Agent-in-Charge

“Oh, God, thank you. I was so scared!”

Graham held her tight. He rested his cheek against the silk of her hair. He breathed in, deeply, of her scent: soft, feminine, clean. No artificial perfume. He smelled a trace of shampoo that hinted of coconut, but mostly he inhaled the aroma of Casey herself—female pheromones and fragrant skin and just…Casey.

For a long moment, he couldn’t speak.

The hit-and-run. The revolving door. The subway threat. Now someone had rigged the elevator doors to jam. If he’d ever had doubts about her first “accident,” they were history.

Someone wanted Casey dead.

Now it was his job to find out why.

Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! And we have six breathtaking books this month that will make the season even brighter….

THE LANDRY BROTHERS are back! We can’t think of a better way to kick off our December lineup than with this long-anticipated new installment in Kelsey Roberts’s popular series about seven rascally brothers, born and bred in Montana. In Bedside Manner, chaos rips through the town of Jasper when Dr. Chance Landry finds himself framed for murder…and targeted for love! Check back this April for the next title, Chasing Secrets. Also this month, watch for Protector S.O.S. by Susan Kearney. This HEROES INC. story spotlights an elite operative and his ex-lover who maneuver stormy waters—and a smoldering attraction—as they race to neutralize a dangerous hostage situation.

The adrenaline keeps on pumping with Agent-in-Charge by Leigh Riker, a fast-paced mystery. You’ll be bewitched by this month’s ECLIPSE selection— Eden’s Shadow by veteran author Jenna Ryan. This tantalizing gothic unravels a shadowy mystery and casts a magical spell over an enamored duo. And the excitement doesn’t stop there! Jessica Andersen returns to the lineup with her riveting new medical thriller, Body Search, about two hot-blooded doctors who are stranded together in a windswept coastal town and work around the clock to combat a deadly outbreak.

Finally this month, watch for Secret Defender by Debbi Rawlins—a provocative woman-in-jeopardy tale featuring an iron-willed hero who will stop at nothing to protect a headstrong heiress…even kidnap her for her own good.

Best wishes for a joyous holiday season from all of us at Harlequin Intrigue.

Sincerely,

Denise O’Sullivan

Senior Editor, Harlequin Intrigue

Agent-in-Charge

Leigh Riker

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Like many readers and writers, Leigh Riker grew up with her nose in a book—still the best activity, in her opinion, on a hot summer afternoon or a cold winter night. To this day, she can’t imagine a better combination than suspense and romance.

The award-winning author of ten previous novels, she confesses she doesn’t like the sight of blood yet is a real fan of TV’s many forensics shows—a vicarious “walk on the wild side,” not to mention great research for her own novels. And when romance heats up the mix? It doesn’t get any better than that.

Born in Ohio, this former creative writing instructor has lived in various parts of the U.S. She is now, with her husband, at home on a mountain in Tennessee with an inspiring view from her office of three states. She loves to hear from readers! Write to Leigh at P.O. Box 250, Soddy Daisy, TN 37384 or visit her Web site: www.leighriker.com.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Casey Warren—The former art gallery owner’s hit-and-run wasn’t an accident. Someone wants her dead. Can her ex-husband keep her alive—but will he also steal her heart again?

Graham Warren—Does this mild-mannered civil servant have another, more dangerous, side? Graham isn’t talking about his own agenda—or his tangled feelings for the woman he’s sworn to protect.

Jackie Miles—Is Graham’s sometimes incompetent co-worker part of the solution—or the problem itself?

Sweet William—An aging golden retriever, he is Casey’s loyal guide dog. Who just may need her more than she needs him.

Anton Valera—Casey’s elderly, and sometimes forgetful, neighbor could be the link to a vicious killer.

Ernest DeLucci—Graham’s boss at Hearthline Security, the new government agency. Is he selling secrets to the enemy?

Eddie Lawton—A scrawny techno-wizard with a stubborn cowlick and a nose for other people’s business.

Rafe Valera—Anton’s son. Friend or foe?

Marilee Baxter—The girlfriend of the hit-and-run driver is filled with remorse. If she’s not careful, she could also be dead.

David Wells—This ex-counterterrorism task force member lives beyond his means.

Holt Kincade—The D.C. cop may be moonlighting elsewhere—as a traitor.

Tom Dallas—Graham’s former partner. What’s a nice guy like him doing in a job like this?

With love

for Don,

Hal,

Kimberly and Tim,

Scott and Linda…

My family, old and new,

who make the world so bright.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Prologue

Casey Warren didn’t hear the car at first.

From somewhere above her in the otherwise silent parking garage, its whisper-soft engine made barely a sound. She paid little attention.

At well after five o’clock on a typically hot and muggy summer day in D.C., it was just a car winding its way down the ramp toward the Washington street, its driver eager, as she was, to get home.

Her arms aching from the burden she carried, Casey hurried toward her compact sedan. The sound of her heels echoing on the concrete floor in the almost-deserted garage caused her heart to pound for no reason. Clearly, she’d watched too many movies. Psycho had given her an innate fear of the shower curtain being ripped back, a knife flashing in an assailant’s hand, and now, the vague sense of uneasiness when walking through a barren garage to her car. Like the film, her fear was unfounded. Silly, to imagine herself as someone being hunted, the innocent prey of a crazed killer.

A half-remembered face flashed through her mind. In the elevator earlier, she’d seen a man who had looked familiar, yet she couldn’t place him. Casey had felt uneasy ever since.

Nothing new. Her usual distrust of other people could be bad news or good, depending on the circumstance. From the age of five she’d learned to be self-sufficient to the core. That was the good.

The bad? With her divorce just final, at thirty she was on her own again. Alone.

In the silent garage, that very isolation seemed even worse to her than her recent break from Graham. She didn’t need to be surrounded by people, Casey told herself. People she could never quite trust.

For instance, Graham. And—the thought surprised her—the stranger in the elevator who, having caught a passing glimpse of Casey had found her familiar, too. Forget it. Forget them both.

Casey frowned and shifted the box in her arms. Bringing the small carton of Graham’s belongings to his office had been something she’d been dreading. He always worked late, and she’d braced herself for a face-to-face encounter. But luck was on her side. She hadn’t gained admittance at Hearthline Security once she got there, and she’d seized that excuse to run from the newest government agency.

She didn’t really want to see him.

Couldn’t risk her heart this soon.

So why had she come in the first place?

Obviously, it was like worrying a sore tooth. Instead, she should have mailed his stuff. Certainly Graham, ever the unflappable civil servant workhorse, would have done that in her place. Just as he’d coolly written The End to their marriage. What had happened to them?

Yet despite her own misgivings, she had come, and the nonevent seemed so…final. Too bad she still had the box and all her memories of Graham, with his thick, dark hair, his devil’s dark eyes and that quick slash of a grin that always surprised her. Like the way his slightest touch could heat her blood. As if it ever would again.

On level three of the garage Casey turned the corner and spied her car at the end of the row, in the farthest spot from the elevator.

All she heard now was the approaching growl of a big, well-tuned engine.

In that instant the air seemed to fill with sound. The throaty purr of an expensive motor and the shush of tires on pavement reverberated through the quiet parking garage when a long sedan squealed down the ramp, around the curve from the upper level, and screamed onto the third floor.

Inches from Casey’s heels.

Too close. Too close.

In her peripheral vision, she barely saw it coming. Frozen in shock, Casey felt the big automobile graze her body. Disbelieving at first, she tried to twist aside, but there was no room, nowhere to go except the wall.

The car bumped hard against her side. She bounced off the rear door, spun into the right front fender, then the force of impact lifted her off her feet and she slammed against the hood. For a second her head hit metal. Hard.

Then Casey was thrown back onto the concrete floor.

The car sped away, tires shrieking.

Casey saw a quick blaze of stars.

I’m dead, was her last thought. I’m dead.

Then everything went dark.

Chapter One

Total darkness obliterated Graham Warren’s senses. Disoriented, he felt his heartbeat kick into overdrive. The acrid scent of burning ash invaded his nostrils, and in the smoky haze he struggled not to cough, even to breathe hard. Any sound might be his last.

Just like Casey—almost—a few weeks ago.

Pushing his way forward into the bombed-out building, he kept his grip tight around his Uzi. His 9-millimeter Glock, tucked into the back of his waistband, would be his backup. Lose that, and he lost himself. His life.

In the blackness he crept forward, keeping his partner behind him. An advance team had already scouted the old apartment building on the fringes of D.C.

Any nagging fears he felt for Casey would have to wait. He had a job to do.

Focus.

Complete the mission.

Deliver the remnants of the terrorist cell to the proper federal authorities—

“Psst.”

His new partner’s voice at his rear stopped Graham.

“What?” He whipped his head around to mouth the word. They weren’t supposed to communicate, except in hand gestures. Jackie Miles knew that.

“To the right.”

Wishing again that his former partner hadn’t been sent to Afghanistan on another assignment, Graham looked in the direction Jackie had indicated and saw a room that had been blasted by the fire into near oblivion. Still, the walls remained.

So did the enemy.

A sudden burst of ammunition nearly shattered Graham’s eardrums. They were receiving fire! A shot whistled past his temple, and in a fury Graham pulled his trigger.

Seconds later, the hail of bullets had ended. Their Uzis still ready, his heart still pounding, Graham and his partner edged toward the room where the terrorists had hidden.

Graham steadied his aim.

“Freeze. Put your guns down. Hands in the air. Don’t get heroic.”

The blasts had already rattled through every pore in his skin, every cell in his body, every nerve ending, every muscle and bone. Most of all, Graham hated the noise, the sharp spurts of automatic fire, the tracers arcing through the night.

Except it wasn’t night.

Except for the smoke, it wasn’t real.

Tell his heart that, he thought. Tell his lungs.

It would be hours before he unwound.

Graham barged through the barren room. Kicking weapons out of the way, he secured the area. It stunk of creosote and kerosene. Hours before, after some punk had lobbed a Molotov cocktail, the D.C. fire department had issued permission to use the building. The team never knew when an opportunity for such an urban exercise might occur.

Graham barked commands to the mock terrorists. Up against the wall. Feet spread. Between them, he and Jackie Miles cuffed the “traitors” with plastic restraints. Other team members moved in to help.

And Graham inhaled his first deep breath in thirty minutes. He was sweating.

His partner laid a hand on his back. “You all right?”

Graham flinched. “Fine. You?”

“Still here. Still breathing.”

With that, he dragged her aside. “What the hell did you think you were doing?”

Looking away, Jackie holstered her sidearm. “We would have been here all day if I hadn’t seen where they were hiding. It’s only training.”

“Yeah? Tell my churning gut. It could have been the real thing. If it were, we’d both be dead.”

Under guard, the “captives” filed past.

Holding his temper in check, Graham finished his duties in record time. Just as he’d raced from Hearthline, leaving the agency’s intense security behind as soon as the alert came in. Not secure enough, he thought, but he’d deal with that later. And with Jackie. What was her problem?

His new partner had a thing or two to learn. Still, they had stayed in one piece—and captured the “bad guys.” When the time came for a real takedown, they’d be ready.

Graham shook his head. Casey considered him to be just a boring civil servant. If she only knew. Which was exactly the point. She couldn’t.

Now that he could breathe again, it wasn’t just Jackie who worried him. Or the exercise. For the two weeks since Casey’s horrible accident, he’d had a nagging feeling of dread. He had to get out of here. Graham couldn’t get it out of his head that she might still be in danger.

He needed to see for himself that she wasn’t.

“TELL ME WHAT YOU SEE.”

The yellow-gray, elusive blur danced just beyond Casey’s wide-open eyes. Innocent and harmless, the light fluttered around the doctor’s examination room like a ballerina doing a tours j’eté under water. Then it spun away as if on satin toe shoes, trailing gossamer ribbons of remembered sun. Like that imaginary dancer’s flowing skirt, the glow was fleeting, graceful…gone.

Casey stared hard at the blank space in front of her. “Nothing,” she said, her heart beating hard.

She clenched the edge of the table with—probably—white-knuckled hands. She saw nothing. Felt nothing, except the terror that seemed to follow her everywhere. Without her sight, she felt vulnerable…afraid. Even the antiseptic smells of the office made her nervous. Oh, how she had hoped for better news.

At an unexpected brush of air on her skin, Casey jerked back on the exam table. The doctor had passed a slow hand in front of her face, that was all. She had to get hold of herself.

“Shapes?” he said. “Do you see any shapes?”

She shook her head. “No. Just the flickering light sometimes.” Rarely.

In the hospital that first day, her whole body had hurt but Casey’s vision seemed fine. Then a few days later, it blurred, dimmed. From there, her eyesight had gone downhill. Was this all she could expect, forever?

Fresh anxiety ripped through her.

Her future promised—no, threatened—total darkness, her own terrors locked inside her like a scream. She didn’t know where the next thought came from. Certainly she didn’t want it. I’ll never see Graham’s face again.

She squeezed her eyes tight, turning the darkness into a blood-red sunset behind her lids, and conjured him mentally—dark hair and eyes, that handsome face and beloved smile, broad shoulders and tough, lean body so at odds with his sedentary job pushing papers at Hearthline.

Casey bit back tears. “I should get myself a guide dog, what do you think? A nice big German shepherd….” With teeth like razors.

She loved animals. She’d always wanted a dog, but not under these circumstances. How would she take care of it now? Take care of herself? She couldn’t do this, wouldn’t survive on her own this time.

The doctor patted her shoulder but said nothing more. Which, for Casey, said it all. Poor thing. She hated pity.

“Try to be patient,” he said. “You never know in cases like these. It can take time.”

Casey couldn’t cling to false hope. “I doubt time will help. You said I had some kind of delayed hemorrhage.”

“Yes, that happens sometimes after a frontal head trauma. Edema within the optic nerves leads to—”

“I know what it leads to.” Casey touched a hand to her forehead, where some of the worst bruises had been. They were healed, but her eyes were not. She made herself say the words through tears. “I’m blind.”

Bilateral blindness. Both eyes.

He didn’t try to contradict her. When the doctor slipped out of the room to make her next appointment, he left Casey defenseless in the blackness from which there would be no escape. She was alone inside herself. And still terrified, not only because of her blindness.

In Casey’s mind getting run down in that parking garage had been no accident. To her, that meant only one thing. Someone—the same someone who had blinded her—would try again to kill her. And now she couldn’t protect herself.

Ironic, really, when she had prided herself on not needing anyone, especially Graham.

But it wasn’t Graham she “saw” now. Another face, unsmiling, flashed through her mind. When she’d been in pain, she had suppressed the memory of the man she’d seen in the elevator at Graham’s office building. Pale hair, pale features, she remembered. Why think of him again now? Was he harmless, just an acquaintance she couldn’t quite place—or part of the threat she continued to feel?

The fear raced through her again like another speeding car bent upon her total destruction. When it happened the next time, she wouldn’t be able to see it coming.

IN THE LOBBY of her doctor’s building where he’d been waiting, Graham was relieved to see Casey finally emerge from the elevator. She wasn’t alone.

Graham nodded at the nurse then focused on Casey.

“Hey, babe.” He swallowed. “How’d it go?” He had heard the tap of her white cane before he actually saw her, but he could tell by her face that she’d had bad news. Casey didn’t hide her emotions as well as Graham did these days. She hadn’t walled them up inside.

Startled by his voice so near, Casey missed a step and Graham cursed himself. He hadn’t meant to surprise her. Briefly, her head tilted in his direction. Then she kept walking, the cane that had become an extension of her right hand in the past few weeks rhythmically tapping the Carrara marble floor.

“It’s a miracle,” she murmured in the too-light tone she sometimes used to downplay a problem, as she walked right past him. “I can see, I can see.”

Obviously, she couldn’t, and sudden anger swept through him. Graham glanced again around the busy lobby of the professional building, making sure it remained secure. For the past half hour, after his quick stop at home to shower away the smell of smoke and change clothes, he’d made regular checks of the area from his leaning stance against the marble wall. But, like Jackie Miles’s earlier blunder, he couldn’t quell his own uneasiness about Casey.

Graham peeled himself away from the wall. “I’ll take care of her,” he said to the nurse after introducing himself. When Casey didn’t object, he waited again while she thanked her doctor’s nurse, who gave Graham a crisp goodbye. And another thorough once-over as if to reassure herself that she was leaving Casey in good hands.

Graham watched the woman disappear into the elevator.

Casey wouldn’t welcome him fussing over her, either. Yet she needed someone right now—in this case, him.

He stepped in front of her, forcing Casey to halt when she would have struck off on her own.

“Tell me what he said.”

She gazed sightlessly at the floor between them.

“He said, ‘be patient.’”

Her sleek blond bob had slipped like silk around her pale cheeks, creating a heavy curtain that hid her smooth, even features. Her straight little nose. Her beautiful green eyes were hooded by her lids now, and she didn’t try to look at him, which made him all the more angry. With her, with himself. They might not be married any longer but…

“Casey. Don’t. It’s me.”

And he watched her crumple. Just like that.

She didn’t want to, he guessed, but she flowed like warm honey into his waiting arms.

To his surprise, Graham felt a flash of familiar but unwelcome desire run through his body. With their first touch, he had caught fire—like that run-down apartment building for the team exercise. Graham tried to tamp it down, but Casey, slender yet curvy in all the right places, her skin warm and as soft as down, felt like home in his embrace. Hell. What was he doing, lusting over a broken woman? A woman who didn’t belong to him now?

“It’s over,” she said against the front of his dress shirt. He felt wetness seep through the blue cotton. “I’m trapped inside myself. I’ve never liked small, enclosed spaces, but now that’s all I have. I’ll never be able to run an art gallery of my own again. Never see the paintings on the walls. The colors. Never know if something is good, or bad. How could I now?”

Graham shut his eyes, sharing the darkness with her for a moment. “You’ll find a way. You know you will.”

He had to remind himself that they were quits. Over, as she’d said of her gallery.

His remark seemed to stiffen her spine, but he hated seeing her like this, hated knowing what someone else had done to her in that lonely parking garage. To Casey, her career, her life, her future had been snatched away along with her vision.

And her accident still troubled him, too.

That was natural.

She had nearly been killed.

But why in hell had the accident happened in the first place? Mere steps from his own office at Hearthline?

He took another look around the lobby. When he saw nothing suspicious, Graham tipped up her chin so he could look into her eyes, and the pain ripped through him all over again. Her gorgeous green eyes. Hell, he could do this much for her if nothing more.

“Let me take you home. My car’s outside.”

Casey pulled away, then set her shoulders. “I may be blind. I’m not crippled. I am fully capable of leaving this lobby and raising a hand to call a cab.” She stepped back a few inches. “You have no responsibility for me, Graham, remember? Our marriage is over.”

“We’re divorced, not mortal enemies.” Which only made Graham angrier at himself. “Frankly, if you ask me, you could use not only a lift—you could use a friend.”

“You are not my friend.”

Ouch, he thought, but he knew he hadn’t acted like a pal, much less a husband. He couldn’t fault her for not trusting him, for walking out. He’d driven her to it.

Yet Graham would be the first to admit that things weren’t always what they seemed. Including him. Too bad he couldn’t tell Casey anything—for now—but lies.

He double-checked the lobby, finding only the normal flow of passersby intent upon their errands. It didn’t soothe him. He forced his tone to sound lazy, nonthreatening. He wanted to get her out of here.