His compass kept him on the right track, true north orientating him and leading him on through the darkness. Without the point of reference, he would have been utterly lost as the desert was a mirrored landscape, nothing but a reflection of itself in all directions.

Fucking Matthias.

God damn him.

Then again, assuming the guy lived, he’d just given Jim his ticket out of XOps . . . so in a way, he owed the guy his life: The bomb was one of their own and Matthias had known precisely where to put his foot in the sand. And that only happened if you wanted to blow your damned self up.

Guess Jim wasn’t the only one who wanted to be free.

Surprise, surprise.

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 1

South Boston, present day

“Hey! Wait a—Save that shit for the ring!” Isaac Rothe shoved the advertising flyer across the car hood, ready to slam the damn thing down again if he had to. “What’s my picture doing on this?”

The fight promoter seemed more interested in the damage to his Mustang, so Isaac reached out and grabbed the guy by the front of the jacket. “I said, what’s my face doing on here?”

“Relax, will ya—”

Isaac brought the two of them close as sandwich bread and got a whiff of the pot the SOB smoked. “I told you. No pictures of me. Ever.”

The promoter’s hands lifted in the conversational equiv of a tap-out. “I’m sorry . . . I’m really . . . Look, you’re my best fighter—you get me the crowds. You’re like the star of my—”

Isaac curled his fist tighter to cut off the ego stroking. “No pictures. Or no fighting. We clear?”

The promoter swallowed hard and squeaked, “Yeah. Sorry.”

Isaac released his hold and ignored the wheezing as he crumpled the image of his face into a litter ball. Looking around the abandoned warehouse’s parking lot, he cursed himself. Stupid. Fucking stupid of him to have trusted the smarmy bastard.

The thing was, names were not all that important. Anybody could type up a Tom, Dick, or Harry on an ID card or a birth certificate or a passport. All you needed was the right typeface and a laminating machine that could do holograms. But your mug shot, your face, your puss, your piehole . . . unless you had the funds and the contacts to plastic-surgery your ass, that was the one true identifier you had.

And his had just gotten a workout at Kinko’s. God only knew how many people had seen it.

Or who had zeroed in on his whereabouts.

“Look, I was just doing you a favor.” The promoter smiled, flashing a gold grille. “The bigger the crowd, the more money you make—”

Isaac shoved his forefinger up the guy’s stovepipe. “You need to shut the fuck up right now. And remember what I said.”

“Yeah. Okay. Sure.”