Читать книгу A Weaver Holiday Homecoming - Allison Leigh - Страница 8

“This isn’t an assignment like anything else you’ve ever done. That we’ve ever done.” The silver-haired man watched him steadily from across the small table. “There are even fewer guarantees than usual.”

Around them, the small backwater pub was crowded with people. No one seemed interested in what any of the other patrons were doing. Or discussing. This wasn’t the kind of place where people came to be seen.

It was the kind of place where people came to remain invisible.

Which was why it was a perfect meeting place for Ryan Clay and his boss.

He eyed the older man who’d just outlined the dicey undercover scheme and slowly twisted his glass in the ring of sweat the ice had left on the scarred wooden tabletop. “I can handle it,” he said, since Cole seemed to be waiting for some sort of response.

“It’s not going to be easy,” Cole warned.

Needlessly.

Nothing to do with the agency had ever been easy. It hadn’t been for any of the agents on Hollins-Winword’s very secretive payroll—several of whom came from Ryan’s own family.

And it was family that had grabbed his interest when Coleman Black gave Ryan the rundown. How many families were being destroyed by the trafficking ring he was being assigned to infiltrate?

“I can handle it,” he said again. A little impatiently, because if his boss hadn’t already known that point, he wouldn’t have chosen to offer Ryan the assignment in the first place. Coleman Black was a hard-as-nails man. But he was also practical. He didn’t like losing good agents. They were too hard to come by.

By the time an agent got to the level Ryan held within the organization, assignments weren’t doled out by demand. They were offered. And always with the expectation that it was no sin for the agent to decline.

Mostly, because some agents never made it back.

Ryan easily pushed the thought out of his mind and met his boss’s sharp gaze. “Let’s just get on with it.”

Coleman watched him for a moment longer. Measuring.

Then he nodded. He sat forward. And then their low talk began in earnest.