Elizabeth Bevarly - Overnight Male

“You’ve lived your whole life in the D.C. area?”

He nodded. “My father was a Virginia senator until he retired a few years ago.”

Lila’s mouth dropped open at that, but she said nothing.

“He still does a little advising for the current administration,” Joel continued matter-of-factly, “but mostly he and my mother enjoy their respective retirements, usually on another continent.”

“Respective retirements?” Lila echoed. “What did your mother do for a living?”

“She edited the Washington Sentinel. Her family owns it. Among other things. They’re big in the publishing world.” Before Lila had time to digest that, Joel was adding, “My grandparents lived in D.C., too. My grandfather worked for Eisenhower, and then Kennedy. The house I live in now belonged to him and my grandmother. She left it to me when she died, since my sister and her husband already had a place in Tysons Corner and she knew I wanted to stay close to home after I graduated from Georgetown.”

Lila’s head was spinning by now, thanks to the rarefied atmosphere she’d just entered. Senators, presidents and newspaper families were the sorts of creatures she never had much chance to meet, but to Joel, they were a part of everyday life. Falls Church, Georgetown and Tysons Corner were all very refined, very affluent areas. Certainly Lila was no stranger to the lifestyles of the rich and powerful. But she’d been a part of them only as an outsider looking in. And only when she was working on assignment. Never in her life had she been a part of that environment for social reasons. To Joel, there was no other life.

“You come from money, then,” she said, stating the obvious.

“I do,” he admitted. Again without hesitation, but also without apology or vanity. It had been Lila’s experience that rich people usually copped to their wealth in either one way or the other. To Joel, however, it seemed to be a part of his makeup, the same way his lungs were.

“Must be nice,” she couldn’t quite keep herself from saying.

“It was,” he told her. But once more, he spoke without any kind of inflection. “Still is.”

“And you have a sister. Anyone else?”

He shook his head.

“She’s older?”

He nodded.

Well, goodness, this conversation was offering Lila all kinds of insights into Joel’s background and character. If this kept up, she might even find out what his favorite color was, and that would really violate regulation.

She grinned. “If you could be any vegetable in the world, what would you be and why?”

That, finally, got a reaction out of him that wasn’t matter-of-fact. Not a big reaction. Mostly just the squinching up of his eyes so that he was looking at her as if the sun had gone into total eclipse and thrown the planet into complete darkness, but hey, it was something.

Even so, his voice remained unchanged from its usual straightforward delivery when he replied, “One of those bags of salad that’s already washed and ready to serve.”

Lila’s smile broadened. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

“But that’s not actually a vegetable, is it?”

“Of course it is,” he insisted. “And it’s a damned interesting one, too.”

“Okay, so why would you be that?”

He gazed at her blankly. “Are you kidding? Salad already washed and ready to serve? That’s like a party just waiting to happen.”

After that, the remainder of the ride to their jet passed in a surprisingly swift and tension-free manner, with Lila learning all kinds of things about Joel. Like, for instance, if he could be any fruit in the world, it would be a coconut, because they never took themselves too seriously. Any animal, he would be a jellyfish, because, hey, no pressure there. Any musical instrument? An electric guitar, because it was so soulful. Supermarket product? A TV dinner, because they were bad for you but, oh, so good. Mode of transportation? A bullet train. Because, well, for obvious reasons.

Of course, she thought when he uttered that last. What guy wouldn’t be a bullet train for obvious reasons? Still, it did make her wonder. About a lot of things. Things that had nothing to do with transportation. Well, not conventional transportation, anyway. A guy who was a bullet train could doubtless transport a woman to a lot of places. Hence the wondering about a lot of things. Until the wondering became visualizing and started threatening to make Lila lose track of what her and Joel’s actual goal was, which was…

Well, hell. She’d known a little while ago. Before Joel became so charming and approachable and bullet-trainy and made her start wondering about and visualizing things she had no business wondering about and visualizing when she should instead be focused on…

An assignment, she finally recalled. An assignment to capture a man who was a threat to national—even international—security. A man who had eluded OPUS—who had eluded her— for years. A man whose presence roaming free in the world was a smack in the face to Lila’s skill and determination as an agent. A man she was tired of chasing.

It was time to catch Adrian Padgett, she told herself, refocusing her attention on the man it really needed to be on. Past time. She would catch him this time. And she would see him tossed into the most fail-safe prison in the country, if she had to slam the door shut and lock it behind him herself. Then maybe she could get on with other more pleasant pursuits. Like, oh…she didn’t know. Her life, maybe.

For some reason, her gaze fell on Joel as that last thought formed in her head. Even though she told herself he was not going to be one of her pursuits, never mind have anything to do with her life. He wasn’t her type, he wasn’t her goal, he wasn’t her match. Hell, he wasn’t even her partner, not really. Providing Oliver survived his upcoming wedding to Avery Nesbitt, he and Lila would return to being a team. She hoped.

Joel Faraday would just be a blip on the time line of Lila’s life. One man of many, and by no means the most important. That man was hiding somewhere in Cincinnati. And she was this close to bringing him down. For good.

LOUNGING WITH A SNIFTER of an exceedingly good Armagnac in the living area of his exceedingly luxurious suite at the Four Seasons Cincinnati, Adrian Padgett was exceedingly bored. But then, that was hardly anything new, was it? He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been intrigued/fascinated/captivated/even remotely preoccupied by anything intriguing/fascinating/captivating/even remotely worthy of preoccupation. Life could be so boring when one was corrupt. Where was the challenge in anything? Where was the mischief? Where was the sneaky underhandedness? When a man was amoral to begin with, there were no lines to cross, no rules to break, no crosses to double. If one had no allegiances to begin with, one couldn’t exactly betray them, could one?

Truly, dammit, where was the fun? Taking the entire planet hostage wasn’t turning out to be nearly as diverting as Adrian had thought it would be.

Of course, he thought as he contemplated his companions, it would have helped if he’d been able to amass some proper henchmen instead of the ragtag group of college students he’d collected over the past few months. The three young men draped over the furniture in his suite weren’t exactly Adolf Hitler and Genghis Khan when it came to villainy. More like Boris and Natasha. Only, without the elegant wardrobe and charming accents.

Oh, sure, they said they wanted to take over the world with Adrian. And if they’d put forth half the effort to take over this world as they had taking over the worlds in their godforsaken video games, Adrian would be master of time, space and dimension by now. But that was just it. Unless something was a graphic on a game screen, they didn’t view it as a challenge. And it wasn’t as if Adrian hadn’t given them plenty of incentive. He’d promised them that once they had the world in their possession, the boys could have Daytona Beach, all incarnations of MTV, the Playboy mansion, Nintendo and Jessica Alba to divvy up however they wanted.