The Cinderella Mission

by Catherine Mann

  The telecommunications squeaks ended. “Confirm we have a secure line. Stand by for your party from Director Hatch’s office. Go ahead, ma’am.”

  Ma’am? Hatch’s office?

  A burn started in his brain, firing an instinctive awareness that fate had targeted his mojo again. He had a fair guess who the agency ma’am from Hatch’s office would be. That ma’am would be the freaking icing on his bad-luck cake that had started with someone shooting at him as he hurtled through the sky dangling from a streamer parachute.

  Foreboding made a drive-by in Ethan’s brain with a mere second’s warning before her voice flowed through the speakerphone in the last kind of distraction he needed today with a Code Delta in his future.

  “Ethan?”

  Kelly Taylor’s single word swirled through his car and conscience.

  “Roger, Kel. I’m here.” He kept it light. No way would she discuss anything too deep with the agency monitoring their call. “What do you have for me?”

  “Director Hatch requested that I let you know he’s waiting in his office when you arrive. Something to do with your Gastonia assignment.”

  Damned if she didn’t have the most incredible voice caressing the airwaves with a richness that could make reading a menu sound like foreplay. And she thought she wanted him when he knew damned well he couldn’t have her.

  He still remembered the impact of hearing her for the first time two years ago. He’d nearly crawled through the phone line. In five seconds flat, he’d planned seventeen ways to romance her into his bed where he would tangle himself up in that smoky suggestiveness for a solid week.

  Then he’d found Kelly Taylor’s voice didn’t fit the rest of her. At all. Face-to-face, the woman personified innocence and happily-ever-after. He might have wanted those things once, but since Celia, he preferred his women with eyes wide open. Liaisons with innocents were especially taboo. And Ethan suspected they didn’t come any more innocent than Kelly Taylor.

  So instead of a lover, he’d found a friend, a much more valuable commodity.

  “Ethan?” Her voice glided over his name like bourbon swirled on the sides of a glass. “Are you still there?”

  “Yeah, Kel.” He grabbed his pants off the seat beside him, steadying the wheel as snowflakes dotted his windshield. “Just kinda busy right this second.”

  “Anything I can help you with?”

  Ethan glanced down at his bare legs and boxers. “No, thanks. I’ve got it under control.”

  His body tightened.

  “I’m always here to give you a hand.”

  Ethan stifled a groan.

  “Are you okay? Should I tell Hatch we’ll debrief later?”

  Debrief? Ethan resisted the urge to cover himself. He drove one-handed down the lonely stretch of road while sliding into his Brooks Brothers pants. “No thanks.”

  “If you’re sure you’re up for the meeting.”

  He was seconds away from being “up” for a hell of a lot more if he didn’t finish this call. He resolved to focus on her words rather than her voice. “I’m only five minutes out. Once I upload my after-action report from the Gastonia assignment—”

  “Already done. I had a head start to get on top of things.”

  An image of her on top of other things nearly sent Ethan into a snow-filled ditch.

  Apparently her words posed a hazard after all with each syllable blanketed in her intoxicating tones. The afternoon promised to be long and painful. “Thanks, Kelly.”

  “My pleasure.”

  Ethan swerved short of driving up a road sign.

  Now that would be a hell of a way to go, pants down and totally turned on by the equivalent of encrypted phone sex.

  A voice like that should come with some kind of warning label. Don’t use while others are driving or operating heavy machinery.

  Ethan buckled his belt while driving past the agency radar detector at the designated speed to signify he wasn’t under duress. “Need to sign off. Approaching the perimeter.”

  “See you soon.”

  The connection died.

  Silence echoed in his car. Ethan accelerated around the corner back up to eighty, steering one-handed while exchanging his diver’s watch for a Cartier timepiece.

  His senses cleared and a mental image of Kelly overlaid the sensual torture of her voice. Large chocolate eyes invited a person to climb right into her soul.

  Those vulnerable eyes, too full of some misguided infatuation, offered all the reminder he needed to leave her the hell alone. He knew firsthand how a broken heart crippled a person and wouldn’t deal the same blow to anyone else.

  Especially not to Kelly.

  Besides, he had enough on his agenda with a Code Delta—make or break for a man testing his ability to stay at the top of his game.

  Ethan squashed doubts and slowed over the grate in the road that held the covert camera to check the Jaguar’s undercarriage for explosives. He would simply keep his mind on the mission. He’d identified his weakness, right? No softening, none of that sensitivity garbage.

  Nix the emotions. Just as on the basketball court, he needed to keep his head clear and his emotions locked up tight. He would plant his eyes firmly on her sweet, wholesome face at all times as a reminder that the voice was a red herring.

  The rush of an impending job simmered. Every life saved brought the thrill of cheating death, a beast that had already taken too much when it had snatched Celia, when it took his parents.

  Ethan plowed around the last curve, the brick quadrangle of ARIES buildings slipping into sight behind a deceptively decorative fence. He only had to endure the next few hours—one day, max—and he’d be back out in the field, far away from Kelly Taylor’s romanticized notions.

  Kelly Taylor hated Valentine’s Day.

  After having spent all twenty-four of hers alone, she dreaded the season when Cupid shoved her social ineptitude in her face like a Boston cream pie. And this one promised to be a whopper.

  Perched at the conference table, Kelly clicked away on one of the laptops beside Hatch while they waited for Ethan Williams to arrive. She’d hoped the Gastonia assignment would keep Ethan occupied through the holiday.

  Apparently Cupid had ignored her wishes yet again.

  She still couldn’t believe she’d given herself away to Ethan with one silly look. After two years of keeping the ridiculous infatuation to herself, she’d let a single moment of weakness betray her.

  As if the whole crush wasn’t embarrassing enough.

  Ethan, with all his playboy ways and bad-boy smiles, was totally not the sort of guy she wanted for anything other than friendship. Not that her hormones seemed to care one bit what she wanted.

  At least she wouldn’t be stuck out there with him and all those Valentine’s Day decorations some romantic fool had plastered through the stark ARIES lobby in an incongruous display.

  Part of her insisted she bore partial responsibility for her dateless status. Years spent in the classroom conjugating verbs from every European language imaginable left her with minimal real-world experience.

  So what if she cared more about her career than clothes? Who could keep up with all the trends anyway? And if her mother waved one more make-up gift pack in her face, Kelly vowed she would scream. She’d tried lipstick once and had paid a price far too high for the wrong kind of attention it brought her way.

  Never again would she be the helpless graduate student at the mercy of a stalking professor.

  The CIA job offer had seemed like a liberating gift from the gods. She certainly hadn’t expected to spend ten hours a day behind a desk in operational support. The closest she’d come to a weapon was her docu-binder.

  The speakerphone buzzed on Hatch’s desk, announcing Ethan’s arrival. Kelly’s stomach clenched around her breakfast bagel.

  Hatch pushed away from the conference table as Ethan sauntered through the open door. She allowed herself a weak moment to soak up the image of him.

  How st
range that a man who’d made it to ARIES headquarters in half the normal time still looked as if he’d strolled the whole way. His charcoal-gray suit over a turtleneck hung from his lean body with a negligent élan.

  Jet-black hair gleamed with molten life under the sterile office lights. She always liked his hair right after a deep-cover assignment, the longer length giving him a more reckless air—if that was possible.

  Deep-blue eyes glinted with the knowledge of things she dreamed of experiencing, places she knew all about but never visited. Ethan Williams personified every risk she’d ever wanted to take and didn’t dare, all wrapped up in one dangerous, six-foot-three, bad-boy package.

  “Good morning, sir.” Ethan shifted toward her, jammed his hands in his pockets and nodded. “Kelly.”

  Heat crawled up her face and for once she was glad she always forgot to pull her hair back. She longed to duck under the conference table and die of embarrassment over the awkwardness she’d brought to their friendship. But she wouldn’t. She was through backing down from life.

  “Welcome home, Ethan. Congratulations on the Gastonia mission,” she managed to say.

  “A simple in-and-out operation. Nothing to worry about.”

  Her accidental be careful warning loomed between them like a big pink elephant on the plush navy carpet.

  Director Hatch motioned for him to sit, taking his own seat at the head of the table with a fresh mug of coffee. “Thank you for coming in so quickly, Ethan. I’m sorry to pull you off R and R.”

  “No problem, sir.”

  “You’ll be rewarded.”

  Kelly admired the director; he looked more like an old gumshoe with fashion sense almost as bad as her own. Knowing his rumpled appearance covered a man rumored to have more power than the vice-president and the CIA director combined gave her hope for herself.

  Appearances weren’t everything, damn it.

  Man, she wanted to trade her docu-binder in on a SIG-Sauer 9mm. She yearned to step out from behind her desk and into the world reflected in Ethan’s world-wise eyes.

  Hatch’s piercing green gaze met theirs. “Have you heard of Dr. Alex Morrow?”

  Ethan hooked an elbow on the chair next to him. “Some kind of rock doctor, right?”

  Kelly shoveled her hair out of her face. Typical Ethan to make a multi-degreed scientist sound like a Rolling Stone magazine shrink who’d obtained his Ph.D. over the Internet. “Dr. Morrow is a world-renowned geologist.”

  Ethan nodded. “Right.”

  Hatch rolled the mug between his palms. “Dr. Morrow has gone missing from a conference in Holzberg. You may have run across Morrow while you were in Gastonia.”

  “Never met the guy. But I heard some buzz about Morrow attending a European conference on environmental issues. American civilians make too damned tempting targets for terrorist factions these days.”

  Hatch’s hand clenched around his mug, a small but telling gesture from the man who showed so little. “Morrow is one of ours. One of ARIES.”

  Kelly’s head snapped up. “Morrow?”

  “You’re surprised?” Hatch tipped back his mug for a sip.

  Were his hands shaking?

  Ethan and Kelly exchanged a quick glance across the table. Who the hell was this Morrow person to warrant such a strong reaction?

  Ethan straightened in his seat. “Of course not. I’m a prime example of how the CIA and ARIES both recruit from the civilian sector. I’m sure I’ve crossed paths with more than one ARIES agent without knowing it.”

  His cover focused on his wealthy background, giving him blanket acceptance to travel anywhere as one of the idle rich. Sometimes he donned a deeper cover, as he had in Gastonia. Other times, he simply played his role of rich playboy to gain access into the upper echelons of the corrupt wealthy. Once in place, ARIES operatives fulfilled the legacy of their mythological namesake who rescued the persecuted Greek twins Phryxius and Helle.

  Lucky Ethan busted bad guys while she sat behind her desk decoding encrypted messages in multiple languages. “How long since we last heard from him?”

  “Dr. Morrow went silent three days ago.” Hatch clicked through a series of keys on the laptop in front of him. “I’m transferring copies of all the transmissions to your data bases. They’ve already been decoded, but I’m hoping you’ll be able to find something more.”

  Why all the worry about an agent going silent for seventy-two hours?

  Hatch shoved up from his chair, his restlessness apparently winning out as he poured more coffee from a corner bar. “Two hours after the last transmission, we lost total contact. The signal on Morrow’s tracking device went dead.”

  Silence echoed, broken only by the drip of the coffee maker and the low hum of fluorescent lights. The covert transmitters were virtually undetectable, and so pricey only operatives in deep cover warranted the expense. Even super space-power countries with access to a constellation of satellites barely stood a chance of detecting the nanosecond microburst of data from the tracking device, activated only when an agent disappeared.

  Just three causes came to mind for a surgically embedded transmitter to fail. Satellite interference. Physical removal.

  Or complete destruction of the agent.

  Kelly’s breakfast bagel weighed like lead in her stomach.

  Hatch turned to face them. “I’m employing agents throughout Holzberg to search. Now I need to work the stateside angle. Morrow’s last transmission points to a shakedown of some sort at an upcoming European summit in DC. Ethan, your social connections make you the obvious operative to slide in place.”

  Damn. Kelly mourned the impending loss of that gorgeous hair of his about to be sacrificed for appearances. “And why am I here, sir?”

  Hatch could have easily sent the transmissions along with a memo.

  “The summit ends with a gala celebration and jewel display. We’re fairly certain from Morrow’s intel there will be a hit. With any luck, tracking those responsible for the attempted heist will give us a lead back to Morrow. For safety’s sake Ethan’s date needs to be one of ARIES.”

  He couldn’t mean—

  “And what better partner than an expert in the regional languages of the dignitaries attending?”

  “Partner?” Ethan’s eyes narrowed.

  Already Kelly could feel the constraints of her desk loosening their hold, the weight of that SIG-Sauer in her hand. Excitement tingled over her. Only because of her first real field assignment, right? Not because of her partner on that assignment.

  “For the next two weeks, you’ll be joined at the hip 24/7 right up to the night of the gala.”

  Ethan half stood. “But, sir…”

  “You and Taylor will make the perfect couple.”

  Chapter 2

  Couple?

  Ethan dropped back into his chair. “A couple?”

  Just as he chose his women with their eyes wide open, he preferred his partners with more experience. Kelly sat across from him, her peaches-and-cream complexion shouting innocence. She studied him with those doe eyes for three seconds before her head fell forward. All that sable hair glided onto the open file in front of her.

  Hatch couldn’t really expect to throw her into a Code Delta with only her entry-level training. Ethan’s instincts screamed a red alert. A missing agent linked to missing jewels? Something didn’t add up.

  The ARIES director cupped his mug with both hands. “The couple cover is common, but effective. Hopefully you’ll be able to avert a heist attempt prior to the gala. If not, I need you both in place. Taylor’s facility in European languages will prove invaluable.”

  Fan-freaking-tastic.

  He would get to spend the next two weeks exchanging language-of-love quips with her.

  Kelly looked up. “Sounds like a practical application of my specialty.”

  Her do-me-honey tones wrapped around languages with as much power as they twined through a man’s libido.

  His libido.

  Ethan reminded
himself to stare squarely at her innocent face for his reminder that the voice was a red herring.

  Except her warm brown eyes deepened to onyx with excitement over the impending assignment, and he couldn’t help but wonder if sex would bring the same heat to her eyes. “Sir, with all due respect, I can handle this one alone.”

  The spark in Kelly’s eyes muted to muddy brown. Ethan refused to let her wounded-puppy look sway him. He was just thinking of her safety.

  Yeah, right. “I don’t need backup. Kelly can perform any language analysis from here without the risk of putting her in the field.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.” The director’s restless feet tracked the room, taking him past a line of mementos down one wall that included diplomas from his scientific background. The man had been a grassroots planner in everything from missile programs to genetic testing. “I’m not willing to risk it. Davidson and Juarez will be at your disposal to coordinate anything you need back here at headquarters. Anything.”

  Finally the director stopped by a four-drawer safe. Reaching toward the back, he pulled out a bottle of vodka. “Do you know what this is?”

  Ethan worked to follow the director’s train of conversation. “Aside from the obvious? No, sir.”

  He turned to Kelly. “Taylor?”

  She shook her head, staunchly avoiding Ethan.

  Hatch held the bottle up to light. “There’s an old tradition in the agency and the military. Many leaders keep a bottle similar to this. Whenever an agent or soldier dies, a toast is lifted in honor. The weight of responsibility is as strong as if a family member has been lost.” He traced his finger along the empty space a quarter way down the bottle as if remembering a face with every shot glass. “I don’t want a drink with Alex Morrow’s name attached.”

  Ethan watched remorse flicker through his mentor’s eyes and surrendered to the inevitable reality of two weeks with Kelly. Aside from being honor-bound to protect his fellow operative like family, he owed Hatch for giving him a reason to live after Celia died.

  If Hatch needed a kidney, Ethan would start cutting. “Consider Morrow found.”