Pawn. Carla Cassidy

been promised that the charges would be dropped if she helped get Jonas under arrest. She’d upheld her end of the bargain, but apparently she’d been the only one to do so.

      Big surprise, a government agency had lied to her. Once again she tightened her fingers around the steering wheel as she thought of their broken promises.

      She consciously kept her thoughts away from Nick. What point was there in indulging in what-might-have-beens? He’d been right. She had been the one to walk away and she couldn’t harbor bitterness about the fact that their relationship had died due to lack of nourishment and through long distance.

      It pissed her off that he’d been the messenger of doom, that the FBI had guessed that, of all people, Nick would be the only one to convince her to do what they wanted.

      It also upset her that seeing him again had sent all kinds of memories crashing through her head, memories she didn’t want to indulge.

      It hadn’t been Nick who had convinced her to make the call. It had been the fact that she knew he was telling her the truth, that they would stop at nothing. They would follow through on their threats to destroy her professional life and to take away her personal life. They’d proven that by what they’d managed to do on her computer that morning.

      She had no choice in the matter.

      What she hoped was that she’d meet with Blake, hear the details of whatever they wanted her to do, then somehow talk her way out of it without any further repercussions.

      As she drove through the desert landscape her thoughts momentarily drifted back in time to the lush flowers, bright colors and salt-scented air of Miami.

      She’d lived a life of luxury in an oceanside mansion that belonged to her godfather, Jonas, but she’d experienced love in a small beach house that had belonged to Nick.

      Two-fifteen Harbor Road. The address popped into her head unbidden. Did he still own that small white bungalow with the cheerful yellow trim? The place where she had fallen so helplessly, so hopelessly in love with him?

      She unclenched her hands from the steering wheel. Love. As far as she was concerned it was vastly overrated. Jonas had professed to love her, but he’d thought nothing of lying to her and using her special gifts for his own means.

      Nick had said he loved her, but she’d never been sure if that had merely been an illusion they had both shared for a brief period in time.

      There had been a time in her life when she’d dreamed of a Prince Charming riding to her rescue, coming to take her away from the isolation and loneliness of her life with her godfather. In the past year Lynn had realized she didn’t need a Prince Charming. She didn’t need anyone riding to her rescue.

      Her sisters and the women she now called friends had brought out in her an inner strength she’d never known she possessed. A strength she had a feeling she was going to need now more than ever.

      She pulled up in front of the warehouse. Only a couple of cars were parked out front. Last night it had been too dark to notice much about the building, but now she saw an old wooden sign hanging from a large pole that announced the place had once been Carlos’s Cactus Jelly and Candy.

      The bright colors of the sign had long faded, blasted by the desert sun, grit and wind. She wondered what had happened to Carlos? Had his life and his business been interrupted by a lack of tourists and poor business sense or had the FBI swooped in on him as they had on her?

      Her stomach knotted as she shut off the car engine and stared at the large structure before her. Nobody would ever guess that there was an FBI operation going on inside.

      Once again a sharp edge of apprehension stabbed her. She got out of the car, suddenly eager to put an end to the speculation and know the answers as to why they were after her this time.

      A new face met her at the door, a tall, slender man with unsmiling eyes who didn’t ask her name or business, but obviously knew she was expected. Without a word he led her back to the office where she’d spoken with Richard Blake before.

      Blake greeted her at the office door, his pale blue eyes as cold as she remembered. “Ms. White, it’s nice to see you again,” he said as he ushered her inside and closed the door behind them. “Can I get you something cold to drink?”

      “No, and you can cut the pleasantries. We both know I’m not here because I want to be but rather because you boys don’t play fair.” She sat in the chair in front of his desk, filled with a new sense of anger, of outrage.

      “We play the cards we have in our hands,” he said smoothly and sank down at the desk. “You could have made this easier by speaking with me yesterday.”

      “I didn’t know then that you were going to infect my computer with a bug, threaten to trash my professional life and see me in jail for charges that were supposed to have been dropped a year ago. Oh, and I’m just wondering, did you send me a weird e-mail, as well?”

      He frowned. “I don’t know anything about an e-mail, but I do know that one of our techs sent a little bug to you this morning to make you understand that we weren’t just going to go away.”

      “Okay, you have my attention. Now tell me what you want from me.” Make it something easy, she thought. Maybe whatever they wanted from her, whatever they needed from her would take an hour, maybe a day, and wouldn’t disrupt or destroy her life after all.

      He leaned back in his chair, picked up a pencil and began to tap its eraser on the desktop. “As I’m sure you know, since 9-11 the top concern of this country has been national security, particularly securing borders, and the need to prevent another 9-11 from happening.”

      His words were punctuated by the faint thunk, thunk, thunk of the eraser hitting the desk. “Our agency works closely with Homeland Security.”

      “What does that have to do with me?” she asked impatiently.

      “As I’m sure you know, we’ve managed to effectively tighten our airport security. Our borders are more heavily patrolled than ever in the history of our nation and the politicians have finally realized that funding is vital in our quest for national security.” Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. The eraser tapped faster.

      Lynn tamped down frustration, wondering when the hell he was going to get to the point? She fought the urge to reach across the desk and snatch the damned pencil from his hand. The tapping of the eraser threatened to make her crazy. And she was already feeling crazy enough without anything else making it worse.

      “There’s only one place that our security measures are relatively weak, one place that could be far too easily breached, and that’s our international docks.” To her intense relief he threw the pencil down and leaned forward, his gaze cold and intently focused on her. “And that’s where you come in.”

      She stared at him blankly. Was he completely mad? What could she possibly do to ensure safety at the country’s international docks? “I don’t understand.”

      He sat back once again and drew a hand across his overly broad forehead, as if he might be suffering a headache. She hoped so. He was certainly giving her the beginnings of a head-banging ache.

      “We have received some troubling chatter that indicates an al Qaeda terrorist attack is possibly going to take place around the end of this month or the beginning of next month,” he explained. “The chatter is coming from a reputable source and our intelligence tells us that the attack will come in the form of a dirty bomb in a shipping container. We believe that container is coming ashore at the Stingray Wharf in Miami. Unfortunately, we don’t have specifics on where exactly it will come from.”

      Lynn frowned. She knew of Stingray Wharf. It was a small wharf near the bigger port of Miami. She still didn’t understand why she was here, what exactly they wanted from her. “If this is happening in Florida, then what are you doing here in Arizona?” she asked.

      “We have other sensitive operations going on,” he replied.

      Once