Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 101840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 509(@200wpm)___ 407(@250wpm)___ 339(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 101840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 509(@200wpm)___ 407(@250wpm)___ 339(@300wpm)
“Are we done here?” He sounded bored.
“What happens when you change your mind a few days in?” I asked.
He lifted an eyebrow. “Do you have so little faith in your ability to satisfy me?”
I met his eyes. “Maybe you should let me blow you right now to see if it’s as good as you remember it.”
He stood again and moved toward me, standing between my legs. His hand moved through my hair until he cupped the back of my head and brought it toward the front of his pants. Just as I was getting ready to take a deep inhale through my nose, he let out a soft rumble of laughter and leaned down to whisper against my ear.
“Some decisions are best made hungry, Jethro.”
The sound of my fake name in his deep voice played me like a fucking fiddle. Why was that?
Locke moved away from me and back over to his desk, where he picked up his phone and tapped something into it. “Demarius will take you home. He’ll also be out front of your place Sunday morning at nine to pick you up. In the meantime, text me a list of your measurements so someone on my team can get you decent clothes. Don’t bother packing anything. My people will take care of it.”
I blinked at him. “I didn’t agree.”
He opened the laptop and got back to work. “You will,” he said without looking up. “Good night, Jett.”
10
JETT
I wasn’t going to go.
Obviously.
Mostly because I wasn’t Julia Roberts, and this wasn’t Hollywood. I was a highly respected intelligence officer. My unclaimed accomplishments had been on the front pages of news sites and on the lips of world leaders.
I’d helped dismantle a human-trafficking ring in Venezuela by locating the foothills compound in which they were being held. My work in Germany three years ago had foiled an eco-terrorist attack on the canal locks in Brunsbüttel. I was good at what I did.
And I wasn’t about to fuck it up by playing happy hooker to a billionaire.
“Did you have a nice night?” Trevi asked as I hugged my coffee cup at the conference table the next morning.
“Mpfh.”
He took the seat next to mine and snickered. “Too many G&Ts?”
Before I could answer, Rocky came striding in. “Where are Rita and CJ? We have a situation brewing in Germany.”
The mood in the room immediately shifted. As soon as everyone was present, Rocky began debriefing us about suspicious activity near the Kiel Canal, the vital waterway that allowed an average of ninety vessels a day to take a shortcut from the Baltic to the North Sea.
The canal was critical to the movement of goods in Northern Europe, something I’d seen firsthand three years ago when I’d been on one end of it in Brunsbüttel. It was being used more and more to smuggle goods into and out of Russia, so it was no surprise that it was involved in something.
“We intercepted a shipment of drones, but there’s chatter about possible munitions and hazardous chemicals coming on other vessels or by rail. Draković weaponry travels by rail in that region. And so do international aid supplies, all things various groups are eager to get their hands on.”
While my gut filled with the usual nervous excitement I experienced at the start of a new mission, it also dropped in extreme disappointment that the decision to go to Italy was now irrevocably made.
Not that I’d been seriously considering going.
The opposite. Obviously.
But if I had, that idea was well and truly nixed now that there was a serious mission in a place I had the most practical knowledge of. I wasn’t even sure anyone else on the team was fluent in German.
Rocky turned to CJ, one of the newer recruits. “You’re heading out in the morning. You’ll be working with one of the inspectors in Brunsbüttel as a gopher of sorts. The inspector is an asset who knows what’s going on and will give you access to as many vessels as possible.”
I kept my eyes on my boss, waiting for an assignment. She turned to Rita next. “And you’ll be in Kiel. The best cover we can get for you is working at a lunch cart on the docks. We need you to make friends with as many dock workers as possible and keep your ears open. At Kiel, we’re looking for anyone who is falsifying records, cherry-picking which vessels get inspected, et cetera.”
Next, she turned to Trevi. “I need you in constant communication with them. We can’t have a repeat of three years ago.” Her eyes flicked over to me before landing back on our comms specialist. “Jett should never have been in the dark so long in Hamburg. That’s on me. But I don’t want a repeat, okay?”
I felt a flush of heat in my face. “I did fine,” I clipped, feeling stung, even though I was clear that wasn’t her intention.