Di Stefano almost choked on the mouthful of stale nachos as sounds came from his partner’s headset. Something going down! At last!

“What? What did he say?” Di Stefano rounded on Alexei and fought the urge to grab the smaller man’s grubby sweatshirt and shake the words out of him.

Slowly, deliberately, Alexei lifted one earphone away from his ear. The other he kept covered with the foam rubber earpiece. Alexei had been offered earbuds and even a sleek, pricey Bang & Olufsen headset that conducted sound through the ear bone, but he’d refused them all. He wanted to hear everything, he said, and for that he needed the big old-fashioned foam rubber pads that covered his ears.

They couldn’t operate the laser beam at night. The light beam became visible in the dark. But from first light to last, Alexei was on duty, eating and drinking and pissing and crapping with at least one ear covered at all times, listening.

This was what the Unit was all about—a secret government agency tasked with studying the growing contacts between terrorism and international organized crime, bringing together military operatives and law enforcement officers to combat this unholy alliance.

Alexei blinked as if coming out of a trance. “Not much. He picked up the phone and said hello, listened, then said excellent, then listened some more, then said have a safe journey, my friend. That’s all I heard him say.”

John’s mind raced. “Okay, okay. He’s happy about something. He’s happy about something that’s moving. Or rather someone that’s moving.” Di Stefano closed his eyes at the thought of all the bad people who could be moving around. “So now all we have to do is find out what it is that he’s so happy about, if it’s coming here and when.”

Alexei, who was a 36-level Doom player, grinned and lifted his can of diet Coke. “Piece a cake.”

Four

Parker’s Ridge

Da Emilio’s

To Nick Ames.

Nick lifted his glass and drank to himself. Or rather to Nicholas Ames, jolly retired stockbroker, nonexistent though he might be.

Ames had a pretty good deal, sitting here in this elegant restaurant across the table from one of the prettiest women he’d ever seen in his life.

It sure as hell beat his last undercover job, as Seamus Haley, former PIRA fighter who was hiring himself out to the highest bidder as an enforcer after peace broke out in Belfast. Nick did a very credible Northern Irish accent—it was probably in his DNA—even if Guillermo Gonzalez couldn’t tell the difference between an Irishman and a Frenchman. As far as Gonzalez was concerned, Nick was one more corrupt gringo he paid to break legs and deliver packages.

Nick had spent twelve very long months rising through the ranks in Gonzalez’s organization, step by step. Living and breathing and acting the part of a scumbag.

He’d even had to fuck Consuelo, Gonzalez’s sister. Christ, that had been hard. Not because she was ugly—no, Consuelo was a looker. Worked at it, too. She spent more than the education budget of some third world countries on clothes, jewelry, and cosmetic surgery.

The instant she’d laid eyes on him, she’d staked her claim. Guillermo found it funny. He’d once walked in on Consuelo giving head and had stayed to watch, critiquing her style.

Nick had had more sex in that twelve-month period than a teen pop star and every second of it had been sheer, unadulterated vomit-inducing hell. Consuelo was heavily into pain—her pain, not his, thank God. He drew the line at that.

Still, her pain had been bad enough. She was into bondage and whips, with a hellish range of sex toys and sex paraphernalia she kept in a big red chest. She liked her sex so rough he sometimes spent the rest of the night driving the porcelain bus when he finally crawled back into his small, spare bedroom.

Nick never got used to it, never found it got easier. When he fucked her hard, knowing he was hurting her, her face got red, her eyes glassy, grunting then screaming while she came, urging him to hurt her even more.

It had been the hardest thing he’d ever done in a hard lifetime.

He’d seen quite enough pain during his childhood. Stopping people from hurting others was what he was all about. Being forced to hurt a woman made his gut clench, turned him inside out.

He was seriously contemplating quitting when all of a sudden, in a flurry of activity, Gonzalez put together a guns-for-cocaine deal that was the biggest Nick had ever seen. Two tons of cocaine for enough firepower to keep an African civil war going for years, which had been the point.

They had a system in place for Nick to get the word out and Gonzalez had gone down in the raid, caught in a crossfire so vicious the only thing left of him on the warehouse floor had been human hamburger.

The cocaine had gone into a warehouse instead of up yuppie noses, the arsenal had been destroyed, and fifty-seven people slapped in jail. Enough work to keep an army of DAs busy for the next ten years. Not bad for his first mission in the Unit in terms of results. It had been hell, though. The mission had lasted a year, but it had felt like a century.

This was a better mission. Way better.

The waiter rolled a cart to their table and started plating the food. It smelled otherworldly. Nick took in a deep sniff and Charity smiled at him. “You’re in for a treat.”

“Smells like it.”

He waited until she picked up her fork, then dug into what looked like a plump ravioli that the menu called a fagottino. When he brought the fork to his mouth, he nearly moaned. Cream, mushrooms, and truffle shavings in featherlight pasta. God.

Charity had her eyes closed, too, chewing delicately. She’d chosen a mushroom risotto.

Charity had the daintiest manners he’d ever seen. She enjoyed her food and didn’t treat it as if it were radioactive like other women did. But though her pleasure was visible, every movement was delicate.

Nick watched her smooth, slim white throat work as she swallowed and swallowed heavily himself. He caught himself watching her next bite avidly. His eyes were riveted on her fork as the tines speared the morsel of mushroom and followed it every inch of the way into her mouth. That lovely, delectable, soft pink mouth.

He flashed suddenly on a vision of Charity opening that pretty mouth over his cock. It was a disturbingly intense vision and very, very detailed. He could see it, as clearly as if it were happening right now. Right in front of his eyes.

They were naked, stretched out on a carpet in front of a fire, exactly like the one in the big dining room. Nick was stretched out on his back and Charity was bent over him, the smooth shiny bell of her hair tickling his thighs, watching him out of her witchy, upturned light cat’s eyes. That soft mouth opened. He could feel the heat of her breath against the sensitized skin of his cock. She licked him once and…

Goddamn! What the hell am I doing?

Nick shook himself out of his fantasy—a fantasy so lush and enticing his cock had twitched in his pants, hard. Jesus. Of all the places and times…getting a woody in a fancy restaurant while dining with a woman he needed to pump for information.

And fuck. The instant his mind thought the word pump, his head was filled with another vision. This time it was a picture of Charity stretched out under him while he pumped in and out of her.

It was like he was on the ceiling, looking down. He saw everything. Her slim thighs twined around his hips, slender arms around his neck, his butt working as he moved in and out of her….

He swelled fully erect.

Right there, in Emilio’s elegant dining room, in the middle of at least fifty other patrons happily eating and drinking, unknowing that there was a woody in the room. How fucking lame was that? Luckily his lap was covered by the peach linen tablecloth, but he didn’t dare move.