“You’re our secret weapon.” Ryan was loving every minute of this. “If we ever need to clear a building we’ll just take you to Chinatown first, then send you in. Ten minutes and the enemy will be out cold.”

“Or they’ll surrender.” Joe grinned at her.

“Everybody’s a comedian.”

Ryan and Joe laughed loudly before occupying each other with toilet jokes.

Megan pulled up a seat beside Dimitri. It was on the tip of her tongue to apologise for screwing up the meeting. Instead what came out was, “I blame you. I’m sure it was the broccoli.”

She’d expected some ribbing, maybe a lecture about being unprofessional. Instead his eyes softened when he looked up at her. He brushed her cheek with his knuckles. A gentle, caring touch that disarmed her.

“You okay?” His voice was soft, for her ears only.

“Yeah.” She swallowed hard at the huskiness in her voice.

“You did good last night, Buffy.”

The words went straight to that secret place inside of her that protected the core of insecurity she was terrified the world would see. “I made noise. That’s how he caught me.”

“You couldn’t help it.”

Megan was vaguely aware of Joe and Ryan winding each other up in the background, but all of her attention was on Dimitri.

His warm hand rested on the curve of her throat as his thumb brushed the edge of her jaw. “He would have found you anyway. He came in from a direction that made you easier to spot. It wasn’t your fault. It was mine. I shouldn’t have put you in that position.”

“Rubbish. We’re partners. Remember?”

Something flickered in his eyes and he looked away from her. His hand dropped back to the table. “Yeah, we’re partners.” His voice was louder. “You did great disabling him. Professional. I was impressed.”

Alarms went off in Megan’s head at this sudden coldness. Then she realised what she’d seen in his eyes was guilt. Stupid man, probably blamed himself for her getting caught.

“Lake’s classes,” she confessed. “He drummed those moves into us.”

“No, not just the classes. You have an instinct for this business. And you’re freaking lucky.”

There was no denying it, she was definitely lucky.

Whatever he was going to say next was lost as the door opened and a burst of colour rushed in. The woman was wearing a bright pink T-shirt with Hello Kitty on it, lime green jeans and her bobbed hair was dyed pastel blue with purple streaks. She blinked unnatural lavender coloured eyes at everyone. Megan knew at one glance that she’d found a stand-in for Claire. Julia was lovely, but Megan missed the like-minded mischief her twin was capable of. This woman looked like she was more than able to make trouble with Megan.

“Did I miss anything exciting?” the woman said with a cheeky grin.

“This is our tech liaison.” Callum came in behind the woman, spotted the gasmasks and glared at Ryan. “She’s going to go over our comms system with Megan after the meeting.”

“Hi.” Megan waved at the woman. “I’m Donaldson, Megan Donaldson. You must be Q.”

The woman grinned. “I wish. Just call me Elle.”

“L? Is that a code name?”

“No. It’s my name.”

Megan ignored Dimitri’s groan. “Do I get a poison dart pen and camera shoe?” She really hoped she did. So far being a gun-for-hire did not live up to the hype.

“Very Man From Uncle,” Elle said. “I like. Unfortunately, you don’t get any cool tech. We’re totally standard ops here.” She pointed at her laptop. “There’s some wizardry on the programming, hacking side, but you won’t get any gizmos from this department.”

“Bummer,” Megan said. “This gig isn’t as much fun as I thought it would be.”

“I know,” Elle said with a pout.

Tags: Janet Elizabeth Henderson Benson Security Suspense
Source: readsnovelonline.net