not a word in his vocabulary.
He could handle one smart woman with a bad attitude.
What he couldn’t handle was the way this whole mission was starting to feel wrong. Everyone from the FBI to the head of Foxfire assumed that Nell’s father was back at work, orchestrating a complex theft within days of his release from prison. They also believed that his daughter was involved. The local FBI team had made that much crystal clear in their reports.
It just didn’t feel right.
He had watched Nell cross an icy ridge in Scotland, showing quick judgment and courage. She had herded the teens and gotten them to safety at considerable risk to herself. No whining, and no backing down. She was many things—prickly, stubborn and a little reckless, but Dakota wasn’t convinced that she was a thief.
Not because she wasn’t smart enough. Not because she didn’t have the skills. It was her personality that didn’t fit the pattern. Doing undercover work, you learned to read people fast, and Dakota had pegged Nell for a loner, while a complicated job like the museum theft required a big, well-knit crew, long weeks of coordination and close communication as well as dependence on one another.
Not Nell’s style at all, he thought.
But Jordan MacInnes was a different story. The man was smart enough and manipulative enough. According to his file, he had highly placed criminal connections scattered over every continent. The art fraud experts in the FBI were convinced that MacInnes was back at work with a vengeance, and Dakota could buy that. But his stubborn, gutsy daughter?
He watched Nell pace the room, her face wary but intent. She wasn’t beautiful, he thought. She didn’t have perfect features or the kind of cool sexuality that would make a man turn to watch her in a crowd.
But for all that he couldn’t seem to take his eyes off her.
When they’d huddled together inside the tent, with her legs wrapped around his waist, he’d wanted to do a whole lot more than talk. He couldn’t get the memory of her body out of his mind. He woke up dreaming of how she’d feel when he drove her over the edge to a blinding climax. Starkly erotic fantasies involving her had already cost him more sleep than he cared to admit.
The SEAL shook his head. He had to forget how her body had felt on that snowy cliff. Sex with Nell MacInnes wasn’t happening in this or any other lifetime. She was his target to assess, the key to the location of thirty million dollars worth of missing art.
She was work, nothing more.
Since the museum break-in, Dakota had been fully briefed about her habits. He knew her usual route home, the names of all her friends and her favorite foods, along with everything else of importance in her life. He would use all those details to assess her response and ensure that she followed orders. This blood-stirring response to her body would change nothing.
Her cell phone rang on the table, and she reached out to answer it, but Dakota cut her off. His hand circled her wrist. “Let it ring.”
He felt her stiffen, her cell phone dropping to the big leather sofa. “You can’t make me—”
“I just did. I will keep on doing it, too. Right up until my mission is complete.”
Her face paled in the glow of the overhead light. “Do you always treat people this way?”
“Only when it’s necessary.”
The phone stopped ringing. He saw her glance down, reading the caller ID. Dakota didn’t bother checking, because he knew Izzy was already in place nearby, monitoring her phone and e-mails.
She still hadn’t opened the file.
“Are you afraid to read it?”
“Tell me instead.”
Dakota crossed his arms. “I’ll talk while you pack.”
“No, now.” She sat down on the sofa beside her phone, but made no move to reach for it. “Exactly what is this urgent job that I need to do?” she said tightly.
Dakota prowled the room, choosing his words carefully. “Last month a newly discovered, unpublished and unrecorded piece of art was brought to the National Gallery for assessment. Two weeks later it was stolen.”
“What period and provenance?” Nell sat up a little straighter, frowning. “And how did they get in?”
He watched her face closely but saw only questions. There was no guilt or calculation. He moved closer, reading the heat spots of her body using his enhanced vision. Normal flow at pulse points. Normal respiration heat patterns. She wasn’t trying to block him.
Which proved nothing.
Dakota narrowed his focus. His orders were to see how much she knew. His Foxfire training gave him the ability to assess changes in eye response, pulse rate and skin temperature. All those factors would indicate whether she was involved in the theft or not.
“It was an English landscape painting,” he said. “Very old, very rare.”
As he spoke, he watched Nell’s face. There was no sudden flare of heat. No spikes in pulse or pupil dilation at his lie. Not satisfied, he eased into the deeper skills he’d been taught as a Foxfire agent, reading her emotions through thermal shifts and eye response. But Dakota picked up only curiosity and confusion.
She didn’t know about a theft at the National Gallery. And that first piece of evidence made him doubt everything else he’d been told by Ryker and their FBI contacts. How much else was wrong with this mission?
“So a painting was stolen. I don’t understand why you need me?”
Dakota crossed his arms. “Because we already know who took it and we have to steal it back.”
“I don’t steal things, Lieutenant.”
“But your father does.”
“Did.” Nell glared at the unopened file on her table. “Not anymore.”
He sipped some water, watching her face, checking her. It was time for the detail that would hurt her most.
“We know this piece art was stolen from a locked room in one of the most secure institutions in the world.” He waited a heartbeat, watching her face. “The thief or thieves were exceptionally skilled and left nothing behind but a single fingerprint. The print belonged to the president of the United States.”
Nell’s hands clenched.
“Obviously, we do not consider the president to be a suspect. Given the thief’s m.o.—”
“No,” she whispered. She shot to her feet. “You’re wrong.”
“I’m not wrong, Nell. You know what that mark means. Your father always left a single carefully transferred presidential fingerprint behind when he stole a piece of art. It was his signature.”
“My father did not do this.” Her voice tightened. “I know that was his pattern, but half of the law enforcement personnel in this country knew it, too. It’s hardly a secret now. Any thief could have done this.” Color flared in her face, and Dakota picked up shock and anger. The anger came in waves, registered in a sudden thermal flare at her face and neck, signs that could not be hidden from him. No, Nell definitely hadn’t known about this detail of the theft, either. She was fully convinced of her father’s innocence.
“Get out. You’ve wasted enough of my time.”
“Those are the facts, Nell. Why don’t we call your father and ask him about those men in the alley. Let’s see what he says.”
“You weren’t on vacation in Scotland,” she said slowly. “That was a lie. You were following me, weren’t you?”
When Dakota started to counter with a question, Nell cut him off. “I told you to get out.” She gestured furiously toward the door. “I don’t have time for more lies and accusations. I’ve lived with