Deadly Allure. Elle James

       Chapter Seventeen

       Chapter Eighteen

       Chapter Nineteen

       Extract

       Copyright

Chapter 1

      Nicole Steele, “Tazer” to those who knew how lethal she could be, slipped through the loading docks entry of the corporate headquarters of Ryan Technologies. Dressed in the white coverall and cap of the Acme Cleaning Services’ staff, she blended in with others coming on to the night shift to clean the multistoried building.

      Once inside, she claimed a cleaning cart and followed the other janitors to the service elevators. At 2200 hours she didn’t expect many of the executives to be in their offices, most having gone home or out for drinks by now.

      The three other contracted cleaners who entered the elevator car with her talked about their kids, sports and the price of gasoline. Nicole kept her head down, aware of the camera located in the upper corner, above the control panel.

      A rounded woman with brassy orange hair, her gray roots showing, smacked her gum. “New at Acme?”

      “Yeah.” Nicole kept her answer short, abrupt, not inviting further conversation.

      Undaunted, the woman prompted, “Got kids?”

      “No.”

      “Guess that’s why you can still find your hips.”

      Nicole shrugged without responding.

      “I used to have a figure. Four brats ago.” The woman snorted. “Now I figure life’s too short to pass up a piece of apple pie and ice cream.”

      The others laughed and the car stopped on the seventh floor.

      “Well, this is my floor. Have a good night.” The brassy-haired janitor left the elevator and Nicole breathed a sigh.

      Another stop on the tenth floor and again on the twelfth left Nicole blissfully alone. She rode the elevator up to the twentieth floor, two floors short of her target, Brandon Ryan’s office. She’d take the stairs the rest of the way.

      Having studied the building schematics and the security system camera points, she was prepared. As soon as she left the elevator, she rolled her cart to the door nearest the east stairwell, closest to the security camera for the floor. Digging her hand into her pocket, she unearthed the miniature can of black spray paint, ducked under the camera and sprayed the lens until it was completely covered in one short burst of paint, then checked her watch.

      Ten after ten. She had exactly fifteen minutes to get into Ryan’s office, download the data and get out. Another five minutes to leave the building and this operation would be complete. Short, sweet, uneventful. That’s the way she liked it.

      Nicole stepped into the stairwell, raised her hand to spray the camera in the corner and climbed the steps two at a time to the floor above. She blacked out the camera there and moved up to the next floor. Once on the top floor, she disabled the security camera and hurried to Brandon Ryan’s spacious office, paid for by taxpayer dollars meant to be used to supply guns to the military. It was the potential other deals he was making with the opposing forces in the Middle East that had landed her there.

      As a member of the Stealth Operations Specialists, Nicole was part of a very small force of secret agents called on by the President of the United States to handle situations neither the FBI nor the CIA could handle. Sensitive cases that only a handful of people knew about.

      Her boss, Royce Fontaine, had prepared her for this mission; given her the equipment and knowledge that would get her inside and to the computer Ryan used to store the top-secret data concerning his organization’s dealings.

      Intel from SOS operatives in the Middle East had informed Royce the Taliban had new guns that looked suspiciously like those supplied to the U.S. military.

      Nicole’s job was to ferret out the information necessary to determine whether the Taliban had stolen the weapons or if Brandon Ryan was supplying them to the opium-rich leaders of the terrorist organization.

      She’d spent the past two weeks schmoozing with Ryan, playing the pampered debutante to get closer to the renowned womanizer so that she could get a tour of his office and see the security layout in person. She’d gotten that and more—a copy of his key card and a viable fingerprint she’d had imprinted on the thumb glove. Now she was putting her groundwork to use.

      With security disabled, she moved quickly toward Brandon Ryan’s office where she paused to slip a rubber glove over her thumb, the glove imprinted with Ryan’s thumbprint. She ran the key card Geek had supplied her with and touched her gloved thumb on the scanner.

      For a long moment she held her breath. Either the door would unlock or alarms would go off, alerting the security guards on duty to the presence of an intruder in the boss’s office.

      A soft click sounded. Nicole twisted the door handle and the door opened into a lushly appointed outer office with a beautiful mahogany desk blocking entrance to Ryan’s inner office. His executive assistant, having long since gone home for the night, had been a pretty but determined young woman with a glare that could sear scars into a person’s skin. Nicole hadn’t given her more than a cursory glance down the straight length of her nose. Being a socialite had meant disregarding the peons surrounding Ryan.

      Though she’d pretended to ignore the executive assistant, she’d been very aware of the woman and her position as the last line of defense against intruders into the great Brandon Ryan’s inner sanctum.

      Once inside his office, she pulled the door shut, leaving it cracked open enough so she could hear movement in the outer office. Then she eased into the plush leather chair behind Ryan’s massive mahogany desk. As big as the expensive piece of furniture was, it didn’t begin to fill the roomy office with the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the sparkling lights of the Los Angeles skyline. Armed with a flashlight, she pulled out the sliding keyboard tray, stuck a flash drive in the side of the sleek combined video display monitor and CPU and went to work decoding the encrypted password. Geek, back at SOS headquarters, had been adamant. “All you have to do is plug it in. It’ll crack the password within minutes.”

      As soon as she plugged in the flash drive, the monitor blinked to life, lighting the room. She pressed the button on the side to turn off the display, returning the room to near darkness, her vision taking a moment to adjust.

      Nicole worried she might not have minutes. If the regularly scheduled cleaning lady happened by the office, she’d either be caught red-handed or have to find a place to hide until she left.

      While the password hacking module worked its magic, Nicole pulled the drawers open, searching for anything that looked like evidence Ryan was sleeping with the enemy. His desk was clean, the drawers only containing designer pens and extra golf balls.

      She rose from the seat, the leather so soft it barely made a sound. A bar in one corner had a cabinet below it. She checked the contents, finding only additional bottles of the best booze money could buy. The man was cocky and insanely rich. Too bad he was a lying bastard who betrayed his country. If he was selling guns to the enemy, Ryan was personally responsible for the deaths of American soldiers. His own countrymen, fighting for his freedom. He was just the kind of high-powered sleazebag Nicole liked to bring down.

      Just like Rodney, her former lover who’d pilfered her access card, broken into the FBI data center, stolen secrets he’d had no right to take and ruined her reputation with the Bureau. She’d been placed on administrative leave during the investigation, but had resigned before they could fire her.

      Young and naive, she’d believed Rodney loved her, when all the time he’d been using her to get to FBI data that would potentially compromise hundreds of undercover agents.

      The