Lisa Childs - Agent Undercover

“Your personal office was the only one that had been broken into,” Stryker said. “We’re going there right now to make sure nothing’s been taken.”

“My office?” She shook her head in denial. “That makes no sense.”

“Someone tried grabbing you in the parking lot,” he reminded her. “Since they couldn’t get the information from you directly, they must have tried getting it from your office.”

She wanted to scream in frustration at his stubbornness. But apparently he wasn’t the only one with the wrong idea about her. “So a man was shot over something someone thinks I’m trying to sell?”

The guard was shot because of her?

She leaped up from the bed, but the aftereffects of the chloroform must have included dizziness. Feeling faint, she nearly toppled over, but he caught her.

If what he’d claimed earlier was true, he had already caught her another time that night.

“We need to go,” he said.

“To the hospital—”

“Are you all right?” he asked as he held her up, his hands warm on her shoulders.

Her legs were too rubbery for her to stand without support. But she insisted, “I’m fine.” Or she would be once the room stopped spinning. “I want to go check on the guard.”

“Your boss said the man is in stable condition. He will be fine,” he assured her. “We need to go to your office and make sure nothing’s been taken.”

She hadn’t left anything of value to anyone else in her office. But there were things of value to her there, things she couldn’t replace. And she would be of more use at the office than she would be pacing a hospital waiting room. She wasn’t even sure she knew who had been wounded, but it didn’t matter. She still felt somehow responsible. Why had someone broken into the company and then only into her office?

“Okay,” she said and pulled away from him. Her skin tingled from where his hands had grasped her shoulders when he’d been holding her upright. She needed distance from him. “Let’s go!”

“You’re in an awful hurry,” he said. “But then you wouldn’t want someone to steal what you’re trying to sell.”

Beyond irritated with him, she gritted her teeth and replied, “I am not selling anything.”

“You want me to believe you were at this hotel tonight because you really were speed dating ?” He sounded horrified at the prospect.

Heat rushed to her face, which had probably turned as red as her dress. “I really was...”

He glanced around the hotel room. “Is that why you rented a room?”

Her face got even hotter. “I rented a room in case I’d had too much to drink.” And she felt as if she had, thanks to the chloroform making her head fuzzy and her legs weak. Or maybe Agent Stryker had made her legs weak. It really wasn’t fair that the FBI agent was so ridiculously good-looking. “I didn’t rent a room because I thought I’d get lucky.”

There had been nothing lucky about meeting Agent Stryker. And while she wanted to meet someone else, she hadn’t expected much from the speed dating experience. She certainly hadn’t expected to fall in love in five minutes.

On the floor next to the bed she noticed her shoes and her purse. She stepped into the uncomfortable heels. Then she grabbed up her purse and reached into the oversize bag to search for her keys. “I’ll drive myself to the office.”

He held up her keys; she recognized them because the rhinestone wristband attached to the chain caught the light. She’d bought the wristband key chain so she could slip it over her wrist and always have her keys accessible. Yet she kept tossing them into her bag out of habit.

“We’ll take my car,” he said as he walked toward the hotel room door. He didn’t wait to see if she followed him. He just opened the door and stepped into the hall.

That same feeling of helplessness washed over Claire like it had nine years ago when nobody had believed her about the hacking. Or maybe they’d only cared that she had and not why she had.

She didn’t want to ride with him. “But my car has the permit for the company parking lot,” she said as she hurried after him.

“My car is FBI,” he said. “That gives me a permit to park wherever I want.”

She pulled the hotel room door shut and mouthed his words behind his back. Sure, she was acting childish, but he was just so arrogant and infuriating and...

He chuckled, so he must have somehow witnessed her juvenile behavior. Did he have eyes in the back of his head? “Are you coming?” he asked.

She wanted to say no, but since he had her keys she had no choice. Unless she hailed a cab...

Maybe she should hail a cab. And call a lawyer.

But first she had to go to the office. Had to make sure nothing had been taken. Had to try to figure out what someone had been looking for.

But he had her keys—not just to her car but to her office, too.

“Yes,” she finally, reluctantly, replied.

“Come on, then,” he said, as if she was a child that needed his direction and protection. “You need to stick close to me.”

He had just uttered the words when a door creaked open and a dark shadow filled the hallway ahead of him. Reminded of the man accosting her in the parking lot, Claire shivered with foreboding. She glanced back at the hotel room, but she’d closed the door. And like her keys, Ash probably had the card to the room; she couldn’t reenter without it.

So she hurried up to close the distance between them. But he held out a hand to her as if shoving her back. He used his other hand to withdraw his gun from his holster. She shook her head in protest.

If he pointed that gun at some unsuspecting hotel guests, he was going to scare them to death—like he had nearly scared her when she’d awakened to find him leaning over her.

“Ash...” Maybe she should have called him Special Agent Stryker, but for some reason his first name was what had slipped out of her lips.

Regardless of what she’d called him, he lifted a finger to his lips, silencing her.

The shadow stepped through the stairwell doorway and into the hall. The shadow belonged to a man—a big man—and like Ash, he carried a gun. He pointed the barrel at Special Agent Stryker.

“FBI,” Ash called out.

The man didn’t care. He cocked the gun and pulled the trigger. But Ash fired, too.

Claire screamed and ducked as bullets struck the walls of the hallway, tearing through the blue-and-green-striped paper to burrow into the drywall. Or pass through into the rooms of those unsuspecting guests.

“Stay down!” Ash ordered her.

Then a bullet must have struck him because he staggered back. But he kept his body between hers and the shooter, using it to protect her as he returned fire.

She screamed again but she wasn’t worried just about herself or those guests; she was worried about him. Had he been hurt badly?

Chapter Four

Ash cursed as the force of the bullet propelled him back. He nearly knocked over Claire, who stood behind him like he had directed her. Maybe he should have told her to run. But the man with the gun stood between them and the stairwell and the elevators.

She had no place to run.

Even if he passed her the key card to the hotel room, she wouldn’t be safe inside the room—at least not for long. A man this big could easily knock down her door. The only way to keep her safe was to eliminate the threat to her safety.

So Ash fired again. But this was a kill shot. The big man crumpled to the carpet like the guy in the parking lot had crumpled to the asphalt.

“It’s okay,” Ash told her as he turned back to Claire. “It’s over.” For now. But how long before someone else tried to abduct her? And why?