# Secret Agent Secretary

Melissa Cutler

Passion ignites after office hours in this installment of the ICE: Black Ops Defenders miniseries.Bullets whizzed past as Ryan Reitano and Avery Meadows escaped into the night. How could Ryan have suspected Avery of being the mole inside ICE? It’s true she was no ordinary secretary. The way she used her wits and her lethal stiletto heels against the gunmen pursuing them astonished the jaded agent. And that killer body he’d somehow never noticed before…Too bad there wasn’t time to explore the possibilities. With Chiara’s men hot on their trail, capturing the mercenary was more than just a mission for Ryan. He had his own reasons for wanting the criminal dead. But with his surprising–and utterly enchanting–new partner, perhaps there’d be a chance for romance later…if they survived.

Passion ignites after office hours in this installment of the ICE: Black Ops Defenders miniseries

Bullets whizzed past as Ryan Reitano and Avery Meadows escaped into the night. How could Ryan have suspected Avery of being the mole inside ICE? It was true she was no ordinary secretary. The way she used her wits and her lethal stiletto heels against the gunmen pursuing them astonished the jaded agent. And that killer body he’d somehow never noticed before…

Too bad there wasn’t time to explore the possibilities. With Chiara’s men hot on their trail, capturing the mercenary was more than just a mission for Ryan. He had his own reasons for wanting the criminal dead. But with his surprising—and utterly enchanting—new partner, perhaps there’d be a chance for romance later…if they survived.

“Hold on—are we in some sort of danger?”

Looking into Avery’s wide eyes, Ryan let a wry chuckle escape 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 as if 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. “I thought you were conducting routine surveillance tonight, nothing dangerous. Otherwise, the whole team would’ve been here to—”

In time with the pounding bass from the ballroom, a booming shot rang out nearby. A second shot followed before he could react, lodging in the wall behind Avery. She shrieked.

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

Dear Reader,

I love secret-agent movies and books, always have. From the larger-than-life action scenes and exotic locations to the even more spectacular heroes (hello, James Bond). Secret Agent Secretary features a Bond-worthy hero in ICE agent Ryan Reitano, who is ICE office secretary Avery Meadows’s tall, dark and drool-worthy office crush…and the only man who can keep her alive after she inadvertently plows into the middle of Ryan’s covert op to catch an international criminal mastermind.

Like me, Avery Meadows loves all things secret agent, but she takes her devotion a step further. Okay, several steps further. It’s the reason she became an ICE agency secretary and why her cats are named…well, you’ll have to read on to find out what she names her cats. By the end of Avery and Ryan’s story, you’re going to covet your own gadget watch and maybe even consider building your own secret lair. And you’re definitely going to want a smooth operator like Ryan Reitano to blaze into your life and whisk you away for a lifetime of adventure and true love.

Happy reading!

Melissa

Secret Agent Secretary

Melissa Cutler

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MELISSA CUTLER

is a flip-flop-wearing Southern California native living with her husband, two rambunctious kids and two suspicious cats in beautiful San Diego. She divides her time between her dual passions for writing sexy, small-town contemporary romances and edge-of-your-seat romantic suspense. Find out more about Melissa and her books at www.melissacutler.net, or drop her a line at cutlermail@yahoo.com.

## MILLS & BOON

Before you start reading, why not sign up?

Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!

SIGN ME UP!

Or simply visit

signup.millsandboon.co.uk

Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.

This book is dedicated to my two favorite secretaries:

Joanie, my inspiration for the story,

and my mom, Loutrisha,

who taught me that if you want to succeed in life, always be nice to the secretaries.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Excerpt

Chapter 1

The ICE Agency office was decidedly free of gadgets. Avery had known that in advance of accepting the secretarial position six years ago, but in her enthusiasm over the job offer, she’d overlooked the details that didn’t sync up with her lifelong dream to work in national security. Besides, no covert ops agency displayed their gadgets in plain sight. Everyone knew gadgets belonged in the basement.

She still adored her job even though she had yet to stumble upon a secret basement, but she could’ve seriously used a gadget tonight, some sort of mechanical arm or miniature grappling hook or the like. The problem was that she wasn’t flexible enough, nor were her fingers long enough, to grasp the zipper of her party dress.

In the office restroom, she spun in a circle, her body torqued at an odd angle, reaching for the zipper that was stuck in the middle of her back. Then it hit her that she was acting more like a dog chasing its tail than a single girl ready to dance her way into the New Year.

After giving up, she marched to her desk and flounced into her chair, chewing the lip gloss off her bottom lip in irritation. She should’ve taken Kristen up on her offer to primp at her house. Granted, that would’ve been awkward now that Kristen and Charlie were newlyweds, but at least she would’ve saved herself from engaging in a wrestling match with the slinky pink dress she’d spent half her paycheck on.

Rendezvousing at Kristen’s house also would’ve saved her from indulging her overactive work ethic. Here it was nearly ten o’clock on New Year’s Eve and she’d put in another thirteen-hour day at the office, leaving herself only twenty measly minutes to change clothes and walk four blocks to the downtown San Diego club where she was meeting her six friends.

“Oh, well. I bet Moneypenny works New Year’s Eve, too.”

Actually, the true reason she’d worked longer than any sane, healthy person would on a holiday night had nothing to do with her work ethic. The project she’d been helping several of the office’s agents with was bringing her the closest she’d ever come to assisting in the capture of an international criminal mastermind, which happened to sit at the top of her bucket list.

It didn’t hurt that the man in charge was none other than the office’s newest tall, dark and droolworthy agent, Ryan Reitano.

With a little smile, she glanced at his desk across the room. He’d transferred from a different branch of the department six months ago, and while the two female agents on staff hadn’t shown much interest in him, Avery sure had. Even if the man barely seemed to notice her presence, much less that she was female—and recently available.

She’d stayed late tonight composing a memo for Agent Lucey while stealing furtive glances at Agent Reitano as he got organized for his surveillance detail at the Mira Hotel in preparation for the big sting operation later that week. She’d just about worked up the courage to give him a genial “Happy New Year’s” hug on his way out when she heard his hasty exit as she was in the back hall making copies, off to do his supersecret spy thing while Avery couldn’t manage to zip up a stinkin’ dress.

She smoothed the creased fabric over her thighs with a frown. Six hundred bucks and the dress wasn’t even wrinkle resistant. Between the wrinkles and the obnoxious zipper, the dress was way too high maintenance for her taste.

When she’d seen it hanging in the window of an uptown boutique, she’d thought it a perfect symbol of her New Year’s resolution to move on with her life after her disastrous breakup with Zach in October. Plus it was exactly the sort of curve-hugging dress Pepper Potts might wear to a Tony Stark cocktail reception, which made it a must-have in Avery’s book.

Well, Pepper Potts would never let a high-maintenance dress get the best of her. She spun the chair toward her desk and grabbed a box of paper clips. She might not be Pepper Potts or have access to secret agent gadgets, but Avery was nothing if not resourceful.

In two minutes flat she’d fashioned a paper clip chain and shimmied out of the dress. Though the office had been crawling with agents all day, Agent Reitano had been the last to leave, so she didn’t have to worry about someone catching a glimpse of her Spanx or beige ultra-support bra.

With only a few minutes to spare until she was supposed to meet her friends, she didn’t have time to wallow in the irony of lingerie that made a woman look sexy in clothing but did exactly the opposite once her clothes came off. But given how clingy and revealing this particular dress was, a teensy lace thong wasn’t going to cut it. Avery’s figure required high-performance undergarments.

Once she’d secured the end paper clip to the zipper, she donned the dress once more and raised the chain over her shoulder, pulling up. The zipper began to close.

“Ha! Take that, sucker.”

When the dress was half-zipped, her desk phone rang. The shrill, unexpected sound made her jump. Heart thudding madly, she leaned her elbows on the desk to check the caller ID and yanked the dress’s zipper the rest of the way closed.

Odd. Agents never called the office landline from their personal cell phones after hours, especially when on surveillance missions. They had partners and ops contacts and all sorts of important people to touch base with—anyone but the office secretary.

Then again, it was after ten. He should’ve been done with the surveillance detail already and off celebrating the last night of the year. Brows raised in disbelief, she lifted the receiver. “ICE Agency. This is Avery Meadows.” Even her usual telephone greeting came out sounding skeptical.

“You’re there. Good.” Agent Reitano had the kind of deep velvet voice that resonated in Avery’s body all the way to her toes, even though coaxing more than a few clipped words from him at a time was no easy feat. The man gave new meaning to the word laconic.

“Agent Reitano, is everything okay?”

He chuffed. “That’s debatable. Listen, I need you to get on my computer and email me a document labeled LM1204. Would you do that for me?”

LM1204 was a classified piece of evidence from the Chiara case. Why would he need that tonight?

“Our computers are password coded and we’re not allowed—”

“I know it’s against department policy, but I can change my password tomorrow. This is too important.”

A little voice inside her told her to decline. It went against her better judgment not to alert her bosses that one of the ICE agents might be in distress and had asked her to go against the rules regarding the handling of classified intel.

But a bigger voice inside her, the proverbial devil on her shoulder, said, This is what you’ve been waiting for, Meadows. They don’t call it covert ops for nothing.

Her gaze caught on the Department of Homeland Security emblem on the wall opposite her desk. An eagle, its wings outstretched and its body guarded by a shield. ICE, the department’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement division, was a critical component of that shield guarding her country’s freedom.

“Yes, of course I will.” She jotted down the password he gave, then decided to indulge her curiosity by asking, “Are you still at the Mira?”

The line went silent, as though he were thinking deeply about her question. “Yes.”

She bit her lip against asking for more details. Clearly he wasn’t in a talkative mood. As if he ever was. She rolled her eyes and her attention caught on that afternoon’s mail. “Oh! One more thing. I forgot. A letter came in for you a few minutes after you left from an express courier service. It’s international and it’s got urgent stamped all over the front and back. From a Mr. Paolo Hawk.”

She paused as a crazy idea took shape in her mind. Her only New Year’s resolution was to finally start crossing items off her bucket list, and one of those items was to be more daring—at work and in her social life. It might be less than two hours until the stroke of midnight, but this was her first chance to get started.

“Wait, what did you say?”

“A letter from Honduras. And it looks urgent.” He started to speak again, but she cut him off, knowing if she didn’t get this out now, she might never. “What if... How would you like...” She drew a bracing inhale. Come on, Meadows. You can do this. “Would you like to meet for coffee tomorrow? I could bring you the letter then.”

He sighed. Not a good sign. She waited in silence, her mortification growing. Just when she thought she couldn’t take it anymore, he answered, “Yes. Okay. Take it home with you. That would be best. I’ll get it tomorrow.”

“Over coffee?” She cringed. She’d sounded a bit too desperate with that question.

“I have to go. Don’t forget to email me the file. Oh, and don’t tell anyone we talked. Got it?”

“Oh.” What the heck was going on?

“Avery, will you do that for me?”

Any other time, she would have thrilled at the sound of her name from his lips, but an uncomfortable tingling had begun in the back of her throat. This wasn’t normal, not the request for secrecy or the strain that had leaked into Agent Reitano’s usually unemotional voice. “What’s happening? Is there someone I need to call? Agent Mickle or—”

“No,” he barked before continuing more softly. “Please. Don’t tell anyone, especially Mickle. If you want to help me, email me the file, then go home and take that letter with you.”

Despite her misgivings, she trusted all the agents in her office. If Agent Reitano needed her to keep a secret as a matter of national security that might aid in Vincenzo Chiara’s capture, then she would.

Vincenzo Chiara was one of the world’s most wanted men. An Italian black-market mercenary, his crimes included forcing children into slavery and prostitution, the murder of innocent people and orchestrating the sale of drugs, weapons and anything else on demand in the black market.

She glanced again at the department’s emblem. It was time to step up and do what she was born to.

Pumped and feeling good about her decision, she sat up straighter and looked at her watch. Drat. She was already late. Kristen was going to kill her. Oh, well. National security never took the night off. “I’m on it, Agent Reitano.”

“Thank you. And Avery? Call me Ryan.”

Oh. What she needed now was a witty comeback, something flirty and fearless. She screwed her mouth up, thinking hard, but before her brain had a chance to kick into gear, the line clicked dead.

She held the receiver away from her face and stared at it for a beat before dropping it into the cradle. So much for witty banter.

Waiting for Agent Reitano’s computer to boot up, she fingered a stack of Post-it notes and tested his name aloud. “Ryan. Good morning, Ryan. Have a good weekend, Ryan. Would you like to take me home and have your way with me, Ryan?”

Hmm. Felt weird on her lips. Apparently, a first-name intimacy with Agent Reitano was going to take some getting used to. She turned her attention back to the computer.

“Uh-oh.”

The monitor was black save for an error message.

“No, no, no,” she muttered as she pressed every function key to no avail. She tried again, this time pushing the function keys and the control button simultaneously. Nothing. Avery knew her way around a computer. She typed a hundred words a minute and could locate anything on the internet. Spreadsheets and data fields were her comfort zone. But when it came to the actual technological components that made her beloved machine work, she was as clueless as a monkey.

In desperation, she resorted to the only key combination she knew—Control, Alt, Delete. She depressed all three keys with a silent prayer, but the dang thing had the audacity to beep at her like the survey machine on Family Feud.

With an offended scowl, she pushed the power key until it shut down and began to reboot.

The office was loaded with computers, Avery didn’t have access through her own computer to the virtual storage cloud the agents used and she couldn’t jump onto another agent’s computer because each was privately passworded. If she couldn’t get Agent Reitano’s computer to work, her best bet was to scan the hard copy—if there was a hard copy.

Still barefoot and with the paper clip chain attached to the zipper slapping at her back with every step, she walked to the rows of file cabinets and went straight to the drawer where she’d put the Chiara case file that afternoon. She flipped through the files but found nothing on Vincenzo Chiara.

Baffled, she searched again. It should’ve been right in the front, but it was gone. She laid her palms flat over the tops of the files and considered her options. Before she got ahead of herself coming up with a plan C, she checked back at Agent Reitano’s—Ryan’s—computer. It had finished rebooting and the same error message from before still glowed on the screen.

She poked the monitor, muttering a mild curse, then jogged into Director Tau’s office. A quick scan of his desk for the file’s hard copy yielded nothing.

His file cabinets were locked, as she knew his desk would be, so instead of wasting more time, she pivoted and went straight for Agent Mickle’s desk, the other agent working the Chiara case.

It was locked.

With another, more stringent curse, she walked back to Agent Reitano’s desk. Maybe the hard copy of the case file had been right under her nose and she’d been too focused on the computer error to notice. The desktop was bare except for the bald eagle bobblehead figurine Director Tau had given him when he’d transferred to the department, as was the office tradition. And, as was the office’s tradition, Mickle and the other agents had promptly dressed the eagle in a pink Barbie bikini top and coordinating hat.

With her hand on the top drawer handle, she warned the desk, “Don’t be locked,” then gave a tug.

It opened, sending Bald Eagle Barbie’s head bobbling and pens in the drawer rolling. She eyeballed each drawer in turn but didn’t see the file. Or anything interesting or personal in nature. Nothing to give her a clue into the life or personality of her stoic office crush.

She had her head in the bottom drawer, riffling through form letters and expense reports, when the “Bootylicious” ringtone on her phone started. That would be Kristen, wondering why Avery wasn’t in front of Club Brazil like they’d planned. She hustled to her desk and fished her purse from the floor.

“Hey, Krissy.”

“Where are you? We’ve been standing here for twenty minutes.”

That late already? She chewed her lip and glanced at her computer screen to check the time—but all she saw was the same error message as on Agent Reitano’s computer. Stifling the curse that was on the tip of her tongue, she smacked the side of the monitor, then sunk into her desk chair. “Sorry I didn’t call. Something came up.”

“Aw, sweetie, are you still at the office? You’ve got to snap out of this work rut you’ve been in lately. You need to get a life.”

Avery was about to protest that she had a great life, and was, in fact, on the verge of crossing off the first item on her bucket list. And maybe a second one if Agent Reitano followed through on her coffee offer. But she didn’t have time to get into it with Kristen over the merits of working late on a case, not when Agent Reitano was expecting that transcript.

“Yes. I’m still at work. National security never sleeps, ya know.”

“You already used the work excuse to weasel out of joining us for dinner tonight, and now this? I know what’s really going on.”

“You do?” Avery asked.

“You mentioned the other day how lame you felt being the only single person in our group. You don’t still feel that way, do you? ’Cause you’d be the only one.”

True, it bugged her that she’d be partying with three couples. No one liked being the odd man out, but she’d never use that as an excuse not to go dancing with her friends. Just this once, though, she was going to let Kristen run with the idea.

“It’s so awkward, Krissy. Who am I going to kiss at midnight while you, Gina and Megan suck face with your men?”

Kristen groaned. “Oh, come on. Midnight’s not for two more hours. Plenty of time for us to find you a hot guy to ring in the New Year with. Have a little faith.”

Avery stuffed the letter from Honduras into her tote bag along with her work clothes. “All right, you win. You guys head into the club and scope out the scene. I’m going to have to meet up with you in an hour or so, after I take care of something here at work. If you see a cute guy who’s my type, do whatever you have to do to keep the other girls away from him until I get there.”

“I hope you’ve picked a new type because Zach was the last pretentious, tofu-obsessed jerk I ever want to see you with.”

Zach was the son of her parents’ best friends, and Avery had only stayed with him as long as she did because it’d made her parents happy to see her with someone they approved of, someone with their same lofty ideals and political leanings—or so they’d all thought.

Avery glanced at Agent Reitano’s desk. “I think from now on I’m going to go for the strong, silent type. Tall, dark hair and eyes. And lots and lots of muscles.”

“I like the way you think, but every girl goes for the strong, silent type. If I find an unattached one, I’ll try to save him for you, but you’re going to have to do your part and get here fast.”

Avery slapped the side of the computer monitor, but the blasted error message shone firm. “I’ll do my best.”

Once she got Kristen off the phone, Avery took one more look around the room. If there was any place she forgot to check for the Chiara file, it certainly wasn’t announcing itself with a neon blinking sign. There was nothing left to do but call Agent Reitano and find out how he wanted to proceed.

She called his number, but it flipped straight to voice mail. She left a message, then wrote him a text message.

Now what did she do? She had no idea why he needed that transcript of a wiretap tonight while he cased the hotel, but, frankly, it was none of her business. She wasn’t even supposed to know the LM1204 file was a transcript of a wiretap. Besides, if he said he needed it, then that should be good enough for her.

She had one more option left, but it wasn’t a particularly great one. Agent Reitano wouldn’t know this because Avery tried not to spread it around, what with all the national secrets she was privy to at the office, but she’d been cursed with a near-perfect photographic memory. She knew the contents of the LM1204 file by heart and could re-create it for him word for word, because the week before, when she’d waited at his desk while he signed off on a stack of evidence transfer paperwork, she’d seen the file open on his computer monitor. All she needed now was a functioning computer to type it out on and she could re-create it in minutes flat.

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.

Trembling with rage, she rose to her full height. She couldn’t die yet. Not when she hadn’t crossed a single thing off her bucket list. And she couldn’t let Agent Reitano die either, even if he barely noticed she existed.

She reached back and grabbed hold of the paper clip chain, yanking as hard as she could. It snapped free of her dress, popping the zipper off with it. Whatever. The damn thing wasn’t even wrinkle resistant. Rushing forward, she wrapped the chain around her palms and held it taut between her hands.

She hurled herself onto the bad guy’s back and dropped the chain around his throat. Tucking her elbows, she pulled the chain with all her strength. Caught unaware, the man let out a strangling noise. Avery rose to a crouch, straddling his legs, and pulled harder, until she felt the paper clips bending and giving way.

Time to give this guy a taste of his own medicine. Maintaining her hold on the paper clips, she jammed the toe of her shoe into his crotch and twisted. He reared back, howling, then keeled sideways onto the stairs. She kicked him onto his back and ground her spiked heel into his crotch. His eyes rolled back in his head.

That’s right, buddy. No one messes with Avery Meadows’s bucket list.

With a nod of satisfaction, she swung the chain out and grabbed hold of a single paper clip that had pulled straight. Without giving it a second thought, she jammed the paper clip into the assailant’s shoulder. She heard his shriek of pain as if from a distance and pushed the metal in deeper as the image popped into her head of Zach in bed with that two-faced pole-dancing instructor.

A hand on her arm shook her out of her trance. She whirled around, wielding the paper clips.

It was Agent Reitano. He eased the chain out of her hand, his eyes huge, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he’d witnessed.

“Avery, stop screaming.”

Screaming?

He put a finger on her chin and pushed her mouth closed.

Confused, she met Agent Reitano’s eyes with a look of challenge. “I wasn’t screaming. Don’t be ridiculous.”

Amusement flashed in his eyes. It was the first time that night he’d looked at her without accusation. “My bad. You were as stealthy as a ninja.”

She smoothed her dress. Cold air nipped at her back, where the dress now gaped with a broken zipper, but she couldn’t find it in her heart to care. Power and energy like she’d never experienced buzzed through her system, pushed along by her pounding heart.

She chanced a look at the assailant. He’d passed out cold. Good. “Any chance that guy was a criminal mastermind?”

“Not quite. More like a hired gun. Anyhow, thank you for coming to my rescue.”

Looking over her shoulder, she studied the limp form of the man more closely. Then reality crashed over her. “Oh, my God. I saved you, didn’t I? I kicked that bad guy’s butt. Wow.”

Ryan retrieved Cross Tattoo Man’s gun from the floor, popped it open and inspected the inside, then put it back together and stuffed it into his jacket. “More like ground his nuts to a paste, but yeah, you saved my bacon.”

“I saved your bacon,” she echoed in a whisper of disbelief as a bone-jarring shiver racked her body, bringing with it a hefty dose of nausea. Desperate for a distraction so she didn’t give up her butt-kicking status by spewing her martini all over Agent Reitano, she paced to one end of the landing and back, trying to calm down.

He glanced up from where he was sifting through the pockets of the man with the broken neck. “Avery, take some deep breaths.”

She stepped over the men’s legs, rubbing her jittery arms. “Trying. Not working.”

The next moment, his hands clapped onto her shoulders, his thumbs stroking the straps of her dress. “Your adrenaline’s crashing. Totally normal. It’ll fade soon.”

She dropped her forehead onto his shirt and concentrated on the rise and fall of his solid chest to distract her from her queasiness. His hands slipped from her shoulders to her head. He smoothed her hair in slow, easy strokes.

All the years she’d dreamed of gadgets and high-speed chases, clever riddles to solve and fake identities to assume, she’d never once stopped to think what it would actually look like to watch someone die. Nor what it would feel like to listen to a man scream in pain that she was causing.

Her mom would say no human being deserved to be the victim of violence, no matter how repugnant his crime. Avery knew, logically, that her mom was wrong, that some men were evil and had to be stopped by whatever means necessary when there were no other options.

But growing up the child of two grassroots pacifist leaders, she’d come to understand that believing in the occasional necessity of violence and letting go of the guilt about feeling that way were two entirely different issues. She’d wrestled with both for most of her life, but that struggle hadn’t prepared her for the way she felt tonight.

Watching Agent Reitano battle the bad guys had certainly frightened and shocked her, but what she’d felt when she joined in the fray was a hundred times more potent. She’d liked the way it had felt to wield power. It had given her satisfaction to do harm to another person. The realization scared her to her core.

“Maybe I should stick to being a secretary.”

Against her forehead, she felt the rumble of his chuckle.

She pulled back, annoyed. “Are you mocking me?”

His smile fell. “No, I... Absolutely not.” He rubbed his neck, his expression turning guarded again. “I’m going to finish searching these guys, and then we’ll get out of here. I’m going to let go of you. Don’t fall.”

“I won’t.”

He set her away from him, holding her shoulders until she found her legs again.

“Thanks, Agent Reitano.”

He frowned down at her. “Just Ryan, okay?”

Nodding, her gaze slid to the fallen men.

Ryan squatted over the man she’d felled and patted down his pockets. Then he rolled him onto his stomach and continued the search.

“Are you looking for ID?” she asked.

Shrugging at her question, he lifted the flap of the man’s sports coat and removed the gun hidden there. “Not really. These guys aren’t going to tell us anything I don’t already know.”

He pocketed the gun, then tried the doorknob of the employee locker room she’d stood in front of during the attack. It was locked. “Here’s the plan. We’re going to make a break for it through the parking garage, so I’m going to get my gun out and load it with a fresh magazine, okay? Don’t freak.”

Avery drew herself up, giving him her best indignant glare. “Oh, please. I’m not going to go nuts at the sight of a gun. I see guns every day at the office.” Holstered, of course. But still...

He straightened his tie, smoothed a hand over his hair, then removed a big black gun from his jacket and positioned himself against the wall next to the parking garage door.

Despite her words to the contrary, Avery drew a sharp breath and her heart skipped a beat. But her reaction was purely reserved for the man holding the weapon. She followed the line of his shoulder to the bunched muscles of his biceps beneath his pricey-looking, perfectly tailored jacket, then farther, to the large, steady hand holding the gun. With that suit, the gun and his devastatingly handsome face, he looked like the most dashing and sophisticated secret agent the world had ever known.

He looked like James Bond.

A hot flush crept over her cheeks. No doubt about it, Agent Reitano—Ryan—hit every one of her buttons in just the right way.

Without seeming to notice her perusal, he said, “Stand behind me, out of sight.”

Avery complied, flattening herself against the wall, her bare arm brushing his sleeve. “You’re going to make sure the garage is free of bad guys, right?”

“Definitely.” He opened the door a crack and listened. Avery held her breath. He opened the door wider and stuck his head and gun through. Then he closed it again and lowered the gun. “The door’s at a bad angle, so I couldn’t see much, but it’s too quiet in there. No cars moving, no people’s voices. Totally silent.”

“It’s New Year’s Eve and the hotel is crawling with people,” Avery said. “The parking garage should be packed. Can’t we call someone to help us get out of here? Director Tau or Agent Mickle, maybe Agent Lucey?”

“No.”

“But—”

“Avery, you’re going to have to trust me that we’re on our own. I’m hoping the silence is a random coincidence because I’m not crazy about going back upstairs. Let me think for a sec about the exit locations in the parking garage from the hotel blueprints I went over this morning.”

That, Avery could handle. She closed her eyes, visualizing the blueprints. “Except for the employee locker room on the other side of that door—” eyes still closed, she gestured her head toward where she’d been standing moments before “—the parking garage takes up the entire underground level beneath the hotel. The only car exit ramp will be on our right, approximately fifty yards away. It exits on Fifth and J Street. There are four emergency exit stairwells in the garage. The nearest one is three rows past the first pillar on the west side. It exits to Fourth along an alley.”

She opened her eyes to find Ryan staring at her with an inscrutable expression.

“Did you memorize the blueprints?”

She shrugged noncommittally. “I didn’t try to memorize them.”

Cocking his head, he looked like he was about to speak when a door opened somewhere in the stairwell above them. Footsteps moving fast, growing louder. Before Avery knew what was happening, Ryan had pulled her into the parking garage.

The door shut behind them with a clatter that garnered the attention of four machine-gun-toting men standing near the valet parking booth. In a flash, all four guns trained on them.

Avery gasped, then clamped her mouth shut and bit her tongue. It hurt like mad, but she couldn’t get her jaw to open again to stop the pain.

Ryan’s expression was unreadable as he raised his hands.

The men with guns looked to be in their mid-thirties or early forties and were dressed in jeans, sweatshirts and ball caps. And they each had huge, nasty guns that looked capable of firing a million rounds a minute with the slightest depression of the trigger.

They sprinted in Avery and Ryan’s direction, with the burliest of them shouting in a heavy Eastern European accent, “Drop the gun! On your knees or we kill the girl.”

Avery’s arms shot in the air of their own will. She maneuvered to her knees awkwardly, her movement hindered by her dress. Ryan followed suit, placing his gun on the ground a few feet in front of him.

Behind them, the stairwell door opened again, but Avery didn’t dare look. Ryan did though. Whoever it was, he kept his arms raised and his expression stony. Guess the police or a random team of navy SEALs hadn’t charged in to save them.

One of the men nabbed Ryan’s gun and stuck it in his sweatshirt pocket; another went through Ryan’s jacket and withdrew two more guns, a cell phone and a knife. A third man circled them, calling something in another language to whoever had come through the stairway door.

Orange cones had been placed across the car entrance ramp, along with a sign that read Lot Closed. The thug at the valet booth, dressed as hotel security, was arguing with an unarmed man in a bellboy uniform.

As subtly as she could, Avery swung her eyes toward the emergency stairways. They were unmanned, but she bet they’d been rigged to stay locked. It looked like whoever these guys were—probably Vincenzo Chiara’s men, she’d hazard to guess—they wanted some privacy for whatever nefarious activities they planned to perform tonight. She’d also bet that the crew of valet parkers were either dead or had been strong-armed into taking an extended coffee break all at once, like she’d seen in a movie one time.

Ryan nudged her leg with his shoe. “The locker room,” he said under his breath. “Where in the hotel does it come out at?”

A man rushed at Ryan and speared him in the gut with the nose of his rifle. “Shut up!”

Grunting loudly, Ryan crumbled into a fetal position.

Avery held her breath lest she erupt with the scream building inside her. It was unbearable, watching him be hurt again.

“Where?” he whispered without moving.

Avery forced herself to move, though fear had once again nearly paralyzed her. She leaned over him as though to comfort him. “Behind the lobby reception desk,” she breathed. The question baffled her. How would they access it if it were locked?

“Back on your feet!” one of the men barked. “Move it!”

It was a whole new round of awkwardness, returning to her feet in the dress, though she wasn’t sure why she gave a whit about modesty anymore. She stalled on her knees, wondering how to manage it, when Ryan offered her a hand. His other hand slid against her skin at the gape in her dress where the zipper had popped off.

It was work, keeping the utter shock off her face as his hand, warm and sure, dipped below the broken zipper. His fingertips breached the top of the Spanx. Quite the terrible timing to get fresh with her, even if he clearly knew his way around a woman’s body. He helped her up gradually, and as she straightened her back, cold metal replaced the feel of his fingers. Avery nearly choked on her own spit.

The metal was heavy. It felt like...

No.

Did he actually drop a weapon into her Spanx? She wiggled and a metal finger wedged into the cleft of her backside. Yep. That was a gun.

Holy smokes.

She turned to him, her mouth agape. His eyes narrowed in warning; then he looked straight ahead. With her blood pressure skyrocketing, she glanced over her shoulder. A lone woman, dressed in a hotel employee uniform, held a small handgun aimed at Ryan’s back while two men dragged the bodies from the stairwell into the garage.

Avery whipped her face forward, her eyes counting the number of guns pointed at them. If she and Ryan made it out of this night without being shot, it was going to be a miracle of epic proportions.

They were shuffled across the garage to an old brown Chevy Malibu. The woman jogged ahead of them and opened the trunk.

No way. Everybody knew you should never let the bad guys lure you into a trunk. She tugged Ryan’s sleeve. “What do we do?”

“Chill. I’ve got this,” he whispered.

“Chill?” she hissed. Sure thing. She’d get right on that after she stopped freaking out that they were being bullied into a car trunk by a bunch of angry men with huge guns who knew they’d killed two of their angry friends on the stairs.

When they reached the trunk, the man in the valet uniform hollered something in another language that grabbed everyone’s attention. Leaving the woman and an armed man to guard Avery and Ryan, the rest of the men jogged to the top of the entrance ramp, where a black limo idled. The limo driver’s window rolled down. The bearded driver and the valet began an animated discussion.

Avery darn near jumped out of her skin in surprise when Ryan’s hand settled onto her bare back once more.

The man and woman who’d been left to stand guard were distracted by the presence of the limo. Even Avery knew this was the perfect window of time to act. But she was scared witless about it. All she could do was hope Ryan didn’t expect her to pull off any moves like she had in the stairwell. She’d used up all her allotted spy powers for the day.

In one fluid motion, he pulled the gun from her Spanx, shoved her to the ground alongside the car and pivoted toward the man with the machine gun. The man went down with a single shot.

Next Ryan lunged at the woman, who fired in his general direction but missed, obviously flustered by the turn of events. He paid her gunfire no mind as he took hold of her blouse and pulled her into the open trunk.

Avery scrambled to her knees. She couldn’t see much but knew there was no way the men talking to the limo driver had failed to hear the gunfire. Sure enough, as Ryan slammed the trunk closed, someone opened fire in a continual staccato of shots.

Ryan dived to the ground near Avery. “Let’s jam,” he said, cool as a cucumber.

He gestured with his gun toward the rear of the garage. Avery kicked her shoes off and followed after him, threading in a crouched position between car bumpers and the wall.

Bullets flew in all directions, crumbling car windows and the concrete wall and ceiling. Avery ran as quickly as she could. License plates tore chunks of her dress off and slashed at her legs, but she never slowed more than an arm’s length from Ryan’s back. Every so often, he’d pause and return fire, buying time for them to dart across empty parking spaces.

Finally, he ground to a halt behind the passenger door of the last car. Avery fell to her hands and knees beside him. The dress, now ripped to shreds, no longer impeded her movement.

“What’s the plan?” she asked between breaths. Her voice sounded muffled to her ears, damaged as they were by machine-gun fire.

Ryan glanced at the stairwell door, then lifted his pant leg, exposing an ankle holster where an extra magazine rested against the inside of his calf. That must’ve been where he’d had the gun he stashed in her underwear, she reasoned.

As she caught her breath, he exchanged the empty magazine for the fresh one. “I’m going to cover you while you run for the door.” He flashed a set of keys. “I lifted these from that woman. Hopefully one opens the door to the locker room.”

She had to play his words over in her mind twice to make sure she’d heard him right. “You want me to run? Out in the open?”

“Yes. Are you ready?”

Avery gauged the distance from their hiding place to the door and estimated it to be at least fifteen feet. “No,” she answered honestly.

He blinked at her; then his eyes turned soft and his lips twitched like he was contemplating a smile. He looked playful. Boyish. Like they were back on the employee softball team last November when one of the other agents was razzing him about a missed catch. Like in the next few seconds they weren’t going to risk their lives all over again.

“I’m not ready for you to make that run, either. But it’s our only option.”

He pulled the tail of his shirt free of his pants. Strapped to his waist over his undershirt and above his belted pants was a black canvas belt with lots of pockets and zippers. Reaching near the small of his back, he withdrew two small canisters.

“What’re those?”

“A decoy grenade and smoke screen.”

She gaped at the objects in his hand. Unreal. Then she looked into his deep brown eyes, intense but for the slightest touch of amusement, and tried her best not to swoon. Sure, the thrill of the battle was starting to course through her system again like a bizarro happy drug she couldn’t control, but still, they were cornered in an underground garage while being fired at by machine guns.

Her fingers danced over the decoy grenade as she shot him a sidelong gaze. “You carry gadgets on your belt?”

She couldn’t help it. She swooned a little anyway. Mr. Tall, Dark and Droolworthy just got even more intriguing.

Chapter 4

For someone who’d freaked at the sight of his gun, Avery sure did caress the grenade canisters in Ryan’s hand like they were her favorite sex toys. And calling them gadgets? Ryan didn’t know anybody who referred to grenades as gadgets, but if it gave Avery courage for the life-risking run they needed to make, then she could call them whatever she wanted.

Fighting a smile, he bought Avery a few more seconds to make peace with what she was about to do by squeezing off several rounds that forced Chiara’s men to scatter for cover. “Yeah, I’ve got a few gadgets. Are you ready to move?”

Avery gave a thumbs-up and crouched into a sprint starting position. A pulse of admiration for her bravery nearly had him smiling again as he removed the pin from the first grenade and tossed it. It exploded in a screen of smoke.

The decoy he lobbed at the garage entrance. The hostiles’ gunfire stopped, and Ryan could see them running for cover. Spraying gunfire to cover Avery’s sprint, he gave her back a nudge. “Move!”

She took off running. Ryan followed, shooting through the smoke screen. Machine-gun fire resumed all around them. Bits of wall and ceiling crumbled over Avery as she threw the door open, but she kept moving like a champ. Ryan slipped in behind her. There was no way to bar the door from opening, but lucky for him, Avery had kept her wits about her and was already working the keys in the locker-room door.

Ryan held his position near the door, ready to neutralize anyone who dared open it.

“Got it,” Avery called. She shouldered the door open, kicking her fallen purse in with her.

Ryan sidestepped her way, gun trained on the parking-garage door until he was at the employee entrance. As he closed his hand over that door, the parking garage door opened, followed by another succession of gunfire.

He ducked behind the door, paused to squeeze out a half-dozen rounds, then slammed the door behind him. If Chiara’s men had another key, he and Avery had maybe thirty seconds to bolt. If they didn’t, their window opened to a minute or two, perhaps more until Chiara’s attack dogs either blew the door down or found another way to reach them.

A thunder of noise from beyond the door preceded the appearance of dimples in the metal plated wood. Gunshots. Ryan dived away from the door. “Let’s move!”

He scooped up Avery’s purse and jogged with her past the kitchenette and dining area, toward the lockers. Behind them, the sound of the doorknob rattling was followed by another long roar of gunfire.

So they didn’t have another key. Excellent. He tucked Avery’s purse in the inside pocket of his jacket. “How do we get out of here?”

“Stairs, straight ahead.”

Halfway down the row of lockers stood a solitary young man, shirtless, his eyes and mouth wide-open as he stared at Ryan’s gun. The poor schmuck looked harmless but frozen with terror, which was probably why, despite the gunfire in the parking lot, he looked more ready to pee his pants than flee. While Ryan was busy mentally debating whether or not to incapacitate him so he didn’t call hotel security on them, Avery rushed the guy, spearing a finger in the air.

“You. Take off your shoes. Now!”

The man gaped at her. Ryan was taken aback, too, but he caught on quick. She’d left her heels in the parking garage and had correctly reasoned that even used, ill-fitting shoes were better than no shoes at all.

He moved beside her, his gun aimed at the poor, half-naked employee. “You heard the lady. Get those shoes off.”

His focus riveted on the gun, the man whimpered and sank to his knees. “Don’t kill me.”

Avery rolled her eyes and swatted at the air between them. “It’s a gun. Get over it. Give me your shoes, or I’m going to make you.”

His lower lip trembled, but he nodded and complied.

It was an entirely inappropriate time to feel like smiling, but Ryan nearly did. It’s a gun. Get over it? That was quite the change of tune since she’d first laid eyes on Ryan’s S&W in the stairwell.

Once Avery had slipped into the black sneakers, Ryan gestured his head toward a staircase along the wall that led to the ground level. “Lead the way.” Pointing his gun at the employee, he added, “Count to one hundred—then call 911. Got it?”

The man nodded like the bobble-headed eagle on Ryan’s desk.

Avery took the stairs two at a time, the heels of the sneakers clunking like flip-flops, clearly too big. He climbed sideways behind her, keeping one eye over his shoulder at the employee to make sure he didn’t try anything heroic and the other on her bare back. Boy, had he been wrong to think her a possible double agent. She was like a shot of sunshine with a heart of pure moxie—about as far from the shady underworld Ryan operated in as a person could get.

All those months he’d wasted stewing on his suspicions he could’ve spent having impure thoughts about her.

Behind them, the door to the stairwell rattled. Muffled shouting came from the other side. At the top of the stairs, Avery paused at the closed door. He came up close behind her, ready to resume his lead position. There was only one problem. “I’m out of ammo,” he said under his breath.

She turned, brushing against him. Her hair flouncing over the right side of her face, she fingered his tie. “But you’ve got more gadgets, right?”

What was it with her and gadgets? He tucked her hair behind her ear and let his gaze drop to her full, heart-shaped lips—the kind that straddled the edge between sweet and wicked. The kind that begged to be scandalized with a hot, wet kiss. Maybe later—after they made it out of the hotel alive.

“I’ve got more gadgets.” Maybe, for once that night, luck would be on his side and he wouldn’t have to use them.

Reaching past her, he cracked the door and took stock of the reception area. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. “Here’s the plan. We’re going to walk straight out the Mira’s front doors. You think you could pretend we’re a couple, out for a night on the town?”

He hoped she was game because that wasn’t going to be a problem for him. There wasn’t going to be a single ounce of pretending on his part to look like he was totally into the smoking-hot woman at his side.

She inhaled deeply, determinedly. “Okay, but there’s one teensy issue.”

He cocked his head in question.

“If we’re trying to blend in, then this dress and these shoes aren’t going to work.” She held the tattered edges of her skirt as evidence.

He stared down the length of her body. Most of the skirt had been torn off in the parking garage, dirty smudges covered most of the material and the back hung open due to the broken zipper. What a shame. “It was such a nice dress.”

“You approve?”

He doffed his jacket and draped it across her shoulders, his jaw growing tight as a fresh zing of approval hit him below the belt. “Something like that.”

Given their height difference, the jacket was long enough to cover Avery’s body from her neck to an inch or so above her knees. Her clothes were still an obvious wreck, but at least the whole of downtown San Diego wouldn’t be treated to a view of her bare skin.

He dropped his empty shoulder holster onto the floor and double-checked to make sure his shirt covered his concealed carry belt. Holding the door open with his shoulder, he wrapped an arm around Avery’s waist and pulled her firmly against his side. Damn, she felt good there. If only they weren’t fighting for their lives against one of the deadliest men in the world.

Ducking his lips near her earlobe, he whispered, “Showtime.”

She shivered at the word, so he searched her face, looking for fear or hesitancy. If she froze up now, he’d have to rethink their getaway. But all he saw in her face was brazen determination. Impossible not to admire her for that kind of courage, given how her life had been flipped upside down that night.

Nothing he could do about it now except protect her the best he could. That was one of his duties tonight, but not his biggest problem. Getting them both out of the hotel wasn’t even his biggest problem. Apparently, his biggest problem had come in with an express courier late in the day. The thought made his gut lurch.

He maneuvered them through the maze of managerial offices at a brisk clip, as though they belonged there, then around the back of the busy receptionist desk and into the lobby.

As they moved through the crowd, he whispered, “Where’s the letter I asked you to take home?”

“In my car.”

Ryan didn’t consider himself a cynic, but it was almost too good to be true that something had gone off without a hitch tonight. He’d been afraid it’d gotten dropped somewhere in the hotel. “Where’s your car now?”

“In the ICE parking garage.”

That was going to be a problem. Chiara’s men would know to look for him at the ICE office. For all he knew, they’d been hunting him as surely as he’d been hunting them. True, Ryan could probably still take on an army of Chiara’s goons with the various weapons and defensive devices strapped around his body, but without at least one loaded gun at his disposal he felt positively naked. They’d have to regroup and return for the letter once he was fully loaded again.

A bellman opened the front door, but before they’d stepped a foot outside, gunfire sounded all around them. The wall of windows above the lobby shattered.

Ryan’s reaction was immediate and visceral. He ducked over Avery to shield her from the raining glass, pushing her through the door. They spilled onto the sidewalk with dozens of screaming, fleeing guests.

While the cover provided by the panicked crowd had its benefits, Ryan fought against getting swept away with them. He and Avery needed to move at twice the speed of the masses and get out of view of the street, out of range of the hostiles’ bullets and the law enforcement officials who were guaranteed to swarm the building at any moment. Already, sirens sounded in the distance.

Ryan kept his arm around Avery and pulled her into the first building they came to. A restaurant. Though it was nearing midnight, the place was packed. They ran past the hostess, dodging tables of diners who seemed dumbstruck. Wide-eyed, several of them stood in slow motion, like they were still processing the noises they’d heard from outside and it was finally sinking in that something bad was going down.

Behind them, more gunfire rang out. Ryan turned to see three of the men from the parking garage giving chase. He pushed Avery faster, pulling the pin of another smoke grenade with his teeth. He chucked it at the men as he and Avery pushed through a swinging door into the kitchen. They sprinted past prep tables and stove tops, dodging startled cooks and waitstaff.

Finally they burst out into a dark alley. Not exactly an ideal locale for avoiding shady underworld thugs, so Ryan took Avery by the hand and steered her toward the next block, where a cluster of employees huddled under a light, smoking, just outside an open door. Hoping it was another back entrance to a nightclub or restaurant, Ryan pulled his gun out. Sure, it was out of ammo, but these guys didn’t need to know that.

He ground to a stop in front of the smoking workers and took aim at them with his S&W. “Out of our way.”

Cursing, they scurried off. Ryan boosted Avery ahead of him, then reached for an offensive grenade. Using it was a huge risk given the close proximity of the other buildings. There was little else in the world that Ryan hated more than collateral damage—innocent civilians getting hurt or killed. It was his one thing.

He’d vowed to his father when he had entered the service to never take collateral damage lightly and to avoid it at all costs. But he and Avery needed to create some distance between themselves and the men trailing them and he was running out of options.

“What are you waiting for?” Avery asked from inside the doorway.

“Just a sec.”

As soon as the three thugs shot into the alley from the restaurant, Ryan made sure they got a good look at him. They ran at him, shooting wild. He waited until they were in range, then pulled the pin and lobbed the grenade.

He slipped through the door as an explosion ripped through the alley, a tsunami of shock waves and fire. He shook off the jolt to his body and slammed the door then locked it with the dead bolt.

Avery took hold of his arm. “Are you all right?”

All right was a relative term at the moment. “Better than dead.” It was something he and his black ops crew used to say. Remembering the crew sent a knife of longing through his heart. He missed those times, before it all fell apart. “Let’s jam. You lead the way.”

He followed Avery through the nightclub employee break room, ignoring the protests of the workers, and into the main area of the club. The music inside was deafening, so loud that no one seemed to have registered the grenade explosion or trouble at the Mira only a few blocks over. This place was dark and crowded, perfect for two people on the run to get lost within.

Halfway across the dance floor, Avery put on the brakes and turned to look over her shoulder, like she wanted to say something. Ryan ducked his ear close to her lips to hear her over the techno music.

“I know this place,” she called. “It’s a string of connected dance rooms and bars, each linked to the club next door. We might be able to sneak out an exit the bad guys aren’t expecting us to.”

“Perfect. I’ll follow.”

“There’s a problem.”

He cocked a brow at her.

“This is Club Brazil, where I was supposed to meet my friends tonight.”

No way. “Seriously?”

“We can’t let them see us or they’ll want to know what we’re up to. We don’t have time to explain and we can’t take a chance of the bad guys seeing them with us. They don’t deserve to be put in danger.”

She was right on every level. “You’re short. Keep your head down and—”

“Avery!”

Her eyes closed, her face scrunched. “Too late.”

Ryan swallowed a curse and plastered a genial expression on his face as three sets of couples gathered around them. The women were young and dolled up much like Avery, with tight dresses and flushed, happy faces. The men were just regular guys, corporate businessman types and sort of puny, the kind that made Ryan feel like an ogre in comparison.

“You made it,” one of the women said. She hooked Avery in a one-armed hug that threatened to slosh the drink in her other hand, but her attention was locked on Ryan, as were the other women’s. “I see you found someone to ring in the New Year with, and you didn’t even need my help.” She nudged Avery and whispered something. Ryan wasn’t a lipreading expert, but it looked like she said, “He’s hot. Nice job.”

“Sorry I’m so late, but you can see I had a good reason.” Avery took Ryan’s hand, like they were an item. Her hand was so tiny and slender; he loved the way it felt in his. He held on tight. “I hate to do this to you, but we’re on our way to, uh, have a little private party of our own. We just stopped by so you wouldn’t worry about me.”

Wow. Bold. Then again, taking off with guys she’d just met must not have been her normal M.O. because her friends’ eyes grew wide and they gave Ryan a brand-new head-to-toe inspection. The men seemed more skeptical than pleased at the news compared to their dates’ reactions. One of them stepped forward, hand out like he wanted to shake Ryan’s and make extra sure their friend was safe in his company.

Avery lurched sideways, waving and pulling Ryan along with her. “Okay, we’re out of here.”

Ryan offered the group a conciliatory wave and matched Avery’s quick stride.

“You didn’t even tell us his name,” the curly-haired brunette called after them.

“James!” Avery hollered, smiling with too much enthusiasm.

They ducked through a hall between that dance floor and the next. This room was even more crowded with revelers and dancers than the last, so that they were squeezed together as they wormed their way through the throng.

Ryan couldn’t muster the desire to let go of Avery’s hand, and now that they were pressed back to front, it was easy to get close to her ear to tease her.

“James?” he asked. “Is Ryan not a good enough name?”

Sweeping her chin over her shoulder to regard him from below her thick, long lashes, she smiled. “That was my attempt at subterfuge.”

And damn it all if he didn’t break out in a chuckle right there on the dance floor of Club Brazil while fleeing with a civilian from a ruthless pack of hit men. He couldn’t stop the lightness Avery summoned forth from him.

They were partially across the floor, moving toward the lighted exit on the far end of the room when the music volume lowered. The DJ’s voice boomed over the speakers, announcing midnight’s imminent arrival. The number twenty appeared on the numerous television screens around the room, counting down to midnight.

Ryan and Avery exchanged glances but kept moving, though their progress was made more difficult because the partiers were all standing still. Champagne was passed around. Everyone’s eyes were on the screens.

Ten, nine, eight...

The emergency exit came into view down the restroom hallway behind a mass of people only four deep. In moments, they’d be out on the street. The midnight celebrations would be the perfect cover for them to slip away. But all he could think was, What the hell. You only live once.

He ground to a stop, tugging Avery’s hand, spinning her to face him.

She bumped up against his chest, looking confused. “Why did we stop?”

Three, two...

As the first second of the New Year turned over, he took her cheek in hand and captured her lips with his. She stiffened, then her mouth went soft. She threw her arm around his neck and kissed him back. Her kiss was as luscious as her body, full of passion and heat and supple softness. It’d been a while since Ryan had really kissed a woman so that it crashed through him, all the way deep down inside. He forgot how profound a feeling that was, how addictive.

He touched the tip of his tongue to her lip, and the moment her tongue found it, flicking against it, a jolt of arousal ripped through him. Oh, yeah, this was the best idea he’d had all night. He could’ve stayed there until morning dawned, but the city was crawling with hostiles who wanted nothing more than to destroy him—and now Avery, too. He couldn’t afford to take his eye off the game, not even to puzzle out the secrets of the charming, beautiful woman in his arms.

He ended the kiss, then looked down at her dazed eyes and moist, parted lips, and had to hold himself back from sampling her again. “Happy New Year, Avery.”

She blinked slowly, as if awakening. “Happy New Year, Ryan.”

He smoothed his hand over her bare back under his suit jacket, hungry for the feel of her flesh. “I’m back to being Ryan again?”

“It’s a lady’s prerogative.”

He caressed her lower lip with his thumb, and the grin that had been threatening to break out did exactly that. “How about we get out of here?”