Lisa Childs - Agent Undercover

Why not just pay what she asked for the information? Unless she was telling the truth...

She moved as if to look around him, but he used his body to block her view. She didn’t need to see what he had done to protect them. But instead of moving around him, she moved toward him—her hands reaching out toward his chest.

“Are you all right?” she asked, her voice cracking with concern.

He nodded. But he wasn’t entirely convinced that he was all right because he was beginning to believe her and doubt himself. She had been so concerned about the security guard and now about him. Maybe she wasn’t the mercenary person he thought she was.

“But you were shot!” she exclaimed, her palms patting his chest as if she were searching for the wound.

He caught her hands and pressed them more tightly against his vest. “I’m fine.”

She shook her head. “You must be hurt.”

“The protective vest took the bullet,” he assured her. He had only felt the impact of the too-close shot. And he would probably have a bruise on his chest from the force with which the bullet had struck the vest. He pulled her hands away from his chest, and she tugged them free of his grasp.

“Thank God you’re wearing a vest.” Her breath shuddered out with sincere-sounding relief. “But of course you would be wearing a vest.”

“Of course.” But there had been times that he hadn’t been able to when he’d been undercover. He couldn’t have risked someone noticing the vest, no matter how thin and indiscernible the Bureau vests were. He also hadn’t been able to wear a wire then, either. He had been totally on his own. But that hadn’t been anything new to Ash.

“Maybe I should be wearing one, too,” she mused, and she must have finally caught sight of the man he’d shot because she shuddered in revulsion.

“He wasn’t shooting at you,” he said.

Her green eyes widened in skepticism. “Really? I was right behind you.”

“He wouldn’t have hit you.” The guy had been aiming only for Ash.

“Why not?” she asked.

“You’re too valuable.”

She laughed like he’d heard her laugh during the speed dating event, like he had told her a not-so-funny joke like those other guys must have. “Yeah, right...”

Was her self-deprecation real or feigned? He believed it was real, because he was beginning to believe her. He had conceived his opinion of her from her file—from the things she’d done in her past. He of all people should have known better than to think a person’s past defined the kind of person he or she would become.

“The information you have is valuable,” he clarified. “They want to know what you know.”

“But you think I’m offering that information for sale,” she said. “So why wouldn’t they just pay me for it?”

“Some people would rather get the information for free,” he said.

She glanced toward the man lying on the floor and shook her head. “That’s not free.”

No. Like the man in the parking lot, this guy had undoubtedly been hired to abduct Claire, but whatever they’d been paid hadn’t been enough. The mission had cost them both their lives.

Ash rubbed his chest where the bullet had struck the vest right over his heart. If not for the vest...

During his years with the Bureau, Ash had had some dangerous assignments, but now he wondered if this mission would be the one that cost him his life.

* * *

HE HAD KILLED a man, but the police hadn’t questioned him. Of course Special Agent Ash Stryker hadn’t stuck around to talk to them, either. He’d whisked Claire out of the hotel as if nothing had happened.

But the gunshots still rang in her ears, and she trembled in the aftermath of the close call. Maybe he was right. Maybe the man hadn’t been shooting at her. But she’d thought Ash had been hit, which had been entirely too close for her.

She had actually touched him, just to check his chest to see if a bullet had struck his heart. But he’d been wearing a vest. She’d felt the hardness beneath the softness of his sweater. Maybe she should have checked beneath the vest, too. At the thought of pulling up his sweater and peeling off that vest, her pulse quickened. Would his chest have dark hair that would be soft to her touch? Or would his muscles be all sleek and smooth beneath her palms? Her breath caught at both images.

“Is something missing?” Agent Stryker asked.

Her face heated with embarrassment that he had caught her daydreaming about him when she was supposed to be checking her ransacked office to see what could have been missing. Why would someone break into her office?

The power was on her computer but her files were untouched. Nobody would have been able to bypass her security passwords, though. And once they’d sounded the alarm and shot the guard, they wouldn’t have had time to even try to figure it out.

What were they so desperate to steal from her?

She reached for the snow globe paperweight that sat next to her monitor. She shook it and watched the flakes float onto the pond, a tiny figurine of a father skated around with the tiny figurine of his daughter perched high upon his shoulders. Her breath shuddered out in relief. “It’s okay.”

“You were worried about a paperweight?” he asked, his blue eyes narrowed with skepticism.

“Have you ever seen anything like it?” she asked as she held it out toward him.

He shrugged. “It’s a snow globe.”

“It’s special,” she said with a soft sigh as sweet, old memories rushed over her. “My father gave it to me.”

“Is he dead?”

She gasped at the horror of such a loss. “No!”

He reached for the paperweight, engulfing the delicate glass globe in his big hands. “I don’t see what’s so special about it,” he said as he studied it more closely, “unless you hid a flash drive inside it.”

Afraid that he might smash it onto the floor to look for something hidden inside, she grabbed for it, her fingers sliding over his as he gripped the globe. “Don’t break it! My father had that specially made for me.” To commemorate a perfect day. Of course it had been just the two of them...

Maybe she shouldn’t have gotten so upset when her mother left them since she had never really spent that much time with them anyway. And Claire probably wouldn’t have if her father hadn’t gotten so upset. He had been in so much pain that she’d had to lash out. She sighed again, but this time with regret.

“He’s not dead,” Ash reminded her.

“Does he have to be?” she asked. “Why can’t something he gave me be important to me while he’s alive?”

Ash just shrugged again.

Her heart sank as she had a grim realization. “Your father’s dead.”

He jerked his head in a quick nod, as if he was embarrassed to admit it.

“I’m sorry.”

Now he shrugged off her sympathy. “It happened a long time ago.”

She doubted that would have lessened his pain very much. If something happened to her father, she would miss him forever. “That must have been tough on you and your mom.”

“My mom died with him,” he said.

Her hands still covered his, over the snow globe, so she squeezed, offering sympathy and comfort. “That must have been horrible for you. To lose them both...”

For a while she had felt like she had, too.

Ash focused on her now, as if he’d picked up on the tone of her voice. “You lost your mom.”

“Yes,” she said but then hastened to add, “but not like you did, though. She’s alive. She’s just gone. When I was sixteen, she left my dad and went to live in England with a man she’d met online.”

His eyes widened, and then he nodded with sudden realization. “That was when you hacked into that bank.”