Read Into the Blackness (Blackness Series Book 4) Online
Authors: Norma Jeanne Karlsson
Tags: #Romance, #romantic thriller, #contemporary romance, #Romantic Suspense
Into the Blackness (Blackness Series Book 4)
Into the Blackness Copyright © 2014 Norma Jeanne Karlsson
Published by It’s Publishing
Edited by Progressive Edits
Cover Design and Layout by
Ellie Bockert Augsburger
Creative Digital Studios
CreativeDigitalStudios.com
Cover Photo © pio3 / Dollar Photo Club
ISBN e-book: 978-0-9911873-6-2
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
To my husband. The man who helped me learn how to thrive.
Kat
The Domestic Crime Agency, better known as the DCA, has a certain set of criterion they utilize when recruiting new agents. Potentials must be unattached, unaffiliated, unassuming chameleons, of questionable moral fabric and above all willing and able to use deadly force without hesitation in any situation. Oh yeah…and you’re supposed to have a dick too. I met and surpassed the initial requirements easily. I’m in no control of meeting the final unstated requirement of being male. My recruiter told me upon our first interaction that I would be an ideal candidate for intelligence monitoring, in other words riding a desk. I didn’t then, nor do I now, have any inclination to ride a desk. Desks are where people like me go to die.
That’s funny because most people would think being an active operative in a clandestine government agency under the umbrella of the FBI would be where people like me go do die. They’d be wrong. This is where I came to flourish, meet my full potential. The DCA is where I was brought to life, not back to life,
to life
. I wasn’t alive once and then looking to be reborn. I was searching for my birth, the place where I fit in the world. June 1, 2003 Katherine Russell was born at eighteen years old weighing 138 pounds and measuring five feet eight inches in length. Nothing before that date exists for me other than my training and life skills that created the woman I am today. I carry the memories of my parents and the lessons they taught me, but other than that, people, places and relationships from before that date ceased to exist. Not that there was much hanging around.
These thoughts often run through my head on mornings like this. I think they enter of their own accord to ground me and remind me that this is who I am. I take one final look in the mirror, the reflection I see today I’ll be glad to rid myself of tomorrow. Severely dyed midnight black stick-straight hair hanging three quarters of the way down my back. I look like Demi Moore in
Strip Tease
. My dark brown colored contacts change the entire look of my face. With the caramel tan, inky hair and chocolate button eyes, I appear Mediterranean when that couldn’t be further from the truth.
There was a little “enhancement” for this undercover operation (op). I had injectable fillers put in my lips and cheeks causing me to look younger and fuller in the face. My striking high cheekbones now have a soft curve beneath them, making me look closer to twenty than my closely approaching thirty. The lips were specific for my mark, the target of my op. He enjoys women with fat lips, so I now have fat lips. Thankfully, these augmentations are temporary, only requiring me to have the procedure once more while I’ve been undercover as they wear off in a matter of months. Months, which I’ve spent living with my mark as the stunningly beautiful Camilla Bruno from upstate New York, sadly discovered by the wealthy arms dealer Marco Bianchi, while working as a stripper in one of his establishments. Poor Camilla grew up in foster care and was in desperate need of a powerful man to sweep her off her feet and plant her securely on her back beneath him. My back fucking hurts.
After five months of living and breathing Camilla doused in expensive perfumes always surrounded in a cloud of Marco’s cigar smoke, I’m ready for a cleansing deep lungful of fresh air. I saturate myself in Marco’s favorite scent and shove down the gag at the back of my throat. I pull my hair over my naked, more than a handful, boobs à la
The Blue Lagoon
and take one last glance at my heavily make-up covered face—a porn star’s face. Disgusting. Marco will love it.
I stride from the marble encased bathroom into the bright light beach-facing hotel bedroom. White linen everywhere with hints of local Belize mahogany, this place is truly a paradise. I’ll come back for a vacation someday…like that will ever happen.
Marco sits up on an elbow in the king-sized bed, intensely perusing my appearance. He likes what he sees so much that he hisses sharply through his fake teeth. Marco is an extremely attractive older man. He dyes his hair a chestnut color to avoid appearing his age of fifty-eight and it works since his body looks at least fifteen years its junior. At only six feet tall, I’ve been cautioned to be sure my heels allow him an inch over my height at all times. No skin off my back.