LITMIR.BIZ

      Contents

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Chapter 1

      For as far as the eye could see, the land was a vast, endless stretch of lonely plains that resembled the high desert of New Mexico. An occasional eucalyptus dotted the landscape with its thin, spindly branches, and small arid plants that needed little moisture in order to survive thrived under a hot sun that burned in a cloudless sky. And covering everything was a veil of choking red dust kicked up by a dry wind that blew steadily from the north.

      Staring out at the haunting land that was the Australian outback, Russell Devane had, before he’d accepted this particular mission, thought he was a man who could take in stride whatever nature threw at him. After all, his job as an operative for the secret organization SPEAR had taken him to the farthest reaches of the globe. He’d withstood the bone-numbing cold of the Arctic and the blistering sands of the Sahara, all without complaint. But he could see already that nothing in his past had really prepared him for the vastness of the outback and its drastic temperature changes. It was the tail end of summer—fall was just days away—but the temperature had to be a hundred and twenty degrees in the shade. And it wasn’t even noon yet!

      Just thinking about working in that kind of heat all day long made him sweat, but he grimly resolved to get used to it. He had to. In a few minutes, he would be arriving at the headquarters of the Pear Tree Cattle Station, where he would assume the identity of Steve Trace, the station’s newest cowboy and an associate of Art Meldrum, the owner of the place.

      To the rest of the world, Art was an absentee landlord who left the running of the huge ranch in the hands of his daughter, Lise, most of the time. Only Russell—and his fellow SPEAR operatives—knew that Art was actually an alias for Simon, the traitor who’d spent the last eight months trying his damnedest to destroy not only Jonah, the head of SPEAR, but the agency itself. And he was slippery as an eel. Time and again, just when SPEAR operatives were sure they had him in their grasp, he’d managed to slip away.

      Not this time, Russell promised himself, his gray eyes steely as he thought of how Simon had evaded capture just days ago on the Caribbean island of Cascadilla. The bastard had, in fact, never even put in an appearance on the island. Thanks to the real Steve Trace, a kidnapper and thug who’d been hired sight unseen by Simon, he’d been warned he was walking into a trap if he came to Cascadilla. So he’d run home to the outback, where he could lie low in the bush, and he’d never known that the real Steve Trace had died soon after he’d gotten word to him he was in danger.

      SPEAR had made sure that no one knew of Trace’s death, making it easy for Russell to step right into his life. Pretending to be Trace, he’d used Trace’s cell phone and discovered through the phone’s address book that Simon was using the name Art Meldrum in Australia. He’d immediately called him and given him a sob story about needing a job. Not suspecting a thing, Simon had told him to come to the station, which was just what Russell had figured would happen. After all, Simon had narrowly escaped capture thanks to the quick thinking of

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