The Bodyguard's Assignment. Amanda Stevens

she gave it a fierce yank, and then another and another, each more desperate than the last until she realized the exit had been padlocked from the outside. Other than the overhead door through which the cars had driven, there was no other way out of the warehouse.

      Grace whirled to retrace her steps, but the flames had spread quickly. The entire warehouse was ablaze, the smoke nearly opaque. In another few moments, she would be overcome.

      A few yards in front of her, the smoke curled upward, fanned by a breeze. Grace’s gaze followed the writhing trail, and she realized that a pane in one of the windows was missing. The night air was drawing the thick haze like a flue. It was also showing her what might be another way out.

      But the windows were a good twenty feet from the ground. Grace wasn’t at all certain she could reach them. Knowing it was her only hope, she began to climb the wooden pallets, her lungs searing in agony. She wouldn’t let herself look down, or think about the flames that were licking toward her, the rolls of carpeting that were melting beneath her feet.

      She wouldn’t contemplate the reality that if she died in this warehouse, she would never be able to redeem herself in Brady Morgan’s eyes.…

      Chapter One

      The landscape was as vast as it was empty, a wasteland of rugged plains made even more bleak by the dead of winter. In the distance, mist settled over the craggy peaks of the Davis Mountains, softening the jagged edges until gray rock melded almost seamlessly with slate sky.

      Brady Morgan huddled in his sheepskin coat as he watched a hawk circle overhead. He’d been living and working on the Smoking Barrel Ranch for almost five years now, but he still hadn’t gotten used to the loneliness of the place.

      West Texas was a world unto itself, and he guessed he was still a city boy at heart. He’d grown up in a rough area of Dallas, had been a street cop for several years before joining the Narcotics Division. During those years, he’d seen the worst human nature had to offer, and sometimes the best, but nothing he’d experienced as a cop had ever made him as aware of his own mortality, of his insignificance in the whole scheme of things, as the boundless isolation of the ranch.

      He’d been riding fence all morning, and in spite of the thick cowhide gloves he wore, his hands were numb from the cold. The white ranch house was hardly more than a speck on the endless horizon, but Brady could imagine the curl of smoke from the chimneys, the rich aroma of Rosa’s strong coffee permeating the warm kitchen. He gave Rowan a nudge, urging the red chestnut homeward across the rocky turf.

      They’d stayed out too long. Rowan’s breath rolled from his nostrils like steam hissing from a locomotive, and the dull ache in Brady’s knee had turned into searing pain. But he wouldn’t give in to that pain. He’d had enough drugs and doctors to last him a lifetime, and besides, none of them could fix what really ate at him anyway. A shot-up knee would heal in time, but a young woman he’d sworn to protect couldn’t be brought back to life.

      Idly, he watched a tumbleweed roll across the frozen tundra in front of him, but in his mind’s eye he pictured a cloud of dark hair and soft, soulful eyes. Rachel had been a good person, but she’d gotten herself mixed up in a bad business. A nasty business. When she’d wanted out, her ex-lover, a Houston drug lord named Stephen Rialto, hadn’t thought twice about sending his goons to storm the safe house where Brady had taken her until she could testify. Brady’s leg had been shot to hell in the raid, but Rachel had been killed. She’d died in his arms.

      The burning throb in his leg was a grim reminder of how powerful and dangerous Stephen Rialto had become. Obviously he had a mole somewhere—in the FBI, the Department of Public Safety, maybe even in the Texas Confidential. But Brady didn’t think the latter was too likely. The Confidential was a tight-knit organization. He knew all the agents personally. In some ways, they’d become his family. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—believe that one of them had betrayed him. But then, betrayal could come where and when you least expected it. He’d learned that lesson a long time ago.

      As he drew near the sprawling, two-story ranch house, he saw the front door open, and a figure stepped out onto the wide front porch. She waited until Brady had dismounted and tied Rowan to the cedar rail outside the bunkhouse before running lightly down the porch steps.

      Protected from the cold by a dark blue parka, Penny Archer strode toward him with purpose, the flat soles of her boots thudding on the hard ground. The hood of her coat hid her expression, but something about the way she hurried toward him struck Brady as ominous. It was as if she’d been waiting for him, watching for him from one of the front windows of the ranch house.

      As she approached, Rowan began to prance and snort, bucking at the reins wrapped around the cedar rail.

      Penny said irritably, “Why do you keep that damn horse? He’s dangerous.”

      “He’s a pussycat around anyone but you,” Brady teased, his breath frosting on the cold air. “You bring out the beast in him.”

      Penny gave him a dour look behind her wire-rimmed glasses. “God knows I should be used to working with animals.”

      Brady grinned. Penny’s disdain for the agents—all male—with whom she worked was legendary. She didn’t take much guff from any of them, except maybe for Rafe Alvarez. She tried to pretend his good-natured ribbing didn’t get to her, but Brady had seen the way she looked at the agent when she thought no one was watching. He wondered if Rafe had any idea Penny was in love with him. He wondered if Penny even knew.

      “Mitchell wants to see you ASAP,” she told him.

      “What’s up?”

      She shrugged. “How should I know? He never tells me anything. I’m just the gofer around here.”

      Yeah, right. Penny was more than that and she knew it. As Mitchell Forbes’s assistant, she kept the ranch and the Texas Confidential running as smoothly as a well-tuned engine. She knew everything there was to know about each case they took on, and her air of innocence this morning didn’t wash. A bad sign that she was keeping something from him, Brady thought.

      “I’ll be in as soon as I see to Rowan,” he told her.

      She shrugged again. “Okay, fine. Suit yourself. Mitchell said for you to come immediately, but it’s your hide, not mine. I’m just the messenger.”

      Brady’s foreboding deepened as he led the horse toward the barn. Mitchell Forbes wasn’t one for idle conversation. If he wanted to see Brady this urgently, it was because he had an assignment for him. And Brady wasn’t ready for that.

      After Rachel, he wasn’t sure he ever would be.

      BY THE TIME Brady got to the ranch house, the rest of the agents had already assembled in the war room—that section of the special-built basement which had become Command Central for the organization. The Confidential was not a secret group per se, but as a specialized division of the Department of Public Safety, they worked cases that were highly sensitive. Discretion was vital, literally a matter of life and death, and the possibility of a mole, someone who had tipped off Rialto to Rachel’s whereabouts—who might also be responsible for the recent disappearance of one of their agents—had them all concerned.

      “Señor Brady!” Rosa, the Smoking Barrel’s housekeeper, bustled into the library as Brady summoned the elevator.

      For security purposes, the elevator was hidden behind a bookshelf that slid away with the push of a button, then rolled back into place once the elevator was activated from inside the car. The high-tech and secretive nature of the organization always made Brady feel a little ridiculous, a little too 007-ish. He was basically just a cop, although the undercover work wasn’t that different from the assignments he’d had as a narc. But that was a long time ago. A part of his life he didn’t much like to think about.

      Gratefully, he accepted the steaming mug of coffee the housekeeper handed him. “You read my mind, Rosa.”

      She beamed. “You’ve been out in the cold