Deadly Deception (SCVC Taskforce) (2 page)

Not the slightest
.

But he had ways of finding out. “I’ll have her there for the meeting.”

“You better, or both our asses are in deep shit.”

“Roger that, boss.”

Thomas disconnected and headed for the exit door of the police station. He’d given the nice police officers a phone number to call. Not Cooper’s. No need for the boss to know his cover might be blown. Another friend and coworker. One who worked behind the scenes with the SCVC taskforce and who was tight with the local cops. After Bobby Dyer had set things straight, the cops had locked up the Kid Rock lookalike, taken Thomas’s statement, and then released Thomas.

But of course, Cooper had called to inquire about Ronni and the gig was up.

Outside on the sidewalk, he stopped. His car was at the airport. He had less than an hour to find Ronni and get her to the briefing. And San Diego was one big fucking place.

Don’t panic
. How far could she go?

Not far, apparently. As Thomas blinked in the late afternoon sun, he spotted a hot pink halter top now paired with conservative black pants, leaning on a cherry-red convertible across the street.

Ronni took a sip from the convenience store drink in her hand, pursed her lips, and lifted the sunglasses from her nose to give him a slow perusal. “Need a ride, Boy Scout?”

He hardly looked like a Boy Scout in his current state. “You offering?” he called across the expanse, waiting for a car to pass. Once it had, he jogged across the street, stopping in front of her, his eyes raking over every inch of her body. She’d looked good in Des Moines. Now, she looked incredible. “Not sure I’m that desperate.”

Her full lips, tinged a dusky pink, wrapped seductively around the straw, drawing another sip. She gave his body, and his getup, a second open appraisal as she licked those lips. “Look pretty desperate to me.”

“Are you kidding?” He struck a fashion model pose. “I’ve got lots of pretty woman wanting to take me home.”

She smiled around the straw, speculating. Or working up a comeback. She was never speechless.

Then her nostrils flared as she got a good whiff of him. “When was the last time you bathed?”

He sniffed his armpit.
Yeah, not good
. “Been a few days.”

“Must be one hell of an op you’re working.”

“If you take me to the Mickey D’s down the road, I’ll clean up. We have a briefing with Victor Dupé and the taskforce in an hour. I’ll tell you about the op, and the meeting, on the way.”

She nibbled the end of the straw, and Thomas’s cock jumped again. Handcuffs, Ronni…
what meeting?

The setting sun shone on her latte-colored skin and he itched to touch it. “I like the clean-cut Boy Scout look you had in Des Moines better.”

“What? You don’t go for bad boys?”

“I don’t go for stinky vagrants.”

“Vagrant is politically incorrect. It’s ‘street person’, and I was going for the bad-boy biker look, not the homeless look.”

“Uh, huh.” Her tone said she wasn’t impressed. “Well, Mr. Street Person, get in but don’t soil the leather.”

Yes!
That was easy—finding Ronni waiting for him
and
scoring a ride—and damn, but the easy way was so
much nicer than the hard way.

He did a small fist pump as she pushed off the car and climbed into the driver’s seat.

He hopped over the passenger door and gave her a charming grin as he slid down into the seat. Taking out his phone, he sent Cooper a short text.
Found her. All’s well.
Then he put it away. “I’m sorry about earlier. At the airport. I couldn’t let that kid get away with stealing.”

Ronni replaced her sunglasses, set her drink in the cup holder, and started the car. “That’s because underneath that disgusting vagrant appearance, you really
are
a Boy Scout.”

“True, but you like Boy Scouts, remember?”

Her lips thinned. “You ever stand me up again, Mann, and it’ll be the last time you walk without a limp.” She put the car in drive, sent him a look through the sunglasses he felt in his balls. “We clear?”

Damn. Fabulous But Irritating didn’t begin to cover it. He grinned. “You’re going to make my life hell on the taskforce, aren’t you, Punto?”

She was quiet again, staring off into the distance. She didn’t answer, only shoved the car in gear and squealed the tires as she pulled into traffic.

Chapter Two

Twenty minutes later

McDonald’s parking lot

Just her rotten luck.

Not luck…Murphy’s Law. Whatever could go wrong
would
go wrong. She and Murphy were long-standing friends. He liked to ruin her life.

Like throwing her into the SCVC taskforce six months after Petero Valquis shoved a knife in her back and changed the course of her career. Like having sexy Thomas Mann as her new partner. Why couldn’t she have Celina back?

Because Celina’s no longer a field agent
. Her old partner was now a crime scene photographer. And she was engaged to the Terminator, Cooper Harris. Harris exemplified the typical DEA agent—big, bad, and machine-like in his take-downs and arrests.

Terminator Junior was now inside the McDonald’s cleaning up. Cooper had trained Thomas and brought him onboard the SCVC taskforce. Thomas was no Boy Scout, regardless of how she teased him. He was two-hundred-plus pounds of tough male with the West Point creds and a stint with an off-the-books special ops branch to prove it.

Smarts came with the muscles. He’d moved onto the Department of Defense after a dozen Spec Ops assignments, doing God-knows-what, and then decided field work was more his thing. The FBI, CIA, NSA…they’d all wanted him. He’d chosen the DEA.

The guy played his cards close to his vest, and no one knew why he picked the drug enforcement agency. Ronni suspected it had something to do with his past—some
one
in his past. He may have been smarter than Bill Gates and tougher than the entire US Army put together, but there was always a reason for the choices one made. The past was never really the past.

As she sat in the parking lot, pretending to listen to music and enjoy the warm summer air, the anti-Boy Scout emerged from the building, wiping his face with a bunch of white napkins. His hair was wet and slicked back like he’d stuck it under a faucet. The beard had been trimmed down to a light stubble. How had he pulled that off? Was he hiding an electric razor in his cargo pants?

Thinking about what was in his pants made her flush.
Sooo not going there
.

Two wafer-thin blondes checked Thomas out as he walked by, one licking her lips. He trashed the napkins, jogged over and leaned on Ronni’s door. The scent of soap and water followed.

His clear blue eyes met hers. “Better?”

Who knew the scent of commercial soap could be such a turn-on?

Not the soap, stupid—the eyes.

They pulled her in, ignited something inside her she hadn’t felt in a while. But they also showed concern and hid all the things he was thinking about her.

Damaged
. She was damaged goods, and he knew it.

“The blondes over there think so.”
Air…I need air
. She covertly inhaled a deep breath. “Let’s go.”

He checked his watch. “The meeting’s in twenty. I’ll drive.”

It made sense since she had no idea where they were going. “This isn’t some macho partner bullshit, is it? You’re the male, so you get to drive everywhere we go?”

A spark of humor danced in his eyes. He leaned closer. The blondes stopped on the sidewalk, continuing to scope him out. “What if it is?”

“Then you better check your junk at the curb. If we’re partners, we’re equals, inside the car and out.”

His gaze dropped to her lips, made a slow perusal up to meet her eyes. “I wouldn’t want it any other way.” He lowered his voice and a soft tingle started at the base of her spine. “Believe it or not, I like take-charge women.”

Oh, she just bet he did.
Not
. “Well, aren’t you lucky? I’m a walking, talking, take-charge woman.”

Opening the door, she pushed him back a few steps, her fingers brushing his on the frame as she stood and straightened to full height. He lightly ran a hand over her elbow as if helping her, and she hid a flinch. His skin was rough, but warm…what would his hands feel like running over her body?

Dammit!
They were going to be partners—temporarily—and then she’d be on her way to her next assignment. Working partners, nothing else. She was not getting involved with anyone in California—maybe not anyone ever again. Men always let her down. Her heart could only take so much.

The car door was the only thing between them. In her conservative heels—why hadn’t she worn her Steve Madden’s?—she had to peer up at his face, which irritated her.

The tingle at the base of her spine grew as his eyes locked on hers. Her cheeks heated. She pretended to straighten her pants. “You can drive this time, but once I know my way around San Diego, we’ll take turns. Agreed?”

The setting sun outlined his body as he looked at her with those damn blue eyes that saw all the way to her soul. “I know you’re nervous about this meeting, Punto, and you don’t want to be here, but the SCVC group is a good team. We don’t just work together. We’re family.”

He leaned in, getting right in her face. That stubble, those lips…”We won’t let you down this time, I swear.”

We
. Not I.

Not his fault
. Yes, he’d been outside the apartment on duty the night Valquis snuck in and stabbed her. He could have stopped him. But it wasn’t Thomas’s fault the psycho had gone after Ronni. Not really. Celina had been the target, and no one in the FBI or on the SCVC taskforce really believed at the time that either of them was in danger. Valquis was supposed to be dead.

Dead.

Ronni’s chest grew tight like it always did when she thought about that night. FBI agents were routinely threatened, occasionally punched, and in rare circumstances shot. But to have a perp stab you in the back when you weren’t prepared…

She squeezed the door frame.
Air
. Even though she was outside, she needed some goddamn air. She closed her eyes and did the breathing exercise the shrink had taught her. She could not—would not—let Thomas or anyone else on the taskforce see her weakness. The doctor may have cleared her for field work, but hyperventilating wasn’t an option.

“Easy does it, Punto.” Thomas’s voice was steady. He didn’t touch her, but bent so he could look into her face. “You okay?”

Obviously, she wasn’t hiding her internal chaos well enough. She had to do better. Otherwise, this wasn’t going to work. How could she be around him without thinking of that night?

You survived a madman before. You’ll survive this one.
Shut. It. Down.

She did, calling up a mental exercise she’d created for herself when the breathing technique didn’t work. Petero Valquis had tortured and killed five others besides her. For them, she mentally took out her gun and shot the image of him branded into her brain right between the eyes.

One breath. Two…

Vengeance. She wasn’t supposed to be after vengeance.
Work through the anger and let it go
, the therapists told her. Besides, there was no one left to take vengeance on. Valquis was dead—Celina had killed him. Three bullets sent right into his cowardly back. A just reward.

My kill.

But she hadn’t been there to witness it, and for some reason, she just couldn’t seem to move on.

Just like with Daniel.

“I’m fine,” she lied, focusing on her mental exercise. “Must have been something I ate on the plane.”

“O-
kay
.” He kept watching her as he straightened up.

The FBI was her life, so after Valquis, she’d done what the therapists and supervisors wanted—put the past in a box, pretended to work through her anger, and attacked the physical therapy and healing process with gusto. She was now in the best physical shape of her life and there were plenty of other violent perps out there she could put away. Hence, this temp assignment with the taskforce.

The band around her chest eased.
Breathe…

Straightening, she avoided Thomas’s eyes and headed for the passenger side. “Let’s get to that meeting.”

The two blondes continued to watch Thomas, making her bristle. They giggled at Ronni and made eyes at him. Whipping out her credentials from the chain around her neck, she made sure they each saw them. “FBI. You got a problem, ladies?”

They stopped giggling, two sets of eyes going wide. “Uh, no,” the double D said, grabbing her friend and hustling her inside.

Once they disappeared, Ronni put her creds away and returned to the passenger side of the car. She slid in, ignoring the questioning smirk on Thomas’s face. “Did I miss something?” he asked.

“Aside from the tacky blondes enjoying your vagrant appearance?”

“Maybe they’re into the biker look.”

Riight
. Checking her face in the mirror, she adjusted her sunglasses. She looked good, regardless of the nerves banging around in her stomach. “Just drive.”