Chances Are - By Christy Reece Page 0,2

further than a back and forth light flirtation when he came into the office for an assignment. Angela, on the other hand, had done everything but proposition him to make sure he knew she was interested. Her efforts had produced zero results. It was enough to give a girl a complex.

She jerked herself out of her unhelpful introspection. She was who she was and made no apologies. As much as she wanted a relationship with Jake, he had no influence on her career choice. She was proud of the work she had accomplished for LCR. With her skills and abilities as a researcher, she knew she had saved lives. Still, she wanted more. She had the training and the opportunity…now she just needed the mission.

When she told Noah that she was ready to be a field operative, he hadn’t seemed surprised. He had to have known it was coming. Being true to her nature, she hadn’t waited for him to give her an assignment…she already knew which one she wanted and had presented her choice to Noah. To say he was shocked would be the world’s biggest understatement. But the question remained: Would he agree?

There was a monster loose in London.

Noah McCall stared grimly down at the pictures before him. Graphic police photographs, depicting the horror of a gruesome murder, screamed up at him, telling him that this killer had no remorse, no conscience. Noah had seen hundreds of crime scene photos and many of them had turned his stomach. None had affected him like these. Something had to be done to stop the bastard. And he might have the solution.

Slumping back into his chair, he rubbed the crease in the middle of his forehead as his mind searched for another way. Assisting the police in apprehending criminals wasn’t the norm for Last Chance Rescue but they’d done it on occasion. Operating beneath the radar often meant not getting involved even when they wanted to intervene or assist. LCR enjoyed a good relationship with law enforcement officials and stepping on their toes was a sure way to ruin it. However, this time the officials had come to him and asked for help. LCR had the resources to go deep cover, for months if necessary. They also had something else—highly skilled and trained operatives who could hunt down this bastard and stop him. Therein lay his dilemma.

LCR’s purpose was rescue. Each operative understood that victims came first and would risk their lives to save others. Noah’s number one concern was the safety of his employees. His operatives were in danger every day but they usually knew the monsters they pursued—pedophiles, human traffickers, and kidnappers were scum of the earth but a somewhat known evil. This was a different kind of creature—like nothing they’d ever hunted before.

His people were the best trained in the business. They could and would trap this fiend and end his reign of terror. Noah’s issues with this case came from one employee only. A trained operative who could kick butt with the best of them, shoot the whiskers off a cat without scaring it, and when necessary, lie better than anyone he’d ever known. But she had never worked an op in her life.

She had brought the case to him. With her knowledge of the inner workings of LCR, few things got past Angela. She knew they had been asked to help, she knew they had the expertise. And she wanted the op for herself. He had always known this day would come. He’d just never anticipated it would be on a case like this.

For years, Angela’s family obligations had prevented him from assigning her any missions. She had been responsible for their welfare. All of that had changed. Her entire family was now gone and Angela’s entire life had changed in an instant. One thing that hadn’t changed was her desire to become a field operative. Truth was, when she had told him she was ready to be a full-fledged operative, he had been relieved. For months, he’d watched her frozen in grief, zombie-like and merely existing. There was light in her eyes once again. Dammed if he wanted to douse their brightness.

With her skills, intelligence, and grit, he had every faith that Angela would be an excellent operative. What she lacked was experience. But was this the right assignment for her first time? A psycho-maniac who was abducting and torturing his victims before murdering them? This was a hell of an op to cut her