Colton Cowboy Standoff, page 22
He’d determined that ROC was using the library somehow to pass information but he didn’t know how. And he couldn’t directly ask Ludmila Markova, the woman whose file he’d committed to photographic memory months ago. She had to be caught committing a crime before he could tip off SVPD to arrest her.
As he watched, Markova hadn’t been successful in getting the back door open, which he found surprising, as well as amusing. The thugs Ivanov employed were top notch and knew their way around locks of all kinds. And they usually were smarter than to attempt to sneak into a public building in broad daylight. But nothing was usual for ROC. They did whatever had to be done to accomplish their jobs, whether that was moving kidnapped underage immigrant women into sex slavery and trafficking illegal drugs, or laundering money made from all of the above.
He watched Portia DiNapoli speak to Markova and a cold sense of dread blanketed him. Emotions weren’t allowed during his missions, but he never ignored his intuition. This could go south so very quickly, so very badly. Markova had at least the long knife she’d used to try to pry the door open, and she was adept at using it according to the profile he had on her. Besides her current work for ROC, a number of assassinations were included at the top of the long list of grim accomplishments in her FSB history.
By comparison, Portia DiNapoli’s record was as squeaky clean as they came, and reflected an average American who did her job well and contributed to the community with her entire heart. People like Portia were why the Trail Hikers’ work was so important. She was not someone who deserved to bleed out in the library parking lot because she’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time with a trained ROC killer.
Kyle eased himself out of the truck’s passenger side, using a car parked next to his to shield his movements. His breath steamed in the frozen air and he kept his movements slow and steady. If luck was on his side, Markova would turn and leave without harming Portia.
Kyle never relied on luck. He listened to their conversation, which was taking place no more than ten yards away.
“Excuse me, can I help you?” Portia’s voice, normally gravelly and sexy, sounded angry as she shouted at Markova. Making like he was walking toward the diner’s back entrance, he hoped to be able to shout and startle the criminal, forcing her to leave the library parking lot.
But the word laptop got his radar up.
“Hey, our laptops are for in-house use only. Why are you—” From Portia’s tone, there’d be no working it out. He heard it and so did Markova, apparently, who turned and fled. But not before she shoved Portia, who disappeared into the open exit.
Okay, that made it easier, at least. Portia would be safe.
Except that she’d decided the library laptop wasn’t going to disappear on her. To his surprise and consternation, Portia was back on her feet and out the door in a blink. He watched her long legs stretch out, her arms pumping, and did what any reputable, competent undercover agent would not do. Kyle ran after Portia.
* * *
Portia followed the woman up and onto the railroad tracks, her feet screaming that her simple leather oxfords were no replacement for sneakers or snow boots in the frigid temperatures. Snow crunched under foot and her lungs burned with no scarf to help warm the air.
What was so important on the laptop that the woman would rather risk being criminally charged for taking it than just simply turning it back in and then checking it out again the next day? And why was she running from Portia? Why had she shoved her?
Portia’s mind raced with the possibilities, but right now she needed to get the woman, get the library’s computer. She was gaining on the woman and gave it ten more strides. As she drew close enough to touch her, she reached for her hoodie and tugged. The woman turned and faced her, still holding the laptop in her arm. Shooting Portia an evil grin that was revealed by the curve of bright red lips in the mouth opening of the knitted mask, she brandished a knife with menacing intent, and the winter sun flashed off the blade.
Portia drew up short, barely stopping herself from falling on the woman—and her knife. She felt the wooden train ties under her thin-soled shoes, her legs trembling, no, quaking. But not from the cold. From the shock, the sheer terror of facing down her own mortality. Before Portia could pull back, run from the knife, she saw the woman’s eyes glint, narrow, focused on something behind Portia. Her lips curled upward again, as if the laptop thief liked what she saw. Without further threats, the woman jumped off the tracks and ran into the woods on the other side of town. Too late, Portia realized the pounding of her feet on the railroad track wasn’t what made the frozen wood ties shake. It was a train. The sound of its whistle blowing was the last thing she remembered before being hit sideways by an overpowering force.
Copyright © 2018 by Geri Krotow
Geek girl Lexi Carmichael thought getting engaged would mean calmer days ahead. But when her fiancé’s past brings up more questions than answers, she’s not going to let anything—or anyone—drive them apart.
Keep reading for a sneak peek at No Stone Unturned by Julie Moffett.
No Stone Unturned
by Julie Moffett
If my mom texted me a picture of my own engagement ring one more time, I was going to lose it.
Apparently she was trying to send them to her best friend, Candi Schmidt, but Mom and her new phone were still coming to an understanding, so she’d texted me the same picture seven times in the last five minutes. It was my picture to start with, and I’d only sent it to her after she bugged me for a week, threatening that if she didn’t get a photo, she’d post an engagement announcement on my behalf in the Washington Post. That horrified me enough to snap a photo of my ring and send it to her. Unfortunately she now wanted to share it with all her friends, which essentially meant the entire greater DC area. I had seriously been considering hacking her phone so it went exactly nowhere, but it seemed that wasn’t necessary. For now, I gritted my teeth and tried to be happy that the photo was coming back to me, over and over, instead of to her ginormous circle of friends.
My phone dinged again, but I ignored it. Mom was just excited for me, but she was telling everyone about my engagement, while I’ve struggled with telling anyone, even close friends and family. Her enthusiasm was starting to make me feel weird about the mixed-up feelings I was having about getting engaged. I’m a geek girl who loathes attention, and telling people that Slash and I are engaged inevitably leads to screams, hugs, and a thousand questions about a wedding I haven’t even thought about yet. The stress was getting so acute that not even reciting Frederich Karl Gauss’s Theory of Reciprocity could take the edge off my social anxiety.
My name is Lexi Carmichael and my life was a bit weird even before I got engaged. My fiancé and I are both uberhackers—me for a private cyber intelligence company called X-Corp and Slash for the NSA. His nickname is short for backslash in hacker lingo, and only a few people know his real name because of the covert nature of his intelligence work. He’s recently taken a much more visible position, and is now the youngest director of the Information Assurance Directorate in NSA history, followed around the clock by his own special Secret Service detail.
My own job isn’t exactly lacking in excitement either. X-Corp is based in DC, but despite the virtual nature of my job, I travel a lot to secure my clients’ assets. I used to think that being an expert in cybersecurity meant a safe, quiet job behind a desk. I’ve discovered that couldn’t be farther from the truth. It’s a new world out there, and security is more often than not managed by strokes on a keyboard. Since humans are often the weak link in cybersecurity, I’ve had to do considerable work with people to keep data safe and secure. All that means both Slash and I are at the forefront of protecting national security, as well as business interests. It sometimes puts a strain on our relationship, but we decided to take it to the next level and commit ourselves to each other anyway.
At this particular moment, national security wasn’t even on my radar. Instead I was focused on the engagement party Slash had informed me was inevitable. As the news of our engagement filtered out, our friends and family wanted to see us in person to congratulate us and see the new house we’d recently moved into together. Although we’d planned the party for this Friday, I was obsessing and stressing because this would be the first one I’d ever thrown in my own house. Slash was helping, which meant we were muddling along, trying not to kill each other in the process.
“Do we really have to allow people to bring a guest?” I asked him for the third time, studying the spreadsheet while chewing on the eraser at the top of my pencil. We were sitting at the counter with mugs of coffee and a printed spreadsheet of all the things we had to do for the party. I’d carefully divided the spreadsheet into three parts—my responsibilities, Slash’s jobs and our joint tasks. Inviting people was part of our joint-task column, so here we were, hammering it out.
He glanced up from the spreadsheet and my breath caught in my throat. He was unquestionably the best-looking guy I’d ever dated. Okay, he was pretty much the only guy I’d ever dated seriously. Still, when he spoke with his sexy Italian accent and gazed at me with his deep brown eyes, all logic left my brain. I knew that sometimes he used that to his advantage.
His mouth quirked slightly at the corner, probably because he could see the glazed look coming into my eyes. Yep, Seduction 101, that’s exactly what he was doing. Even though I was fully aware of it, it was still working.
“Your brothers have girlfriends, right?” he replied. “Guest plus one is standard.”
“Who cares about plus one?” I groused. “I don’t even know who their girlfriends are this week.”
He didn’t respond, so I let out a loud huff of annoyance before reluctantly adding two extra people as the unknown guests of my brothers. “We’ve already got sixteen people, including my parents. “It’s too many guests. We’ll never fit them all.”
“We have a big house, cara. We’ll fit and have room to spare. Besides, it’s possible some people won’t come. You can stop worrying.”
I’d never stop worrying, because I’d rather endure a dozen Microsoft patches than attend a party. But here we were—party planning central.
Forcing myself to keep my mind on the task at hand, I resumed studying the spreadsheets. “Do I have to iron napkins?” I asked.
Slash looked up from the spreadsheet. “What?”
“The napkins. The book said formal events required ironed napkins. But now that I think about it, we don’t have napkins to be ironed.”
Slash started to say something and then shut his mouth. After another beat, he asked, “What book?”
“Party Planning for Dummies. They have separate chapters for formal and informal events. Formal events require cloth napkins. Do I need to buy some? More importantly, I’ve never ironed a napkin before and the book isn’t terribly clear on how to do it properly.
Slash put his hand over mine, stopping me before I could write it down. “We are not buying or ironing cloth napkins. This is not a formal gathering. This is a casual party with close friends and family. It’s being catered, so we need to do little more than show up.”
“Easy for you to say. You don’t mind the showing up part.”
“I like it better than the party planning part, I admit.” He put a hand on my back and made circles with his fingers. “We’ve got this. We’ll email the invites, pay the caterer, keep the house clean, and we’re done. People will come, congratulate us, look at the house, eat, drink and make small talk. One evening—over and out.”
He made it sound easy. I only hoped he was right. In hindsight, I should have known better.
Don’t miss No Stone Unturned by Julie Moffett, available now wherever Carina Press ebooks are sold.
Copyright © 2019 by Julie Moffett
www.CarinaPress.com
ISBN-13: 9781488041112
Colton Cowboy Standoff
Copyright © 2018 by Harlequin Books S.A.
Special thanks and acknowledgment are given to Marie Ferrarella for her contribution to The Coltons of Roaring Springs miniseries.
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 22 Adelaide St. West, 40th Floor, Toronto, Ontario M5H 4E3, Canada.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and ™ are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and in other countries.
www.Harlequin.com
Marie Ferrarella, Colton Cowboy Standoff
