Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 107096 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107096 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
I caught Erin as she moved away from Danny. “You had any luck with that toy you were working on?”
Erin pushed her glasses up her nose and dug in her shoulder bag. “I think I can make it smaller, but if you want to give it a test run, go ahead.”
She passed me a package: she’d even gift-wrapped it. I broke into a big, wide grin and pulled her into an impromptu hug, delighted.
Then it was time to go. As I watched all the couples say their final goodbyes, I couldn’t help but feel a little sad. Must be nice to have someone.
Colorado to New York was too far to go by chopper, so Gina had rented a small plane instead. As we flew east, the sun behind us turned the clouds in front to pink cotton candy and then to gold-edged mountains. We all knew each other well enough that we could just sit and experience it, without having to fill the quiet with small talk, and I loved that.
We crossed the line that separated day from night and it felt as if we were crossing into another country, one where only bad things could happen. I scowled at my reflection in the window: don’t be stupid.
The cabin grew dark, with just Gina’s instruments up front throwing out a dim green glow. Next to me, Bradan was dozing. Cal, who needed all the leg room he could get, was twisted in his seat, legs filling the aisle. Danny was reading on his phone, probably another of the doorstep-thick fantasy novels he and Erin read. I flipped on a little flashlight and carried on reading through Tanya’s file, wanting to know everything there was to know about her. Her spy mission stuff was all redacted but that still left plenty of personal details and with every one, she became more fascinating. She spoke six languages: six! I barely spoke English. She was an expert chess player: I was more of a checkers guy. She was a trained dancer...and now I was imagining those full breasts in a leotard…
I caught my reflection in the glossy surface of the photo and frowned at myself. Remember she’s a bad guy. Someone to be taken down, restrained and transported. The enemy.
I flipped the last page of the file, not really expecting to find anything. A photo slid out and fell. I grabbed it on instinct...and stared.
It had been taken with a long lens in some sort of café. The photographer had caught Tanya as she lifted her coffee cup to take a sip and for once, her expression was open and unguarded. She was gazing off to the side and there was a hint, just the tiniest hint, of a smile on her lips. I felt something lift, right in the center of my chest. But that wasn’t what made me stare.
She was wearing a tight, turtleneck sweater. It was ribbed and the lines curved and stretched over the soft mounds of her breasts like contour lines on a map, making me growl low in my throat. But that wasn’t what made me stare, either.
Unlike the others, this photo was in color. Her ribbed top was bottle green. Her eyes were the sort of freezing blue you only get high up in the clouds, out of reach of us dumb grunts on the ground. And her hair…
Her hair wasn’t brown, it was red. Red like the sun just as it sinks below the horizon, melting copper and liquid fire. It gleamed and shone, the vivid color the perfect contrast to her milky skin. The combination was so damn sexual...suddenly, I was mentally stripping her of that sweater, imagining those full, soft breasts bare and in my hands, the tips of her red hair caressing the backs of my fingers as I squeezed and rubbed. And then I started thinking about what was under those skinny jeans: would the curls of hair between her milky thighs be that same vivid copper?
“You know how long you’ve been staring at that picture?” The voice was smooth as bourbon and warm with humor. Gabriel. I’d forgotten he was in the seat behind.
I felt my face heat and tried to brazen it out. “Just doing my homework.” I swallowed. “One time, I was after this guy who’d skipped bail down in Aurora. Nobody could find him. But I’d done the research, found out he had a medical condition. Picked him up coming out of a pharmacy.”
“Mm-hmm,” murmured Gabriel. I could hear the grin in his voice.
I snapped the file closed, mad at myself. What’s wrong with me? It didn’t matter that she was a woman, or that she was gorgeous. She was going down, just like all the others.
An hour later, we were sitting in a darkened SUV across the street from Tanya’s apartment building. It was just after midnight.