Cate froze.
Was that . . . ?
Narrowing her eyes, she dragged two fingers across the trackpad to enlarge the photo on the screen. Then she studied it. Carefully. For what felt like hours. But no matter how many times she zoomed in and out, she still couldn’t make sense of what she was seeing. As her heartbeat accelerated, she opened a Web browser and did a quick image search.
“Holy shit,” she mumbled.
Instincts humming, she scrambled for her cell phone and pulled up Riya’s name. She felt bad waking the woman, but if she was seeing what she thought she was, then Riya would want to be woken up.
“Hey,” came Riya’s response. Fortunately, she sounded alert.
“You need to get back down here. I have something to show you.”
“Everything all right?”
“It’s either more than all right—I’m talking scoop of the century all right—or I’m totally hallucinating.”
There was a soft chuckle. “I’ll be right down.”
While she waited, Cate enlarged the photo and inspected it again. By the time Riya appeared in the bar, she was convinced this was no hallucination. And the wily journalist at her side instantly confirmed it.
“Oh my fuck,” Riya breathed.
Cate sputtered out a laugh. “I know, right?”
The dark-haired woman bent over the screen, her eyes alight with excitement. “Jesus, Cate. It’s really him. Or else it’s someone who’s fucking identical to him.”
That gave Cate pause. “Ah, shit. Didn’t he have a ringer during that raid last year? It was on the news, remember? The DEA ambushed some big powwow between the South American cartels and ended up killing a look-alike. What if this is one of his doubles?”
“Shit. Yeah, that’s a likely possibility.” Riya pursed her lips. “Let me call my guy at the Bureau. They might be able to run this through their facial recognition program. It’ll take some time, though.”
“How much time?”
“Days, most likely. They’re not too quick about granting me favors.”
Cate bit the inside of her cheek. Damn it. She knew someone with access to a program like that too. Someone who could offer results in a matter of minutes, not days.
“Fuck,” she said with a sigh.
Riya’s brow furrowed. “What’s wrong?”
“This is a big deal, right?”
“Uh, this is huge, hon.”
“Huge enough that we’d want confirmation as fast as we can get it?”
“Huge enough to win both of us a Pulitzer.”
“Fuck,” she said again.
“Cate—”
“Don’t contact your FBI buddy,” Cate interrupted. She released a resigned breath. “Morgan will have an answer for us before you even get off the phone with your guy.”
Riya’s lips twitched. “You sure about this?”
Cate was already opening her e-mail account. “You want fast results, this is how we get them.”
She pulled up a new message, attached the photo, and quickly typed a few lines in the body. After she’d hit SEND, she reluctantly reached for her phone and shot off a short text as well.
E-mailing you a pic. Super important. Confirm that this is who I think it is?
She wasn’t surprised when she received an instantaneous response.
Opening the e-mail. Stand by.
Cate rolled her eyes. For a man who spoke to her as if she were a military operative, he sure as hell didn’t treat her like one.
Less than ten seconds later, a follow-up message popped up.
Jesus Christ, Cate. What the hell are you involved in??
She gritted her teeth and typed, Confirm or not?
After a long delay, Morgan texted back.
I’ll get back to you soon. Sit tight.
* * *
Turtle Creek, Costa Rica
“Carbon Cola has announced it will cease production of its products, effective immediately, due to sugar shortages,” announced a sober-voiced newscaster. “Meanwhile, inflation has increased by two hundred and thirty percent in the last month. Food bank lines grow longer on a daily basis, with all but a select few going home empty-handed.” The screen split, and a pale-faced, suited man appeared on the right side. “Steven Cranston, you’re an expert in Guatana foreign affairs—what do you make of this announcement?”
“Watching the news on a Friday night? I see that Jim needs to find something for you to do,” a sultry voice drawled from the doorway.
David “Ash” Ashton looked up to find his boss’s wife leaning against the doorframe. He muted the volume and flashed her his patented Southern smile full of wicked charm. “Does it involve you? Because if so, I’ll be a happy man.”
Noelle’s blue eyes warmed from glacier cold to frosty. The only time those chilly eyes fully thawed was around Ash’s boss, Jim Morgan. The Queen of Assassins took the King of Killers into her bed every night, and from the noises that came out of the bedroom, their lovemaking sounded more like a WWE wrestling match than a fuckfest. Ash always had an urge to cup himself protectively when she was around, but he refrained because he knew, as with any predator, that you couldn’t let them know you feared them.
“You’re a handful, Ash.” She pushed away from the door and sauntered toward him.
Petite and curvy, with a face that belonged on magazine covers, more than one man had lost his head over her—literally. Noelle had put down more dangerous people than a platoon of Marines. She could get you off with one hand while tearing your heart out with the other. Ash surmised she’d done that to Morgan a few times before the two of them had called a truce.
“Feel free to fill your hand with me,” he forced himself to say with a smile. He was a single Southern boy. Flirting was taught at the cradle. It used to come as naturally as breathing, but lately he’d found it hard to muster up any good humor. He’d become a moody shit. “I know Jim will kill me, but it’d be a worthwhile death.”
Noelle stretched out an arm behind him and tangled her fingers in his hair. Most men would pop a boner the moment she sat down next to them on a sectional big enough to house half an army. His head acknowledged she was a beautiful and dangerous woman—the best kind for a mercenary—but his dick didn’t get hard for anyone these days.
He had a feeling she didn’t miss the fact that his downstairs was dead as a doornail as she ran her scarlet-coated fingertips through his hair.
“By all means, let’s go upstairs and do the dirty right now.” Her red lips curved into a smile.
Ash glanced down at his lap and prayed for something, anything to move, even though taking her up on her invitation would mean certain death. He wouldn’t even get to lay a hand on her before Morgan would appear and rip him into pieces. Still, that would mean some kind of relief from the torment Ash had been suffering lately.
“Nah. I don’t want the old man to look bad in comparison. If you had me, you wouldn’t be able to go back. I like Jim too much to do that to him.”
“Ah, I see. So, instead, you’ve blazed a path through all the local girls between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five. I’ve heard you’ve left quite a trail behind you.”
Noelle’s nails scraped along the back of his neck, a highly erogenous zone in the past. That and a light stroke behind his ears never failed to generate wood in his pants. Jesus. He was turning into a miserable human being. He couldn’t even get hard when one of the most beautiful women on the planet was coming on to him. Yes, he knew it was fake. Noelle wouldn’t actually fuck him. Not just because Morgan would kill them both, but because she had zero attraction toward him. And he wasn’t interested in Noelle either.
But shouldn’t he at least get hard? Shouldn’t his cock stand up and acknowledge that a smoking hot chick was rubbing up against him?
“A gentleman doesn’t br
ag about his luck with the ladies.” Ash spread his legs so that his right thigh pressed against Noelle’s knees. Surely that contact would rouse something in him.
“You’ve been staying home a lot lately.”
She moved even closer. Close enough that he could feel her breath waft across the back of his neck. Still nothing.
“Didn’t know you were keeping tabs on my love life,” he said lightly.
“I keep tabs on everyone.”
The way she said “everyone” made his short hairs prickle. “Everyone?” he echoed, trying to act nonchalant.
She smiled smugly. “Aw, honey, you want me to tell you all the dirty little secrets I know? Well . . .” She started ticking off her fingers, one by one. “Isabel and Trevor are trying for a baby—God knows why they’d want to bring a kid into this wretched world. Your boy scout Ethan likes to screw Juliet in the pool but thinks nobody knows what a naughty boy he is. Sofia’s trying to convince Derek to give her a real wedding ceremony instead of the half-assed let’s-go-to-the-courthouse-and-sign-some-papers shit he tried with her. Dubois knocked up his wife. Reilly’s pulling a Sofia and harassing Bailey about marriage. Hmmm . . . who else . . . Kane and Abby kick the shit out of each other in the training room and then fuck like bunnies on the mats afterward.”
“That doesn’t seem like everyone,” Ash noted. A bite of impatience he couldn’t completely tamp down colored his words. Noelle was playing with him, but he wasn’t sure why.
“Oh, who are we missing?” she drawled.
Fuck you, Noelle. She was going to make him say it, huh? And he didn’t want to. For the past four years he’d tried to ignore his inappropriate lust for a girl he shouldn’t be thinking about. He’d buried that lust deep down behind a dozen layers of self-control. He’d tried to fuck her out of his memory bank, burning through the local women, and then, when that failed, jacking off so many times that he swore he’d developed a callus on his right hand.
That only whetted his appetite instead of killing it off. Since then he’d tried to forget that she was alive. But it hadn’t worked. Nothing had.
“No one, I guess. No one important,” he muttered, drawing away from Noelle.
He was growing hard now, but it had nothing to do with Noelle and everything to do with the one person they weren’t talking about. The one person significantly excluded from Noelle’s exhaustive rundown of the entirety of her team of female assassins and Morgan’s team of male mercenaries. The one person in the world who was off-limits to him.
Christ, if Ash thought Jim would castrate him for looking at Noelle funny, that punishment would be a birthday party compared to what Jim would do if he knew who starred in Ash’s nightly—and daytime—fantasies.
And, as if thinking of her conjured up Morgan, the boss himself appeared suddenly in the doorway. “The two of you need to stop flirting and get your asses to the war room,” he barked.
Ash jumped up as if the couch were on fire.
“Ash, honey, at some point, you need to decide that you want something more than Jim’s approval,” Noelle whispered as she slid off the sofa.
Ash followed behind with a bitter taste in his mouth. He knew that. The problem he’d always had was that he wanted both.
Jim’s approval . . . and Jim’s daughter.
Chapter 2
Three years ago
“They’re back.”
Ash watched as Ethan Hayes strolled up with a coil of rope over his shoulder. The two of them were headed for the training course to repair one of the rope climbs, but Ethan seemed more interested in the commotion beyond the front doors. His announcement was completely unnecessary, too. Jim Morgan and his daughter had been arguing loudly since they’d exited Morgan’s Land Rover. From the sounds of it, they might have been arguing since Morgan picked Cate up from the airport.
Ash scratched his neck and pretended he didn’t care that Cate was back, never mind that his dick started swelling at the first sound of her voice. “I’m guessing the college visits were a bust.”
The two men shared a wince at the harsh slam of the door. That door was made of iron and wood. A man had to be really pissed off to hit the frame with that kind of impact.
“Would it fucking kill you to take this seriously?” Morgan thundered.
“I am taking it seriously,” Cate yelled back. “If I take it any more seriously, I’ll be getting my college degree on the fucking application process.”
“Don’t curse.”
“Don’t talk to me, then, you hypocrite!”
“Jesus Christ, Cate. I’m asking you to go out and experience a world that isn’t full of guns and bad guys. Is that so wrong?”
“What’s wrong with this life? Here with you and Noelle and our family?”
Ethan rolled his eyes and mouthed, Family? toAsh.
Yeah, they were a family. An unconventional one full of a bunch of head cases that wouldn’t fit in any other life than this one.
But he didn’t blame Morgan for urging Cate to seek a different path. Morgan’s base of operations was a former drug lord’s compound complete with booby traps, C-4, and three electric gates. Any loving father would want his daughter to live in a nice suburb where the biggest danger was someone’s asshole dog pooping on your lawn instead of the threat of getting wiped out by a rival mercenary group.
“I want something better than that for you.” Morgan’s volume lowered a decibel and took on a weary note. “Anyone you’re going to meet around here is a merc or a hired gun or an operative. You’re better than that.”
“Better than you?”
“Damn straight. The life span of a contract killer is short, Cate. So yeah, I want something better for you.”
Ash’s stomach dropped.
“Let’s go, Rook,” Ethan murmured.
Ignoring the twinge of shame in his gut, he followed the other man into the massive, modern kitchen and grabbed a pair of work gloves off the granite counter. “How long you going to call me that?”
“Until someone newer, younger, or rawer comes along,” Ethan informed him.
“I’m recruiting tonight.”
“Good. Fix now”—Ethan jiggled the rope—“recruit later.”
“Okay, Ger.”
“Ger?”
Both their heads shot up at Cate’s question. They found her standing in the doorway, a wary smile on her lips.
“Short for geriatric.” Ash winked at her while he quickly scanned her face. No signs of crying, thank fuck. Nothing was worse than seeing Cate cry, not even Morgan’s implication that everyone in the household didn’t deserve to breathe the same air as she did. “If I’m the rookie, then Ethan’s a step away from the grave.”
“Nah, that’d be Kane,” Ethan joked as Kane Woodland, their second-in-command, stalked into the kitchen with Morgan dragging up the rear.
“What am I?” Kane grabbed an apple off the counter and bit into it.
“Old. Decrepit. Maybe senile,” Cate volunteered with a pointed look toward her father.
Ash wondered if that would set off another round of fireworks, but Morgan merely snorted.
“What’s so funny, old man?” Kane taunted. “We’re nearly the same age.”
“I’m not the one she’s calling old.”
“Oh you’re old, Jim,” Cate clarified helpfully.
“Not compared to Kane. I might be older than him in years, but I’m younger where it counts.” Morgan smirked. “Ethan, what was Kane’s time last run?”
“A little over nine minutes.” Ethan was the keeper of all the team’s times. The men could get a little competitive.
“Bullshit. I run that course in eight and under every time.” Kane turned to Ash. “Next time we race, I need you there to keep Ethan honest, rookie. I don’t trust that kid.”
Ethan just grinned.
“And you?” Kane said, turning to their boss. “You really think you can do better? You’re slower than molasses.”
Morgan raised a brow. “I could smoke your ass any day. Let’s go. Right now.”
“Bring it.”
“I’m not kidding.”
“Neither am I.” Kane held out his arm. “After you,sir.”
Morgan flipped him off before heading for the French doors that led to the huge stone terrace where the team liked to dine at night. The sun shone brightly above the lush green canopy of the jungle bordering the enormous property. As Ash watched in amusement, the two older men set off in a brisk march toward the tree line.
“Men,” Cate grumbled from the counter.
Ethan snickered. “I can’t believe they’re actually going to race.”
“You better get out there to time them,” Ash told him.
“Hell no. Whichever one of them loses will kick me in the balls for being the time messenger. They can time themselves.”
“Oooh, I’ll do it,” Cate said with sudden glee. “It’ll be fun declaring Jim a big, fat loser.”
Ash stifled a laugh as she practically pranced to the patio doors. “Oh, hey,” she whispered as she passed by. “I need to talk to you later.”
“About what?”
“College. Him.” She jerked a thumb toward her dad’s back as Morgan strode toward the jungle. “Please?”
It was the sad plea in her voice that did him in. “Course.”
“Thank you.” Cate squeezed his arm and then hurried down the terrace steps to catch up with the men.
Unwittingly, Ash’s eyes drifted down to her ass, which was nicely encased in a pair of worn denim cutoffs. Christ. Her legs were criminally long. He stifled a groan.
“Better watch where your eye lands. People are noticing,” Ethan murmured.
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Seventeen’s a little young, don’t you think?”
“I repeat,” Ash said stiffly, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Best keep it that way. Noelle’s chameleons are adults and fair game. Jim’s little girl? Completely off-limits, dude.”