Dark Seduction

by Cheyenne McCray

  “No one had seen Demitri for a couple of days,” McKnight said.

  “Right,” Logan said. “He called in sick.” He scowled. “Demitri must have taken the place of the CIA agent before he and Agent Taylor came to see me yesterday.” Was it only yesterday?

  “And there’s not a damned thing we can do about it right this minute,” Logan added. “Demitri and that woman are long gone.”

  McKnight gestured toward the screen that showed the lab, real time. “Looks like your agents are here.”

  Logan turned and shouldered past Tori and McKnight and then headed back to the CVP lab.

  Tori frowned as she watched the CIA agents process the scene back down in the lab. Apparently what the agents had been doing was so highly classified that they would not be contacting the local law enforcement.

  Logan dragged his hand down his face. “We have to get the CVP back and fast.”

  James McKnight had one hand braced on a lab table and his other hand on his holstered weapon. Tori would have thought the big muscular man was hot if not for the situation they were in. His brown eyes were narrowed. “How in the hell are we going to do that?” he said

  Tori had been working everything through her mind until she came up with a plan. “I can do it.”

  Both Logan and McKnight turned and looked at her, McKnight with surprise and Logan with an expression she couldn’t read.

  “I’m not letting you out of my sight,” Logan said.

  “I’m your only hope.” Tori squared off with him, her hands on her hips. “I can get in there and find out where they are keeping the CVP so that we can grab it.”

  Logan’s scowl deepened. “I don’t trust you.”

  She walked closer to him. “I gave you my word that I would help and that’s what I’m going to do.”

  “You’ve been playing me from the beginning,” he said.

  “Not from the beginning.” Her voice softened and she tried to let him know how she felt. “That first weekend we met, that was for real. The time we’ve spent together…even though you thought I was Carla, that was real for me.”

  He narrowed his eyes.

  “It is what it is now, Logan.” Tori pushed her hair from her face. “I know I betrayed you, but I was doing my job. When the agency put me on this assignment, I was led to believe that you were the bad guy here. You haven’t done anything to prove you’re not, but I’m taking a leap of faith and going with my gut.”

  He said nothing.

  “Let’s get out of here.” She looked around them at all of the agents on the scene. “I want to talk about this in private.”

  “All right,” Logan said. “We’ll go to my office,” he said to both Tori and McKnight.

  They were quiet as he led the way out of the lab, past the second set of doors and out into the hallway to the elevator. When they were in the elevator car, he punched the button for one floor down.

  It was closing in on midnight now, but Tori didn’t feel the least bit tired. She felt wired and like she needed to do something.

  Once they arrived at the next floor, they walked until they reached his office. Logan closed the door behind the three of them.

  “What can you possibly do, Tori?” Logan asked as soon as the door closed behind him. “Demitri knows who you are. He’ll tell them what happened.”

  “They know who Tori is,” she said thoughtfully. “They won’t know the difference if I go in as my partner.”

  He looked at her for a long moment. “How do you think you’ll pull that off with the real Brian Eckhart out there?”

  “We have to capture him and I’ll take his place.” Tori started running scenarios through her mind. “Now that the CVP isn’t available, we aren’t able to bring him in and learn anything. So I need to go in.”

  “Mind explaining to me what’s going on?” McKnight said.

  Tori ignored him. “Like most agents, he’s not predictable—that’s the way you survive in our business. But he has one weakness.”

  “What is that?” Logan asked.

  “Ice cream.”

  He raised a brow and looked skeptical. “Ice cream?”

  “Brian loves it,” Tori said. “And he has a favorite shop near the PIA’s headquarters. He goes there regularly when he’s not undercover.”

  “What’s the PIA?” McKnight asked.

  With a thoughtful look, Logan said to Tori, “What do you propose?”

  McKnight looked annoyed as Tori and Logan ignored him.

  “We stake out the ice cream shop.” She pictured the events as she planned to have them unfold. “If he goes, it will be afternoon sometime. It might even be evening before he does, but usually in the afternoon.”

  “All right,” Logan said. “What then?”

  “He has a silver Porsche,” she said. “Once he’s in the ice cream shop, we’ll get ready to take him and then grab him when he comes out. He’s tough as hell, though, so it won’t be easy. I’ll take the Porsche and head back to PIA HQ.”

  “It might be easier if I knew what in the hell was going on,” McKnight said. “And what the hell this guy looks like.”

  “Allow me,” she said and both men looked at her.

  She took a deep breath and started shifting. McKnight looked at her with a mixture of shock and fascination and Logan regarded her with an unreadable gaze. Pain seared her head and her limbs. Her scalp tingled as she felt her hair go shorter and straight, buzzed at the sides of her head. She grew four inches taller from Carla’s height—which was ten inches from Tori’s natural height—her face felt rough with stubble. Other parts of her anatomy felt odd, something she never got used to when she shifted into a man.

  Her body filled out, becoming hard, solid. Her muscles developed as she transformed into Brian’s well-cut body. She looked Logan in the eyes, now about as tall as Logan and McKnight.

  “Holy shit,” McKnight said.

  Logan said nothing.

  “The scanners will never recognize the difference.” Tori’s voice came out low and deep. “I know his mannerisms pretty well from working with him over the past few years, so they’re not likely to suspect anything.”

  She slowly shifted back into her own form, not Carla’s. Her cover was blown, so what difference did it make now?

  When she was finished and herself again, McKnight studied her. “And who are you really?”

  Tori held out her hand. “Agent Tori Adams.”

  “CIA?” he took her hand and shook it.

  “Not exactly.” Logan said to McKnight, putting the skids to any more questions. He turned to Tori. “I’m going to inject a tracking chip under your skin so that we can find you if necessary.”

  “That’s a good idea,” she said, “But the sensors might pick it up if it’s metal. And you won’t be able to track me once I’m underground.”

  “They won’t pick up ours.” McKnight finally had an opportunity to inject something into the conversation. “It’ll be just fine. You won’t even be able to tell it’s there or where it is.”

  Logan nodded. “As far as tracking you underground, as long as we know you’re there then we will hopefully be able to get to you if you’re in trouble.”

  “I wouldn’t count on that.” She frowned as she thought about how dangerous it could be, probably more dangerous than any assignment she’d ever been on. “When we’re finished with this assignment, I want the thing out.” She met Logan’s gaze. “I’m not living the rest of my life with a tracking chip inside of me.”

  “Agreed,” he said.

  Chapter 15

  By the time they had worked out some basic plans, and the agents had processed the scene, it was well past midnight.

  Logan and McKnight had agreed with Tori that they would run the op without the CIA to get Brian and infiltrate PIA HQ. Logan didn’t know Senior Agent Valenzuela well enough to be sure that he wasn’t undercover PIA, and they wanted to avoid the red tape that would be involved. Not to mention the CIA didn’t usually use civ
ilians and both Logan and McKnight wanted to be involved.

  When they left the Savage Industries’ building, Tori in her own form, she realized she would never have a reason to take Carla’s form again. She wasn’t sure she minded that at all.

  They climbed into his Jag and as they pulled away from the curb, he said, “You’re going with me to my place.”

  She shrugged and didn’t argue. Exhaustion had finally hit her and all she wanted was to sleep. Tomorrow would be a big day.

  It wasn’t long before they arrived at his house and he escorted her into his home. Despite the fact that he was angry with her, he still acted like a gentleman. She supposed it was so ingrained in him that he couldn’t help it.

  “You’re hungry,” he stated when her stomach growled as soon as they walked in the door.

  She shrugged. It had been since yesterday noon that she’d had anything to eat, some thirteen hours ago.

  “Come on.” He inclined his head toward the kitchen.

  She followed him and sat when he pointed to a chair at the kitchen table and told her to sit. He dug in the fridge and pulled out lunchmeats, a tomato, lettuce, mayo, and mustard. He grabbed a loaf of bread from off the counter and started putting sandwiches together.

  Muscles in his forearms rippled with his movements and his biceps flexed as he made their late dinner. When he looked at her, she couldn’t read his gaze at all. “What kinds of assignments have you done in the past?” he asked.

  She shrugged as he set a paper plate in front of her and another plate in front of the seat across from her. “A variety of things.” She let out a breath. “Now to find out that what I did was against the U.S… It makes me sick inside.”

  He went to the fridge and brought out two bottles of Blue Moon, surprising her. He cracked them open and put one in front of her then seated himself and took a long draught of his own beer. “What are some of the operations you were involved in?”

  She took a drink of beer, too. After their long and hard night it felt good rolling down her throat and warming her belly. Yet as she answered him she felt cold. “Mostly stealing technology. My partner and I went into foreign countries and stole technology that was in the wrong hands—or so I thought. For all I know now, all along the PIA could have been selling it themselves.”

  “What else?” he asked.

  “Gun running rings,” she said, “took down drug cartels, ended a huge bank fraud scheme. Things that certainly seemed legit.” She paused. “Now something has changed. I had no doubt I was working for the good guys then.”

  “I can see that.” He paused. “Did you ever assassinate anyone?”

  A queer sensation churned in Tori’s belly and her sandwich didn’t taste so good. “I didn’t. But my partner did.”

  He just looked at her for a long moment then continued eating. He went through two sandwiches to her one and they each drank two bottles of beer.

  When they finished, there wasn’t much to clean up, just the beer bottles and paper plates.

  He brought her into his living room and had her sit down on one of the couches. “I took what I wanted to know from you,” he said. “I want you to know the truth from me.”

  She frowned, not knowing what he meant. He went to the huge stone fireplace and touched something behind a rock on the fireplace. Beside it part of the wall swung open. She looked at him with surprise as she saw that a safe was behind the portion of wall.

  Logan removed a set of keys from his pocket and put one into the safe and turned it. A click and then he pressed in a combination on a keypad before speaking into a microphone. “Logan,” he said.

  The door to the safe swung open. Logan reached in and drew out something metal. It was rectangular and about the size of a small toaster. He brought it over and sat on the couch next to her and showed her the device.

  He patted the top of it. “This is the original prototype for the CVP.”

  She opened her mouth in surprise. “There’s more than one?”

  “It’s older and bigger than the one that was stolen, but it’s just as good.” He turned it around so that she could see an LCD screen on the back as well as a built-in speaker. “From the speaker you will hear the answers to your questions,” he said. “On the screen you will read thoughts.”

  Tori’s cheeks went warm. “At the lab you could read my thoughts on a screen on the back of the device.”

  He gave a nod. “Yes.”

  “Oh.” Tori wanted to put her face in her hands. “You’re not going to use that on me again, are you?”

  He held her gaze. “You’re going to use it on me.”

  Tingles of surprise went through her. “You’ll let me?”

  “I want to give you proof of our intentions,” Logan said. “Earlier I didn’t want to be questioned while the CIA agents were present. But now that they’re not… I want you to know that you can trust me.”

  He set his hand on hers and continued. “When I found out about you, I was angry and wasn’t thinking clearly. But I’ve had time to think about it, and having heard your thoughts…I think I can trust you. I know I can.”

  “Wow.” She held her hand to her chest, a sense of relief overcoming her. “Thank you.”

  “Here.” He handed her the device and set it on her lap before adjusting it so that it was facing him. It hummed the moment he turned it on and its lights glowed. The LCD screen lit up.

  She looked at Logan and he nodded. “Ask my name to start off with.”

  Her hands weren’t steady so she adjusted it to get a better hold on it. “What is your full name?”

  “Logan Robert Savage,” the device said.

  Tingles went through Tori as she looked at the LCD screen and read it. I was born on December eighteenth in Tacoma. The words were in red. Then in green, I have one brother.

  She glanced back at him and he smiled. “Someone may be trying to think false information if you have it pointed at them, but direct answers are never wrong. If you see something in red, then it’s false—the person intentionally put that thought out there. So you ask a question about it.”

  “When is your real birthday?” she asked. “Where were you born? And do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  “October first,” the device said. “Seattle. I have one brother, John Savage.”

  She tilted her head to the side. “So it’s possible to fool it?”

  “No,” came out of the device.

  He studied her. “Now ask me the questions you really want to know.”

  She bit her lower lip then straightened in her seat. “Were you going to sell the technology to a foreign faction or government?”

  “Never.” The computer said the word, but Logan’s eyes looked fierce. “I would never betray my country.”

  In green across the LCD screen, it read, At first it hurt that she believed that of me, but then I realized she didn’t know me well enough to know it wasn’t true.

  She swallowed. “What did you plan on doing with the device?”

  “I planned to sell it to the US government,” the device said. “When it was fully functional.”

  Technology such as this is dangerous in anyone’s hands, was in green across the LCD screen. Sometimes I think that the CVP was a mistake.

  “Do you forgive me for what I’ve done?” she asked quietly.

  “Yes,” the device said. “I believe you were doing your job and you believed that it was for our government.”

  I love her, popped up in green on the LCD.

  Her eyes widened as she looked from the LCD to Logan. “You love me?”

  “Yes,” the device said. “I love you.”

  He cleared his throat. “I didn’t expect that to come out. It came from my subconscious.” Then he smiled and said, “But…yes, it’s true.”

  She swallowed. “Were you in love with Carla?”

  “Carla has been different than before,” came out of the device. “Now I know it was you all along. So it’s you I fell in love wit
h.”

  She took a deep breath and moved the CVP device to the coffee table, not meeting his gaze for a moment. Then she turned to him and smiled. He took her in his arms and kissed her.

  The kiss was long and sweet and she felt lightheaded when he pulled away. He stood and took her by her hands and drew her to her feet. He kissed her again and said, “Wait right here.”

  He reached for the device and picked it up then carried it to the safe and locked it up again.

  When he returned to her, he took her hand and led her to his bedroom.

  He pulled his polo shirt over his head, his gaze on her, and he removed his shoes, socks, and jeans.

  She kicked off her own shoes and tugged off her socks. He watched as she unbuttoned her blouse and took off her bra, before she shimmied out of her panties and jeans. When she was naked he just stared at her for a long moment.

  His body was magnificent and she couldn’t help but look him over, too. So solid, so virile. His body was hard and muscular and she wanted to touch and run her tongue over every single inch of him.

  He took her hand again and led her to the bathroom. She followed him in and watched as he went to the shower that was partially enclosed by rock and turned on the showerheads in the spacious area. When the water was warm, he drew her into the shower with him.

  “Shampoo and body soap is there.” He gestured to a small alcove built within the rock.

  As water beat down on them she retrieved the bottle of shampoo. She turned to see that he was staring at her with hunger in his eyes. Her gaze traveled down his hard chest to his taut abs and lingered on his erection. She met his eyes again and his throat worked as he swallowed.

  “Come here,” he said, his voice low and husky.

  She moved toward him, wondering what he was going to do. When she reached him, he took her by the shoulders and faced her away from him before taking the bottle of shampoo from her. He poured some on his palm then set the shampoo bottle on a shelf built into the rock wall.

  He started washing her hair, soaping the short strands into thick lather. She closed her eyes as his fingers massaged her scalp and her nape, some of the tension slowly easing out of her. He didn’t say a word so she kept her mouth shut and didn’t speak. She wanted the moment to last before they had to face reality again.