Deadly Seduction (Romantic Secret Agents Series Book 2) Read online

  "Nice to meet you, Laurie. I'm Mickey, the new neighbor," he said pleasantly, giving himself a mental pat on the back when she smiled and shifted closer.

  Mickey engaged in some getting-to-know-you small talk with Laurie, though it took all of his willpower to keep his concentration. Usually, he wouldn’t have a problem with it, but then this wasn’t like the usual situation.

  Because he'd been prepared for a lot, but he noted Laurie was a lot more attractive in person, more than he had expected.

  He had, of course, researched the whole neighborhood. They were tracking someone specific, but they didn’t know if he had friends or allies. Besides, it just paid to be careful, considering it came with the job. The only reason he'd even had to come out here was because someone hadn't been careful enough.

  Special attention had been paid to his neighbors, Laurie and her brother, Karl Nash.

  He'd read the file on her that he'd been given. He knew some details about her, like that she was a graduate student in computer science and she was paying the whole thing for herself. She owned the house she lived in alone until her brother moved in with her.

  It was mostly generic information you could find on a quick search if you were good enough. Then there were the details that made him cringe for this woman, having her privacy invaded as psychology experts tried to build a profile for her to determine where she fit in the mission. Like how he knew she had few friends in the area. She had a part-time job at her university as a teacher's assistant as she finished up her degree. She rarely went out on dates and hadn't been on one in nearly a year. She loved biking and took her bike everywhere.

  She was as much under suspicion as her brother, because she had taken him in once his father kicked him out of their family home. There were those that found it suspicious, but Mickey couldn’t imagine why. He'd only met her for a few minutes and he could tell, unless she was a really good actor, she wouldn’t be capable of such subterfuge. The only reason she was even a suspect—well, the biggest, anyway—was because she was so good with computers.

  But she hadn't been home in a few months because her schedule kept her busy. Her relationship with her father was rocky at best, so she wasn’t even keeping up with calls. She was too busy with her own life. Mickey didn’t think she'd find the time to do it, even if she'd had the motivation. Still, her expertise, the grudge with her father and taking in her brother made her a suspect, and he couldn’t disregard that.

  He was pretty sure she was just stuck in the middle, though. He realized this the more he talked to her. He found himself laughing, his relaxation genuine and not just the usual mission-calm he aimed at everyone he was meeting undercover. He found her likable, and from what he could tell so far, honest. There was no way she could have been a part of it. Likely, her brother had done it on his own and then ran to her when he didn’t have anywhere else to stay.

  There were people that didn’t find that likely, though. Karl Nash was twenty-one, defiant, mischievous, thoughtless, selfish idiot. He didn’t always walk the narrow road. There were at least a couple of arrests from when he was still a minor that his father had tried to suppress which involved drugs and theft. He had seen a few psychiatrists, and everyone had the same thing to say about him. Profilers couldn’t find a link between the event and someone with his level of stupidity.

  But he'd had the opportunity and the motivation. There was a link between him and a small mafia gang. The guy that provided him with his drugs. They had probably been the one to tell him to go for it, instead of his sister being the mastermind. There was little data on how the siblings interacted, seeing as they'd only been together for a couple of weeks. So, there was no way to tell if they were cooperating, or if the younger brother was acting on his own. He was there because they needed direct contact with both the subjects, and he had been picked for the job.

  Considering the weight of what was at stake, no one could afford to be wrong, so they were playing cautiously and covering their bases.

  Of course, his impression of her in a few minutes wouldn’t hold up against the hours spent by experts analyzing data that had been gathered by spying on her for the past several weeks. There was no way to tell whether the surveillance was over, now that he was here, or if they would be keeping an eye on her for him as a backup. He wouldn’t put it past them.

  Really, Mickey considered it a shame that this lovely woman in front of him was currently suspect-by-association in the leak of Pentagon documents caused by her brother.

  She was putting her brother up, but he questioned how much she really knew, what her brother had told her and if her father had told her anything at all. The man had clammed up in the wake of the situation since there were plenty of people that were nowhere close to satisfied with him simply throwing his son out of the house, even if the boy was going to go to the only other family he had.

  He also wondered if she was just a really good actor. As she warmed up and lost some of the nervousness, she grew even more lovely, even more beautiful as she smiled wider and laughed openly with him. He didn’t even realize they were drifting closer together until he realized he could suddenly see dark specks in her green irises. They were close enough that his body blocked her from the sun and he could see her better without the sun in the way. Her tanned skin lost a bit of its glow from the sun, but she didn’t lose any of her radiance.

  They had been standing there for some minutes, when the familiar sound of wheels on the road getting ever closer had them both pausing their conversation and looked up. He saw her brother come riding home on his motorcycle, and Mickey was sure it was him even before he got close enough since the guy wasn’t wearing a helmet. He also matched the description he'd gotten -- on the skinny side with blond, undercut hair. There weren’t any clear recent pictures of him, but if the kid got close enough, Mickey would recognize his blue-gray eyes from earlier pictures.

  He noticed the frown on Laurie's face, and he could guess why, considering her personality. From his records, he knew Karl's license was suspended, so if he'd been caught by a cop, he would have been arrested. And being the person he was living with, Laurie, as his older sister, would have been the one to have to bail him out of jail.

  Mickey could imagine it wasn’t easy for her, having to deal with her younger brother.

  He offered a friendly wave, trying to act 'neighborly' as he rode past them. Not that the little punk appreciated it because he went ignored. He heard a gasp from Laurie beside him and glanced down out the corner of his eye to see her glaring at her brother with narrowed eyes.

  "I'm sorry about him," she muttered without taking her eyes off her brother. "He's my younger brother, and I'm afraid he's been going through some tough times. He wasn’t always like that, but it's really no excuse for him to act this way and treat you like that."

  Not missing a beat, he turned back to her and sympathized with Laurie's obvious annoyance with her brother.

  "It's okay. He's probably just at that age and he's trying to be rebellious. Most kids don’t have the best outlets and that's usually what it boils down to. I don’t have any siblings, but plenty of my friends do."

  She glanced up at him, her glare softened as her eyes seemed to melt, a corner of her lips curved up in the barest smile. Her annoyance wasn’t gone, just momentarily masked, but he could see something like amusement on her face.

  "You call him a kid, but he's really not as young as he's acting. He's actually twenty-one."

  Mickey could feel surprise take over his face, though he wasn’t shocked. Karl, being their true target, had a larger file than Laurie, and Mickey had read through it thoroughly to familiarize himself with even the barest details. There weren’t pictures of him floating around, but a lot of people were more than ready to talk about Karl, the problem child, the delinquent. Karl had roughly the maturity of a five-year-old, an overdeveloped libido and pleasure drive, and limited language, knowledge, and empathy or so many said, including all of his psychiatrists in their
reports to the boy's father.

  Besides, with the way he looked, he could definitely have passed for younger.

  "Wow, really? But I guess it still falls under that bracket. Twenty-one isn’t all that old these days. But," he added with regret, pulling his hands from his pockets to cross his arms over his chest. "I guess you're gonna want to go and talk to him, so I should leave you alone for now. I'm going to get back to setting up my place, but would you like to come over for coffee? I'm sure I have at least a table and a couple of chairs set up."

  Her smile grew a little wider at his poor attempt at a joke and then widened some more almost to its previous brilliance. Really, he didn’t want to leave her just yet, but if she agreed to come over to his place, then that would be so much better. He could do what he was supposed to do, get closer to her while getting to spend time with her.

  A win-win, something rare in his line of business.

  "You're inviting me over to your place for coffee?" she repeated, sounding a little dazed.

  He grinned, and it came to him naturally, it wasn’t another calculated part of his personality meant to lure her in. He found that he really wanted her to come over, and not just for the mission. He hadn't known her that long, and already he knew that he would love more of her company. A lot more.

  "I believe that is what I just did," he joked. "Obviously, not right now. Your brother should come first, it would probably be best to talk to him as soon as possible. But I really would like it if you came over some time. For coffee."

  There was some hesitation, and he was surprised to realize he'd actually held his breath with the hope that she wouldn’t deliver a swift refusal, even though he could see from her face that, despite the hesitation, she did want to. She glanced in the direction her brother had gone off to before her expression hardened into something like determination, and she looked back up at him.

  "I'd love to," she said in agreement. "But only if we can wait until tomorrow afternoon. Right now, I have to deal with my brother. Whatever's going on now, I can't just leave him alone after that."

  He nodded, having expected that. She appeared to have a sense of responsibility, unlike her brother, and it felt like it just fit her character. He ignored the relief that went through him at her answer, grinning at her.

  "Sure," he agreed cheerfully.

  Chapter 3

  Karl was sulking in his room, his snapback hat still on his head, as he looked at porn on Laurie's laptop, which he kept borrowing without asking.

  When Laurie came in, he didn’t even bother closing what he was watching. He turned a glare on her, letting her see and hear everything, watching her face twist into something like disgust, and he felt some sadistic satisfaction. She deserved it after all for just barging into his room like that.

  Never mind that it was Laurie's house.

  "What the hell was that?" he complained. "I know it's your place and all, but this is currently my room, isn’t it? Can I not get some privacy around here? I could have been jerking off, you know."

  Laurie could feel her face twist even more with disgust. As if it wasn’t bad enough he was watching porn. And not just that, but on her own private computer. She'd had it for a while, considering all the work she had done on it, it was one of her most prized possessions. But her brother took it, and all he wanted to do on it was watch his stupid porn.

  She'd tried everything to stop him from taking it every time, but even though he wasn’t as good with computers as she was, he knew more than enough of the basics to get through her passwords so it wasn’t really hard. It was a wonder that he was smart enough to handle even that much when he couldn't do most things for himself. Or perhaps he was just too lazy.

  He didn’t seem to understand or care, that the computer had a lot of important information and data pertaining to her work, no matter how many times she reminded him when he took it, so it had led to arguments a few times already.

  There were other ways she could avoid this, of course. She could buy him his own computer, or fix an old one for him. The only problem was that, with him around it was putting a strain on her funds as it was. She couldn’t afford to get him his own computer. When he'd put up the argument himself she had explained to him why not, then he'd insisted he could just use hers if she wouldn’t buy him his own.

  It wasn’t like she agreed to it, but she didn’t have much of a choice. She couldn’t keep her computer on her all the time, and it was a good way to keep him behaved and distracted, if only momentarily. So it was something of a necessary evil, but she still hated when he took it without asking. Either way, she was going to retreat instead of turning it into a fight.

  Though, she could have done without him yelling at her, or putting the image of him jerking off to porn in front of her laptop in her mind, especially with all that noise in the background. Did he think it made him seem like he deserved privacy? Because she wasn’t just going to give in to him in her house with the way he was acting. For a second, she sympathized with her father for kicking him out. She knew he wouldn’t have acted like this there, though, so she pushed the thought away.

  Still, while she was still angry with their father, Karl was acting like a total brat, and she was not amused.

  Laurie opened her mouth to tell her brother off. She wasn’t even sure where to start. There was all the mess he kept leaving around and expecting her to clean up like she was his maid. There was taking her bike without telling her to who knew where, and biking without a license at that. It was like he didn’t even care about the trouble it would have caused if he got caught by a cop riding when he'd had his license taken from him for being careless. There was also taking her computer without asking and what he put it to use for.

  This was why she was sick of putting up with him already. The only reason she hadn't kicked him out was knowing he had nowhere and no one else to go to. The responsibility of him being her blood relative, her little brother, was all that kept her from tossing him out. Every time she thought about it, she actually felt guilty remembering their dad had done the same thing, just turned his back on his only son.

  But this was more than even she could handle. She'd had endless patience back when she still lived at home, but she had changed in the past eight years, and it was probably time her brother realized it and changed or she'd end up tossing him out, too.

  Words wouldn’t come out of her mouth, though, because there was a sudden, loud moan from the computer that had her flushing from head to toe in embarrassment. It was disturbing, the thought of porn and her little brother together, and she swallowed back bile.

  Karl noticed, and she glared at the smirk he sent her way.

  "See? Why don’t you just leave and we can talk after I'm done here? Since I already started, you can just leave me alone for now, can't you?"

  He drifted a hand over his stomach, and her eyes followed automatically before she caught herself and looked away. She could just imagine the look he had on his face then.

  Laurie responded to his taunting by pulling out a remote she'd designed herself and had started keeping on hand after a while since Karl started living with her. She hit a button on it, turning the computer's power off from across the room.

  She glanced back over at her brother, keeping her eyes focused on his face, feeling smug at the annoyed look that crossed his face.

  "What the hell did you do?" he growled, shooting out of his seat so fast that it clattered to the floor, but he didn’t even seem to notice. He tapped at the computer, before turning to her. "No, seriously, what even was that? You're my older sister, but being a few years older than me doesn’t give you the right to tell me what to do!"

  Laurie just eyed him with pursed lips as he threw a fit at her.

  She thought back to what her new neighbor, Mickey, had called Karl and decided that it was apt. She wondered if he even heard himself talk, how much he sounded like a fourteen-year-old boy complaining to his parents and throwing a tantrum.

  There w
ere all sorts of things she could have told him. Like, how she had the right to monitor what he did, at least while he was in her house. Only, it sounded way too much like their dad that she felt a moment of horror, knowing neither of them would take that statement well.

  Even though it was true. She'd thought it was bull when her dad told her the same thing when he restricted her from what she wanted to do. It had seemed unfair at the time, and she still felt that it was, because she was nowhere near as destructive as her brother was now acting. But this was her home, she paid the bills, bought the food. When Karl ate, or left laundry lying around, or threw trash all over the place instead of where it was supposed to go, the one left to clean up after him was her. This behavior was probably why he didn’t even have any friends that would put up with him.

  Well, whatever.

  Laurie sighed. She actually wasn’t in the mood to put up with her brother just then. So, instead of arguing, she walked in, grabbed her laptop, shut it, and walked out, informing him, "I'll be locking this up whenever I'm not home."

  "What?" he yelped, following her out. "You can't! If you do that, what the hell am I supposed to do here all day?"

  She rolled her eyes at his whining as if she was locking him up in a prison. "You are free to go outside whenever you want. There's also the TV. It's not like you'll be completely without entertainment."

  "But I can't surf the internet from the TV and you only have boring channels. Most of my entertainment I get online, and where the hell am I supposed to get the internet from outside?"

  She turned to him with a frown. "Don’t you have a smartphone?"

  "Of course not," he snorted at her. "Who would have bought it for me. Dad? Even if he did, do you think he'd kick me out and let me take it with me? I have a phone but I can't do anything but make calls and send texts on it."

  He did have a point there, Laurie couldn’t say it was wrong. She didn’t know anyone that didn’t have a smartphone, but their dad was old-fashioned enough that he would have refused if Karl requested him to buy one. She had one she'd bought herself, but she couldn’t hand it over, and she couldn’t afford to get him a phone either.