LITMIR.BIZ

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smile was pleasant. “I don’t think so. Not until I have Dawes.”

      “You’re not getting Dawes.”

      “Yep.” He shoved her Beretta into his belt. “I am.” Then he turned and walked toward the motel room door.

      Short of bringing him down with a volley of bad language, there was nothing Meg could do but scramble after him. He turned the knob and shoved the door open, and Meg found herself holding her breath, but Reggie was nowhere to be seen and the connecting door between the rooms was closed. Blackhorse stepped inside and Meg came in on his heels, not giving him a chance to lock her out.

      Think! Damn it, no agent of O’Dell’s would just stand by and let this happen. Then again, no agent of O’Dell’s would have been caught as easily as she’d been, either.

      “Where were you hiding?” she asked very casually, her mind going like a windmill. “Just for future reference.”

      “Halfway up the stairs,” he said just as casually, giving the room a quick but thorough glance. “You’re new at this secret agent stuff, aren’t you?”

      “What makes you think that?” Her voice was sharper than she’d intended.

      “No other explanation for why you’re still alive.”

      “I stayed one step ahead of you for a week,” she said with annoyance. “So I can’t be that bad.”

      “I didn’t say you were bad.” His gaze held hers momentarily. “Just inexperienced. You looked around you out there, but you never looked up. I was right above you the whole time. If I’d been on Stepino’s payroll, I’d have taken you out with one shot to the head.”

      Meg swallowed, knowing he was right but resenting the fact that he took it so matter-of-factly. I am inexperienced, she felt like shouting at him. So give me a break! Let me take Reggie back to the people who want him so my boss will let me be one of his agents and I can find out who killed my brother!

      Did any of O’Dell’s agents get what they wanted by bursting into tears when things got tough?

      The thought almost made her laugh. O’Dell’s agents, to a man, were walking advertisements for testosterone and macho heroics. Bullets and balls, the old agency joke went.

      “So, where is the little guy?”

      “He’s not here,” Meg said instantly, praying that Reggie was listening from the other room and had the sense to hide. “I’m not as inexperienced as you seem to think I am. Reggie’s in a safe place. Sorry to have led you on this wild-goose chase, but that was the point.” She smiled ingenuously, praying he took the bait.

      And for a moment she thought he might. He glanced around the room again, frowning now, looking undecided. Then he shook his head. “No, I don’t think so, Special Agent Mary Margaret Kavanagh—that’s a hell of a mouthful, by the way. Mind if I just call you Irish for short?”

      He was prowling now, peering in the closet, behind the drapes, glancing around at her now and again as though not entirely sure she wasn’t going to haul out a Mack Ten and start blasting away at him. Meg watched him silently, heart hammering against her ribs as she strolled casually toward the table where her handbag lay.

      “You wouldn’t let the little weasel out of your sight, for one thing,” Blackhorse was saying. “And for another, I was on your tail ten minutes after you left Haney’s office, and you came straight here.”

      “You weren’t on my tail.”

      He just shrugged. “You were good, I’ll give you credit. Better than most, in fact. If you don’t get yourself killed before you get some experience under your belt, you’ll be pretty damn good.”

      “I am pretty damn good.”

      “You’re not bad.” He smiled as he said it, swinging his head around to look at her. His gaze drifted to her handbag, maybe three feet away now. “You wouldn’t have another gun in that thing, would you?”

      Meg let her eyes widen with innocence. “Of course not.”

      He laughed. “I’ll tell you one thing for nothing, Irish—you can’t lie for spit. That’s something you’re going to have to work on if you want to be successful at this secret agent business.”

      “Will you stop calling me a secret agent!” Trying to distract him from the handbag, she strode across the room angrily. “I’m a government agent! Law enforcement of sorts. Or at least a lot closer to it than you are.”

      “Uh-huh.” He didn’t seem impressed. “Well, let’s see what you’ve got in here.” Still keeping an eye on her, he grabbed her bag and upended it over the bed. A variety of things spilled across the faded bedspread, but the thing both of them looked at for a silent moment was the small, satin-blue Targa semiautomatic pistol.

      Rafe smiled. He looked at Kavanagh, but she just gazed back at him stonily, and he wondered what other armament she had stashed throughout the room. He took a couple of steps backward and rapped on the connecting door. “Come out of there, Dawes.” Silence answered him and he hammered his fist against it. “I said come out, Dawes.”

      “He’s halfway to Canada by now,” Kavanagh said impatiently. “Once he knew you were here, he’d have been out the door and gone.”

      Rafe ignored her and tested the knob on the connecting door. It turned easily and he pushed the door open gingerly. The other room was pitch-dark, drapes drawn, lights off. The back of his neck prickled and he gave the door a shove with the toe of his boot. “Dawes? I know you’re in there, so stop playing games and—”

      He sensed more than actually saw something move in the darkness, something coming straight at him, and he recoiled instinctively. The suitcase flew by him, inches from his face, and Rafe swore and dropped like a stone, grabbing for the Beretta even as his mind took in two separate images: Reggie Dawes taking aim with another suitcase, and Kavanagh diving for the gun on the bed.

      He took Dawes out first, ducking under the suitcase that came cartwheeling through the doorway and grabbing the little guy by the front of his T-shirt. Dawes gave a squeak of terror as Rafe pulled him into Kavanagh’s room, then shoved him ferociously. Dawes hit the wall with a thump and slowly slid to the floor, eyes glazed, down for the count. And in the same motion, using the momentum to spin him around, Rafe had the Beretta out and aimed.

      And found himself staring into the barrel of the Targa. She’d landed on the bed on her shoulder and had rolled onto the floor, snatching up the small gun as she did so. And now she was kneeling between the bed and the wall, looking a little pale, as though unnerved by her own wild heroics. But unnerved or not, her hands were rock-steady. That damned pistol was aimed square at his chest, and it didn’t waver so much as a hair.

      “Okay.” He blew out a tight breath and straightened very slowly, the Beretta trained on her. “This could get interesting.”

      “Put the gun down.”

      He very nearly laughed. “I was going to say the same thing.”

      “I’m not playing around here!”

      Rafe let his smile fade deliberately. “Honey, neither am I.” He let her think about it. “I know you think you’re doing the right thing, Irish, but you’re way out of your league here. Put the gun down, come out from behind there, and we’ll talk.”

      She gave him a searing look, but did get to her feet and walk around the end of the bed, her weapon still aimed at his chest. “I won’t ask you again to put that gun down.”

      He smiled coolly. “You haven’t got the stones to kill a man in cold blood, Irish. I’ll bet you’ve never even fired that thing at anything but a paper target.” It was a wild guess, but he could tell the instant the words were out of his mouth that he was right.

      Faint apprehension flickered across her face, gone in an instant under steely determination. “There has

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