Lisa ran her tongue slowly over the surface of Loren’s lower lip. “How about for a lot?”

Loren eased back. Her clit was tight but she wasn’t insane. No one got between Ramsey and a woman. “I’ll have to give it some thought.”

“You do that.” Lisa slid off the stool, her high firm breasts brushing over Loren’s arm. “Have a nice night, Loren.”

Lisa turned to walk away, and Loren said, “I don’t remember giving you my name.”

Lisa winked over her shoulder. “You didn’t. Night.”


*


Sky Dunbar slid behind the wheel of her crap rental car and pulled out of the gravel lot onto the deserted highway. The sky was crystal clear, an ebony blanket studded with stars and a full moon. The silver light was nearly bright as day. Before she accelerated away from the Ugly Rooster, she glanced at the big dark plate-glass window and wondered if Loren McElroy was looking out at her, or if she’d forgotten her the moment they’d parted. She didn’t question why she cared.

McElroy wasn’t exactly what she’d expected. Somehow, she’d thought McElroy would keep a lower profile, but apparently taking a backseat wasn’t her style. Figured, really. A woman didn’t get accepted into a biker club as one of the members and not one of the old ladies unless she had something special to offer. McElroy had that, and more. An Army vet, she’d started out as a grease monkey in the motor pool and worked her way up to commanding a supply company. Along the way, she’d made plenty of contacts, and soon her unofficial duty became procuring whatever needed to be gotten for the post. Everything from extra fuel, surplus body armor and machine parts to contraband of all description. The bureau had recruited her by then, and her illegal activities were sanctioned. Her cover story was a long time in the making, and by the time she’d reached Silver Lake, where she owned her own garage, her story was more than a cover. It was her reality.

They’d never met in person—in this kind of long-game, labyrinthine operation where the smallest breach could mean disaster, the fewer people who could identify one another, the better. Until an hour ago, she was just a voice to McElroy—her telephone voice that didn’t resemble her natural tone at all—and McElroy was just a black-and-white photo clipped in the PDF of her classified file. The file with half the lines redacted. The photo had been of McElroy in desert camo. She looked a lot different now, decked out in leather, her unruly dark hair scattered around a face that would’ve been called beautiful if the edges had been a little softer and her coal-black eyes a little less piercing. Handsome wasn’t quite right, either, but closer. Bold, brash, dangerous. In uniform she’d been imposing; in biker black she was tantalizing.

McElroy moved with the lethal kind of confidence that said she’d unhesitatingly use the weapon tucked into the right front pocket of the jacket that displayed the patch of the Renegades. The Renegades weren’t a Sunday-afternoon club filled with lawyers and accountants and other weekend warriors. They were all longtime bikers, many of them friends since young adulthood, almost all of them with records, and they’d been on the FBI’s and ATF’s radar for a dozen years or more. But their threat level, and consequently their interest level, had waned as more dangerous groups had slowly infiltrated the West Coast—Salvadoran gangs and Mexican cartels, and the right-wing paramilitary groups that were hotbeds for domestic terrorism. The low-level drug, gun-running, and porn rings associated with most of the biker clubs didn’t pose the kind of national security threat that the other groups did. So instead of arresting the bikers, they infiltrated them.

Sky pulled into the rambling, run-down motel complex where she’d taken a room late that afternoon. She’d signed in as Lisa Smith, the woman whose identity she’d assumed. Her orders, predictably vague, had been to tighten the leash on McElroy and be ready to escalate McElroy’s involvement with the militia at short notice. She didn’t know why, hadn’t been read in on the big picture, and wasn’t about to make that call from three thousand miles away. She wanted a closer look if she was sending her contact in deeper, and she was sick of flying a desk. She wanted a firsthand look. Her phone rang, and she slipped the smartphone from the right front pocket of her skintight jeans. She recognized the number, and she wasn’t in the mood for a tongue-lashing. At least, not the kind she knew was coming after her disappearing act.

She hadn’t made her way in the bureau by going through channels, but this time she was way outside the lines. But then, what were they going to do? Fire her? She smiled.

She unpacked the few articles of clothing she’d brought and slipped them into the rickety, chipped Goodwill dresser and sat on the bed to get rid of the god-awful high-heeled boots. Why anyone would choose to wear them was beyond her. She slid her feet into flip-flops, choosing not to look at the faded carpet too closely, and padded into the bathroom to turn on the shower. She was feeling just a little bit grimy. Maybe that had been more a result of the day’s activities than the long hours, but she chose not to think about that too carefully, either.

Chapter Three


Sky slept poorly and woke with her nerve endings vibrating beneath the surface of her skin. Trouble was coming, she could smell it. She had an uncanny knack for telling when an operation was heading south, just as she’d always had an inexplicable ability to tell when someone was lying, no matter how good they were at it. She’d honed the innate skill young, when learning to anticipate a blow from her father or a sly come-on from her older stepbrother had saved her from another assault. The trait had gotten her noticed when she was still a rookie agent, but it had been her ability to beat the polygraph that had gotten her fast-tracked into covert operations. She could regulate her biorhythms so completely she could fool the machines, repeatedly. She didn’t sweat, not if she didn’t want to.

She should have been a shoo-in for an undercover posting, and that’s what she’d wanted. To go in deep, create her own persona, write her own rules. But the psych profiles pointed in another direction—she was better suited to handle the undercover operatives than to be one. She was the best at talking operatives off the ledge when they’d been under too long. She could read the terror or remorse or desperation in their psyches and say just what they needed to hear to get them grounded again. She could analyze their panic without being touched by it. She was an empath without empathy, at least that’s what the psych evals said. She didn’t bother to argue. Hell, maybe it was even true.

But she’d never lost an operative, and that made her untouchable. Maybe she’d gone off the reservation a few times—like now—but the higher-ups gave her a lot of rope, and she hadn’t hanged herself yet.

Annoyed at the trickle of unrest scratching at the back of her mind, she threw off the thin covers and climbed out of bed. A shower would clear away the roaches in her head. No light filtered through the uneven slats of the dust-covered metal blinds. Her internal clock read 0630. Dawn came late in midwinter this far north.

A tap sounded on her door just as she was about to pull off the tank top she’d put on after her shower the night before. She dove for the gun in the suitcase she’d left open on the chair next to the bed and had it in her hand with the safety off in less than five seconds. No one knew where she was.

She eased toward the door, keeping away from the windows and turning sideways to present the smallest target if someone decided to pepper the door with rounds. She’d chained the door when she’d come in, but that wasn’t any kind of protection.

“Who is it?” Sky asked.

“Room service.”

“Good line, but not at this place. You’ve got the wrong room.”

“I don’t think so, Lisa.”

Sky braced her gun at shoulder level and put her hand on the knob. “You want to give me a clue?”

“Jerome’s VP verified your visit. Said he recommended you for the gig.”

“Then we’re all squared away, aren’t we.” She recognized Loren McElroy’s voice.

“Not exactly. He happened to mention you were one hot Chicana. Funny, you don’t look Hispanic to me.”

Shit. She’d expected someone to check on her, but she’d taken a chance that they wouldn’t discuss exactly what Lisa looked like. “He was probably thinking of someone else.”

“He was very specific—apparently he has…personal knowledge. Think you better let me in.”

Sky debated for about a second. Checkmate. She slipped the chain free and opened the door.


*


Cam’s cell phone rang while she was in the shower, and Blair picked it up to check the readout. She recognized the number and answered. “I thought you might take the day off—it’s Boxing Day. Lots of great sales at all the shops.”

Lucinda Washburn answered pleasantly. “The wheels of Washington never stop, even for fifty percent off.”

“That’s really a pity. You sure you don’t want a girls’ day out?”

Lucinda burst out laughing, a sound Blair hadn’t heard much in the last three and a half years. She’d missed it. “You know, Luce, Dad would be lost without you.”

“Your father is a resourceful man. He’s going to be fine.”

“I know that, but I’m not talking about President Powell. I’m talking about Dad. You have to take care of yourself, you know.”

The line was silent for a long time, and Blair wondered if she’d finally overstepped. Lucinda had been more patient with her than anyone in her life except Cam, and Lucinda had seen her at her worst. Hopefully her best too, but she wasn’t really sure. She wasn’t certain that anyone except Cam really saw what was best about her. She couldn’t go back and change the past. She couldn’t unwrite her wild, resentful youth or those times when she’d disregarded her own best judgment to assert her independence, placing herself at risk and putting those who loved her in the untenable position of making her even more unhappy in order to protect her. Those days, hopefully, were past, although she knew she would never slip easily into line, never make the easy decisions about things that didn’t strike her as right. Her father’s and Cam’s safety were the two most important things in her life. “Look, Luce, if I’ve—”