Agent S5: Jaydan Read online

  The sight of him on the hotel steps looking handsome and suave in his tuxedo, had excited her. Running into him in the hallway, bracing a hand against the hard wall of his chest and inhaling his unique scent, had awakened her.

  Nearly kissing him without so much as a word between them had planted her in this perpetual whirlwind of rancor.

  Clutching his bicep in a firm grasp, she stilled. Dense, granite-like muscle sat beneath his sleeve, its contours sharp and chiseled. Her gaze shot to his.

  “Are you wearing some kind of armor?”

  The skepticism in his eyes fell behind a wall of refuge. “No.”

  “What have they done to you?”

  He yanked his arm from her grasp. “Nothing I didn’t approve.”

  The D.I.R.E. Agency’s ability to transform men into super humans fascinated her. Her pseudo-position in Powers International’s research and development department didn’t entertain ideas nearly as exciting.

  The DNA tracker had developed out of sheer boredom, her knack for snooping, and months of hard work. She’d hacked into her deceased grandfather’s confidential business files and discovered his part in the implementation of the international DNA database.

  She’d also found private files even she couldn’t hack into, despite her numerous attempts to do so.

  Nevertheless, she’d managed to create the tracker on her own. If she could land this contract with D.I.R.E. and work as liaison between the two organizations, it would give her the respect and purpose she’d been looking for.

  “You can tell me, Rose. You know I’d never do anything to jeopardize my brother or the agency.”

  His gaze searched hers, the skepticism peeking through again. She wanted him, someone besides her father to take her seriously for once in her life.

  “Jaydan, I’ve had to keep things confidential my entire life. You can trust me.”

  He let out a deep sigh. “Look Les, I know you want to help Saint and Natalie – I get it. But I’m not going to take you. It could be dangerous and I don’t want the responsibility of looking out for you. I prefer to work alone.”

  Closing the distance between them, she pointed at her chest. “I developed that tracker, Jaydan. Me.” Her diamond bracelets jingled as she lowered her hand. “Contrary to what you might believe, I do have a brain. I made it through six years of college, have two degrees and graduated with honors.”

  He closed the gap even further, his dark eyes nearly black. “Will those two degrees help you when Keegan’s kidnappers try to kidnap you, too? Or, when they shoot at you, or…” He gave her body a slow onceover. “Have their way with you first and ask questions later?”

  She could feel her face flame in anger. “I know how to use a gun and I know self defense.”

  His nostrils flared. “If it got to the point that you had to use either, I’m already screwed.” With a firm shake of his head, he said, “I won’t do it.”

  Of course. She’d known that from the beginning.

  She just had to make the trip on her own.

  “You know, I may not have run on the rodeo circuit or worked for a criminal mastermind like you, but hey, my credentials are passable considering I’m a blonde and all.” Turning away, she mumbled under her breath. “Asshole.”

  She heard him sigh behind her. “Les…”

  Stopping at the curb, she jerked around. “What?”

  He approached her, his mouth downturned, his eyes resigned. “Can’t you just be happy doing what you’re doing and let me take care of this? Is having a cushy job and more money than ninety-nine point five percent of the people in the world not enough for you?”

  Her heart tightened like a fist. How many times did she have to hear that in her life?

  “We lost my mother to cancer over twenty years ago. My father spent her last few weeks just trying to keep her comfortable while he died a little inside, watching her wither away.” She stared at him with false bravado, willing away the lump that threatened in her throat. “He deserves to be surrounded by family. I want this for him, too.”

  He just stood there, staring at her, the breeze lifting the dark hair off his forehead. His scent of jasmine and rosewood swirled around them in the wind. He couldn’t possibly be considering her request. His pride wouldn’t allow it. More likely, he was contemplating another way to scare her off.

  She waved him away. “Forget it. If you won’t take me, I’ll go by myself.”

  Moving into the street between two parked cars, she took a couple of steps before the roar of an engine hit her ears. Gasping, she whipped around, a delivery truck barreling toward her.

  Jaydan swept her up against his side. Yelping aloud, she clung to his neck as he spun her away from the truck. Holding out his free hand, he stopped it going full speed. She screamed, her heart slamming against her ribs. The front end buckled against his palm as the front tires squealed, the grill and headlights crushing in on themselves. The back end popped up in the air and dropped down, the tires bouncing on the pavement. The bearded driver stared at them through the windshield, his eyes wide with fear, his thumb still poised over his phone.

  Curse words rolled off Jaydan’s tongue like fluent French before he turned to her, his eyes swirling with anger. “Are you okay, princess?”

  Heaving for breath, she could do nothing but stare as shock rippled through her like sound waves. He’d just saved her life.

  He stopped a truck with one hand.

  A part of her was completely freaked out, disbelief warring with utter fascination in her head. The fear that had choked her breathless, he’d dissipated with a mere hand.

  Logic told her what she saw was impossible, while the truck proved otherwise.

  Her mind whirled, trying to make sense of it all.

  Laying a trembling hand against his cheek, she took in every feature of his taut face before nodding. The anger in his eyes dispelled. He lowered her to the ground between the two cars, her hand braced on the trunk of one, her legs shaking.

  “Stay here.” His order brooked no argument.

  Walking over to the driver, Jaydan yanked open the door, tearing it off the top hinges. It slammed back against the front quarter panel, shattering the side mirror, before settling at a warped angle over the street. He stepped up onto the railing and reached inside. The driver stared at him with wide, fearful eyes. Jaydan snatched the phone from his hand, held it up between them and crushed it in his fist. It disintegrated into tiny pieces, metal and glass scattering on the railing and falling to the pavement.

  Jaydan spoke to him, his brows slashed at angry angles, his shoulders enormous in his white shirt. The man nodded with vigor as he slowly backed toward the passenger door. Stepping down from the truck, Jaydan approached her with strong, determined steps.

  “Freaking asshole. Texting and driving.” Grabbing her hand, he looked both ways before pulling her across the street. Anger radiated off him in waves, his hand hard, solid around hers. “He could’ve killed you.”

  Somehow that knowledge seemed minimal compared to what she’d just witnessed. She yanked him short when they entered the lobby of her building.

  “Jaydan, you just stopped a delivery truck going forty miles per hour - with one hand.” She was still trying to wrap her mind around what she’d just seen.

  His dark, glittering eyes searched her face, their angry intensity mellowing to irritability. “I had to – you weren’t paying attention.”

  She wrenched her hand from his grasp. “You’d just ticked me off – as usual. I was angry.”

  “And you want to walk into a potentially dangerous situation to find Keegan Meeks?” He nodded back toward the street. “Actions like that will get you killed. You have to stay alert and level-headed at all times.”

  She stood hands on hips. “Oh, like you were level-headed by ripping the door from its hinges?”

  “That was level-headed for me. I really wanted to kill him.” He turned to walk away. “Forget Hawaii, Les.”

  Lift
ing her chin, she raised her voice to his back. “I’m going – with or without you.”

  His feral growl of frustration would’ve alarmed her if she hadn’t known he’d never hurt her.

  Whipping back around, he pointed at her. “Be at the D.I.R.E. office at five tomorrow morning, one packed bag…” He held up a finger. “…and remote view details ready to discuss on the fly over. If you’re one minute late, I’m leaving without you.”

  He turned and walked away. Hope did a silent fist pump as she watched his admittedly fine bum fade into the midday sun. Snippets of her arousing vision with the cowboy popped into her head: his wide, muscled shoulders flexing in the heat of climax, his lips soft against her breast…

  Go away.

  Turning to the elevators, she filled her mind with preparations. She had to lie to her father. He would never allow her to go if she told him the truth. Lies always came back to bite her but in this case, she had to take the risk. To find Natalie’s long-lost sister, and earn some respect in doing so, would completely change her world, and her family.

  Jaydan expected her to be trouble. She’d show him just how valuable and cooperative she could be.

  Chapter 2

  “You did what?”

  Jaydan shrugged out of his shirt and tossed it on the desk in the San Diego operations room. He knew Mitchell would ream him out for taking Hope. Knew it was a bad idea. Knew nothing good could come of it.

  Damned if he didn’t agree to it, anyway.

  “Hell Mitchell, she threatened to go by herself.” Munching on an apple, he watched D.I.R.E.’s lead scientist, Clint Robinson, work on the D.I.R.E. armband on his right forearm. “I figured it would be easier knowing her location than worrying about where she’d turn up.” He glanced over at his boss. “As it is, keeping her reigned in will be like herding cats.” Swallowing down a bite of apple, he said, “Robinson, are you sure that microchip in my head isn’t screwing up my thinking?”

  Clint laughed as he opened a panel on Jaydan’s left armband. “No, that idiocy is all you, Rose.”

  Mitchell stared at his computer screen, his long-suffering sigh echoing Jaydan’s own sentiments. “I suppose it wouldn’t do any good to call Luke and have her locked up for a few days.”

  Jaydan let out a bark of laughter. “Let me know how that works out for you.”

  Clint’s shoulders shook with laughter.

  Mitchell glanced up from the computer screen. “I’m just trying to save you an assload of trouble, Rose. This isn’t an official D.I.R.E. op, but I still expect you to follow protocol.”

  He met Mitchell’s laser-sharp gaze. “I know. Don’t sleep with her.”

  Mitchell’s eyes widened before his brows lowered. “Who said anything about sleeping with her? Are you thinking about sleeping with her?”

  Bewilderment had him stuttering. “No, I –“

  “Don’t even go there, Rose.”

  He let out an exasperated sigh. “Mitchell, I nev –“

  “I mean it. Screwing Luke Powers’ daughter ranks right up there with trying to bring down Robert Naylor. It’s damned enticing, you’re one dumb sonovabitch for even considering it, and though the end reward would be sweet, doing so means stirring the bowels of hell.”

  Anger pricked Jaydan’s brain, stirring the electrical energy in his system. A wave of power accelerated through his nerve-endings to his muscles, tightening the dense sinew, hardening his body into severe, granite-like angles. Clint looked up at him, his eyes wide with surprise.

  “We did bring down Robert Naylor,” he said through gritted teeth. “And, in my opinion, it was worth it.”

  Mitchell nodded, his eyes calm. “It was worth it, Rose, but it cost us resources and anguish I wasn’t prepared to deal with.” Letting out a breath, he said, “If we do this DNA tracker with Powers, Hope will be the liaison between us. That constitutes a conflict of interest. I also don’t want to alienate Luke. We may need his network in the future.”

  The energy in Jaydan’s body hummed to a gradual stop. He didn’t know why he was arguing with Mitchell when he had no intention of sleeping with Hope. If he hadn’t learned his lesson on high-maintenance women already, he had no business working for D.I.R.E. His two, long-term girlfriends, Sarah Jane and Maria, had both been spoiled rotten. Both had cost him plenty.

  He’d never make that mistake again.

  “Did you find out who owns that island?”

  Mitchell shook his head. “The deed is buried under several pseudo-corporations. Whoever owns it has held it a long time – over eighty years.”

  “So, the locals know them.”

  “Yep. They’ll be your best source of information.”

  “Okay…” Clint glanced up at him with a grin. “Based on the data from your incident earlier today, your brain is working well with the microchip. The capacitor kicked in and emitted the stored electricity through your central nervous system with more than enough energy to accelerate your muscles.”

  Mitchell glanced up from his computer screen. “You had an incident earlier today?”

  Here goes another ass chewing…

  “I had to stop a truck from hitting Hope. The driver was texting and didn’t see her step out into the street. She could’ve been killed.”

  When she’d stepped in front of that truck, blazing panic seized his chest in a vice grip, squeezing the air from his lungs. When he’d held her rear in his hand and her full breasts against his chest, that blazing panic fueled something deeper inside, something more powerful than his enhancement, something that scared the living hell out of him.

  Her soft hand against his cheek had brought out some kind of rare, irrepressible rage inside him. He’d been millimeters from beating the driver to a pulp.

  Mitchell held up a hand, his tone thick with sarcasm. “Don’t tell me. The driver already uploaded the video and it has a million hits.”

  Rose couldn’t contain his laughter. When Saint had used his magnetism to save Natalie in front of hundreds of people, the video had hit the Internet in seconds.

  “Contrary to my fellow agents, I destroyed the evidence. I took his phone and crushed it in my hand.”

  Mitchell gave an affirmative nod as he went back to the computer screen. “Damn, one of you actually has your head on straight.”

  He wouldn’t tell Mitchell he’d destroyed the phone out of blind rage rather than protecting D.I.R.E.’s identity.

  Clint laughed as he checked the microchip at the back of his head. “I don’t have to remind you that your brain is the power source for your system. You need to keep it fueled with carbohydrates.” Stepping around in front of him, Clint’s eyes turned serious. “With that capacitor, you're always carrying a lethal charge in your head, Rose. If it dumps too fast, it can kill you. Push yourself too far or try to do too much and it will. Your armband will give you warnings: it’ll glow yellow and vibrate when you’re drawing close, red and vibrate when you’re at danger levels. Pay attention to it. By the time I get a red reading, most likely it’ll be too late.”

  He’d known the dangers before they installed his enhancement, realized the heavy maintenance he’d have to endure to keep his system running.

  However, taking down people like Robert Naylor and John Warner made it meaningful. There was no greater purpose than making the world a safer place for his family and friends.

  And saving Les that morning…

  Hell, that alone made it all worthwhile.

  Clint said, “How was the pain afterward?”

  Jaydan gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Minimal. Nothing I can’t handle.”

  Nodding, Clint clapped him on the shoulder. “Good. In any extreme incident, your muscles will tear and need time to rebuild afterward. The process will start once the energy stops flowing. Keep that in mind.”

  Mitchell chimed in. “You have billions of D.I.R.E. dollars in that hard head of yours, Rose. I expect long-term dividends on my investment.”

  Tossing his apple core in a n
earby trashcan, he gave a lopsided grin. “So, no moving mountains or juggling aircraft carriers?”

  Clint barked out a dismissive laugh.

  Mitchell glanced at Clint. “Don’t laugh, Robinson. We’re talking about a man that chose to ride an irate bull on multiple occasions. Not the sharpest tool in the shed.”

  Jaydan gave his boss a cocky grin. “I love you too, Jacobs.”

  Clint bent to put away his tools. “And, because I know you’re concerned, your tattoo still holds its shape when your muscles solidify.” Glancing over his shoulder, he grinned at Jaydan.

  Hell yeah.

  Jaydan was proud to wear his D.I.R.E. tattoo of Newton’s Second Law. A triangle, split into four smaller triangles, lay between his shoulder blades. The top section contained the capital letter “F”, the triangle below and to the left a small letter “m”, and adjacent to that, the triangle contained a small letter “a.” Rays protruded from the main triangle, with tiny electrons dotting the tips. They’d chosen the simplistic design knowing it would keep its integrity when his body was in acceleration mode.

  Jaydan spoke into his armband, his voice laced with humor. “What was that, Clint? You said my tattoo was more badass than the other agents’?”

  Dar Naylor’s voice came over the armband. “Aw hell, don’t even go there, Rose.”

  Aidan Monroe chimed in. “You need to adjust his B.S. barometer, Robinson.”

  Riordan St. James came on. “Clint doesn’t get out much, Rose. I wouldn’t put much credence in his opinion.”

  Clint spoke in a raised voice. “Yeah well, that’s about to change, Saint.”

  Mitchell sat up in his chair.

  “You guys are scoring women with enhancements I invented. I’m tired of being stuck at headquarters doing without. So, things are going to change. Expect my call in the next few weeks.”

  Silence reigned over the airwaves. Jaydan shared a wide-eyed glance with Mitchell.

  “So, I’m cleared to fly to Hawaii, Robinson?” Jaydan said.

  His voice held a gruff edge. “Yeah, just keep it real, Rose. Don’t push your luck.”