, I can’t believe the CIA isn’t all over it. At least, our government
should be doing a welfare check through the Red Cross or something.”
Warren grimaced.
“Unless no one knows she is down there. Think about it. They are on the
bottom of the ocean, more than two miles under the sea. It’s not like you can
just go down there and knock on the door. Any regular monitoring would be impossible.”
Cate nodded. “And
we haven’t been able to confirm that she embarked on the same path as Fuzzy.
All we’ve got are suspicions. Right now, she’s missing. We need to sit down
with her family and get more information. And we need to find other prisoners
who contracted with Martimus.
“Otherwise, we’ve
got nothing.”
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