LITMIR.BIZ

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      My warmest thanks to Carla Cassidy and Marie Ferrarella for their inspiration and support with this series. You two wear some pretty classy coattails— thanks for letting me hitch a ride on them!

      Chapter 1

      Jagger Holtz crouched in the dark as the helicopter overhead peeled away, ostensibly to continue tracking traffic jams on the highways below. They’d hovered over the AbaCo building a total of twenty-eight seconds. Just long enough to drop him on a zip line to the roof of the twenty-story-tall glass-and-steel tower. And hopefully not long enough to trigger the intense security of AbaCo Inc., one of the largest—and most shadowy—shipping firms in the world.

      Bent over at the waist, he ran for cover, ducking behind a giant air-conditioning vent and taking a quick time check. He’d give AbaCo’s goons three minutes to respond. Then, barring any company on the roof, he’d move on to phase two: infiltrating the building proper. He didn’t expect to find his missing colleagues tonight—Hanson and MacGillicutty were fellow government agents sent into AbaCo undercover months ago. And both of them had disappeared. No messages. No distress signals. No evidence of foul play. They were just … gone. When his superiors had approached him, he’d leaped at the chance to do this risky mission.

      It was starting to look as though his rooftop landing had gone unnoticed. He tied off a rope to a sturdy steel grille and checked his rappelling harness one more time. Down the side of the building, in through an office window and then they’d see if the password they’d bought from the snitch worked.

      Without warning, all hell broke loose. The heavy steel doors on each of the four stairwells leading to the roof burst open with a deafening crash. Armed men rushed out, sweeping the roof with automatic weapons. They sprinted forward, quartering the roof with brutal efficiency.

       Holy crap. Commandos for a helicopter overhead for twenty-eight seconds?

      He slammed to the ground just as a high-intensity flashlight beam passed over his position, barely missing lighting him up like a Christmas tree. He was trapped. He gripped the metal grille in front of his face in frustration as they closed in on him. Warm, moist air blew at him like an incongruous sea breeze on this frigid Denver night.

      Air. An air vent. It might be a dead end, but it was better than lying here and getting captured or killed in the next few seconds. He grabbed his pocketknife and used the blade to unscrew the nearest fastener holding the vent shut. He lobbed the thumb-sized screw as hard as he could across the roof. It clattered loudly, and shouting and a scramble of men reacted instantly.

      The second screw popped loose. It went flying in another direction.

      C’mon, c’mon. The last screw finally popped free. He grabbed the bottom of the grille and yanked. Someone was shouting irritably at the guards in German to quit running around like chickens, to form up and to search the roof methodically. Not good. AbaCo’s serious security team was up here if they were speaking German.

      Working fast, he slapped the clip from the rope he’d already tied off onto his climbing harness and rolled over the edge. He fell into space, fetching up hard as the rope caught. He bit back a gasp of pain as his groin took a hit from the harness that all but permanently unmanned him. Oww. So much for the glory of being a special agent.

      The vent was about six by six feet square. Twisting until his feet braced against the side, he walked backward down the galvanized aluminum wall, doing his damnedest to be as silent as possible. The echo of any noise in here would be magnified a dozen times.

      How far down the black shaft he descended, blind and lost, he had no idea. He counted steps and tried to estimate how far he’d gone. But it was hard to focus with periodic bursts of air from below knocking him off the wall and sending him spinning wildly in space, hanging on for dear life at the end of his single, skinny rope.

      Hopefully, the AbaCo powers that be would declare the whole thing a false alarm and satisfy themselves with complaining to the radio station about its helicopter parking in their airspace. Otherwise, guards were probably waiting for him at the other end of this shaft, licking their chops at the prospect of nabbing themselves a third hapless federal agent. The idea of failing galled him, not only because he never failed, but also because it would mean Hanson and MacGillicutty were no closer to being found, their families no closer to any answers. Both of them had wives. Kids. Christmas last week had been hard on them all.

      He guessed he was about halfway to the ground floor when the main shaft narrowed enough that he was forced to stop using his feet. He lowered himself hand over hand down the rope until his arms went so numb he could no longer feel them. His watch said the descent took twenty-four minutes. It felt like twenty-four hours.

      Plenty of time to ponder the symbolism of his descent. Into darkness and silence and utter isolation. The hell he so richly deserved. He pushed away the encroaching panic. He could not afford to lose it now. He was a long way from out of this mess.

      The air rushing up at him began to smell of car exhaust. The underground parking garage, maybe? Hmm. It had possibilities. Light began to glow faintly from below. Between his feet, he made out what looked like a metal grille. It was a miniature version of the big one on the roof.

      The screws holding it

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