Exposed - A Thriller Novella (Chandler Series) by J.A. Konrath & Ann Voss Peterson

“They aren’t the important thing here. They’ve recruited the eighteen-year-old daughter of a VIP. You are to return her to her father unharmed. Not a scratch. The orders are specific about that. She cannot be harmed in any way, not even slightly. I’m sending her photo. She’s using the name Julianne James.”

A babysitting job. A first for me. I glanced at the phone, and a picture of a pretty blonde came up on the screen.

“Who’s her daddy?”

“I don’t have that information.”

It had to be someone important if they were sending me in. There weren’t very many agents in the world with my kind of training.

“Where is the shoot?”

“North of the Hamptons. Your contact is working as a driver for the modeling agency. Your exchange is E-B-P-D.”

“Got it.”

“He’ll introduce you as new recruit Claire Thomas.”

“Claire Thomas,” I repeated, trying on my new name. I used and discarded identities like Kleenex. The only constant was my codename: Chandler. My real name was nobody’s business.

“You’re twenty-five years old, an aspiring model from Brooklyn. Your contact will get you in. After you get the girl, text your location to this number, and he’ll pick you up.”

A number appeared on the screen.

“He’ll be at the curb in twenty minutes. And Chandler?”

“Yes.”

“The girl thinks she’s getting her big break. She might need some convincing before she’ll be willing to leave.”

“And if I can’t convince her?”

“Just get her out of there in one piece. Unharmed.” Jacob signed off.

I got dressed and did my best to channel my inner Max Factor while I sank into the role. I was a wannabe model. Several years younger than my actual age. Pretty. Spoiled. Used to getting my way, but still naive about men. I was looking for my big break. I would do whatever I could to get it.

I went heavy on the make-up, dark eyes and too much pink lip gloss. The dress fit as if it was designed for me, and the shoes made me feel like sex on a stick.

“I’m Claire Thomas,” I said into the mirror. And I believed it.

I slipped my phone into the purse, then headed down to meet my contact.

Human voices, background music, and the clack of heels on marble floors all rose to greet me before I reached the ground floor. The scent of coffee drifted from the resident Starbucks, and a woman passed me wearing enough perfume to enchant half of Times Square.

I personally disliked big anonymous hotels. But due to my frequent need to be anonymous, I stayed in them often. Sometimes the best place to hide was in a crowd. Even so, negotiating the revolving door and stepping out into summer’s hot chaos on the flashing neon streets of New York overloaded my senses. The smell of hot dogs on the street corner and falafel down the block warred with exhaust and teeming humanity. The jangle of car horns and voices and the thump of a bass guitar assaulted me from various angles. The late morning was warmer, stickier, than the hotel lobby, a bit of autumn cool threatening to make an appearance but chickening out.

I paused and forced myself to focus, cataloging each noise and smell and sight, becoming grounded in the now. At the same time, I shut off part of myself—the part that worried about applying makeup and got an ego boost from a good dress and sexy shoes—and I let the other part take over.

The part that had been trained to kill people for the government.

Dismissing the white noise and glitz and big city smells, I ignored what belonged there and singled out what didn’t.

Someone was watching me.

I glanced north to 46th Street.

A man stared at me, standing with his hands at his sides, on the curb next to a black Lincoln Town Car. He was in his mid-thirties, handsome in that GQ kind of way, dressed in a dark suit and sunglasses. It wasn’t his appearance or the car that raised my notice—in midtown Manhattan, the only type of vehicle more common than a black Town Car was a yellow taxi cab, and many of the chauffeurs dressed as if they were auditioning for a role in the Men In Black sequel. No, it was his air of calmness, of stillness, of total focus, that was strong enough to raise the hair on my arms.

And in that split-second assessment, I judged him to be a dangerous man.

My contact, no doubt.

I made a quick visual sweep of the street to be certain he was alone, and then I walked to the car. As I approached, he climbed out, circled to the curb, and reached for the back door handle with his left hand.

“Miss Thomas?”

I nodded. “Hello, Eddie.”

“Going to the ballet?”

“How about the park?”

“Yes. They have ducks.”

I suppressed a smile, amused that the only noun beginning with the letter D he could manage on the fly was ducks. His danger vibe went down a notch.

He opened the door and I settled into the leather seat, then he circled back to his spot behind the wheel, and soon we joined the flow of cabs, limos, and delivery trucks.

Traffic moved well, and it took less time than I’d estimated for us to get through midtown, take the Queens Midtown Tunnel under the East River, and hit the Long Island Expressway. Industrial landscapes gave way to shopping malls and carefully managed green space, then on to nature preserves, beaches, and country clubs. I inched the window open. The scents of salt water and fresh cut grass tinged the air and the screech of gulls rose over the whistling wind. The expressway dwindled to winding roads and the housing seemed to range from vacation mansions to vacation palaces.

“These aren’t nice men, you know.” The first words he’d said since I’d climbed in the car.

His face tilted up to the rearview mirror, and I met his stare.

“I’m not nice, either.”

I watched his lips turn up in the barest hint of a smile. “I know we’re strangers, but can we get on a code- name basis?”

“Call me Chandler.”

“Call me Morrissey.”

I wished I could see his eyes, but they were hidden by his sunglasses. “Thanks for the tip, Morrissey.”

He swung the car into a long drive that wound through a copse of salt-stunted trees.

“They aren’t going to let you take her. Not without a fight. And they’re armed. You’re not.”

“How do you know I’m not?”

“Your purse doesn’t have anything heavier than a cell phone in it. I can tell by how it hangs. And that dress … you couldn’t conceal anything in that dress.”

“Just make sure you’re ready to pick us up when you’re called.”

“I’ll be ready for more than that.”

The car emerged from foliage, and I caught my first glimpse of the house. All contemporary angles, glass and sprawl, it looked cold and hard and expensive. The blue of the water beyond held the unreal look of a movie set.

I scooped in a breath of salt air. My big break. Photos on the beach. My name is Claire Thomas, and The Bradford and Sims Modeling Agency is going to make me a star.

“Remember,” Morrissey said out of the corner of his mouth, “she can’t be harmed.”

That again.

I was going to ask him what the deal was with that when the front door opened, and a man wearing a blue polo shirt and gray trousers stepped out. Shoulders as wide as a linebacker’s, he squinted blue eyes into the sun, his scalp pink under blond stubble. He stood at the top of the staircase, a Tec-9 submachine gun hanging under his