PARIS, FRANCE

FRIDAY

Thirty-seven-year-old American Scot Harvath studied the amazing woman sitting at the café table next to him. Her blond hair had grown back and came to just below her ears.

“We need to make a decision,” she said.

There it was-the topic he’d been trying to avoid since killing the man who had shot her nine months ago.

“I just want to make sure that you’re fully-” he began, his voice trailing off.

“Recovered?” she asked, finishing his sentence for him.

Harvath nodded.

“Scot, this stopped being about my recovery the minute we left the United States. I’m fine. Not one hundred percent, but as close as I’m probably going to get.”

“You don’t know that for sure.”

Tracy Hastings smiled. Prior to being targeted by an assassin bent on revenge against Harvath, Tracy had been a Naval Explosive Ordinance Disposal technician who had lost one of her luminescent, pale blue eyes when an IED she was defusing detonated prematurely. Though her face had undergone significant scarring, the plastic surgeons had done a remarkable job of minimizing the visible damage.

Hastings had always been in great shape, but after the accident she had thrown herself into her fitness routine. She had the most perfectly sculpted body of any woman Harvath had ever known. Self-conscious about her disfigurement and the pale blue eye given to her by her surgeons as a replacement, Tracy had been fond of joking that she had both a body to die for and the face to protect it.

It was a joke that Harvath had worked hard to wean from her repertoire. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever met, and slowly his hard work had paid off. The closer they grew and the safer Tracy felt with him, the less her self-deprecating humor seemed necessary.

The same could be said for Harvath. Ten years Tracy ’s senior, he had used his sarcasm largely to keep the world at bay. Now, he used it to make her laugh.

With his handsome, rugged face, sandy brown hair, bright blue eyes, and muscular five-foot-ten frame, they made a striking couple.

“You want to know what I think?” she asked. “I think this is more about your recovery than mine. And that’s okay.”

Harvath started to object, but Tracy put her hand atop his and said, “We need to put what happened behind us and get on with our lives.”

They had been together less than a year, but she knew him better than anyone ever had. She knew he’d never be happy living an ordinary life. So much of who he was and how he saw himself came from what he did. He needed to get back to it, even if that meant her nudging him toward it.

Harvath slid his hand out from under hers. He couldn’t put what had happened behind him. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t shake the picture of finding Tracy in a pool of blood with a bullet in the back of her head, or the memory of the president who had stood in his way while the person responsible continued to target those closest to Harvath. A couple of friends suggested that maybe he was suffering from PTSD, but in the words of an Army colonel he once cross-trained with, Harvath didn’t get PTSD, he gave it.

“We can’t be gypsies forever,” Tracy insisted. “Our lives have been on hold long enough. We need to get back to the real world, and you need to think about going back to work.”

“There’s about as much chance of me going back to work for Jack Rutledge as there is of me going to work for a terrorist organization. I’m done,” he said.

A Navy SEAL who had joined the president’s Secret Service detail in an effort to help improve the White House’s ability to stave off and respond to terrorist attacks, Harvath had grown to become the president’s number one covert counterterrorism operative and was exceptional at what he did.

So exceptional, in fact, that the president had created a top-secret antiterrorism effort known as the Apex Project specifically for him. Its goal was to level the playing field with international terrorists who sought to strike Americans and American interests at home and abroad. That goal was achieved through one simple mandate-as long as the terrorists refused to play by any rules, Harvath wouldn’t be expected to either.

The Apex Project was buried in a little-known branch of DHS known as the Office of International Investigative Assistance, or OIIA for short. The OIIA’s overt mission was to assist foreign police, military, and intelligence agencies in helping to prevent terrorist attacks. In that sense, Harvath’s mission was in step with the official OIIA mandate. In reality, he was a very secretive dog of war enlisted post-9/11 to be unleashed by the president upon the enemies of the United States anywhere, anytime, with anything he needed to get the job done.

But that part of Harvath’s life was over. It had taken him years to realize that his counterterrorism career was incompatible with what he really wanted-a family and someone to come home to; someone to share his life with.

Starting relationships had never been his problem. It was keeping them going that he never could get right. Tracy Hastings was the best thing to ever happen to him and he had no intention of letting her go. For the first time in he couldn’t remember how long, Scot Harvath was truly happy.

“We don’t have to go back right away,” said Tracy, interrupting his thoughts. “We can wait until November, after the elections. There’ll be Christmas and then the inauguration in January. Unless the Constitution has been rewritten and Rutledge is elected to a third term, you’ll be dealing with a completely new president.”

Harvath was about to respond when he looked out across the street and noticed a well-dressed Arab man remove a “Slim Jim” from beneath his blazer.

Popping the lock on a faded blue Peugeot, the man climbed in, shut the door, and disappeared beneath the window line.

He didn’t know why, but something inside Harvath told him this was more than just a car theft.

Car thefts probably happened all the time in Paris, but Harvath had never seen one. He had also never seen such a smartly dressed criminal before.

As much as he was trying to escape his old life, his instincts were still attuned to the world around him. Just because a sheepdog had grown tired of fighting off wolves, it didn’t mean that wolves had grown tired of preying on sheep.

“What is it?” asked Tracy, as she followed his gaze across the street.

“Somebody just broke into that Peugeot.”

They both listened as the car’s engine came to life and the thief’s head popped back up from beneath the dashboard. Instead of driving away, though, the man just sat there.

“What’s he doing?” she asked.

Harvath was about to answer when he saw a silver Mercedes sedan approach. The thief must have seen it too because he immediately applied his blinker and pulled away from the curb, leaving the parking space to the Mercedes.

Harvath had spent enough time in cities like New York to know the lengths people would go to for a parking space, but stealing a car? This was ridiculous.

As the Peugeot slipped away, the Mercedes took its place.

No sooner was it parked than another well-dressed Arab opened the door, looked both ways up and down the street, climbed out, and walked away.

Tracy looked at Harvath again. “What the hell was that all about?”

“I’ve got no idea,” he replied. “I didn’t see that guy arm his car alarm, though. Did you?”

Tracy shook her head.

For a second or two, Harvath studied the Mercedes. Then he removed a twenty-euro note, laid it on the table, and said, “Let’s go.”

Tracy didn’t argue.

On the sidewalk, Harvath took her arm and picked up the pace.