the clock on the dash. Almost one o’clock. If she and Asia hadn’t spotted Sammy the Snake on the street, she would have already been snuggled into bed and fast asleep.
When she finally pulled into her driveway, she cut the engine and tapped her short nails against the steering wheel. A restless energy had begun to build inside her as the vision of that darned white rose played and replayed in her mind.
If it were earlier she’d have gone to the gym and worked it out. She could always throw some jabs on the punching bag in her spare room, but it was too late and she’d promised Max she’d meet him for breakfast early in the morning.
White Rose. It had been her code name. Another life, she thought. That life had nothing to do with the one she’d carved out for herself over the last five years.
She got out of the car and walked up the sidewalk to her front door. She couldn’t help but feel a burst of pride. Her sidewalk…her front porch…her home and nobody could ever take it away from her.
She would never again sleep on the street or in the shelter of a cardboard box or beneath the thick concrete of a highway overpass. She would never again go to sleep and be afraid of what the night might bring…of what the next day would bring.
Security. It’s what she’d finally attained in the last five years and nobody and nothing would make her risk it. She unlocked the front door, stepped inside and disarmed the security system.
When she closed the door behind her, she knew she wasn’t alone. She didn’t hear a sound, smelled only the scent of lemon oil and glass cleaner from her cleaning frenzy earlier in the day, but she knew in her gut someone had either been inside recently or was still here.
The living room was dark except for a thin stream of illumination that seeped through a crack in the front curtains from a nearby street lamp.
Moving slowly, stealthily, she reached with her right hand into her pocket and pulled out the knife she’d had since she’d been thirteen years old.
The intricately carved handle fit perfectly into her palm and when she tapped the button on the side the switchblade shot out with a faint sound. Not exactly police issue, but she never left home without it.
She shifted it from her right hand to her left, grabbing the sharp point as adrenaline pumped through her. She could hit a target faster, more accurately with the knife than she could with her gun. The knife had kept her alive for many years on the streets.
Her living room was sparsely furnished, as was the rest of the house. There was just enough light to see that there was nobody in the living room. Everything appeared to be just as she had left it when she’d gone to work at three that afternoon.
But the hair stood up on the back of her neck as she quietly advanced from the living room into the kitchen. It was darker and more difficult to discern what lie waiting in the shadows.
She stood in the doorway, willing her breathing to still, the sound of her own heartbeat to silence. Beneath the hum of the refrigerator motor she heard nothing to indicate there was another living, breathing person in the room.
Maybe she was mistaken, still charged with residual energy from the scuffle with Sammy the Snake and from receiving the unexpected communication from the agency. Maybe she was just imagining the nebulous presence of another invading her personal space.
But it had been innate instinct, intense imagination and an almost paranoid level of caution that had kept her alive until now. She’d learned through the years that when any of those three emotions went into action, it was best not to ignore them. And at the moment all three were screaming inside her.
Slowly, not making a sound, she made her way down the hall. The door to the bathroom was closed, as were the doors to the two spare bedrooms. But the door to the master bedroom at the very end of the hall stood open. She never left the doors opened.
The minute she stepped into the doorway of the bedroom she saw him…a tall dark figure standing near the window. An intruder who didn’t belong in the sanctity of her home. The instinct of survival kicked in and she raised the knife to throw…at the last minute a flash of recognition altered her aim.
The knife shot through the air and hit the wall with a sharp thud. Cassie flipped on the light switch to see the handsome dark-haired man standing against the wall, the knife embedded in the Sheetrock an inch from the left of his head.
“Losing your touch?”
“Not likely. If I hadn’t recognized you at the last minute your ear would be pinned against the wall. What are you doing here, Kane?”
She didn’t bother to ask him how he’d entered her house. There wasn’t a locked door or a security system invented that could keep Kane McNabb out if he wanted in.
He moved with a languid grace away from the window and sat on the edge of her bed. “You didn’t call.”
“You’re right, I didn’t.” She walked over to her knife and pulled it out, satisfied to see that a little putty and touch-up paint would easily heal the wall wound.
“Aren’t you intrigued?” Kane asked.
She turned back to face the man who had once been her partner and lover for two years. He hadn’t changed much in the past five years. Like a chameleon, he had the ability to look like a debonair man of means, a disreputable drug lord or a high-ranking foreign government official. He could be whatever the agency wanted him to be. The last time she’d seen him he’d been pale, lifeless and unconscious in a hospital room bed.
Now his eyes were dark and brooding and a remembered flutter of heat ignited in the pit of her stomach. She tried to ignore it. “No, I’m not intrigued. I’m tired.” She bent over and untied the laces of her black boots, then kicked them off.
“You should hear the details before you make any decision.”
“I don’t need to hear the details,” she replied coolly. “I’m not interested…and get off my bed. In fact, get out of my house.” Now that she was closer to him she could smell the scent of his familiar cologne.
To her irritation he didn’t move a muscle. “We need you, Cassie. This is big…really big.”
“I don’t care. I told you I’m not interested. Now, get out.” It was bad enough the agency wanted her back, it was sheer manipulation by them that they’d sent Kane all the way from the L.A. office to recruit her back. It made her more adamant about staying out of all of it.
He stood and moved toward the bedroom door. “So I guess it doesn’t matter to you that within two months’ time tens of thousands of men, women and children will probably be dead and you may be the only person on earth to stop the carnage.” He shrugged. “Pleasant dreams, Cassie.” He left the bedroom and she slammed the door shut behind him.
“Good riddance,” she muttered as she removed her flashlight and billy club from her belt, then took off her service revolver. As she placed the knife and gun in the drawer next to her bed, she tried not to think about what he’d said.
Tens of thousands of men, women and children, and she was the only person on earth to stop the carnage. She was sure Kane had added on that last part in an effort to appeal to her ego, but it hadn’t worked. The agency had hundreds of agents, including other females as effective as she was.
She
