At thirteen, her hair had been long and dark. Her legs had been scrawny and knobby-kneed. And her chest had been flat.
Now her long hair was a jaw-dropping shade of purple. Her figure was that of a full-fledged woman complete with a tucked-in waist and dramatically flaring hips which she’d wrapped in a pair of ripped up jeans that allowed whole sections of her creamy white skin to show through. And then there was her face…
That Bratz doll mug he’d loved to watch tell a story because her expressions were so animated had matured into a beautiful heart shape with high cheekbones and a piquant little chin. Her dark eyes still took up too much space. Her nose still reminded him of a button. And her small, pouty mouth still seemed to form a perpetual moue of disapproval. But now she wore winged eyeliner, her lips were painted a shocking shade of bloodred, and her coltish lope of a walk had been replaced by a graceful—and determined—gait.
He realized with a start he hadn’t pictured her as an adult when they’d talked on the phone. And so he’d been expecting her to look like that same thirteen-year-old scamp.
Crazy because she was…what? He had to do the math. Twenty-eight? Twenty-nine? Old enough to be a wife and a mother, although he’d learned from her big sister she was neither.
He’d run into his old high school flame eight months earlier at a local bar. Candy had been there with a group of friends celebrating a birthday, so she hadn’t been able to talk for long. But she’d mentioned how Hannah had put all her computer geekiness to good use by taking a job with the Department of Defense.
Professional curiosity had prompted Sam to do a little snooping. Which was how he’d discovered Hannah was a super hacker working in the cybercrimes division. Curiosity satisfied, he hadn’t spared her another thought until Panama.
He and his teammates had been poised to make a spectacular forced entry during the guard change at the Central American telecom executive’s sprawling residence when a storm knocked out power to BKI headquarters right as Ozzie was due to take down the security system. To make matters worse, BKI’s backup generator, a big diesel motherfucker, had refused to start.
Turned out, there’d been a short in its ignition.
Since Sam & Co. had been operating in a very short window, and since intel had shown the captured DEA agent had been scheduled to be executed that night, they hadn’t been able to wait around for Ozzie to fix the generator. Sam had taken a chance and called the only other person he’d known who had the skills and the equipment to do what needed doing.
Hannah Bella Blue. AKA Hurricane Hannah.
She’d saved their asses that day. And it’d killed him not to answer her follow-up phone calls or texts. But he hadn’t wanted to lie to her about who he was or what he did for a living, so he’d figured it’d been best to let sleeping dogs lie. He’d assumed he’d never have reason to need her know-how again.
But you know what they say about the wordassumeand it making anassouttayouandme, he thought now as he watched her saunter closer.
Aloud, he said, “Hurricane Hannah.” She came to a stop next to him, adjusting the black backpack she had slung over one shoulder. He felt a smile split his face wide open. “You went and grew up on me.”
“A person tends to do that after sixteen years.” She shrugged, her eyes quickly surveying the compound at his back and widening slightly. People always had that reaction when they first saw BKI’s setup. Then, she gathered herself and returned her attention to his face. “Although I don’t think I gained an inch since the last time you saw me. Not in height anyway. Candy hogged the tall genes for herself and left me with the hobbit DNA.”
Candy Blue…The name alone had been enough to give the high school boys wet dreams. The girl herself? She’d been heaven.
To look at anyway.
Once Sam had stopped being blinded by her dazzling face and amazing body, he’d come to understand Candy had been rather vain. On top of that, she’d lacked any sort of sense of humor. But worst of all? She’d been a Cubs fan.
What Southside girl worth her salt likes the Cubs?
Then again, Candy had always been determined to get out of their Englewood neighborhood and live the high life in the Gold Coast with all the Richie Riches in the Windy City who preferred to keep house north of that great divide known as the Chicago River.
“I want more, Sam,”he remembered her saying.“I want it all.”
Which, of course, had made it easy for him to bid her a fond farewell when graduation rolled around and the Marine Corps came calling. It’d taken everything he had to try to make something of himselfforhimself. Which meant he’d had nothing left over to make a life for someone else too. Especially not a social climber like Candice Blue.
“But I remind myself that it was the small folk who saved Middle Earth in the end,” Hannah added with another shrug, dragging his mind back to the present.
“You know what they say,” he told her with a wink. “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight. It’s the size of the fight in the dog. And something tells me you’re as scrappy as ever.”
“Mmm.” She pulled the papers from his hand and glanced over them. “Probably scrappier.”
“You still a Tolkien fan?”
He remembered how her copy ofThe Lord of the Ringshad been frayed around the edges.
“For life,” she said. “Although I’ve moved on from fantasy.”
“To what?” he asked curiously.
She tucked the sheaf of papers under her arm so she could open her backpack and pull out a paperback novel. When she held it up, he felt the threat of a blush burning the tips of his ears.
