LITMIR.BIZ

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and sweatshirt. “I’m ready.” He ignored a dull pain at his shoulder. Rehab was over. That was all that mattered.

      CHAPTER FIVE

      HE HADN’T BEEN to San Francisco in six years, and he loved the chaos as much as ever. A bike messenger was blasting rap music. Two truckers argued over one parking space. A woman with purple hair blew him a kiss.

      Trace had forgotten how the colors mixed, how the noise roared and ebbed. Standing on Kearny Street, he caught the drifting scent of Middle Eastern spices mixed with Chinese sesame cakes and fried ginger. His stomach growled. Too bad he didn’t have time to stop at the little Hunan restaurant with the blister-your-tongue chile.

      But Trace was due to press the flesh at the senator’s affair in less than twenty-four minutes, and he still had six blocks to walk. His CO had stayed behind in the hotel to make a last-minute phone call to the Foxfire facility.

      His uniform drew a few curious stares, but Trace ignored them, walking briskly. He enjoyed the sea-tinged air, the fog and the pleasant twinge in his legs from climbing steep streets.

      At the busy corner of Sutter Street, he swung his shoulder carefully, testing for range of motion, pain and strength. The rehab process was a success. He wasn’t quite back to one hundred percent strength, but he was damned close. After ten days on the cruise ship, with as many gym sessions as he could schedule, Trace expected to be at full operational ability.

      Behind him a taxi horn screeched.

      A bus lumbered past, belching exhaust fumes. Trace sprinted across the street during a lull in traffic and re-checked the address Ryker had given him.

      Three more blocks.

      With a little luck he’d be there ahead of schedule.

      Something shimmered at the edge of his vision. Through the noise, the bus fumes and the cooking smells he caught the bright tang of lavender, the third time that day.

      He scowled at a passing Porsche.

      The Phenomenon again. That was his word for the random sensations.

      As he walked, the lavender scent thickened.

      Trace ignored it.

      No doubt it was connected to his chips being disabled. He’d write a complete report for Ryker once he was able to detect a pattern, but not a second sooner. He didn’t want to be ordered to visit Foxfire’s resident shrink, forced to dredge up his past for possible signs of emotional vulnerability.

      He knew he was fit for action. His memories of Afghanistan were fading along with his scars, and no shrink would dredge up anything important. The lavender smell had to be a sensory reflex.

      His heart pounded. He had a sudden urge to cross the street, coupled with a sense that something important was about to happen.

      Neither made any sense. Pedestrians rushed past all around him, but they were all strangers.

      There was no reason for him to cut back across Kearny.

      He muttered in irritation, staring at a bakery truck double-parked near a fire hydrant. Probably he was dehydrated. Maybe it was the time change and the late-night flight from New Mexico. But he wasn’t a man who was unsettled often, so he watched the street, watched the passing cars, watched the way clouds brushed Nob Hill beyond the tall buildings.

      And then Trace saw her—tall and slim, wreathed in a bar of sunlight. Light played through her short, spiky hair, cut in layers that framed huge eyes.

      A stranger.

      No need to stare. No need to feel as if someone had jerked the cement out from under him and kicked him in the stomach.

      Something seemed to wrap around his chest, driving the air from his lungs. It made no sense. She was just another woman racing through the afternoon sunlight. Probably going to meet a husband—or a lover, judging by the eagerness in her expression. She wasn’t even beautiful, he thought wryly. Most people wouldn’t have called her remarkable in any way, yet her long, quick stride and the swing of her hair were doing strange things to his pulse.

      Somewhere a clock chimed, but he couldn’t move.

      He had less than twenty minutes to reach the penthouse somewhere above him. He would have preferred to spend the time pressed against that long, slim body, memorizing the secrets of her warm skin.

      Crazy.

      Through long months of training Ryker’s first rule had been burned into the minds of every man on the Foxfire team. No personal life or distractions were permitted. Even sexual contacts were arranged by Ryker’s staff, and the contact was carefully controlled. There was no gentle laughter and slow kisses on a moonlit night. It was physical release and nothing more.

      Trace tried to remember the last time he’d laughed with a woman or simply held her hand. Nothing came to mind. The thought left him empty.

      Suck it up, sailor. You knew what you were signing on for when you accepted your transfer to Foxfire. You knew all you were giving up.

      And you couldn’t wait to be part of the team.

      As Wolfe Houston always said, there were only three things you could trust in life—yourself, your team and the probability of getting fungus where you least wanted it.

      Then Wolfe had defied the rules by falling in love and asking approval to marry Trace’s sister.

      Despite that, all of them were Foxfire property, pure and simple. They were the job, 24/7. Trace had liked that just fine.

      Until he’d stood in the afternoon sunlight watching keen eyes and vibrant cinnamon hair.

      Around him the noise of the city faded. Even the sunlight seemed strange, wrapping itself around the woman across the street, playing in her hair and brushing the clean lines of her face.

      No, she wasn’t a beauty, Trace thought. So why was it impossible for him to look away as she cut through the crowd?

      A fire truck screamed past. Shouts mingled with car horns and motorcycles. Then in one of the weather changes San Francisco was famous for, a bank of marine clouds poured in over the hills. In seconds the street blurred beneath a shifting veil of fog.

      Traffic snarled. Horns screamed. Up the street Trace saw a construction truck back up, its ladder poised above the rear bed.

      The woman had stopped. She bent low as she took something from a young man climbing out of a taxi. Both of them cradled big, white boxes, laughing.

      Her laugh made the hairs rise along Trace’s neck. The sound was full and rich and subtly sensual.

      She was a stranger, but he knew just how her voice would sound up close, warm and husky.

      A wave of sexual attraction hit him, as thick and sudden as the fog.

      Hell. Maybe Ryker was right. Maybe this was about stress, not sex, and he hadn’t put Afghanistan behind him.

      As the woman headed down the street, she didn’t look in his direction once. Trace took a deep breath. It was time to go. He glanced toward his destination, checking the address through pale, trailing fingers of fog.

      Down the street he saw the truck turn, ladder creaking. One of the metal restraints twisted and broke free, the metal frame shuddering violently.

      The woman and her friend hadn’t noticed.

      He moved by pure instinct, his heart pounding as he sprinted through a gap in traffic. Neither the woman nor her companion heard his shout as they turned toward the nearby hotel, their boxes held tightly at their chests.

      Trace jumped the curb, shoved the woman sideways against a wall, and pushed her companion after her just before the ladder swung horizontal across the sidewalk. Its broken edge was a death blade cutting directly over the place the two had stood laughing a second before.

      “Hey, watch it.” The woman slammed him hard with her shoulder,

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