Twin Targets
Jessica Andersen

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

About the Author

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

Epilogue

Copyright

Though she’s tried out professions ranging from cleaning sea lion cages to cloning glaucoma genes, from patent law to training horses, Jessica Andersen is happiest when she’s combining all these interests with her first love: writing romances. These days she’s delighted to be writing full-time on a farm in rural Connecticut that she shares with a small menagerie and a hero named Brian. She hopes you’ll visit her at www.JessicaAndersen.com for info on upcoming books, contests and to say “hi”!

Chapter One

Sydney Westlake made her move a half hour before the shift change, when the armed men who guarded the compound on Rocky Cliff Island would be at their least vigilant.

She hoped.

Tiberius was too smart to have a clockwork-regular schedule for something as important as security, so the armed forces that guarded the mansion and surrounding grounds worked randomly staggered shifts. After eleven months on the island, though—three of them as a prisoner—Sydney had found patterns in the randomness.

Today they were on what she’d dubbed “Schedule C,” which meant the guard post located directly between her quarters and the boat dock would change shifts at 1:40 a.m. God willing.

“You can do this,” she said to herself. “You have to do this. For Celeste.” Her sister’s name had become a mantra, something she held on to when her bravery faltered.

At first Sydney had told herself she was helping her ailing twin by staying on the island off the Massachusetts coast and working for Tiberius. She’d been trying to find a cure for the insidious genetic condition that was slowly killing Celeste. The obscenely large income being funneled into an offshore account was an added draw, allowing Celeste to stay in their wheelchair-friendly, restored Victorian in Maryland with a personal aide, rather than moving to an assisted-living facility of some sort. It had all seemed like a godsend when Tiberius first contacted her through his figurehead company, Tiberius Corp.

Now, though, she knew better. Tiberius wasn’t a philanthropist and he wasn’t a visionary. He was a monster, a sociopath, a self-professed businessman who wanted to use her discovery to do terrible things. Or rather, sell it to other criminals, who would use it as a smokescreen, hiding their identities while they did God only knew what.

She had to stop it from happening.

Trying not to betray her nerves, she crossed the high-tech lab Tiberius had ordered built and outfitted to her precise specifications. When she’d first arrived, the huge room, filled with the latest cutting-edge biotech equipment and analytical devices, had seemed like paradise. Now, it was a prison.

Sitting down at the bank of a half dozen networked computers, each of which controlled several of the big machines and analyzed the resulting data, she tried to block awareness of the security cameras blanketing the huge room, tried not to think about the men who were undoubtedly watching her image on-screen.

She’d done her prep work well. They’d gotten used to her returning to the lab around 10:00 p.m. and working until one or so in the morning. If she were lucky, all they would see now was their tame lab rat pulling up the last set of results and then powering down the big machines for the night.

In reality, she was executing two programs she’d managed to sneak onto the island. One was an uncrackable lockdown program that would freeze all of the lab computers and machines until she typed in a password. The other would shut down all of the networked computers on Rocky Cliff Island—including the ones running power and security—for the space of five minutes, and then go back into hiding, supposedly untraceable by all but the original programmer.

Celeste had developed the routines just before she’d gotten sick; she was the techie, Sydney the bio-geek. Together, they’d used to joke, they were a nerd superhero.

Now, those powers would be put to the test.

“Okay, kids, do your thing.” Sydney powered the lab computer down right after she’d fed the programs into the network. In ten minutes, the lights should go out. Then, the next time someone turned on one of the lab computers, the only thing they’d see on the screen would be a text prompt that read: Password?

If she made it off Rocky Cliff Island, she would use the password as leverage to keep her and Celeste alive long enough to grab the money out of her accounts and disappear. Then and only then, she would contact the authorities and tell them about Tiberius’s plans.

If she died trying to escape, she could only hope Tiberius or his tech experts would try three wrong passwords, whereupon the worm would corrupt every piece of data on the network and fry the computers.

If she lived and was recaptured, though…

She shuddered. She’d seen what happened to people who crossed Tiberius. The image of what he’d done to Jenny Marie, the softhearted cook he’d caught sneaking e-mails between Sydney and Celeste, would remain burned on Sydney’s retinas until the day she died. Unfortunately that day could be far sooner than she hoped, because crossing Tiberius was her only option right now. She couldn’t allow him to use her scientific discovery for the purpose he intended; she had to stop him. Which meant it was now or never.

Sydney’s fingers trembled as she hung her lab coat on its hook near the airlock-type passageway that was the only way in or out of the windowless lab. After pushing through the first of the pressurized doors, she touched the intercom button beside the second. “Out, please.”

She’d long ago learned not to bother making small talk with the guards—it only made them suspicious. Nowadays, she stuck to her routine and they stuck to theirs, little suspecting that she was studying them and waiting for her chance to escape. Or maybe they’d suspected all along, and she was doomed before she even began.

The door unlocked with a click. Sydney held her breath as it swung open automatically, then exhaled in relief when she saw the hallway was empty. If they’d sent an escort she would’ve had to scrap her plan, but the armed escorts had gotten fewer and further between with every week and month she behaved herself, as she’d pretended to cooperate with Tiberius and his mad plan.

Forcing herself to breathe evenly, she stepped out into the hallway and headed for her quarters, trying to look like all she had on her mind was a few hours of sleep. When she reached the gray, featureless door leading to her two-room suite, she pressed another intercom button. “In, please.”

The door clicked and opened, but instead of entering, she reached around the corner and fumbled for the thin wire she’d installed in the wall panel earlier that day, in the ten minutes she’d bought by “accidentally” blocking the view of the single camera in the main room of her suite by hanging a towel over the lens. By the time one of the guards had buzzed himself in without knocking, removed the offending item and groused at her for her continued sloppiness—which she’d carefully cultivated over the past few months—she’d done what needed to be done with the circuitry.

Concealed alongside the molding, the wire led to a simple gadget she’d Mickey Moused out of parts filched from the lab, using the diagram Celeste had sent via Jenny Marie. A sharp tug would form a bridge between the two main power lines in the wall beside the door, creating an obvious short and giving Tiberius’s engineers no reason to look further for the source of the electrical failure.

At least that was the theory.

“Here goes nothing,” she whispered, heart pounding. She checked her watch. Nine minutes fifty-five since she’d fed the kill program into the network. Fifty-six. Fifty-seven. As the door to her room started to close on its soundless mechanism, she yanked on the wire and jumped back.

There was a sizzle and a blinding flash in her room. Two seconds later the lights went out in the hallway, plunging her into utter blackness.

Sydney didn’t think. She ran.

She heard muffled shouts and pounding feet as she bolted along the hallway and slammed through the door at the end, where she’d jimmied the lock earlier that day.

She was out!

The night was cold and rainy, which she hadn’t anticipated. Sucking in a lungful of the wet, cutting air of springtime off the Atlantic coast, she plunged down a short cement staircase and bolted past a tarped-over swimming pool. Taking the direct route she’d mapped out during her daily guard-escorted walks around the compound, she headed for the dock at the bottom of the hill. The boats were little more than a collection of shadows against a misty backdrop of rain, dark against darker in the moonless, drizzly night.

She was halfway there when the backup generators kicked in, circumventing the primary network she’d crashed. Emergency lights flared to life and alarms whooped, the noise seeming to come from nowhere and everywhere at once.

Heart pounding, legs shaking with fear and adrenaline, Sydney ran for her life.

The drizzle had slicked everything with a thin layer of water, making the cement walkway slippery beneath her sneakers. The sharp wind cut through the jeans and light turtleneck shirt she’d worn in the climate-controlled lab. She hadn’t dared trigger the guards’ suspicions by dressing more heavily than that, and she paid for it as she pounded down a short incline to the water. Her teeth were chattering by the time she reached the first boat.

“Stop!” a voice shouted from behind her. Booted footsteps approached from the side at a run as the guards surrounded her. Gunfire chattered, kicking up stinging pellets of concrete directly ahead and to both sides of her.

They weren’t aiming to kill. Not yet, anyway.

Ignoring the warning shots, Sydney took two running steps across the dock and flung herself toward the nearest motorboat, which was one of the small, fast two-seaters the guards used for shoreline patrols. She untied the craft from the dock and clambered aboard, ducking with a terrified scream as bullets smacked into the side of the boat and peppered the interior of the craft.

Her heart rocketed in her chest and for a split second she wanted to give up, wanted to put her hands up and say, “You win, I was just kidding. Take me back to the lab.”

But she didn’t. She couldn’t. Still, her fingers shook as she punched the ignition button—her complacence had made the guards sloppy enough to leave the console unlocked, thank God—and the engine roared to life.

Coming from the other side of the island, past the cliff-side mansion, she heard the rotor thumps of Tiberius’s helicopter preparing to lift off. She wasn’t sure if he was evacuating or coming after her, but the sound added to the chaos of siren whoops and shouts as a dozen guards hit the dock, running flat out toward the other boats. The gunfire was silent for the moment, though, indicating that the security detail had orders to recapture her, not kill her.

She’d figured Tiberius would consider her far more of an asset than a liability…at least until it looked like she was going to succeed in escaping. Then he’d have his men start shooting for real.

Thank God for the rain. It would give her a layer of covering fog, and hopefully spoil their aim. The idea of being shot at—of being shot—terrified her, but she couldn’t turn back now.

She slapped the throttle forward, blessing the summer she and Celeste had spent with a foster family on Moose-head Lake, where they’d learned the basics of boating. The motorboat leapt forward, spraying the dock with a plume of water that made the guards shout and curse, sounds that were quickly lost beneath the roar of the motorboat engine and the growing thump of the helicopter.

Sydney glanced back, to where the mansion rose high on the crest of the island, a dark, hulking shadow that was barely visible in the fog. Then the chopper swung up and over the building. Its searchlights cut through the mist, and the bumps of rockets were clearly visible on either skid.

That gave Sydney her answer: Tiberius wasn’t fleeing. The bastard was coming after her.

Trembling with terror and adrenaline, breath sobbing in her lungs, she sent the little boat west, toward where the shoreline of northern Massachusetts ought to be. She couldn’t see any town lights through the wind-driven rain, which was coming down harder by the moment. The pellets stung her face and throat, quickly soaking through her light clothing and plastering the fabric to her skin.

“Come on,” she chanted. “You can do it. You can beat him.” She wasn’t sure if she was talking to herself or the boat, but the mantra made her feel a little better.

She almost couldn’t believe that she’d gotten this far. The Sydney Westlake of a year earlier hadn’t been able to fight for her university job or her project funding, hadn’t been able to stand up for herself in the face of her ex’s smear campaign, which had been the lowest of low academic politics.

But somehow, somewhere, she’d become the sort of woman who could plan an escape and make it happen.

Unfortunately, she’d also become a criminal, because whether or not Tiberius had coerced her—and he sure as hell had—she’d been the one to create the DNA code he considered his ultimate retail offering. Now it was up to her to make sure he never got to sell or use the engineered virus.

As she sent the boat into the gloom and the sounds of pursuit faded, hope guttered in her chest, pressing tears into her throat. She began to believe—when she hadn’t really believed before, no matter what she’d told herself—that she was really going to get out of this mess, that she and Celeste were going to be okay.

Then something splashed loudly behind her, followed by a hiss and the growing thump of helicopter rotors. She turned and froze in terror. The chopper was directly behind her, and there was a dark shape in the water, churning a white wake as it sped toward her. A torpedo.

Tiberius had apparently decided she was a liability.

No, she thought. Impossible. Then the searchlights pinned on the boat and the surrounding water, illuminating the plume of the deadly missile speeding toward her boat and proving that it wasn’t impossible at all. She was dead if she didn’t move, and move fast.

Screaming, Sydney flung herself into the sea. The shock of the cold saltwater drove the air from her lungs, but she didn’t have time to take another breath. She didn’t think. She dove and swam down and away from the boat, kicking and stroking for all she was worth.

Moments later, the world went orange and a booming shockwave of water slapped at her, tumbling her end over end, pummeling the breath from her lungs, dazing her and making her ears ring.

She hung motionless, utterly disoriented, feeling the thud of her heartbeat in her head, in her bones.

She was vaguely aware that she was rising toward the surface, and something inside her said that was a bad thing. She couldn’t seem to make her arms or legs obey her commands, though. She could only drift, longing for air as the water around her grew warmer, or maybe she got colder, she wasn’t sure.

This isn’t good, she thought, but couldn’t seem to get beyond the thought.

Then the heavy rumble of a boat engine cut through her daze, and her brain came back online with a jolt. Tiberius’s guards had arrived! Panic flared through her, chasing away the lethargy of shock, and she struck out wildly in the direction she thought was “up.” Moments later she breached the surface and sucked in a gasping lungful of air. Then she was swimming, flailing her arms and legs as hard as she could in an effort to get away from the motor noise as her heart hammered in her ears and panic spurred her on.

There was a splash behind her as at least one of the guards jumped in to grab her.

“No!” She swam harder, adrenaline propelling her onward when her muscles trembled with fear and fatigue, and the numbing cold of the water around her.

Her head pounded and there was a sharp pain above her eye, suggesting she’d been cut by waterborne debris. She banged into other pieces of debris as she swam, and the air was tainted with the odor of gasoline and smoke. She wanted to cough but she couldn’t spare the breath as she swam for all she was worth. She had to get away, had to—

A hand closed on her ankle, gripped hard and dragged her under.

Panic jolted and she screamed, then inhaled water and choked hard. She thrashed, fighting her captor even as she struggled to the surface and gagged, trying to get the water out of her lungs, the air in. The world spun and closed in on her, and her captor shifted his grip from her leg to her throat, clamping an arm across her upper chest while he struck out, swimming strongly with his free arm and kicks from his powerful legs.

“Let me go!” Sydney struggled against him, fouling his rhythm and dragging them both below, but he didn’t fight. He simply waited until they broke the surface, then shifted his arm to her throat and squeezed until her world went gray and spun to a pinprick.

Semiconscious, she went limp against him, barely breathing even after he eased up on the choke hold. Defeat hammered through her, alongside the sure knowledge of what Tiberius would do to her now.

He wasn’t just going to kill her. He was going to force her to help him sell a terrible opportunity to terrible people. Then he was going to kill her and Celeste both, very slowly. That was what he’d promised he’d do if she betrayed him, and she had every reason to believe the threat. She was going to die, and die horribly.

The realization spurred her to a last desperate attempt to escape. Knowing she had just one more chance, she waited until her captor reached the slick white side of a tall boat and called for others to reach down and grab her. At the moment he handed her off, she found another burst of energy and exploded, kicking and scratching at the two men who held her. They cursed and fought to hang on to her. They shouted at her, but she was too far gone to process the words.

She screamed over and over again until her voice went raw and then broke to sobs as they subdued her by grabbing her arms and legs and hanging on despite her furious struggles. When she finally went limp, they dragged her up and over the side, and dumped her onto the rain-slicked deck.

Moments later, the man who’d jumped in after her landed on the deck nearby, dripping and breathing hard.

Sydney curled herself into a protective ball, waiting for rough hands to tie her so she couldn’t get away while they hauled her back to her quarters on the island—or worse, directly to Tiberius.

Instead of rope, though, a heavy wool blanket landed atop her, cutting the sting of the cold air.

She whimpered and clutched at the blanket, pulling it over her head. After a minute or two, when the warmth started to come and the men hadn’t made another move, she peered out, dragging the blanket around herself as she struggled partway up on the rain-slicked deck.

Her teeth were chattering and her dark, shoulder-length hair was plastered over her forehead, covering her eyes. She slicked the strands away from her face, and when her vision cleared, she found herself only a few feet away from the man who’d pulled her from the ocean.

He was leaning back against the side of the gunwale a few feet away from her, wearing a coarse gray blanket like hers. His wet hair was short and dark, his features square and regular, his blue eyes assessing. Even soaking wet, he carried a definite aura of command.

She didn’t recognize him, but that didn’t mean anything. She’d only seen a few of Tiberius’s guards face-to-face, but had heard the footsteps of many more. What was strange, though, was that he was looking at her with utter calm, laced with an air of speculation. He seemed willing to wait for her to speak first, which didn’t make any sense.

Then her eyes locked on his blanket, which had something written on it in six-inch-high letters: U.S. Coast Gu—

It broke off where he’d tucked one side of the blanket beneath the other, but it was enough to have hope blooming viciously in her chest.

She hadn’t been recaptured after all.

She’d been rescued!

She gasped and looked at the other two men standing nearby. They were burly, curly-haired guys with the shared features of brothers and coast guard insignias on their jackets.

When she looked back at the man who’d saved her, he nodded in greeting, but didn’t smile. “I’m Special Agent John Sharpe of the FBI’s major crimes task force, and you’re on the coast guard cutter Valiant.” He paused, expression assessing. “Whether that’s good or bad news for you is going to depend on what you were doing on Rocky Cliff Island and why Tiberius wants you dead.”

Chapter Two

John stood, draping the blanket over his shoulders to stave off the sharp wind, and looked down at the woman who huddled miserably on the deck. The drowned-rat factor did little to hide her high, angular cheekbones or delicately tipped-up nose, or the exotic tilt to her chocolate-brown eyes.

She was, in a word, gorgeous.

He had no clue whether she’d been Tiberius’s prisoner or a coconspirator gone bad, but her looks alone made him lean in the latter direction, because he’d seen the file photos of the bastard’s previous women and she certainly fit the type.

Still, there was no need to head straight for “bad cop” interrogation techniques. For now, he’d let her see him as the rescuer, willing to play along with whatever game she had in mind. With Tiberius and his people it was all about the game, John knew. Move and countermove. A living chess match, played out on a continent-size board, with living people as the pieces and national security the stakes.

Not yet sure whether she was a pawn or a queen or somewhere in between, he held out a hand to help her up. “Come on. I don’t know about you, but I could use some coffee, a few towels and some dry clothes.”

She stared at him, her lovely brown eyes stark in her pale face. Her hand trembled when she reached for his, making him think either she was a damn good actress sent to put him off his game, or else she’d truly been running for her life. Maybe she’d double-crossed Tiberius, John mused, or maybe he’d simply grown tired of her and didn’t want any loose ends returning to the mainland.

Those thoughts died quickly, though, because the moment he and the woman linked hands and he pulled her to her feet, she burst into tears.

“Oh, hell,” he said. “Please don’t cry.” He didn’t do tears.

Instead of stopping, she buried her face in her free hand and sobbed harder, her shoulders—her whole body, for that matter—shaking with reaction…or a good approximation of it.

Reminding himself he was supposed to be playing along with the illusion of a damsel in distress, John grimaced and put an arm around her in a stiff offer of comfort. He patted her shoulder. “You’re safe. It’s over.”

She turned into him, wrapped her arms around his waist and hung on as though she never meant to let go. “Thank you,” she whispered against his neck, her skin warming against his despite the chill. “Thank you.”

Electricity jolted through him in a surge of reaction that was so unexpected, it literally took his breath away. Heat flared and his heart did a thumpity-thump number that set up a clamor of warning bells.

Damn, she was good. Lucky for him, he’d had practice with this sort of thing, and he’d learned his lesson the hard way.

Besides, they didn’t call him Iceman because he was warm and fuzzy.

“It’s okay,” he said, trying to disengage without making it into a wrestling match. He fleetingly wished he’d brought Grace Mears along on this run, or sharpshooter Michael Pelotti, both of whom were way better than he at comforting victims and witnesses—and suspects—while making it seem natural. Hell, pretty much anyone on his team had him beat at this sort of thing.

He looked at the coast guarders. “Can one of you help me out here?”

Dick and Doug Renfrew, the boat handlers he’d borrowed for the night’s surveillance, shook their heads in unison. “Not unless you want to hang around and wait for the chopper to make another pass,” Doug said. He was the talker of the two.

“Good point,” John said, glancing at the gray-black sky. “You should probably get us the hell out of here.”

Granted, Tiberius’s helicopter had peeled off into the fog when it saw the U.S.C.G. ship approaching the scene of the explosion, and he’d heard the other motorboats cut and head back to the island, but they could swing back around for a second look at any moment.

Tiberius and his crew had probably assumed the Valiant was fully manned and ready to act, but the reality was that the cutter was carrying its minimum crew of two, along with one senior FBI agent—John—who was acting on a hunch that hadn’t even been strong enough to justify bringing along the rest of his team.

His gut told him Tiberius was gearing up for something big, something that was focused on his private island off the New England coast. Based on that, he’d called in a few favors and gone on a semiofficial fishing expedition off the fertile ledges of George’s Bank.

The good news was that he’d caught something. The bad news was that he wasn’t sure exactly what he’d caught.

Tiberius was smart enough—and devious enough—to have seen the Valiant on his surveillance systems, identified it through its transponder code and sent one of his people out to get herself “captured” as a diversion. It would be just like him to feed the FBI a decoy intended to distract them away from his main intent.

The question was: had he?

John looked down at the woman, who was quieting some, though she stayed leaning against him as though she found the contact as comforting as he found it disturbing.

“Come on,” he said, voice unaccountably rough. “Let’s get you warmed up, Ms…” He let the sentence trail off in a prompt.

“Sydney,” she said against his chest. “Just Sydney.” Which could either mean she figured they should be on a first-name basis after what they’d just been through together, or that she didn’t intend to voluntarily give him enough to figure out who she was for real.

He didn’t recognize her name or face from the extensive files Grace and Jimmy Oliverra—the two computer jocks on his team—had amassed on Tiberius and his dealings, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t part of his world. Just that she hadn’t said “cheese” yet and gotten her picture taken for the FBI’s scrapbook.

“Okay, just Sydney,” he said, playing the game. “Let’s get you belowdecks, out of this wind.” He disengaged and gestured her across the rain-slicked deck to the ladder that led to the cramped galley and sitting area downstairs.

She fumbled slightly when the boat sliced deeper into the storm and the chop increased. But she looked steady enough overall, as if she wasn’t going to collapse again. Was it part of an act or was it reality?

John didn’t know, but he sure as hell intended to find out, ASAP.

“You can go straight on through,” he said when she paused in a short hallway. “The head is to your right. There’s no shower, but if you want to get out of those wet clothes and towel yourself off, I’ll scrounge something for you to wear. There’s a first-aid kit under the sink. When you’re changed, I’ll meet you in the galley. I’ll fix us some coffee.” With a side of interrogation.

She was pretty out of it, between shock and the gash on her forehead, but he didn’t feel the slightest bit of remorse about questioning her. Experience had taught him that the things people in her condition said were usually more truthful than what came out of their mouths after they’d had a chance to think about their answers. And if that made him the cold, cynical SOB his teammates claimed, then so be it. His suspicious nature had kept him alive when plenty of others around him—good men and women—had died in their efforts to take down the kingpins of modern organized crime.

These days, the major crimes unit wasn’t about territories or ethnicity, it was all about technology. The modern godfathers controlled pieces of science and sold them to the highest bidders…and Tiberius was king among the black market tech dealers.

Tiberius didn’t have a last name that any intelligence service worldwide had been able to find, never mind a history prior to ten years ago, when he’d appeared on the scene almost overnight. He was the worst among the worst, dealing almost exclusively in microscopic weaponry of the germ warfare variety. He’d been variously blamed for bioweapons attacks on five of the seven continents, including targeted viral assassinations in Europe and the U.S., and a series of flulike epidemic outbreaks along the conflict fronts in the Middle East.

Tiberius was bad news, there was no doubt about it. Unfortunately, he’d proved all but untouchable over the decade he’d been in business. There was no solid evidence connecting him directly to any crime and nobody would testify against him—at least not anyone who’d managed to stay alive long enough to take the witness stand. The calculating bastard lived sequestered on his private island off the Massachusetts coast when he could’ve been someplace warm and inviting and outside of U.S. soil. John was convinced he’d chosen Rocky Cliff Island for spite, so he could laugh at the agents who’d dedicated—and given—their lives in a series of unsuccessful efforts to put him behind bars.

Unsuccessful until now, that is, he thought as he dug through a spare clothes locker, changed into jeans, a U.S.C.G. sweatshirt and thick socks, and grabbed a slightly smaller set of the same for his mysterious guest.

Sydney—if that was really her name at all—might just be the answer to his prayers. Though his gut told him she’d probably been Tiberius’s lover, he’d just tried to kill her. That might be all the leverage John and his people would need to get inside information.

Then again, she could be a clever plant. The possibility meant he’d have to be very, very careful in what he said and did around her.

He knocked on the door to the head. “There’s a set of clothes for you outside the door. I’ll be in the galley when you’re ready.”

A couple of minutes later, right about when the small kitchen space had started to take on the aroma of hot coffee, the door to the washroom opened and Sydney stepped out.

Her towel-dried brunette hair stuck up in tufts here and there, suggesting it would curl later. The borrowed clothes hung off her slight frame, and she’d cuffed the jeans so they wouldn’t drag on the ground. She should’ve looked ridiculous in the too-large pants and sweatshirt. The fact that she didn’t, that she somehow looked as though a fashion designer had chosen the outfit and told her to make it work on the runway, had those warning buzzers going off again in the back of John’s brain, loud and clear.

He stared at her, seeing a drop-dead gorgeous woman beneath shock and saltwater, and thought, Were you his lover? A customer in a deal gone bad? Are you a victim, a perp, or somewhere in between?

As if he’d said the question aloud, she locked eyes with him. “So, Special Agent John Sharpe of the FBI…are you authorized to make a deal?”

SYDNEY SAW THE mental shields come crashing down. One minute he’d been looking at her as though trying to make up his mind about her, and in the next she’d made it for him, because innocent people don’t need deals.

His gorgeous blue eyes blanked and a small, sardonic smile touched the corners of his lips, which were bracketed with small creases that drew her eyes and made her wonder what he’d look like if he smiled—really smiled—at her.

“It depends on what you’re offering,” he said, expression giving away nothing.

She wanted to tell him that she intended to give him everything she knew, that she couldn’t live with herself if Tiberius got away with what he was planning. But she had to be realistic. All she knew about this guy was that he was an FBI agent—she figured she could believe that much, because she highly doubted the coast guard loaned their boats and crew to just anyone. Well, she also knew he’d dried off even handsomer than she’d expected. That wasn’t exactly relevant, but it was certainly a fact.

His hair was a rich, dark brown, thick and wavy. From his square-jawed features and the stress lines carved beside his mouth, she guessed he was in his mid-thirties, a few years older than she. Wearing a gray coast guard sweatshirt, borrowed jeans and thick socks—as she was—he should’ve looked casual. Instead, he exuded that same leadership she’d noticed out on the deck, that same “don’t mess with me” attitude.

On one level she found it comforting. On another, disturbing.

She’d known men like him before, men who would do—and say—anything necessary to achieve their goals if they thought the ends justified the means. Hell, she’d dated one of them—almost been engaged to him—and look where that had gotten her: unemployed and forced to seek an alternative source of funding that had turned out to be far less legitimate than she’d hoped.

Thankfully, this time forewarned is forearmed, she thought grimly.

No doubt Agent Sharpe figured that the end of bringing down a man like Tiberius would justify any means. She, on the other hand, needed to protect not only herself, but also Celeste. To do that, she had to maintain whatever leverage she could get her hands on.

Knowing it, steeling herself to negotiate when her conscience was crying for her to spill every last piece of information on the spot, she stayed silent, waiting for Sharpe to start the negotiations.

Instead, he handed her a cup of coffee and gestured her to the small dining area of the galley, where there was a booth-style table and bench seats.

She sat, blew across the surface of the steaming liquid and took a small sip, welcoming the burn of heat and the bite of caffeine.

He sat down opposite her, and the booth was so cramped that their knees bumped beneath the table while he got himself settled. She moved away, all too aware of his maleness, of the way his aura filled the small space and made her think of how long she’d gone without a man’s touch.

Swallowing through a suddenly tight throat and reminding herself that she needed to tread carefully, she lifted her coffee mug and said, “You’ll find me in the system as soon as you run the prints off this mug—presuming, of course, that’s your plan if I haven’t told you who I am before we reach the U.S.C.G. station at Gloucester.”

She expected the obvious question: why are your prints on file? Instead, he skipped right over that and said, “In other words, you needed government clearance at some point.”

She raised an eyebrow, then winced when the motion pulled at the cut she’d cleaned and bandaged in the bathroom. “You’re assuming I wasn’t arrested.”

Again, his smile held no humor. “Consider it a hunch, based on what I know of Tiberius’s women.”

“I wasn’t his lover.” There was little heat in the denial, though she was tempted to ask why that had been his first guess. She wondered how he saw her, what she looked like to him.

After almost a year of interacting solely with the guards and Tiberius’s people, it seemed suddenly strange to be speaking with a man—a tongue-draggingly handsome man—who wasn’t part of that world.

But that was the point, wasn’t it? He wasn’t entirely out of that world—he was simply on the other side. She wasn’t sure she could trust John Sharpe. She’d trusted Tiberius, and that hadn’t turned out well at all.

“But you’re right that I haven’t been arrested,” she conceded his point. “A few parking tickets and a stern warning for doing sixty in a thirty-five zone outside Bethesda, but that’s it. And yes, I needed government clearance.” She paused, trying to gauge how much to reveal, how much to hold back. Finally, she went with what she figured he could get from her prints and a quick background check. “My name is Sydney Westlake. I’m twenty-eight, my twin sister, Celeste, and I were raised together in foster care and we own a house together in Glen Hills, Maryland. Up until a year ago, I worked in the genetics department of the Advanced Institute of Science in Bethesda, investigating the causes and possible cures for a rare genetic disease called Singer’s syndrome.”

She paused when the boat’s engine note changed and their momentum slowed. There were no windows in the small galley, but she thought she heard the clang of a marker buoy, indicating that they were nearing land.

“What changed a year ago?” Sharpe prompted.

“As you might guess from the fact that I was swimming like hell to get away from Rocky Cliff Island,” she said drily, “I went to work for Tiberius. About a year ago my funding was cut, thanks to my lying rat-bastard of an ex-boyfriend. A few weeks after that happened, a representative of the Tiberius Corporation made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. I’ve been working in a private lab on the island ever since, the last three months of it under lock and key until tonight.”

He’d gone completely and utterly still as she spoke, making her think of a predator freezing the moment it sighted prey. His voice was inflectionless—and damning—when he said, “You developed bioweapons.”

She wanted to flinch from the condemnation, but didn’t because it was the truth. A far more complicated truth than he made it sound, but the truth nonetheless. “Not intentionally, and not willingly once I figured out what he actually wanted me to do…but yes, ultimately I developed a new DNA-based vector for Tiberius, and yes, under certain circumstances, it could be used for illegal purposes.”

She couldn’t quite bring herself to call it a bioweapon. It should’ve been a cure, a salvation. Instead, it was a direct threat to national security.

Sharpe set his coffee aside, very deliberately, and folded his hands on the table. “What is the target? How long do we have?”

Incongruously, she noticed that he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. Even more unsettlingly, she found that she was glad.

It’s only because he’s the first male nonfelon you’ve seen in eleven-plus months, she told herself. That, and she appreciated how he’d stayed one jump ahead of her in their conversation. He didn’t repeat himself, and didn’t fill the air with useless questions and chatter. He was cool and calculating, yes, but she could already tell he was extremely intelligent.

Which could make him very dangerous. He was smart, he had an agenda and he had the law on his side. It was up to her to make sure she got what she needed without pushing so far that she got herself locked up, leaving Celeste unprotected when Tiberius came for her. Because he would come for her. There was no question of that.

Even now, the need to get to her ailing twin sister beat beneath Sydney’s skin, along with the fear that the time taken up with her rescue and the boat ride had been too long, that Tiberius would have already figured out what Sydney had done before she left.

If she were in his position she’d grab whatever her adversary held dear, demand the computer password in exchange and then disappear with the technology.

Since this was Tiberius they were talking about, he would probably do exactly that…and then once he had the password, he’d kill her and Celeste outright because she’d dared to cross him.

“Sydney, how long do we have until he sells whatever you developed?” Sharpe pressed.

“You have some time,” she answered. “I corrupted the lab reagents and jammed the computers on the way out. Without the password, it’ll take another scientist weeks, maybe months to re-create what I did. With the password…” She trailed off, trying not to consider that possibility but knowing she had to. “With the password, he could be up and running in a few days. Maybe less.”

He muttered a curse as the boat engines cut out and the craft drifted for a few seconds, then bumped up against the dock. Above decks, they could hear the sound of tramping footsteps and men’s shouts as coast guard crewmen fastened the lines and secured the cutter.

“And the target?” Sharpe asked.

Sydney kept her eyes on his, refusing to look away even though she wanted to hide her head and pretend it was all a nightmare, that she hadn’t really handed this sort of power to a man like Tiberius. “The eventual target is, indirectly, the entire United States legal system.”

“Go on.”

Telling herself this was the only way, Sydney said, “I built a viral vector that was intended to treat the effects of Singer’s syndrome. Under orders—threats, really—from Tiberius, I altered the vector so it mimics the twenty marker sequences currently used for a standard DNA fingerprinting profile.” She paused, saw from his dark expression that he got it, and nodded. “Exactly. Once someone has been infected with the viral vector, any samples coming from his or her body will yield incomprehensible blurs with standard forensic DNA analysis. The police labs will be completely unable to match his—or her—DNA to crime scene samples or DNA fingerprints already on file.”

He muttered a low, vicious oath. “In other words, you’ve single-handedly given one of the most ruthless criminal businessmen on the planet the power to render the CODIS DNA database—and a good chunk of modern forensic analysis—completely useless.”

Now she did look away. “It’s pointless to say how sorry I am. I thought the job was a legit front for his other dealings. I thought I could use his money—use him—to help people.” To help Celeste, and others like her who were often overlooked in favor of efforts to cure more common—and therefore more commercially lucrative—diseases.

“You’re smarter than that,” he said without inflection, and for some reason that stung more than all the names she’d called herself in the dark of night back on the island, when she’d realized exactly the same thing.

She wasn’t just smart enough to know better, she had known better and she’d taken the job anyway, because she’d been so desperate to find a way to help Celeste, so obsessed with the goal of prolonging her sister’s life and making up for the fact that the disease had struck one of them but not the other.

As Celeste had accused her on more than one occasion, she’d been so sure she was right, she’d bent the rules to get what she wanted.

Sharpe focused on her, his eyes gone dark with accusation, with condemnation. “Tell me more, and tell me fast. I’ll need you to reproduce whatever you can remember about the vector and your work so I can kick it over to the Centers for Disease Control and Homeland Security and get them started on a counter-agent. Then you’re going to sit down with me and the rest of my team, and we’re going to go over the past year of your life step by step. You’re going to tell me everything you can remember about the setup on the island.” He paused. “Basically, your butt is mine starting now, until I say otherwise. When it’s all over, if I’m satisfied that you’ve cooperated fully, then we’ll talk about your culpability and possible charges.”

Sydney was surprised and not a little dismayed to realize that the slap of scorn in his voice mattered to her, that his opinion mattered when it absolutely, positively shouldn’t. He was a means to an end, nothing more.

Still, she couldn’t help wishing they’d met under different circumstances, maybe even during different lifetimes. She thought she would’ve enjoyed getting to know John Sharpe a bit better, and figuring out what went on behind those cool blue eyes. Unfortunately, under these circumstances in this lifetime, they were destined to be at odds.

She cemented that by standing and taking the two steps needed to bring her into his personal space, then looking down at him. “I’m sorry, but that’s not how it’s going to work, Agent Sharpe.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Excuse me?”

Reminding herself not to back off, not to back away, she inhaled a breath that contained entirely too much of his energy, and said, “This is where the deal part comes in. I’ll tell you everything I know, but in exchange, I want guaranteed immunity from federal prosecution no matter what happens, and I want my sister and me placed in protective custody, effective immediately.” She faltered a little. “Tiberius is going to try to get to me through her. I can absolutely, positively promise that.”

Sharpe rose from the booth and looked down at her for a long moment, his eyes seeming to pierce deep inside her and see things she’d rather keep hidden. She expected more questions, and braced herself to remain mute until she had a lawyer and a signed agreement, and assurances that Celeste was safe.

She was surprised when he said only, “You disappoint me.”

Then he turned and strode from the small room, his angry strides far too big for the tiny space.

When he was gone, leaving his energy to vibrate into nothingness, Sydney remained staring after him. “Yeah,” she finally said, pressing a hand to her churning stomach. “I disappoint myself, too. The thing is, I’m doing my best to fix it.”

Unfortunately, she didn’t think he saw it that way, which made him dangerous. Watch yourself with that one, she told herself as she headed for the narrow ladder. He’s too smart, too sure of himself.

If she wasn’t careful, Special Agent John Sharpe could ruin everything.

Chapter Three

John knew he shouldn’t have been surprised by what Sydney had revealed. And he wasn’t really. What surprised him was the depth of his anger. She might not have been Tiberius’s lover, but what she had done was far worse.

He’d wanted her to be innocent, he realized as they disembarked and slogged their way toward the main building of the coast guard station. Despite the fact that he damn well knew better, he’d wanted her to be innocent, which she so incredibly wasn’t.

“Can I borrow your phone?” she said suddenly.

He handed it over. “Calling your lawyer?”

She sent him a look that he couldn’t interpret, but that touched his skin with a skitter of warning, of want. She said softly, “Do you blame me?”

She dialed a Maryland exchange, waking what sounded from her side of the conversation like the lawyer who’d been handling her affairs while she’d been on Rocky Cliff Island. He referred her to someone local and she made a second call.

Within fifteen minutes, a fifty-ish briefcase-toting blond woman in a mint-green skirt suit strode through the front door of the coast guard station, looking wide-awake even though it was nearly 3:00 a.m.

John watched her eyes skim the room and could practically see her thought process as she sorted through the coast guarders and himself before reaching Sydney: pilot, pilot, swimmer, cop, ah—client.

She made a beeline for Sydney, took up a protective position at her client’s side and then turned to John, having apparently—and erroneously, at least at the C.G. station—identified him as the guy in charge. “Is there somewhere private my client and I can speak?” the lawyer asked.

John gestured to a nearby door, having already cleared it through the Renfrew brothers and their superiors. “You can borrow that office. My people are pulling together the paperwork as we speak.”

Sydney looked at him, and he caught a flash of nerves and worry in her lovely brown eyes. “What about my sister?”

“The locals are already en route. They’ll make sure she’s safe and get her someplace protected.” He’d thought briefly about using the sister as leverage, but had decided against it, not because he had any compunction against using the tools given to him, but because he knew Tiberius well enough to realize the good guys would lose that leverage if they delayed.

Instead of looking relieved, she looked discomfited, and a little guilty. “You’ll need…” She trailed off, took a breath and said, “Celeste is wheelchair-bound and requires special care. You’ll need to take her care provider with her, or find someone else to do the job, and you’ll need a vehicle she can be wheeled onto. She shouldn’t be removed from the chair.”

Only his natural tendency to play his cards close to his chest kept John from cursing, not only because it meant reorganizing what was supposed to be a quick find-and-grab, but also because it proved what he’d already begun to suspect: Sydney Westlake was planning on giving him exactly as much information as she chose to, exactly when she chose to. This wasn’t a free exchange of information. It was a damn chess game.

Worse, he was finding himself intrigued by her rather than annoyed, which was surprising, and he didn’t care for surprises. In his experience, they tended to end badly.

“Let me guess,” he said as a few more pieces of the puzzle connected in his brain. “Your sister has Singer’s syndrome.”

“My twin sister. Yes.”

“Which explains why you locked the computers instead of destroying them.” If he’d been a cursing man he would’ve let rip right then, because the information added a whole new layer of complications with the realization that her goal and his weren’t the same.

He wanted Tiberius dead or behind bars, and wasn’t really picky which way it went as long as the bastard was out of circulation and his operation disassembled piece by miserable piece. She, on the other hand, wanted to save her sister with a treatment that could potentially be used to topple the federal justice system, and then get her life back without any repercussions.

“Yes,” she agreed, glancing away from him. “The computers were firewalled against connection to any outside network, so I couldn’t e-mail the files off the island, and Tiberius’s people wouldn’t supply me with a flash drive or anything I could carry with me. I kept both my main and backup files on the system, and now they’re locked until either you take down Tiberius and get me back on that island, or Tiberius tortures the password out of me.”

She said the words with such hollow calm that he believed her, and even felt a stir of compassion. He, too, had seen what happened to people who wound up on the wrong side of Tiberius. It wasn’t pretty.

“Look,” he said, “I can sympathize to a degree. If I had a sister I’d probably feel the same way. But all the good intentions in the world don’t change the fact that you went to the island willingly.” His voice turned hard. “I might have to accept this deal, but I’ll be damned if I let you withhold valuable information in the hopes of saving your sister. Getting our hands on—or destroying—the weapon you created is our first priority. Bringing Tiberius down is our second. I’m sorry, but recovering information that might or might not cure your sister has to come behind both of those things on my priority list.”

He expected her to argue fiercely. Instead, she inclined her head ever so slightly. “I know.” She blew out a breath and pressed her palm to her stomach beneath the borrowed sweatshirt. “In my head I know all that. I even told myself it would be okay if I died escaping, and Celeste died because I didn’t make it out and get the cure to her, as long as Tiberius couldn’t use my work the way he wants to.” She paused, then shook her head. “The thing is, I’m not that person. Maybe it makes me selfish or spoiled, but I’m not willing to make that sacrifice.” She fixed John with a look. “It’s up to you, big guy. You take what I’m willing to give you and run with it, or I’m out of here the first chance I get, and then Celeste and I are off the radar.”

He should’ve scoffed at the threat, but damned if he didn’t think she could do it. She’d managed to lock down her work—though he had only her word on that one—and get off Rocky Cliff Island herself. Who was to say she couldn’t grab her sister and disappear off the FBI’s radar, as well?

His level of respect for her, which was already far too high considering they were on opposite sides of this particular issue, inched up another notch.

“Write up your terms.” He gestured to the empty office. “I’ll e-mail the info to my people and get the honchos to sign off on the deal.” He fixed Sydney with a look. “Then you’re going to tell me everything.”

She turned away, but then paused and looked back, and her eyes were dark with regret. “We’re on the same side, you know. I want Tiberius put away just as much as you do.”

“I highly doubt that.”

“I’m sorry,” she said again, so quietly he almost didn’t hear her.

Steeling himself against an unexpected—and unwelcome—surge of warmth, he said, “It doesn’t matter whether we like each other or not, Ms. Westlake. I have something you want, you have something I want. Let’s do the deal and take down Tiberius before he sells your virus to the wrong people and they use it to bring down CODIS. Once we’ve done that, you can get on with your life and I can get on with the next case. It’s as simple as that.”

But as he turned away, effectively ending the conversation, he knew damn well that none of this was going to be the slightest bit simple.

NERVES JANGLING in her stomach, Sydney followed her lawyer, Emily Breslow, into the office Sharpe had indicated.

She hated how her conversation with the agent had gone, hated having to play this game, but what other choice did she have?

“It’s like I always say,” Emily began, waving her to one of the two chairs, which faced each other across a cluttered desk in the untidy office, “if you have to deal with the Feds, it helps to deal with a cute one.”

That startled a snort out of Sydney. Her new lawyer was nothing like she’d expected. Tom Dykstra, the guy in Bethesda she’d used to set up a living trust for Celeste, had fit her sober, cynical, suited-up image of a lawyer. Emily, not so much. Though she wore a suit, it was anything but sober, and even though it was the middle of the night—closing in on morning—she was wide-awake, and her eyes held a glint of humor, as though she might laugh at any moment.

She was also, according to Sydney’s Maryland-based shark of a lawyer, very good at her job. And she had a point about it being a side bonus to work with a cute Fed. The more time Sydney spent in the presence of John Sharpe, the more interesting he was getting.

“Agent Sharpe seems very…focused,” Sydney said finally, though the word seemed entirely inadequate in describing the handsome, charismatic—and dangerous—man she’d gotten herself tangled up with.

“He’d have to be.” Emily dipped into her briefcase and pulled out a thin folder. “Here, sign this. Standard firm contract, yadda, yadda.” While Sydney scanned the document, Emily continued, “I called in a few favors on the way over and got the scoop on Sharpe—what there is of it, anyway. He’s thirty-five, no siblings, parents living abroad. The FBI recruited him straight out of Georgia Tech, where he was a star on both the football team and the chess club. Go figure.”

When the words on the page blurred into legalese, Sydney blinked, trying to focus on the contract. Good business practice demanded that she read and dissect it line by line, but expediency—and a lack of other options—had her signing on the dotted line of duplicate copies after only a quick skim of the document.

Besides, even though she knew it shouldn’t matter, she wanted to hear the rest of the story. “So he was a brainy jock,” she said, prompting Emily.

“Still is, from the looks of it,” the older woman said, but more with the air of a connoisseur than someone who wanted him for herself. She continued, “He made one of the quickest rises through the ranks ever seen, and is still fairly young to be heading up a unit. He has the reputation of being dedicated and driven, even ruthless sometimes, but everyone I talked to said that his word is good. He doesn’t make a promise he doesn’t intend to keep.”

“In other words, you think I can trust him.”

“Yes and no.” The lawyer took one of the copies of the signed contract and tucked it into her briefcase, leaving the other in front of Sydney. “His team has an excellent record of bringing down major criminals, and their conviction record is solid. I think you can trust him to follow whatever deal he signs off on to the letter. However, that’s the key—he’ll do exactly what he’s promised, and no more. Watch your back and don’t assume anything about him or his motivations. You heard him out there. His job is to bring down Tiberius, not protect your work…and maybe not even protect you, if you get in his way.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Sydney said, pressing a hand to her suddenly queasy stomach. “And may I say that I’m blown away by how much you managed to get on him in such a short time frame.”

The lawyer grinned, and for the first time Sydney saw a flash of steel beneath the pleasant exterior. “Don’t worry about the overtime. You’re paying through the nose for my services.”

“I’m sure I am,” Sydney murmured, suddenly realizing how oddly normal it felt to be talking with another woman, someone who wasn’t a guard or cook, or one of Tiberius’s enforcers, or the boss himself. This was possibly the least normal situation she’d ever found herself in, yet the act of speaking with Emily felt so normal, it was nearly enough to bring her to tears, driving home how much she’d left behind when she left for Rocky Cliff Island, how much more she’d lost than she’d planned on or even realized.

How much more she might yet lose.

“Okay, that was a fun bit of get-to-know-the-players, but we have work to do.” Emily pulled a slim laptop computer from her briefcase, set it on the desk and flipped open the flexible screen, turning it so they could both see the display. A few taps on the keyboard woke the machine from hibernation and pulled up a document, this one written in even denser legalese than the contract had been. “This is a pretty standard skeleton for a federal immunity deal, along with some language for witness protection, either through WITSEC or protective custody. Based on the particulars of your situation, I’m going to suggest that we—”

The door opened without a warning knock and Sharpe entered the room, filling it as much with his presence as his physical mass.

Sydney frowned, knowing she should be irritated with the interruption, but feeling something else instead, a little lift in the region of her heart, one that warned her she was well on her way to crushing on the agent, despite them being on opposite sides of too many issues.

He must’ve had clothes in his car, because he’d changed out of the borrowed sweats into a tailored navy suit with a crisp white shirt underneath, and a pair of oxblood shoes that were incongruously rubber soled, as though they were business shoes intended to double for foot pursuit—which they probably were. That detail, and the glimpse of a shoulder holster beneath his suit jacket, took the look from “upscale businessman” to something else entirely.

Something that sent a quiver of nerves—and heat—through her core.

Going for bravado, she started to ask if that was it for their privacy, but something in his cool blue eyes stopped her, making her ask instead, “What’s wrong?”

“The local cops just reported in from your house in Maryland. Your sister is missing and her aide and the aide’s boyfriend are dead.”

Celeste missing. The others dead.

The words didn’t make any sense.

Sydney sat for a second as her heart beat loud in her ears and her mind refused to process his blunt words. Impossible, she told herself. That sort of thing didn’t happen in real life. Didn’t happen to people like her and Celeste.

Except it did when she made the mistake of working for a monster like Tiberius, and then compounded the mistake by double-crossing him.

She rose on legs that threatened to buckle beneath her, and took the few steps necessary to bring her face-to-face with Sharpe. “Take me there.”

“We’re not finished here,” Emily protested, but Sydney waved her off.

“You’ll have to do the best you can without me. Call me if you have any questions. I’ll give you my—” She broke off, realizing she’d canceled her cell phone before she left for the island. She had no phone and no money, and her ID and credit cards were locked up. She was nobody until she retrieved her life from the safe in her bedroom at home.

A home that had been violated. Where two people had been killed.

An image flashed into her mind, that of Jenny Marie’s body after it had washed up on the beach down-current from Rocky Cliff. The cook’s dark hair had been matted with seaweed and sand, and blue crabs had nibbled at her fingers, toes and eyes, but that hadn’t been enough to disguise the horrible things Tiberius had done to her before he’d killed her and thrown her over the edge.

This, he’d been saying to Sydney with his actions. This is what I’ll do to you if you cross me. This is what I’ll do to the people around you. Like Jenny Marie.

Like Celeste.

Tears filmed Sydney’s vision and a sob caught in her throat.

“Here.” Sharpe handed a business card to the lawyer. “My cell number is on it. You can call her at that number.” He turned for the door, gesturing for Sydney. “Come on. We have a plane to catch.”

He acted like he didn’t know—or didn’t care—that she was upset, like she didn’t have the right because she’d brought it on herself. A kernel of bitter anger took root in her chest, kindling and spreading through her body.

“Hey.” She grabbed his arm, trying to ignore the jolt of awareness that sang through her at the feel of hard muscle beneath his suit jacket. But the sensation was so strong, so unexpected, that she fumbled for a second when he turned back and looked at her.

“What?”

Are you completely insensitive? she wanted to shout. What had happened to the guy on the boat? She wanted that Sharpe back, the one who’d held her, comforted her. But she didn’t ask those things, because what was the point? It wasn’t his job to comfort her—it was his job to catch Tiberius, and he’d already made it clear that he didn’t give a damn about her agenda or her feelings.

And maybe that was for the best, she realized, sucking in a breath. She had a feeling the sizzle she’d just felt wasn’t one-sided, and that could complicate things. She couldn’t become involved with him—getting involved would only serve to derail her from the important things.

She’d learned that lesson all too well before. It was her affair with Dr. Let’s-share-ideas-so-I-can-steal-yours Richard Eckhart that’d led to the loss of her university position and gotten her set on this path in the first place.

So instead of asking for comfort, she said, “Why aren’t you arguing about whether or not I should be at the scene?”

Sharpe looked down at her hand on his arm, then back up, so he was staring into her eyes when he said, “Because I never fight a battle I don’t think I can win, Ms. Westlake. You might want to keep that in mind.”

A thousand retorts jammed her brain, a thousand reasons why she should back off, back away and sit down with her lawyer while the FBI mobilized its forces to find Celeste. Instead of giving voice to any of that, though, she said simply, “Call me Sydney.”

“Okay.” But he didn’t offer the same in return. Instead, he gestured to the door and the world beyond, which she hadn’t seen in nearly a year. “Let’s go.”

She went.

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