LITMIR.BIZ

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       Chapter 3

      Rosa Ramirez was Miami born and bred and she’d made it her business to clean up her beautiful city.

      When the opportunity came around to take down El Escorpion, she didn’t hesitate, but in truth, this operation had been a long time coming.

      And she wasn’t blind to the fact that if a certain senator’s daughter hadn’t gotten herself doped up on Bliss and put on life support from her last party, taking down that piece of shit drug dealer wouldn’t have gotten so much attention.

      But Rosa never looked a gift horse in the mouth.

      The operation was in play and she was going to see it succeed.

      But she had a bad feeling in her gut about some of the people involved.

      Mainly Agent Kelly and DEA agent Jones.

      Now, she hated to think one of her own might be dirty, but El Escorpion had a long reach and a deep pocket.

      Times are hard, people slip.

      All it takes is once.

      One agreement to look the other way for a handful of cash and you were hooked.

      Cash was a persuasive bargaining tool.

      Rosa had seen too many good agents get caught up in bad shit because the allure of quick cash was too hard to ignore.

      She poured herself two fingers of scotch and nursed it while reading the personnel files of both Kelly and Jones.

      Both were exceptionally nice to look at—something Rosa hadn’t been graced with—not that it mattered to her.

      Rosa was the job and the job was her.

      And she was good with that.

      But even Rosa had to admit Shaine Kelly had that enigmatic quality of a bad boy wearing a badge, with a devil-may-care attitude that instantly drew women like a flower bathed in pollen drew bees.

      Dark, wavy hair, deep blue eyes—shit, this guy was sex on a stick.

      Rosa flicked away Kelly’s file and picked up Jones’s.

      White-blond hair like a fairy-tale princess, long, lean body and cornflower blue eyes. California prom queen material.

      It should be a cosmic law that if graced with physical perfection, they couldn’t also be smart and well accomplished.

      Hell, bitter much?

      Rosa sighed at her own thoughts, ready to call it a night when something in Jones’s file caught her eye.

      Shot on the job.

      Now, that’s interesting. Rosa sat a little straighter.

      Bullet to the chest; missed the heart by inches.

      “You’ve got a guardian angel, kid,” Rosa murmured before sipping her scotch.

      Savoring the burn in her throat, she leaned back in her chair to read the details of the operation that’d gotten Jones shot.

      First undercover gig with the FBI.

      Rough start.

      Then she left the FBI to work for the DEA in Los Angeles.

      Rosa double-checked which FBI office she worked for—Washington.

      Same as Kelly.

      Coincidence?

      True, the FBI headquarters was huge. It was possible to work in the same office and never know every employee there.

      But two highly skilled undercover agents?

      What were the odds of that?

      Rosa didn’t believe in coincidences.

      Her hunch had been that Jones and Kelly were hiding something.

      And her hunches were rarely wrong.

      Was Hobbs aware that Jones was from Washington?

      Likely not.

      Hobbs was relatively new—transferred in from the New York office when the previous chief retired.

      And clearly, neither Kelly nor Jones had been eager to cough up the information.

      Which meant, they had history they were trying to hide.

      Rosa finished her scotch.

      That wasn’t going to work.

      No secrets. No hiding.

      The stakes were too high to mess around with unknown variables.

      She wasn’t one to knee-jerk react, but she was very good at watching and waiting. In her experience, people revealed their biases, prejudices and their dirty laundry if you were patient. All she had to do was watch and wait.

      And if it turned out that Kelly and Jones were hiding something, they’d be on the first plane back to where they came from.

      Rosa Ramirez didn’t mess around.

      * * *

      Shaine finger combed his hair, grabbed his wallet and fake ID and headed out.

      There was no way he was going to sit in that apartment all night, stewing about the fact that he couldn’t shake the certainty that Poppy was in over her head in some lame attempt to prove something.

      She was an adult.

      And capable of making her own decisions—she’d made that abundantly clear when she’d walked out on him.

      If she got herself shot again, why should he worry about her welfare? All he owed her was the same amount of professional courtesy that he would give any agent.

      Undercover work was risky business.

      Not everyone was cut out for it.

      It wasn’t that Poppy was weak or afraid. She lacked that certain something—intuition—that guided an undercover agent and kept them from getting killed.

      A good undercover agent knew when to cut bait and run and when to bluff.

      Shaine could take things to the edge and stare down into the abyss without fearing a fall.

      Poppy just had crazy determination and a thirst for adventure.

      Hell, he’d liked that about her.

      Until she’d started going undercover.

      Then, he’d hated it.

      Because that didn’t keep you alive.

      “I can do this,” Poppy had insisted. “Lachlan doesn’t know I’m wearing a wire and he has no reason to suspect it, either.”

      “The intel is bad,” Shaine had nearly shouted, wanting to grab her by the shoulders and shake her stubborn head off. “Can’t you tell that you’ve been made? Why else would Lachlan invite you back to his place even after someone recognized you?”

      “I’ll slip in, grab the file and be gone. It’ll be quick. Lachlan is having a huge party. He’ll be too busy to even think about me.”

      “You’re naive, Poppy. Don’t go. My gut is saying he’s luring you into a trap.”

      Poppy’s gaze narrowed. “You don’t believe I have what it takes to be a hotshot like you. Well, I do. I can do this and I’m going to do it.”

      The events of that night were etched in his memory, but Poppy bore the scars.

      He’d thought taking a bullet would’ve cooled her jets about undercover work, but it’d only made her more determined than ever.

      That’d been the beginning of the end for them.

      Now it was happening all over again and he was supposed

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