of the global travel and wanted to find a place to call home in between Trail Hiker ops. He didn’t think it would be Silver Valley, though, as he was born and bred in California and missed the West Coast. He’d purchased land in California while he was still a Marine, needing to know he had someplace to go if he ended up out of the Corps and without a job. But anyplace in the United States was a good place after the rough places he’d been. If he hadn’t been so tied up in this op against ROC, he might have enjoyed Silver Valley a bit more.
Kyle wanted to be the agent to smash apart Ivanov’s reign of terror so badly that he could taste it. The current gang ROC had sent to Silver Valley was responsible for dozens of heroin ODs in this part of the state, and upwards of thousands nationally. After he solved this case, Kyle was due for time off, a full month. He planned to use it to go back west, see if the property he’d been paying taxes on could become home. The director of Trail Hikers wanted him out there for a bit to set up a West Coast office for the agency, so it all dovetailed neatly. Kyle liked things neat.
It’d be sweet if he could crack open this case sooner than later. Pennsylvania winters were colder than he’d imagined. The last weeks since the polar vortex had dipped down had proved brutal. He’d broken down and bought himself foot and hand warmers for the long hours outside, staking out the library, where he’d confirmed the information drop point was. In classic ROC fashion, they used something that seemed so obvious. Most criminal organizations held meetings or passed information in more clandestine spots, places that were difficult to figure out. Not ROC. By somehow passing information in the library, they’d hidden their methods in plain sight. He just hadn’t figured out exactly how yet. The computers were the most likely tools but the Trail Hikers systems forensics expert hadn’t found anything unusual on the desktops. Kyle had done a lot of his own recon inside the library, too, hoping to determine a pattern of behavior or repeat patrons who might be up to no good. He’d used different disguises to avoid any kind of recognition. Not just from Markova or her worker bees, but from the library staff.
The librarian in particular. A woman he’d found himself fascinated with. Portia DiNapoli.
But the librarian he’d also happened to monitor the last several weeks wasn’t going to make his goal of catching Markova in the act possible. Not today, anyway. As an undercover TH agent, he had to avoid any contact with civilians as much as possible while trailing a target. And Markova was a big one. As he watched, he saw that the librarian was engaging Markova. Portia DiNapoli didn’t know Markova was an ROC operative, though.
“Damn it, Portia DiNapoli. Why are you so good at your job?” And why was the town librarian so damn hot? More importantly, why was his dick paying attention at all when he was supposed to be tracking the movements of potential ROC thugs in the library, not Portia’s attractiveness?
You’re lonely.
Damn it, he wasn’t lonely. Okay, he’d appreciate the loving of a good woman right about now, but he was too entrenched in his work to add another concern to it.
Portia DiNapoli was the epitome of distraction. The fact that he was spending mental energy on her when dating her, or anyone else, wasn’t in his best interest or the woman’s, raised his internal alarm. He needed to get it through his thick skull that he had a job to do that a woman, Portia or whomever, would only complicate. He’d had his share of committed relationships over the years but none had stuck. It always came down to him having to put his career first, and there was the added danger of anyone he was involved with becoming a target of the bad people it was his job to take down. Portia DiNapoli’s nearly constant presence in his current surveillance had stirred something in him, though. He probably ought to at least think about dating someone again.
The thing was, he hadn’t been tempted by any of the women he’d had the opportunity to flirt with, dance with, talk to at the local bar scene in Harrisburg. And he’d been out so rarely, the case taking up all of his time.
His casual interest, and that was all it was, a fleeting second glance, in Portia, was complicated. It wasn’t because she was beautiful, and she was. Big brown eyes with long lashes, a full mouth with lips he’d fantasized doing a lot more than smile at her patrons. She wasn’t short, but at least a head shorter than him. The perfect size to pull her in close and lay a kiss on her rosy lips. She always wore rose lipstick, or maybe that was her natural color. Her eyes dazzled behind oversize glasses and her curvy figure was stunning in her sexily delicious pastel cardigans. Portia seemed to have a collection of those, from what he’d noticed. She was all woman, all sexy curves. It might be a record-breaking cold winter, but the sight of Portia each time he’d gone to the library had warmed him up quicker than any wood stove. Today she wore leggings under a body-conscious, curve-hugging dress. The binoculars in his hands were the best technology on the market, but he didn’t need them to know the shape of her sweet ass under her clothes. Not that he’d meant to notice it. But when she’d bent over to shelve books the other day, well, he’d happened to catch a glimpse of her sexy rear.
Let it go, man.
She probably had a zillion dudes lining up to take her out. He didn’t know, because his physical observation of her began and ended with the library. After he’d found out her apartment was in the one next to his, he’d taken extra care to avoid running into her, using his back entrance almost exclusively. She favored the front, and liked to get a cup of coffee at the shop his apartment was perched over. He knew she wasn’t married. And not just from the confidential dossier he’d run on her at Trail Hikers. From her bare left hand to the hours she kept, coming in before the library opened and staying well past closing, Portia DiNapoli was a dedicated career woman. With no commitments outside the Silver Valley Library, except the local homeless shelter. He’d felt no guilt investigating her. He’d had to; when the center of an ROC op was taking place in her library, he’d had to rule her out as a suspect.
Not that his background check on her or anyone was ever considered conclusive. The best bad guys, and girls, were good. Really good. They wouldn’t leave any clues that they were doing anything more than visiting a library.
Portia’s stance shifted and he recognized the defensive posture—he’d seen her use it last week with a patron who was angry about overdue fines.
But now she wasn’t confronting a disgruntled library patron, but an ROC operative, a fully trained, lethal agent. His gut tightened and a distinct discomfort filled his chest. The thought of Portia being hurt by ROC was unthinkable.
Now it looked like the dialogue between Portia and Markova was getting heated. At least, Portia’s face was turning red and he’d bet it wasn’t from the frigid January temperatures.
“Fuuuudge,” he said to himself in the truck, where he’d had his binoculars trained on the library’s back entrance since he’d followed Markova here two hours ago. She’d driven from the drab mobile home she kept on the outskirts of town, parked her car behind a restaurant two buildings down and then walked the rest of the way to the library. Kyle figured he was lucky she’d never even looked toward the banged up truck he huddled down in. She never seemed to care about her surroundings but Kyle knew it was all part of her training, to appear as if she were any other civilian—not a trained assassin who didn’t miss details others never noticed.
It was freaking freezing and he couldn’t risk alerting her to his presence by turning on his engine. Parked behind the 24/7 diner, his vehicle looked like many of the other patrons’ wheels: nondescript and dirty from the overdose of salt on the icy roads.
He’d determined that ROC was using the library somehow to pass information but he didn’t know how. And he couldn’t directly ask Ludmila Markova, the woman whose file he’d committed to photographic memory months ago. She had to be caught committing a crime before he could tip off SVPD to arrest her.
As he watched, Markova hadn’t been successful in getting the back door open, which he found surprising, as well as amusing. The thugs Ivanov employed were top notch and knew their way around locks of all kinds. And they usually were smarter than to attempt to sneak into a public building in broad daylight. But nothing was usual for ROC. They did whatever had to be done to accomplish their jobs, whether that was moving kidnapped