Black Jack

Chapter 1

Two months later

a steady, rain-filled wind whipped around the dark helmet covering Travis Caine’s head, sang around the leather pants and jacket he wore, and whispered a caress over the full, face-shielding helmet he wore. Heavy boots covered his feet, protecting him against the elements as rain poured down from the skies, and lightning lit the darkness with jagged forks of power.

The Harley he rode roared down the open highway, throbbing with the increased power it had been customized with. The display beneath the handlebars was lit with a muted glow indicating speed, time, and location. The embedded electronics in the night-vision shield of the helmet provided other readouts considered imperative in his line of work.

According to that information, he was growing closer to his destination and a mission he still wasn’t certain he was prepared to be a part of, because of the woman he was partnered with, because of a night they shouldn’t have shared.

He shouldn’t have loved her.

No, he shouldn’t have fucked her, he corrected himself. He immediately felt an edge of distaste at his attempt to make that night into something unemotional. Something less powerful than it had been.

It was a night he hadn’t been able to forget. In the past two months it had tormented him, torn at him, and left him hungry for more of her in ways he had never hungered for another woman before. She was the last woman he should have ever touched.

What the hell was she doing to him?

Elite Two and the women that were a part of that team were a hidden, rarely mentioned section of Elite Ops.

The Ops was more than the one team Jordan commanded, Travis had learned. For years he and the other agents under Jordan’s command had believed that Elite One was the only sanctioned operation and that the women they had helped train were meant to be backup, nothing more.

They hadn’t realized just how good those women were.

Elite Two had hidden even the slightest sign that they, too, were agents. No one had told Elite One what those women’s true purpose was, nor had anyone explained the full extent of the Elite Ops and the units that comprised it until after the Warbucks mission months before.

Warbucks had been stealing and selling top-secret military weapons as well as agents’

identities. He’d managed to infiltrate government agencies as well as the companies his father had had interest in to acquire the stolen resources.

Elite Two had gathered the information that had led them to Warbucks because of their covers as very exclusive, well-trained escorts.

Once the mission had revealed Warbucks’ identity, Elite Two had also managed to reveal his associates, his buyers, and his silent partners in many of the sales.

It was then he and the other agents had begun questioning the organization that had taken them in, that had saved them, and created new lives for them.

They’d learned it was much more extensive than they could have imagined. And the missions were drawing together slowly, linked by a thread of information here, a suspect there. Travis could feel it edging toward a single denominator, which made him begin questioning all the missions they were given.

This latest one had him questioning even himself.

It was a damned dangerous game he was getting ready to participate in, and thinking about it left a sour taste in his mouth. Despite all the good it was doing, there were times the Elite Ops had little tact and even less taste. To use a woman in the manner they were prepared to use her had his back teeth clenching in anger and a sense of injustice rising inside him.

The fact they were using his woman, despite her agent status, only pissed him off more.

And he was damned if he could figure out why he was letting it bother him. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t learned the hard way how easily a woman could betray a man. He’d “died”

with that lesson pounding in his head years ago, and when he’d been reborn, he’d sworn to himself that he wouldn’t forget it.

He’d lost everything in his life because he’d trusted a woman and it wasn’t a lesson he cared to repeat. It was one he had sworn time and time again he wouldn’t repeat. But the minute he’d learned how the Elite Ops was forcing this woman to face her past, he’d become enraged.

Lilly was different, his heart swore, though his mind fought that instinctive knowledge.

He shouldn’t have been surprised, though. He should have expected it at some point once he’d managed to uncover her former identity. She was the perfect asset to use to find the individual or individuals involved in the death of the powerful, influential Lord Harold Harrington, Lilly’s father.

But they were prepared to use her in a way that Travis feared would end up destroying her.

Returning her to her old life, to the family she had left behind, wouldn’t be a cakewalk for her.

Sure, Lilly had already been training to follow in her father’s footsteps as an MI5 agent before her “death.” But even then, she had been a Harrington and had been entrenched in that blue-blood life. She had been raised to be a lady and to assume all the responsibilities that entailed. However, once she had joined the Elite Ops, she left all of that behind and had become someone else entirely. An outsider, a rebel . . . a lost soul who had seen and done things others only saw in their nightmares. Like him, she no longer belonged in that rarefied world. And making her face what she had been forced to leave behind was damn cruel.

Facing it himself wouldn’t be easy. There was an added painful element for Lilly, though.

They were returning to investigate the death of Lilly’s father and the attempt on her own life when she had been Lady Victoria Harrington. Lilly remembered very little about that final night of her old life. She remembered seeing her father lying in a pool of blood when she entered his study, and nothing more.

The next day Lord Harrington’s body had been pulled from his car, which had gone over a cliff. The fuel line had cracked upon impact, and in a matter of minutes the car exploded.

Harrington’s body had been burned beyond recognition. They’d had to identify him by his dental records. Lilly’s body had never been found. It was believed that she had been thrown from the car upon impact and that her body washed out to the sea at the bottom of the cliff.

They believed that whoever shot Lord Harrington had tried to cover up the crime by making it look like he and his daughter had gotten into a horrible car accident. And because he had been wealthy and titled, and because MI5 would have preferred not to have anyone looking too closely into why Lord Harrington might have died, he had been laid to rest quickly and Lilly had been declared dead. Unfortunately, the ones responsible still had not been identified.

As a covert agent for MI5, Lord Harrington had been investigating the electronic theft of thousands of pounds from trust funds and legitimate companies in England. The situation came to his attention when he had launched a probe into his own company when funds had gone missing.

Those funds had been diverted to accounts overseas, transferred again and again until they disappeared entirely in dummy accounts. That’s when Elite Ops had become interested in the case.

No one could track who was doing it, how they were doing it, or who would be targeted next. Until Lord Harrington had sent a message to MI5 that he had figured it out. Before the agency could send anyone out to his estate to pull him in, he had turned up dead, and his daughter had disappeared. However, money was still disappearing, and they had finally managed to track it to several terrorist accounts and it looked like someone among England’s very wealthy was involved, which made it a delicate situation for MI5. And though they might hesitate to investigate England’s upper crust, Elite Ops had no such compunction.

Pulling beneath the wide receiving area of the Marriott, Travis cut the power to the Harley, unclipped his helmet, and swung his leg over the seat before striding through the electronic doors to the reception desk.

The tired young woman who checked him in paid a little too much attention to the wet leather he was wearing. The glint of lust in her eyes assured him that if he needed any company when she got off her shift, he only had to let her know.

Hell, he should take her up on it, he thought as he strode to the elevator. He would have, if he wasn’t damned sure that he’d end up disgusting himself. Once a man saw heaven in one woman’s arms, then nothing else would do. And that scared the shit out of him, the thought that no other woman but Lilly would do.

Sliding the security key card into the electronic slot, Travis waited for the green light before stepping carefully into the room, his fingers curled around the butt of the gun holstered beneath his shirt.

The room was empty. The sense of vacancy that filled it wrapped around him. It was pure loneliness. Hell, he would have almost preferred an assassin.

Closing the door behind him, Travis tossed his leather bag to the empty chair beside the bed and stared around the darkened room for long moments before moving to the lamp and flipping it on.

Turning, he came to a hard stop at the sight that met him in the shadowed corner on the far side of the room.

“Hell, I didn’t even sense you.” Travis raked his fingers through his hair as Jordan uncurled himself from the chair next to the small round table. “I thought we were meeting later.”

Jordan was an enigma to him, as well as to the rest of the team. Even his nephew, Noah Blake, admitted that his uncle was damned complicated. Travis knew he had never worked with another man as dangerous, nor as completely icy, as Jordan Malone.

“We need to talk before we meet with the commanders from Elite Two. You’ll be accompanying them to Switzerland, and I wanted to brief you first,” Jordan informed him as he moved to the tiny kitchen station in the corner and pulled open the door to the box refrigerator.

“I could have used a nap first,” Travis grunted.

Why the hell Switzerland? The last he heard he was heading to England.

He could have used some time to think about this one.

“You want the nap or full disclosure?” Jordan asked as he pulled free two beers, uncapped them, and handed one to Travis before returning to his chair.

Full disclosure from Commander Tight-ass? Now that would sure as hell be a change.

Setting the bottle on the dresser behind him, Travis threw the helmet to the bed before peeling off his wet jacket and throwing Jordan a dark glare.

“Since when do you give full disclosure?” he asked.

Bright blue eyes flashed with a hint of anger as Jordan lifted the bottle and took a long drink of the beer. When he set the beer back on the table, his expression was once again cool, composed.

“Since we’re using a noncombatant,” Jordan stated, his voice harder than normal.

Travis watched him carefully now. “Night Hawk isn’t a noncombatant, Jordan,” he reminded him. “She’s an agent.”

Jordan took a long sip of his beer, his expression thoughtful before saying, “Not any longer.”

Travis froze. He’d never heard of an Elite Ops agent being released from duty. It was a life sentence. Try to run, try to hide, even dare to think of revealing the truth about your life, and it was fatal.

“What do you mean, not any longer?”

The only way she could have managed release was death. And she couldn’t be dead. She couldn’t.

Leaning forward, Jordan braced his elbows on his knees and stared back at him, his expression remote, but Travis felt the tension emanating from the other man.

“We believe Night Hawk has been compromised,” Jordan said. “Two months ago she was shot outside of Elite Two’s headquarters. She was struck in the head.”

Two months ago. She would have just been returning to England. Two months and he was just now learning what had happened to her.

Travis felt ice form in his veins. For one everlasting moment bleak darkness seemed to flow through him, to slice into the hardened shield he’d placed around his heart.

Night Hawk. She was tiny as hell, fragile, slender. There were times she appeared almost broken inside. She was the type of woman that a man wanted to protect, to wrap in cotton batting and hold close to his heart forever.

The fact that she was a trained sniper with a rating that other snipers would envy never failed to amaze him. She didn’t look strong enough to carry the rifle he knew had been customized for her. She sure as hell didn’t look merciless enough to use it, though he knew she was.

She was filled with regret, with bitterness. There was a dark, overwhelming agony that lived in her eyes, and a hunger that went far beyond the lust he knew she felt for him.

And now, there was a chance he would never again touch her, never taste her, never know the culmination of the need that filled her gaze each time she looked at him.

He could only imagine the damage, and the horrific results of those images flashed through his mind, sending a shaft of pain through his soul that he should have been immune to.

“Status?” He could barely force the words past his lips as he suspected the worst.

Jordan had stated she was compromised, not dead. That left hope. God, he needed hope. He couldn’t imagine his Night Hawk gone forever, the tiny glimmer of hope that always lingered in her gaze extinguished.

“Recovering. She moved at the last second, so the bullet just grazed her. She has a damned hard head, but there are complications.” There was no emotion in Jordan’s tone. He could have been discussing the weather rather than a person’s life.

Travis had to do something. If he continued to stand there, then he might end up losing his grip on reality.

Jerking fresh, dry jeans from his pack and ignoring Jordan, he removed the leather riding pants before pulling the jeans over his legs and securing them quickly. Pulling the damp jacket from his shoulders, he tossed it negligently to the floor before stripping the moist T-shirt from his body and tossing it to the floor with the jacket.

Jordan wasn’t talking.

Travis pulled a T-shirt over his head, then turned, lifted the beer, and finished it in one drink.

“What are the complications?” he finally asked, knowing Jordan was going to draw this out, to force him to ask, to reveal any emotions he might feel. Any feelings that could compromise the assignment or Travis’s ability to use Night Hawk however Jordan intended to use her.

When he spoke, he was deadly serious.

“Amnesia. She’s completely forgotten the past six years. That includes her father’s death.

For all intents and purposes, she’s become a liability, Travis.”

Amnesia. She was once again the woman she had been rather than the woman she had been trained to be. For a moment, a sense of joy threatened to swell within him, because he remembered the young woman she had been rather than the agent she had been forced to become. One he knew suffered from the loss of the life she had left behind.

“Then the operation has changed?” She was alive. She was alive. The words played through his mind, his heart, as he fought to get his bearings upon realizing that she hadn’t been killed, that at least he could hold on to the fact that she still breathed.

“The operation’s focus is still the same. But the reasons behind the mission have . . .

expanded a bit,” Jordan informed him. “And we’re still going to use her. You’re still going to use her.”

Knowing it and hearing it were two different things. Having that knowledge affirmed with such cool confidence, such lack of regret or mercy, had the power to piss Travis off more than it should have.

“Now why the fuck doesn’t that surprise me?” Travis bit out, his voice rough, emotion slipping through his control despite his attempts to hold it back. “Fuck, Jordan, over the years, has it occurred to you that you’ve turned into nothing more than a governmental fucking robot?”

He knew the original operation that had been planned. It would have been hard enough for her to go back to her old life. Doing it with no memory of who she had been for the past six years would make her a danger to herself, to himself, and to the mission, and that wasn’t acceptable.

“We suspect that whoever tried to kill her six years ago has somehow found her again. The Elite Ops could be jeopardized if this is true, Travis. If they found her, then every agent in the program could now be at risk. We have to find this bastard and find out just how much he knows.”

“You’ll get her killed if you try to use her now,” Travis warned him, only barely managing to maintain an air of unconcern now that the initial shock had passed. “If she’s unaware of her training, then she’s unaware of the danger as well.”

He was surprised at the slow nod of assent he was given in reply.

“We’ve considered this,” Jordan informed him. “Myself and Night Hawk’s commanders have come up with a viable alternative for the situation. She’s changed, Travis, just as the rest of you have. She won’t be the same woman no matter what her memories are. However, you were more involved in her training and she’s closer to you. We suspect she’ll trust you no matter the situation. You’ll have to guide her through the mission without revealing your true reason for being there, or her previous agent status.”

“Really?” His lips twisted cynically. “Is that all?”

Jordan gave him a mirthless grin.

“Her closeness with me may not help,” Travis told him. “Actually, it could hurt.”

Jordan watched him closely for long moments.

“I’m confident you can handle it,” Jordan finally stated. “Especially considering the night the two of you spent together.”

Travis remained silent at the comment. His night with Lilly was between him and Lilly. It had nothing to do with Jordan or with the Elite Ops. “What do you know about the attempt on her?” he asked instead.

“The plastic surgeon listed as her doctor was killed in a fire in his office the day before she was shot,” Jordan revealed. “And Raisa has reports that in the past month someone had been questioning Lilly’s contacts in Berlin and Afghanistan. We have to find out if they know about the Ops as well.”

Dragging his fingers through his hair, Travis sat down on the edge of the bed and stared back at his commander. “What are the chances of her memories returning?”

Jordan shrugged. “Our doctors say no chance. There was too much damage. She’s damned lucky to be breathing on her own.

“Elite Command is willing to let her go, to allow her to return to her old life as long as her memories stay buried. She’ll never be safe, though, until her would-be assassin is caught. This is the second attempt on her life. We have to know if Elite Ops is at risk as well, how she was found, and who Lord Harrington suspected was electronically stealing and transferring those funds. It’s all tied together. Find Lilly’s attempted murderer and we’ll solve the rest of the mysteries.”

“Do we have any suspects?” Travis questioned, his voice rough.

“A whole society full,” Jordan informed him grimly. “Lady Victoria Lillian Harrington and her father were incredibly social, as her family still is. At this point we haven’t pinpointed who it isn’t, so it could be anyone.”

“What does your gut say?” Travis demanded.

“Her uncle, Desmond Harrington. He married her mother the second year after Lord Harrington’s death. He’s my best guess.”

Breathing in roughly, Travis fought to push back the anger that was fraying his control.

He’d learned over the years that it rarely paid to give in to his emotions. The plain and simple fact was that he had signed up for this willingly, and he had known the rules when he had done so.

“Any indication Elite Ops has really been compromised?” It was all he could do to force the words past his lips, to keep his anger at bay that Lilly would now be so damned vulnerable.

“Several.” Jordan’s jaws clenched together. “There were inquiries into several agencies questioning any covert status she might have with them. In Afghanistan one of her contacts reported and forwarded several anonymous e-mails he received requesting any known agents she may have worked with.”

“That list is long,” Travis bit out, his voice cold. “Lilly Belle was trained for just such work.”

“And it’s well documented within those agencies that she provided security as well as contacts,” Jordan agreed. “But we believe her cover will hold.”

Travis nodded thoughtfully. He kept his anger contained for the moment and forced his mind to consider the angles of this new, far more dangerous operation.

“How will I re-establish myself in her life?” he asked.

“Directly would be the most efficient,” Jordan said. “Her Elite Ops cover as a professional escort will be in place. If anyone goes digging into the past six years, that’s what they’ll find.

We’ll also stick close to the truth about your past association with her—that you trained her.

But in addition to that, you were one of her more frequent clients, as well as her lover. That should give you more than enough cover to get close to her. She’ll want to know about those missing years. Who better to tell her about them than her lover, Travis Caine?”

Travis clenched his teeth and refrained from warning Jordan that this might not be as easy as he and the others were assuming.

He knew Lilly. She would never accept that she had been a professional escort. She would know better, and he fully expected she would eventually remember the truth. Lilly was too stubborn not to remember.

“It’s as if you had this planned from the beginning. It’s laying in smooth as hell, isn’t it, Jordan?” Travis mused sarcastically.

“Nothing about this has been smooth,” Jordan informed him. “You were the one who rescued her that night. If you hadn’t been there, she would have died six years ago. It’s unfortunate we weren’t fast enough to save Lord Harrington though or to identify the killers.”

Travis regretted that as well. And sometimes it shook him to think that it had been mere luck that had saved Lilly’s life that night. He and Noah had been there hoping to steal the information Lord Harrington was going to turn over to MI5.

“So is MI5 in on this?” Travis asked.

Jordan shook his head. “We’ve been involved with this one since the beginning and it concerns one of our own agents, so they’re handing it over to us completely. Besides, you know they’d prefer not to have to go after one of England’s most privileged themselves, and that’s exactly where this thing is pointing.”

Jordan sighed. “As for Lilly, this is her chance to go home, Travis. We both know she’s missed it, despite the fact that she never mentions it.”

“Even if she doesn’t belong there anymore?” Travis ran a hand through his hair.

“Yes,” Jordan said with a joyless smile, “even if.”

Travis paced to the large window, though he didn’t pull the curtain aside to stare into the night beyond.

Lady Victoria Lillian Harrington.

Victoria Harrington had been quiet, filled with laughter, and as polite as hell. She had been all woman, though.

He remembered dancing with her before his own “death.” He had been very married at the time. He had also been very aware of his wife’s infidelities. He’d danced with Lilly and fought his arousal as he saw the very innocent, very feminine hunger in her eyes. He’d seen her regret, too, just as sharply as he had felt his own.

“Do you think it’s truly possible for her to go home after the life she’s lived the past six years?” Travis mused. “She’s not that innocent, idealistic young woman any longer, Jordan.”

Was it really possible to return to innocence no matter the memories lost?

Jordan breathed out roughly at the question.

“Who knows?” He finally shrugged. “Either way, we have a mission to complete and a very dangerous person to find. Lord Harrington was a very specialized, well-trained agent.

Whoever killed him knew what the hell they were doing.

“MI5 focused on the new lord. Desmond Harrington, Harold Harrington’s half-brother from their father’s second marriage. He’s caretaker of the Harrington title now.”

“I’m surprised Lady Harrington remarried so quickly.” Travis knew Angelica as well. There were few things that mattered as much to her as appearances did.

Jordan sat back in his chair and finished his beer before speaking. His expression was thoughtful, suspicious.

“If she hadn’t, the title would have been lost to her son. If Desmond Harrington married and had other children, Jared would have no chance of inheriting it.” He looked at Travis.

“Speaking of Angelica, it seems she tried to have Lilly sent to a psychiatric clinic in France to cure her of obstinacy.”

Travis grimaced at the information. “It’s a very nasty but common occurrence in some of the titled families,” he responded. “It’s kept quiet, considered a shameful secret, but highly relied upon to control the actions and decisions of the younger generations.”

Jordan was staring at him as though he were crazed.

Travis sat down heavily on the bottom of the bed and stared back at his commander in resignation. “Did you read my wife’s file?”

Jordan frowned. “There was nothing there about psychiatric problems or hospitalization.”

“There wouldn’t be,” Travis agreed. “It’s kept quiet, as I said. Very quiet. Even I was unaware of Patricia’s ‘stay’ in France until after her death. It was then her father informed me of her psychiatric problems. The fear of going back ensured that Patricia kept any activities her father or I would disagree with carefully hidden.”

Not that Travis would have allowed her to be hospitalized again.

“Hell.” Jordan shook his head in amazement. “Will Lilly be at risk?”

Travis’s lips thinned. “It’s possible. If Lilly associates with Travis Caine, Lady Harrington might try. However, when she discovers her daughter’s past as a paid escort, one day she may simply disappear, and then we’ll be looking at a mess.”

Jordan’s expression hardened. “A mistake Lady Harrington doesn’t want to make.”

Travis’s smile was mocking. “Lady Harrington doesn’t make mistakes. She’s always right.

Always perfect. And she’ll be a pain in our collective asses.”