Melissa Cutler - Secret Agent Secretary

His lower lip trembled, but he nodded and complied.

It was an entirely inappropriate time to feel like smiling, but Ryan nearly did. It’s a gun. Get over it? That was quite the change of tune since she’d first laid eyes on Ryan’s S&W in the stairwell.

Once Avery had slipped into the black sneakers, Ryan gestured his head toward a staircase along the wall that led to the ground level. “Lead the way.” Pointing his gun at the employee, he added, “Count to one hundred—then call 911. Got it?”

The man nodded like the bobble-headed eagle on Ryan’s desk.

Avery took the stairs two at a time, the heels of the sneakers clunking like flip-flops, clearly too big. He climbed sideways behind her, keeping one eye over his shoulder at the employee to make sure he didn’t try anything heroic and the other on her bare back. Boy, had he been wrong to think her a possible double agent. She was like a shot of sunshine with a heart of pure moxie—about as far from the shady underworld Ryan operated in as a person could get.

All those months he’d wasted stewing on his suspicions he could’ve spent having impure thoughts about her.

Behind them, the door to the stairwell rattled. Muffled shouting came from the other side. At the top of the stairs, Avery paused at the closed door. He came up close behind her, ready to resume his lead position. There was only one problem. “I’m out of ammo,” he said under his breath.

She turned, brushing against him. Her hair flouncing over the right side of her face, she fingered his tie. “But you’ve got more gadgets, right?”

What was it with her and gadgets? He tucked her hair behind her ear and let his gaze drop to her full, heart-shaped lips—the kind that straddled the edge between sweet and wicked. The kind that begged to be scandalized with a hot, wet kiss. Maybe later—after they made it out of the hotel alive.

“I’ve got more gadgets.” Maybe, for once that night, luck would be on his side and he wouldn’t have to use them.

Reaching past her, he cracked the door and took stock of the reception area. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. “Here’s the plan. We’re going to walk straight out the Mira’s front doors. You think you could pretend we’re a couple, out for a night on the town?”

He hoped she was game because that wasn’t going to be a problem for him. There wasn’t going to be a single ounce of pretending on his part to look like he was totally into the smoking-hot woman at his side.

She inhaled deeply, determinedly. “Okay, but there’s one teensy issue.”

He cocked his head in question.

“If we’re trying to blend in, then this dress and these shoes aren’t going to work.” She held the tattered edges of her skirt as evidence.

He stared down the length of her body. Most of the skirt had been torn off in the parking garage, dirty smudges covered most of the material and the back hung open due to the broken zipper. What a shame. “It was such a nice dress.”

“You approve?”

He doffed his jacket and draped it across her shoulders, his jaw growing tight as a fresh zing of approval hit him below the belt. “Something like that.”

Given their height difference, the jacket was long enough to cover Avery’s body from her neck to an inch or so above her knees. Her clothes were still an obvious wreck, but at least the whole of downtown San Diego wouldn’t be treated to a view of her bare skin.

He dropped his empty shoulder holster onto the floor and double-checked to make sure his shirt covered his concealed carry belt. Holding the door open with his shoulder, he wrapped an arm around Avery’s waist and pulled her firmly against his side. Damn, she felt good there. If only they weren’t fighting for their lives against one of the deadliest men in the world.

Ducking his lips near her earlobe, he whispered, “Showtime.”

She shivered at the word, so he searched her face, looking for fear or hesitancy. If she froze up now, he’d have to rethink their getaway. But all he saw in her face was brazen determination. Impossible not to admire her for that kind of courage, given how her life had been flipped upside down that night.

Nothing he could do about it now except protect her the best he could. That was one of his duties tonight, but not his biggest problem. Getting them both out of the hotel wasn’t even his biggest problem. Apparently, his biggest problem had come in with an express courier late in the day. The thought made his gut lurch.

He maneuvered them through the maze of managerial offices at a brisk clip, as though they belonged there, then around the back of the busy receptionist desk and into the lobby.

As they moved through the crowd, he whispered, “Where’s the letter I asked you to take home?”

“In my car.”

Ryan didn’t consider himself a cynic, but it was almost too good to be true that something had gone off without a hitch tonight. He’d been afraid it’d gotten dropped somewhere in the hotel. “Where’s your car now?”

“In the ICE parking garage.”

That was going to be a problem. Chiara’s men would know to look for him at the ICE office. For all he knew, they’d been hunting him as surely as he’d been hunting them. True, Ryan could probably still take on an army of Chiara’s goons with the various weapons and defensive devices strapped around his body, but without at least one loaded gun at his disposal he felt positively naked. They’d have to regroup and return for the letter once he was fully loaded again.

A bellman opened the front door, but before they’d stepped a foot outside, gunfire sounded all around them. The wall of windows above the lobby shattered.

Ryan’s reaction was immediate and visceral. He ducked over Avery to shield her from the raining glass, pushing her through the door. They spilled onto the sidewalk with dozens of screaming, fleeing guests.

While the cover provided by the panicked crowd had its benefits, Ryan fought against getting swept away with them. He and Avery needed to move at twice the speed of the masses and get out of view of the street, out of range of the hostiles’ bullets and the law enforcement officials who were guaranteed to swarm the building at any moment. Already, sirens sounded in the distance.

Ryan kept his arm around Avery and pulled her into the first building they came to. A restaurant. Though it was nearing midnight, the place was packed. They ran past the hostess, dodging tables of diners who seemed dumbstruck. Wide-eyed, several of them stood in slow motion, like they were still processing the noises they’d heard from outside and it was finally sinking in that something bad was going down.

Behind them, more gunfire rang out. Ryan turned to see three of the men from the parking garage giving chase. He pushed Avery faster, pulling the pin of another smoke grenade with his teeth. He chucked it at the men as he and Avery pushed through a swinging door into the kitchen. They sprinted past prep tables and stove tops, dodging startled cooks and waitstaff.

Finally they burst out into a dark alley. Not exactly an ideal locale for avoiding shady underworld thugs, so Ryan took Avery by the hand and steered her toward the next block, where a cluster of employees huddled under a light, smoking, just outside an open door. Hoping it was another back entrance to a nightclub or restaurant, Ryan pulled his gun out. Sure, it was out of ammo, but these guys didn’t need to know that.

He ground to a stop in front of the smoking workers and took aim at them with his S&W. “Out of our way.”

Cursing, they scurried off. Ryan boosted Avery ahead of him, then reached for an offensive grenade. Using it was a huge risk given the close proximity of the other buildings. There was little else in the world that Ryan hated more than collateral damage—innocent civilians getting hurt or killed. It was his one thing.