Payback. Harper Allen

you’re not Dawn O’Shaughnessy now, are you?” Her voice was no longer uneven, but harshly flat. “You’re Dawn Swanson, and don’t you forget it…because like Lee Craig used to say, sometimes all that’s left is to live the lie.”

      She turned on her heel. Wrenching open the driver’s side door, she slid in behind the wheel again, started the car and resumed the last few miles of her journey.

      “I’m a biochem assistant. As long as the labs here aren’t run with the same inefficiency as security appears to be, I’m really not interested in how your people screwed up the paperwork on me.”

      Dawn wondered if she was overdoing the pedantic monotone in her voice, but decided to keep going with it. Even if she hadn’t recognized Asher from the photo in his file, the ID tag on his uniform would have told her she was dealing with the man whose suspicions she most needed to allay. Just your bad luck he’s a hands-on kind of guy, she told herself, who has standing orders to be notified by the gate guards whenever a new employee shows up. Even worse luck that someone here made a mistake over my gender—unless this is another example of that little weasel Carter’s sense of humor.

      But even Carter knew better than to pull something like this, she reflected. “William London certainly knew I was a female when he hired me,” she went on. “If you’ve got a problem with my name being spelled D-a-w-n instead of D-o-n, take it up with him. In the meantime, I’d like to settle in and start work.”

      She shoved her glasses higher onto the bridge of her nose and gave him a sullen stare in keeping with the persona Carter had chosen for Dawn Swanson, but behind the lenses her belligerent gaze was unobtrusively taking a first real look at the man Aldrich Peters had claimed would be her most dangerous opponent on this assignment.

      “Assassinate him first?” Thinking quickly, she’d shaken her head in sharp disagreement when Peters had issued the order in his office two days ago. “Sorry, Doctor, but when I’m working undercover it’s my neck on the line. That gives me a vested interest in the decisions I make. I’ll take out Des Asher if and when I feel the action’s warranted, but if I can complete the assignment without resorting to that, so much the better.”

      Peters had raised an eyebrow. “You sound like a woman who’s lost her nerve. Or at least her taste for killing.”

      “No, I sound like my Uncle Lee,” she’d replied evenly. “He’s the one who taught me any thug off the street can pull a trigger if he doesn’t care about losing his own life. A professional completes the assignment, gets out safely, and lives to work another day. I’m doing this my way.”

      Aldrich hadn’t put up any further argument—most likely, Dawn guessed, because with her as the best Lab 33 assassin, he was forced to recognize the merit of her argument. So you owe me, buddy, she thought as she assessed the fatigues-clad SAS captain who had abruptly walked a few feet away from her and was now conferring with a soldier in the guard shack by the facility’s high barbed-wire gates. I’m not saying you’d have been a cinch to take out, judging from what I’ve heard about the combat training you Special Air Services types receive, but in a one-on-one between the two of us, my money would have been on me.

      He didn’t really fit her preconceived notion of a Brit, she thought with a frown as, impatience showing in every inch of his more than six-foot frame, he bent his head over a logbook a subordinate had handed him. In his late twenties or early thirties, he was deeply tanned, for one thing—a legacy, she supposed, of his recent service in the Middle East, which had been all too sketchily described in the bio she’d read. Peters had shown irritation at the lack of detail Lab 33’s investigators had been able to dig up on Asher’s military career, but Dawn herself had felt a private sense of relief. If Peters’s people hadn’t managed to uncover what assignments the SAS had given Des Asher, there was a good chance her own activities during the months she’d been AWOL would remain undiscovered.

      But besides the tan and the heavy biceps straining the rolled-up sleeves of his fatigues, there were other incongruities that bothered her. So far he’d shown none of the famed politeness she’d always associated with the English. His manner, as he’d taken her credentials from her and then thrust them back, had been decidedly dismissive, and although she was unable to catch his low-voiced conversation with the soldier by the guard shack, at least twice he’d uttered back-alley curses loud enough for her to overhear.

      He didn’t like his job. The revelation came to her with the conviction of absolute certainty, and behind the glasses her gaze narrowed. No, it was more than that, she thought slowly, taking in the tight set of Asher’s jaw, the barely controlled anger displayed as he raked a hand through short-cropped, burnt-pewter hair. He hated what he was doing.

      Which means we’ve got one thing in common, big guy, she thought as he handed the logbook to the guard and met her watchful gaze before she could avert her eyes. Too bad we’re working on opposite sides or I might have let you buy me a shot of Stoli and told you my reservations about this assignment before buying you a round of warm British beer and letting you fill me in on how you ended up in a dead-end job, baby-sitting your famous uncle.

      On second thought, she told herself as Asher nodded curtly to a younger officer who had stopped his jeep in front of the guard shack and was glancing curiously in her direction, maybe it was better having him as an opponent. His antagonism would keep her focused, and right now that was what she needed most.

      Her headache had returned. This time she couldn’t afford to give in to it.

      “If the paperwork’s screwed, my people didn’t do it.” Without pausing to talk to the young officer exiting the jeep, Asher strode from the guard shack and came to a halt directly in front of her. He continued, his manner barely civil. “I’d advise you to contact whoever sent you here and get them to resubmit your information. Until you do you’re not getting past this gate.”

      The hand he clamped onto her upper arm was like a band of iron…or maybe it was just that her headache had progressed to the point that every nerve ending felt raw. This attack was ten times worse—try twenty times, Dawn thought with a sharply indrawn breath—than those she’d so far experienced, but judging from those previous ones it couldn’t last much longer. All she had to do was ride it out.

      Easier said than done, O’Shaughnessy, she told herself tightly. And it’s not ultrahelpful that Mr. Freakin’ Special Air Services has his damn hand welded to my arm right now. If he’d just ease up for a second so I could concentrate on shutting down the jackhammer that’s pounding away in my—

      His hard tone broke through the thin veneer of control she was trying to establish. “Letting strangers into a restricted area when their credentials don’t check out isn’t the way I work. On your way, lady.”

      Without warning, the pain soared to an unbearable crescendo inside her head, escalating its assault until it took all her energy just to stay upright. No one could endure this, Dawn thought in numb agony, no longer caring whether her face revealed what was happening inside her. She’d been trained to take pain, to resist pain, to rise above pain, and all that training didn’t matter a damn. She wasn’t going to get through this.

      A long way away a voice was speaking, the low and deadly tones searing enough to dimly penetrate the haze of unconsciousness that was shutting down her senses. Faint hope stirred in her. Was the pain losing its grip? Was there still a chance she could win this fight? Drawing on reserves she’d thought were already exhausted, she focused on the voice with the desperation of a swimmer going under for the third time—going under and hallucinating, she thought hazily. Because that voice sounds weirdly familiar, O’Shaughnessy—so familiar that if I didn’t know better I’d say it was your own.

      “Call William London and get this straightened out, dammit! Because if you don’t, I swear I’ll—”

      “Ash! Put the gun down! Lady, back away from him or I’ll shoot you myself!”

      The shouted commands came from the officer who’d gotten out of the Jeep. No longer standing by the shack, he was now only a few yards away and leveling his rifle at her, but as inexplicable as his actions were,