Bulletproof Seal

Rikki joined him and blew out a breath. “How would that guy have ID’d you? He barely got a look at you before you took him down.”

“If he knows who you are, he might make the connection from New Orleans to me and me to you.”

“There aren’t many people who knew what we did in Dubai.” Her lashes fluttered, and she got busy putting away the spare gun. “I mean, that we...hooked up. I don’t think some random person from intelligence is going to make that link between me and you.”

“Intelligence? Is that who that was? You said it yourself earlier. The CIA thinks you’re dead.”

She raised her shoulders to her ears. “I don’t know who he was, and more important, he didn’t know who I was.”

“Are you telling me that was some kind of random abduction?” Quinn shook his head. “No common street thug is going to get over on you, Rikki, especially when you have a gun and cuffs on you.”

“I didn’t say he was a common criminal. The guy had mad skills himself and I’m not downplaying your heroic rescue, but he’d let his guard down by the time he got me outside the Gator Lounge. He wasn’t expecting anyone to come riding to my defense.”

“You think he was from the Company?”

“I don’t know. We didn’t get that far in our acquaintance, but he did not know who I was. He asked me.”

“Maybe I am still drunk.” Quinn massaged his temple with two fingers. “If he didn’t know who you were and he was some kind of spy, why was he abducting you and why were you meeting him?”

Rikki hopped on a stool, straddling it, knees wide. “First, you. How did you know I was going to the Gator Lounge when I left here?”

“I didn’t know you were going straight there when you took off, but I saw the text message come through.” He clicked his tongue. “Careless, Rikki. I was looking straight down at your phone, but then maybe you wanted me to see that message.”

She shot up on the stool, her back ramrod straight. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Now you. Who were you meeting at the Gator and why?” He held up one finger. “And don’t even try lying to me.”

She slumped, her shoulders rounding, her hands on her knees. “I don’t know exactly who I was meeting. We had a series of clues for each other, a back-and-forth, starting with his Dodgers cap.”

“That guy was wearing a Dodgers cap. What happened?”

“I spotted him at the bar, everything on track. I ordered a beer, using the agreed-upon language, but he didn’t reciprocate. He went off script. My contact didn’t know who I was and wasn’t supposed to ask, but this guy...” She waved one hand in the air.

“You figured he wasn’t your guy or maybe your guy had been replaced? What did you do?”

“I admitted nothing to him and was getting ready to abandon the mission. I must’ve telegraphed that because the next thing I knew, he had his gun poking me in the side.”

Quinn crossed his arms, curling his fingers into his biceps. “Did he ask you any more questions at that point?”

“Nope. Started marching me away to God-knows-where.” She captured the unfamiliar brown hair in one hand and curled it around her fist.

Quinn’s gaze locked onto the dark, silky strands. Even without her wavy red hair and bright blue eyes, he’d recognized Rikki in a flash. Why wouldn’t he? She’d been in his dreams nightly.

He tugged on a lock of his own hair, which he’d grown out since his previous deployment. “Is that a wig? It’s so...different.”

Her mouth formed an O and released a little puff of air. “I thought we were talking about my abductor.”

“We are, we will, just wondering about the transformation.” The warmth from his chest began creeping up his neck.

Even discussing a violent incident and a mystery, Quinn couldn’t tamp down his attraction to Rikki. He could take her right now, across that kitchen counter, bent over that stool, and not give another thought to her mysterious meeting or the man he’d beaten down in the alley.

What did any of it matter with this woman back in his life, sitting right in front of him, inches away?

She tossed her head, and the dark hair flowed over one shoulder. “It’s not a wig. I had my hair straightened when I had it colored. It’ll last for several weeks—as long as I need.”

Quinn ran both hands over his face as if waking from a long, drugged sleep. “As long as you need to do what, Rikki? What are you doing in New Orleans? What was that meeting all about?”

“The man I was supposed to meet had something for me, something that might help me clear my name. I need that. I need something before I can go to the CIA and reveal that I’m still alive—and no traitor.” She blinked and rubbed her nose with the back of her hand.

The Rikki he knew, the woman who’d dumped him in Dubai, never cried. But that woman had been a trusted CIA operative at the top of her game and still on the rise.

When she’d succumbed to him, knowing her superiors would frown on her conduct, knowing she could be reprimanded, she’d spun out of control. Their desire for each other had been so great they’d both thrown caution to the wind. They’d made love in glass elevators high above the glittering city, coupled in the warm waters of the Persian Gulf in a place that frowned upon spouses holding hands in public.

And during all of it, the kick-ass CIA operative who could disarm a man without breaking a sweat and interrogate a suspected terrorist for twenty-four hours straight had relinquished control to him in every way. She’d waited for his commands, done his bidding, which was really her own. She could pretend to herself that he’d mastered her mind and body, but in reality he’d been the captive. She’d enthralled him. Still did.

Quinn launched forward and crouched beside her. His thumb swept her bottom lashes where a single teardrop trembled, although she’d willed it not to fall.

“You deserve that life back, and I’m going to help you reclaim it. What did your contact have for you?”

“A-a flash drive containing some information. I don’t think he even knew what the info meant, but he was going to pass it along to me.”

“On whose authority? Who’s your contact at the agency? Who sent him?”

Rikki swept her tongue along her bottom lip. “Maybe it was all a setup. Maybe the goal of the plan all along included my capture. The flash drive a ruse to lure me out.”

“Who sent him? Not some anonymous source? You didn’t trust some anonymous CIA drone, did you?”

“It was Ariel.” She hunched forward, her nose almost touching his. “You know Ariel, don’t you?”

“The head of the Vlad task force. Several of my SEAL team members have been on assignments controlled by Ariel—and they trust her, or him.”

“Her. Ariel is definitely female.”

“How do you know that? I think one of my team members actually spoke to her, but we’re not even sure it was the real Ariel.” Quinn’s eyes narrowed. “You know her?”

“Ariel was my mentor at the CIA when I started. You know, one female spy to another in a department dominated by men.”

Quinn sat back on his heels. “You mean, you know the real Ariel? The actual woman behind the clever pseudonym? From what I understand, the Vlad task force is controlled by Prospero, Jack Coburn’s black ops organization. Ariel, Prospero—from the Shakespeare play.”

“Yeah, I remember my Shakespeare and yeah, Ariel is with Prospero now, recruited from the CIA several years ago.”

“Her real name?”

Rikki ran her fingertip along the seam of her lips. “Ariel.”

Quinn jumped to his feet and paced in front of the window. “You don’t owe her anything if she set you up.”

“I can’t be sure she did. She’s the one who discovered I was in the labor camp and not dead. She’s the one who helped me escape, get back to...get out.”