Off the Grid Read online

  Praise for the Lost Platoon Series

  “McCarty’s first installment in her Lost Platoon series—Going Dark—features betrayal, murder, and ecoterrorism. The nonstop action and love story are guaranteed to keep you turning the pages to find out what happens to Dean and Annie.”

  —#1 New York Times bestselling author Catherine Coulter

  “A sexy thrill ride from start to finish. Steamy and suspenseful, Going Dark is a must read.”

  —#1 New York Times bestselling author Jennifer L. Armentrout

  “McCarty’s exciting contemporary series launch will not disappoint fans of her historical Highlands romances.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “The background politics, ensuing conversations between two smart and well-drawn characters, and the mystery of SEAL Team Nine—who survived and why they were ambushed—elevate McCarty’s above many military romances. Readers will find it hard to wait for the next in the series.”

  —Booklist (starred review)

  “McCarty’s foray into romantic suspense is nonstop action from beginning to end. This fast-paced story will have readers hanging on to the edge of their seats, wondering where it will take them next. With the two main characters on a course set for disaster, the attraction between them cannot be denied. With no one left to trust, are they being completely honest with each other? A great read by the talented McCarty!”

  —RT Book Reviews

  Also by Monica McCarty

  The Lost Platoon

  GOING DARK

  The Highland Guard

  THE GHOST

  THE ROGUE (novella)

  THE ROCK

  THE STRIKER

  THE ARROW

  THE RAIDER

  THE KNIGHT (novella)

  THE HUNTER

  THE RECRUIT

  THE SAINT

  THE VIPER

  THE RANGER

  THE HAWK

  THE CHIEF

  The Campbell Trilogy

  HIGHLAND SCOUNDREL

  HIGHLAND OUTLAW

  HIGHLAND WARRIOR

  The MacLeods of Skye Trilogy

  HIGHLANDER UNCHAINED

  HIGHLANDER UNMASKED

  HIGHLANDER UNTAMED

  A JOVE BOOK

  Published by Berkley

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2018 by Monica McCarty

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  A JOVE BOOK and BERKLEY are registered trademarks and the B colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Ebook ISBN: 9780399587733

  First Printing: July 2018

  Cover art: man © Claudio Marinesco; power plant with smoke © Nikkytok/Shutterstock Images

  Cover design by Rita Frangie

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Praise for the Lost Platoon Series

  Also by Monica McCarty

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Excerpt from Out of Time

  About the Author

  To Laura, my law school classmate,

  Disney half-marathon companion,

  and travel buddy extraordinaire,

  whom I apparently spend so much time with that iPhone photos thinks she is in my immediate family .

  I look forward to many more adventures!

  Acknowledgments

  A huge thanks to my editor, Cindy Hwang, and my agent, Annelise Robey, for believing in this series and seeing it from my computer screen to bookstores everywhere. Your support, knowledge, and expertise are both valued and appreciated.

  The entire team at Berkley Publishing Group has been phenomenal to work with, but I want to give a special and very big shout-out to my incredible publicist, Jessica Brock (you are the bomb); to the art department for the yummy covers (to keep my hot-cover streak alive); and to the production team, including Kristine Swartz and my very hardworking copy editor.

  Thanks also to Jami Alden, who is my much-trusted and depended-upon first reader. I have no idea what I would do without you. Please never make me find out.

  Prologue

  SUBCAMP OF VORKUTLAG, POLAR URAL MOUNTAINS, RUSSIA

  MAY 26, 0130 HOURS

  “Travel the world,” they’d said. “Have an exciting career while doing what you love.”

  The navy recruiters who’d come knocking on John Donovan’s frat house door eight years ago, when he was an all-American water polo player at University of Southern California, had promised both. John had been thinking more along the lines of Bora Bora or Tahiti—not Siberia—but they’d sure as hell undersold the excitement part of the job.

  It was hard to get more exciting than a no-footprint, fail-and-you-die recon mission to a supposedly abandoned gulag in Russia, looking for proof of a doomsday weapon, with not only their lives but war at stake if they were discovered.

  Yeah, definitely undersold. But that was why he was here. Retiarius Platoon, one of the two platoons that made up the top secret SEAL Team Nine, didn’t do vanilla. They did exciting and impossible, and this op sure as shit qualified.

  But so far they’d been giving Murphy’s Law a workout in the “if it can go wrong, it will go wrong” category. They’d lost their unblinking eye in the sky—nicknamed Sauron from The Lord of the Rings—lost all comms—aka gone blind—and now that they were finally at the camp and ready to start looking around, something else was going down.

  They should be inside the gulag’s command building by now, but they’d stopped in the yard for some reason. From his position at point, John