His steward entered, offering a handset.
“Another message, sir.”
Noon tomorrow.Our usual place.
Anger gripped him.She was alive and had the audacity to come to him for help.
Breathing steadily, he achieved battlefield calm, the type that led either to violence or to salvation.
* * *
Sable tugged the brim of her baseball cap lower as St.Paul’s Cathedral tolled noon.The sun was a spotlight on her face, and she couldn’t risk being spotted by snitches for slavers.
The sound of sonorous bells rolled down the narrow limestone street, vibrating through her bones like the echo of a memory.
That memory was always Elijah.
She did her best to forget him as she blended into the crowd, but they’d lived here, loved here—at least, she had.
Focus!Risk was ever present for an undercover agent.Safety in numbers?Not here.Not anywhere.The street might be crowded, but who knew what the scrum concealed?There was no such thing as a sanctuary for someone in Sable’s line of work, except maybe briefly, when Elijah had been at her side.
Elijah.
Seven years since she’d vanished to save his life, faking her death to sever Black Meridian’s hold over her partner.Seven years of ghosts and grit, rebuilding her life in the shadows.Contacting him again for this mission, begging for resources to dismantle the slavers’ ring, cracked open the vault she’d buried herself in, leaving her vulnerable to enemies, life, and to Elijah.
Dreams came hot and relentless every night, dragging her under the way his hands used to drag her hips back against him.Last night’s frenzied recollection had been the worst.She’d woken, sweat slick and aching, thighs clenched around nothing but memory.
In the dream, Elijah had her pinned to a rain-lashed warehouse wall during that final op, his mouth brutal on her throat, teeth marking skin while his fingers shoved her jeans down just enough.“You think you can walk away from this?”he’d snarled, his voice cold as steel even as he thrust into her hard enough to rattle her teeth.
Hot sex, cold heart was a perfect description of Elijah.
In her dreams, he was merciless, driving deep inside her as she shattered around him.Afterward, his storm-gray eyes locked on hers with calculation.Never a whisper of the softness she’d craved.When a careless tear leaked from her eyes, he barked, “Get your head in the game, Sable.This isn’t a fairy tale.”
Guilt clawed at her gut as she remembered leaving him cold, without a single word of explanation.Fists clenched, she yelled silently at herself again as she hurried on down the street.Victims of the slavers needed her to be on her game, not softened by lust for a man who held the key to their freedom.
One girl in particular had driven this mission.Anna Marie was in terrible danger.Barely eighteen, she had been lured from home like so many others on the pretext of a lucrative job.They’d met on a quiet island off Malta, where Sable had retreated after shattering Elijah’s world.Although working as a cleaner during the day, Anna was already in the slavers’ clutches and would be sold on before being transported to who knew where.
How many innocent victims would vanish along with Anna?The pattern was clear: captives herded in silent processions toward a transport that ferried them straight to hell.Only Elijah could free them with his floating battleship and team of hardened mercenaries.
But this mission could cost him his life.
Her mouth dried at the thought, but then she remembered the prisoners and Anna’s pale, distraught face and knew she was right to be here, because Elijah was the best.She had no option but to call on him for help.
When it came to persuading him to overlook the past and help, she held a trump card.There was a woman he’d be desperate to save.She only knew this from an old photograph he carried around.Both Elijah and the woman Mara had been fostered by the same family, and Mara had saved him from a violent home.
Black Meridian did nothing by chance.They shipped assets around the world.Sometimes, a straightforward sale was arranged, but if a prisoner could be used to bring a target out of the shadows, they wouldn’t hesitate.It was Mara’s bad fortune to be captured.That was how Sable saw her image on the dark web.Elijah was the target; Mara was the lure, making Sable’s seven-year separation from him futile.
Far from angering her, it made her all the more determined to rescue the prisoners and obliterate at least one tentacle of Black Meridian.
The imminent meeting with Elijah filled her with dread and excitement.Weaving through the crowd sharpened her senses as she waited for that shift in the air that would tell her he was close.She might not see him right away, but she’d feel him watching from the shadows.Elijah, the ultimate undercover operative, was educated, lethal, and breathtakingly compelling, a force of nature wrapped in self-control.
She was also good at blending into the background.Jogging down stone steps to the seafront, she looked like just another tourist in cut-offs and a vest—if tourists hid blades in their shoes, carried mace in their pockets, and were skilled in Krav Maga.
Ilya Korsakov’s training had turned her into a human weapon.The retired KGB operative had seen something in Sable when she was a child in a state orphanage he visited.His methods were brutal but effective.They’d kept her alive more times than she could count.
Crossing the road, she tensed as a scooter roared past too close for comfort, but it was just a delivery driver.Then a ripple gripped her spine, sharp, electric, familiar.
Seven years vanished as if they’d never been apart.Her body knew Elijah, though she couldn’t see him yet.Scanning the street revealed nothing.He’d been a shadow since the first day they met.
