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paced the briefing room.
    Standing a few feet away, Lieutenant Riley Cooper looked everywhere but into his superior’s livid eyes. “We didn’t anticipate an inmate getting inside help,” he said.
    “Didn’t anticipate? It is your job to anticipate!”
    The other man swallowed hard. “I understand.”
    “I want them caught or dead—and I want it done yesterday!”
    “Y-yes, sir.”
    The seven men who comprised the prison SORT team shifted uncomfortably in their chairs while their team leader was grilled to a crisp.
    “The woman, too?” one of the men asked after a moment.
    “She is an accomplice and is to be considered armed and extremely dangerous. For God’s sake, she smuggled a firearm into the prison for him.” Underwood’s gaze scanned the faces of the team he’d gathered to hunt down and kill Zack Devlin and Emily Monroe. “All of you saw the security-camera video. She and Devlin have evidently been planning his escape for quite some time. He is armed with explosives, antipersonnel devices and at least one semiautomatic weapon. I don’t need to remind any of you what this man is capable of.”
    Nobody had anything to say about that. Underwood had made certain each man on this handpicked team had seen the file he’d built on the infamous Irish terrorist, Zack Devlin. As far as they knew, Devlin had spent the last ten years murdering indiscriminately. Men. Women. Children.
    “This is a race against time, gentlemen,” Underwood said. “It is your responsibility to stop this murderer and his accomplice before they kill again. It is your responsibility to bring them back to me dead or alive. Am I clear?”
    Silence shrilled for the span of a full minute.
    “This briefing is over,” Underwood snapped.
    The team members rose quickly, gathered their weapons and gear and filed out the door.
    Dr. Lionel was in the process of gathering his notes when Underwood approached him. “Were you able to locate and remove the GPS device before he got away?” Underwood asked.
    “It had been implanted just under the skin.” The doctor pulled a sealed plastic bag from the file and held it up. “I extracted it just a few minutes before he overpowered me.”
    Underwood took the bag and studied the tiny device. “Looks to be state of the art.”
    “It is. But without it, whatever agency he’s working for won’t be able to locate him.”
    The lieutenant approached the two men. “Devlin doesn’t stand a chance in a storm like this with seven of my best men tracking him.”
    “You had better be right.” Underwood looked at Dr. Lionel. “I do not want our progress on RZ-902 interrupted.”
    The doctor nodded. “We’re moving on to the next phase as planned.”
    “Excellent. You know how I feel about delays.” Dropping the GPS device on the floor, Marcus Underwood crushed it with his shoe. “I hate waiting almost as much as I hate loose ends.”
     
     

 
    Chapter Four
     
    Zack pushed the snowmobile to a dangerous speed, zipping between trees and treacherous outcroppings of rock. The machine beneath him screeched like a mechanical banshee. Wind and snow battered his body and face shield. Even over the roar of wind he could hear the rotors of the helicopter overhead. He could see the spotlight sweeping down like a white tornado. If they were spotted, it would be over. Not only for him but for the woman he’d dragged into this.
    Cursing beneath his breath, he punched off the single headlight. Behind him Emily tensed. “You can’t drive this thing without headlights!”
    There was no other choice. The headlights made them sitting ducks. Blanketed in darkness, it took all his concentration to steer around the trees and jutting rock. He silently prayed he wouldn’t run them into some immovable object. At this speed, an accident would be fatal.
    “I know what I’m doing,” he said.
    He remembered from the map he’d studied of the area surrounding the prison that the main road leading to the small, rural