Secret Agent Secretary

Her apartment was a half hour away through New Year’s Eve traffic. It would be much faster to walk the six blocks to the Mira Hotel and lay out his options for him in person. She could even recite the transcript if he wanted to go that route.

Far from being concerned about blowing his cover, she was confident she’d fit in great with the downtown party crowd, dressed to kill as she was in her slinky pink gown. She couldn’t imagine a solid reason why she shouldn’t go for it.

She slipped her feet into the pair of four-inch strappy black heels she’d spent two weeks breaking in by wearing every waking minute she spent in her apartment. Though she’d probably walk with a limp for days afterward, she was determined to start the New Year off in the shoes she’d maxed out her Macy’s card for.

A dab of gloss to her lips, a toss of her hair to give it some oomph and she was ready to go.

She set the office alarm, turned off the lights and locked the door, tote bag and purse in hand. After a quick stop at her car in the underground parking garage to drop off the tote bag in the trunk, she strode to the street-level exit and into the cool night air. Halfway down the first block, she recalled the paper clip chain swinging behind her. Mortified, she pulled her hair out of the way and tried to remove it. When her efforts failed, she stuffed the chain down the back of her dress and kept moving.

Computers or no, this secretary was seeing her job through to the bitter end tonight. After all, Moneypenny would never allow such trifling matters to stand in the way of her work, and neither, by God, would Avery.

Chapter 2

The ice machine released another round of tumbling ice as Ryan dragged the second unconscious man into the supply closet attached to the ice and vending machine alcove and cuffed him to a plumbing pipe. The first man groaned. It was the only noise he’d made since Ryan had smashed his head against the mirrored vanity in the hotel room.

Reaching around to the small of his back, Ryan withdrew the 9 mm he’d confiscated from the groaner and tapped him on the head with the barrel. “Anybody home?”

After he let out another pitiful sound, the man’s head lolled to the side. Out cold again.

With his dress shoe, he toed the sneaker of the second man, a lean, fair-haired Eastern European–looking sort. “What about you? You alive in there?”

Nothing.

Damn it. With so much at stake, he didn’t have time for this. He rolled his head back and stared at the ceiling, reining in the maddening frustration. Ten long years he’d been at this, hunting the man who haunted his nightmares. Ten years of near misses and outright failures, of getting so close he could taste the closure that killing Vincenzo Chiara would bring—the freedom it would bring—and yet here he was, in the middle of his last good chance to get the deed done, and he’d spent the past half hour in a hotel supply closet waiting for two unconscious hit men to rouse so he could pump them for information.

He returned the gun to the waistband of his dress pants and shook his head. “Note to self, Rambo—next time two guys jump you, try not to incapacitate them so enthusiastically.”

He’d dragged them to the closet because remaining in the hotel room made him an easy target for the next batch of punks dispatched to do him in. Ryan had no doubt this first attempt to silence him wasn’t going to be the last before the night was over.

The main question he needed to ask the hit men was not who they worked for. That was as plain as the crude prison tattoos on the one man’s arms and face. Nor was the question why they wanted Ryan dead. He was crystal clear about that, too.

What he needed to know was how.

How did Chiara know where to find him, down to the exact hotel room he’d secured under a pseudonym two weeks ago? In other words, he was still at square one, puzzling over the same damn question he had been for the past six months—which of the twenty-five San Diego ICE department employees was double-dealing?

He’d narrowed down the answer to four possibilities. Make that five now. He’d dismissed the office secretary as a suspect months ago, but she was the person who’d processed his paperwork for the hotel room and she hadn’t come through with his one request tonight. She hadn’t emailed him the file he’d asked for. So Ryan had to wonder, was that because she didn’t understand how critical the document was to deciphering Chiara’s business and contacts in San Diego...or because she did?

Either way, the longer he stayed on the sixth floor of the Mira Hotel, the greater the risk. Time to leave before Chiara’s men got the jump on him again. His window of opportunity to catch the man was shrinking fast, so he refused to contemplate aborting the surveillance mission, but there were any number of positions in surrounding buildings from which he could observe the Mira without getting himself trapped again.

He straightened the blue tie he’d worn with a crisp white dress shirt and suit to blend in with the festive hotel atmosphere, then used the phone he’d confiscated from the groaner—he’d smashed his own on the off chance it’d been bugged—to check one last time for the transcripted conversation on his email account. Nothing.

He pocketed the groaner’s phone. Then, leaving his own pistol in his shoulder holster and his service piece at his ankle, he took the confiscated 9 mm in hand again. Gun first, he nosed around the corner to scan the hallway for trouble before heading for the stairs.

He knew from his arrival earlier that the hotel was swarming with guests of the massive New Year’s Eve celebration taking place in the main ballroom on the second floor, but judging from the silence in the hall and in the stairwell, the party had already gotten under way.

As expected, the ground level was hopping with New Year’s revelers. He tucked the gun out of sight, rolled his shoulders and did his best to look relaxed and happy as he moved closer to the lobby. Just a regular guy on his way to meet friends for a celebratory drink.

There were no potential hit men in view, or anyone who registered on his radar as connected to the man he’d been hunting for ten years. Hunting with the laser focus of a man poised to lose everything he held dear, a possibility that might be closer than he realized if the letter from Paolo Hawk was the warning he dreaded it was.

His eyes followed a lanky bellhop pushing a loaded luggage cart toward the service elevators. Ryan stepped aside to give him room. He tipped his hat with a “Good evening, sir” before moving on. As the luggage rack moved past him, a gorgeous, shapely backside adorned in a pink dress caused him a moment of distraction before his eyes flickered back to the crowd. No time to enjoy the scenery when he could be ambushed again at any moment.

He allowed himself a last look at the woman standing at the bar, this time taking inventory of her legs. He was just starting to wonder if her face matched the sophisticated sexpot allure of the rest of her body when she accepted a martini from the bartender, then turned to look across the lobby.

Ryan’s jaw dropped. He might’ve made a little sound of disbelief, but it was hard to tell given the volume of music streaming from the ballroom.

This changes everything—she changes everything.

Ducking farther into the hall’s shadows, he reflexively brought a foot up to tap his service weapon, his backup piece for the night. Double-checking the presence of his guns was rather pointless, but after seventeen years as a soldier, it was one nervous habit he couldn’t see fit to break.

Maybe he’d mistaken the woman’s identity. San Diego was full of women with long, wavy blond hair and big brown eyes.

Taking care to keep his face in the swath of shadow created by the enormous lobby Christmas tree, he tipped his head around the corner until he had a clear view of the bar.

No two ways about it; the woman in pink was Avery Meadows.

With her lips on the rim of her martini glass, she glanced around anxiously, as though she was waiting for someone. Him, he assumed. What a dangerous move, to waltz into the middle of the undercover op she knew full well was happening here. She looked like a pink bull’s-eye, standing in plain sight dressed like she was, as though she had zero concern for her personal safety.

Then again, if she was working with Vincenzo Chiara, maybe safety wasn’t a concern. Maybe, instead of looking for Ryan, she was meeting up with Chiara’s men to ensure they’d followed through on their job to off him.

But why the dress and the drink—to blend in with the New Year’s Eve party crowd? Why would she bother? Nothing made sense.

He strained his brain to remember what she’d been wearing when he’d left the office but couldn’t pull it up from his mental files. Maybe a charcoal-gray dress and a sweater...or was it a pantsuit? He’d pretty much been avoiding eye contact with her since arriving at the San Diego office. Mostly because she wouldn’t stop looking at him in that sly way women did when they were making plans for a man.

Watching her watch him gave him the willies, as though maybe he’d been right to suspect her of misdeeds. But even if she hadn’t been on his short list of corruption suspects, he wasn’t in San Diego to get involved in a relationship or even have a bit of no-strings-attached fun. He was there for only one purpose: to bury Chiara along with the secret Ryan had dedicated his life to protecting. He couldn’t afford to get distracted—not even by his office’s sweet, cute secretary.

She certainly didn’t look sweet and cute tonight. More like trouble wrapped in a pink hourglass. And Ryan already had plenty of trouble.

He smoothed a hand over his hair and straightened his tie. Whatever dirt Avery was mixed up in, it was time for her to come clean.

He skirted the room along the wall. She hadn’t noticed his presence, so he took advantage of the element of surprise and walked around the far side of the bar to approach her from behind. She looked even sexier the closer he got. His eyes traced the line of her calf to the skin on the back of her knee. And that butt—how had he never noticed it before?

When he was near enough to see the movement of her teardrop pearl earrings as she fished the olive from her drink, he double-checked his body language. Just a guy meeting his date at the bar.

He wrapped his hand around her elbow and ducked his lips close to her ear. “You know what they say about people who eat the olive before finishing the drink, don’t you?”

Startled, she stiffened and sucked in a sharp breath. The martini sloshed over the rim of the glass. “Agent Reitano, thank goodness. I was starting to think I’d never find you.”

She tried to face him, but he maintained his position of power with an unyielding grip on her arm. “Ryan,” he corrected. No need to advertise he was an undercover agent. “What are you doing here?”

“I left you a voice mail and texted you that I was coming.”

“I tossed my phone.”

“What? Why?” She tried to turn again, so he pressed against her back, pinning her between the bar stool and his hips.

“My question first.”

She fiddled with the base of her glass. “Okay. The answer is no. I don’t know what they say about people who eat the olive first. That we’re hungry?”

Huh? “Avery, what are you doing here?”

She angled her head over her shoulder and whispered out of the corner of her mouth, “There was a problem with the document you asked for.”

Damn it. Now what was he supposed to think? Avery definitely wasn’t giving off a double-agent vibe, but her actions were suspicious as all get-out. Once upon a time, Ryan had valued his intuition first and foremost, but ever since the betrayal that had broken up his black ops crew and turned Ryan into a lone hunter, he knew better than to trust anyone or anything— including his own instincts.

And wasn’t that a royally jaded thought? When had he become such a cynic? Actually, he could pinpoint the exact day and time he’d turned into a cynic, not that it made the transformation any less jarring.

He shook off his regret and frustration about the past. There was nothing he could do to change the way things went down with his crew.

“What sort of problem?” He leaned in for a view of her facial expression when she answered.

“The office’s computers crashed, so I searched for the hard copy, but the file was missing. I didn’t know what else to do but come find you.”

Scowling, he shook his head. “You expect me to believe that?”

“Uh, yeah. Why wouldn’t you?”

Another loud, beat-heavy song drifted into the lobby from the second-floor ballroom as the New Year’s Eve ball went into full swing. Regardless, the ground-floor lobby bar was not an ideal place for an interrogation.

From his research on the hotel, he remembered a row of conference rooms on the third level. Taking the service stairs would be quicker, but with Avery’s dress, they’d stand out too glaringly to anyone on the lookout for incongruous movement. Staying with the horde of revelers attending the ball was the best camouflage he could manage under the circumstances.

After dropping a twenty-dollar bill on the bar, he slipped his arm around her waist, working to ignore the heat of her body and the provocative curve of her figure. “Let’s walk.”

Hip to hip, they strode in pace with the impenetrable crowd lining up at the base of the escalators. Well, Avery didn’t so much stride as teeter along in a pair of black stiletto heels that looked downright torturous.

As soon as they shuffled onto the escalator, Ryan turned their backs to the lobby and looked out the wall of windows at the sea of cars and pedestrians on the packed downtown street. Chiara was out there somewhere nearby. Ryan could feel it.

Times like these, constrained by the rules of his job, he didn’t feel like the man with the advantage. Especially given that he was locked in a deadly game of cat and mouse with a man of no scruples and no loyalty but to himself.

Avery shifted, reclaiming his attention. She tilted her mouth toward his chin. “Where are we going?”

“Somewhere to talk.”

She nodded, the worry lines on her face easing. “Good. Because I think I can help you with the Lassiter transcript.”

Her words threw him off-balance again. The LM1204 document was top secret. There would be no way for her to know the names involved in the wiretap unless she’d read the file. Even if she was lying about his computer breaking down, she couldn’t have opened the file, because it was individually passworded. Lassiter was a rogue computer hacker and a known associate of the Chiara brothers. His connection to the current investigation into Chiara was highly classified intel that she had no business knowing.

He gave her body a calculated perusal. “I’m curious—why the costume and the drink?”

He’d chosen the word costume purposefully and injected some venom into his tone to lob that off-balance feeling right back at her, but he still felt a twinge of regret when she smoothed a hand down her dress in a self-conscious gesture. He touched his shoe to his ankle holster, a reminder of the dangerous mess he was in.

“There are a lot of women here in cocktail dresses holding drinks,” she answered. “I think I blend in rather well, thank you very much.”

He ran his tongue along the backside of his teeth, fighting the urge to break it to her that her rationale was flawed. Sure, there were a lot of fancy-looking women in the lobby, but a hot blonde in a skintight pink dress standing alone at the bar? He’d bet the contents of his safety-deposit box that every male in the room had taken note of her.

The escalator poured them into a wall of people waiting to gain entrance to the ballroom. With one hand on Avery’s elbow and the other on the small of her back, Ryan cut through the crowd, his destination the service stairway entrance on the far side of the second-floor landing near the restrooms. Neither he nor Avery tried to speak, as the effort would’ve been futile given the earsplitting mash-up of dance music and people talking.

As he bypassed the elevators, then the restrooms, she tugged his jacket sleeve. “Wait a sec. Where exactly are we going?”

“Conference rooms on the third floor.”

“What about the hotel room you reserved? Wouldn’t that be the safest place?”

It was happening again. His intuition was going bonkers. Was she trying to lure him there thinking he had yet to visit the room where the hit men had been lying in wait? Or was she asking an honest question? At this point, he couldn’t see any harm in telling her the truth. “Chiara’s men were waiting to ambush me in the room when I got here tonight. So, no, it’s not the safest place for us to talk.”

He opened the stairwell door and leaned in to make sure the stairs were clear. Avery yanked him back by the jacket and gave him a shake. “Hold on—are we in some sort of danger?”

Looking into her wide eyes, a wry chuckle escaped his throat. He removed her hands from his lapels and held her wrists. “Right now I can’t decide if you’re honestly that clueless or if you’re the world’s best liar.”

She jerked away from his grip like he’d burned her. Another twinge of regret jolted through him. He forced himself to remember it was a good sign, that feeling. It meant he had at least a shred of humanity left in him, which was saying something after all he’d seen and done in his life.

“I don’t understand,” she said. Glancing over her shoulder at the crowd they’d navigated, she rubbed her bare arms. “I thought you were conducting routine surveillance tonight, nothing dangerous. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have come alone. The whole team would’ve been here to—”

In time with the pounding bass from the ballroom, a booming shot rang out nearby and a piece of wood splintered from the doorway above Ryan’s head. A second shot followed before he could react, lodging in the wall behind Avery. She shrieked.

Ryan pulled her into the stairwell and jerked the door shut.

He pushed her ahead of him down the stairs as he retrieved his S&W .45. “Change of plans. How fast can you run?”

Chapter 3

Ryan had to hand it to Avery. For a dolled-up chick in high heels and a tight dress, the lady could book it. He paced her at a jog, the soles of his shoes crunching over debris and crumbled stucco on the dingy, dusty staircase.

“Oh, my God. We were shot at, weren’t we? Oh. My. God.” Maintaining a litany of exclamations and curses, she skidded around the second turn in the staircase and slammed her side into the wall.

Arms flailing for balance, she barely slowed down until, somewhere above them, a stairwell door opened with an echoing boom. Her speed faltered before cranking up another notch, until she was virtually flying around the final corner.

The stairwell bottomed out on a dim, concrete-floored landing with a door leading, Ryan hoped, to the hotel’s underground parking garage. He sped past Avery before she had a chance to dart through the door. He wasn’t a big fan of running scared, which meant it was time for him to neutralize the threat.

He snagged her around the ribs and tossed her into the shadowed space beneath the stairs, in front of a second door he hadn’t noticed earlier that had the look of a supply closet. Her eyes locked on his gun for the first time and she squeaked, dropping her purse. After flashing his fiercest warning glare, she clammed up. Last thing Ryan needed was her giving away their position. Then again, if she did, he’d have his answer about who her allegiance belonged to.

At least two sets of men’s shoes thumped along the stairs in descent.

He pulled back into the shadow, smushing Avery’s body into the corner behind him. Assuming a defensive position, he aimed at the turn in the stairs, his finger on the trigger. Avery’s shallow, quiet breathing fanned over his neck. From her stomach to her chest, her body quivered against his back, as though she was trying so hard not to move that her muscles spasmed with fatigue.

Too late, it dawned on him that if she was the double agent, she might be armed. He had no idea where she’d stash a weapon in that dress, and her purse was on the ground between their legs, but nevertheless, it was a stupid move to have his back to her.

Torn between protecting her from Chiara’s men and protecting himself from her, he decided to go with his gut—however unreliable that’d proved tonight. After all, hesitation, not double-crossing secretaries, was the number one killer of people in his line of work. The debate fled his mind as a man’s legs materialized on the steps.

Avery’s body quivered more violently.

Three men took the steps two at a time, their eyes on the door to the parking garage. Ryan recognized none of them, which told him Chiara had an even deeper reservoir of attack dogs than he’d been aware of.

Two men, Ryan could’ve neutralized before they knew what was happening, but the third man changed the odds. He’d have time to react while Ryan felled the first two, putting both Ryan and Avery in serious danger.

Close combat was his only viable option.

As the men descended, their focus on the door, time slowed. The world went silent.

Ryan felt the rush of adrenaline through his veins, a hot, dark burn of power and purpose. His favorite feeling in the world. All his years of experience had taught him to harness its potential, syncing the strength of his body to the strength of his will. He released an exhale in a slow stream through his nose and prepared to attack.

The tallest man put his hand on the door’s push bar.

Ryan took a deep breath and lunged, squeezing the trigger as he flew.

* * *

Avery watched with crippling fear as Ryan charged their assailants. Every bang of his gun made her heart squeeze and froze her body further, until she couldn’t even flinch away from the violence. Cowering against the far wall, the long-forgotten paper clip chain cutting into the skin of her back, she could barely breathe or blink.

One of the three assailants fell to the ground almost instantly, an angry hole gaping in his torn and bloody shirt. She’d never seen a real gunshot wound before. It didn’t look anything like in the movies.

Ryan latched onto the back of the nearest man still standing and foisted him into the taller of the two as he continued to fire. She caught a glimpse of a black-ink tattoo of a cross between the shorter man’s shoulder blades before Ryan’s right arm hooked around the man’s neck. A crack like a bone breaking made Avery blanch.

Ryan dropped the shorter man. Tucking his gun into his jacket, he stepped over the body to seize the wrist of the remaining man’s gun hand. He slammed it into the door over and over until the gun clattered to the ground near their feet.

The other man caught him with a punch to the cheek.

His face a cold mask, Ryan threw his fist into the assailant’s neck, then his gut. The blows continued from both men, their arms moving so quickly Avery couldn’t tell who was winning. The two fell to the ground and rolled toward the stairs.

When they came to a stop, Ryan had the other man’s neck balanced against the edge of the bottom stair, his palm against his chin, locking him in place.

The man gasped, his legs kicking beneath Ryan’s weight. Before Avery’s eyes, Ryan’s mask of cool control morphed into a look of fierceness as lethal as his skills had proved. She was so fixated on his face, she didn’t notice the other man’s knee coming up until it made impact with Ryan’s groin.

With a guttural sound of pain, Ryan’s grip eased and the other man pounced on the opportunity to counterattack. He flipped on top of Ryan and wedged his head between the stair and the bar of the rail.

Ryan let out a wheezing breath that shook Avery from her fear-frozen state. Anger and irritation bubbled in her throat like acid. How dare those shooters threaten her and her coworker. And on New Year’s Eve, no less. She was supposed to be partying with her friends to celebrate the end of a crappy year that included catching her boyfriend in bed with another woman, not running for her life or watching her office crush get the snot beat out of him.