Scuba-diving convict loon that Steele was, he was all or nothing.
God help them.
"Yeah. I'll tag along for a look-see."
"Good. Oh, and I almost forgot the best part.... you know our friends at Asset Protection?"
Syd ground her teeth at the mention of the "security" company that was a known front for organized crime, mercenaries, and hired assassins. "What about them?"
"They've been in contact with our boy Steele. I have it on good authority that they even made an employment offer not too long back."
A slow smile spread across her face. Oh, yeah, he was perfect.
Tee winked at her. "Do whatever you need to to get ready while I go arm-wrestle Joe into this."
Syd watched as Tee made her way back to the private office that she shared with their director, Joe Public. When Syd had signed on with the agency, her agenda had been solely to protect those who couldn't protect themselves.
It was an oath she took most seriously. If she failed in this mission, there was no telling what repercussions could affect not just her life, but millions of others.
Who would have ever thought that the best way to save lives was to take one? But then that was what Joe had preached to her from the first day on her job.
He even had a name for it. Political pruning. In order to make the tree grow, the dead, diseased, and contaminated limbs had to be removed. If they didn't fall off on their own, then you had to get the chain saw out and cut them loose. At first she'd been naive enough to think that she could never be so jaded. But time and missions had finally succeeded in bringing her around to Joe's way of thinking.
It was a dog-eat-dog world, and she had the biggest bite of all.
Two
"T he man took a potshot at his commanding officer."
Ignoring his comment, Tee leaned against Joe's desk to read over his shoulder. He was looking at the folder she'd handed him, which contained the dossier for her latest possible recruit: Joshua Steele, former Army sniper, now semipermanent resident of Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
She couldn't understand Joe's reticence about that one little fact that had sent Steele to jail. Normally he saw good potential whenever she handed it to him.
"Yeah, so? He's surly, ill-tempered. Marches to his own tune and makes quick decisions. Okay, granted, shooting at the CO, not bright, but we all do stupid things from time to time. Other than that one tiny critical error in judgment, he sounds like a perfect recruit for the Bureau of American Defense."
Joe gave her a droll stare as he closed the file. "He took a potshot at his commanding officer."
For her life, Tee couldn't understand why he was hung up on that. "So? He's even passed Syd's scrutiny, and I know I don't have to tell you what a death-defying feat that is."
"I would be his commanding officer, Tiger. Don't you think you've already gotten me shot enough times in my career?"
She rolled her eyes at him and snatched the folder from his hands. "You're never going to get over Prague, are you?"
He gave her an indignant glare as he slapped at his leg. "You shot me in the thigh."
She snorted. "It was only the fleshy part."
"Fleshy part, my ass. Another millimeter or two more, and the boys would have been history."
She waved a hand dismissively as she returned to her metal desk, which was set just across from his. Unlike his, which was always kept scrupulously clean, hers was littered with catalogs, files, papers and several small Amy Brown statues that she collected. "Yeah, yeah, be glad I was tired and my aim was off." She put the folder in her large black briefcase. "Now stop being a baby and make the call."
He continued to glare at her. "Why is it when I'm the one shot, I'm a baby, but when it's you, it's a matter of life and death and national security?"
"Because I'm cuter in a short skirt. Now make the call, Joe."
"Make the call, Joe," he mocked as he reached for his antiquated Rolodex. Personally, she much preferred her small PDA, but Joe was virtually a technophobe--he hated anything that was electronic. Except for the TV remote, and that was one penchant she didn't want to even think about.
He opened the cover and started spinning through the cards. "You do realize that I am the head of this agency, right?"
Tee made a rude noise at him as she opened up her filing drawer and rooted around in it for the rest of Steele's paperwork, which she'd already gathered. "Figurehead, you mean. You couldn't find the key to the door in the morning unless I handed it to you first."
He continued to flip through the cards without looking at her. "Only because I'm not a morning person."
She gave him an arch stare. "And you're not a night person either. Face it, babe. You've only got two good minutes a day. The minute before noon and the minute right after."
He cast a feral glare at her that might have actually scared her if she wasn't packing an even higher-caliber weapon than he was. "You know, I could fire you. I could even arrange to get you killed. Or kill you myself."
Tee organized some of the more errant papers on her desk while he blustered at her. "Ooo, big scary threat. That might hold water if it wasn't for the fact that I know how much you hate paperwork."
"I do know how to operate a computer."
She had to force herself not to laugh at that one. The first thing she'd learned years ago when they had been partners in the CIA was that Joe Public would rather be hit in the head with a tack hammer than sit at a desk, working on a computer.
"Yeah, right. What was it you said just ten minutes ago? Get this damned thing off my desk before I shoot it? Now make the call, Mr. Hunt-and-Peck."
Joe tossed a piece of rolled-up paper at her before he dialed the phone.
Tee caught it, kissed it, then hurled it back at him.
It rebounded off his head.
He growled at her as he bent over, like any good obsessive-compulsive, picked it up from the floor, and tossed it into the garbage can. "I really should fire you."
Tee would have commented that she wasn't that lucky, but just as she opened her mouth, he started talking to their Army contact. She forced herself not to smile at the fact that she was getting her way...again. But then she almost always did with Joe. He was like a big surly bear in a cave. You poked him, he growled threateningly, then moved aside as he rubbed his tush and glared menacingly at you.
Then again, Joe only did that for her.
Deep down, she knew the truth. Joe Public was never a pushover. He was hard-nosed, callous, and stern, one of the best agents the CIA had ever trained. Joe didn't know the meaning of the word play.
Which was a shame, given just how good the man looked. He had long, dark brown hair that he usually wore pulled back in a ponytail, eyes that were so blue, they should be illegal, and a butt so fine that Hollywood agents would jump to sign it.
She'd seen him shirtless a time or two on assignments and had never fully recovered from the sight. Lean and taut, his body could rival that of any male gymnast. And every time she saw glimpses of it, she was possessed with a raw need to lick every inch of him...
Tee clamped down those thoughts--as she always did. Work and play didn't mix.
Joe was her ex-partner and, at the end of the day, her boss. There could never be anything more than that between them, and she knew it.
But deep down in places she shouldn't acknowledge, she wanted a lot more than just a working relationship with him.
She listened to that take-no-shit tone of his as he talked to their contact. A New York City boy, Joe was able to disguise his accent 99 percent of the time. But when he was trying to intimidate or take control, that accent came out full force.
And something about it was sexy as hell. But then, his voice always was. Deep and resonant, it had a way of sending chills up and down her spine.
Joe hung up the phone.
"Well?" she asked, hiding the fact that she was embarrassed to admit she'd been so focused on him that she hadn't been listening to his conve
rsation.
"Book us a flight to Kansas, Dorothy. Let's see if Toto can bark."
Three
I t was just another day in hell as far as Steele was concerned. Why he had ever thought it would be preferable to do time in an orange uniform instead of a green one, he wasn't sure.
But two years ago, when he'd decided to shoot the helmet off his CO in a fit of anger, he'd figured anything, even court-martial and jail, was better than what the Army had in store for him.
Boy, was he ever wrong.
Now he'd spend the next twenty-five years inside these walls, listening to the other inmates spiel bullshit while he had to fight daily to maintain the fact that he was cock of the walk, and if anyone wanted a piece of him, they were going to die for it.
Yee-haw, his life was great.
"Steele?"
He looked up from the carrots he was skinning with a spoon to see one of the guards eyeing him.
"You have visitors."
It took a full twenty seconds for those unexpected words to register.
Visitors? Him?
What were the odds of that? His family had abandoned him the day he'd been arrested.
So had all of his friends. Not that he'd ever had that many to begin with. He'd always been a loner for the most part, some of which came from being an Army brat whose family was transferred from post to post every three to four years. The only real friends he'd ever had had been crazy old Jack and Brian. Jack was now holed up in a bunker away from the world, where he most likely had no idea what had happened to Steele, and Brian...
He winced as pain tore through him like glycerin on glass. How could his family have cut him loose so easily? He'd have never done this to anyone, but for all intents and purposes, he'd been completely orphaned and abandoned by everyone he'd mistakenly thought he was close to. None of them wanted the taint of his incarceration to stick to them. Like they were the ones who had to live the horror of his life.
In the last eighteen months the only people who'd come to see him were his lawyer and one stupid asshole who'd wanted to hire him to kill people.
Yeah, right. He was through with killing for a paycheck. If Uncle Sam couldn't get him to do it, no one else could either.
His days of pulling a trigger were over.
Steele turned off the oh-so-manly food processor, then wiped his hands on his equally manly apron. He pulled the apron off over his head and hung it up on the wall hook.
"He can't leave," the head cook shouted at the guard, who was a good three inches taller than Steele. With a stocky build, Hank wasn't the most benevolent of prison guards. He was more like the kind who generally gave them all a bad name. But for fate, no doubt the man would have been in Steele's shoes behind the bars Hank liked to clank with his nightstick as he walked down the hallways at night. Steele really detested the bastard. "We've got to get this meal finished."
"Then you better find yourself someone else to run the food processor," Hank said. "These people aren't the kind to wait."
Steele snorted. "What? We got the fucking president out there or something?"
Hank curled his lip. "Stow it, Steele. These aren't the kind of folks you piss off."
Yeah, right. Everyone was the kind of person you pissed off at some point. No one, not even the president, was that big. "Maybe you don't, Hank, but we'll see about me."
Hank looked less than impressed by his attitude. "Your funeral."
The guard led him out to the hallway, where they were waiting to cuff him. Steele stiffened. Part of him wanted to fight rather than submit, but he'd learned the first few weeks of his unfortunate incarceration that fighting the guards really didn't pay.
Here at Club Leavenworth, daily humiliation was just par for the course. And if he was really lucky, they might even wake him up in the middle of the night and let him scrub toilets with his toothbrush again.
Oh, goody.
Grinding his teeth, he forced himself not to react as Hank grabbed his arm and hauled him toward the visitation room that was reserved for conferring with attorneys. It was one he hadn't seen any more of since his attorney had told him that the last appeal they could make had been turned down flat. Now the attorney, who had cost him every dime he'd had, wouldn't even return his calls. Yeah...his life was just a bowl full of laughs.
Needless to say, he wasn't particularly thrilled by being here again as those repressed emotions went through him, stoking his anger.
Once they reached the correct room--which, as fate would have it, happened to be the one where he'd lost his last hope--the guard opened the door, then shoved him into it.
Steele stumbled a step before he caught his balance and went ramrod stiff. His nostrils flared as he kept his anger leashed and his gaze carefully on the floor. He wanted desperately to glare at Hank, but he knew better than to even try it. Instead, he felt a muscle working in his jaw as he righted himself to look at the people who were there to speak with him.
Like the rest of the prison, the room was drab, but even if the walls had been painted hot pink with naked hookers on them, the intense people waiting on him would have stood out.
They were government-trained. He could smell it. It bled from every pore of their bodies, even though they were dressed as civilians, and the man had hair longer than the woman sitting beside him. Steele's gaze went to the man's right arm, where a tattoo was peeking out from underneath his long, dark blue sleeve. He had on black pleated pants and a red-striped tie, but not even that could cover the fact that the man wasn't as refined as he wanted to appear.
There was something about him that was raw and deadly--the kind of guy you'd have to fight in a bar because his woman dared to look at you.
And God help you if you were dumb enough to speak to her.
The woman beside him was a strange dichotomy. She was a tiny, petite Asian woman--Vietnamese-American, if he didn't miss his guess. Dressed in a white blouse and short black skirt, she appeared sedate and calm. Yet his instincts told him it was only a facade. Her movements were too precise. Too studied. He sensed that she was as acutely aware of him as he was of her. Her short black hair was a perfect frame for her attractive face as she watched him from behind a pair of soulless black eyes.
But it was the woman standing in the corner with her arms crossed over her chest who held his attention most. Her expression totally blank, she was dressed in a pair of jeans with a loose red top and a dark brown leather blazer. She wasn't very tall, only about five-four or so. She wasn't petite or heavy, but rather built solidly.
An image of an Amazon warrior popped into his mind. Yeah, he could see her like that. Sword in one hand, whip in the other as she stood toe to toe with an enemy.
Or better yet, naked over the guy she'd tied to her bed.
That thought almost made him smile. Only the pain of his sudden erection kept him from it. It'd been way too long since he'd last spoken to a woman. Never mind being close enough to one that she could actually tie him up to something.
What he wouldn't give to have five minutes alone with her...
Steele forced himself not to betray those thoughts, but it was hard.
Her long black hair was pulled back into a braid that fell to the middle of her back. No doubt it would be soft to touch. Like silk against his face as he nuzzled her neck...
It was enough to make him want to whimper.
She wore a pair of round tortoiseshell-framed glasses that didn't even come close to hiding her green eyes, which had a feline slant to them. Something hot and wicked went through him as he watched her.
Every part of him seemed strangely attuned to her presence. Yeah, he'd been in prison way too long. She wasn't his type by a long shot. She looked more likely to kick a man's ass than to ride it.
And still he had to force himself not to stare at her, and he wasn't even sure why. Her lips and eyes were a bit too large, her stance a little too masculine.
Even so, there was something about her that was absolutely compelling. r />
The guard led him toward a chair across the table from them.
"Uncuff his hands," the unknown man said in a bored tone.
"That's against protocol."
"Un. Cuff. His. Hands," he repeated, stressing the syllables of each word without looking at the guard.
Hank glared at the man an instant before he roughly complied. Steele forced himself not to grimace as Hank wrenched his hand so hard, he half expected it to break.
"Fine, if he attacks you--"
"He'll be dead before he hits the floor," the seated woman said in a distracted tone as she rummaged through her large black leather briefcase. "And I'm sure he knows it."
Steele rubbed his wrists as he hooked a heel against the chair leg to pull it out. He sat down and eyed the seated pair sullenly.
The guard took a stance inside the door.
"Wait outside," the man said.
"That's--"
"Wait. Out. Side," he stressed again.
Oh, yeah, there would be hell for him to pay later after these three were gone and Hank could prove himself superior. Steele couldn't wait.
The guard cast a feral sneer at them before he complied.
"Thanks," Steele said sarcastically as his anger swelled again. "Can't wait for the walk back. You guys specialize in something other than acid enemas?"
The Vietnamese woman's eyes gleamed at that as she set her briefcase on the floor. "Ooo, he's snotty. I like him already."
The man, like the woman who still continued to stand off to the side, was completely stone-faced. Steele had to admire that. It took a lot of practice to show absolutely no emotion. He knew that well enough, since he practiced it religiously.
When the man spoke, his tone was as cold as his body language. "We're here with a special offer for you, Mr. Steele. A once-in-a-lifetime type of opportunity."
Steele snorted. "Oh, wait, I've seen this movie. I do a job for you, and you let me go. So who am I? I can't be Eddie Murphy, wrong ethnicity. I'm not bald, so I can't be Vin Diesel. So where does that leave me?"
The woman gave him an evil smile. "Think Snake Plissken. You know...Escape from New York? You do this job, and if you don't fuck it up, we let you live."
"Yeah, I've seen that movie. At the end they try to kill him anyway."