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business.
Lillian lifted her lashes and let his gaze catch hers. She felt suspended then, held between duty and desire, between the rules and a hunger she couldn’t explain even to herself.
“Risa Clay.” She finally cleared her throat. “Daughter of Jansen Clay.”
“The traitor who conspired with Sorrell.” He nodded. “I know of her.”
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Lillian guessed there wasn’t an Elite Ops member who hadn’t heard of her. Jansen and his ilk were the very reasons why the Elite Ops had been created.
“There’s a contract on her head,” she stated. “Two million, and word is that Orion has taken the contract.”
She watched his eyes then. They narrowed as his jaw tightened. It was a small reaction, but one that assured her that the search for the deadly assassin known only as Orion was still a priority with his unit.
“Why the contract?” he asked her.
“Rumor is, she’s beginning to remember things that someone doesn’t want her to remember. Things such as the man who conspired with her father.”
“The man who raped her.” His voice darkened in fury.
Risa Clay had been brutalized by her rapist, then again by her father when he’d had her drugged and institutionalized for nineteen long, horrendous months. The young woman had been freed upon her father’s death, when the truth had been revealed. But nothing, Lillian thought, would ever ease the nightmares that girl must surely have.
She nodded at the statement. “The man who raped her. Evidently, he’s more influential than first believed. Orion will be arriving in the states within an estimated one to two weeks. He has four weeks to complete the contract by knife.”
That was Orion’s preferred me
thod of death. He’d been known to use a bullet, many times, but he normally liked to play with his victims, especially the women.
“Any hint to arrival point or his identity?” Jack asked.
Lillian shook her head. “Nothing. We’re still working on it, but we’ve been working on it for years with nothing new. I wouldn’t expect that to change in time to save her life. You know how it works, Jack. At least we have a warning this time. It’s
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more than we usually have when men such as he accept a job. We should count ourselves lucky.”
And she should know. A man such as Orion had destroyed her life, had for all intents and purposes, taken her life. And now, she was wondering if the price she had paid for life might have been too high. It was a price that held her back, held her silent, and forced her to deny her need for a man who was just as dead as she.
#
Travis watched the woman he had long ago nicknamed “Lady Hawk.” Night Hawk was her codename, and he hadn’t realized how much he hated code names until he’d found a curiosity for this one woman.
Curiosity was quickly turning to desire, though. When had it started? Hell, maybe it had always been there. Staring into her emerald eyes, seeing the feminine softness, a feminine hunger, he realized it must have always been there after all.
He stored away the information she had given him. He’d arrive back at unit command tonight and relay the message to Jordan. He wouldn’t mention a midnight car ride, or the fact that his cock was throbbing and his need to touch his contact was driving him crazy.
Damn. She looked like a dark angel as she sat next to him in the car, staring back at him with aching loneliness. That loneliness was easy to identify, it lived and breathed inside him as well.
“Any further information?” He forced the question past his lips. He didn’t want to talk to her about death or assassins. He didn’t want to talk at all, but what he did want was so forbidden that it could make him a dead man in truth. Maybe.
She shook her head, her long, dark brown hair brushing around her shoulders and upper arms, drawing his gaze, his hunger. He wanted to feel that hair on his flesh,
Night Hawk
