Читать книгу Intimate Knowledge - Julie Miller - Страница 7

“I WANT YOU to teach Miss Lockhart about working undercover. I’m reassigning you to the organized crime division to work as her partner. We intend to take down Harris Mitchell.”

“What?” Logan Pierce glared at the silver-haired FBI chief, Commander Sam Carmody. “Harris Mitchell?”

Thief. Money launderer. Murderer.

Logan had never worked a case against Mitchell, but when the crimes you committed were big enough and bad enough, every agent knew your name.

Stunned disbelief carried his gaze across the room to the stone-faced young woman sitting on the couch writing down in her stenographer’s notebook every word being said. She’d dressed herself to appear older than she was, pulling her hair back into a tight bun, donning an unflattering pair of seriously thick glasses and wearing no makeup.

Grace Lockhart looked all of twenty-three—twenty-five, tops. She needed to work a few kiddie assignments before tackling something as dangerous and unpredictable as a major undercover case.

Logan shook his head and turned back to Carmody. “I work solo—you know that.”

He hadn’t had a partner for two years, two months and eleven days. Roy Silverton had been fresh out of the academy on that first mission, too. Quick to learn, eager to please.

Too young to die.

Logan could watch his own back. He’d learned to do that long before the FBI had recruited him. It had been a matter of survival back in downtown Chicago with no mother and a father steeped in terminal grief.

Larry Pierce had been devastated when his wife had been held hostage and then murdered during a botched robbery at the bank where she’d worked. He’d found his solace in a bottle. But six-year-old Logan had been devastated, too. And without a father’s guidance, he’d raised himself. He hadn’t always made the best choices, but he’d found a way to survive, a way to stay on top of the game.

Eventually he’d straightened out enough to become a cop, and was discovered by the Bureau on a joint undercover investigation. Discovered by Carmody himself, who sent him to college and recommended him for the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s training academy here in Quantico, Virginia.

Logan had taken a vow from the moment he’d earned that first badge. He’d sworn to protect innocents like his mother.

Like Roy Silverton.

To be responsible for another life…for another rookie…

He didn’t need that kind of grief.

An age-old pain tightened in Logan’s chest, threatening to squeeze the breath right out of him. He covered the vulnerability with a cocky smile and took a shot at reasoning with his boss. “I’m good at this job.”

“That goes without saying.”

“You recruited me personally because I knew how life on the streets worked.”

“Your skills have proved most invaluable.”

“The Bureau has been my home for thirteen years.”

Carmody sat back in his chair and narrowed his gaze the way a wise old father would. “Get to the point, Logan.”

Logan hooked his leg over the corner of the desk and sat, leaning in toward the commander. “Commander—Sam,” he began, using the gentlest, most rational voice he possessed. “I don’t deserve to be saddled with a newbie. I’ve earned the right to pick and choose my assignments.”

“She has experience.”

“Experience?” Doing what? Typing memos?

Logan glanced over his shoulder. The instant Grace Lockhart realized she was the focus of his attention, her fingers moved to her face and adjusted her glasses. Then she busied herself writing something in her notebook while her cheeks flooded with color.

Interesting, he thought. So quick to blush. He wondered if anything else about her reacted as quickly.

Logan blinked and mentally shook off the speculation. She radiated virginal innocence in a way that piqued his jaded, world-weary curiosity. Nothing more.

He stared at the shapeless bag of femininity and absently wondered if Grace Lockhart had ever been laid. If she even knew what the words meant. If she had any idea what he was thinking right now. She looked so clueless. Full of theory and stratagems learned in a classroom, without a day of real-world experience, much less experience working undercover with real criminals.

Had she ever ventured out of her shell? Let her hair down? Smiled? Why would an obviously mature woman in her twenties get up in the morning and deliberately put on a bulky suit that made her figure look like a sack of potatoes?

Didn’t she know that a man liked to see a woman’s curves? That she could look professional without resorting to the two-sizes-too-big routine? Whether she was skinny or chunky or somewhere in between, there were tricks to dressing that most women knew.

But obviously not Grace Lockhart.

As the color in her cheeks crept down to her neck, she cleared her throat and looked up at him, finally responding to his scrutiny. “Is there something I can help you with, Agent Pierce?”

The tone of her voice pulled him up short, dashed water on his original assessment of her sexual experience.

Her voice was deep, husky. Sultry as sin. With that voice, she could call men on the phone, read something as unerotic as a grocery list, and still make all their fantasies come true.

“How much field experience do you have?” he asked her.

“None. I’ve been working in research. This is my first assignment.”

Logan swore. He got up off the desk, jammed his hands into the pockets of his jeans and stalked to the far end of the room before turning back to her. She was serious!

How could she stand up to a notorious crime lord if she didn’t even know how to dress?

“Oh, this just gets better and better.”

Her fingers flew up to adjust her glasses, a nervous gesture brought on by his rich sarcasm, no doubt.

Maybe he could teach her a thing or two about making herself attractive to a man. That would be the place to start with Grace Lockhart. Yeah. Teach her a few of the basics about her sexuality before she tackled anything like threats and guns and people dying.

Logan swept his gaze from the top of her bun to the soles of her sensible black shoes and was surprised to discover that the idea actually intrigued him. Maybe he had seen too much of the world’s darker side. Why else would he be contemplating the notion of investigating whether she might be hiding any more delightful secrets like her voice beneath her dowdy appearance?

How long had it been since he’d made love to an inexperienced woman? Had he ever?

“Agent Pierce.” Her soft voice trickled down his spine like a lover’s caress, commanding his attention. “Why do you keep staring at me? Is it that my appearance has something to do with whether or not you plan to accept this assignment?”

“Hell no.” He turned his anger on Carmody. “You have no business putting her in the line of fire.”

The commander refused to budge. “She’s been studying Harris Mitchell for almost a year. She came up with the plan herself. I think it’s brilliant.”

“Book smarts and street smarts are two different things. I won’t be her partner.”

He could almost visualize her body, lying battered and bleeding on the docks of New York. He could see the life draining out of her before she ever really had a chance to live it.

Just like Roy. Logan squeezed his eyes shut as imagination turned into memory. He should have saved him. He should have saved the kid.

No, he wasn’t about to partner up with any neophyte agent who wanted to mix it up with the big boys and get herself killed.

He opened his eyes and drilled Carmody with his final offer. “I’ll go after Harris Mitchell myself, if you want me to. But I won’t be her partner.”

Logan strode to the door, putting an end to this ludicrous conversation.

“Pierce, there’s no use making this unpleasant.” Commander Carmody stood. Logan paused, respecting the rank, and the man himself, even if he didn’t agree with his current ideas. “We’re working on a narrow time frame with this case. Mitchell’s about to go bicoastal with his operation. He has contacts in Los Angeles already. I want to stop him in New York before that happens and bring in every connection he has.”

Logan puffed out a frustrated sigh. Carmody had planned this takedown on a grand scale. “Then you want your best agents on the case. Men with experience in the field. It shouldn’t be a training mission.”

“I want you to work with Lockhart because you are my best agent. You know all the ins and outs of undercover work. You can handle that end of the assignment, and Lockhart will handle the technical aspects. Together, I know you can get the job done.”

“I appreciate your confidence in me, Sam. And I know I owe you for saving my butt and bringing me to the Bureau in the first place.” Logan spared one more glance at the mysterious, myopic Miss Lockhart. “But I work alone.”

He pulled his keys out of his pocket and doffed a salute to Carmody. “My report’s on your desk. Get McCallister or Anderson to work with her. I’m gettin’ some shut-eye.” Then he headed through the door.

“Pierce! Get your butt back—”

“Excuse me, sir. Let me have a word with him.”

LOGAN WAS A GOOD TEN paces down the hall before Grace was out the door. “Agent Pierce?”

He didn’t answer.

She’d spotted him immediately. He didn’t look like anybody else milling through the administrative end of the FBI training center. He seemed an anachronism to the tradition of discipline and routine radiating from the walls around her.

Exactly what she needed. Someone different. Someone who could teach her to be a different person.

She pushed her way through men in three-piece suits and women dressed in similar fashion and called his name again. Either he was going deaf or purposely ignoring her. She had a feeling it wasn’t the former.

Logan Pierce was tall, with broad shoulders emphasized by the bulk of his black leather jacket. His lean hips and long legs seemed naturally built for clinging to hardware-heavy motorcycles. He wore his dark brown hair short, like most of the other agents he passed. But the day-old scruff of beard clinging to the jut of his jaw and angular planes of his face altered any air of respectability.

He rounded the corner and headed toward the elevator, pausing to wink at the leggy blonde who passed by. Grace opened her steno pad and jotted down the woman’s reaction to his flirtation. The woman’s eyelids dropped a fraction as she watched Logan pass by. Her bottom lip pouted out into a smile. No, not really a smile. Not exactly a pout, either. More of an upward tilt at the corners, a pressing of the lips—oh, hell.

Grace scratched out the observation. If she couldn’t even explain how it was done, how could she ever hope to do it herself?

But Logan, too, had slowed his pace to study the woman, and Grace seized the advantage by dashing ahead and falling into step beside him. “Is it your usual practice to walk out on a superior officer?” she asked.

His easy stride stuttered a fraction, as if her appearance at his elbow surprised him. He stopped and sucked in a deep breath, stretching the black T-shirt material across his chest and momentarily distracting her from her purpose.

He was such a big man. Even bigger up close like this. So tall. So broad.

So bad.

Oh, God, what had she been thinking? A quick catch of breath filled her nose with the rich scent of leather and spice and man. Foreign smells to her untrained senses. Enticing smells.

“Nope. But I’ve done it before.” He pointed to the steno pad tucked under her arm. “Be sure you write that down, too.”

He turned and marched on down the corridor. Grace swallowed the impulse to run back to Carmody’s office. That would mean accepting defeat. And the thought of failure frightened her more than the idea of harnessing the overwhelming power Logan possessed over women.

Commander Carmody had agreed to her plan only if she went in with a seasoned veteran at her side. And only if she could prove she had what it took to work undercover.

Logan Pierce could help her on both counts.

She tapped the corner of her glasses with her fingertips, pushing them up to the bridge of her nose. She could do this. She had to do this.

Instead of retreating, she doubled her pace.

“You’re living up to your reputation, Agent Pierce. I’ve heard that your arrogance has gotten you into trouble on more than one occasion. But I’ve also heard that you have more citations of merit in your file than any agent in the drug enforcement division.”

Logan halted in his tracks. She took an extra two steps past him before pulling up. There was no mistaking the warning glare in his gray eyes.

“Your research should also show you that I work alone.”

Then Logan went and did the one thing sure to move her past her insecurities about herself, past her trepidation about asking a living legend at the Bureau for his help.

He patted her on the head.

“Now be a good girl and run along.”

He brushed past her and headed for the elevator. Grace stood rooted to the spot, feeling the resentment well up inside her, overtaking her, making her curse the day she’d ever been born the daughter of Mimsey Lockhart.

She squeezed her eyes shut and gritted her teeth.

Logan Pierce was just like any other man.

Her chest began to move up and down with heavy breaths as she struggled to control the anger.

Of course, Logan wasn’t exactly like the men her mother had known. And he certainly wasn’t anything like the men—make that man—she’d known.

She’d come a long way from Joel Vitek and his groping hands and drooling lips. A long way from hearing her mother’s name instead of her own as he’d found his completion within her. As he’d lived out his fantasy at her expense.

She’d thought Joel was different. But men were all alike.

Patronizing, self-serving sex machines who talked to a woman’s breasts instead of her eyes, who winked at a woman only if he thought she was pretty…who patted her on the head and set her aside as if she was unimportant.

The hot breaths hissed between her teeth now as resentment began to win the battle inside her.

Grace had come a long way from Hollywood, California, to Quantico, Virginia. But she hadn’t come for the snatches of verdant hills or the history of the area. She hadn’t come for the eligible marines stationed nearby. She hadn’t even come for the chance to get away from the painful memories of her childhood.

She’d come to prove she was more than the sum of her parts. That she had a brain inside her body.

She’d come to prove she was nothing like her mother.

Her breath seeped out in one cleansing breath, leaving her feeling weak. She tapped into the logic and common sense that had gotten her thus far. That logic would give her strength.

No man would take advantage of her the way they’d used her mother. The way they’d wanted to use her.

Lusty old men who had tried to catch her mother’s eye and failed sometimes turned to her. She hadn’t known there were laws then about grown men hitting on fifteen-year-old girls.

But she knew now. Now she was twenty-six and educated. Now she carried a gun and a badge.

The perverts and the users of the world had better watch their backs. Agent Grace Lockhart was out to get them.

And Harris Mitchell was the man who topped her list. She had him in her sights, with every intention of bringing the exploitative thief, murderer and racketeer to justice.

But, first, she had to learn all those feminine secrets she’d worked so long and hard to deny.

She had to get Logan Pierce to help her.

He hadn’t listened to a direct order.

He hadn’t listened to reason.

Time to play her best hand.

Grace hurried after him. She saw a length of well-worn denim stepping onto the elevator. When he turned around, she rushed forward, her desperation replaced by a self-righteous anger. “I don’t care what kind of agent you are, Pierce. I don’t care if you think you failed Roy Silverton. Despite what Commander Carmody said, those aren’t the skills I want from you.”

His cheeks flushed at the mention of his deceased partner’s name, and his fingers curled into a fist at his side. Grace flinched when he raised that fist. But his hand shot over her shoulder to brace the door open. “What skills are you talking about?”

His size and proximity didn’t matter right now, even as he towered over her. The heat in her own cheeks fueled her anger. She tilted her chin and stated her case.

“I’ve devised a plan to bring down Harris Mitchell. From the inside. I can handle the computers once I’m in, but I need your help to get there.”

“What skills, Miss Lockhart?” he repeated, moving a step closer, forcing her to tip her head back farther.

“Agent Lockhart.” She corrected him and continued on without taking a breath. “Harris Mitchell is eccentric. He hires only women for his inner circle. His bodyguards, chauffeur, housekeeper, hit men—hit women, I suppose—”

“What skills do you want from me?” He articulated each word with probing finesse. His warm breath fanned across her lips, shocking her into silence.

Her anger vanished in an instant and she became acutely aware of just how close he stood to her. How his arm stretched beside her cheek, close enough for her to turn her head and bury her nose in the leathery smell of his jacket. How his chest rose and fell in steady rhythm just inches away. How she could feel his heat at the tip of her chin, at the tips of her breasts, even at the tips of her toes.

“I do need you to keep me safe. But…”

What was she doing? What was she thinking?

Her glasses fogged as her skin rapidly chilled with a sense of foreboding. Without thinking, she reached up to adjust them on her face and inadvertently brushed her fingers against his stomach. He sucked in his breath and she snatched her hand away, hugging it close to her chest as if she’d been singed.

“But what?” His low voice vibrated through her.

What did she have to lose? She’d already tossed away most of her pride by chasing him so relentlessly.

She had to have his help. There was only one way to get to Harris Mitchell. Carmody would reassign the case if she couldn’t learn what she needed to. And she knew Logan Pierce, legendary field agent, undercover expert, and love-’em-and-leave-’em ladies’ man was the best choice to teach her.

She lowered her gaze to his scuffed boots and followed a hesitant path up the tantalizing length of his legs and chest before meeting him eye-to-eye.

“I need you to teach me how to seduce a man.”