Surrender A Section 8 Novel

Chapter Twenty-four





Dare was playing games—like father, like son—but Rip would be damned if that mattered. His plans were moving along in the right direction, despite his missing man. Now, as Rip went over the encrypted e-mail his men had sent, he knew it was nearly time to tighten the noose he’d placed around all of them—Grace and Dare and Avery. He almost regretted having to include the brothers, Key and Jem, but they were too involved, too risky.

He didn’t know how the man with the tattoo parlor played into all of this, but he was confident he would soon. In the end, he always got his way.

He wasn’t going to be brought down by the group he’d created.

Rip had been given the chance of a lifetime when he got the offer to create an elite team made up of the craziest men and women the military ever had the pleasure of court-martialing.

They had the training—they’d had money spent on them—and they had the drive, the ambition, just didn’t have the outlet any longer. He cultivated them from a pool of thousands, picked them because of their opposition to authority.

“You really want this?” his supervisor had asked. “Because you could be blowing your entire career on a bunch of f*cked-up misfits.”

Rip was a f*cked-up misfit himself—he just hadn’t let the CIA in on that entirely. “Yes, sir.”

He’d taken the sealed envelope and left the office, and he’d never looked back.

Left in an orphanage in Belgrade, he’d been liberated by some goddamned American hippies and brought here at age ten. He’d spent the first few years hoarding food and trying desperately to lose that pathetic accent.

After three foster homes, they’d given up, mainly because he’d learned to fight and never let go of what was his, be it food or hand-me-down clothing or even something as simple as a school notebook. He’d had everything taken from him, and he couldn’t—wouldn’t—let that happen ever again.

He’d done institutional living until he’d left at age fifteen. By then, he’d come to the conclusion that he’d never let anyone be in the position to control him.

By then, he’d decided he was going to rule his own empire, and it was going to be big and dangerous.

At first, he lived on the streets in New York, and later, Miami, running drugs and guns and getting addicted to the latter rather than the former. He liked the power behind the guns, liked knowing different and even better ways to kill his opponents.

At nineteen, when he’d acquired just enough street knowledge to be truly dangerous, he embraced the legitimacy of the Navy. Because he’d need that legitimacy to carry out his plans.

Behind every great fortune lay a great crime. His was still being committed daily.

Rip could’ve contented himself with simply being the best goddamned CIA spook he could be. Started out that way, trying to leave behind the stench of poverty and anger that had followed him from Belgrade.

He’d tried to be grateful. Humble.

Neither was part of his genetic makeup, though, and he’d stopped faulting himself for it a long time ago. Instead, he double-crossed the CIA, his friends—anyone and anything to make himself better at what he did. Studying the human condition became a second full-time job; it f*cking fascinated him.

Because of it, he ended up heading one of the greatest secret teams of all time.

Teams of elite former soldiers were nothing new. Rip had made sure his team rose above by purposely picking men no one wanted and letting them work their magic.

After the Zaire mission, Section 8 had been officially disbanded. Although he knew they continued doing black ops on their own, by that point he was too far into his own assignments to worry. The lure of money and power strong-armed him.

And when he needed a team he trusted to work a personal mission for him, he called S8 together one last time. When that mission went wrong, Rip cut off all contact with them, but it didn’t matter. Darius had discovered through mutual contacts at the CIA that it had been a personal mission for Rip . . . and he’d discovered Rip’s identity as S8’s handler.

Rip had had that mutual contact killed, but the damage had already been done.

Darius knew that S8 members had been killed doing Rip’s personal business. And then Darius had taken Grace right out from under his nose.

Create a team that scares the hell out of you, and you know you’re doing it right.

His pride and joy. His ego. His baby.

He’d created his own worst enemy, and they were the only ones worthy enough to be his adversaries. He smiled when he thought about the leverage in his basement and the intel that had been tortured out of him. Breaking a man you’d taught never to break was equal parts satisfying and heartbreaking.

It was only a matter of time before Grace was back on the island safely, and this time, he knew she’d never leave. She’d spit the name at him. Rip.

Rip. He rolled the name on his tongue out loud, but it never sounded right when he said it. That didn’t stop him.

Grace had been the first one to call him Rip—she’d refused to call him Dad or Richard . . . and somehow she’d known that he’d see Rip as an insult, even though they were his initials.

But then he’d decided to embrace the nickname from her.

The fact that she was truly psychic was almost more of a hindrance to him than a help, although Esme always insisted that Grace was the best thing to happen to them. But when Grace had given false intel that could’ve cost him his life, he’d taken Esme away. Grace had been twelve then. For the next few years, she’d given him intel, and he’d made sure to check and double check, never relying solely on it.

When she was seventeen and she’d tried to kill him a second time, he’d known it was time to break her.

He also hadn’t known if that was truly possible. Grace fascinated him in the way unbreakable people always had. He considered himself unbreakable, and the fact that Grace had never truly surrendered, no matter how much he tortured her, astounded him.

Her gift had been the first casualty when he’d attempted to break her—but not her spirit. Now, with the intel she’d learned from S8, she could take him down, gift or no gift. He had no choice but to kill her this time.

If at first you don’t succeed . . .

“Try, try again. I’m coming for you, Gracie,” he whispered quietly into the silence of his office. “And this time, there’s no escape.”