At Any Cost

by Allie K. Adams

  "That's what you're basing this whole thing on? Her ear? Who best fits? A missing agent? We go under all the time, Donovan." Dan shoved the photos back in the envelope.

  "Hey! Don't we get a peek?" Stevens protested.

  "No."

  "But—"

  "I said no."

  Opie wouldn't let it go. "Who the hell died and made you King Shit of the Outhouse?"

  Slowly, calmly, Dan met his eyes. Without a word, he conveyed how close this kid was to another ass kicking. Dan didn't blink, didn't falter, until Stevens finally looked away.

  Too bad. The mood Dan suddenly found himself in made him itch to punch something. Hard. Grinding his teeth, he spat out, "So why bring me in on this? You know what a liability I am, right, Donovan? Isn't that what you said to me when you told me to take a hike?"

  "You were told to take a break, Weber. No one expected you to stay away. That was your decision and yours alone."

  Dan felt a growl creeping into the base of his throat. That's exactly what they expected him to do. He'd become unpredictable, and that equaled unreliable. He was useless to NASSD. Why wait around for the agency to put him out to pasture? Besides, still being on NASSD's payroll meant he still had to follow their rules. As a freelancer, he could do what he wanted, when he wanted. He had all the freedom in the world.

  For the past two years he thought of little else but hunting down the man responsible for the scar on his chest and returning the favor. He'd tried to find him, but always picked up the trail too little, too late. As a NASSD agent he had unlimited resources at his disposal. When he left, he lost that freedom.

  How ironic.

  "Sounds like you got all the pieces together. By the looks of this hot beauty queen, she hasn't been a NASSD agent for long." He dropped the envelope onto the desk. His hard on finally picking up the fact it wasn't the real thing, he leaned back in the chair.

  "How do you figure?" Donovan asked.

  "She's young, maybe late twenties. She didn't pose like that as an agent, which means either the swimsuit photo is old, or she's new. I've never heard of her and I've only been out for two years. If she's supposed to be NASSD's secret weapon, I would have known about her. There aren't too many female agents, and none of them are that screaming hot. She's new."

  "You got all that off a swimsuit photo?" Stevens asked, his lip curled. Although he tried to sound unimpressed, Dan could see in the kid's eyes that he was, indeed, impressed.

  "You're right, as usual." Donovan leaned forward in his chair. "We had her back in training for almost a full year before she disappeared. After proving she can shoot the gnat off a wall at three hundred yards in a high wind, we decided to make use of her skills. She looks better than any pinup centerfold, which we knew would work to our advantage."

  "How so?" Stevens asked.

  "Any male would turn to putty in her hands," Dan stated and smiled at the thought. He'd give his left nut to have her hands all over him, to have her rub that gorgeous body up against his just so he could melt on the spot.

  The thought of LEON out there made him pull his attention back in check. "What about Professor Keithan? His assistant? How do we know it wasn't one of them?"

  "Always the chivalrous one. Believe it or not, some women out there are evil. Evil to the core. You of all people should understand that." Donovan's eyes skipped to Dan's chest and back up. "The professor and his assistant are both dead, killed by our little eye candy. Now she is after the unit assigned to the project. Your old team, Weber. She has the skill, and she has the information. We can't seem to stop her. We need you."

  Dan felt another chill crawl up his spine. Jesus, not his team. What kind of callous bitch takes out members of her own organization? "Anyone hit?"

  "Saunders. Cummings. Johnson is missing."

  Christ. That left three of them. Dan swallowed down the bile creeping up the back of his throat. "Where are the others?"

  "NASSD is in contact with them. Cole doesn't want anything to do with us, but he isn't much of a threat. The guy snapped after we destroyed the project. He can barely remember his own name. He's in a convalescent center, drooling all over himself."

  "Too bad. He was a smart guy. Loved to talk about his little niece, Jessica," Dan remembered aloud. Charlie Cole talked about that little girl so much the rest of the team felt like they knew her, too. The last time he'd talked to Cole, little Jessica had been accepted into some Ivy League college on the east coast.

  Dan snapped out of his melancholy. "Aims?"

  "He's fine moving undercover until this blows over."

  "Blows over?" Dan kept his voice as steady as possible, but the thought of LEON loose, coupled with the fact a sexy-as-sin rogue agent has targeted his old unit for extinction, made it difficult. "That's simplifying it a bit, don't you think? And you have yet to prove to me how the mole could possibly be that woman."

  "Weber, quit thinking with your little head. That female isn't as innocent as she looks. She took out an asshole in Mexico her first day out of boot camp. Snapped his neck with the strap of her M16."

  "Why didn't she just shoot him?"

  "Said she didn't want to waste the bullet. Now I'm telling you, she's an assassin, and she loves her job."

  "So why'd she turn?"

  "That we don't know. After proving she could do an efficient job, we sent her to the base up in the Cascades. The same one we sent you to years ago."

  Dan rolled his eyes. " Gahanna ? How can I forget? Day in and day out NASSD shoveled so much information into my head I couldn't make heads or tails of half of it."

  "Well she's miles ahead of your progress, and you were the best. We were so preoccupied with how much we could feed her we failed to stop and think of how much we should feed her. She took off before we could give her her next assignment."

  "Which was?"

  "We've been gearing up to send her undercover in Colombia ."

  Dan swung up his gaze, slammed it on Donovan. "Don't tell me you are going after the Mercado cartel again? We took care of Carlos Mercado years ago. It destroyed the cartel and sent the remaining members into hiding."

  "Carlos Mercado had a son, Santos , we didn't know about until recently. You thought Carlos Mercado was dangerous? Well, his son redefines the term. We busted a big shipment of Mercado's heroin last year. As payback, he blew up the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá, killing 164 Americans. He graduated from drug lord to terrorist with that one, and moved up a notch in the FBI's most wanted list."

  "Charming fellow. What's he got to do with Turner? I thought you said she took off?"

  "From what intel has been able to gather, Mercado is the frontrunner for the bid on LEON ."

  Dan looked at Brooks. "Is that why you're here?"

  "I'm here in case Turner succeeds in deciphering the code to recreate LEON ," Brooks replied grimly. "ICE believes I'll be able to shut down the program before LEON regenerates."

  "And you?" Dan asked Stevens.

  "I'm here to make sure you can still do a job," he said, his voice full of prickly attitude.

  Ah. So NASSD still didn't trust Dan. He had earned himself a couple of babysitters. "And if I can't? Your orders are to take me out."

  "That's right."

  Dan smiled as he turned back to Donovan. This bordered ridiculous. "They send a rookie and a wash out to cover me? Come on, Donovan. The kid won't be able to stop me. He's just going to get in my way and annoy the shit out of me. Brooks already said he didn't want to be here and probably wouldn't even put up a fight. I've got two strikes against me. You know I like to work alone."

  "It's the only way I could get NASSD to agree to this." Donovan shrugged.

  "But you're the head of the entire western region. You've got enough pull."

  "Sorry, buddy. If you want back in, you're going to have to take them with you."

  "Swell " Dan said flatly. He wanted to tell them all to go screw themselves. He wanted to get up and walk out. But he wanted LEON back more. And damn if he did
n't want to take the assignment just to meet Turner, to see if she looked that good in person. "Keep going."

  Donovan grinned. "Thanks, man. We need you on this."

  "Back to Mercado, please." Dan wasn't interested in Donovan's gratitude. LEON was loose, possibly in the hands of a terrorist. They didn't have time for niceties right now. As much as it pained him, if JT Turner really did turn, he'd have no choice but to eliminate her.

  "Apparently he likes his new status as psycho terrorist, wants to prove he's more than a drug lord. Turner had access to all the files on Mercado. She could see how much money he has and must have realized how much Mercado would be willing to pay for a weapon like LEON ."

  "Millions," Dan commented dryly, his want for the mouthwatering rookie starting to dull. Oh, he still ached to touch her, to kiss her until she forgot her name, and to tease and lick her until she begged him for release. Only then would he bury himself so deep inside her, over and over, until they both passed out.

  That's it, Weber. Way to keep that hard on in check.

  "Millions upon millions," Donovan corrected. "That's why we need you to find her. Before she takes out the rest of your old unit and sells LEON to Mercado.”

  "She stole LEON two weeks ago, right under our damn noses. You'll notice in that surveillance photo she kept her face away from the cameras."

  How'd she get in? Fuck that. How'd she find the lab? He didn't even know of its existence. Did any of the others? That left only a few men knowing of its existence, aside from the scientist and his assistant. This didn't look good for the good-looking agent.

  Ballsy. Stupid. Very unlike a NASSD agent to be caught on surveillance. Something didn't feel right. She kept her back to the cameras, which meant she knew they were there. Instead of staying out of range, she purposely had herself in positions to be caught on camera. It didn't fit.

  "She obviously knows which agents were on the project," Donovan explained.

  "How's that possible? Only those assigned to protect it knew about LEON . The team's identity was top secret." Dan could hear the alarms screaming in his mind. The situation had just gone from bad to worse.

  A lot worse.

  Damn. A mole. A mole with possibly the deadliest information in the world at her disposal. A mole who, if Dan's instincts were right, and they were usually dead on, had control of the world in her hands. They could sell that control off to the highest bidder.

  Holy world domination.

  "She's contacted each and every one of the others from the project. You are the only one she's never contacted. Unless..."

  Dan thought of the flawless beauty in the photo and almost felt a sense of remorse she hadn't contacted him. Almost. If she so much as sent him a text message, he'd put a bullet in her head without hesitation. "No. She's never contacted me."

  The unit disbanded shortly after Dan left the agency. How in the hell could she possibly have gotten the information? It wasn't like NASSD would keep the blueprints of a secret lab right there on the computer. It couldn't have been from any of the members in his unit. They swore an oath, and swore to protect it to the death. And by the looks of it, they were carrying out that oath, one by one. "How did she contact them?"

  "We don't know. Saunders was found floating in his pool, a hole in his forehead, five more through his back. He'd called Aims and told him about this hot brunette he'd met that day, and how she was coming over for a swim. The next day, when Saunders didn't answer his cell, Aims went over there and found him. Two days later, Cummings called Aims and told him about this hot brunette he'd just met, and how she was into playing in his sandbox. Aims told him about Saunders and said to ditch the bitch. Apparently Saunders didn't listen. The next day, Aims found Cummings face down in his Zen Sand Garden , a hole in the back of his head. Again, he had five more in his back."

  "How do you know all this?"

  Donovan looked at him and blinked a few times. "How else would I know?"

  "That didn't answer the damn question."

  "Aims told me."

  Dan's head hurt. Another piece that didn't fit. The guys didn't call and brag about their women. They waited until the Saturday night poker party. Of course, Dan hadn't gone to one in a while. Maybe if he had, he would have been able to pick up on the fact someone was trying to pick them off.

  That was enough to convince Dan. He'd find her, find LEON , and clean up this goddamn mess. He owed it to Saunders and Cummings, and more than likely Johnson. "What is it you want me to do? Kill her? Retrieve the disc?"

  "God no, don't kill her. Bring her in. Get that disc. It has everything needed to regenerate LEON . We don't want a weapon like that out there."

  With a curt nod, Dan grabbed the envelope and accepted the assignment. "Stevens. Brooks. You're with me."

  "Duh. Asshole," Stevens muttered.

  "Show some respect," Donovan ordered. "He's now your boss."

  "Yeah," Dan added. "If you're going to insult me, follow it with 'sir'."

  "Alright. You're an asshole, sir."

  Dan smiled. "That's better."

  Chapter 2

  It might have started out as any textbook op, but NASSD never trained JT Turner on how to dodge bullets while in the shower. Luckily, her assailant was a man who, upon eyeing JT in all her soapy glory, paused just long enough.

  He didn't even have the chance to say, "Thanks for the show," before JT filled his eyes with body wash. She kneed him in the groin, sending all of his future children into his throat, and grabbed a towel.

  Her weapon sat on the end table across the room. Stupid rookie mistake. She'd have to leave it. There wasn't any time. No doubt Soapzilla had friends with him. Reaching for the disc she'd duct taped to the bottom of the table by the door, JT tore it away and ran out of the hotel room.

  She raced out into the hall, slammed the door behind her and broke off the key in the lock. She knew there had to be a reason why some hotels still used them. They must expect terrorists to break in to the room. They were being proactive in giving the good guys the upper hand when it came to a hasty escape.

  JT ran down the hall toward the enclosed staircase. She stopped. Twenty-two flights? I don't think so. Judging on Soapzilla's dumpy physique, he certainly didn't climb the stairs to get to the top floor. He would have collapsed halfway. But that didn't mean he didn't have friends in the stairwell, waiting. JT turned around and hit the button for the elevator.

  How in the hell did they find her?

  Her contact at HQ told JT this op was classified. Hell, her contact barely gave her enough detail on it. Only that this op was important enough to pull her away from her transfer to the proverbial desk job to nowhere.

  What he did tell her was that she'd be on her own. No partners. No contact with HQ. No one else would know her assignment. Odd. NASSD never sent their agents in alone. Especially rookies. But, this mission would give her the chance to prove herself to the agency, to ensure her future with NASSD. Screw protocol, he'd told her. Real agents knew when to bend the rules. Good agents made the rules up as they went along. Didn't she want to be a good agent? Didn't she want to prove to NASSD she was the best of the best?

  JT wanted to prove it so bad she could taste it, wanted to show them all that a woman, in a profession dominated by men, could kick terrorist ass just as well as the rest of them. She'd learned everything she could at Gahanna . She'd adapted to every situation they put her in. She didn't spend every night eating coffee grounds and popping No Doz in order to stay one step ahead for nothing. She'd show them all she could fill the shoes of the great Dan Weber, despite what all her instructors had said.

  She'd never met Dan Weber, but by the way everyone in the agency talked about him, he was some sort of Counter-terrorist God. An Assassin God. A Superspy. JT already didn't like him and hoped she'd never have to meet him. From the rumors floating around HQ, she never would. He left the agency two years ago.

  Some Superspy. All the reports were classified, and the ones JT could decrypt gave
sparse information. Weber on a project with seven other men. One disappeared. One died. One left.

  "Take one down, pass him around, five agents left on the wall," JT sang to calm herself down, to clear her head. She wondered if the guys who found her would have found the great Dan Weber. No, he would have easily walked in and taken the disc, promptly shot every single bastard in the room, and walked back out. Easy job. No mess.

  Unlike the mess JT seemed to have gotten herself into. It wouldn't be long before Soapzilla cleaned his eyes out enough to radio in. The doors whooshed open. With the skimpy towel barely covering the curve of her ass as she wrapped it around her boobs, JT jumped into the elevator and pushed the button for the lobby.

  Yes, this was more than likely walking right into the hornet's nest. But unless there were more than a dozen men waiting, she'd be able to hold her own. She hoped. She'd taken out ten of twelve in a training exercise before they got her. Of course, she had more than a towel on, and at least had a weapon.

  The elevator lowered to the lobby. As the door opened, JT hugged the wall when she spotted two more men standing by the stairwell opening.

  They both had radios up to their ears, listening to Soapzilla, no doubt, as he relayed something in Spanish. She never did pay enough attention in her language classes. She tried to make out some of it. Something about the bitch disappearing on him, and for them to be on the look out. Either that or he just had his tip pierced. She highly doubted the latter and went with her first translation.

  JT pushed herself into the front corner as best she could. If the elevator didn't have mirrors lining the walls, hiding would sure be a hell of a lot easier. The dim-witted men walked right by the open door without so much as a glance in the direction of the elevator. She sighed.

  Easy enough. She'd just wait for them to—

  "Tomemos el elevador."

  Shit . She didn't need to know Spanish to understand that.