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through his private medical staff in Thailand.
    Other people could fight for justice, freedom, and the right to vote. He knew what the world wanted. The whole goddamn world wanted to get high, with or without a side order of democracy.
    Bangkok, Hong Kong, Islamabad, Vientiane, Rangoon, and Bogotá, he’d known where to find his men, all American expatriates, all floating in black money, all connected to the global, underground economy of illicit drugs and mayhem for hire.
    He looked back at the photograph, looked at it through his one pale blue eye. The other had been cut out, sliced right out of his fucking head by a blond bitch with a big knife. Skeeter Bang was still at the top of his hit list, but right under her was the bitch who called herself Red Dog.
    The first three times she’d fucked with him, the only thing she’d written in her goddamn red paint was his name, Royce. That was all, just Royce, which had gotten him nothing except pissed off. Two months ago, though, in Uzbekistan , she’d given him “Red Dog,” and it hadn’t taken him too damn long to find out the only Red Dog on the planet with the skills to screw up one of his deals was a shadowy figure with an attitude. A woman, more than one source had decided when pressed, a woman with a badass Knight SR-25, and both she and the rifle were for sale to the highest bidder on a job-by-job basis—which still had not explained why she was on his ass and on his deals.
    But he had a feeling it was all going to become clear real damn soon. She was baiting him, the fool, and he was only too happy to bite.
    She’d ruined the paint on his Mercedes in Miami with her goddamn paint and screwed a million-dollar cocaine deal in the process. In Uzbekistan , she’d gotten to Gul Rashid, a warlord he’d been doing business with since the beginning of his now defunct career with the CIA, and somehow gotten Rashid to back out of delivering the ton of Afghan opium Royce had promised to a buyer in Marseille. Then she’d had the balls to leave her calling card in red paint on the sheets in his hotel room: Red Dog .
    Now she’d gone the extra step. Red Dog 303 —that’s what she’d painted on his million-dollar villa last night, right on the goddamn walls.
    He hated women.
    And this one, this goddamn Red Dog, he was starting to hate her worst of all.
    He stared at the photograph and knew Las Vegas was going to have to wait. She’d pushed him too far.
    “Where is area code three-oh-three?” he asked.
    “ Denver , Colorado ,” Zane said.
    Denver ?
    Jesus. He looked up from the photograph and pinned Zane with his steely, pale-eyed gaze.
    “You know who’s in Denver .” Goddamn Skeeter Bang and her goddamn husband, Dylan Hart, and their whole goddamn crew of Special Defense Force operators—especially Christian Hawkins, the one they called Superman. Shit.
    “SDF,” Zane confirmed.
    “Get on it,” Royce ordered. “If it’s Bang, I’m dropping a bomb on seven thirty-eight Steele Street .”
    “And if it’s not?” Zane asked.
    “Then it’s some new bitch they’ve got on board. No one of that caliber is working out of Denver without Hart and Hawkins knowing about it. Pull up everything you can find on SDF, including their stringers. We’re heading to Denver .”
    Red Dog 303 —the skanky bitch was just begging to be taken out.
    After another long moment of staring at the picture, Royce decided he could do a little better than that, even. It had been a while since he’d had some fun. He was due.
    He was overdue.
    With just a little extra effort, instead of a nice clean hit, he could give her something special. He never went anywhere without a few of his Thai goodies—and while she was screaming her brains out, he could have her sliced and diced.
    Zane was the master.
    CHAPTER
    5

    T RAVIS SMOOTHED Gillian’s hair back off her face, his fingers sliding through the wet auburn strands, his palms cupping the sides of her head. Her face was tilted toward