They locked him up in the basement, in a steel cage enclosure normally housing the Rottweilers that guarded Congressman Wharton's D.C. mansion. Undercover agent Troy Hill struggled against the plastic cuff that trapped his hands behind him, careful so the guard outside the cage wouldn't notice as he shifted on the cold cement floor.

Step one: Get his hands free.

Step two: Deal with the two-inch wide metal chain and the padlock that kept the door secured.

The sooner he escaped the better. He knew too much, enough so that his captors couldn't afford to let him live.

Next time they came for him, it wouldn't be for another brutal interrogation. They knew now that they couldn't impress him with pain. Next time they came, they would be coming to kill him.

The guard, a six foot ten massive ex-football-player type, cursed as he restarted the game he'd been playing on his phone. He adjusted his large frame on the barstool, engrossed in hitting the right buttons with his oversized thumbs.

Troy didn't plan on going up against him, not with the cracked ribs, the busted knuckles on his right hand, and the swollen kneecap that had met with a baseball bat repeatedly during his questioning. Much better to hedge his bets and go for the weakest link.

Which meant the female. She had the least amount of weight and muscles among the three guards who switched out every two hours. She'd be on guard duty next. Troy stretched his legs, warming up his muscles, getting ready.

She hadn't been there when the others had beaten him. On her previous shift, she'd brought him extra food and water. Seemed nice enough—another weakness he might be able to exploit. She was tall and lean, dark hair in a tight bun at her nape, the clearest green eyes he'd ever seen.

And something behind those eyes... A wall. Or maybe more than one, a whole defense system. Her muscles had been tense. Not a temporary thing. Her body language… He knew people with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, who walked like that, watched like that, always on the edge, on the ball of their feet as if they were ready at a moment's notice either to lunge into a fight, or flee.

Among the three guards, she'd be the easiest one to rattle.

But she wouldn't be a pushover. He would have to kill her to get away.

His conscience pinged.

He silenced it and focused on the cursed plastic cuff once again. * * * Claire Montgomery stood at attention in Congressman Wharton's office with half of his security detail. The six guys were all at least a head taller than she, with more muscles than a body builder, uniform tough-guy looks on their chiseled faces. Prime male specimens, yet she couldn't relate to them, let alone feel attracted to them. She couldn't see whatever it was they had that so titillated the maids.

Standing next to them, she felt like she was in some photo in an activity book for kids. Which one of these things is least like the others?

They were a well-oiled team, with her being the recent hire, the outsider. The photo op. Seemed suspicious that on her first day on the job last week, the Congressman just happened to walk around the grounds during her shift, started a chat with her, and the press had happened to be there to record everything.

CONGRESSMAN WHARTON BELIEVES IN HIRING RETURNING VETS, the headlines read the next day, above a picture of the man smiling benevolently at her.

He loomed now behind his desk, ready to dismiss the team. In light of the intruder, they'd been discussing various security upgrades to avoid something like this happening again. He'd called the meeting, his last one for today. He often worked in the middle of the night, and nobody seemed to think it strange.

"I think we should call the police, sir," she blurted her opinion. They should have called the cops the second they'd caught the intruder hours ago.

She hated that she'd been on break when the man had been apprehended. She'd only found out about him when everyone around her started running. Her earpiece must be acting up again, because she didn't even hear the alert.

The Congressman's aide, standing on his right, flashed her an annoyed look for speaking out of turn. "The FBI is on their way. They're going to take him in. If we call the local police, the media will be alerted. They monitor the police channels. We want to keep this under wraps."

"I don't want this in the news," the Congressman cut in, wearing his best vote-winner smile, disarming and trust- inspiring at the same time. "An attack on me will either paint me as a victim, or a man hated enough for assassins to be stalking him. Not the image I'm trying for just when I'm announcing my bid for presidency."

Everything had a political angle here, probably even the choice of what color socks the Congressman put on in the morning. Since she desperately needed the job, she just had to learn to live with that. "Yes, sir."

Wharton's gaze moved from man to man. "I want you to find out how he got in and make sure this doesn't happen again."

"Yes, sir," they said in unison, then backed out of the room, each going to their station.

She swung by the security office, grabbed a new headset then headed straight to the basement room where they held the intruder.

Her personal cell phone buzzed. She glanced at the display, and flipped the phone open immediately. "Is everything okay, mom?"

"I wish you would come home." The words were spoken in the tone of a long-suffering martyr.

"Mom, it's midnight." Claire rubbed the bridge of her nose as she walked. "We've talked about this."

"You know how bad stress is for my health." Her mother switched to accusation right on schedule.

"Then don't stress over it."

"You're sick, too, you know. You should have never taken that job. You should be home recuperating. You shouldn't take any job, period." She paused before she added, "Hector's been asking about you."

"As soon as I'm ready to be a trophy wife, you'll be first to know." Hector Merrick was one of her father's business associates, a man twenty years her senior.

"Don't use that mocking tone on me. I'm your mother."

"Sorry." She swiped a bottle of water from the pantry as she walked through what had been the servants' quarters when the sprawling Washington D.C. mansion had been built over a hundred years ago.

"I want the best for you, you know. You should have never joined the Army. Good Lord, with your height and those check bones—"

"Mom!" She couldn't deal with another lecture on her wasted life.

"Well, they broke you then spit you out. You're very lucky that Hector is interested at all, with your sort of sordid history. Not many men would consider a burned-out soldier, for heaven's sake, who deliberately involved herself in all that unpleasantness, to be the mother of his children."

And Hector was only interested because he fancied taking over after her father retired. But pointing that out to her mother would have been useless. "I have to go, mom. My shift is starting."

"You don't have to work. I don't understand you, Claire."

"I'll call you later." She hung up the phone and drew a deep breath before she plodded down the stairs.

She liked having a job. The job kept her sane. The job kept her alive, saving her from having to go back under her parents' roof where her mother would have auctioned her off to the highest bidder. The job made her feel productive. Made her feel normal, even if she was anything but, even if she hadn't slept more than two hours at a stretch since she'd returned from Afghanistan.

She pushed the door open.

"About time." Jason slid off the barstool without looking at the man in the cage.

But she did, and blinked hard at the blood. "What happened to him?"

"Asked to use the bathroom. Tripped over his own shoelaces on the way back in." He shrugged. "Wiped the cement floor with his face."

"You could have cleaned him up."

"He refused first aid."

She could believe that. The man's steel gray eyes, cold and calculating, watched her without emotion—a possible assassin, or domestic terrorist.

She'd just spent two consecutive tours of duty fighting foreign enemies. Frankly, she thought people like him inside the U.S. should appreciate their hard-won freedom and stop being jackasses.