LITMIR.BIZ

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name the time and place.’”

      “You give it to the person and it’s up to them to decide where and when to demand the quickie. I pick riskier places than Lucas does. It throws him off balance.”

      Sophie grinned. “You’re so good for him, Mac.”

      “You’ll be good for Tracker, too. He’s lonely.”

      She’d never thought of Tracker as having any vulnerabilities.

      “He probably needs a little encouragement. Lucas did. And some of these little toys get amazing results.”

      Sophie picked up the final item that Mac took out of the bag, a black velvet ribbon, and drew it through her fingers. “What kind of game do you play with this?”

      Mac tilted her head to one side. “Bondage comes to mind, but there’s a tag with an interesting suggestion.”

      Sophie glanced at the tag and saw that it even included a diagram with what she suspected was a highly inventive Kama Sutra position. The man was seated, the woman was on his lap—backward—and the ribbon was looped around his… Tilting the card sideways, Sophie narrowed her eyes. Yep, the ribbon was looped around exactly what she’d thought. “Are you sure this is anatomically possible?”

      Mac cleared her throat. “Not from personal experience. I think you have to have great powers of concentration to actually… My advice would be to improvise.”

      Sophie glanced around the bed at the sex toys that Mac had taken out of the gift bag. “I’m getting that message loud and clear.”

      “Tracker would be a safe person to try these out on.”

      Safe. Yes. In spite of his air of mystery and danger, she’d never felt safer than when Tracker had held her in his arms that very first day in Lucas’s office. Right after she’d punched her brother.

      “Go for it, Sophie.”

      “TRACKER, I’d like you to meet Carter Mitchell,” Lucas said as he closed the French doors leading to the patio, and strode into his office. “He’s one of the two men Sophie brought this evening.”

      Tracker recognized the name. Carter Mitchell was the manager of the art gallery next door to Sophie’s shop. Since Mitchell’s relationship with Sophie had been strictly business, Tracker had had one of his men run a routine check. Now Tracker caught something familiar in the way Mitchell moved as he rose from his chair. The face was familiar, too. Although it was leaner now and harder, there were still traces of the baby-faced twenty-two-year-old he and Lucas had worked with on their last mission six years ago.

      “Chance?” he said, narrowing his eyes as he took in the Italian designer suit, the slim gold bracelet he wore on one wrist and the diamond earring in his left ear. Chance had been the only name he’d known this man by when they’d worked together. They’d called him that because there wasn’t a chance that he wouldn’t take.

      “Yeah.” He stepped toward Tracker and extended his hand. “I figured I’d have to come clean the moment I walked through that door with Sophie. The name’s Carter Mitchell now.”

      Lucas moved to stand behind his desk. “Seems our old friend Chance is working undercover and he wants to make sure we don’t spoil things for him.”

      There was a steeliness in Lucas’s voice that had Tracker withdrawing his hand from Chance’s grasp.

      “He took me aside and asked me not to give away his cover,” Lucas said. Then he turned to Chance. “Now, I want an uncut, uncensored version of who you’re working for, and if my sister is involved.”

      “I work for a group of insurance companies that want to recover some stolen artifacts from an archeological find in Turkey, most importantly three rare coins. They were in England when they were stolen, and it’s caused quite an international stir. Various investigative agencies including Interpol and the feds have concluded that the stuff’s being brought into this country cleverly concealed in shipments to selected commercial locations. Sophie’s shop had been identified as warranting close surveillance.”

      “How long has she been a target of the investigation?” Lucas asked.

      “For about a month and a half. That’s when I became the new manager of the art gallery next to her shop. A month ago we got our first big break in the case. An operative on this side got close enough to the head guy to actually buy a piece we believe contained one of the coins. She purchased it at One of a Kind, and she was supposed to deliver it in person to her boss.”

      “Supposed to?” Tracker’s eyes narrowed.

      “Five minutes after she left the shop, she was the victim of a hit-and-run driver. Two men came out of nowhere. One pushed her into an oncoming car, the other took the package and then both ran.”

      “And you’ve waited a month to let me know my sister might be in mortal danger?”

      Chance switched his gaze to Lucas. “I swear I didn’t put Sophie together with you until I walked in here tonight. None of us went by our real names when we worked together. Hell, I didn’t even know you had a sister.”

      Everything Chance said was true enough. The kind of operations they’d worked on never appeared in the newspapers, and real names were never mentioned.

      “And now you’ve decided to date her?” Tracker asked, silently cursing himself. He’d focused his time and the time of his staff checking out the men Sophie went out with even casually. If she’d gone out with Chance sooner, he’d have had a photo of the man standing in front of him, and he’d have known over a month ago that something was up.

      Once again, Chance raised his hands, but this time he grinned. “Hey, I’m not her date tonight. I’m just her tag-along gay friend.”

      “You’re not gay,” Tracker said.

      Chance shrugged. “It’s part of my cover. Telling a woman you’re gay is the quickest way to lower barriers short of taking her to bed—and that’s a little complicated if she’s one of your prime suspects.”

      For a moment, Tracker didn’t say a word. He had to get a grip. Anger wasn’t going to help—nor was fear. “Sophie’s not involved in smuggling anything.”

      “I eliminated her as soon as I got to know her. She doesn’t have a dishonest bone in her body. And she loves that shop of hers too much to risk it by getting involved in something like this.” Chance’s eyes narrowed and grew colder. “But someone on this side is funneling the goods to the right person.”

      “Do you suspect Noah Danforth, her assistant?” Lucas asked.

      “It could be him,” Chance replied. “Or it could be any one of her regular customers. She makes them feel like family. All it would take was a word that they were looking for a particular piece, and she’d see that it was set aside. Noah would do the same.”

      “So the only thing you really know is that anyone who gets close to the head guy ends up dead.” Lucas turned to Tracker. “I want her out of that shop until the investigation is over.”

      “That won’t necessarily keep her safe,” Chance said quickly. “Whoever is behind this is very clever. His nickname is ‘Puppet Master’ because he stays in the background and just pulls the strings. We got close to him three months ago when he shipped the first of the coins. He used a small shop in Connecticut, and the owner was killed in a fire that destroyed his shop. If this guy gets even a hint that Sophie knows anything, she could still be in mortal danger. The only way to really keep her safe is to find out who’s behind this.”

      Tracker paced to the French doors. The hell of it was Chance was making sense. From the sounds of it, the bastard behind the smuggling ring didn’t leave any loose ends that could be traced back to him.

      “I’ll cancel my trip,” Lucas said.

      “No.” Tracker turned to face him. “If you do, Sophie

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