Full Throttle(6)

These last three days had been some of the longest of her life. Seeing him again. Being near him again. Noticing that in most ways he was still the same man she’d known back in DC. Smart. Handsome. Quick with a smile. But in others ways, he was entirely different. Harder. Edgier. Sexier…which she wouldn’t have thought possible had she not witnessed it with her own two eyes.

Oh, Dad, why did you agree to his coming along on this assignment? Why couldn’t you have sent him to guard Caroline and given me another one of your super secret operators?

And, yes, she knew all about Black Knights Inc., the clandestine group of men and women her father had formed a couple of years after becoming president and learning there were some things that could only be done outside regular government channels. She knew all about them because making sure Carlos was always taken care of had been part of their deal.

Their deal… That mothersucking, whackass, crap-tastic deal…

Which brought her back to the question of why her father had sent Carlos here. She’d been shocked as shit to see him that first day. Hadn’t her father thought about how difficult it would be for her? Hadn’t he given one second’s contemplation to how hard it would be for her to have to smile and flirt and tease like she’d done back in the good ol’ days? To have to act as if nothing had—

She sensed a dark presence move up behind her a split second before the dainty, almost delicate bite of—was that a needle?—pierced her neck. Her heart slammed against her sternum with enough force to snap a rib. She opened her mouth to scream, but a loud, gurgling groan like that of a dying animal was the only sound to escape.

It was a needle. And the substance shooting through her veins was powerful and fast-acting. It locked her vocal cords in place and caused her muscles to go limp. Instantly, she lost the ability to grip the hotel balcony’s rough ledge. And although she could feel the sticky sweat on the forearms of the mysterious man straightjacketing her arms to her sides while pushing the syringe’s plunger home, she could not for the life of her do one thing to fight him.

Oh God, no! Her horrified mind screamed the words her mouth couldn’t form. And as the stuff shot through her veins like the drug it obviously was, burning, festering, polluting, it ignited her blood and sent a thousand stinging ants skittering across her nerve endings. Then, like a light switching from on to off, all her senses dulled. She knew the breeze drifting up from the dark street below was hot and moist, redolent with the burning scent of car exhaust and the more pungent odors of dried fish, cardamom, and freshly cut chili peppers. But she could no longer feel its sultry kiss on her skin or smell its uniquely Southeast Asian flare.

She was trapped. Trapped inside a useless body. And not to go all Apocalypse Now or anything, but the horror of it! The absolute horror!

Struggling to hang on to some semblance of coherence, she fixed her watering eyes on the Petronas Towers, off to the north. The massive skyscrapers pierced the blackened sky with their bright, silvery glow…twin beacons of hope showing the world just how far the country had come in the last twenty years.

And where is my hope? My salvation? Where the frickin’ sticks is my security detail?

She let her gaze slide to the balcony on her left, looking for Marcy Tucker, the Secret Service agent who’d been assigned the room next to hers for the night. But, to her utter dismay, her eyes landed not on Agent Tucker at her post, but on a tall, dark-skinned man leaning against Agent Tucker’s balcony. His smile was obscene, his teeth blazing white against the darkness when he lifted a fisted hand, pumping it once in…victory, maybe? But what kind of victory? She didn’t dare contemplate.

Cocking her ears, she waited for the interior door adjoining her room to Agent Silver’s room on her right to burst open. She wasn’t supposed to lock it. That was part of the protocol she’d been living under for nearly nine years—and after what had happened at Georgetown, you can bet your bottom dollar she followed the letter of the law to a tee. And surely Agent Silver had heard that awful sound she’d made before her vocal cords quit working. Surely he was two seconds away from racing to her rescue. Surely…

But instead of the adjoining door, it was the door to his balcony that skimmed open with a muted snick. And it wasn’t Agent LaVaughn Silver’s big, bald head and black goatee that materialized into the night; it was another smiling, dusky-skinned stranger. He pumped his fist in a salute similar to the other man’s, and dread wrapped its black fingers around her throat, threatening to strangle her.

One last chance…