by Cynthia Eden
Tina leaned forward and brushed her lips over his. She reached around him, her hands sliding over his coat.
She frowned when she felt the small bulge in his pocket.
Her brows lifted as her fingers slid inside that pocket. She touched the familiar form of an inhaler.
“I want you to always be safe,” he whispered. “I want you close to me, and I want to make sure I can help you.”
“You’ve been carrying this—”
“Since I found out what you needed. I want to be the man you need. The man who makes you smile in the morning.” A wicked glint lit his eyes. “The man who makes you moan at night.”
“You are.” Her heart was beating faster—because she was happy. The happiest she’d been in years.
It wasn’t about taking a chance on him. Wasn’t about the unknown risk of falling for a dangerous agent.
It was about what the heart wanted.
About trust.
About love.
“My sisters want to meet you,” he said as his lips lowered toward hers. “They want to meet the woman who saved them.”
“But I didn’t—”
“Yes, you did. Doc, you’re the bravest, strongest woman I’ve ever met. And I don’t know how I got so lucky as to find you, but I don’t ever want to let you go.”
She tilted her head back. “You don’t have to let me go.” Fair warning time. “Because I’m not going to let you go.”
“Forever?” Hope was there, in his eyes. Hope and love and happiness.
In his eyes. In his voice. On his face.
“Forever,” Tina promised. She kissed him and knew that she’d found the right man. The only man for her.
Epilogue
Bruce Mercer gazed down at the busy Washington, D.C., streets below his office. The sidewalks were full of people, and cars bustled on the pavement.
Those people lived their whole lives without realizing the danger that truly stalked the world. The danger his agents faced every single day.
“The last case was too close,” he said quietly. He’d almost lost Tina, and Cassidy’s true identity had nearly come to light.
Good thing only a dead man had heard Cassidy’s confession.
Devast had gotten intel that the man never should have possessed. The EOD tracking devices had been designed to protect the agents.
Not put them at increased risk.
Devast was dead, but the case wasn’t over. Not completely. There was a traitor in the EOD. Someone in his organization was selling out agents who were already risking their lives.
That traitor would have to be stopped.
Mercer turned away from the busy street and gazed at the agent who sat, silent and still, in the leather chair. “It was close, but you did a good job on this mission, Agent Marshall.”
Cooper Marshall inclined his head.
“Now I’ve got another case for you.” Bruce stalked slowly toward him. “I want you to find my traitor, and I want you to stop him.”
Cooper gazed up at him for a moment. “You’re sure it’s one of our own?”
“Yes.” And that just made the betrayal even harder to take. “Trust no one on this case, Marshall. A man—or woman—who will sell out his own teammates—that person will be the most dangerous enemy you’ve ever faced.”
And that enemy was in the EOD. He or she could be walking through the offices right then.
Mercer had thought he’d already cleaned house at the EOD. Every employee there should have been carefully screened.
But he’d messed up. He’d trusted the wrong person, and now his agents were paying for his mistake.
They can’t pay with their lives.
“Stop the traitor,” Mercer ordered him again. “By any means necessary.”
* * * * *
Read on for a special sneak peek of
THE GIRL NEXT DOOR,
the next installment of the
SHADOW AGENTS: GUTS & GLORY miniseries,
coming from Intrigue March 2014!
Chapter One
Cooper Marshall burst into the apartment, his gun ready even as his gaze swept the dim interior of the room that waited for him. “Lockwood!”
There was no response to his call, but the stench in the air—that unmistakable odor of death and blood—told Cooper he’d arrived too late.
Again.
Damn it.
He’d gotten his orders from the top. He’d been assigned to track down Keith Lockwood, an ex-Elite Operations Division agent. Cooper was supposed to confirm that the other man was alive and well. He’d fallen off the EOD’s radar, and that had sure raised a red flag in the mind of Cooper’s boss.
Especially since other EOD agents had recently turned up dead.
Cooper rounded a corner in the narrow hallway. The scent of blood was stronger. He headed toward what he suspected was the bedroom. His eyes had already adjusted to the darkness, so it was easy for him to see the body slumped on the floor just a few feet from him.
He knelt, and his gloved fingers turned the body just slightly. Cooper pulled out his penlight and shone it on the dead man’s face.
Keith Lockwood. Cooper had never worked with the man on a mission, but he’d seen Lockwood’s photos.
Lockwood’s throat had been slit. An up-close kill.
Considering that Lockwood was a former navy SEAL, the man shouldn’t have been caught off guard.
But he had been.
Because the killer isn’t your average thug off the streets.
The killer was also an agent with the EOD, and the killer was trained just as well as Lockwood had been.
No, trained better.
Because the killer had been able to get the drop on the SEAL.
Cooper’s breath eased out in a rough sigh just as a knock sounded on the front door.
The front door that Cooper had just smashed open moments before.
He leaped to his feet.
“Mr. Lockwood?” a feminine voice called out. “Mr. Lockwood...i-is everything all right?”
No, things were far from all right. The broken door should have been a dead giveaway on that point.
“It’s Gabrielle Harper!” the voice continued. “We were supposed to meet...”
His back teeth clenched. Talk about extremely bad timing. He knew Gabrielle Harper, and the trouble the woman was about to bring his way just was going to make the situation even more of a tangled mess.
Cooper holstered his weapon. He had to get out of that apartment. Before Gabrielle saw him and asked questions he couldn’t answer for her.
He rose and stalked toward the bedroom window. His footsteps were silent. After all of his training, they should be.
Gabrielle’s steps—and her high heels—tapped across the hardwood floor as she came inside the apartment.
Of course, Gabrielle wasn’t just going to wait outside. She was a reporter, no doubt on the scent of a story.
And she must have scented the blood.
She was following that scent, and if he didn’t move, fast, she’d follow it straight to him.
Cooper opened the window, then glanced down below. Three floors up. But there were bricks on the side of the building, with crevices in between them. If he held on just right, he could spider crawl his way down.
The floor in the hallway creaked as Gabrielle paused.
She should have called for help by now. At the first sign of that smashed door, Gabrielle should have dialed 9-1-1. But, with Gabrielle, what she should do and what she actually did—well, those could be very different things.
If she wasn’t careful, the woman was going to walk into real danger one day. The kind she wouldn’t be able to walk away from.
He slid through the window. Since it was after midnight, Cooper knew he’d be able to blend pretty easily with the darkness when he climbed down the backside of the building.
He’d make it out of there, undetected, provided he didn’t fall and break his neck.
He eased
to the side, his feet resting against the window’s narrow ledge. He pulled the window back down and took a deep breath.
“Mr. Lockwood!” Gabrielle’s horror-filled scream broke loud and clearly through the night.
She’d found the body.
Jaw locking, Cooper made his way down the building.
Gabrielle had just stumbled into an extremely dangerous situation. Now he’d have to do some serious recon to keep her out of the cross fire.
Keep reading for an excerpt from ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVENGE by Cindi Myers.
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Chapter One
Elizabeth Giardino had died on February 14. For three hundred and sixty-four days, Anne Gardener had avoided thinking about that terrible day, but on the anniversary of Elizabeth’s death, she allowed herself a few minutes of mourning. She stood in her classroom at the end of the day, surrounded by the hearts-and-lace decorations her students had made, and let the memories wash over her: Elizabeth, never Betsy or Beth, her hair streaked with brilliant purple, leaning dangerously far over the balcony of her father’s penthouse in Manhattan, waving to the paparazzi who clicked off shot after shot from the apartment below. Elizabeth, in a ten-thousand-dollar designer gown and impossibly high heels, sipping five-hundred-dollar champagne and dancing into the wee hours at a St. Tropez nightclub while a trio of morose men in black suits looked on. Elizabeth, blood staining the breast of her white dress, screaming as those same men dragged her away.
Anne closed her eyes, shutting out the last image. She’d gain nothing by remembering those moments. The past was the past and couldn’t be undone.
Yet she couldn’t shake a feeling of uneasiness. She looked out the window, at the picture-postcard view of snow-capped mountains against a turquoise sky. Rogers, Colorado, might have been on another planet, for all it resembled New York City. Those lofty peaks did have a mesmerizing effect, anchoring you to the earth in a way. Part of her would like to stay here forever, too, but she doubted she would. In a year, or two at most, she’d have to move on. She couldn’t afford to put down roots.
She drew a deep breath, collecting herself, then gathered up her purse and tote bag, and shrugged into her coat. She locked the door of her classroom and walked to the parking lot, her low-heeled boots clicking on the scuffed linoleum, echoing in the empty hallway.
Her parking space was close to the side entrance, directly under a security light that glowed most mornings when she arrived. But there was no need for the light today, though the shadows were beginning to lengthen as the February sun slid down toward its nightly hiding place behind the mountains.
The sudden descent to darkness had made her uneasy when she’d first arrived here. Now she accepted it as part of the environment, along with stunning bright sun that shone despite bitter cold, or the sudden snowstorms that buried the town in two feet of whiteness as soft and dry as powdered sugar.
She drove carefully through town, checking her rearview mirror often. People waved and she returned their greetings. That, too, had unsettled her at first, how people she’d never met greeted her as an old friend within a few days of her arrival. She’d never lived in a small town before, and had to get used to the idea that of course everyone knew the new elementary schoolteacher.
Dealing with the men had been the biggest challenge at first. More men than women lived in these mountains, she’d been told, and the arrival of an attractive young woman who was clearly unattached drew them like elk to a salt lick. Elizabeth would have been in heaven—the men were ski instructors, mountain climbers, cowboys, miners—all young and fit, rugged and handsome, straight out of a beer commercial or a romance novel. But Anne rebuffed them all, as politely as she could. She wasn’t interested in dating anyone. Period.
A rumor had started that her heart had been broken in New York and this was why she’d come west. The sympathetic looks directed her way after this story circulated were almost worse than the men’s relentless pursuit.
Things had calmed down after a few months. People had accepted that the new teacher was “standoffish,” but that didn’t stop them from being friendly and kind and concerned, though she suspected some of this was merely a front for their nosiness. People wanted to know her story and she had none to tell them.
She stopped at the only grocery in town to buy a frozen dinner and the makings of a salad, then drove the back way home. She tried to vary her route every few days, which wasn’t easy. There were only so many ways to reach the small house in a quiet subdivision three miles from town.
The house, painted pale green with buff trim, sat in the middle of the block. It had a one-car garage and a sharply peaked roof, and a covered front porch barely large enough for a single Adirondack chair, which still wore a dusting of snow from the last storm.
She unlocked the door and stood for a moment surveying the room. A sofa and chair, covered with a faded floral print, filled most of the small living room, the television balanced on an old-fashioned mahogany table with barley-twist legs. An oval wooden coffee table and a brass lamp completed the room’s furnishings, aside from a landscape print on the side wall. The place had come furnished. None of the items were things she would have picked out, but she’d grown accustomed to them. No sense changing things around when she couldn’t stay.
She stooped and picked up her mail from the floor, where it had fallen when the carrier had shoved it through the slot. Utility bills, the local paper, junk—the usual. Nothing was amiss about the mail or the house, yet she couldn’t shake her uneasiness. She eased out of the boots and padded into the kitchen in stocking feet and put away the groceries. She wished she had a drink. She had no liquor in the house—she hadn’t had a drink since she’d left New York. It seemed safer that way, to always be alert. But today she’d welcome the dulling of her senses, the softening of the sharp edges of feeling.
She put water on for tea instead, then went into the bedroom to change into jeans and a comfy sweater. Maybe she’d start a fire in the small woodstove in the living room, and try to lose herself in a novel.
The bedroom held the only piece of furniture in the house she really liked—an antique cherry sleigh bed, the wood burnished by years of use to a soft patina. She trailed one hand across the satin finish on her way to the closet. She stopped beside the only other piece of furniture in the room, a sagging armchair, and slipped out of the corduroy skirt and cotton turtleneck. Sensible clothes for racing after six-year-olds. Elizabeth would have laughed to see her in them.
She opened the closet and reached for a pair of jeans. She scarcely had time to register the presence of another person in the room when strong arms wrapped around her in a grip like iron. A hand clamped over her mouth, stifling her scream. Panic swept over her, blinding her. She fought with everything she had against this unknown assailant, but he held her fast.
“Shhh, shhh. It’s all right. I won’t hurt you.” The man’s voice was soft in her ear, its gentleness at odds with the strength that bound her. “Look at me.”
He loosened his hold enough that she could turn her head to look at him. She screamed again as recognition shook her and choked on the sound as she stared into the eyes of a dead man.
Jake Westmoreland watched the woman in his arms closely, trying to judge if it was safe to uncover her mouth. He wasn’t ready to release his hold on her yet. Not because he feared she’d strik
e out at him, but because he’d waited so many months to hold her again.
She was thinner than he remembered, fragile as a bird in his hands, where he’d never thought of her as fragile before. Her hair was darker too, cut differently, and the bright streaks of color were gone. He’d seen her picture, so he should have been prepared for that. But nothing could have really prepared him for meeting her again, not after the trauma of their last parting. For months, he hadn’t even been sure she was still alive.
“I thought you were dead,” she said when he did remove his hand from her mouth. Tears brimmed in her eyes, glittering on her lashes.
“I was sure Giardino’s goons would go after you next.”
“Your friends got to me first. But they never told me you were still alive. How? The last time I saw you...” She shook her head. “So much blood...”
They told him later he had died, there on the floor of the suite at the Waldorf Astoria. But the trauma team had shocked his heart back to life and poured liters of blood into him to keep his organs from shutting down. He’d spent weeks in the hospital and months after that in rehab—months lying in bed with nothing to do but think about her.
He brushed her hair back from her temples, as if to reassure himself she was real, and not a dream. “Elizabeth, I—”
The pain in her eyes pierced him. “It’s Anne. Elizabeth doesn’t exist anymore. She died that day at the hotel.”
He’d known this, too, but in the moment his emotions had gotten the better of him. He stepped back, releasing her at last. “Why Anne?”
“It was my middle name.” Her bottom lip curved slightly in the beginnings of the teasing smile he’d come to know so well. The old smile he’d missed so much. “You didn’t know?”
“No.” There was so much he hadn’t known about her. “Can we sit down and talk?” He nodded toward the bed, the only place where two people could sit in the room.
A piercing whistle rent the air. He had his gun out of his shoulder holster before he even had time to think.