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“They weren’t there when I arrived. They must be on a drive-by.”
“Why don’t you just tell Mr. Vinay to call off the surveillance for now? That would be the most logical thing to do. Then, if anyone drove by, we’d know they aren’t ours.”
“I may do that.”
The car must have just circled the block. It turned onto the street again. “Pretend to chase me and let’s see if they’ll shoot you,” Niema said, and put on a burst of speed, knowing the car’s headlights couldn’t yet pick her out. She barely contained a giggle at Medina’s soft curse behind her. She had taken three steps when a heavy weight hit her in the back and two arms wrapped around her, dragging her down. They landed on the soft grass beside the sidewalk, with her on her stomach and him on top of her. In the pre-dawn darkness, no one was likely to see them unless they were moving.
He held her down, despite her wriggles and erupting giggles, until the car had passed by again. “You little witch,” he said breathlessly, as if he were trying to hold back his own laughter. “Are you trying to get me killed?”
“Just keeping you on your toes, Medina.”
“On my belly is more like it,” he grumbled, climbing to his feet and hauling her upright. “What if someone looked out their window and called the cops?”
“We’d be long gone. And if we weren’t, I’d just say I stumbled and you tried to catch me. No problem.”
“I hope you’re having fun,” he growled.
A little startled, she realized she was having fun. For the first time in a long while she felt as if there was some purpose to her life, as if she had something important to do. No matter how interesting her work with surveillance devices was, benchtesting circuits didn’t give her a kick.
But she felt alive now, rejuvenated, as if she had been existing in some sort of half-life for the past five years. She had kept up her running all this time, but until yesterday she hadn’t been aware of the workings of her muscles, the pumping of her blood. She enjoyed sparring with Medina, both verbally and physically. She wasn’t a gun fanatic, but she had also enjoyed learning about the different handguns, learning how they felt in her hand, learning her own limits and then stretching those limits. She wanted to know more, do more, be more.
This was the danger of fieldwork. She had known the lure, resisted it for five years, but now the excitement was flowing through her veins like a potent drug. She didn’t know whether to hate Medina or thank him for dragging her back into this.
Was five years’ penance enough? Would a hundred years be enough to empty the guilt and anguish she felt over Dallas? Her stride faltered as she thought of the times they had jogged together; afterward they h
ad showered together, then fallen into bed and made love.
Would Dallas have been attracted to the woman she had been for those five years, the woman she had made herself become? Or would he have been bored by the insistence on structure and security, the lack of risk? She was afraid she knew the answer. Dallas had been a risk taker; for all his low-key persona, he’d been a man who thrived on challenge and danger. Why else would he have become a SEAL, then a contract agent? What had attracted him most to her, and she to him, was the instinctive knowledge that they were alike.
Medina was the same type of man, only more so. Alarm bells, suddenly loud and clear, shrilled in her head. It was one thing to allow herself to be sucked back into the heady world of espionage and contract work, but letting herself develop feelings for another man in that same world was something else entirely.
She would have to keep her guard up, because emotions could boil over in such high-stress situations. And Medina was an attractive man; more than attractive, really. If he ever let his guard down, he’d be devastating. He seemed relaxed with her, but not once had he let any personal details slip. She knew nothing about him.
She had already felt warning twinges of physical attraction during the close contact required by training. A woman would have to be dead not to notice that lean, rock-hard body, especially when he was pressed against her.
Was that why she had teased him about making the surveillance team think he was chasing her, so he would catch her and hold her? In a flash of self-awareness, she realized she had been flirting with him. Uh-oh, she thought. She’d have to be more careful in the future.
What future? This was a one-time thing, wasn’t it? They would work together briefly just this once, then she would return to her safe, familiar job and he would disappear again.
“Are you ready to pack it in?”
She glanced at the luminous dial of her wristwatch; they had already been running for over an hour. Luckily they hadn’t gone in a straight line, or it would have taken them another hour to get back to her house; they had circled blocks and backtracked several times, so they were no more than half a mile from home. Dawn was close, so close that details were clearly visible now. “What if the surveillance team is still looking for me?”
“They had better be, or—” He didn’t finish the sentence, but she could guess what he had meant to say: Or they would be looking for another job.
“They’ll see you,” she pointed out.
“I’ll split off and let you go home alone. Once they see you’re safely home, they’ll break off surveillance.”
“What else is on the agenda today? More target practice?”
“That and more self-defense training.”
With her new insight into herself, she didn’t know if close-contact training with him was such a good idea. “I thought only the basics were necessary.”
“We might as well do something with our time. Who knows? It may come in handy some day. By the way, some boxes will be delivered to you today It’s a new wardrobe, jewelry, things you’ll need.”
“Why do I need a new wardrobe?”
