Pawn. Carla Cassidy

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СКАЧАТЬ was wrong. Otherwise he wouldn’t have gotten that phone call.

      He got up from the sofa and grabbed his car keys from the kitchen table, then walked down the hallway and paused in the master bedroom doorway. Good, the phone hadn’t awakened her.

      As he walked back down the hall toward the front door, he wondered what in the hell had happened. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good.

      They had agreed, when he’d gone deep undercover three months ago, that there would be no contact unless it was a dire emergency. The fact that the code had been used meant something terrible had occurred and that couldn’t be good news for him.

      He left a note on the table that said he’d gone to get a pack of smokes, just in case she woke up and wondered where he was.

      As he left the house, as always, his gaze shot up and down the street, looking for anything suspicious, anything or anyone that didn’t belong.

      Although Raymore, Florida, was only an hour’s drive from Miami, it was light-years away in culture and flavor. Struggling economically the small town was populated by people on their way down rather than on their way up.

      It was also the place where an FBI undercover operation had been ongoing for the past year to break up a huge methamphetamine ring.

      Nick started the engine of his ten-year-old sedan, then pushed against a panel in the door that opened to reveal a secret compartment. Inside the secret compartment was a cell phone.

      As he headed away from the small bungalow he’d called home for the past three months, he punched in the number that would connect him with his contact.

      “Are you safe?” a deep, male voice asked.

      “I don’t know. You tell me.” Nick didn’t know the name of his contact, had only spoken to him by phone once before, on the day he’d gone undercover. He knew the man only by his contact name of Haley, a name that would have nothing to do with his real one.

      There were only three people who knew where Nick was and what he was doing in Raymore. Buzz Cantrell, an agent who coordinated much of the undercover work within the agency; Frank Jessup, Nick’s boss; and Haley, a faceless voice over the phone.

      “I’m alone in my car, on my way to a convenience store for a pack of cigarettes. What’s up?” Nick’s stomach remained knotted as he waited to hear what could only be bad news. As he listened to what Haley had to say, the knot twisted tighter. By the time Haley had finished telling him why he’d called, Nick had arrived at the convenience store.

      Nick disconnected the call and sat for a minute, trying to digest what he’d just heard. He didn’t want to do it, but knew the men in charge would find a way of forcing his hand no matter how much he protested.

      He got out of the car and went into the store. As he paid for a pack of cigarettes, he continued to think about what he’d just been told. They were asking him to play a dangerous game. They couldn’t pull him off the case he was working—too much time and effort had gone into setting him up in his current position.

      But, they needed him to do another job for them, one that could not be done by any other agent. It was a dangerous request, with dangerous consequences should it be discovered.

      He already knew that one false move on the case he was working would see him dead. The meth operation was headed by a handful of ruthless, amoral men who would think nothing of putting a bullet through his head should they entertain even a moment of suspicion. Now he’d been ordered to risk compromising his position.

      He got back into the car and restarted the engine at the same time he shook a cigarette from the pack. He hadn’t been a smoker before he’d started this job, and he intended to quit as soon as this assignment was finished, but you couldn’t go out to buy cigarettes and not smoke them.

      As he headed back toward the bungalow, he thought again of what he’d just been asked to do. The only positive thing he had to focus on was that if this got him killed, at least he’d have an opportunity to see Lynn again before he died.

      Chapter 2

      Lynn was having a bad morning. Part of the problem was that she was trying to function on too-little sleep. Despite the fact that she’d tried to forget the unexpected appearance of the FBI in her life once again, she hadn’t been successful.

      She’d tossed and turned all night, cursing them even as she wondered exactly what they’d wanted from her. She’d finally fallen asleep as dawn was creeping into the bedroom, then had awakened just before ten and had forced herself out of bed despite a headful of grogginess. After two cups of coffee she’d felt better prepared to face the day.

      She’d punched on her computer with the intention of working only to discover that the piece of technological machinery had gone wonky.

      It booted up just fine, but before she could touch another button it began indiscriminately opening and closing programs one after another. Her dancing dolphin screen saver, WordPerfect, Free Cell, Excel—every program large and small she had ever loaded into the computer flashed on and off the screen in mind-boggling succession.

      She stared at the screen, stunned, wondering what in the hell was going on. She punched keys, trying to gain control of the possessed computer, but it responded to nothing she keyed in.

      What was happening? When she’d opened that crazy Delphi e-mail the night before, had it somehow infected her computer with a new kind of virus?

      She was still seated in front of the computer screen when a knock fell on her door. She got up to answer, unsurprised to see her next-door-neighbor Leo Tankersly. He often drifted in and out of her apartment as if he belonged.

      “Hey, Lynnie.” He walked through the doorway and headed for her kitchen, where she knew he’d help himself to her freshly brewed coffee.

      Leo had made it clear from the moment she’d met him seven months ago that he wouldn’t mind if their neighborly relationship moved on to something more intimate.

      She stood in the kitchen doorway and watched him pour himself a cup of coffee. There had been times in the past seven months that she’d been tempted to let herself fall into a relationship with Leo, times when loneliness had made his attractiveness look appealing.

      And he was attractive. He was a big man, with broad shoulders and a headful of long, blond hair that made him appear lionlike. He had the clear blue eyes of an Arizona summer sky and an easy nature that made him comfortable to be around.

      He owned his own construction business, but was the least driven man she’d ever known. He worked when he felt like it, or when his cupboards were empty. For him, work was merely a means to an end, not a way of life.

      What had kept her from falling into a physical relationship with him so far was the fact that, as handsome as he was, as sexy as he looked in his jeans and T-shirt, there were no sparks for her, none of the visceral pull that she’d felt only once before in her life for a man.

      “You aren’t speaking this morning?” he asked once he had his cup of coffee in his hand. He raised a furry blond eyebrow.

      “I’m having a bad morning,” she said, unable to stop the frown she felt tug across her forehead.

      “How can it be a bad morning? The СКАЧАТЬ