Wait! What do you mean?
Better not walk around naked at night, Miss Hutchens. Hot Stuff may bump into you. Signing out.
The window closed automatically on its own. Amber cursed out loud. For the second time in half an hour, the man had left her hanging, more intrigued than ever. Hot Stuff indeed. He had used her own code word to refer back to himself. Hawk McMillan had a big head. And was one very smart operative. He had cleverly gotten her to talk to him without even wasting any time trying to find open port holes in her system. All he had needed was her cooperation—to go into his system to see what he was doing and to reply to his baiting. It was a long enough conversation for him to trace her if he wanted to, but he already knew who she was and her business phone, so what was he doing while he was distracting her?
Damn it. She wished she had the evening off so she could play with this new program she had downloaded. But Brad was on the way and she had other business to attend to. She eyed the computer screen suspiciously, half expecting something else to happen, but the window didn’t reappear.
She would have to tell Lily about this. It was clear she had underestimated this Hawk McMillan.
Hawk snapped his laptop shut. That didn’t take long—Miss Amber Hutchens took the bait quickly enough. He had wondered whether she would, but evidently she was very confident about her computer firewalls.
He gathered that she was somewhat of a gambler anyhow. Anyone who did what she had done last night, taking the risk of being caught by Dragan Dilaver’s men just to hang a message on him, had to have a wild side. Since he enjoyed living on the edge himself, he appreciated the woman’s daredevilry. However, he didn’t like knowing she had knocked him out with drugs, that it could have been something more serious.
She had a point. His attention couldn’t slack. It could cost him his life.
He was also intrigued by Amber Hutchens’s front. A café owner. Who would see her as some kind of tracker? And from what Dilaver had said, she sold information to get his protection. So whose side was she on?
When she had answered the phone earlier, her voice had had the oddest effect on him. Smooth and soft, it slid against his skin like silk. So this was the voice belonging to the woman who’d touched him. He had hated not having an image for a target. Now he had a voice. And he wondered whether she looked as delicious as she sounded.
Hawk made an impatient sound. His mind was wandering into territory that had gotten him into trouble again. Fuck! The curse brought a reluctant wry smile on his lips. Exactly. Months of clogged sperm. He was going to get himself killed if even a sexy voice was making him horny.
She was probably big as a house. Nope, he had fought with her last night. Okay, now he had a voice and a body. He closed his eyes, going through the events of last night, bringing up the fight in slow motion, from the moment his mystery assailant had attacked him till the last point of consciousness when he had tried to snap her neck.
Details came flooding back. She wasn’t very tall; he had towered over her. She had a very strong grip and, remembering the way she held the needle, she was right-handed. He smiled again. And yeah, she had very strong thighs, too. He suddenly recalled, just before falling over, he’d thought the “man” wiry and…his hand had gone for the neck…brushing up against…Hawk sat up. He had touched her breast during that struggle and she had squirmed. That was when she’d decided to use that damn hypodermic needle, because she’d realized that he would discover the truth.
A fierce satisfaction came over him. She had been in trouble herself. Good. He hadn’t liked thinking about how in control she had been, with this plan of tying that note in such an insulting way. That meditation training was damn good—his mind was pulling sensory details out of his unconscious that he didn’t even know he had.
Hawk was definitely looking forward to exacting some kind of revenge now. It would be interesting to see how good an operative Miss Amber Hutchens was.
He spent the next few minutes removing the tracking devices from his cell phone. Then he called Jed’s number again, going through the coded conversation with the woman on the other side. This time there was no sudden disconnection.
“This is Jed.”
The Asians called Jed McNeil Ghost Lightning, a weather phenomena that the superstitious feared. Hawk had heard of other monikers given to the man who had trained him on and off the last half a year.
His current undercover assignment started in Asia a few months ago. He had to leave his SEAL team to work for “Stefan.” Even though the other man never brought it up, Hawk suspected Jed had picked that name as a private joke in reference to Hawk’s family’s odd penchant to give all the sons the same name. Every one of Hawk’s male relatives, including his father, was Steve, or Steven, or Stephan, or one of the other derivatives. He had learned quickly that there wasn’t much Jed McNeil didn’t know about those around him.
His commander, Admiral Madison, had sent him to Jed’s outfit when he’d found out Hawk could speak Asian languages. He could work side by side with the elusive man and observe him.
“I want to know more about those COS commandos,” he’d told Hawk, referring to Jed’s shadowy unit. “This next mission’s a good way to find out.”
So far Hawk hadn’t found out too much. The COS commandos weren’t exactly a group of guys one saw together often.
“Sorry about the last call,” Hawk said.
“We expected it, hence the safeguards.”
“I know who it is now,” Hawk said. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“You have to draw your own conclusions about the person with whom you’re going to work, Hawk. How did you like her methods?”
Sneaky. Unpredictable. “Are you saying I can’t trust her?”
There was a pause. “You can never trust an operative who’s been out there for that length of time,” Jed said, “although Amber Hutchens has been a very useful asset to the CIA.”
“She sells information to Dilaver—how’s that useful? She’s probably responsible for some of the leaks. In fact, she might be in league with the D.C. rat’s nest that’s been betraying us.” To find all those responsible for selling information to the enemy was one of Admiral Madison’s goals. Too many of their military brothers had been compromised by those traitors. “Is there no other guide?”
“She’s the most qualified, having been over there for four years, Hawk. She knows that area very well or I wouldn’t use her as an asset. As for the matter of trust…” Jed paused, as if choosing his next words. “Her ratio for providing the truth runs about seventy percent, and that’s in her dealings with me. So you can expect less than that toward you.”
