Breaking Deep Cover - Beth A. Freely

Strait McCardle thought he was done. A ghost left behind by a war no one admits happened. But when STARR pulls him out of retirement for one last mission, he discovers the battlefield and the enemy have changed.

Mariam Carteras was the asset who vanished. She was a brilliant neurochemist embedded too deep in a biotech front tied to Ashfall, the weaponized belief system that nearly broke STARR apart. Finding her should have been simple. Bringing her home will take everything.

What begins as an extraction becomes a reckoning. Ashfall has evolved, fused with Mariam's stolen research, and it can now rewrite the mind itself. At the heart of it all is Kaysan Ahmed, who has risen from the dead and is determined to finish what he started.

As Strait and Mariam fight to expose the program's last phase, they'll face betrayals, buried memories, and the ghosts they tried to leave behind. But some bonds can't be programmed. And some loves refuse to die.

They're still STARR-but they answer only to each other this time.