Kitabı oku: «Secret Agent Reunion»
“Is there something I can do for you, Agent Lama?”
Mitch seemed more muscular than before. His shoulders broader beneath the polo shirt that hugged them and the well-defined muscles of his chest. On his right arm was the tattoo that she had found undeniably sexy and dangerous when she had first discovered it. His hair was shorter, but framed the strong lines of his face better and brought attention to his eyes. Startling slate-grey eyes followed her every move.
“We need to talk, Dani.”
“Talk? You have more from Lazlo about the mission?”
He released an exasperated sigh. “It’s not about the assignment and you know it.”
What she knew was that she was torn between having him take her into his arms and kicking his backside for breaking her heart.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Caridad Piñeiro was born in Havana, Cuba, and settled in the New York metropolitan area. She attended Villanova University on a Presidential Scholarship and graduated with honours. Caridad earned her Juris Doctor from St John’s University and became the first female and Latina partner of Abelman, Frayne & Schwab.
Caridad is an author whose love of the written word developed when her fifth-grade teacher assigned a project – to write a book that would be placed in a class lending library. She has been hooked on writing ever since. Articles featuring Caridad’s works have been published in various magazines and newspapers. She has appeared on Fox Television’s Good Day New York, New Jersey News’ Jersey’s Talking with Lee Leonard and WGN-TV’s Adelante Chicago. Caridad was also one of the Latina authors featured at the first-ever Spanish Pavilion at the 2000 Chicago BookExpo America. Caridad’s novels have been nominated for various readers’ and reviewers’ choice awards, including awards from Affaire de Coeur, Harlequin Books and RIO. Danger Calls was a 2005 Top 5 Read from Catalina magazine and the first book selected for Catalina’s cyber book club.
When not writing, Caridad is a mum, wife and lawyer. Caridad also teaches various writing workshops and heads a writing group at a local bookstore. For more information on Caridad’s books, contests and appearances, or to contact Caridad, please visit www.caridad.com.
Dear Reader,
When I was asked to write the story in which this heroine first appeared, More Than a Mission (May 2007), I was also asked to leave the status of “the Sparrow” in question. I was delighted! Why? Because I totally fell in love with the relationship between the two twin sisters, and because I knew there was more to Dani and the story of why she became “a world-renowned assassin.” Since writing More Than a Mission, many readers have asked whether Dani was actually dead and also, how I could redeem Dani if she had killed or aided in the death of the Prince of Silvershire. I won’t give anything away, but I hope that by the time you finish Secret Agent Reunion, you’ll understand the demons that drove Dani and sympathise with the choices she made.
Why did I choose such a hard road for Dani? I see the news every day, and the toll that drugs take on our society is immense. I wanted to make a point that even recreational drug use comes with a price you may not see – the thousands of people who die as a result of drug-related activities, much like Lizzy Bee’s and Dani’s parents. I hope you’ll enjoy not only this action-packed story, but also the romance between Mitch and Dani, since they have become two of my favourite characters.
Caridad
Secret Agent Reunion
CARIDAD PIÑEIRO
MILLS & BOON
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This book is dedicated to all my wonderful
nieces and nephews – Brendon, Deanna, Erika,
Jonathan, Lauren, Peter, and Vincent – I love
you all! You’re the best.
Chapter 1
Only someone who had come back from the dead truly knew how deadly distractions could be.
Danielle Moore had let personal feelings get in the way of a top-secret mission over a year ago and had nearly lost her life. So she kept her eyes glued to the man—six feet two inches of thick muscle—as he charged at her like a linebacker after a quarterback, arms outstretched to trap her in his embrace.
Dani used his momentum against him, sweeping him aside with a matador like step. Turning quickly as he stumbled by, she snapped an elbow to the back of his neck and dropped him to the ground. Before she could totally incapacitate him, another more compact man charged at her from the opposite side of the room.
She pushed off the first man’s fallen body and came up ready for action, but as she did so, something pulled along her midsection. A twinge of pain followed, but she tamped it down. She couldn’t allow physical discomfort or weakness to divert her attention.
As the smaller man shoved past his rising friend, she released a sharp dropkick, catching him squarely in the chest and rocking him backward, where he immediately tripped over the larger man. Both men sprawled to the ground in a messy heap.
Dani stopped, placed her hands on her hips and laughed as they tried to untangle themselves and resume their attack.
“Come on, boys. Is that the best you can do?” she teased in fluent French.
After months of training together, the three of them had developed an easy camaraderie. Even now, when the men couldn’t seem to contain Dani as her physical strength and martial arts prowess returned rapidly, they accepted her superior abilities good-naturedly.
Her current physical state was quite different from what it had been nearly three months ago, Dani thought.
After being shot and lingering in a coma off and on, she had emerged long enough to approve the removal of the bullet that had lodged precariously close to her spine. Three months after that, she had finally been well enough to begin physical therapy and try to get back into shape.
She had a new mission waiting for her, after all. At least, that’s what the enigmatic man by her bedside had intimated to her so many months ago.
Dani now knew who that mysterious angel was—Corbett Lazlo, the elusive powerhouse behind the Lazlo Group, a private agency known for handling the most discreet and sometimes dangerous of missions. A group well known to her from her time with the Secret Intelligence Service, or SIS, the British equivalent of the CIA and the agency at which she had worked as the Sparrow, a world-renowned assassin.
Only she hadn’t really been an assassin. All her supposed “kills” had been taken into SIS custody so that SIS might find out more information about an elusive crime organization they called SNAKE, which they suspected of being responsible for a number of illegal operations.
She had let her last mission get personal. Her actions had resulted in the death of the prince of Silvershire and had nearly caused her death and that of her twin sister. SIS had been less than pleased that, in her quest to find her parents’ killers, she had messed up the mission in Silvershire, the small European island kingdom she had called home at one time. With her cover as the Sparrow possibly blown and an international incident brewing, SIS had tossed her out.
Lazlo, who had also been thrown out of SIS many years earlier, was the man she had to thank for keeping her alive. He was the one responsible for the medical treatment that had worked a miracle and brought her back from the dead.
He had taken her into his agency and told her that he would let her know when the time was right for her to be reborn and go out on another mission.
She felt mission-ready now and sensed that somehow Lazlo would know that.
He seemed to know everything about everyone while she, like most of the people she had met within his group, knew little about him. To her surprise, few had even seen the elusive Mr. Lazlo.
After thanking her two sparring partners for the training session, she walked to the gym to finish her workout. She took a place at the first station and lifted the weights, evenly pushing up the bars on the bench press and enjoying the strength she had regained in her arms. Satisfied, she finished her reps and moved on to the next station and then the next. By the time she finished, her muscles trembled from her exertions, but it was a good feeling. The kind of sore that said she was getting stronger.
The kind of pain that confirmed she was still alive.
In the locker room, she peeled off her clothes and grabbed a towel, ready for a long soak in the Jacuzzi. As she passed a mirror, she stopped short, surprised by what stared back at her.
The image of a hard-bodied woman of average height was reflected in the mirror. Shoulder-length hair in need of a trim. Fine-boned shoulders leading to full breasts above a long, barely pink scar that ran down her middle. Beside the scar was the ragged, stellar-shaped wound where she had been shot during her last mission.
The physical wounds of the past year were alive in her vision, much like those in her heart, which had been there far longer. The scar of her parents’ murder. The ragged and still unhealed wound from her lover’s death barely three years ago.
Dani ran her hand down the long scar, but it was numb. Just as she was numb inside. Paralyzed. Yet she still had things to do so that might make her feel alive again.
So that she could finally go home. Go and see her twin sister, Elizabeth.
Only, as she’d heard before, she suspected that she could never truly go home again.
Lazlo agent Mitch Lama watched as Dani sparred with the two men in the gym.
Was she ready? he wondered tapping his lips with his index finger as Dani deftly handled the two much larger men.
The frailness from her injuries was gone, as was the pallor that had colored her skin for the many months she had been unconscious and battling for life. Months during which he had come to sit by her bedside, urging her to keep up the fight. Reading to her in hopes that she might hear his voice and return because they had things to settle between them.
Now she was back from the dead and he didn’t know what to do with her. What to do about the lies she had told him for so long. Lies that had nearly cost him his life and hers.
She looked strong now. Presumably ready for action.
He had always admired Dani’s physicality. Been intrigued by the strength beneath the seemingly fragile and feminine surface.
She was a warrior. A champion who was forever prepared to take up a cause and fight a wrong.
He both loved and hated her for being a hero.
For nearly three years, he had been waiting to see her. To talk to her again. To be able to touch her and have her know it was him.
To ask her why she had lied to him about who she was, even as he’d lain dying.
A loud beep came from his computer, notifying him that he had an urgent message from Corbett Lazlo. A second later, his phone rang and he had no doubt who would be on the line.
He shut down his access to the camera trained on Dani, immediately regretting the loss of her.
“Lama,” he said, a tinge of annoyance in his voice that he had been pulled away from his surveillance.
Corbett Lazlo identified himself. “Did you get my message?”
“Hold on just one second, sir, while I open it,” he said, the cadence and tone from his days in the military coloring his speech. He double-clicked to open the e-mail message Lazlo had forwarded and held his breath as he read it.
The message threatened with its simplicity.
Ready for Round 2?
“I’m assuming Cordez couldn’t track the source of this message either?” He wondered why their top computer person was having such difficulty tracing the mysterious missives.
“You’re correct. Plus, I have some other news.”
He knew the news would be bad so he preempted Lazlo’s report. “Another operative is down. I’m assuming the same MO as before?”
“Unfortunately, yes. His body was discovered not far from our Prague offices. Close-range shot to the head, just above the left ear. Hollow-point bullet. I’ve asked our various contacts to see if they have a record of any assassins with a similar MO but I suspect there may be quite a few.”
Mitch considered the facts and sensed that the moment for waiting and watching had ended. Time for him and the Sparrow to join forces and discover who was behind the messages and attacks.
“I’m assuming that you want me to activate the Lazarus Liaison now, Mr. Lazlo.”
Silence came across the line before Lazlo asked, “Do you think she’s ready?”
He recalled the sight of Dani as she sparred. “I think she’s physically ready, sir.”
“Quite the political answer. And you? Are you ready? Physically? Emotionally?”
He’d be a liar if he said “yes,” and so he provided the only answer he could.
“That remains to be seen, sir.”
Lazlo’s rare amused chuckle cut across the phone line. “Well, then. We’ll activate the Lazarus mission sometime tomorrow. Be prepared for a joint briefing with the Sparrow in the afternoon.”
He wanted to protest that it wasn’t enough time but suspected that he could never have enough time to fortify himself to see her again. To face Dani down and deal with all the issues sure to exist between them.
But he had no choice. Corbett Lazlo had saved his life and Dani’s. For that reason alone, he was honor-bound to do what Lazlo was asking of him.
He only hoped that, when it was all over, he would finally have some peace in his life.
Chapter 2
Dani stared intently at the long steps leading up to Sacre Coeur on top of Montmartre. Months earlier she had tried to climb those steps but failed, her body debilitated thanks to too much time in bed. For the past few months she’d pushed herself by making each day’s walk longer than the one before. Her hikes eventually brought her back to the bottom of these steps, but she had never felt strong enough to make the climb.
Until today.
She began slowly, pacing herself in the August heat, but about halfway up she knew.
She increased her pace and although she was slightly winded at the top, she made it. For a Rocky-like moment, she wanted to pump her arms in the air and jump around, but contained herself. She didn’t want people to look at her and think, Crazy Tourist.
Instead, Dani glanced at Paris, laid out before her in all its splendor. From high up on Montmartre, most of the city and the Seine were visible on the clear summer day.
She paused to enjoy the sight for only a moment, knowing that she had not only pushed her physical limits, but that she had stretched the boundaries of how long she had been away from the Lazlo medical compound. The beep that sounded at her side a second later confirmed it.
Grabbing her cell phone, she read the text message—her presence was demanded back at the compound immediately. Mr. Lazlo wanted to meet with her.
It would take her time to walk back, and she sensed from the curtness of the message that she shouldn’t dawdle. Texting back that she would be there within the half hour, she rushed back down the steps and walked to one of the side streets until she hit a main thoroughfare, where she quickly snagged a cab.
In French as flawless as her English, she asked to be taken to the Louvre and then she held on as the cab sped off, weaving through traffic and the assorted circles at a breakneck pace. When the cabbie stopped with a screech before the museum in record time, she mumbled a thanks to God for arriving in one piece and paid the man.
Racing past the pyramid, she walked to the bridge near the Seine, down the stairs to the riverbank and hurried to the metal grate beneath the bridge. Once she felt confident that it was secure, she used a specially encoded magnetic card to enter the tunnel and rushed toward the elevator to the Lazlo medical compound. After clearing the palm print and retinal scan, she proceeded to the main level of the compound where Jacques, the larger of her two sparring partners, waited for her.
“Mr. Lazlo asked me to bring you to his conference room as soon as you arrived,” Jacques said in French with a polite bow.
“Of course,” she replied and followed Jacques to a wing of the compound she had yet to enter, wondering about the elusive Mr. Lazlo, whom she had met only once.
As he stopped at a door, Jacques placed his palm on another reader and with the same almost silent whoosh, opened the portal. “We’ve coded this door to allow you entry as well,” he added as he motioned for her to enter.
“Merci,” she said and walked in, expecting him to follow her into the lushly appointed conference room. Instead, the door closed silently behind her, leaving her alone in the space.
A large mahogany table filled the center of the area. Three of the walls were lined with matching bookcases, ornately trimmed with hand-worked moldings and filled with expensively bound leather volumes. An exceptionally large plasma monitor was mounted on one wall, and as she walked farther into the space, the lights dimmed slightly and the monitor snapped to life.
“Good afternoon, Dani. I trust you enjoyed your stroll this morning.” The voice came from a speaker phone in the center of the table.
Dani had heard the voice only about a half dozen times since that one fateful meeting by her hospital bedside, but it was familiar enough for her to recognize.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Lazlo. Given your message, I had hoped to be meeting with you in person,” she said as she strolled around the room, searching for whatever kind of surveillance equipment was being used to keep an eye on her.
“In time. But for now there is a matter of some urgency that requires your attention. That is, if you’re ready for a mission.”
“Not that I’ve minded your hospitality, Mr. Lazlo, but for months now I’ve been trying very hard to understand why you would want me to work for you.” As she spoke, Dani walked around the room, searching for the location of the hidden camera.
“I know what it’s like when SIS turns its back on you. I used to be one of them.” A dead tone filled his voice at the admission, causing a sympathetic sensation within her. She still felt dead inside.
“I’m surprised you feel you can rely on me. My instincts have been rather bad lately.”
“You believed the prince when he said he wasn’t using drugs anymore, correct?”
Dani dredged up the memories of that night from her last mission. Normally she would have turned over the prince and the man who had hired her to kill him—Silas Donovan—to SIS to handle, but Donovan had dangled an intriguing bit of info before her. Donovan had insisted that the prince knew who had murdered her parents nearly a decade earlier.
Dani had wanted that information badly. So badly that she had put her personal quest above the SIS mission.
“Dani?” Lazlo prompted at her prolonged silence.
“I didn’t think the prince would use the tainted cocaine I left behind that night,” she finally admitted, still feeling guilty that she had played a part in Prince Reginald’s death. She had believed he was clean and had hoped that having seen the error of his ways, he would reveal the names of those who had sold him drugs and possibly killed her parents.
She walked to the front of the room and paused before the plasma monitor. As she tracked her gaze along the sides of the bookcase beside it, she caught a telltale glint, almost like a speck of glitter against the dark wood. As she raised her finger to cover what she suspected was a fiber-optic camera, the image of her doing so appeared in the large monitor.
“Your admission of that is a good start. So, are you ready for an assignment?” Lazlo pressed again.
She nodded, and Lazlo began his report. “I need you to concentrate on the data I’m about to provide.”
With a curt bob of her head to acknowledge the request, Dani seated herself at the table in a comfy leather library chair. Immediately, a picture of Silas Donovan came onto the screen.
“You’re aware that Mr. Donovan paid them to assassinate the prince so Donovan’s nephew could instead inherit the throne of the European principality of Silvershire.”
As her gaze locked with that of the man in the photo, she remembered those cold eyes staring at her from behind his ski mask as Donovan had stood by, waiting for her to die after he had shot her. “Tell me something I don’t know, Mr. Lazlo.”
“We believe someone at SIS, or possibly even someone highly placed in the government sector with access to SIS, leaked information about you to the crime syndicate you were sent to infiltrate.”
Dani considered his comment but shook her head in denial. “You think someone official blew my cover as the Sparrow?”
“It makes sense that once the syndicate knew you were SIS and knew your family history, they would naturally ask you to take on the job for Mr. Donovan. They knew you had a score to settle about your parents.”
“And then they revealed my personal information to Donovan so he would eliminate me after I’d done all the dirty work? That’s quite convoluted.”
“Quite, my dear. But once your cover was blown, the crime bosses needed you gone and Donovan most likely wanted you silenced so you couldn’t reveal his role in the prince’s death.”
Dani mentally ran through all that had happened and unfortunately, the facts supported the unlikely scenario. Painfully, she acknowledged that she had possibly been betrayed by one of her own.
“What does all of this have to do with the mission you want me to undertake?”
“There have been a series of recent incidents—”
“What kind of incidents?” she challenged, annoyed by the obtuseness of Lazlo’s comments—until a series of photos flashed onto the monitor and Lazlo identified each of his murdered operatives.
“The last two have a similar MO—a close range shot to the head, just above the left ear, with a hollow-point bullet.”
“The killer is issuing a challenge to you that he can get close anytime he’d like,” Dani advised. “So that makes three operatives down in less than two months. Quite a personal attack on the Lazlo Group.”
“More than you can imagine,” he said in a way that raised the hackles on the back of her neck.
“We believe the first incident—which actually would make it four operatives attacked—may have occurred nearly three years ago. Different MO from all three of these kills, but the goal was the same—to disrupt an important Lazlo Group operation.”
“Which was?” Dani asked, although in her gut she suspected what Lazlo would say even before he spoke or flashed the smiling picture of her dead lover up on the screen.
“Mitchell Lama. On assignment in Rome when he was knifed by a courier working for the syndicate. The courier you later turned over to your handler at SIS, but reported as killed to your contact at the crime organization.”
Anger erupted within her, creating a chill in her gut. A chill that would only be removed by finding out who had set Mitch up and by making sure they were punished. Fighting off the violence that rose in her, because she knew she couldn’t let it get personal again, she jumped out of the chair and stalked to one side of the room, hopefully out of range of the ever- intrusive camera.
“All roads lead to Rome, my dear. It’s where these troubles possibly began. I need you to work with another Lazlo operative to find the SIS leak. We believe the information from that SIS leak is being used against the Lazlo Group.”
“I’ll find the leak, Mr. Lazlo. So who is this operative you want me to partner with?” she said, arms wrapped tightly around her waist as she struggled to contain herself.
The door whooshed open behind her, and she faced the tall, broad-shouldered man who entered.
She went completely still. Then a cold pit of rage formed in her gut. The numbness that had filled her center for months was swiftly replaced with a tight knot of pain.
She walked up to Mitchell Lama and punched him, snapping his head back with the force of her blow.
“You son of a bitch. You’re not dead.”
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