Melissa Cutler - Secret Agent Secretary

Her apartment was a half hour away through New Year’s Eve traffic. It would be much faster to walk the six blocks to the Mira Hotel and lay out his options for him in person. She could even recite the transcript if he wanted to go that route.

Far from being concerned about blowing his cover, she was confident she’d fit in great with the downtown party crowd, dressed to kill as she was in her slinky pink gown. She couldn’t imagine a solid reason why she shouldn’t go for it.

She slipped her feet into the pair of four-inch strappy black heels she’d spent two weeks breaking in by wearing every waking minute she spent in her apartment. Though she’d probably walk with a limp for days afterward, she was determined to start the New Year off in the shoes she’d maxed out her Macy’s card for.

A dab of gloss to her lips, a toss of her hair to give it some oomph and she was ready to go.

She set the office alarm, turned off the lights and locked the door, tote bag and purse in hand. After a quick stop at her car in the underground parking garage to drop off the tote bag in the trunk, she strode to the street-level exit and into the cool night air. Halfway down the first block, she recalled the paper clip chain swinging behind her. Mortified, she pulled her hair out of the way and tried to remove it. When her efforts failed, she stuffed the chain down the back of her dress and kept moving.

Computers or no, this secretary was seeing her job through to the bitter end tonight. After all, Moneypenny would never allow such trifling matters to stand in the way of her work, and neither, by God, would Avery.

Chapter 2

The ice machine released another round of tumbling ice as Ryan dragged the second unconscious man into the supply closet attached to the ice and vending machine alcove and cuffed him to a plumbing pipe. The first man groaned. It was the only noise he’d made since Ryan had smashed his head against the mirrored vanity in the hotel room.

Reaching around to the small of his back, Ryan withdrew the 9 mm he’d confiscated from the groaner and tapped him on the head with the barrel. “Anybody home?”

After he let out another pitiful sound, the man’s head lolled to the side. Out cold again.

With his dress shoe, he toed the sneaker of the second man, a lean, fair-haired Eastern European–looking sort. “What about you? You alive in there?”

Nothing.

Damn it. With so much at stake, he didn’t have time for this. He rolled his head back and stared at the ceiling, reining in the maddening frustration. Ten long years he’d been at this, hunting the man who haunted his nightmares. Ten years of near misses and outright failures, of getting so close he could taste the closure that killing Vincenzo Chiara would bring—the freedom it would bring—and yet here he was, in the middle of his last good chance to get the deed done, and he’d spent the past half hour in a hotel supply closet waiting for two unconscious hit men to rouse so he could pump them for information.

He returned the gun to the waistband of his dress pants and shook his head. “Note to self, Rambo—next time two guys jump you, try not to incapacitate them so enthusiastically.”

He’d dragged them to the closet because remaining in the hotel room made him an easy target for the next batch of punks dispatched to do him in. Ryan had no doubt this first attempt to silence him wasn’t going to be the last before the night was over.

The main question he needed to ask the hit men was not who they worked for. That was as plain as the crude prison tattoos on the one man’s arms and face. Nor was the question why they wanted Ryan dead. He was crystal clear about that, too.

What he needed to know was how.

How did Chiara know where to find him, down to the exact hotel room he’d secured under a pseudonym two weeks ago? In other words, he was still at square one, puzzling over the same damn question he had been for the past six months—which of the twenty-five San Diego ICE department employees was double-dealing?

He’d narrowed down the answer to four possibilities. Make that five now. He’d dismissed the office secretary as a suspect months ago, but she was the person who’d processed his paperwork for the hotel room and she hadn’t come through with his one request tonight. She hadn’t emailed him the file he’d asked for. So Ryan had to wonder, was that because she didn’t understand how critical the document was to deciphering Chiara’s business and contacts in San Diego...or because she did?

Either way, the longer he stayed on the sixth floor of the Mira Hotel, the greater the risk. Time to leave before Chiara’s men got the jump on him again. His window of opportunity to catch the man was shrinking fast, so he refused to contemplate aborting the surveillance mission, but there were any number of positions in surrounding buildings from which he could observe the Mira without getting himself trapped again.

He straightened the blue tie he’d worn with a crisp white dress shirt and suit to blend in with the festive hotel atmosphere, then used the phone he’d confiscated from the groaner—he’d smashed his own on the off chance it’d been bugged—to check one last time for the transcripted conversation on his email account. Nothing.

He pocketed the groaner’s phone. Then, leaving his own pistol in his shoulder holster and his service piece at his ankle, he took the confiscated 9 mm in hand again. Gun first, he nosed around the corner to scan the hallway for trouble before heading for the stairs.

He knew from his arrival earlier that the hotel was swarming with guests of the massive New Year’s Eve celebration taking place in the main ballroom on the second floor, but judging from the silence in the hall and in the stairwell, the party had already gotten under way.

As expected, the ground level was hopping with New Year’s revelers. He tucked the gun out of sight, rolled his shoulders and did his best to look relaxed and happy as he moved closer to the lobby. Just a regular guy on his way to meet friends for a celebratory drink.

There were no potential hit men in view, or anyone who registered on his radar as connected to the man he’d been hunting for ten years. Hunting with the laser focus of a man poised to lose everything he held dear, a possibility that might be closer than he realized if the letter from Paolo Hawk was the warning he dreaded it was.

His eyes followed a lanky bellhop pushing a loaded luggage cart toward the service elevators. Ryan stepped aside to give him room. He tipped his hat with a “Good evening, sir” before moving on. As the luggage rack moved past him, a gorgeous, shapely backside adorned in a pink dress caused him a moment of distraction before his eyes flickered back to the crowd. No time to enjoy the scenery when he could be ambushed again at any moment.

He allowed himself a last look at the woman standing at the bar, this time taking inventory of her legs. He was just starting to wonder if her face matched the sophisticated sexpot allure of the rest of her body when she accepted a martini from the bartender, then turned to look across the lobby.

Ryan’s jaw dropped. He might’ve made a little sound of disbelief, but it was hard to tell given the volume of music streaming from the ballroom.

This changes everything—she changes everything.

Ducking farther into the hall’s shadows, he reflexively brought a foot up to tap his service weapon, his backup piece for the night. Double-checking the presence of his guns was rather pointless, but after seventeen years as a soldier, it was one nervous habit he couldn’t see fit to break.

Maybe he’d mistaken the woman’s identity. San Diego was full of women with long, wavy blond hair and big brown eyes.