On the Edge Read online

  “We would have given you a weapon, you know,” she said.

  He shook his head. “I prefer my own.”

  “A Smith & Wesson M&P .40’s not exactly a unique piece.”

  “Like I said, I prefer my own. And she’s the best when it comes to ambidextrous firing.”

  Charlotte mentally scanned the info sheets she had on Tony. “You’re right-handed.”

  Through the corner of her eye, she saw his sharp look. “Anything you don’t know?”

  “Sweetheart, I even know you had your wisdom teeth out when you were seventeen and had a bad reaction to Demerol. There’s very little about you…uh—all of you guys—I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know why I shoot the S&W M&P .40.”

  “True. So why don’t you tell me?”

  “When I was ten, I jumped into a really bad brawl. Kid managed to break two of the fingers on my right hand and I was screwed—couldn’t hit a damn thing with my left. Bastard beat the living shit out of me. There was no way I was letting that happen again.”

  “So you actually trained yourself to be ambidextrous?”

  “Yeah. It’s a secret, though.”

  She grinned at him. “I’m pretty good at keeping secrets. Although, on the grand scale of secrets I keep, that’s not a very juicy one.”

  “Not to you, but the guys in the black hats not knowing I can kill them as well with my left hand as my right could save my ass someday. Hell, it has saved my ass.” He paused, then said, “So you know everything, huh?”

  His tone had changed, and Charlotte had an idea of what he was thinking. Childhood hadn’t been particularly kind to Tony Casavetti, and young adulthood wasn’t much better. “The lives of the Devlin Group agents are open books to me. But only to me.”

  Tony only looked out the window, and she didn’t press the issue. It wasn’t an easy thing having a person know every nook and cranny of your past, as Alex Rossi knew hers.

  But Tony’s…she couldn’t imagine suffering through what the court transcript attached to his psych file had detailed. A hard-ass Texas judge looking down at an eleven-year-old Tony and asking, “Well, son, how does it feel to know you’re such a worthless pile of refuse, ain’t nobody in the whole world who wants you?”

  Charlotte forced herself to stop squeezing the life out of the steering wheel. This visit—the DG meeting being the exception—was supposed to be about her fulfilling an ongoing little fantasy. Flirtation, fun, and—hopefully—a weekend of smoking hot sex. Getting to know Tony Casavetti a little better. Or a lot better.

  “So what’s this little shindig about?” the star of said fantasy asked after a few minutes.

  “Just an announcement we only want to make once, with the opportunity to hash any resulting issues out face to face.”

  “Sounds interesting.” Tony turned to face her, one eyebrow raised. “The Group isn’t downsizing, is it? Because unemployment forms don’t have check boxes for my particular occupational skills.”

  It was her turn to laugh. “No. Nothing like that.”

  “Good. And thanks for having my back when the Chavez job went to shit. Thought I was heading for a pine box that time. And there at the end…”

  The thought made Charlotte shudder. She was no stranger to violence, but she hated being reminded of how often the agents found themselves—or put themselves—in the line of fire. Especially the “core” of the Group—Alex Rossi, Gallagher, Carmen Olivera, Grace Nolan before she left the Group. And Tony Casavetti. She really didn’t like when Tony was in the line of fire.

  “The girl he took as a hostage? Her name is Rosa, and she’s been reunited with her family in Mexico. I just thought you might like to know.”

  He closed his eyes for a moment, a small smile playing at the corners of his lips. She forced her attention back to the road. “That makes it all worthwhile,” he said.

  “I’m glad we happened to be on open comm when it went bad.” She felt his gaze on her, but resisted the urge to turn and meet it. Let him look.

  “You know, you don’t look anything like I expected you to.”

  “Let me guess,” she said. “Stout. Gray hair. Clipboard?”

  “Metal ruler, actually.”

  “Too Catholic school,” Charlotte replied, then shot him a sexy smile. He missed it, since his focus was on her legs. “I’m not a very parochial kind of girl.”

  Tony’s eyes returned to her face and he gave a sexy smile of his own. “Maybe not, but I bet you’d look hot as hell in the skirt and knee socks.”

  Was he hitting on her? Flirting to be polite? During down time they tended to be flirtatious over the comm, but she wasn’t sure how he’d react in person. She’d been told her looks could be intimidating.

  She didn’t care—he was in her sights for a very limited time and she intended to make the most of it. “Hmm…I have a cute little schoolgirl outfit left over from a Halloween party a few years back. I’ll model it for you after the meeting.”

  There. The ball was in Casavetti’s court, and she waited to see how he’d play it. Laugh it off? Launch into a lecture on how sex would undermine their professional relationship? Throw himself out of a moving vehicle?

  “A naughty schoolgirl, huh?” Tony said in a low voice. “I’ll have to remember to wear a belt.”

  And dammit, just when things were getting good and hot, they pulled up to her townhouse. A townhouse currently containing fourteen agents and seven support personnel, none of whom factored into her personal plans for Tony Casavetti.

  She calculated quickly in her head. Meeting in a half-hour. Should take an hour or so, then more mingling and what-not. A meal. If she were lucky, in about four hours she’d be playing giddy-up with her favorite cowboy.

  —

  Tony tried not to watch Charlotte moving around the room, making small talk while they all waited for the ball to start rolling. The problem with being in a roomful of Devlin Group agents was their tendency to be pretty damned perceptive. Gossip about him having a jones for their exec admin, he didn’t need.

  She was one hell of a piece of work, and he was still having trouble believing she was the Charlotte Rhames he’d been communicating with all this time. Which reminded him, he’d forgotten to ask her why her file photo was classified.

  Come to think of it, her whole damn file was pretty skimpy. He didn’t remember much, but he remembered thinking at the time he’d pulled it up that there was nothing in it to indicate a background suited to running an international contract agency.

  But run it she did. Her constant, untiring presence in their earpieces was a comfort to every agent, especially himself. He couldn’t think of another person he’d ever depended on as he did on her. And now that he wasn’t sitting in the hot zone of her sensual magnetism, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to know that voice was coming from a face like hers. Desire still sizzled through his veins, but when push came to shove, he needed her whispering data in his ear more than he needed her whispering sweet nothings.

  He was distracted from the enigma that was Charlotte Rhames by the entrance of Konrad Ludka. The German still looked tense and a little jumpy after his encounter at the airport.

  “Hey, Gallagher,” Tony called to the guy who looked for all the world like a beach bum, but was hands-down the best he’d ever worked with. And the former Navy SEAL could plan a mission like nobody’s business. When Gallagher looked over, Tony gave him a “c’mere” jerk of the head. They shook hands and exchanged “How you been?” small talk.

  “What’s Ludka working on these days?” Tony asked when the chit-chat dwindled.

  “Konrad? I think he was working with Jones on a Greek thing.”

  Greek fit the look of the silent man at LaGuardia. “What kind of thing?”

  Gallagher’s natural relaxed state stiffened just a bit. “Greek tycoon from old money likes to make new money by dealing in underage sex slaves. Jones is in-country, Konrad’s involved in a support capacity.”

  Support didn
’t really jibe with the scene he’d witnessed. If the guys at the airport were the Greeks under investigation, Ludka shouldn’t be face to face with them.

  “Something up?” Gallagher asked.

  Tony forced himself to look away from the sweaty German. “I don’t know. Ludka got in a beef with a couple of guys—could be Greek, by the look—at the airport and it just didn’t look right to me.”

  “We lost comm with Jones two days ago.” They both thought about that for moment. “I’ll talk to Ludka when we’re done here, see what’s up with him.”

  “What the hell is this meeting about, anyway? I’m supposed to be down for two months.”

  Gallagher laughed and shook his head. “You ain’t gonna believe this, man.”

  As if on cue, Alex Rossi stepped into the room. He was tall, of obvious Italian descent, and one of two men on the planet Tony truly trusted with his back, Gallagher being the other.

  “Hey, people,” Rossi said in a voice that carried to every corner of the room. “Thanks for coming.”

  Tony wanted this pony show over, and he wondered where the hell Sean Devlin was. With agents in from every corner of the world, the big boss man should at least make an appearance. Alex Rossi ran the field ops, but Devlin hit send on the money transfers.

  He watched Charlotte take a position beside Rossi. Even in work mode, the woman made his dick want to stand up and say howdy. Since now wasn’t exactly the best time, he looked around the room, noticing most eyes were pinned on Rossi.

  Gallagher’s weren’t. He was alternating between watching Konrad Ludka and Carmen Olivera. Clearly the poor sap hadn’t made his move on Carmen yet. Tony had known the gorgeous thief since they were troubled kids trying to survive the Texas juvenile system, and he knew she wouldn’t make it easy on Gallagher. She’d ignore all the signs and signals and make the man grovel. She was pretty damn cold when it came to men.

  Ludka was, interestingly enough, still fidgeting. He’d look at Rossi, scan the room, then look toward the door to the hallway. Then he’d do it again, all while fiddling with the strap of his backpack. He was on the far side of the room from Tony—leaning on an interior wall—and surrounded mostly by the support personnel. They were clearly a little intimidated by the pack of contract agents who’d staked out the best parts of the room—near the two big windows.

  Tony nodded to Phil, a support tech in a blindingly red tropical shirt. The man had been tireless and lightning fast during the Chavez job—receiving scanned fingerprints and returning IDs on everybody from victims to perpetrators. He was a genius with missing persons databases and probability equations, and he’d helped Tony build an intel file that was going put the hurt on child-traffickers long after Chavez had started decomposing.

  “All right,” Rossi said, dragging Tony’s attention back to him and Charlotte. They were positioned at the top of the room, next to the hall door so everybody could see and hear him, presumably. “Part one of this meeting—you all received a written account of our little fiasco involving Angelo Contadino a few months back.”

  Everybody nodded, Tony included. He hadn’t received a written account—too risky while he was in that deep. But Gallagher had flown to Texas in a walk-on role for the Chavez job, and he’d filled Tony in over a beer.

  He’d been pretty surprised to learn Grace Nolan had left the Group because she was pregnant. If he remembered correctly, she just kind of disappeared after a job went bad in London. He’d been even more surprised to find out the baby was Alex Rossi’s. Eight years later, when Danny Nolan was kidnapped and Grace showed up on Rossi’s doorstep and shoved a gun in his face, everything had pretty much gone to shit. The boy had been a pawn to keep the Group from interfering with Contadino’s plans, but apparently Rossi and Grace had kicked some serious ass while stoking up an old fire.

  “Grace and I tied the knot officially about six weeks ago,” Rossi continued, then he paused to acknowledge the cheers and wolf whistles. “Thanks. Now…part two, and the real reason you’re all here. This is something we weren’t sure would have to come out or not, but we’ve been picking up some whispers underground, so I want you all to hear it from me.”

  Tony leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms. He didn’t like surprises, unless they were of the Charlotte Rhames variety—and even that one was a little unsettling. She was currently standing very still, but visually scanning the room, as if gauging their mood.

  Rossi cleared his throat. “Sean Devlin doesn’t exist.”

  It didn’t surprise Tony at all that the support people all gasped and started whispering to one another, but the agents gave up no reaction. They watched…waited.

  His personal reaction held more than a trace of royally pissed. Alex Rossi, Gallagher and Charlotte Rhames had all held his life in their hands more than once, and being in that position required a certain amount of trust. Only the fact they’d never let him down kept him from walking out of the room.

  “Sean Devlin was a…fictional character,” Rossi continued. “I had my reasons for inventing him, and those reasons ceased to exist along with Contadino. Never has that subterfuge on my part undermined the safety or the integrity of a mission.”

  He stopped talking, and Tony got the impression he didn’t have much more to say on the subject. The atmosphere in the room was charged as a dozen or so very dangerous people considered the ramifications of this professional—and maybe a little personal—betrayal.

  A mousy young woman, who just happened to be one of the most brilliant hackers on the planet, hesitantly raised her hand. “So…does that mean we’ll be the Rossi Group now?”

  A few chuckles went through the room, easing the tension a little. Tony didn’t join in, though. Whether the secret had ever affected a mission or not, knowing he wasn’t worth letting in on it stung.

  “No, it won’t,” Rossi was replying. “The reputation and history of this agency belongs to the Devlin name, and we don’t want to mess with that. The Devlin name also holds some personal meaning for me still, and it’ll remain on the letterhead.”

  Tony glanced in Ludka’s direction as the man started shifting his weight from foot to foot. He was sweating like a pig, and Tony wasn’t the only one in the room who noticed.

  “I…uh…I must take a leak,” the German said, and he slipped through the open door.

  From Tony’s vantage point, he could see Ludka set his backpack down in the hall before he took off. In the opposite direction of the guest bathroom.

  Not right. Something was definitely not right.

  He and Gallagher moved at the same time. A sense of urgency he didn’t quite understand drove him toward the front of the room. Toward Charlotte.

  “Bomb! Go out the windows now!” Gallagher bellowed, even as the man picked up an antique armchair and shattered one of the two large plate-glass windows. He heaved Carmen through the opening, then moved toward Charlotte. Most of the agents obeyed on instinct. The desk jockeys panicked. Since Gallagher had Charlotte, Tony diverted toward them.

  Rossi was reacting, too, Tony noted. He slammed the door closed and moved toward the knot of stunned support geeks. The mousy hacker made a few whistling gasps, then slumped to the ground, kicking her chair out and tripping Phil as he moved toward the windows.

  The second window shattered, and Tony was aware of the room emptying. He helped their accounting whiz—an older, rather overweight lady—toward the window, giving her a boost and hoping somebody caught her on the other side.

  Phil was still on the ground, clutching his knee, while somebody Tony couldn’t place tried to help him up. Rossi picked up the unconscious hacker and tossed her like a doll to Tony. He caught her and ran for the window, aware that Rossi had Phil on his feet and was shoving the other Samaritan after him.

  A concussion of sound, light and pain slammed into Tony as their world exploded. Somebody screamed and then it all went black.

  Chapter Two

  Hector Anetakis sat with his head between his kne
es, his muscles trembling so badly he half-expected to fall forward out of the chair, cracking his head on the marble floor.

  Perhaps that wouldn’t be so bad. A concussion could lead to amnesia, no?

  He allowed himself to daydream about that particular affliction while hyperventilating between his thighs. He imagined forgetting his mother and his sisters. Forgetting everything he had to do to ensure they lived as the Anetakis women were expected to live. Forgetting his father, and all the bastard had done to destroy the Anetakis empire. Everything Hector—the only son—did to hide his father’s sins.

  It was tempting to succumb to the welcome image of his skull splitting like the skin of a rotten grape. But he didn’t, because it would hurt. The excruciating migraines had become infrequent since his father’s death, but Hector still lived in fear of the pain.

  A buzzer sounded, and he nearly fell anyway. A glance at the security screen told him his mother was on her way up, and he had two minutes to prepare—to transform himself into the man he was forced to be.

  He washed his face and changed into the fourth crisp, white shirt of the day. After taking a stiff drink, he brushed his teeth. Feeling slightly refreshed, he stared into an ornate mirror until his vision blurred.

  “I am Hector Anetakis,” he whispered.

  He blinked and the cool, chiseled face of the son of an industry scion and one of the most powerful men in the criminal underworld stared back at him.

  A second buzzer sounded. After a deep, steady breath, Hector pressed a button and a pocket door slid open automatically, allowing Olivia Anetakis step in. She crossed the threshold and the door closed behind her.

  The elegant sixty-year-old woman settled herself on the settee. “I’m going to take the yacht to Monte Carlo for the month. Your sisters and the children are joining me. You should come.”

  Hector’s stomach rolled when he thought of how much that little jaunt was going to cost. The price of mooring the multi-million dollar money pit of a boat alone would equal the GNP of a small country.