Page 2 of Craved

“Damn,” I say, with a hard snap of my fingers. “I knew I forgot something.”

Stark Security burst onto the private security scene several years ago, and has since grown into an organization with a worldwide reputation for excellence. I’m proud to work here, but one of the reasons I’d come on board was so that I could take smaller assignments and stick closer to my adopted home of Los Angeles. It’s a nice change from my former job with the SOC—Sensitive Operations Command—which is a covert, off-the-books government organization with oversight from the NSC.

There, I’d been assigned to huge missions with worldwide repercussions. During my tenure, I helped bring down a hell of a lot of bad guys, and I’m proud of the work I did, but the lifestyle was a bitch. Basically, I’d been a real-life James Bond. Or Ethan Hunt. Or Sydney Bristow.

In other words, I’d had a job that was cool as shit and stressful as hell.

These days, my work is still fascinating and my private sector paycheck rocks. Plus, I have a house in Venice Beach right on the bike path, a chest of drawers instead of a suitcase, and an actual pet, albeit a hamster. I still don’t feel quite settled enough to get a dog, but I’m working on that.

I’ve even joined a book club, and I go to yoga class twice a week.

Domesticity, thy name is Cami.

I’d grown up in the Bronx, and my memories from my childhood aren’t exactly something you’d find on the Hallmark Channel. More like Shudder.

Needless to say, the thought of going back now doesn’t sit well.

None of that, however, is the primary reason that I don’t want this assignment. On the contrary, I don’t want it for the exact reason that Ryan thinks I’m the perfect girl for it.

Maxim Wilder.

Just thinking his name makes me edgy, and I push up out of the chair and start to pace again.

“We’re looking at the potential for mass genocide, Cami.”

My eyes cut to the report I’d just finished reading. The confidential one stamped PGU, which stands for Project Group Ultra.

Not long ago, Stark Security helped foil a major threat from Group Ultra, a terrorist organization with cells all over the globe. Unfortunately, the group itself hadn’t been eradicated, and the leader—a vicious chameleon of a man named Killion Lambert—had crawled back into the sewer.

Current intel says he’s behind a seemingly legit Manhattan-based non-profit organization that’s developing an enhanced water processing and reclamation system for underdeveloped countries. Except that’s not what they’re developing at all. Chatter suggests that the water project is merely a cover for their work on a next-gen weapon with major destructive power. What it is and how it works is anyone’s guess.

Which means the best way to find out is to infiltrate the organization and gather that intel.

That’s where I come in. Because who has a better ticket into the inner circle than the woman who used to fuck Maxim Wilder, Lambert’s right-hand man?

“It would be a mistake,” I say. “Don’t you get it? It would be too personal.”

Ryan shakes his head. “On the contrary. I think it’s just personal enough.”

“And if I say no?”

He stands, then circles his desk in long strides before leaning against it right in front of me. “If you say no, it’s likely that this weapon will go operational. You know that.”

I do. I also know that I’m not going to turn down this mission. Ryan knows it, too.

With a frustrated sigh, I concede the point. “Mission parameters? Op tech? What about back-up?”

“Brax is your on-point here.”

“Good.” Braxton Reed is an amazing agent and one of my closest friends. For months, he and I were the only fully covert agents at Stark Security. As in, no one outside the office knows that we work for the organization. As far as the world is concerned, we’re just ordinary citizens with ordinary jobs. Now there’s three of us working in that covert capacity, with the third being his new wife, Sabrina.

They’ve only recently returned from their honeymoon, and I’m assuming that this is the first op Brax has worked since he got back.

“I’m going to head home to pack once we’re done here,” I tell Ryan. “I’ll see if he and Brina want to come over for lunch. He can brief me then.”

“Fine,” Ryan says. “As for on-site, Zane Parker will be your contact if anything goes sideways. Standard covert protocol for contact and extraction.”

I nod as I run through a mental Rolodex, finally landing on Parker, who I recall is a relatively new research associate at Stark Security. As my extraction contact, he’s only notified when I activate my emergency beacon. If I don’t initiate contact, then he’ll have no idea I’m even in the city. Another protocol to help ensure covert operatives remain covert.