Agent Undercover
“No,” he said. “I recognized the smell. That’s why I brought you back to your room, so you could regain consciousness.”
“What do you intend to do to me?” she asked, her heart continuing to pound wildly with fear.
He sighed and pushed a hand through his dark hair. “I wish I knew...”
“Then why did you grab me?” If he had no plan...
“I only grabbed you after your abductor had been shot,” he said, as if his crazy explanation made perfect sense.
“Abductor?” So now he was trying to place the blame on someone else.
He nodded. “I don’t know who the man was.”
“Was?”
He nodded again but grimly this time, his strong-looking jaw clenched. “He’s gone.”
“Dead?” Her voice squeaked with the question. “You killed him?” Maybe there had really been another man...before he’d died.
“No,” he said. “Another agent shot him...before he could shoot me.”
“And then you brought me back here,” she said, as if she was following his preposterous story. The man was obviously deranged. No wonder he’d followed her out of the hotel and tried to grab her.
And she had thought getting to know someone in person first would be safer than dating someone she’d only met online. Maybe dating at all was a bad idea. But how else was she ever going to meet someone who could share her life—her hopes, her dreams?
Somehow she suspected that having a relationship wasn’t going to be an issue for her anymore—unless she could somehow overpower this muscular man and escape him. She tried to peer around him to determine how far away the door was.
Or maybe she could yell...
Weren’t hotel room walls notoriously thin?
She opened her mouth to scream, but his palm slid across her lips, silencing her. And he joined her on the bed, his thigh hard and warm against her hip. She tried to struggle, but he easily held her down—pushing her into the mattress. And she noticed that his sweater had ridden up, revealing a holster and a gun. He was armed.
Tears stung her eyes as fear overwhelmed her. What was he going to do to her?
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, almost as if he regretted that he wasn’t. “I’ve been watching you...”
So she hadn’t been paranoid.
“I’m trying to stop you from doing something that’s going to put your life and the country in danger,” he said. “But obviously I’m too late. You’re already in danger.”
She had realized that back in the parking lot. She’d been scared then. She was terrified now.
“Have you put the country in danger, too?” he asked.
She moved her lips against his palm, as if she was trying to answer his question. As if she could actually answer something so absurd...
She only wanted him to move his hand so that she could scream. If he didn’t want her making any noise, he wouldn’t risk shooting her. Would he?
If she screamed, hopefully someone would hear her and come to her aid. It was her only chance to escape this man and his madness.
But he didn’t move his hand. In fact, it covered her entire face, his fingers covering one ear and his thumb the other. She could still hear him, though—still hear his ridiculous questions.
“Did you already endanger national security?” he asked.
“How?” she murmured the word against his palm.
Who did he think she was? He must have mistaken her for someone else. Maybe it was dawning on him because he stared down at her through narrowed eyes as if determining if he should trust her. He moved his palm slightly.
She could have screamed. But he could still shoot her before help arrived. And then he could shoot whoever might have been chivalrous enough to help her. So she spoke quietly instead. “Who do you think I am?”
His mouth curved into a slight smile. “You’re Claire Molenski.”
Her pulse quickened before she reminded herself that she had given him her first name. And he’d had time while she was unconscious to go through her purse and find her license. Oh, God, if he had seen her license, he also knew where she lived. He could have taken her keys, too, for her car and her house.
But why?
“Who are you?” she asked.
During their speed dating round, he had only given her his first name but that might have been as made up as his other wild stories.
“Ash,” he said. “Special Agent Ash Stryker.”
That name definitely sounded made up to her. But then he tugged on the chain that disappeared beneath the neck of his black sweater and pulled out a big shield. She had seen enough of those the past several years that she realized the shield was real.
And so was Special Agent Ash Stryker.
Dread overwhelmed her and she groaned. “No...”
Triumph flashed in his light blue eyes. “You didn’t think we would trace the online auction back to you?”
“Online auction?” He might have been telling the truth about who he was and what had happened, but none of it made any sense to her. All she understood was that somehow her life was turning upside down—again. And she didn’t know how to turn it right side up. “What do you think I’m selling?”
He just stared at her, obviously convinced that she knew, so that he wasn’t even going to bother to answer.
Annoyance flashed through her. She had been too young before to fight for herself. She wasn’t going to go down this time without a fight.
“Do you think I’m selling my body?” she asked.
His lips quirked again, as if he was tempted to grin. “That might explain the speed dating and the hotel room...”
He flicked his gaze down her short, tight dress, as if he were actually considering buying. And heat flashed through her now, making her skin tingle with excitement. But then she reminded herself that he was an FBI agent, and a cold chill chased away the heat.
“But an FBI agent,” she said, “especially an FBI special agent wouldn’t waste his time investigating something that a vice cop would handle.”
He arched a dark brow and asked, “Do you know much about Vice?”
“No.” She sighed. “But I do know about the Federal Bureau of Investigations.”
He didn’t ask why; he would have read her file. The FBI probably had a volume on her by now.
“So, Special Agent Ash Stryker,” she addressed him. “How are you going to ruin my life this time?”
Chapter Three
The woman was trouble. Ash had known that before he’d even met her. But she was even more dangerous in person than he had expected her to be.
Because he hadn’t expected his reaction to her—his very physical, very male reaction to her beauty. Her skin was porcelain—all pale and smooth—and too much of it showed beneath the short skirt of her tight red dress. Damn, she was sexy. She knew it, too, and was using it to her advantage with that flirtatious comment about selling her body.
Hell, if she was really selling, he might have been tempted to make an offer. She was that beautiful. But she was also that treacherous.
“I have never met you before,” he reminded her. “So I have had no part in ruining your life.”
Was that why she had betrayed her country? Out of spite over her arrest years ago?
“You’re such a suit,” she uttered the slang word for FBI agent with total disdain. “Even without the suit, I should have realized you were an FBI agent. I knew something wasn’t right with you.”
Her remark had his pride stinging. He was good at going undercover. Nobody else had ever suspected he wasn’t who he was pretending to be—even when he’d gone deep undercover with motorcycle gangs and militia groups. But maybe he had been more out of his element speed dating than he had ever been anywhere else.
“Actually, everything’s right with me,” he said. “You’re the one in the wrong.”
She shook her head, and her silky blond hair skimmed across her shoulders, which were bare but for thin red spaghetti straps. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“I believe that’s what you said last time—”
“It was true last time, too,” she insisted.
“You hacked into a bank,” he reminded her since she seemed to have forgotten what she’d done. “And cleaned out someone’s account.”
She defensively crossed her arms over her chest. “I had my reasons.”
“Do you have reasons this time, too?” he asked. “Because the only one I can think of is greed.”
“You thought that was my reason last time, too,” she murmured with even more disdain—as if she thought him an idiot. “But I didn’t keep that money. I gave it all away to charity.”
“It wasn’t your money to give,” he pointed out. “And I didn’t have anything to do with your last arrest.” He hadn’t even been an agent then. He had probably still been a marine at that time. The Bureau had recruited him out of the service to become an agent. He had been surprised that either of them—the marines or the Bureau—had wanted him, given his background.
She sucked in a sharp breath, and her eyes widened with fear again. When she’d regained consciousness, she had seemed genuinely afraid. Despite what she’d started with her online activity, she obviously hadn’t expected that she’d put herself in danger.
“Last arrest?” she repeated his words. “Is there going to be another arrest?”
Not unless he could find some more concrete evidence against her. It wasn’t enough that knowledge only she possessed had been offered for sale. She was smart enough now that the online auction couldn’t be traced directly back to her...except for that knowledge. He would have only been able to arrest her if he could have caught her in the act of selling the information. That was why he had come to the speed dating event, to pose as a buyer.
But somehow he must have spooked her before he had even been able to put in his bid. Then having to rescue her in the parking lot had completely blown his cover. Now it would be harder to find evidence against her. Now that she knew the FBI was on to her she was going to be even more careful. But maybe he could convince her to confess—if he could bluff enough that she thought the Bureau already had enough evidence for an arrest.
“You tell me if I should take you into custody,” he suggested. “Have you already sold it?”
“Sold what?” she asked, acting as confused as she had when he had mentioned her online auction earlier.
Claire Molenski was as good an actress as she was a hacker because he was almost starting to buy her act. But only almost. From going undercover himself, he knew how easy it was to assume a role. He usually had to assume one of guilt because he was acting like a criminal. She was assuming one of innocence because she was acting like a victim. As if she had been unjustly persecuted before and now.
But it was just an act. Just an act...
Someone’s phone rang. It wasn’t his; he always kept that on vibrate. So he reached for her purse and pulled out her ringing cell.
“Maybe this is your buyer.”
And maybe here was his evidence. If this caller made an offer for her information and arrangements for an exchange, Ash had her. Instead of triumph, though, he felt a flash of disappointment.
* * *
CLAIRE DIDN’T CARE that he had a gun. She grabbed for her phone anyway. She wasn’t worried about him intercepting a call from a buyer. She still had no idea what he thought she was trying to sell. She was actually worried that he might intercept a call from someone from the dating service she had joined.
She didn’t want a man answering her phone and scaring away a potential match. She had spent too much of her life alone; she wanted to share it with someone now.
But he ignored her attempt to grab for it and clicked on the talk button. “Hello.”
She groaned. She had only given out her number to a couple of promising prospects from the dating service—to guys that the service had matched her with for compatibility. She hadn’t needed five minutes or a dating service personality test to determine that she was totally incompatible with this man.
These potential matches wouldn’t be too promising either after Ash got through with them, especially when he continued speaking, “This is Special Agent Stryker...”
She swallowed another groan. Uttering it would do her no good—just as explaining her hacking nine years ago had done her no good, either. She had still been arrested. She’d been convicted. She’d been sentenced. While she hadn’t spent any time actually behind bars in the juvenile detention center with which she’d been threatened, she had been locked up—in a classroom studying to be an even better hacker. And then in a business that specialized in internet security.
“It’s your boss,” Stryker told her.
She’d worked for Peter Nowak for years, but the former CIA agent still intimidated the hell out of her. Her hand trembled slightly as she reached out for the phone, but Ash Stryker ignored her and continued to listen.
“Give it to me,” she insisted.
But he shook his head, still denying her access. To her phone or to the help she would be able to seek with it? She wasn’t sure how much help Peter would be, though, if he also suspected her of whatever the FBI did.
She could call a lawyer, though, like she should have last time. But she hadn’t wanted her father to go broke trying to pay her legal fees.
Ash replied to whatever her boss had said with “We’ll be right there.” Then he clicked off her cell phone and pocketed it.
“Why are you speaking for me?” she asked. “Am I in your custody?” Had she already been arrested but she had been too drugged to understand her rights? She really needed to call a lawyer this time.
“Your boss said the building was broken into—”
She shook her head, not buying this story of his just as she hadn’t the first stories he’d told her. “We have an excellent security system at the office.” Peter had designed it himself. “We also have armed guards. There’s no way anyone got in—”
“The alarm system was compromised,” he said.
She shook her head, unable to believe it. “But there are guards—”
“One of them was shot.”
She gasped as her heart pounded. She saw those guards every day as she passed them on her way in and out of the office. “No! Who? Is he all right?”
“Nowak is at the hospital with the man.”
“Then we need to go there, too,” she said.
“He told us to go to the company instead.”
“But why would he want me to go there?” She wasn’t in management. She had nothing to do with the details of running the company or the office.
“Your personal office was the only one that had been broken into,” Stryker said. “We’re going there right now to make sure nothing’s been taken.”
“My office?” She shook her head in denial. “That makes no sense.”
“Someone tried grabbing you in the parking lot,” he reminded her. “Since they couldn’t get the information from you directly, they must have tried getting it from your office.”
She wanted to scream in frustration at his stubbornness. But apparently he wasn’t the only one with the wrong idea about her. “So a man was shot over something someone thinks I’m trying to sell?”
The guard was shot because of her?
She leaped up from the bed, but the aftereffects of the chloroform must have included dizziness. Feeling faint, she nearly toppled over, but he caught her.
If what he’d claimed earlier was true, he had already caught her another time that night.
“We need to go,” he said.
“To the hospital—”
“Are you all right?” he asked as he held her up, his hands warm on her shoulders.
Her legs were too rubbery for her to stand without support. But she insisted, “I’m fine.” Or she would be once the room stopped spinning. “I want to go check on the guard.”
“Your boss said the man is in stable condition. He will be fine,” he assured her. “We need to go to your office and make sure nothing’s been taken.”
She hadn’t left anything of value to anyone else in her office. But there were things of value to her there, things she couldn’t replace. And she would be of more use at the office than she would be pacing a hospital waiting room. She wasn’t even sure she knew who had been wounded, but it didn’t matter. She still felt somehow responsible. Why had someone broken into the company and then only into her office?
“Okay,” she said and pulled away from him. Her skin tingled from where his hands had grasped her shoulders when he’d been holding her upright. She needed distance from him. “Let’s go!”
“You’re in an awful hurry,” he said. “But then you wouldn’t want someone to steal what you’re trying to sell.”
Beyond irritated with him, she gritted her teeth and replied, “I am not selling anything.”
“You want me to believe you were at this hotel tonight because you really were speed dating?” He sounded horrified at the prospect.
Heat rushed to her face, which had probably turned as red as her dress. “I really was...”
He glanced around the hotel room. “Is that why you rented a room?”
Her face got even hotter. “I rented a room in case I’d had too much to drink.” And she felt as if she had, thanks to the chloroform making her head fuzzy and her legs weak. Or maybe Agent Stryker had made her legs weak. It really wasn’t fair that the FBI agent was so ridiculously good-looking. “I didn’t rent a room because I thought I’d get lucky.”
There had been nothing lucky about meeting Agent Stryker. And while she wanted to meet someone else, she hadn’t expected much from the speed dating experience. She certainly hadn’t expected to fall in love in five minutes.
On the floor next to the bed she noticed her shoes and her purse. She stepped into the uncomfortable heels. Then she grabbed up her purse and reached into the oversize bag to search for her keys. “I’ll drive myself to the office.”
He held up her keys; she recognized them because the rhinestone wristband attached to the chain caught the light. She’d bought the wristband key chain so she could slip it over her wrist and always have her keys accessible. Yet she kept tossing them into her bag out of habit.
“We’ll take my car,” he said as he walked toward the hotel room door. He didn’t wait to see if she followed him. He just opened the door and stepped into the hall.
That same feeling of helplessness washed over Claire like it had nine years ago when nobody had believed her about the hacking. Or maybe they’d only cared that she had and not why she had.
She didn’t want to ride with him. “But my car has the permit for the company parking lot,” she said as she hurried after him.
“My car is FBI,” he said. “That gives me a permit to park wherever I want.”
She pulled the hotel room door shut and mouthed his words behind his back. Sure, she was acting childish, but he was just so arrogant and infuriating and...
He chuckled, so he must have somehow witnessed her juvenile behavior. Did he have eyes in the back of his head? “Are you coming?” he asked.
She wanted to say no, but since he had her keys she had no choice. Unless she hailed a cab...
Maybe she should hail a cab. And call a lawyer.
But first she had to go to the office. Had to make sure nothing had been taken. Had to try to figure out what someone had been looking for.
But he had her keys—not just to her car but to her office, too.
“Yes,” she finally, reluctantly, replied.
“Come on, then,” he said, as if she was a child that needed his direction and protection. “You need to stick close to me.”
He had just uttered the words when a door creaked open and a dark shadow filled the hallway ahead of him. Reminded of the man accosting her in the parking lot, Claire shivered with foreboding. She glanced back at the hotel room, but she’d closed the door. And like her keys, Ash probably had the card to the room; she couldn’t reenter without it.
So she hurried up to close the distance between them. But he held out a hand to her as if shoving her back. He used his other hand to withdraw his gun from his holster. She shook her head in protest.
If he pointed that gun at some unsuspecting hotel guests, he was going to scare them to death—like he had nearly scared her when she’d awakened to find him leaning over her.
“Ash...” Maybe she should have called him Special Agent Stryker, but for some reason his first name was what had slipped out of her lips.
Regardless of what she’d called him, he lifted a finger to his lips, silencing her.
The shadow stepped through the stairwell doorway and into the hall. The shadow belonged to a man—a big man—and like Ash, he carried a gun. He pointed the barrel at Special Agent Stryker.
“FBI,” Ash called out.
The man didn’t care. He cocked the gun and pulled the trigger. But Ash fired, too.
Claire screamed and ducked as bullets struck the walls of the hallway, tearing through the blue-and-green-striped paper to burrow into the drywall. Or pass through into the rooms of those unsuspecting guests.
“Stay down!” Ash ordered her.
Then a bullet must have struck him because he staggered back. But he kept his body between hers and the shooter, using it to protect her as he returned fire.
She screamed again but she wasn’t worried just about herself or those guests; she was worried about him. Had he been hurt badly?
Chapter Four
Ash cursed as the force of the bullet propelled him back. He nearly knocked over Claire, who stood behind him like he had directed her. Maybe he should have told her to run. But the man with the gun stood between them and the stairwell and the elevators.
She had no place to run.
Even if he passed her the key card to the hotel room, she wouldn’t be safe inside the room—at least not for long. A man this big could easily knock down her door. The only way to keep her safe was to eliminate the threat to her safety.
So Ash fired again. But this was a kill shot. The big man crumpled to the carpet like the guy in the parking lot had crumpled to the asphalt.
“It’s okay,” Ash told her as he turned back to Claire. “It’s over.” For now. But how long before someone else tried to abduct her? And why?
Why not just pay what she asked for the information? Unless she was telling the truth...
She moved as if to look around him, but he used his body to block her view. She didn’t need to see what he had done to protect them. But instead of moving around him, she moved toward him—her hands reaching out toward his chest.
“Are you all right?” she asked, her voice cracking with concern.
He nodded. But he wasn’t entirely convinced that he was all right because he was beginning to believe her and doubt himself. She had been so concerned about the security guard and now about him. Maybe she wasn’t the mercenary person he thought she was.
“But you were shot!” she exclaimed, her palms patting his chest as if she were searching for the wound.
He caught her hands and pressed them more tightly against his vest. “I’m fine.”
She shook her head. “You must be hurt.”
“The protective vest took the bullet,” he assured her. He had only felt the impact of the too-close shot. And he would probably have a bruise on his chest from the force with which the bullet had struck the vest. He pulled her hands away from his chest, and she tugged them free of his grasp.
“Thank God you’re wearing a vest.” Her breath shuddered out with sincere-sounding relief. “But of course you would be wearing a vest.”
“Of course.” But there had been times that he hadn’t been able to when he’d been undercover. He couldn’t have risked someone noticing the vest, no matter how thin and indiscernible the Bureau vests were. He also hadn’t been able to wear a wire then, either. He had been totally on his own. But that hadn’t been anything new to Ash.
“Maybe I should be wearing one, too,” she mused, and she must have finally caught sight of the man he’d shot because she shuddered in revulsion.