maroon. And she was young, midtwenties maybe. Which he supposed wasn’t that young. It was just the age of his younger sister, who would forever and always be his baby sister, even when she turned old and gray.
Like his sister, the woman trembling in front of him was beautiful in an old-fashioned way. Her skin was porcelain, her lips rosy and full, her eyes huge and dark. Her beauty was soft.
Under any other circumstances but these, he would have registered this woman as ridiculously attractive, walked away from her and then obsessed about her for weeks afterward, kicking himself for not talking to her or at least getting her name and phone number.
It wasn’t that he’d never successfully put the moves on a hot female. But he’d been undercover for so long that he was starting to worry about forgetting how to come on to women at all.
He could not see her figure under that ridiculous coat, but even swathed in heavy wool, she was slight in stature. She hadn’t fought like an athlete. And then there’d been that horrifying moment when she’d started to go into shock. She’d gone limp in her captor’s arms like prey in the jaws of death.
He hadn’t intended to leave his surveillance post. He’d been prepared to let her get robbed, maybe even roughed up a little. But when that bastard had started to drag her away—and, worse, she’d appeared to go catatonic—he’d had no choice but to leave his hidey-hole and act.
She might be the target of his op, but that op did not include watching the damned subject die. He needed her contacts. Her connection to the top leadership of the group he’d spent all these months infiltrating.
It was a huge breach of security protocol to blow his cover like this, to come into direct contact with the person he was supposed to be watching. But what choice did he have? He couldn’t stand by and let that jerk drag her off and do his worst to her. Swearing to himself, he pasted on the bland expression of a casual passerby who was just grateful to have been in the right place at the right time to lend a hand to a lady in distress.
The cops collected the assailant, who was now looking quite a bit worse for wear. He watched carefully to make sure they didn’t mess up Mirandizing and cuffing the perp.
As a police officer stuffed the assailant in the back of a squad car, Max straightened and turned to check on the woman. He lurched as something light plastered itself against his chest. It was her. Oh, God, sobbing.
“I got to you as fast as I could,” he muttered unwillingly. “I’m sorry it wasn’t sooner.”
Reluctantly his arms came up around her, and, swear to God, she snuggled against him. The strangest feeling washed over him as this tiny female burrowed closer against his chest as if he were a combination furnace and Second Coming. It made him feel protective. Possessive. Needed. What the hell was that all about?
Lord knew, other people had needed him his whole life. His father after the divorce devastated him. His mother after the car accident paralyzed her. His baby sister after their mother died and left him alone to raise her. But never had any of that made him feel like this. Like he could climb a mountain or conquer an army single-handedly.
The woman’s shaking lessened as he held her, and eventually a policeman peeled her off his chest to take a brief statement from her about what had happened. She gave her name, Lissa Clearmont, but, of course, he already knew it.
He already knew lots of things about her. Like what time she opened the bedroom blinds in the morning to greet the sun. That she practiced yoga almost every day. That she didn’t like being in the store alone after dark. Which electric company and telephone company the shop used. What brand of laundry soap the owner preferred. After all, he was very good at his job.
He was intrigued when she begged off coming down to the police station immediately to make a report, saying that she had something pressing to do before she talked to them again. What was more important than putting away the bastard who’d tried to assault her and possibly kill her? There’d been something about the way the assailant had attacked Lissa that smacked of a psychopath and not a regular, garden-variety mugger.
Another police car pulled up, this one unmarked except for a magnetic siren stuck to the driver’s side roof. Bastien LeBlanc, a friend of his sister and her fiancé, piled out of the car. He looked as if he’d been pulled out of an undercover mission, too. Or maybe he’d been at a strip club down in the French Quarter using all those bad-boy good looks to get lucky. He stopped to speak briefly with the arresting officers and then made his way over to Max.
“Hey, bro. What up?” the New Orleans cop and former navy SEAL asked him.
“That guy—” he pointed at the perp in the cop car “—mugged that woman—” he pointed at Lissa “—a few minutes ago.”
“Lemme guess. You dived in and saved the day. Dude’s looking a little rough around the edges. Street name’s Julio G. He’s a notorious gangster. We’ve been working on taking him down for a couple of years. Problem is, his flunkies keep taking the fall for him and he keeps slipping out of our net. But not tonight, methinks. Make sure the NOPD doesn’t get blamed for busting him up like that, eh? We wouldn’t want him to get off on yet another technicality.”
Max grimaced. “The girl did most of the visible damage after I took the bastard down. I thought it might be good for her to work out a little of her fear on him before we called you guys.”
Bastien grinned. “I’m beginning to see why my future brother-in-law called you an ice-cold motherfu—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Max interrupted. “Listen. I need a favor.”
“Name it. The district attorney’s going to be thrilled that we finally got Julio G. dead to rights. We think he’s top dog in one of the more violent gangs in the area. Not only did you take him down, but you gift wrapped him for the police. No way is he passing off these charges on to one of his boys. We owe you one.”
“I need my name kept out of the police report. In fact, I need all mention of my being involved with this incident sanitized out of the official record.”
“You don’t want any credit at all for catching this slimeball?”
“Nope. None. I was never here.”
Bastien grinned again. “I dunno. The way that pretty little lady’s lookin’ at you, I might rethink that ‘never been here’ thing. She’s one sweet piece of—”
“And that’ll be enough out of you,” Max interrupted.
Bastien frowned. “The woman’s testimony ought to be enough to put Julio away. But if it’s not looking good at trial, I’m gonna have to give your name to the DA and let him call you to testify. We can’t let this guy slip out of our grasp. He’s seriously bad news.”
Max nodded reluctantly. “Understood.” This was the paradox of being undercover and going after bad guys. It became a trade-off of blowing one’s cover versus putting away the scumbags one encountered along the way. At what point was it worth blowing two years’ worth of undercover work to put away one guy?
“Do me a favor in return, bro,” Bastien said.
“What’s that?” he asked cautiously.
“See to it Ms. Clearmont gets home safely. She’s refusing to come down to the station until tomorrow to make her statement, and I’d hate for
