by Leslie North
“Someone’s shooting at us,” he whispered.
“No shit?” M already had her weapon pulled and was sidling toward the back of the van.
Cursing under his breath, Loki ditched the bulky fanny pack still strapped around his waist, pulling out the extra magazine of ammo and burner phone he’d stashed in there, before sneaking after her with his own weapon raised. “Do you know who it is?” he asked, his voice low.
“Not definitively,” M said, whipping back around to face him as another volley of bullets pinged off the cars around them. “But I’ve got a pretty good idea.”
“Great. Mind sha—” He’d been about to say “sharing”, but was interrupted by his cell phone ringing. It had to be Cam. The agency’s resident tech guru was the only person with Loki’s number today. He hit the answer button at the same time M answered her own phone, then glared at her while he talked. “What is it?”
“Got another data leak, boss,” Cam said as the sound of him typing on his keyboard clacked through the phone line. “Looks like this one’s coming from the support tech company we hired, not the mole you were investigating. Thought you’d want to know.”
“Dammit. Thanks.” Loki ended the call then stared at M, his irritation growing. “I thought you were my mole.”
“Yeah?” She snorted, shoving her own burner phone into the back pocket of those impossibly tiny shorts. “That’s funny. Cause I thought you were my mole.”
“Your mole?” Loki scowled, ducking once more as more ammo rained down on them. The near-silent bullets were starting to draw attention at last, people running and screaming, and sirens now wailed as law enforcement neared the parking area where they were hiding. “I’m not a mole.”
“Neither am I.” She smiled. “We need to get out of here before the cops find us.”
A small muscle ticked near Loki’s tense jaw. His gut told him to get back to the agency, to work with Cam to find out who the hell was responsible for that second leak and who the hell had tipped off the shooter that he’d be at the airshow today. His mind, however, insisted he stick with his mysterious M here and figure out why exactly she continued to show up at all the same places where he expected his mole to be when she clearly was not the mole.
Exiting through this parking lot clearly was not an option though. She was right, dammit. They need to get out of there before the cops arrived, and before their sniper turned them both into Swiss cheese. He took her hand and pulled her back toward the crowded walkway. A friend of his from the Navy, guy named Marcus Allen, was here today showing off a fancy private jet he was piloting for some rich businessmen in New York. If they could make it to the jet, they might have a shot of getting away clean. He’d marked that escape route as a last-ditch resort, since Loki’s research had revealed some unexpected connections between M and Marcus, but if there was ever a time for last-ditch it was now.
“Where the fuck are we going?”
“To catch a plane.”
M struggled to remove his grip on her, but Loki was too strong. He kept a hold of her as they skirted through the people, dodging old folks and toddlers in strollers. Thankfully, there were enough obstacles between them and the snipers that they couldn’t get a clean shot. Finally, they reached the chain link fencing lining the taxiways and he did a final check over his shoulder to make sure they hadn’t been followed before stowing his gun in the back waistband of his jeans.
“What now?” M asked, clearly annoyed.
“Now we climb.” It was Loki’s turn to grin as he started scaling the ten-foot-high fencing. “Better hurry. From up here I can see the police are headed this way. If you can climb in those things, that is.”
He eyed her Daisy Dukes and did his best not to imagine those sleek, tanned thighs wrapped around his waist as he thrust into her hard and long. Jesus. He’d been too long without a woman. That had to be it. He never lost concentration like this on a mission.
She glared up at him for a moment then proceeded to shimmy up the fence beside him, sneering as she went. “This is horseshit. They told me this job should be a piece of cake.”
Loki raised a brow at her words. Who were “they”? The people she was working for? And what job exactly was she working on?
At the top of the fence he threw his leg over and hopped down to the ground then held his arms up to catch her when she jumped. She was about a foot shorter than his own six-four, and all lush curves and lean muscle. He might have enjoyed the feel of her body sliding down the front of him a tad more than he should have.
“Jesus.” She rolled her eyes at him when he didn’t let her go right away and stepped out of his arms. “C’mon, lover boy. Let’s get to that plane of yours before they kill us.”
With that, she pulled Loki across the tarmac toward Marcus’s plane.
As he raced along behind her, Loki couldn’t help wondering when the fuck his normally ordered, perfectly planned mission had gone so horribly off track.
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Available August 2 2018
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BLURB
He didn’t understand loyalty until she stripped it away…
Ex-NYPD cop Damian Stone was on the fast-track to an FBI career until a mafia ambush cost him his partner. He left the force and was recruited by an elite security team that leverages his hyper-protective instincts to protect the unprotectable--dangerous clients are Damian's bread and butter.
But he never expected her.
Alexa Volkov lived a privileged life—far from the messy underbelly of her father’s Russian mafia. But that doesn’t stop her from carrying the tattoo that makes Damian burn for revenge. As a crime boss daughter, Alexa is in a unique position to collapse the organization from the inside out. Her plan to testify against the mob patriarch puts a bounty on her head that would tempt even the most trustworthy cop—especially one hell-bent on punishing her for the sins of her father.
But the safe house part of Damian’s protection plan is anything but safe. In a place where alliances are not what they seem and the most dangerous heat bearing down on them is the forbidden burn of seduction, the only thing more at risk than life is a lethal hit to the heart.
Grab your copy of In Safe Hands
(The Safe Hands Unit Book One) from
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* * *
SNEAK PEAK
This was the last time Damian Stone would ever let Rockwell assign him a woman.
He studied the two figures at the nearby gas station, slid his thermos from his console, and took a fortifying swig of espresso. Twenty minutes had passed since his first scalding sip, and the caffeine had yet to rouse him from his morning haze. But the sight of Alexa Volkov’s crisp, white blouse shrink-wrapped against her cleavage was enough to raise a corpse from the dead.
Pure triple shot.
Admittedly, there had been no precedent before her. Damian’s past clients included a sweaty Wall-Street type with an appetite for sex trade cash, an informant that had turned state’s evidence against a high-profile New York senator, and a retired real estate mogul whose trophy wife had hired half of Jersey’s parolees to make his death look like an accident. In every instance, the guys were foul-mouthed, ball-scratching, abysmal excuses for human life that Damian would have given his dying breath to protect.
This woman? Damian would have surrendered his dying breath and every damned other involuntary drive to extract himself from her protection detail.
Two red flags skewered his instincts.
First red flag: her dossier. The text was more than half obscured. Rockwell’s thick, black boxes would have made the State Department proud. And the grainy, paper-clipped photo of the blond may as well have been a police sketch from a drunk eye witness.
Damian had nothing to go on. Less than nothing.
Second red flag: Goddamn, but she was beautiful. Distractingly beautiful. Throw-a-top-security-agent-off-his-game beautiful.
Volko
v's escort leaned against the company’s unmarked sedan, looking damn obvious—dressed all in black and wearing a pair of expensive shades. The man looked like he had been trained on a Hollywood set and released out into the wild in full wardrobe. He certainly didn't look like someone casually passing through Wyoming at dawn.
Damian made a mental note to have a word with Rockwell about some of the newer trainees.
Volkov wasn't doing much to improve her cover, either. Her stiletto heels peeked from beneath an expensive, wide-legged pantsuit; and despite a coat more inclined to fashion than function in the Rocky Mountains, a sleek belt at her waist amplified her shapely curves. But what most women aspired to, Volkov achieved effortlessly: long, lithe figure; wide-set, exotic eyes, straight blond hair pulled back into a high ponytail.
One glance at Alexa Volkov was like taking a blow to the head. The spark behind your eyes that kept you company when someone laid you out on the training floor at the police academy.
Damian allowed himself a moment to feel dizzy. Then he got out of his car.
The woman didn't shrink as Damian approached, though her slender arms fidgeted. He wondered what she was contemplating more—his nondescript outfit, or his towering, decidedly descript build. He didn't blame her for looking uncertainly to her escort for a confirmation of Damian's identity.
"Stone," said the man in black.
Damian took ownership of the name with a slight nod. He flashed the escort his credentials, but his focus never veered from Alexa’s stare. Eye contact was the first non-verbal to gaining her trust. Her Nordic-blue eyes, as breathtaking as the rest of her at close proximity, tightened to a glare.
Her escort took the hint and departed without further comment.
"You're a cop," she said. It wasn't a question.
"Retired," he acknowledged.
"You don't walk like you're retired."
She was observant, then, as well as being a knock-out. Damian wondered how her defenses would impact their shared situation. He had been on the receiving end of that mistrustful look a time or two before when he still wore the uniform.
"Why don't we get some coffee?" he redirected. "Have you eaten anything?"
"Shouldn't we be heading out? I mean, isn't it dangerous, now that I'm…?"
"You're with me."
Volkov’s perfectly-shaped eyebrows twisted in a not-so-perfect fashion, no doubt her brain working to process his meaning. He had used the statement to calm skittish clients before, but the words hadn’t struck him as odd until they left his lips in the presence of a beautiful woman.
"What I mean to say is that you're safe, Miss Volkov. You can trust me to make decisions. Patronizing the diner will make our visit to the premises less suspicious."
Her steady, contemplative blinks seemed to indicate a shift, a consent to delay judgment until more information presented itself. Lines at her forehead eased then disappeared.
Damian guided her to the diner’s entrance and held the door for her.
Volkov stalled in the doorway and looked up at him with a wan smile. "Tell me again how you're retired? Even your words are blue." She ducked beneath the pillar of his arm to enter.
In her wake, her fragrance wafted to his nose—something blossoms and vanilla and rain, rolled into one.
The scent soothed his jacked nerves. Always first-meet nerves.
The Sizzling Griddle diner was cramped, built like a long railcar with red vinyl booths lining the outer wall. Volkov took direction from him beautifully and didn't stop until they had sequestered themselves in a secluded corner. A cursory glance satisfied Damian that they were a good distance from the windows. He took a seat on the stool beside her, trying to assess how much he was allowed to study a woman under his protection while still retaining his professionalism.
Seeing her in poor lighting only made things worse. She might be anyone. He might be anyone. Their first meeting might be a thing of chance, rather than a life-preserving necessity.
"How was your escort?" he asked. If they were strangers in a diner, he certainly wouldn’t have opened with that line.
"Strong. Silent. He looked a little ridiculous. You, on the other hand…" She paused when Damian removed his baseball cap and place it on the table beside his wallet, seemingly changing her mind about what she planned to say at the last moment. "Your name is Stone?"
He didn't correct her. An adherence to last names was a good boundary to encourage. Instead, he nodded to a passing waitress, who obliged him by overturning his mug and pouring him a cup of coffee. Alexa declined a cup.
"How did you get into this line of work?" she asked after their waitress left.
Damian raised the mug to his lips.
"Were you discharged?"
"No."
"No offense, but you look too young to have retired by choice. And if you were injured in the line of duty, I doubt this would be your logical next assignment. You have to be able to protect me, right?"
Damian lowered his coffee without having taken a sip. Answers about his past could make or break her trust in him.
"Am I right?" she pressed.
"Miss Volkov, if the question is whether or not I am capable of protecting you, then I assure you that you are in safe hands."
She sat back from the bar and crossed her arms. Damian wondered if she was going to order anything to eat, or if this had been a wasted effort to appear unsuspicious. When the waitress returned, he took the liberty of ordering two stacks of pancakes. A possible overstep, but their first meeting couldn't derail much faster.
Volkov ate her meal dutifully, speaking little. Damian accepted a refill on his coffee. It was a long drive back to the safe house, and he couldn't afford to let last night's fitful sleep show. He paid in cash, and they quietly exited the diner.
A man watched them from a sidewalk, half a block away, half-concealed by a parked Jeep.
Damian’s hand seized her elbow. He kept the movement casual, overfamiliar for the benefit of anyone who might be looking, but the pressure his hand exerted left little question as to his intention.
Volkov stopped walking. "What is it?"
Damian leaned toward her, his body as close as a lover, his answer a whisper. “Trouble.”
Grab your copy of In Safe Hands
(The Safe Hands Unit Book One) from
www.LeslieNorthBooks.com