Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 107096 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107096 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 535(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
JD rubbed at his stubble and nodded. “After all he went through, a new school’s not so scary. Plus, he’ll be the cool kid from New York in a little town: that’s gotta help.” He grinned. Back when Stormfinch first started, he’d been solemn and sort of grumpy. But since Lorna and Cody had come into his life, he was happier, lighter. They’d changed him...or maybe changed him back, to how he was before he was widowed.
The others trooped in: Danny, the Brit, looking sharp as always in his suit, and with him his girlfriend—and JD’s little sister—Erin. Next was Gabriel, our reformed thief, grinning as he showed a card trick to Bradan, one of the two Irish brothers. Then Cal, our huge sniper, in his plaid shirt, and Gina, our pilot, yawning and scowling as if this was altogether too early in the morning for her. Last of all was Kian, Bradan’s brother, the guy who set up Stormfinch and who gets us our missions. “I’m heading out of town straight after this,” he told us. “Got to go to Washington.”
“Washington?” Bradan leaned forward. “You finally going to ask him?”
Him being the President. And the question being could I have your blessing to marry your daughter? Kian had been dating her for years and he’d been on the verge of asking for close to a year, now. To be fair to the guy, asking that question’s a pretty big deal even when your girlfriend’s father’s not the most powerful man in the world.
Kian nodded. “Next week, he’s taking us to a football game. His team is playing at home, in Arlington, Texas. I figure I’d ask him after the game...if Texas wins.”
“Like that’s in any doubt,” rumbled JD, ever loyal to his home state.
“Can you get some pictures of the stadium for me, from inside?” asked Erin. She turned to Danny, grinning, in full geek-out mode. “The roof is so cool! It’s huge, but they can close it completely when it gets too hot!”
Danny nodded patiently and kissed her forehead.
JD’s phone beeped with a message and he stood up. “Alright, let’s rock and roll. The guy who’s going to brief us just arrived.”
Erin kissed Danny goodbye and hurried off to another room, where she was working on our communication links. JD left and a moment later came back in with a guy in a gray suit. He was no more than thirty-five and with his blond curls, tan and easy smile, he looked like a surfer who’d thrown on a suit for a job interview. But I knew straight away he was a spook. The CIA does something to people: you can see it in their eyes. It’s like it moves them out of the nice, warm little bubble we all live in so they can peer in at us from outside. That lets them see everything better, but it’s a cold, lonely place to be.
“This is Casey Steward,” JD told us. “From Langley. He’s going to be our contact with the CIA on this one.”
Danny frowned. “What happened to Roberta?” Roberta Geiss, a tough-but-fair woman in her sixties, had been our CIA contact since we started, and everyone liked her.
Steward winced. “Roberta was in a traffic accident yesterday. She’s in the hospital. I’m her deputy, I’m filling in.”
We all shook our heads and cursed. “I’ll send some flowers from all of us,” said Danny.
Steward hooked up a laptop to the big screen. “This is your target.” He tapped a few keys and—
The photo was black and white and grainy: you could tell it was an old-fashioned, paper-and-ink photo that had been photocopied and scanned and printed out again about a billion times until all the subtlety in the grays had been washed away and it was brutally hard and contrasty, literally just black and white. But it didn’t matter. It couldn’t take away from what she was.
The most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.
Some women are girl-next-door beautiful. Pretty as hell but attainable, believable. She wasn’t that. She was movie-star beautiful, launch-a-thousand-ships beautiful.
The first thing I saw were her eyes. Big and pale: I couldn’t tell what color they were but...you know that dumb shit people say about falling into someone’s eyes, getting lost in them? Suddenly, that didn’t seem so dumb. I felt like I was back in Missouri, standing on my houseboat on the hottest day of the year, looking down at the cool surface of the lake and just wanting to fall forward, clothes and all, into those glittering depths. Her eyes were so heartbreakingly beautiful, they almost made me hesitate: she was like an oil painting I was afraid to touch in case you messed it up. But then I saw her brows, perfectly shaped, one of them arched in a look that was one part disapproving, two parts taunting: well, what are you doing just standing there? It was so rawly sexual, I swore I blushed and there’s not a goddamn thing that can make me blush. The heat washed all the way down my body to my cock and I wanted to crawl right across the table to her.