“Apollo. I hate you almost as much as I love you. And I really, really fucking hate you.”

The debriefing with the FBI took forever, but finally, Chris, Diana, and Rand were cut loose to go to the hospital. Rand paced the waiting room.

Kira will be fine. She has to be.

Freya and Cal arrived, followed twenty minutes later by Morgan, Pax, and their two-year-old daughter, Valentine. The little girl reminded Rand of his sister’s kid, right down to the Disney Princess costume.

Finally, Kira’s father arrived. Yesterday, Kira had told him that she’d known Freya since childhood. Their parents had been colleagues. Rand knew nothing about Freya’s family, but Conrad Hanson met Freya’s proffered hug with a cold handshake.

It was weird because Freya never hugged.

“You did this.” Kira’s father’s words held sharp accusation.

“Dr. Hanson, we had no way of knowing⁠—”

It was strange seeing Freya—a badass former CIA operative in her late thirties—take a deferential role, but it made sense given her history with Hanson.

She was saved by a man in medical scrubs who greeted Hanson with a handshake, then pulled him aside for a private conversation before escorting him into the secured corridor to Kira’s hospital room.

Rand understood the reasons for HIPAA, but at that moment, he wasn’t a fan.

Freya dropped into a chair in the corner of the waiting room and rested her head in her hands. Her husband, Cal, rubbed her back and murmured consoling words.

He understood Freya felt horrible for putting Kira in the crosshairs, but Rand was the one who’d dropped her off at her apartment without a thought for her security.

He’d seen the guy’s eyes yesterday. Rand knew what it looked like when a man was capable of true evil, and he’d seen it directed at Kira. But instead of considering her safety, he’d focused on getting a date with her.

Freya leaned against Cal. “I never should have asked for her help.”

“She’s going to be fine,” Cal said.

“Physically, maybe. I should have seen this coming.”

If anyone deserved Kira’s father’s hate, it wasn’t Freya Lange. Rand was the one who should shoulder that blame. It was small consolation that the man who’d orchestrated her abduction would die in prison for his other crimes.

He couldn’t sit still and resumed pacing the room. Finally, Kira’s father reappeared. Everyone turned to him expectantly.

“All of you need to leave.” His gaze fixed on Rand. “Especially you.”

Rand did the only thing he could. He left.

Chapter One

Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story

Virginia Beach, Virginia

June

Six Months Later

Teaching a bunch of soldiers, sailors, and marines nearly half her age that it was a bad idea to loot the countries they were deployed to was not how Kira Hanson had expected to spend the last Tuesday in June. She was supposed to be heading to the airport, embarking on her first-ever trip overseas. This kind of gig usually went to an in-house Army or Navy archaeologist. After all, the Cultural Heritage Monitoring Lab was only a few hours away from JEB Little Creek-Fort Story, but CHML didn’t have anyone to send at the last minute when Dr. Diana Edwards, who had a contract to conduct these trainings through Friday Morning Valkyries, had been hospitalized with appendicitis requiring emergency surgery yesterday.

Kira owed Diana her life, so when the archaeologist needed a pinch hit, Kira would always step up to bat. Even if she had to bump her flight a day. Thank you, changeable tickets.

Now here she was. She’d driven down from DC in the wee hours of the morning to give herself time to review the presentation materials before she faced her first classroom of fifty or so students. Three sessions today—one in the morning, two in the afternoon, and she’d be done. Then the long drive home. She’d catch her rescheduled and rerouted flight to Malta at seven a.m. tomorrow.

Six hours of teaching. She could do this. Or, given her anxiety, she might vomit on her shoes and spend her lunch break crying in a closet somewhere.

She’d liked teaching when she was in grad school. But that was at a university where, in theory, at least, students wanted to be there. They took art history courses because they liked the subject, or they thought it would be an easy A, which it wasn’t.

She had a feeling these students wouldn’t be so keen on the subject, but at least there was no tuition, no tests, and no grades. Kira was way more nervous than her students would be.

She took several deep breaths as she sat behind the steering wheel and stared at the building. She’d made it through Pass and ID with the help of a civilian Navy employee who’d met her at the gate. She’d cleared the first hurdle.

Social anxiety was nothing new for her, but she usually managed it with careful planning. It helped that work was one thing she had confidence in. She was a recognized expert in her field. But this wasn’t her usual environment, and there’d been little time to brace herself for standing in front of a room and teaching 150 total strangers for six hours.

It was an equation for an anxiety attack.

She took a long, slow breath. Today, I am a Valkyrie.

Well, except she wasn’t a Valkyrie. Not really. She was a consultant for Friday Morning Valkyries, but she’d never taken Morgan’s defense classes, or Freya’s tradecraft training. She didn’t have the security clearance of all the real Valkyries. She didn’t travel abroad and run down artifact traffickers. Her fieldwork was limited to archives on the East Coast.

Until a few weeks ago, she couldn’t get either the security clearance or passport necessary for being a Valkyrie. But with help from the State Department, she had finally obtained a little blue book of freedom. The security-clearance part would come later. It was enough to have an actual passport.

And tomorrow, she’d get her very first stamp.

That thought centered her. Eased the queasiness in her stomach.

I am going to Malta.

She climbed from her car and smiled at the NAVFAC—Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command—employee who’d escorted her onto the base and then politely waited in the parking lot for her to get over her minor panic attack before entering the building.

“Sorry. Got a text I needed to reply to,” she lied. Hopefully, he hadn’t been watching her and seen she wasn’t using her phone.

“No problem. We’ve got an hour before the first session.”

It took fifteen minutes to get the projector to work with the prepared presentation Diana had sent her. She then ran through the slides and accompanying notes. It was familiar information, but she was glad Diana taught classes on the regular, because the notes were detailed enough that Kira wouldn’t get stuck wondering why there was a slide of Indiana Jones in a refrigerator without the accompanying point that was being made, even though the joke should be obvious.

She smiled at the silly meme. She didn’t expect it from Diana, who always seemed so serious. But then, Kira and Diana met over serious circumstances, so it might be their brief history and not the woman’s personality.

Students filed in minutes before the start time. They all wore fatigues of one kind or another. The slightly different patterns and cut probably indicated which branch of the military they were from. Little Creek was part of a joint base run by the Navy, but the other part, Fort Story, was Army. Plus, Norfolk wasn’t far, and, for all she knew, personnel from there had also been assigned to one of these training sessions.

This was the kickoff for a series of trainings Diana had proposed to the Department of Defense. Her depth of experience in the Middle East and knowledge of the artifact trafficking world—and recent acclaim for identifying and taking down a terrorist leader—would be a big draw for students who might otherwise grumble at being forced to take the class.