she stiffened and sucked in a sharp breath. The martini sloshed over the rim of the glass. “Agent Reitano, thank goodness. I was starting to think I’d never find you.”
She tried to face him, but he maintained his position of power with an unyielding grip on her arm. “Ryan,” he corrected. No need to advertise he was an undercover agent. “What are you doing here?”
“I left you a voice mail and texted you that I was coming.”
“I tossed my phone.”
“What? Why?” She tried to turn again, so he pressed against her back, pinning her between the bar stool and his hips.
“My question first.”
She fiddled with the base of her glass. “Okay. The answer is no. I don’t know what they say about people who eat the olive first. That we’re hungry?”
Huh? “Avery, what are you doing here?”
She angled her head over her shoulder and whispered out of the corner of her mouth, “There was a problem with the document you asked for.”
Damn it. Now what was he supposed to think? Avery definitely wasn’t giving off a double-agent vibe, but her actions were suspicious as all get-out. Once upon a time, Ryan had valued his intuition first and foremost, but ever since the betrayal that had broken up his black ops crew and turned Ryan into a lone hunter, he knew better than to trust anyone or anything— including his own instincts.
And wasn’t that a royally jaded thought? When had he become such a cynic? Actually, he could pinpoint the exact day and time he’d turned into a cynic, not that it made the transformation any less jarring.
He shook off his regret and frustration about the past. There was nothing he could do to change the way things went down with his crew.
“What sort of problem?” He leaned in for a view of her facial expression when she answered.
“The office’s computers crashed, so I searched for the hard copy, but the file was missing. I didn’t know what else to do but come find you.”
Scowling, he shook his head. “You expect me to believe that?”
“Uh, yeah. Why wouldn’t you?”
Another loud, beat-heavy song drifted into the lobby from the second-floor ballroom as the New Year’s Eve ball went into full swing. Regardless, the ground-floor lobby bar was not an ideal place for an interrogation.
From his research on the hotel, he remembered a row of conference rooms on the third level. Taking the service stairs would be quicker, but with Avery’s dress, they’d stand out too glaringly to anyone on the lookout for incongruous movement. Staying with the horde of revelers attending the ball was the best camouflage he could manage under the circumstances.
After dropping a twenty-dollar bill on the bar, he slipped his arm around her waist, working to ignore the heat of her body and the provocative curve of her figure. “Let’s walk.”
Hip to hip, they strode in pace with the impenetrable crowd lining up at the base of the escalators. Well, Avery didn’t so much stride as teeter along in a pair of black stiletto heels that looked downright torturous.
As soon as they shuffled onto the escalator, Ryan turned their backs to the lobby and looked out the wall of windows at the sea of cars and pedestrians on the packed downtown street. Chiara was out there somewhere nearby. Ryan could feel it.
Times like these, constrained by the rules of his job, he didn’t feel like the man with the advantage. Especially given that he was locked in a deadly game of cat and mouse with a man of no scruples and no loyalty but to himself.
Avery shifted, reclaiming his attention. She tilted her mouth toward his chin. “Where are we going?”
“Somewhere to talk.”
She nodded, the worry lines on her face easing. “Good. Because I think I can help you with the Lassiter transcript.”
Her words threw him off-balance again. The LM1204 document was top secret. There would be no way for her to know the names involved in the wiretap unless she’d read the file. Even if she was lying about his computer breaking down, she couldn’t have opened the file, because it was individually passworded. Lassiter was a rogue computer hacker and a known associate of the Chiara brothers. His connection to the current investigation into Chiara was highly classified intel that she had no business knowing.
He gave her body a calculated perusal. “I’m curious—why the costume and the drink?”
He’d chosen the word costume purposefully and injected some venom into his tone to lob that off-balance feeling right back at her, but he still felt a twinge of regret when she smoothed a hand down her dress in a self-conscious gesture. He touched his shoe to his ankle holster, a reminder of the dangerous mess he was in.
“There are a lot of women here in cocktail dresses holding drinks,” she answered. “I think I blend in rather well, thank you very much.”
He ran his tongue along the backside of his teeth, fighting the urge to break it to her that her rationale was flawed. Sure, there were a lot of fancy-looking women in the lobby, but a hot blonde in a skintight pink dress standing alone at the bar? He’d bet the contents of his safety-deposit box that every male in the room had taken note of her.
The escalator poured them into a wall of people waiting to gain entrance to the ballroom. With one hand on Avery’s elbow and the other on the small of her back, Ryan cut through the crowd, his destination the service stairway entrance on the far side of the second-floor landing near the restrooms. Neither he nor Avery tried to speak, as the effort would’ve been futile given the earsplitting mash-up of dance music and people talking.
As he bypassed the elevators, then the restrooms, she tugged his jacket sleeve. “Wait a sec. Where exactly are we going?”
“Conference rooms on the third floor.”
“What about the hotel room you reserved? Wouldn’t that be the safest place?”
It was happening again. His intuition was going bonkers. Was she trying to lure him there thinking he had yet to visit the room where the hit men had been lying in wait? Or was she asking an honest question? At this point, he couldn’t see any harm in telling her the truth. “Chiara’s men were waiting to ambush me in the room when I got here tonight. So, no, it’s not the safest place for us to talk.”
He opened the stairwell door and leaned in to make sure the stairs were clear. Avery yanked him back by the jacket and gave him a shake. “Hold on—are we in some sort of danger?”
Looking into her wide eyes, a wry chuckle escaped his throat. He removed her hands from his lapels and held her wrists. “Right now I can’t decide if you’re honestly that clueless or if you’re the world’s best liar.”
She jerked away from his grip like he’d burned her. Another twinge of regret jolted through him. He forced himself to remember it was a good sign, that feeling. It meant he had at least a shred of humanity left in him, which was saying something after all he’d seen and done in his life.
“I don’t understand,” she said. Glancing over her shoulder
