by Robyn Amos

Prologue

Regrets were a waste of time. Keshon Gray had lived as a criminal long enough to know that much.

Stepping onto the rooftop, he took a pack of cigarettes out of his breast pocket. Gray only had a minute or two before he had to go back to the pretense of being a bouncer for LA's trendy night spot, Ocean. But this time, as he struck a match and held it to the end of his cigarette, a strange sensation washed over him.
Before his break he'd helped move a shipment of cocaine, but that wasn't what was pushing against the edges of his conscience. Nor was it the crates of semiautomatic Street Sweeper shotguns stacked in the storeroom beside the paper cups. He released a short puff, and as he watched the blue smoke curl and blend with the cool November air, it hit him.

Once he'd hated cigarettes . . . and smoking. At the back of his mind lived the memory of a time when he'd sworn the habit would never touch him.
Gray's first toke on a cigarette had been to prove himself to his boys. And even after he'd long outgrown that need, the habit remained, like sooty residue in the wake of a fire.
Each guise he'd taken on over the years—and there had been many—left a new layer of grime clinging to his soul. But he had no more choice now than he'd had thirteen years ago.

He may not have chosen the right path in life, but he'd done it for survival—not his own, someone else's. He'd made up his mind to do whatever he had to, but he hadn't been quick enough or strong enough then, and someone he'd loved like a brother had died.

Suddenly Gray's throat constricted and he felt as if he was choking. His cough was rough as he struggled to clear his throat, his eyes watering with the effort.
Even now, he couldn't think of that episode in his life with the numbing cool he was able to apply to everything else. For that reason, Gray had never failed again—at anything. He approached each new challenge as though someone's life depended upon his success—and more often than not, it did.

Since he'd returned to LA, he'd reconnected with the remains of the gang he had belonged to. Those that weren't dead or in prison had been floundering on the edges of the LA drug trade and getting nowhere fast.

He herded them off street corners where they'd been hustling, and yanked them out of basements where they wasted their days getting high. It was time for them to move from petty street dealing into the big time. Making real money in this business required contacts, which he'd been cultivating carefully. Add a little weapons brokering into the mix, and they had an organized operation with the flashy LA club scene as the perfect cover.

The agency Gray worked for, SPEAR (Stealth, Perseverence, Endeavor, Attack and Rescue) was on the trail of a traitor—not a small problem since most government organizations didn't even know that SPEAR existed. Those that did know of SPEAR recognized them as a group of the most elite, well-trained operatives in the world. A fact that made this turncoat's threat to the agency all the more menacing.
He was willing to do whatever he had to do to bring down the enemy, but the fact was, he'd been hiding in shadows for so long, he no longer knew what he looked like in the light.

Gray stared at the cigarette burning between his fingers. Reflexively, he spread his index and middle finger and watched the cigarette fall over the edge of the roof and into the darkness below.

The time for mourning lost opportunities had passed. He'd made his choices and now he had to play them out. It didn't matter that he'd never based those choices on his own needs. Trying to find the man he'd lost so many years ago was pointless. In fact, that man had never existed. Gray had only been sixteen when his identity had begun to slip away.

He took a step back, straightening the collar on his black blazer, which he wore over jeans and a T-shirt, both black. His break was over. And so was the bittersweet glimpse of his past.

As Gray hurried down the stairs, he couldn't know that after nine years, he was about to look into the eyes of the only person who had ever known the real Keshon Gray.