LITMIR.BIZ

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anyone. Least of all him.”

      Him being the big man in charge of OPUS. Or, as he was pseudo-affectionately known in the organization, He Whose Name Nobody Dares Say. Mostly because nobody knew what his name was.

      “Not that everyone in OPUS hasn’t wanted to put a bullet in the guy at least once,” she qualified. “But that whole attempted-murder thing was just a desperate, trumped-up charge they hoped would turn up the heat and flush me out.”

      “Yet still you managed to stay under their radar,” Faraday murmured.

      “Like you said. I’m the best agent OPUS has.”

      He grinned again. “I’ve also heard you’re not modest.”

      “Modesty is overrated. Especially when it isn’t warranted.”

      He neither agreed nor disagreed with her assessment of herself, and that bugged the hell out of Lila. What bugged her even more was that she actually gave a damn whether he agreed or disagreed with her assessment of herself.

      “And I’ve heard that you’re smart and focused and dedicated,” he went on, sounding genuinely impressed, something that dulled the edge of her irritation. Which also bothered her. What did she care if he was impressed by her or not? “And that your number one goal in life right now is to bring Sorcerer to heel.”

      Sorcerer was formally known as Adrian Padgett, and at one time had been an agent for OPUS himself—before turning to the Dark Side and choosing a life of crime. He’d been on their list—and on the lam—for years, and Lila was only the most recent agent trying to bring him in. So far he’d eluded her, something that had only served to make her more determined, but this time he wasn’t going to get away. Of that she was positive.

      “And I’ve heard that if anyone can bring him in,” Faraday continued, “you can. Because I’ve also heard that you don’t quit until the job is done. And I’ve heard that you scare the hell out of most people. Oh, and I’ve also heard that you’re arguably the most dangerous woman in the world.”

      “Arguably?” Lila echoed dubiously.

      “Well, I certainly wouldn’t argue with it,” he assured her.

      Smart man. “And do I scare the hell out of you?” she asked.

      His eyes never left hers as he reminded her, “You’re the one handcuffed to the bed. What do you think?”

      She opened her mouth to reply with a quick retort, then realized she wasn’t sure how he’d meant his remark. Was he saying he’d cuffed her to the bed because he was terrified of her? Or was he saying that since it had been a piece of cake for him to cuff her to the bed, she wasn’t scary at all?

      Wow. A man she couldn’t get a read on. Lila couldn’t remember the last time she’d met one of those. In fact, she wasn’t sure she ever had.

      “So you’ve heard quite a bit about me,” she said, deciding to ignore his last comment. For now. Considering the way he’d listed all her attributes, she figured her badass rep was still pretty much in place. “Do you believe it?”

      This time his gaze drifted from her face and sauntered down her entire body, all the way to her toes and back again. And every last inch of her began to tingle and grow hot under his scrutiny. Wow. It had been a long time since she’d felt that, too. That immediate shudder of sexual awareness that started in the pit of her stomach and exploded outward, demanding satisfaction.

      Damn. This really wasn’t a good time for her to meet a man who could do that to her. Especially one who could do it so quickly after meeting him. And do it with such amazing thoroughness.

      “Well, handcuffed to my bed like that, you don’t look too dangerous,” he said. Ironically, there was something in the way he said it that made him seem very dangerous indeed.

      Lila shoved her errant thoughts and feelings and tingling sexual awareness to the back of her brain and smiled at him. And she hoped like hell it was a convincing smile, and revealed none of the nervousness still quivering in her belly. “Good. Then why don’t you come over here and unlock me?”

      He laughed softly as he lifted the brandy snifter to his mouth for an idle sip, taking his time to draw the liquor into his mouth, and savoring it for a moment before swallowing. Lila watched fascinated as he completed the action, wondering why she found such a simple gesture so provocative, and why it suddenly felt as if she, not he, was the one who had consumed something that seared her insides with heat. He didn’t answer her question, but when he remained rooted in place, she gathered that was pretty much all the response she was going to receive from him.

      “I’d offer you a cognac, too,” he said, “but I’ve also heard you don’t drink. However, I stocked up on decaf green tea in anticipation of your, ah, arrival. If you’re interested.”

      “Maybe later,” she said, thinking news traveled fast. She’d voiced that no-drinking policy and preference for decaf green tea at her sister’s house only a couple of weeks ago, and only in the presence of one other OPUS employee. “We need to go over the assignment,” she told him. She tugged at the handcuff again. “Come on. Unlock me. Joke’s on me. But now the joke’s over. Let me go.”

      “Right,” Faraday said. “So you can kick my ass from here to Abu Dhabi. I’ll unlock you in a little while.”

      “I’ll still kick your ass from here to Abu Dhabi,” she told him matter-of-factly. “It’ll just hurt more later.”

      He considered her in that thoughtful way again as he enjoyed another sip of his drink. Another slow, thorough, fascinating, provocative, heat-inducing sip that went straight to Lila’s head. If he kept this up, she was going to be under the table soon.

      “Maybe,” he finally said.

      It took a minute for her to realize he was talking about the ass kicking, not the under-the-tabling. No maybe about that first one. She’d totally kick his ass, she thought. But she kept it to herself.

      “So tell me what you know,” he said.

      “Did you read my report?” she asked.

      He nodded.

      “Then you know everything I know.”

      “Reports only cover the facts,” he said. “Not gut feelings. Not impressions. Not theories. So what are your gut feelings, impressions and theories on this thing?”

      Faraday didn’t need to identify the thing any more than he had. Adrian Padgett had been the focus of Lila’s job for some time. Before she’d come along, he’d been arguably OPUS’s best agent. He’d operated by his own rules, to be sure—kind of like Lila, come to think of it—but he’d still stayed within the parameters of Doing the Right Thing. OPUS itself often bent its own rules to ensure political unity and security, so no one had really bothered to rein in Sorcerer, even when he started overstepping those parameters. He always collected exceptionally good intel, always bagged the bad guys, always got the job done. So who cared how he went about it?

      Eventually, though, he began to stray so far beyond the parameters that there was no coming back. Several years ago Sorcerer had decided to become a free agent of sorts, and blackmailed the organization who employed him, threatening to expose it and many of its agents if he wasn’t paid millions of dollars and left alone. Had he not been such a good agent, the threat would have been laughable. OPUS was built on a framework of secrets—so many secrets that there were few in the organization who could honestly describe how it all worked.

      With Sorcerer, though, as good as he was, the risk was too great to ignore the threat. Even so, before OPUS could amass the cash necessary to pay him off, Sorcerer leaked enough information to compromise dozens of assignments and agents. One assignment was so badly compromised, in fact, that the agent completing it ended up dead. Maybe the man hadn’t died by Sorcerer’s hand, but he’d died by Sorcerer’s actions. The agent had been the father of Lila’s regular partner, so there was

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