He was covered in sweat and thrusting into her in hard little stabs because he couldn’t bear the thought of pulling back too far because that meant leaving her heat. So he set his legs and pressed into her, circling her, stabbing hard and his heart stopped and the top of his head came off and he spilled into her, hard spurts that made him shake.

When he was finally done, he put his palms against the wall near her head to hold himself upright. Isabel slowly lowered her legs to the ground and he slipped out of her.

They were panting, both of them.

Isabel’s legs were shaking and her knees gave. She slid to the floor and he slid with her, rolling until it was his back against the cold floor and Isabel was lying on top of him, eyes closed, mouth upturned in a mysterious smile.

Joe lifted his head to watch her then let it fall back with a thud. He was completely wiped out.

“Forget killing Blake,” he said when he got his breathing under control. “You’re going to kill me.”

She laughed.

Washington, DC

She knew. The bitch knew, somehow. She had to go. It was time.

Blake had thought of this over and over again. Leaving Isabel alive was a security risk. But she’d been so broken he’d let it ride and all things considered, she’d had a good run. He’d let her live six months. Her memory was returning, and he knew exactly what she was remembering. Isabel alive was now an unacceptable risk, but it was good that it had taken time.

No one was going to connect the suicide of a troubled young woman with the events of months ago.

And soon Blake was going to be busy with phase two, and he wouldn’t have time to deal with her if she all of a sudden woke up and remembered halfway through a presidential campaign. So, it was time.

He arranged a rock-solid alibi then called his personal pilot. The pilot would fly him under an assumed name, flying a plane that was registered under a company it would take forensic economists months to trace back to Blake.

And why should they?

Hector Blake in Washington would have nothing to do with the suicide of a young woman across the country.

He could actually deal with this himself, with the help of his pilot and Kearns, his man on the ground.

He called Kearns. “Our little dove is going to fly away.” Their code for it’s time to get rid of the little bitch.

There was just enough of a silence to annoy Blake. Had the moron already forgotten their code?

“Ah. Okay. In Washington?”

Blake closed his eyes. Kearns would be the next to go. He wasn’t smart enough to take part in phase two, let alone phases three and four. “No, where her nest is.”

Portland.

“Nest nest?”

Meaning—in her home?

“Any objections?” Blake asked coldly.

“Well...she, um, seems to have made friends with a—a lot of people on her street. Maybe they’d report right away if something—something happens to her. Or someone might...interfere. I think we should, um, isolate her.”

“None of that was in your reports. That she had made friends on her street.”

“No, um. I didn’t think it was worth mentioning.”

A small vein throbbed in Blake’s temple. At the first opportunity, Kearns was gone. But for the moment, Kearns was on the ground and right now, Blake felt that he should be moving fast. Eliminate this small threat before it grew into a big threat.

“Okay. I’ll call her before the meeting and say I have to meet her downtown. Say at the bar of the Hotel Monaco. In the meantime, book a room in her name at the cheapest motel you can find. Here’s her credit card information—” Blake read off Isabel’s VISA number. He kept close tabs on her. It pleased him that she had very little in her checking and savings accounts. “I’ll email you a prescription for twenty capsules of Trevilor. Little Miss Dove is going to have a sad ending. Any questions?”

He’d better not have questions.

“No, sir.”

Next Blake spoke to his pilot and arranged a noon departure for Portland, a six-hour flight, arrival 3:00 p.m. local time. Plenty of time to get set up. He’d arrange for a 5:00 p.m. meeting.

Once Isabel was eliminated he’d fly straight back to DC, where at least four people would swear in court that he’d never left.

He paid them more than enough for a little perjury.

Chapter Eleven

“Comms check, again,” Joe ordered.

Isabel didn’t complain, didn’t roll her eyes. As if she’d been an undercover agent for the past ten years, she simply ran through their systems one more time. The tenth time. Eyes focused, no wasted movements, completely serious.

An operator.

“Check,” Felicity said.

Okay. It was late afternoon and they were in the back of Three Windows and Jacko’s friend had been absolutely ace. They had the placed fully wired. Nothing was going to happen that they didn’t know about. Joe had personally tested the metal detector at the front door, going through again and again with a weapon, with a knife, with knuckle-dusters. You couldn’t tell it was a metal detector and what he was carrying only showed up on Felicity’s screen at the back.

The metal detector worked.

If the fucker showed up with a fucking metal toothpick Joe was going to be all over him, he didn’t give a fuck if he blew the op.

The place was positively seeded with mini-mikes, almost invisible, incredibly powerful. Several were going to be piped into Bud Morrison’s office, an ASI friend. Former marine, now head of the homicide department and slated to become police commissioner soon.

Bud was chomping at the bit, as was Nick. Neither of them was territorial, either. Both of them just wanted to take that fucker down. They didn’t care who got the credit.

This was a team just raring to go. Even ex-CIA guy was communicating with Felicity via computer.

Everything depended on Isabel. He shot her a glance. The hot sexy woman he’d made love to last night was gone. In her place was a serious woman willing to risk her life to bring a criminal down.

They’d gone over the plan again and again and she knew every step, every facet. She’d had Felicity walk her through the eyes and ears they’d have until she understood everything.

Nick had given her an intro into interrogation techniques and she’d absorbed them quietly. They’d gone through a number of scenarios and in each one, she kept her cool.

Jacko and Metal were the designated shooters. If Blake so much as touched Isabel they would shoot to maim and stop, not kill. That was a collective decision and Isabel had been hotly opposed to it. She had a shoot to kill policy and it had taken a lot of talking to bring her down.

She accepted the reasoning—he needed to be alive so he could be interrogated about the conspiracy, so he could name names, so he could point fingers at the moles that had to exist in the US government for something like this to work. She accepted the reasoning but she didn’t like it.

Isabel looked calm and ready but Joe knew she was out for blood and that scared him. The only thing he could do was be ready to jump in and protect her. That was his designated role. He’d be in the open, just another guy in the bar situated way across the room, to the left. Drinking a beer, back to the room, seemingly absorbed in his tablet just like any other guy watching a game. What he’d be watching was Isabel. There was a camera trained right on her face. They’d worked it out so he had a clear view of everything, down to her eyelashes. It was the only way he could be persuaded to not be sitting next to her.

“Ten mikes,” Nick’s calm voice sounded in his earbud. Ten minutes to the arrival of Blake. The earbud was invisible. On Joe’s screen, Isabel blinked three times. A prearranged signal for everything’s okay. Blink twice and Joe was pulling his Glock from his shoulder holster, turning and shooting the fuck’s brains out from across the room. No, he told himself. As satisfactory as it would be to paint the walls with the inside of Blake’s head, he wouldn’t shoot to kill. Wouldn’t. No, sir.