we’ll set up a time to meet. Be prepared to be pulled out right after that.”
“I will.” She tugged her hat down on her head and was sliding from the booth when Craig reached out and grabbed her wrist.
“I can’t stress this enough. Be careful, Lauren. My Spidey senses are tingling.”
“I will. I promise.” She had no wish to get crosswise with Stefan Maes.
As she exited the Dirty Dog, she pulled her jacket tighter around her body and turned up the collar. The temperature had dipped again while she was inside and there was a sharp nip in the air. Craig’s words echoed in her brain and she felt as if she had a target painted on her back. She walked with rapid steps to the closest Tube station. A mob still crowded the sidewalks despite the temperature, and she had to fight her way through it, all her senses on high alert.
Even when she reached the station she scanned every area the way she’d been trained. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Just the usual Friday night late crowd, everything from singles and couples heading home after a night out to the usual lowlifes who seemed to spend their lives in the Tube stations.
She was smart and savvy enough, however, to know that didn’t mean anything. At each station she was careful to choose where she stood to wait. She changed trains twice, and damn it, why did it seem as if all the cars on the three trains she rode were full past capacity? She had that familiar twitchy feeling between her shoulder blades, as if someone was watching her. Or worse yet, aiming a gun at her.
Her eyes never stopped moving. Did that guy in the black jacket look at her strangely? Was that a gun in his pocket? Maybe it was the woman watching her from the corner of her eye. At one station she boarded a train then just before it took off, leaped out, and waited for the next one. But that twitchy feeling was still there.
She hadn’t tripped any wires. She knew she hadn’t. And Craig was just being his usual old lady self. That was what he got paid for. So why had she been feeling this way all week?
From the beginning, she’d been able to play her part because she knew her handler had her back. She just hoped that neither of them was overreacting.
She was exhausted by the time she exited the final stop of the night. Again, she searched the streets as she hiked from the train to the building where she entered the tunnel. Were those footsteps she heard behind her? A man was out walking his dog, and she closed her hand over the gun in her pocket, just in case.
Tap, tap, tap.
When she looked over her shoulder she saw an old man walking with a cane. What on earth was he doing out so late at night? She walked faster, hurrying down the familiar street. Maybe she should have stayed at an all-night place until it was light before heading home.
She raced up the stairs of the building behind hers, let herself in, and hurried to the tunnel, following it to her building. At last she climbed the inside stairway to her flat with weary steps. She had just pulled her key out to unlock her door when the special phone buzzed in her pocket. Her stomach knotted, knowing this meant something serious. She pulled it out and pressed the button to answer.
“Craig?”
“Get the hell out of there. Don’t pack, don’t do anything. You know where to meet me, and I’ll have everything you need. Just get going. This minute.”
Then he said the three words no covert CIA agent ever wanted to hear.
“Your cover’s blown.”
Chapter 2
Arrowhead Bay, two years later
“That’s it, Marissa. Foot sweep. Just like that.”
Marissa Hayes extended her leg and swept her foot as instructed, almost, but not quite taking Justin Kelly to the floor. Sweat dripped from her as the former SEAL, wearing protective gear and a big grin, moved just out of range. The protective gear she wore didn’t help her movements, either.
“Damn!” She swiped her forearm across her forehead, catching the drips of perspiration. “You do it every time.”
“That’s what I get paid for. Don’t tell me you’re ready to quit.”
She glared at him. “Not even for money. Bring it on, mister.”
Justin grinned at her, a curve of his lips that made her body want something other than kicks and jabs and punches.
“Okay, then.”
This was the fourth lesson she’d taken from him. When Vigilance, the elite private security agency that made its home in Arrowhead Bay, began offering both group and private classes in certain forms of self-defense, Avery March, the owner, had urged Marissa to take advantage of it.
“You never know when you might need it,” she’d cautioned.
And in Marissa’s situation, that was more truth than poetry.
When one of the most dangerous men in the world had you at the top of his hit list, you never had the luxury of relaxing. Stefan Maes’s reach, even after losing so much of his empire, was still extensive. And she knew, without a doubt, he’d never give up.
In the two years since her job with the CIA had ended so abruptly, she’d fit herself in to the slow pace of life in Arrowhead Bay, which really suited her. She could be as anonymous as she wanted. For the most part she’d isolated herself from social situations, reminding herself she wasn’t in a position to develop a relationship. Not now. Maybe not ever. Her situation could blow up in her face any time. She never stopped looking over her shoulder. Always double and triple checking locks. Never parking her car in dark places. Ever alert to her surroundings and strangers who could bring danger to her. Never getting too close to people.
She didn’t think she’d ever be able to let her guard down again. She’d always be looking over her shoulder, but that was the tradeoff.
Reluctantly she’d let Avery talk her into these classes.
“You know Justin,” the woman reminded her. “You’ll be comfortable with him.”
That was true. He was an unexpected and unplanned bright spot as she crafted a new life for herself for the third time. She’d also begun to think of him as her safety net. Not only had he been with Vigilance for five years but he was also a former SEAL. She couldn’t get better protection than that if she needed it.
Maybe because of that he was one of the few people here she could relax with.
Sort of.
Because he was also a man who lived in her dreams almost every night. Who woke up parts of her body she’d thought frozen. It didn’t help that she sensed she was having the same effect on him, from the way he looked at her and the tentative signals he’d floated. But he would never make any kind of move unless she indicated she was open to one. It both excited and scared her.
She couldn’t relax too much.
She had to keep repeating that to herself on a daily basis. Letting down her guard could prove fatal to her. Something she never forgot. When she took the CIA assignment, she had suppressed any need for sex, buried any desire for a relationship. She couldn’t do that and her job. Something like that
