Geri Krotow - Snowbound With The Secret Agent

Her plan was foolproof, as was everything she did. Two more shoves and the door would open. She was three minutes from completing this part of her mission.

Portia’s breathing ramped up as she passed row upon row of books, DVDs and then periodicals, making her way to the stairs, where she sped down to the children’s level. The exit door was at the base of the stairs and the stairwell reverberated with the sound of metal on metal. The unknown person was still at it, working on the door.

What the hell?

Portia pushed the long bar handle in, shoved the door open and squinted against the bright motion detector light. The sun had begun its rise behind the building, as well; it was a sharp contrast to the stairwell’s dim interior.

“Excuse me, can I help you?”

The person straightened, and the first thing Portia noticed was the cold emotion in the glacial blue eyes under the winter facemask. The second thing was that the person—a woman, judging from the figure under her jacket, the makeup on her eyes and lipstick on her very red mouth—was holding one of the library’s dozen laptops. Portia knew it was a Silver Valley Library computer from the identification stickers on its cover.

“Hey, our laptops are for in-house use only. Why are you—”

Before she finished, the woman shoved Portia in the chest, knocking her backward. The assaulter whirled around and ran toward the railroad tracks that divided the library property from the rest of downtown Silver Valley.

Portia scrambled to her feet, and against the voice in her brain that screamed for her to wait for the police, she took off after the laptop thief. Silver Valley Library had mysteriously lost ten laptops in the past six months. It ended with her, today. Now . Without hesitating, she took off after the assailant. She hadn’t lettered in track and field at Silver Valley High for nothing.

Kyle King swore under his breath, the interior of the beat-up truck he was hunkered down in filling with the crystallized vapor. He couldn’t run the engine and heater while he was trying to blend in. He had to make it look like the truck was empty, parked behind the Silver Valley Diner. Right next to the town library, where he’d patiently waited for ROC’s thug to show up. He hoped to figure out how the hell they were passing information on illegal drug shipments.

As an undercover agent for the Trail Hikers, a secret government shadow agency, second to none and headquartered in Silver Valley, he knew how critical it was to stop ROC’s trafficking of illegal cargo, especially heroin and other drugs, into Pennsylvania. Silver Valley was a short fifteen-minute drive from the state capitol, Harrisburg, and the epicenter of transportation logistics for the entire US Eastern Seaboard.

Typical of ROC’s blatant disregard for law enforcement, they’d set up their distribution headquarters in the shadow of a nondescript, medium-sized, everyday American town. Of course ROC had no clue about Trail Hikers, but it was public knowledge that Silver Valley and the surrounding county had succeeded in defeating the most heinous criminals over the last few years. Including an ROC human trafficking ring. Which made the fact that ROC still wanted to stake a claim here stick more deeply in his craw. The latest intel from Trail Hikers and FBI indicated that the criminals were somehow using the local library as a way to pass critical information about their local ops.

Kyle had operated on countless global missions for Trail Hikers over the last several years, after a short stint in the Marine Corps. After two tours to Afghanistan, he knew he wanted to continue serving, but in a different capacity. The offer to become a Trail Hiker agent had been too good to pass up.

That was seven years ago. The ROC op had brought him to Silver Valley three months ago to provide much needed support. He’d welcomed the switch and enjoyed being in an American town for longer than the usual few days his other ops had given him.

Fact was, Kyle was tired of the global travel and wanted to find a place to call home in between Trail Hiker ops. He didn’t think it would be Silver Valley, though, as he was born and bred in California and missed the West Coast. He’d purchased land in California while he was still a Marine, needing to know he had someplace to go if he ended up out of the Corps and without a job. But anyplace in the United States was a good place after the rough places he’d been. If he hadn’t been so tied up in this op against ROC, he might have enjoyed Silver Valley a bit more.

Kyle wanted to be the agent to smash apart Ivanov’s reign of terror so badly that he could taste it. The current gang ROC had sent to Silver Valley was responsible for dozens of heroin ODs in this part of the state, and upwards of thousands nationally. After he solved this case, Kyle was due for time off, a full month. He planned to use it to go back west, see if the property he’d been paying taxes on could become home. The director of Trail Hikers wanted him out there for a bit to set up a West Coast office for the agency, so it all dovetailed neatly. Kyle liked things neat.

It’d be sweet if he could crack open this case sooner than later. Pennsylvania winters were colder than he’d imagined. The last weeks since the polar vortex had dipped down had proved brutal. He’d broken down and bought himself foot and hand warmers for the long hours outside, staking out the library, where he’d confirmed the information drop point was. In classic ROC fashion, they used something that seemed so obvious. Most criminal organizations held meetings or passed information in more clandestine spots, places that were difficult to figure out. Not ROC. By somehow passing information in the library, they’d hidden their methods in plain sight. He just hadn’t figured out exactly how yet. The computers were the most likely tools but the Trail Hikers systems forensics expert hadn’t found anything unusual on the desktops. Kyle had done a lot of his own recon inside the library, too, hoping to determine a pattern of behavior or repeat patrons who might be up to no good. He’d used different disguises to avoid any kind of recognition. Not just from Markova or her worker bees, but from the library staff.

The librarian in particular. A woman he’d found himself fascinated with. Portia DiNapoli.

But the librarian he’d also happened to monitor the last several weeks wasn’t going to make his goal of catching Markova in the act possible. Not today, anyway. As an undercover TH agent, he had to avoid any contact with civilians as much as possible while trailing a target. And Markova was a big one. As he watched, he saw that the librarian was engaging Markova. Portia DiNapoli didn’t know Markova was an ROC operative, though.

“Damn it, Portia DiNapoli. Why are you so good at your job?” And why was the town librarian so damn hot? More importantly, why was his dick paying attention at all when he was supposed to be tracking the movements of potential ROC thugs in the library, not Portia’s attractiveness?

You’re lonely .

Damn it, he wasn’t lonely. Okay, he’d appreciate the loving of a good woman right about now, but he was too entrenched in his work to add another concern to it.

Portia DiNapoli was the epitome of distraction. The fact that he was spending mental energy on her when dating her, or anyone else, wasn’t in his best interest or the woman’s, raised his internal alarm. He needed to get it through his thick skull that he had a job to do that a woman, Portia or whomever, would only complicate. He’d had his share of committed relationships over the years but none had stuck. It always came down to him having to put his career first, and there was the added danger of anyone he was involved with becoming a target of the bad people it was his job to take down. Portia DiNapoli’s nearly constant presence in his current surveillance had stirred something in him, though. He probably ought to at least think about dating someone again.