LITMIR.BIZ

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back. “We’re in.”

      The view on the center four screens changed, opening up on a night view of a canal in a busy metropolitan area. Sam’s phone GPS showed up as a pulsing orange dot.

      “Can you get closer to Special Agent St. John?” Riley struggled to keep the tension out of his voice.

      “I’m on it.” Tolliver worked the keyboard again and brought up a closer image. “You are going to get permission for the use of this spy satellite, aren’t you, Special Agent McLane?”

      “You bet.” Riley would, of course. But it wouldn’t be permission he was seeking. Rather, it would be forgiveness. In the spy trade, he’d learned that it was often more productive to everyone involved to ask for forgiveness rather than permission. Permission usually never came, and forgiveness was generally around the corner and most of the time no later than the next presidential election.

      Sam stood in the shadows of a tree along the canal. Riley could tell from his lover’s posture that she was worried. He wished he could put his hand on the wallscreen and touch her.

      “Start capturing images, Tolliver,” Riley said. Although he was more inclined to fieldwork, Riley was also being groomed as a handler. He didn’t want to come in from the violent world that he loved, and felt that he could do the most good in the trenches, but he knew that sooner or later he would be forced to do it.

      Tonight, however, he was thankful he was in a position to help Sam. He clicked over to Sam’s phone connection. “I’m here.”

      Tolliver worked quickly, downloading image after image and saving it off to a file.

      “I’m here with Elle,” Sam said. “She’s in a houseboat about two hundred feet southeast of my position. Farther along the canal.”

      Covering the mouthpiece with a hand, Riley said, “Back out. There’s a houseboat on the canal. A second agent is aboard.”

      “What agent?” Tolliver clicked the keys and the view backed out. The houseboat came into focus.

      “It’s a need-to-know, Tolliver. Just acquire the images.”

      “Yes, sir.”

      Riley didn’t want to have to explain how Sam happened to be in Amsterdam with her twin sister, who happened to be an excellent Russian spy. He had no clue himself.

      “What am I looking for, Sam?” Riley asked.

      “Someone broke into the houseboat,” Sam answered. “Elle went to find out who.”

      “Is the person or persons still there?”

      “I don’t know.”

      Riley heard the irritation and frustration in Sam’s voice. As carefully guarded as she was with her emotions, he doubted many people would have noticed. “What are you working?”

      “Private business.”

      “For the school?” Riley knew from recent experience that Athena Academy graduates had a tendency to operate quietly in the background to deal with their own issues.

      “There’s no time to talk about it now.”

      Shelving his irritation, Riley studied the screen, finding Elle standing beside the houseboat’s stern door just as the woman moved out of the shadows. An instant later, a quick illumination flared into being, then just as quickly disappeared.

      “That was a gunshot,” Tolliver said.

      “I know.” Tension swirled inside Riley. He knew the flash indicated a weapon had been fired. He’d spent years out in the field. “Does Elle have a weapon, Sam?”

      Joachim didn’t get a good look at the woman as she came through the door. He’d gone after her immediately, hoping to catch her by surprise. Instead, she’d caught him almost flat-footed by firing so quickly. There had been no hesitation. Whoever she was, she intended to kill him.

      He twisted as he saw her hands shift. The bullet grazed his chest, sliced through his shirt and pulled at his jacket as it ripped through. Another inch or two and he’d have been a dead man. He wrapped both hands around the woman’s and forced the pistol from his direction.

      She fired again, and the muzzle flash ripped through the cottony darkness. The bullet slapped low into the wall behind him, letting him know she was a pro because she was firing at the center of his mass rather than panicking for a head shot.

      In the next handful of seconds, Joachim found out he had a hellcat on his hands. Her elbows and knees lifted, crashing into his body rapidly, going for his crotch and his face—softer tissue areas. He maintained his lock on her hands, then swept her feet from under her and fell on top of her, knocking the breath from her with his weight. He was more than a foot taller than her and had her by at least a hundred pounds. She shouldn’t have given him much trouble. But she did.

      He made the mistake of lifting his head to look at her and identify her. She responded by crashing a forearm into his nose and left eye. Blinding pain screamed through his head and he lay on top of her again, somehow managing to knock the pistol away.

      “Stop,” he said. “I don’t want to have to hurt you.”

      “Like you didn’t hurt the guy on the floor?” She continued struggling, but—for the moment, at least—he had her arms pinned.

      “I didn’t kill him.”

      She went still. “Then let me up.”

      Cautiously, Joachim lifted his head and looked at her. With the blue monitor glow washing over her, he saw that she was one of the blond women he’d met earlier at Central Station. Not only that, she was the one he’d been so intrigued by. Almost instantly, he grew aware of how her body lay pressed under his. Before he knew it, his body responded and he was pressing with more than he’d intended.

      He didn’t know what surprised him more: that the woman was the one from Central Station, that his body could react so quickly under the circumstances…or that she arched her back and headbutted him in the face.

      Bright pain ignited inside Joachim’s skull. If his nose wasn’t broken, he was going to be further surprised. Blood dripped into his vision from a cut over his left eye.

      He cursed.

      “You,” she accused. Those beautiful ice-blue eyes widened in shock.

      Shifting, straddling her uncomfortably now with his excitement hard against her belly, Joachim held her wrists and sat up. He looked down at her. “What are you doing here?”

      “You were following us.”

      “How could I be following you if I got here in time to kill that man before you did?” he asked.

      Another thought occurred to Joachim. “Where’s your sister?”

      She glared at him.

      Joachim growled a curse. “Don’t play games. That could get your sister killed. There are worse people out tonight than me.”

      Sam waited anxiously after the muzzle flash. Riley’s question kept wriggling through her mind. Does Elle have a weapon?

      Then the second muzzle flash blazed to life inside the houseboat.

      “What’s going on?” Tuenis asked.

      For a moment, Sam considered releasing the man and going to her sister’s aid. With luck, they could find Tuenis again. Then Riley spoke into her ear over the phone.

      “Sam, you’ve got trouble.” His voice was deadly calm. “Three men—no, four men are closing on the houseboat. You’ve got to get out of there.”

      Instinctively, Sam pulled Tuenis back into the shadows with her. She scanned the street with her peripheral vision, not trying to see the men, just opening her vision up to spot approach patterns.

      Two of the men came

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