Nico Rosso - Undercover Justice

Fasten your seat belt...

You’re in for a white-knuckle ride.

Posing as criminal syndicate drivers, heiress Stephanie Shun and mechanic Arash Shamshiri want to take down a human trafficking ring. Each thinks the other is a bona fide member, but neither can resist the sparks igniting as they speed into a nightmare of revenge, danger and desire. And if they can’t trust their hearts, there’s bound to be a crash!

NICO ROSSOwas a writer in search of a genre until he was introduced to romance by his wife, Zoë Archer. He’s worked in many forms and was deeply honored to have one of his romantic suspense novels be a finalist for the RWA RITA® Award. When he’s not writing, Nico can be found in his shop, building furniture for the California home he shares with his wife and their cats.

Also by Nico Rosso

Renegade Protector

Countdown to Zero Hour

One Minute to Midnight Seconds

to Sunrise

Heavy Metal Heart

Slam Dance with the Devil

Ménage with the Muse

The Last Night

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

Undercover Justice

Nico Rosso

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-09382-8

UNDERCOVER JUSTICE

© 2019 Zachary N. DiPego

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Version: 2020-03-02

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Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Epilogue

About the Publisher

Stephanie Shun didn’t steal cars. Her father had always told her if there was a car she wanted that someone wasn’t willing to sell, there were people they could hire to steal it for her. But she’d stopped listening to him long ago, around the time she decided that his criminal empire tucked into a corner of Chinatown, San Francisco, wasn’t the legacy she wanted to be buried under.

And yet here she was, crouched next to a car in a dark parking lot, prying the plastic cover off the side-view mirror. To anyone who might catch her, it would look like she was a car thief, and that was exactly what she wanted. This job was the first step to ingratiating herself with a crew of drivers who contracted out to the worst criminals on the West Coast, and it had to look perfect. Nobody could know she was stealing her own car.

Once she had the side-view mirror cover separated out enough to spot a collection of thin wires, she placed a plastic wedge in the gap and pulled a multi-tool from her belt. Even if it was her car, bought and paid for with the profits from her various investments, it was still a crime to threaten the bodywork of the sleek Mercedes. Striving to minimize any exterior damage, she selected one of the wires and stripped the insulation from a section using the knife of the multi-tool.

Footsteps froze her. It was after three o’clock in the morning, and still someone was up on the second floor of the private parking lot to retrieve their car. One of the hazards of committing crimes in a city as populated as San Francisco: there was activity at all hours. She coiled her body by the front wheel, in case anyone was searching below the chassis. The buzzing lights on the concrete ceiling created deep shadows for her to hide in. She knew she was undetected by the security camera, but an individual might spot her, even though she wore all black and carried a black bag.

The quick pace of the footsteps put her mind at ease. A guard would’ve been less direct, but this person had no intention of lingering in the parking lot. They got into their car and closed the door. Stephanie used the sound of the engine starting to mask her retrieving an electronic device from her bag. Headlights turned on three rows over, making her shift her feet so they were in the shadow of the wheel next to her.

But the other car didn’t move. Checking their phone? Waiting for the heater to kick in? The night was cold, but Stephanie shivered with a deeper chill. Her watch read 3:21 a.m. The instruction from the driving crew boss was that she had to have a stolen car on the road by 3:30 a.m., when he would text her the next move. If she botched this job, it would kill her chances to get in with the crew. And if that happened, the ultimate target could slip through her fingers.

This was the one shot to find human traffickers who’d eluded law enforcement for too long. And while Stephanie had access to the law’s resources, she didn’t have to play by their rules. That was the point of re-forming Frontier Justice over a hundred years after her ancestor had first helped create the organization. The vigilante group wasn’t exactly legal then, or now, giving her the space she needed to go after the bad guys.

The other car in the parking lot finally chugged into gear and crept up the aisle. It was a risk, but the clock was ticking, so she resumed her work on stealing the Mercedes before the other car completely descended this level. She attached a small metal clip to the exposed wire in the side-view mirror and plugged that into the electronic device in her hand. The dim screen immediately started scrolling with information taken from the central computer of the coupe. Pushing buttons on the side of the screen narrowed the focus of the data scan until she located the factory-set key codes for the car.