freedom it would bring—and yet here he was, in the middle of his last good chance to get the deed done, and he’d spent the past half hour in a hotel supply closet waiting for two unconscious hit men to rouse so he could pump them for information.
He returned the gun to the waistband of his dress pants and shook his head. “Note to self, Rambo—next time two guys jump you, try not to incapacitate them so enthusiastically.”
He’d dragged them to the closet because remaining in the hotel room made him an easy target for the next batch of punks dispatched to do him in. Ryan had no doubt this first attempt to silence him wasn’t going to be the last before the night was over.
The main question he needed to ask the hit men was not who they worked for. That was as plain as the crude prison tattoos on the one man’s arms and face. Nor was the question why they wanted Ryan dead. He was crystal clear about that, too.
What he needed to know was how.
How did Chiara know where to find him, down to the exact hotel room he’d secured under a pseudonym two weeks ago? In other words, he was still at square one, puzzling over the same damn question he had been for the past six months—which of the twenty-five San Diego ICE department employees was double-dealing?
He’d narrowed down the answer to four possibilities. Make that five now. He’d dismissed the office secretary as a suspect months ago, but she was the person who’d processed his paperwork for the hotel room and she hadn’t come through with his one request tonight. She hadn’t emailed him the file he’d asked for. So Ryan had to wonder, was that because she didn’t understand how critical the document was to deciphering Chiara’s business and contacts in San Diego...or because she did?
Either way, the longer he stayed on the sixth floor of the Mira Hotel, the greater the risk. Time to leave before Chiara’s men got the jump on him again. His window of opportunity to catch the man was shrinking fast, so he refused to contemplate aborting the surveillance mission, but there were any number of positions in surrounding buildings from which he could observe the Mira without getting himself trapped again.
He straightened the blue tie he’d worn with a crisp white dress shirt and suit to blend in with the festive hotel atmosphere, then used the phone he’d confiscated from the groaner—he’d smashed his own on the off chance it’d been bugged—to check one last time for the transcripted conversation on his email account. Nothing.
He pocketed the groaner’s phone. Then, leaving his own pistol in his shoulder holster and his service piece at his ankle, he took the confiscated 9 mm in hand again. Gun first, he nosed around the corner to scan the hallway for trouble before heading for the stairs.
He knew from his arrival earlier that the hotel was swarming with guests of the massive New Year’s Eve celebration taking place in the main ballroom on the second floor, but judging from the silence in the hall and in the stairwell, the party had already gotten under way.
As expected, the ground level was hopping with New Year’s revelers. He tucked the gun out of sight, rolled his shoulders and did his best to look relaxed and happy as he moved closer to the lobby. Just a regular guy on his way to meet friends for a celebratory drink.
There were no potential hit men in view, or anyone who registered on his radar as connected to the man he’d been hunting for ten years. Hunting with the laser focus of a man poised to lose everything he held dear, a possibility that might be closer than he realized if the letter from Paolo Hawk was the warning he dreaded it was.
His eyes followed a lanky bellhop pushing a loaded luggage cart toward the service elevators. Ryan stepped aside to give him room. He tipped his hat with a “Good evening, sir” before moving on. As the luggage rack moved past him, a gorgeous, shapely backside adorned in a pink dress caused him a moment of distraction before his eyes flickered back to the crowd. No time to enjoy the scenery when he could be ambushed again at any moment.
He allowed himself a last look at the woman standing at the bar, this time taking inventory of her legs. He was just starting to wonder if her face matched the sophisticated sexpot allure of the rest of her body when she accepted a martini from the bartender, then turned to look across the lobby.
Ryan’s jaw dropped. He might’ve made a little sound of disbelief, but it was hard to tell given the volume of music streaming from the ballroom.
This changes everything—she changes everything.
Ducking farther into the hall’s shadows, he reflexively brought a foot up to tap his service weapon, his backup piece for the night. Double-checking the presence of his guns was rather pointless, but after seventeen years as a soldier, it was one nervous habit he couldn’t see fit to break.
Maybe he’d mistaken the woman’s identity. San Diego was full of women with long, wavy blond hair and big brown eyes.
Taking care to keep his face in the swath of shadow created by the enormous lobby Christmas tree, he tipped his head around the corner until he had a clear view of the bar.
No two ways about it; the woman in pink was Avery Meadows.
With her lips on the rim of her martini glass, she glanced around anxiously, as though she was waiting for someone. Him, he assumed. What a dangerous move, to waltz into the middle of the undercover op she knew full well was happening here. She looked like a pink bull’s-eye, standing in plain sight dressed like she was, as though she had zero concern for her personal safety.
Then again, if she was working with Vincenzo Chiara, maybe safety wasn’t a concern. Maybe, instead of looking for Ryan, she was meeting up with Chiara’s men to ensure they’d followed through on their job to off him.
But why the dress and the drink—to blend in with the New Year’s Eve party crowd? Why would she bother? Nothing made sense.
He strained his brain to remember what she’d been wearing when he’d left the office but couldn’t pull it up from his mental files. Maybe a charcoal-gray dress and a sweater...or was it a pantsuit? He’d pretty much been avoiding eye contact with her since arriving at the San Diego office. Mostly because she wouldn’t stop looking at him in that sly way women did when they were making plans for a man.
Watching her watch him gave him the willies, as though maybe he’d been right to suspect her of misdeeds. But even if she hadn’t been on his short list of corruption suspects, he wasn’t in San Diego to get involved in a relationship or even have a bit of no-strings-attached fun. He was there for only one purpose: to bury Chiara along with the secret Ryan had dedicated his life to protecting. He couldn’t afford to get distracted—not even by his office’s sweet, cute secretary.
She certainly didn’t look sweet and cute tonight. More like trouble wrapped in a pink hourglass. And Ryan already had plenty of trouble.
He smoothed a hand over his hair and straightened his tie. Whatever dirt Avery was mixed up in, it was time for her to come clean.
He skirted the room along the wall. She hadn’t noticed his presence, so he took advantage of the element of surprise and walked around the far side of the bar to approach her from behind. She looked even sexier the closer he got. His eyes traced the line of her calf to the skin on the back of her knee. And that butt—how had he never noticed it before?
When he was near enough to see the movement of her teardrop pearl earrings as she fished the olive from her drink, he double-checked his body language. Just a guy meeting his date at the bar.
He wrapped his hand
