Catherine Mann - The Cinderella Mission

Ethan plowed around the last curve, the brick quadrangle of ARIES buildings slipping into sight behind a deceptively decorative fence. He only had to endure the next few hours—one day, max—and he’d be back out in the field, far away from Kelly Taylor’s romanticized notions.

Kelly Taylor hated Valentine’s Day.

After having spent all twenty-four of hers alone, she dreaded the season when Cupid shoved her social ineptitude in her face like a Boston cream pie. And this one promised to be a whopper.

Perched at the conference table, Kelly clicked away on one of the laptops beside Hatch while they waited for Ethan Williams to arrive. She’d hoped the Gastonia assignment would keep Ethan occupied through the holiday.

Apparently Cupid had ignored her wishes yet again.

She still couldn’t believe she’d given herself away to Ethan with one silly look. After two years of keeping the ridiculous infatuation to herself, she’d let a single moment of weakness betray her.

As if the whole crush wasn’t embarrassing enough.

Ethan, with all his playboy ways and bad-boy smiles, was totally not the sort of guy she wanted for anything other than friendship. Not that her hormones seemed to care one bit what she wanted.

At least she wouldn’t be stuck out there with him and all those Valentine’s Day decorations some romantic fool had plastered through the stark ARIES lobby in an incongruous display.

Part of her insisted she bore partial responsibility for her dateless status. Years spent in the classroom conjugating verbs from every European language imaginable left her with minimal real-world experience.

So what if she cared more about her career than clothes? Who could keep up with all the trends anyway? And if her mother waved one more make-up gift pack in her face, Kelly vowed she would scream. She’d tried lipstick once and had paid a price far too high for the wrong kind of attention it brought her way.

Never again would she be the helpless graduate student at the mercy of a stalking professor.

The CIA job offer had seemed like a liberating gift from the gods. She certainly hadn’t expected to spend ten hours a day behind a desk in operational support. The closest she’d come to a weapon was her docu-binder.

The speakerphone buzzed on Hatch’s desk, announcing Ethan’s arrival. Kelly’s stomach clenched around her breakfast bagel.

Hatch pushed away from the conference table as Ethan sauntered through the open door. She allowed herself a weak moment to soak up the image of him.

How strange that a man who’d made it to ARIES headquarters in half the normal time still looked as if he’d strolled the whole way. His charcoal-gray suit over a turtleneck hung from his lean body with a negligent élan.

Jet-black hair gleamed with molten life under the sterile office lights. She always liked his hair right after a deep-cover assignment, the longer length giving him a more reckless air—if that was possible.

Deep-blue eyes glinted with the knowledge of things she dreamed of experiencing, places she knew all about but never visited. Ethan Williams personified every risk she’d ever wanted to take and didn’t dare, all wrapped up in one dangerous, six-foot-three, bad-boy package.

“Good morning, sir.” Ethan shifted toward her, jammed his hands in his pockets and nodded. “Kelly.”

Heat crawled up her face and for once she was glad she always forgot to pull her hair back. She longed to duck under the conference table and die of embarrassment over the awkwardness she’d brought to their friendship. But she wouldn’t. She was through backing down from life.

“Welcome home, Ethan. Congratulations on the Gastonia mission,” she managed to say.

“A simple in-and-out operation. Nothing to worry about.”

Her accidental be careful warning loomed between them like a big pink elephant on the plush navy carpet.

Director Hatch motioned for him to sit, taking his own seat at the head of the table with a fresh mug of coffee. “Thank you for coming in so quickly, Ethan. I’m sorry to pull you off R and R.”

“No problem, sir.”

“You’ll be rewarded.”

Kelly admired the director; he looked more like an old gumshoe with fashion sense almost as bad as her own. Knowing his rumpled appearance covered a man rumored to have more power than the vice-president and the CIA director combined gave her hope for herself.

Appearances weren’t everything, damn it.

Man, she wanted to trade her docu-binder in on a SIG-Sauer 9mm. She yearned to step out from behind her desk and into the world reflected in Ethan’s world-wise eyes.

Hatch’s piercing green gaze met theirs. “Have you heard of Dr. Alex Morrow?”

Ethan hooked an elbow on the chair next to him. “Some kind of rock doctor, right?”

Kelly shoveled her hair out of her face. Typical Ethan to make a multi-degreed scientist sound like a Rolling Stone magazine shrink who’d obtained his Ph.D. over the Internet. “Dr. Morrow is a world-renowned geologist.”

Ethan nodded. “Right.”

Hatch rolled the mug between his palms. “Dr. Morrow has gone missing from a conference in Holzberg. You may have run across Morrow while you were in Gastonia.”

“Never met the guy. But I heard some buzz about Morrow attending a European conference on environmental issues. American civilians make too damned tempting targets for terrorist factions these days.”

Hatch’s hand clenched around his mug, a small but telling gesture from the man who showed so little. “Morrow is one of ours. One of ARIES.”

Kelly’s head snapped up. “Morrow?”

“You’re surprised?” Hatch tipped back his mug for a sip.

Were his hands shaking?

Ethan and Kelly exchanged a quick glance across the table. Who the hell was this Morrow person to warrant such a strong reaction?

Ethan straightened in his seat. “Of course not. I’m a prime example of how the CIA and ARIES both recruit from the civilian sector. I’m sure I’ve crossed paths with more than one ARIES agent without knowing it.”

His cover focused on his wealthy background, giving him blanket acceptance to travel anywhere as one of the idle rich. Sometimes he donned a deeper cover, as he had in Gastonia. Other times, he simply played his role of rich playboy to gain access into the upper echelons of the corrupt wealthy. Once in place, ARIES operatives fulfilled the legacy of their mythological namesake who rescued the persecuted Greek twins Phryxius and Helle.

Lucky Ethan busted bad guys while she sat behind her desk decoding encrypted messages in multiple languages. “How long since we last heard from him?”

“Dr. Morrow went silent three days ago.” Hatch clicked through a series of keys on the laptop in front of him. “I’m transferring copies of all the transmissions to your data bases. They’ve already been decoded, but I’m hoping you’ll be able to find something more.”

Why all the worry about an agent going silent for seventy-two hours?

Hatch shoved up from his chair, his restlessness apparently winning out as he poured more coffee from a corner bar. “Two hours after the last transmission, we lost total contact. The signal on Morrow’s tracking device went dead.”

Silence echoed, broken only by the drip of the coffee maker and the low hum of fluorescent lights. The covert transmitters were virtually undetectable, and so pricey only operatives in deep cover warranted the expense. Even super space-power countries with access to a constellation of satellites barely stood a chance of detecting the nanosecond microburst of data from the tracking device, activated only when an agent disappeared.

Just three causes came to mind for a surgically embedded transmitter to fail. Satellite interference. Physical removal.