Black Jack Read online

  Behind her, the warm male body bracketing hers was still for a long moment before she felt the silent sigh ripple across his chest.

  “We’ll discuss that tonight.” There was a promise in his voice and, a part of her feared, a warning.

  A warning about what? The truth perhaps?

  The truth could be a double-edged sword, her uncle had warned her several times when she questioned if he had had the past six years of her life investigated once he learned she was alive. Surely he had, yet he refused to give her a straight answer.

  The evasiveness had been driving her insane. Perhaps, this time, someone would give her a straight answer.

  “And if I don’t show up?”

  His hands eased away from her slowly as the sound of her mother’s voice discussing the merits of a particular porcelain plate filtered through the dim room.

  “Then I guess you don’t show up,” he murmured. “Perhaps, Lilly, there’re things about yourself that you don’t really want to know.”

  As she tried to understand that comment he slipped away from her, the warmth of his body no more than a dream as she turned quickly to try and catch a glimpse of the man who had held her so intimately.

  Was he the one following her? Was he the one that filled her fantasies as well as her nightmares?

  However, all she saw was his back as he slipped out the door and moved quickly past the long, narrow window of the shop.

  Lilly began to race after him. Waiting until tonight for answers suddenly seemed less than feasible. She wanted those answers now.

  “Lilly, Mrs. Longstrom has the most gorgeous lace tablecloth in the back room.” Her mother’s voice stopped her as she took the first step. “You simply have to come back here and see it. I believe it would be perfect for the breakfast room at the manor.”

  Lilly turned quickly back to her mother, a question forming on her lips, a demand to know if her mother had seen the man speaking to her. If she knew him.

  In the moment that the words would have slipped past her lips, she snapped her teeth quickly together. Her mother hadn’t seen him, or she would have already posed the same questions to Lilly.

  Angelica suddenly paused, her gaze sharpening as though she sensed or saw something in Lilly’s face that concerned her or perhaps angered her.

  “I believe it’s time we go.” Angelica moved quickly across the room despite the height of the heels she wore with her alabaster slacks and matching sleeveless blouse.

  Lilly protested as her mother’s fingers curled gently around her arm and urged her toward the door. “Really, Mother, we don’t need to leave.”

  She had to get her bearings, had to make sense of what was suddenly happening. What she was feeling.

  She should never have had such a reaction to a man she couldn’t see, only hear. A man who seemed more familiar to her than her own body.

  She followed her mother from the antiques shop, back to the busy tree-lined street. Pausing, Angelica Harrington made a quick call to the chauffeur, gave him their location, then turned to her daughter with a worried frown.

  “I tried to do too much at once,” Angelica said, the apology in her voice pricking at Lilly’s conscience. “I should have allowed you to rest a little longer.”

  “You’re going to have to get used to this, Mother,” Lilly informed her firmly as she let her gaze survey the busy street with narrowed eyes behind her dark sunglasses. “Just as I have to get used to myself.”

  Lilly didn’t catch her mother’s look of consternation. The older woman watched her daughter as one might watch an alien, waiting, watching for any signs of danger. But together with the wariness there was also pain.

  A mother’s dream had come true. The daughter she had thought she had lost forever had returned home. Her child lived and breathed. She was given the chance few parents who had lost children were given. A chance to say all the things she hadn’t taken the time to say before. A chance to kiss her daughter good night. A chance to see her smile. Hear her laughter.

  Perhaps.

  Travis wondered if Lilly had learned to laugh again. He knew the few times he had managed to pull laughter from her it was like seeing sunshine for the first time.

  He wondered if her mother saw sunshine when she saw her daughter’s smile, or heard her laughter. He wondered if she’d seen that smile or that laughter since her daughter had been home. God knew, Lilly deserved at least a few moments of happiness before the world went crazy on her again. And before her mother possibly lost her daughter all over.

  One thing was certain, beneath the impatience and flashes of irritation Angelica Harrington’s heart was also breaking as she watched the young woman she had been told was her daughter.

  There was no doubt Lilly was definitely Victoria Lillian Harrington. DNA proved it, her dental records proved it, but there were no fingerprints to back it up. Her fingerprints had been removed the day she signed on with the Elite Ops. With her return the blame had been lain on the fiery car crash.

  Standing well out of her line of vision, he watched her closely, a smile tugging at his lips as she slid her sunglasses on and continued to watch the street with what he knew were eagle-sharp eyes.

  She’d caught him following her several times throughout the afternoon. Each time she had stopped, arrowed in on him, and watched him with a familiarity he knew did nothing but confuse her.

  He’d seen that confusion. He’d felt it. He’d nearly tasted it as he stood behind her and breathed in her scent.

  She was fighting to make sense of the world she was in and the memories she had lost, but she was still game to fight for the answers.

  She would be there tonight. There wasn’t a doubt in Travis’s mind that she wouldn’t find the bar in time to meet with him. He wondered if she would make it there alone, or if her shadow, the bodyguard her uncle had hired, would manage to follow her.

  Lilly Belle, code-named Night Hawk, would never have allowed herself to be tracked to a meeting. She would have ensured she arrived alone, and if she didn’t, then she would ensure the one following her regretted it.

  That was his Lilly. She could be merciless, but in being so, he’d watched, year by year, another piece of her soul erode.

  Those wounds were still there, in her eyes, along with her confusion, her wariness.

  “What do you think?”

  Travis glanced over his shoulder at the towering former Russian who stood carefully back from the edge of the building.

  Nik Steele watched Lilly and her mother, his icy blue eyes lasered in on them intently.

  “I think we need to plan for when all hell breaks loose,” Travis grunted as a limo drew to a stop in front of the two women.

  The chauffeur jumped out, and Travis couldn’t help the amused twitch of his lips. He had to admit, Wild Card made a hell of a chauffeur.

  “Looks slick in that perky little hat, huh?” Nik said. “Maybe we should send pictures to his wife.”

  Travis snickered at the thought. Wild Card’s wife was a hell of a woman; he had no doubt she wouldn’t ooh and aah over how cute she thought he looked. It was enough to make a single man shudder in fear. Or in envy.

  “Save the pictures,” Travis advised him. “Maybe we could throw darts at them instead.”

  Nik’s amused grunt was a rough, broken sound, part amusement, part mockery. The man never laughed. He rarely smiled. But hell, Travis couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed himself.

  “So what are we putting in our report to Live Wire?” Nik asked him as Wild Card helped Lilly and Angelica into the car.

  What was he putting in his report to Jordan?

  “She’s viable,” he stated.

  “Really?” The skepticism in Nik’s voice wasn’t lost on Travis. “That’s not how I saw things, Black Jack.”
/>   “Do you intend to report differently?” As the limo pulled away, Travis turned back to the mountain they now called Renegade.

  Nik was the only one of the team that seemed to change code names like underwear. Jordan couldn’t seem to make his mind up about the big, blond-haired giant.

  “Not me.” Nik shook his head firmly as he glanced back at Travis. “If I were you, I’d talk to Wild Card, though.” He nodded in the direction the limo had taken. “Make sure he has the same report. Because I’m betting ‘viable’ isn’t the word he would choose either.”

  But it was the one he would use in his report, Travis promised himself. He’d talk to Wild Card. Tonight, he’d meet with Night Hawk. The game was about to begin. That meant “viable” had to be the word they all used. Or Night Hawk would pay the price.

  Under no circumstances could the Elite Ops be revealed. The damage it could cause, the danger it could represent to them all, was too high.

  If Lilly wasn’t considered viable and an asset to the operation, then she was a risk. And all risks had to be eliminated.

  Immediately.

  Chapter 3

  lilly had thought there would be no way to find a motorcycle she hadn’t even known she owned. The idea of it intrigued her, though. The thought of riding wild and free with nothing but the wind surrounding her filled her with a sense of heady excitement.

  Finding the damned thing would be the hard part. Or so she had thought.

  Lilly didn’t have memories of the past six years, but she had a strong sense of intuition.

  As she rode through Hagerstown in the rented cab, her gaze narrowed on street signs and buildings, Lilly found herself pulling free bits of memory. She could remember riding through town in the dark, but she didn’t remember why.

  A certain street sign snagged a memory and she had the driver turn. A building pulled at a memory, a sense of familiarity struck her at an intersection, and soon she had the driver stopping in front of a lot filled with storage units.

  She stared at the long lines of blue and white units. A flashback tore through her mind, causing a sudden shaft of pain to seize her temples.

  It was here. She knew the unit number and the code to the lock. Her temples throbbed with pain, but she knew. The memory of it was there, a little hazy, but present.

  Paying the driver, Lilly left the car and entered the lot, walking quickly to the farthest line of units. She could feel the security cameras trained on her as she kept her face turned carefully from them.

  The storage unit she moved to was a simple ten by ten with a combination key and digital code lock.

  Lilly bent to the edge of the bottom frame, moving aside the thick layer of gravel carefully until she revealed the cement pad beneath the unit. There, a small depression had been hollowed out of the cement. The key rested there, wrapped in a protective, heavy plastic case.

  Within seconds she had the unit unlocked and the key returned to its resting place.

  Opening the door slowly, Lilly reached in, flipped the light on, and entered the unit as she closed the door behind her.

  There was more than a motorcycle sitting there. Lilly felt her throat tighten, her heart racing out of control. Perspiration dotted her forehead, and for a moment she swore she would become ill. On one wall a series of shelves had been hung. A wide black case sat in the middle of the shelf, surrounded by smaller ones.

  Stepping to it, she opened it carefully, her breath catching at the sight of the weapon packed carefully in black foam.

  A sniper rifle. It was broken down, well oiled, and shining in the dim light. Reaching out to touch it with trembling fingers, Lilly fought back the realization that she had used it, more than once.

  Moving to the smaller cases, she found handguns, and knew somehow that they were modified and highly illegal. There were empty clips and cases of ammunition.

  There were clothes, maps, files that Lilly scanned as fear stole her breath.

  What in the hell had she been involved in?

  Shaking, she pulled a leather bag from a small cabinet and packed clothes, a Glock, ammunition, and several knives inside.

  Storing the bag in the back compartment of the motorcycle, Lilly turned to the remainder of the clothes.

  She dressed quickly in leather pants, t-shirt, and jacket. Flat leather boots pulled above the knee, and she found the key to the cycle hanging in the ignition.

  Fear was ever present, but so was excitement. It pounded inside her, raced through her bloodstream, and sent adrenaline flying through her system.

  She didn’t remember who she had been.

  She didn’t remember what she had been.

  But maybe those memories were now growing stronger, moving closer, and were almost within reach.

  Friendly’s Sports Bar sat in the perfect location for assignations such as the one Travis had set up with his favorite former Elite Ops counterpart.

  It sat on a corner. Across the street were an assortment of closely built inner-city brick houses that served as apartments, homes, and offices.

  Franklin Street was a busy area, especially on a Friday night, which allowed for greater anonymity, as well as plenty of traffic, both by vehicle and by foot, which could be used as a distraction as the other agents positioned themselves to watch every corner of the tavern.

  They wanted to know who was following Lilly, how she was being followed, and who they could be traced back to.

  Sitting at the bar, Travis nursed a beer, his gaze trained on the side entrance of the building from the short end of the L-shaped bar. At the other corner, Nik sat sideways on a bar stool as the red-haired Tehya, one of the team’s communications experts, sat beside him and flirted outrageously.

  Farther down the bar Clint McIntyre, a former Navy SEAL and now part of the Elite Ops independent backup team, sat with his wife and tried playing the drunken male on the make while his wife, Morganna, her long dark hair pulled back in a braid, pretended not to be amused.

  The rest of the team, backup as well as the agents, were positioned outside along with Jordan and Santos Bahre, one of Lilly’s commanders.

  “She’s not showing.” Santos’s voice came through the tiny earset that linked communications between the agents and the commanders. “I warned you she wasn’t this predictable.”

  Travis glanced around the bar.

  “She’s here.” She’d been here for a while, he suspected. He could feel her watching, those green eyes narrowed on him as she waited to see what he’d do.

  “Doubtful.” Reno Chavez, commander of the backup team that had been with the Ops for years, now spoke into the link. “Macey and I both have the entrances covered. There’s no way she slipped in there without us knowing it.”

  There was a way. Lilly always found a way.

  Travis pushed back the warm beer he had been nursing and made to rise when he felt the small hand that pressed between his shoulder blades, indicating he should remain in place.

  Settling back on the stool, he turned his head, restrained his smile, and watched as Lilly slid onto the bar stool that had been vacated beside him.

  “I didn’t think you were going to show.” He motioned for the bartender to take her order.

  Waving the man away, Lilly turned back to him, her gaze suspicious as she watched him closely.

  She was wearing her riding leathers. Leather pants, boots, a short jacket, and a black silk shirt that bared her midriff if she moved just the right way.

  “Neither did I.” Her green eyes were dark in the shadows. “Tell me who you are and what do you have to do with me?”

  There was something about him, something familiar, something she couldn’t put her finger on. She should know him, but she couldn’t remember him. She couldn’t remember meeting him.

  But her body seemed to
know him. Each time she had seen him, this morning as well as tonight, her body had responded with heated warmth and that familiar sense of remembrance.

  This man had touched her, he had kissed her. Her body remembered it and she ached for more. That ache had followed her through the day, the remembered feel of his body behind her, at the store, impossible to recover from.

  “I’ve had many things to do with you.” His smile was rakish, his brown eyes filled with sexual knowledge. A sexual knowledge of her.

  Lilly looked up at the bartender as he set a cold beer in front of her.

  “Good to see you back, Lilly.” The grizzled bartender gave a wide smile and a wink. “I see your friend found you.”

  “That he did.” She lifted the beer to her lips and took a long, cold drink.

  The bartender moved away, leaving her with the man watching her now. She didn’t even know his name.

  “Travis Caine,” he whispered at her ear as though reading her thoughts. “In case you were wondering.”

  She was doing more than wondering. It had been driving her crazy not knowing even that scrap of information. “I know your name then,” she said quietly. “Who are you to me?”

  “We met six years ago,” he told her. “We’ve run together at odd times since.”

  Lilly pushed the fingers of one hand through her hair.

  “We traveled together then?” Her heart was racing, her lungs starved for oxygen as she fought not to breathe too hard.

  He nodded and Lilly tipped the beer to her lips, and finished it quickly before setting it rather hard on the bar and flicking her fingers at the bartender to the empty bottle.

  He’d obviously been watching for her. Within seconds there was another bottle in front of her. She wondered what tip she usually left him for such excellent service.

  She finished half the beer, set the bottle on the bar, then glanced back at Travis.

  “I fight?” she whispered back at him.

  “Rather well.” He gave her a strange half smile. Strange, because she felt she should know what that smile meant.