1
November 10
Derek Tower strode down the hallway toward Conference Room One, a mug of black coffee in hand, his reflection moving with him along walls of burnished steel. A woman’s silky laughter told him that Holly and Nick Andris were already there. A husband-and-wife team—and two of Cobra’s best operatives—they had just returned from a covert job in Colombia and were here for a debriefing.
This needed to be quick. Derek had a flight to catch.
He was due in Istanbul tomorrow morning. A Cobra operative had infiltrated a ring of IS recruiters, and tomorrow they were going to take that ring down. It was the kind of covert work Cobra did well, the kind that involved perfect coordination, flawless execution, and complete secrecy.
Derek entered the conference room, its glass walls soundproof and equipped with built-in blinds that were already closed. “Morning.”
Andris dragged his gaze off his wife. “Morning.”
“Hey, Derek.” Holly’s lips curved in a smile that turned men into idiots.
Naturally platinum blond with big brown eyes and lethal curves, she could have been a movie star. Instead, she’d put her brains and good looks to work for the CIA, gathering intel through intimate contact with men—and occasionally women—who were deemed a danger to the United States. When she’d been exposed and almost killed, Derek and Javier Corbray, Derek’s business partner, had offered her a job. They’d also taken on Andris, a former Delta Force operator who’d worked as muscle for the CIA.
As far as Derek was concerned, Holly was Cobra’s most valuable asset. Anyone could be trained to point a gun and shoot, but not many could gather intel while being groped by a drug kingpin, terrorist organizer, or foreign assassin.
“You got him. Good work. How was your flight?” Derek sat and punched a button on the control panel that would turn on the view screen and bring Corbray into their meeting from Washington, D.C.
Andris shared a look with his wife. “We slept most of the way.”
Right.
The two of them were crazy in love. They’d once been caught on camera fucking on the table in Conference Room Two. Derek didn’t understand love, but he understood lust. He would bet his ass they hadn’tsleptat all. “Corbray, you there?”
“Great job.” Javier Corbray’s grinning face appeared on the screen.
Corbray, a former Navy SEAL, had worked with Derek to put this company together, lifting Derek from the ashes of his private security firm—Tower Global Security, which had been forced into bankruptcy. Corbray spent a lot of time in D.C., where his wife, Laura Nilsson, worked as a television journalist.
That was fine with Derek. He didn’t miss dealing with the suits in Congress.
Derek glanced at his watch. “I need to get to the airport, so let’s do this.”
Corbray went first. “I had a message from the Attorney General in my inbox this morning. She is elated to have this asshole in custody.”
The asshole in this instance was Christopher David Hansen, a former Coast Guard officer who’d been using his position to help a Colombian cartel run cocaine into San Diego. When he’d realized the DEA was onto him, he’d fled to Colombia and tried to hide in the jungle. The DEA hadn’t been able to get near him. There were too many leaks, too many eyes along the roads, too many people ready to tip off the cartel bosses the moment any gringo asked about him.
But the DEA’s intel had revealed that Hansen liked to beat up hookers and left his lair a few times a month in search of prey. That’s when they had given Cobra a call.
Andris slid his written report across the table. “Based on the intel we received, we set up our operation outside Characa. There’s a little cantina in town where he likes to drink and pick up working girls.”
Holly told them how she’d driven to the outskirts of town, alone but wearing a mic, while Andris and his team had placed themselves strategically out of sight. She’d walked into the cantina pretending to be a tourist whose boyfriend had ditched her and whose car had broken down.
“When no one spoke English, I started crying and asked for a drink and then another. I pretended to get wasted. He sat in the corner with one of the girls, watching. I did a little drunk dancing, and eventually, he took the bait.”
“Of course, he did,” Derek said.
Helpless, drunk, and drop-dead gorgeous—an irresistible combination for a predator like Hansen.
Holly told them how she’d tagged Hansen with a micro GPS transmitter during a hug just in case he didn’t try to pick her up. But then the bastard had offered to let her stay at his place and send a tow truck for her car. She had feigned gratitude, let him buy her another drink, and left the cantina with him—and his two armedsicarios.
Derek had worried about this part of the plan. It had been risky as hell for her to be alone with that fucker and his trained killers.
Then again, Holly was a pro, and managing risk was part of the job.
“He stopped a few miles down the road and had his men take away my phone and passport—for safekeeping, he said.”