Chapter 1

I grimace as the black hood comes off. For the past eight hours I had been cursing and counting the minutes until someone would finally remove it but for the split second that it's yanked off and the desert sun cooks my retinas, I cannot help but groan and wish I could go back to my stifling little cocoon. The cuffs around my wrists are popped open soon after and I'm allowed the luxury of shielding my own eyes from the sun. Stiff pain arcs down my back and across my shoulders. My legs still feel spongy, but the muscles are starting to remember their use and I just about hold myself upright.

The whole thing is ridiculous. The van, the black hood, the cuffs, I'm still not entirely convinced whose protection this is all for. I volunteered for this goddamned assignment, in the end. Whatever indignities it has yet to bear down on me, to start everything off by being carted around like a terrorist suspect headed for Gitmo feels just a tiny bit over the top. Of course, there is no assignment. And the man who's just pulled me out of the back of the van isn't with the agency. I'm a Jane Doe now as far as law enforcement is concerned, a Jane Doe who's about to step into a whole river of shit. So they're protecting themselves, because they know if I knew too many details about what they're doing out here - here being Nevada I assume while slowly peering around the desolate sun-baked plains through bleary eyes - I could come back to bite their dicks off. They're also protecting the men here. Because they're bad men and though the top brass still ardently believe they're good guys, they need bad men on their payroll sometimes.

This bad guy is six foot two. I take a disliking to the way he runs his calloused fingers through my short, blonde hair. At five-three, I'm just shy of being a foot shorter than his grizzled, muscular bulk. He's dark-haired, bearded, foreign-looking. I guess Russian, and his accent as he speaks tells me I'm better at faces than I'd thought.

"Rise and shine, Princess. You've only got two weeks before your confirmation."

He's got a pair of reflective aviators on. I look up into his eyes and only see my own blue irises staring back at me. The fish-eye effect of the lenses makes me look small and wide-eyed from his perspective, a fragile little thing with freckles across the bridge of her nose, cracked lips from the dry heat, looking like she's about to faint. I'm twenty-seven, but I look like a twenty-one year-old who's just been dragged out of her parents' home in the middle of the night.

I'm wearing little more than you'd expect of a woman that's been snatched off the street - tight jeans, sneakers, a faded old t-shirt - now drenched with sweat, a bra that's starting to dig into my ribs more than I'd care for. I dressed down for the occasion. In the end though there is only so much I could anticipate. Eight hours in a van, in the desert, even old casual street clothes start to feel suffocating. On the other hand, I also feel like I'm giving this guy far too much to look at. Had I dressed for the heat, he'd have even more to smile about. Funny that I care about something like that, even now.