Taming the Fire (8 page)

The file was sitting in the middle of Dev's desk the next morning, on top of the pile of paperwork Marlena had left for him. Dev was more than aware that a new recruit shouldn't be taking up his focus—no, he had bigger troubles in the form of Itor Corp and the man who ran it. The man who'd given life to Dev and used him last year in order to gain knowledge about ACRO.

Dev had been making plans—he and Oz had been making plans to wage a war against Itor, the likes of which they'd never survive. Dev had just begun to concentrate on his mission again. And now he was focused on a fucking folder, scared to touch it because he didn't want to know what it held.

He'd spent an uncomfortable night after the guards had come to pick up the wayward operative, spent his time roaming the house and trying not to imagine what the young man would feel like under him.

He fought the urge to bang his head on the desk and gulped his coffee instead.

“Rough night?” Marlena slid a second cup next to him.

He looked up at the beautiful woman who'd been by his side for nearly six years now. Although it didn't show on her face, she'd had a rough night too. He was as finely tuned in to her as he was to himself.

He'd been woefully neglecting her feelings over the past months while he'd been mourning. She understood, but he had a lot of making up to do.

She glanced at the file. “New guy.”

“You've looked.”

“Would I do that before you with classified information?”

“Every single time.” He couldn't help but grin. “Do we have an intake sheet yet?”

“He filled it out late last night after we got him settled into the trainee quarters.” She pulled the papers out of the appointment book she carried with her.

Dev knew if he held the pages between his fingertips, he'd know too much. Having something the new recruit had touched made it much easier for him to get a read. He motioned for Marlena to put it down on the desk instead, and she complied, albeit with a quizzical look.

He picked up the second cup of coffee, took a long sip, and then, “This operative was dropped at my house last night. Any idea who gave those orders?”

“No clue. Did you call the gate?”

“They said he walked away—he claims he was driven to me.”

Marlena raised her eyebrows. “I'm assuming reprimands are in order.”

“Perhaps even dismissals,” Dev growled in agreement. “That's a complete breakdown in protocol.”

“I agree. Let me pull the gate records and bring in everyone who worked last night.”

Dev rubbed his head, even as Marlena moved behind him to rub his neck. “Thanks.”

“I'm here to make your life easier,” she said, as Annika slammed into the office without bothering to knock. It didn't matter—Dev had sensed her presence as she rode the elevator to his floor.

“The new guy is a problem,” she announced without so much as a “Good morning.” She wore her PT uniform—black sweats and black T-shirt, and her blond hair was pulled back in a pony-tail. She looked every inch the drill instructor she was.

A drill instructor with the ability to shock people to death.

“Tell me something I don't know.” Dev leaned back in his chair. “I didn't call you here to talk about the new guy. He's not my concern now. I have a jet on standby to get to Trance. You'll leave in less than forty-eight hours if all goes as planned, less if it doesn't. You need to be packed and ready to go.”

“I'll be ready,” Annika told him—she was one operative he didn't have to worry about. Annika had it together when it came to her job. And, of course, if the new guy didn't fall into line immediately, it would annoy her to no end.

“Can we talk about the new guy?” Annika asked, and then continued without waiting for him to answer. “He's giving his handler hell, and he's got attitude out the ass. I know he's had a fucked-up life, but he needs to chill. He's too dangerous to be with the other trainees right now.”

A fucked-up life. Dev didn't have to read his file to know it would show desolation. Loneliness. Foster care, juvie and jail. Dev could've exchanged it for over half of his agents with special abilities.

Could've exchanged it for Oz.

Dammit, he didn't want a replacement for his lover. There had to be something more here for Oz to send this operative to him.

Which was crazy, that he was even considering Oz was sending him someone. “Let me talk to Zach about him—maybe time with the animals would do him some good. In the meantime, give him a wide berth.”

Annika nodded and left. He prepared to go back to work, except that Marlena was staring at him. “What?”

“You don't know the new recruit's name. You don't want to know it.”

He didn't answer. “I thought you were going to get me a list of the guards who worked last night.”

She nodded. “Okay, will do, Devlin.”

“And take this with you—file it away,” he growled, handing her the new recruit's file. She didn't say another word, just took it from his hand and walked out of the office in a huff, and yeah, it was going to be a hell of a day.

T
HE MAN
who'd been told his name was Ryan might be thirty-two years old, but his entire life amounted to eight months of unremarkable memories, several migraine headaches and two homemade DVDs of fetish porn, starring him and no fewer than six gorgeous, bound women.

Thing was, none of his eight months' worth of memories included any of the sex he'd had on those DVDs, which was a total fucking bummer, because it looked like he'd had a pretty good time, even if the kind of kink he'd apparently been into didn't look like fun now.

The utter lack of memories was the reason he'd ordered Itor's pilot to take a quick side trip to Frankfurt before continuing on to his final destination.

Ryan ignored the turbulence as the jet descended into its final approach to the German airport. He was too busy flipping through the pages in one of two files he'd brought with him. One file detailed his official mission: capturing or killing a rogue Itor operative named Ulrika Jaeger. The other file detailed his personal mission: finding a woman named Meg Lapp and discovering why, when he couldn't remember anything about his past, he remembered her name. Or, at least, the name he'd known her by.

Coco
.

And what the fuck kind of name was that?

He pulled her picture from the file, a familiar sensation washing over him as he did so—a bizarre combination of hatred and lust. He had no idea why he might hate her, nor did he know why he threw wood every time he looked at the photo. Maybe they'd been married or something. Itor claimed he'd never been married, and while they hadn't ever given him reason to doubt them, instinct told him not to buy into everything they said. That instinct was also the reason he'd kept his search for Coco under the radar, even though he'd covertly used Itor's resources to find her.

Good thing too, because Coco would never have been found by conventional means.

No, his Coco was a clever little thing, whose shady cyberspace dealings kept her on the move and underground.

He ran his finger over the image of her dark, pixie-short hair as though he could smooth the windblown locks. The picture had been taken from a distance while she'd been sipping coffee and pounding away at a laptop at a Parisian outdoor café. Her funky, red-framed glasses sat low on the bridge of her nose, and he'd bet that right after the photo was snapped, she'd pushed them back up.

If the women in his DVD porn were any indication, he was attracted to tall, big-breasted blondes, but something about Coco fired his imagination. She was hot in a nerdy way he shouldn't find sexy if he was the bastard on the DVDs. Then again, his brain had been scrambled and rewired, and he didn't know what he found attractive anymore.

According to Itor, eight months ago he'd suffered a traumatic head injury while on an assignment, resulting in amnesia that left his entire life a big, black hole. Itor doctors had repaired his body, but no matter how hard he tried to remember his past, all he could come up with was the name Coco, something he'd kept to himself.

Itor had showed him evidence of his past… gruesome photos of the kills he'd supposedly made, and videos of his sex life that, apparently, he'd recorded. Christ, his life before the brain injury had included a penchant for torture and a seriously fucked-up BDSM habit that went beyond
safe, sane and consensual
.

Which was, in part, why he'd been tasked to bring in Ulrika. The shape-shifter seemed to have found a way to keep her animal side under control by taking sex to an extreme level.

The other reason he'd been given the assignment had more to do with his special abilities than anything else. When Ulrika had been an operative—though rumor had it she'd been less an agent and more a leashed attack dog—he'd been assigned as her comms agent.

She'd had handlers, men and women who operated the device that controlled and tracked her radio-shock collar, but when she went on a mission, she wore a mic to communicate with her handlers and Ryan. Ryan's special ability, electrokinesis, allowed him to see through her eyes, see what she saw, as long as they were in contact via an electronic device. So he knew her, but she'd never seen him. Handy, since he'd have to handle her capture delicately.

Itor had lost one of the only two remote controls when her handler was captured by enemy agents, leading to her escape, but apparently the remaining device was enough to locate her. It had taken months, but they'd finally narrowed down her location to somewhere in London. Unfortunately, they couldn't isolate her exact position, which had seemed odd to Ryan, until his mission supervisor, Miljenko Zoko, explained.

“We made modifications to the device to allow for a larger range than the ten-mile limitation. We were able to increase the collar's range to fifty miles. Unfortunately, the modifications ruined the device's capability of pinpoint accuracy.”

“And you want me to track her down?”

“We know she frequents BDSM and fetish clubs. That's where you come in. You're familiar with the lifestyle and the lingo, so you'll fit in. And there can't be that many in London. You'll have her in no time, especially if you have the remote. Turn it on, and you should be able to see what she sees. If she looks at a street sign, a storefront… You get the picture. Find her club, and with your background, you're set.”

Yeah, well, he couldn't remember the lifestyle or the lingo. Not that he was about to tell Zoko that. He'd been itching to get the hell out of the island Itor compound he'd been stuck in for months. Especially since he'd tracked down Coco, and who the hell knew when she'd up and move again
.

“One other thing,” Zoko said. “Our modifications caused some power surges… it's possible that she's felt a mild buzz or shock in the collar. She may be extra-alert or even ready to run. Be careful.”

That conversation had taken place this morning, and now he was on his way to London, but not until he had a little chat with Coco. Or, more accurately, a long, involved interrogation that would require her to accompany him while he hunted down Ulrika. He had a car waiting at the airport, Coco's address in hand, and he was taking her from her apartment if he had to kidnap her—which he was fully prepared to do.

Because he'd had enough of not remembering his past. The people at Itor had told him all about it, had told him how he'd served in the U.S. Marines, using the military to illegally sell arms, and when he got busted, Itor had picked him up. He'd been with Itor ever since, and the things they said he'd done for them… Yeah, he was a coldhearted scumbag, even if he didn't recall any of it.

But something didn't feel right, and he needed to know why. Somehow, he knew Coco was the key to his murky past, and she was going to unlock it, no matter how terrified he was that his past might be better left forgotten.

“W
HERE HAVE YOU
been? You were supposed to check in with me last week.”

“Don't get all big brother on me, big brother.” Meg pushed the glasses back up on her nose before taking a sip of her Caramel Macchiato and glancing around the outdoor café in Frankfurt, where she'd been spending the past month. “Obviously, I'm fine.”

Mose—or ML, as he called himself these days—sighed on the other end of the line. Nothing she hadn't heard before from him, the same way she'd heard it from her mother and father years earlier. “You're never fine. Don't you think you've been on the run long enough?”

“I don't consider it running.” As she spoke, she typed in the code that allowed her to access the bank accounts of some of the richest men in Germany. She had no plans to change their status, but knowing she could satisfied her almost as much as the caffeine.

Why she did it was more of a mystery than the how—numbers had always been her thing, had come as easily to her as breathing from the time she was a little girl. When her formal education ended in eighth grade, as was the tradition in her Amish sect, she'd continued studying everything she could in mathematics and science, using books and papers smuggled to her from other Amish teens, fresh from their
rumspringa
. Mose helped her with this—had made friends with a group of older boys who roamed through the Amish areas riding their dirt bikes. He'd sneak out with them at night and come home with various gifts for Meg, like the laptop he'd brought her.