Page 68 of Every Last Breath

Through the glass door, she watched Cole throw a couple of twenties on the desk and scrawl something on a piece of paper for Pete. Then he came outside, up close to her.

Too damn close.

The heat radiating from him slid across her like a second skin. Her chest throbbed, pulse pounding in her head. She turned, facing the flesh-colored building, refusing to show him how his proximity affected her, and dialed Gideon.

“What’s your status, Reaper?” she asked.

“I located the helicopter at a local charter company. I’m going to squeeze the owner for any information.”

If anyone was good at squeezing a person to make them talk, it was Reaper. Formally trained in interrogation and assassination, he was the ruthless type who’d push—or pull off fingernails if necessary—to get the information.

“Okay.” She filled him in on the hotel and called Harper at the Gray Box. “It’s me. How long would it take you to hack into a hotel’s guest registry?”

“I don’t know. Depends on the firewall encryption and—”

“Hotel Monaco. DC. I need the registered names and room numbers for any guests who checked in between eleven thirty and midnight last night. Also, tap into their security camera feed and run the facial recognition program for our targets.”

“I’m on it.”

Stabbing the phone with a finger to end the call, Maddox turned, headed for the bike. Cole put one hand on the wall, blocking her, and with the other dragged his knuckles across her jaw. The searing contact nearly stopped her heart.

Oh God, if she looked up at him, it would be her undoing.

His mouth caressed her hair, his warm breath against her ear. “Maddox—”

She shoved the muscular barrier of his arm out of her way and strode toward the bike. One foot in front of the other. The squeeze in her throat almost made it impossible to talk, but she swallowed past it. “Let’s go.”

Chapter 20

Hotel Monaco, Washington, DC

11:56 a.m. EDT

Maddox craned her neck, looking up at the splendid Corinthian pillars of the neoclassical building as Cole pulled in front of Hotel Monaco.

What had once been their special place. They had come here many times, to be alone together, away from his parents’ house or her roommates in her Georgetown dorm.

Squirreled away in the hotel, they’d talked about everything from their childhoods to their hopes for the future, had fed each other room service, swathed in a sense of completion, lying curled naked around one another for hours after making love. Always intense. Threaded with passion, like their souls had been sewn as one with adamantine strands.

The helmet became stifling. She needed to get it off. Needed to breathe.

Cole parked in a spot ahead of a line of taxis.

Heart racing, she ripped off the helmet and raked in a breath. She dismounted the bike and gripped the hard seat of the motorcycle until the ground beneath her feet stopped teetering. Across the street stood the National Portrait Gallery. Home of the Kogod Courtyard, where Cole had strolled into her life.

He’d been so freaking cute. Wild, midnight hair. Warm, penetrating eyes. A disarming smile. He’d strode up to her like he was capable of taking on the whole world to get anything he wanted.

His bad-boy hotness, heck, just talking to him had made her crazy-giddy.

She’d accepted everything he had offered—lunch, a ride on his bike, a smoldering kiss she’d remember until the day she died—even though he was trouble.

The kind of trouble that gave her father nightmares.

Pivoting, she looked back at the hotel.

This was ground zero.

A dull ache echoed through her.