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ChapterOne
Clay Lexis gulped the last dregs of his third Red Bull of the night, washing down a pill that would keep him even more alert for the shit show he was about to walk into.
The stimulants and caffeine made him twitchy, but that was all part of the role he was playing.
Some of his former cop buddies had always said that Clay “grimed up good.” Meaning he had the ability to shift from clean-cut country boy to stalker of dark alleys where criminals lurked.
Helovedgoing undercover, and even if he would suffer from the aftereffects of all the crap he’d swallowed in the past hour, he needed to be awake and alert to nab the radical ringleader he met on the dark web.
When he put together the op, he’d already been awake thirty hours, and there wasn’t time for shuteye. Once he had this guy behind bars, the stimulant crash and lack of rest would all be worth it.
If he’d learned anything in his years as a cop, it was that he had to join the criminals to beat them.
Clay only had the information he was given—meeting place, time and the unique detail of a 1986 Buick with one red panel. So far, there was no sign of the car.
He lurked in the shadows between two buildings. The street was dark and silent, but his heart was thumping like an addict’s. Damn, maybe he’d overdone it with that last energy drink. When he came down from this, he was going to crashhard.
Of all the jobs he’d taken in the course of his life—Army infantry, cop, small-town justice of the peace and then bodyguard for the WEST Protection security team—this was by far the one he was finding the most challenging.
The WEST team had been approached about heading a joint task force in Colorado, which happened to be Clay’s home state, so volunteering was a no-brainer. Besides, back in the small, quaint town of Stone Pass, Montana, where he’d spent the past twelve years of his life, he was growing restless.
Stale? Definitely.
Washed up?Hellno. He was at the peak of his game, even at forty.
A drainpipe on a nearby building dripped steadily into the street. From somewhere on another street came the faint sound of a dog barking. Being alone out here he could live with—but he hated not havinganybackup.
When he agreed to head the team known as Sentry, Clay never expected to have ataskbut noforce.
But within hours of his arrival in East Canon, he received a tip that a group was plotting to blow up a church. He had no choice but to set up this meeting, even if he was alone, and try to stop it.
He scrubbed a hand through his hair. All the caffeine made him sweat, which only added to his persona. He’d chased down a few criminals who operated on the dark web. More often than not, online they acted big, tough, badass. Then he’d meet them and find a nerd with a degree in accounting in some dirty crime ring.
Usually those were the guys who thought they were invincible—beyond reach of the long arm of the law, assuming their big brains would get them where their small dicks didn’t.
He pulled a breath in through his nostrils.Ahh, the foul stench of a restaurant dumpster.East Canon might be his hometown, but it really could use some cleaning up, and not just when it came to crime being at an all-time high.
A mixture of hot trash, stagnant rainwater and something sour hung in the humid July air. These definitely weren’t the streets he’d grown up running wild in. Times were different, and the loss of factories in the old town led to poverty, which unfortunately led to desperation.
As a kid, he and his buddies would be out in the streets playing stickball by streetlight. And as teens, they cruised around in cars they fixed up in their parents’ garages and looked for pretty girls to pick up.
He slicked his hair back with his fingers, aware of the slight tremor from too many stimulants rushing through his veins.
Looking around, he detected no people nearby, and the traffic he could hear was on the main street a few blocks away.
Messages had been going back and forth on the dark web between this person calling himself blackwillow73 and two other guys. From what Clay, and his FBI contact who he reported to, could make out, blackwillow73 was the ringleader.
Moving only his eyes, he glanced up at the top of a nearby building. It was damn good luck that he arrived in town when he did, and during daylight hours. It gave him the chance to scout the area, and running across a guy installing cameras at the very meeting place set for that night was a bonus.
It was even better luck that the installer had a criminal record he didn’t report to the security company he worked for, and the company clearly hadn’t run a background check.
The entire situation played into Clay’s hands. He felt mildly guilty for threatening to expose the guy, but hedidget the passcode to the camera system out of it, which he then managed to change, so now Clay controlled the cameras.
The surveillance system was the closest Clay would come to backup. He wasn’t about to walk in there without eyes on him.
The whir of tires on asphalt had him cocking his head. He picked up the sound of the engine and gauged the speed of the vehicle coming this direction.
He checked the time on his burn phone. Blackwillow73 was running according to schedule.
