Midnight Kiss (Men of Midnight #7) - Lisa Marie Rice Page 0,3
people.
Not this woman. She was looking out the window to her right so he could keep sneaking glances at her without coming off as skeevy. She was more than pretty. She was beautiful. Delicate features, huge green eyes surrounded by thick black lashes, perfect ivory skin, short spiky blue-black hair. Slender and fragile-looking, though it was hard to tell because she wore oversized clothes as if trying to hide herself from the world.
Her whole body language was — don’t look at me. Well, yeah, if she had killers after her, she definitely didn’t want to be seen.
Though with regular-fitting clothes and without possible killers after her, people would look at her. Definitely. Men, in particular.
She was in big trouble, though Felicity had only given him the bare bones of her story. It’s better if Hope tells you herself, she said. And yeah, that made sense. A secondhand story wouldn’t do anyone any good. They’d have plenty of time for her to tell him what was going on. Where they were going, they could stay for a while, figuring things out. Luke didn’t start work at ASI for another two weeks and he was absolutely certain that no one knew where Hope Ellis was. ASI was good at that.
Well, unless Satan himself — armed with excellent gear — was after her. Always a possibility. After his recent experiences, Luke wouldn’t swear that the devil himself was not alive and kicking in Portland, Oregon.
Nice little city. Gentle, responsible people around. They obeyed the laws, gave to charity and recycled. But there were monsters here, too. He was living proof of that.
They were at the hotel. Luke drove past the façade and around the corner. ASI had a separate entrance with security cameras that could be turned off from the garage up to the top suite. They’d already checked in. No one on earth except ASI knew where they were and Luke would lay his life on the line that no one at ASI would leak the info, or could be bought or coerced into talking.
He believed in ASI when he no longer believed in much of anything, particularly the law.
Hope’s eyes were large as she glanced at the façade as they drove by. “This is a fancy hotel,” she said.
“Yeah.” It was. Way beyond the architecture and design, it was in part a safe house and a lot of money had gone into making it secure.
She turned her head to look at him as he plunged into the garage, turning right into an area off-limits to other guests.
“I have money to repay your company,” she said earnestly. “Not to mention the private plane over. As a matter of fact, my parents left me a lot of money and I earn very well. But the thing is —”
Luke held up a hand and she cut herself off. He parked and turned fully in his seat toward her. His heart clenched a little because she was looking so worried. So pale and fragile, curled against the door. As if nobody would help her if she couldn’t pay right away. As if she were expecting to be abandoned. She looked so small and vulnerable in her oversized clothes, pale face turned anxiously toward him.
“Don’t say another word.” He put command in his voice and saw her blink, startled. He wanted to stop this right now. “Money is definitely not an issue here. You are a friend of Felicity’s and she’s asked us to do her a favor. Felicity has done endless favors for everyone in the company, she’s gone out of her way countless times. Everybody is dying to do something for her. As a matter of fact, the guys envy me because I happened to be available when you called her. A lot of our operatives are on missions and several are OUTCONUS. That’s —”
“Outside the continental United States,” she said. “Yeah. I worked for the NSA for two unpleasant years.”
Luke clutched the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned white so he wouldn’t slap himself upside the head. What was he thinking? She sat there, looking so vulnerable, looking like a frightened twelve-year-old, and he’d just assumed that he could talk to her as if she were one.
This was an accomplished professional, one of the best in a hard field, and she’d worked on issues of national security all her professional life. Her security clearance had probably been higher than his when she worked at the NSA.