He knew it all. He’d been trained to observe strict surveillance rules. He knew how it was done. He’d worked for the CIA’s National Clandestine Service for five years before being cashiered for some stupid anti-corruption rule. They’d trained him well. But the government didn’t pay well. What did they care if he accepted money on the side? It had nothing to do with his mission. The discharge still burned.

No one had ever made him before. Ever. Kearns was furious with himself that he’d been made by a freaking untrained girl. A cook, for fuck’s sake. A woman who’d had a nervous breakdown. He’d read the psych eval. Someone in her state was barely aware of her surroundings and here she’d caught him.

But goddamn. What betrayed him was that she was a freaking looker. He had a weakness for the ladies. Isabel Delvaux was a little on the scrawny side but fuck. Big eyes, big pouty mouth. Surprisingly large boobs for a thin chick. A guy’d have to be dead not to notice. Kearns wasn’t dead. Not even close. And his cock worked just fine.

He had a low-level contract to keep an eye on the Delvaux woman who’d changed her name and moved to Portland. It was boring work because the chick never did anything. And the pay wasn’t good because it was goddamned scut work. Nothing a half-assed snot-nosed newbie couldn’t hack.

Watching a clueless woman was demeaning work. Kearns had taken it only because he was working his way up this new hierarchy he’d sensed was doing big-time stuff. Big-time stuff meant big-time money and he needed it. He’d blown the money from his last big contract in Vegas. He was flat-out broke and he wanted in on whatever it was that was happening. He’d put out the word that he was available and he’d gotten a bite within forty-eight hours.

He hadn’t expected to watch a chick day after day, doing nothing but taking slow walks in the mornings and cooking and reading in the afternoons, from what he could see.

Another guy followed her at times, walked slowly with her at others. Her next-door neighbor. Kearns checked the name, and when he checked in military databases the hairs rose on the back of his neck when he saw the guy was a former SEAL. Those guys didn’t fuck around and Kearns was no match for him in a fight unless he took him from behind.

And even then. The guy had been wounded—he had scars and he’d walked with a cane for a few days then threw it away. Wounded or not, though, he had that situational awareness the specops guys were born with and then had the gift pounded into them.

You didn’t take SEALs by surprise.

He stopped day surveillance when he read that Joe Harris was a SEAL. Kearns didn’t report that the Delvaux bitch had a SEAL living next door. Either he’d lose the gig altogether or he’d be replaced, and though it wasn’t much money it was easy money.

So he didn’t follow her around anymore in the daytime beyond the occasional drive-by. He checked in on her at night. Easier, simpler.

And got a real perk. Shit yeah. She looked scrawny when dressed but when she walked around naked, oh yeah. Everything a woman needed, she had. Instead of bony, she was delicate with perfect tits.

She wasn’t sleeping with the SEAL. She was alone at night. Though Kearns did wonder what the SEAL was thinking not fucking a babe like her. Shit, the SEAL was following her around like some goddamned puppy, why not bone her?

Whatever.

The SEAL wasn’t boning her so she was always alone at night with no one watching. So Kearns developed a routine, two, three times a week. He had a Tyvek oversuit in his car, special boots that left no prints, latex gloves, a mask and night vision gear. He knew the outside of the house like his own hand. There was a walkway that went past her bedroom. The Tyvek suit would leave no cloth samples, not even a thread and there was no possibility of DNA should he get caught on a bush. The mask covered his face. And the NV gave him a view he wouldn’t forget in a hurry.

The big problem was not jerking off in the bushes. That would leave DNA. It was really hard, about as hard as his cock when he watched her coming out of the shower toweling her hair dry.

The NV gave everything a greenish glow so he couldn’t see the color of her muff but it was light-colored, like her nipples. Mmm.

So Kearns spent a couple of nights a week looking into her house at night then going back to his miserable cheap motel room to jerk off. And he sent reports on her behavior—a whole lot of nothing, which was what his employer wanted to hear.

Kearns got it loud and clear that the more Isabel Delvaux stayed away from the world, the better it was. Kearns also got it that his reports were making someone happy.

So the last Delvaux was supposed to stay sick and sad and under the radar. Not stir up any waves. Fine.

The only thing she stirred up was his dick.

It was a disaster that he’d been made. Kearns realized he’d strayed a little from the walkway to get a better look. Who could blame him? She was a wet dream. And a Delvaux. They were like Kennedys, only better-looking.

He was absolutely certain he’d left nothing behind, but that big guy next door had come running to the bitch’s door when she screamed. He was barefoot but amazingly fast. And he came out again fast, but by that time, Kearns’s Tyvek suit was off and he was in sweats and a hoodie, opening his car door. He drove by the house slowly and the big guy was checking the ground with a flashlight. A Maglite that lit everything up.

A sheen of sweat blossomed all over Kearns. The SEAL was looking very closely. Kearns had been careful. Hadn’t he? A trickle of sweat rolled down the side of his face because—who the fuck remembered? He’d been enjoying the bitch’s little show that had seemed designed for him. He’d been avidly soaking up every single goddamn detail because she was going to feature large that night in his bed.

Man, he’d never had a piece that fine. Long legs, long pale neck. A mouth made to go down on a guy. On him. Oh yeah, he could imagine it so easily. All that dark honey hair swirling around his hands as he held her in place, pumping in and out of that mouth.

That moment—when he could almost feel her lips around his cock—that was the exact moment her flashlight picked him out. He was jerked harshly out of the fantasy that had been so real he had major wood. His hand been reaching for his groin when the white light had blinded him. He’d snatched the NV goggles off his face but it was too late. He’d lost his sight, temporarily.

Good thing he knew his way around the yard so well his feet carried him out of there without having to think.

But he didn’t remember much between the moment he’d been blinded and when he stumbled out onto the street, tearing off his ski mask and unzipping the suit. He fell into his SUV and pulled out too fast and then, heart still beating, decided to go around the block and see what was happening.

That was when he saw the SEAL searching the ground and for the first time it occurred to him that he could be busted. That’s when his heart started triphammering because he knew the guy he worked for wasn’t warm and fuzzy. Wasn’t the forgiving type.

He didn’t dare make another turn of the block so he drove back to the motel from hell, sweating and swearing, slamming the steering wheel in frustration. And still hard, goddamn it.

Reason kicked in. This Isabel babe was unstable. And a Delvaux. Rich high-born assholes, all of them. Never done an honest day’s job in their lives. Not like him.

And Isabel? A flake. She could’ve done anything she wanted but what did she want to do? Fucking cook. Like his mom. She didn’t do her cooking in a diner that smelled of rancid grease and old socks with the toilets smelling of sex and shit, sure, but cooking was cooking.

She’d survived the Massacre but turned loony. So who was going to believe that she saw someone outside her window? The SEAL would look and look, but wouldn’t find anything, no footprints, no stray threads caught in the bushes, nothing disturbed. That banshee scream was a hysterical woman who saw monsters under the bed.