between the lines and it became clear that little Eva Montoya had been born on a mission. Her parents had set the bar high. From the time she could crawl up on her attorney mother’s lap or charm her JAG attorney father, whose service in the Navy had apparently prompted her to pursue her own career in service to her country, she’d been setting wrongs right.
Girl Scout, student council president, captain of the debating team at University of Virginia and graduated summa cum laude, top of her class at U of V law school. Impressive.
And while she did not follow her father’s hellishly big footsteps into the military, she’d had instructor-level credentials in Muay Thai—no wonder she’d made such quick work of him in the alley—and was an expert marksman rank in both long gun and pistol. In short—she was kick-ass.
Right out of law school, she’d joined the CIA as an attorney in support services out of Langley, where she’d met Ramon Salinas, fallen in love, and after a whirlwind courtship, married him.
Should have been a happily ever after, Mike thought. A woman like her sure as hell deserved one. Ramon would have ripped her heart out and stomped all over it, but Mike wasn’t about to tell her that she wouldn’t have gotten that Cinderella ending. He would not talk trash about a dead man to anyone. Sure as hell not to his widow.
He only looked up when he heard the terrace door slide open again and Gabe stepped back outside.
“Everything okay in there?”
Gabe nodded. “I offered her a shower and she jumped at the chance. You look like you could use one, too.”
“For a fact. Might wake me up. We’ve been on the move for longer than I care to remember.”
“That would explain the need for the ugly shirt. Sucker’s so loud it would keep a narcoleptic awake.”
“Listen to you. Another joke from the Archangel. Jenna really has mellowed your ass out.”
“I suspect she’d say that she
“I’ll let that pass.”
“As if you could do anything about it.”
Gabe headed back inside, his limp reminding Mike what he’d given up in service to his country and for Jenna. He had saved her from a bomb blast, taking shrapnel in his leg that eventually resulted in amputation below the knee.
“That way.” Gabe pointed down the hall.
Mike hesitated and for a second considered hunting up Eva’s purse and digging around for the flash drive. He’d been itching to plug it into Gabe’s computer and read the information that had driven her to Lima to find him.
But that might break this fragile trust they’d developed and frankly, right now, he wanted a shower more. And he wanted to think about the information Joe had turned up on Eva Salinas, who was not Pamela Diaz or Emily Bradshaw.
The woman was nothing if not inventive.
“Here.” He handed Gabe his phone. “For your reading pleasure. It’s the lowdown on your other houseguest—aka CIA legal eagle.”
16
It wasn’t often Eva was given license to snoop. While she wasn’t a pro, she’d searched as much of the apartment as she could manage under the ruse of using the restroom before Gabe had stepped back inside and offered her the use of the guest shower.
Not that she’d found anything. Not that she’d expected to, she conceded as she stepped out of the shower and into the bedroom. A good operative—and despite the evidence of a toddler in residence, Jones had
What she got, however, was Jones, alone on the terrace, loading salmon steaks on a grill.
“So… I figure you have questions,” he said, without turning around. “I know I’d have them if I was in your position.”
Then he gave her the last thing she’d ever expected: full disclosure. And she immediately felt ridiculous for not recognizing who he was the moment she’d met him.
Jones wasn’t merely an operative. He was a member of Black Ops, Inc. Everyone in the intelligence community knew about Nate Black’s band of merry men who, until a few months ago, had run covert ops for Uncle off the grid out of Buenos Aires. The team had recently relocated to Virginia, where they were now a sanctioned entity under the direction of the Department of Defense.
Jones was not only a linchpin on the team, he was a legend in the intelligence and black ops community. She should have tuned in when Brown had called him Angel Boy. He was the Archangel.
Jones had gotten his nickname for his deadly skill with an Arc-Angel butterfly knife—solid titanium, razor sharp, ten inches fully open. No one but a master could handle it the way it was reputed that Jones handled it.
The Archangel and his ilk were the ultimate shadow warriors, rogues who played by their own rules and damn the consequences, often skirting around the dark fringes of international law. Until this past year, when the Black Ops, Inc. team was made legitimate.
“Why?” she asked, opting for wine when he offered her a choice.
“Why tell you who I am?” He extended a glass of chardonnay. “Like you weren’t going to figure it out?”
She gave him a narrow-eyed look.
“You’re CIA. It was just a matter of time.”
“It’s that obvious?”
He adjusted the fire under the salmon. “Relax. You didn’t give anything away. Mike had Joe run your sheet. There are no secrets among spies.”
She joined him by the grill. “I’m not a spy. I’m an attorney.”
One corner of his mouth drew up in a ghost of a smile. “It’s your story. You can tell it any way you want to.” He glanced at her then. “From the sound of things, you’ve been telling a lot of stories.”
Because he hadn’t said it unkindly, she relaxed a little. Apparently Mike had also told him about Lima, which meant he must also know about Afghanistan.
“Where
“Shower.”
“Speaking of showers, thanks. And thanks for letting us crash here.” She lifted a hand toward the grill. “And feeding us.”
“You both look like you need fuel. You’ll work better with some food in you. Then you two can have a sit- down and figure out where you go from here.”
They lapsed into a silence then that didn’t exactly feel comfortable, but was much less tense than before he’d told her who he was.
Eva took the opportunity to size him up. Gabe Jones and Mike Brown could have been cast from the same mold. Jones had a couple inches and maybe twenty pounds on Brown, but both were big men. Both unreasonably attractive. And they both had a look about them. Even though Brown had been out of the game for a few years, his Spec Ops background was evident in the way he walked, the way he constantly scoured the space around them for threats. There was a poised readiness, a situational awareness about him and about this man. When the door opened behind her and Mike stepped out onto the terrace to join them, she had to stop herself from staring.
His hair was still wet. He’d shaved and the effect was stunning. He wore another one of the print shirts she’d bought mostly to tick him off, but partly because he looked so hot in the first one. She could smell him on the light summer breeze wafting across the terrace. Something citrus and spicy and 100 percent male; he must have
