Total pages in book: 165
Estimated words: 154925 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 775(@200wpm)___ 620(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154925 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 775(@200wpm)___ 620(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
But she could turn it around because she knew everything about the man she loved. Including his bank account numbers. Setting him up was nothing more than an act of love.
He had a streak of bourgeoisie morality that was proving hard to rid him of. At first he’d gone with it, living life on the reckless edge.
Then he’d started visiting home and coming back with all sorts of stupid ideas. He’d questioned some of their ops and even talked Drake into agreeing with him.
So she’d lost both her brother and the love of her life.
She wasn’t sure she could fix the relationship with Drake. She could accept that. Losing Kyle wasn’t a possibility she was willing to consider.
“All right. When is your first surgery?” her father asked. “I want to know when you can get back to work. There are a couple of situations that could use your unique skills.”
So he wanted her to steal something or seduce someone. “I’ll be ready to go in a few weeks. Maybe two months. I don’t know. John’s taking care of the scheduling.”
In The Consortium there were a few customs and rules. Women were always used as the principal operatives during any long-term operations. Women, they’d discovered, were far better go betweens than other men. She’d negotiated the end to many a corporate war. If both companies were in the group, that negotiation could happen over a couple of glasses of wine. If one side wasn’t, then she destroyed them. Women in the group took on a code name. She was known as Lizzie.
All the male assistants were John. Johns were good for any number of tasks. They handled most of the physical work, though she didn’t mind shooting someone every now and then. They were also around for security and stress relief. In her case, hers would be playing nursemaid as well since she would be having a whole lot of surgeries in the upcoming months. John would be the one who would ensure that it was easy for her to slip into Jane Adams’s life when the time came.
John had been with her for over a year, and keeping him a secret had been hard as hell. He’d let her know he was there for all of her needs. All of them.
She hadn’t needed a John for stress relief when she’d had Kyle.
“John is the only person you need in your life right now,” her father growled. “Beyond doctors, I don’t want you associating with anyone but him. I’m putting the data you sent about the missions with Kyle in with my other files. You be careful and stay away from Kyle Hawthorne or I’ll take care of the problem for you.”
“Of course. That’s over. I know it was useful to have a CIA operative, but I can move more freely now, and I don’t have to worry about Drake finding out.” Because he already had. Because the worst had happened and now she had to find her way back. She wasn’t going to tell her father that she had no plans to walk away from her future husband. “And I can work on finding another operative inside the Agency.”
“I’ll work on that from my side. I do want someone else on the inside, but it needs to be the right person,” her father replied.
Maybe if she found the right person to recruit, her father would get off her back. And Kyle’s. Her father would do it. He would deploy the leverage she’d built against Kyle, and that wasn’t how she wanted to use it. She would greatly prefer to use it to force him back to her side when the time was right.
She would have to be patient. He would likely go home to Dallas to lick his wounds.
“Stay out of sight until you can move to the next phase,” her father instructed. “I’ll contact you. You should know that your mother is hiring a company to look for you.”
Her mom. Senator Samantha Radcliffe hadn’t been around much. Her career was far more important. In some ways, her mother had taught her a lot. “They won’t find anything. Besides isn’t my brother busy covering it all up? Can’t hurt the family name.”
Not that she had the family name. Her biological father had left her behind long ago, left her in the tender care of Don Radcliffe. She often thanked the universe for that one gift. She had no idea who she would have been if she’d been left with her dull father who’d moved on to teach math or something and had another couple of mewling sheep children. Instead, she’d gotten a true spy. She’d been trained to steal secrets from a young age, and she’d learned that nothing was more important than power. Power and money were the only things in life that mattered.