Agent I1: Tristan [01] The D.I.R.E. Agency (21 page)

“The doctor said it was a miracle he survived the surgery. Most patients don’t make it.”

No response.

“I thought maybe you’d give me a way to contact your sister to let her know.”

He barked out a laugh. “Thought wrong.”

She placed her hands on her hips. “I didn’t have to come in here and tell you anything. I’m trying to make a goodwill gesture.”

Leaning back against the wall, he propped up his foot on the toilet seat, giving her his profile. “Don’t waste your time.”

“What have you got against me? You’re the one that tried to kill me and my mother, not to mention my fiancé. I thought maybe there could be some kind of truce between us since we’re family. Guess I was wrong.”

“Yep.” He pronounced the
P
with a loud pop.

Rachel knew she’d get nowhere but decided to ask anyway. What did she have to lose? “What do you know about my father’s death?”

He barked out a sarcastic laugh. “Which one? Despite what you told me, I know they don’t expect Naylor to make it.”

Tristan squeezed her shoulder and kissed her head.

“I’m referring to Jim Monroe’s murder. Did you do it?”

“What makes you think I’d talk to you? Do I have a sign on my forehead that says gullible idiot?”

She glared at him. What an ass. “No, but you’ve got a look on your face that says total jackass.”

Tristan snickered behind her.

Whipping around, Dar’s eyes rounded with surprise. He sputtered out another laugh. “Well, at least I’ve made something clear.”

“You’re going to be shipped out to
D.I.R.E.
soon. It would behoove you to make friends going into enemy territory.”

He gave her a wily grin. “What makes you think I don’t have friends there?”

Rachel gritted her teeth. He had an answer for everything, didn’t he?  “Well then, at least your funeral won’t be
totally
devoid of people that give a damn.”

With his arm propped on his knee, he pointed at her. “Let me give you a little piece of advice,
Sis
: don’t delude yourself into thinking this is over. Far from it. My
real
sister won’t rest until she gets me out of here.”

Crossing her arms over her chest, Rachel said, “Are you sure about that? Once she learns you’re the one that shot her father, she may leave you here to rot.”

About the Author

By day, award-winning author, Joni Hahn keeps her secret decoder ring hidden while she works as a mild-mannered HR manager and accounting generalist. She believes the world can never have too many superheroes, and anxiously waits for the call when one will need help saving the world… or getting into his costume. Joni was born with a hopelessly tender heart and believes there is nothing on earth more exhilarating than falling in love (other than the rear shot of Chris Evans in The Avengers - that was pretty darn exhilarating). A native Texan, she thinks cowboys are the epitome of masculinity, and that country music is the
other
soul music.

You can find Joni online at:
www.jonihahn.com
.

Currently available in
The D.I.R.E. Agency Series:

Book 2:
Agent E2: Aidan

Book 3:
Agent T3: d’Artagnan

The Agency is always recruiting.

Look for more hot, D.I.R.E. agents coming soon!

The D.I.R.E. Agency

Superheroes born with attitude, created with science

Keep reading for a Sneak Peek of Agent E2: Aidan, Book 2

Agent E2: Aidan

The D.I.R.E. Agency Series

Chapter 1

To be a true super-agent, a man needed a pair of breasts and a push up bra.

Cassandra Naylor zipped up her black jacket as she stepped over the unconscious D.I.R.E. agent lying in the hospital’s fourth floor corridor. Men were such predictable animals. Flash them some perky cleavage and they were distracted like an ADD child at an amusement park.

Slipping off her high heel pumps, Cassandra shoved them into her tote and jogged down the hall barefoot. It hadn’t taken much to hack into the hospital’s computer network and find her father’s name on the patient roster. What had scared the manure out of her was his location: Fourth Floor ICU.

According to the hospital’s map, ICU was on the second floor.

Finding a door marked ICU, Cassandra pushed it open and peeked around the corner. Big, rugged Robert Naylor lay pale and unconscious, a myriad of tubes and wires connected to intimidating machines. An oxygen mask covered his face, a ventilator at his bedside.

Letting the door swish shut behind her, Cassandra stepped over to the bed. Taking his limp hand in hers, she squeezed it, hoping to elicit some type of response. Her tears increased with her grip until she held his hand in a white-knuckled hold.

“What happened, Father? Who did this?”

You know who did it. Mitchell Jacobs and his D.I.R.E. Agency.

The hospital records showed a gunshot wound to the chest. Thank God, he’d survived. She couldn’t imagine life without him. He, Dar and Naylor Interests were her life. If he died, her entire world died with him.

Leaning over, Cassandra gave him a feather-light kiss on the forehead. His skin felt cool against her lips, her body heated from the post-midnight excursion into the hospital. She’d never attempted anything like this alone. That had always been Dar’s specialty.

“Where’s Dar, Father?” She stroked back the hair from his forehead. “What have they done with him?”

Her twin could be free, in a local jail, or well on his way to D.I.R.E. Headquarters. Mitchell Jacobs would like nothing more than to interrogate Robert Naylor’s son – then kill him.

The elevator dinged down the hall. She heard male voices, then running footsteps.

Guess they found her unconscious agent.

She had to get out of there.

Pulling up her blonde waves into a ponytail, Cass shoved her feet into a pair of ballet slippers and donned her glasses. Her father wasn’t going anywhere, anytime soon. She had to find Dar so they could decide what to do. How would they get her father out of D.I.R.E. custody like this? What should she do about the weapon technology deal that was supposed to take place tomorrow night?

She’d never been involved in that side of the business. Her father and Dar had purposely kept her away from the danger. Yet, now she found herself in charge and in doubt of what to do.

Inadequacy weighed on her shoulders.

Opening the door a slit, she peeked down the hall.

Empty.

Opening the door further, she stuck out her head and looked to her right.

The body had disappeared.

An agent ran toward her.

Blast
.

Bolting out the door, Cassandra ran in the opposite direction. Taking a right at the first crossroad, she ran toward the stairwell, heavy male footsteps closing in on her. She hit the exit door and flew down the stairs, her slippers floating over the hard concrete steps.

The door slammed opened behind her.
Shit, shit
. Strong footsteps followed, gaining more ground than she could ever cover with her size eight feet. He jumped over the handrail and landed behind her.

Cassandra’s heart leapt to her throat. She couldn’t afford to get caught. She had to save her family.

“Stop. I just want to talk to you.”

Sure, you do. With a little water and a towel over my face
.

The first floor door came into sight. If she could make it to the ground floor, she could lose him in the bustle of emergency room activity.

He grabbed Cassandra’s arm from behind. A shock of electricity shot through her. She convulsed violently, her body shaking and quivering with abandon.

He dropped her arm. Cassandra collapsed on the landing, her head bouncing off the plaster wall. Pain exploded at the back of her skull, as dizziness shrouded her head. Her body hummed, every nerve-ending charged and sizzling.

He dropped down beside her. She gazed up at him through lazy eyes. Her heart stopped, any hope for breath lodging in her lungs.

She must’ve died and gone to the hot angel floor of heaven.

Bright, emerald green eyes stared down at her beneath furrowed brows, a lock of dark copper hair falling over his forehead.

“Are you okay?” He bent over her.

Yep. He was an angel all right, with a soft, deep voice that made her body sizzle and her head spin all the more.

His full, gorgeous lips were by far his most appealing feature, although his chiseled, smooth jaw came in a strong second. He even wore intricately carved copper and gold armbands like archangels in paintings of old.

The stories of heaven she’d always heard were way underrated.

“You’re beautiful.”

He grinned with a dimpled smile that would render an auctioneer speechless.

“I think you hit your head. Can you stand?”

Cassandra frowned. As a matter of fact, her head did hurt. Reaching behind her, she felt around in her hair and found a knot the size of a Ping-Pong ball.

She wasn’t dead?

Damn. That meant this guy worked for D.I.R.E.

That just wouldn’t do.

Shutting her eyes, Cass took a mental inventory of her body. Other than limbs like noodles and a nagging headache, she felt okay.

She had to lose him.

What a pity.

Mustering strength she would surely beg for later, Cass backed away from him when he tried to help her up. “Don’t touch me.”

Holding up his hands, he unfolded to stand above her. “Sorry about that.”

Glaring up at him, Cass got to her knees. Bracing a hand on the wall, she slowly climbed to her feet - with a swift uppercut to his crotch.

Sonovabitch
echoed in the cavernous stairwell as he doubled over.

Cass flung open the first floor door. Running into the busy corridor, she lost her footing.

Shit, shit, shit
.

Grabbing a handrail on the wall, she righted herself and took off. Thank God she wore stretch jeans. She had a little crawling to do.

Growling through the pain, Aidan Monroe shot out of the stairwell in pursuit of the hellion on wheels that had royally racked him.

Holy buckets he hurt.

“In pursuit of a blonde female.” He spoke into his armband, as he ran with a limp past a nurse pushing an empty gurney. “First floor of the hospital, heading toward the main corridor. Runs like a freaking gazelle.”

Tristan Jacobs, his former SEAL BUD/S teammate and fellow D.I.R.E. agent showed on his screen. “Cassandra Naylor?”

“I think so.”

Aidan had been trained to ignore pain and most of the time he could manage. However, his new system had every nerve ending on high alert and dammit, this woman had knocked his nuts into his throat.

Rounding a corner, he ran into two D.I.R.E. agents in the hallway.

“Which way?” one of them said.

“You mean she didn’t run past here?”

They shook their heads.

Dammit
.

Several minutes later, Aidan walked, no
limped
, into the front door of Creekmore General Hospital. He and some of the other D.I.R.E. agents had scoured the building and grounds looking for the blonde spitfire.

She’d lost them.

Aidan winced as he stopped beside Tristan in front of the elevators. His balls hurt like hell. He may never get a hard-on again. He could kick himself for allowing his out-of-control powers and her striking beauty to play on his sympathies.

“It had to be Naylor’s daughter.”

He preceded Tristan into the elevator. Tristan hit the fourth floor button. “What did she look like?”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “Blonde, built, glasses... good taste.”

“Good taste?” Tristan leaned against the opposite wall.

“She said I was beautiful.” He gave Tristan an arrogant grin.

“Well, you did say she wore glasses.”

Asshole.

Aidan glowered at him. “She’s not the first.”

“Well, Smooth Dog, you’ve been through enough women. At some point, one or two are bound to say something nice.”

Reaching the fourth floor, Aidan followed Tristan into the makeshift D.I.R.E. office. He’d seen his share of women, no doubt. However, long ago he’d discovered that caring for someone brought nothing but heartache and trouble. Variety kept things new and light.

Of course, most women had the opposite viewpoint. Aidan knew he’d left a trail of irate females in his wake. Tristan had warned him that one day he’d meet his match.

Aidan didn’t think so. Besides, he had no time to mess with women now that he’d joined D.I.R.E.

“Monroe, I thought you had a reputation for chasing,
and catching
, women.”

Mitchell Jacobs sat on the corner of a worktable inside the empty operating room. Any medical activity that had taken place on the floor had been transferred to other areas of the building. Mitchell didn’t want to move back to D.I.R.E. HQ until they were sure Robert Naylor would survive.

“What happened?” Mitchell said.

Tristan straddled a chair at the table. “She racked him.”

Wincing, Aidan pulled his shirt over his head. Besides his injury, he also had a new D.I.R.E. tattoo stinging the nerve-endings in his back.

Twisting around in front of the mirror, he admired his artwork.

Tattooed between his shoulder blades was a vivid, three-D image of two intertwined atoms. Stamped in the nucleus of one was the atomic number one, the second, the atomic number twenty-two. Streaks of lightning shot from each nucleus like sunrays.

Because his electrical system fused directly into his central nervous system, Aidan’s nerve-endings remained hypersensitive for now. Thus, the reason Cassandra’s rack job hit the jackpot.

Dr. Clint Robinson, the D.I.R.E. scientist that had flown in to check his system and fix Tristan, motioned for Aidan to sit on a hospital bed. “Do I need to get you some ice?”