Secret Agent Secretary. Melissa Cutler

violence. Cowering against the far wall, the long-forgotten paper clip chain cutting into the skin of her back, she could barely breathe or blink.

      One of the three assailants fell to the ground almost instantly, an angry hole gaping in his torn and bloody shirt. She’d never seen a real gunshot wound before. It didn’t look anything like in the movies.

      Ryan latched onto the back of the nearest man still standing and foisted him into the taller of the two as he continued to fire. She caught a glimpse of a black-ink tattoo of a cross between the shorter man’s shoulder blades before Ryan’s right arm hooked around the man’s neck. A crack like a bone breaking made Avery blanch.

      Ryan dropped the shorter man. Tucking his gun into his jacket, he stepped over the body to seize the wrist of the remaining man’s gun hand. He slammed it into the door over and over until the gun clattered to the ground near their feet.

      The other man caught him with a punch to the cheek.

      His face a cold mask, Ryan threw his fist into the assailant’s neck, then his gut. The blows continued from both men, their arms moving so quickly Avery couldn’t tell who was winning. The two fell to the ground and rolled toward the stairs.

      When they came to a stop, Ryan had the other man’s neck balanced against the edge of the bottom stair, his palm against his chin, locking him in place.

      The man gasped, his legs kicking beneath Ryan’s weight. Before Avery’s eyes, Ryan’s mask of cool control morphed into a look of fierceness as lethal as his skills had proved. She was so fixated on his face, she didn’t notice the other man’s knee coming up until it made impact with Ryan’s groin.

      With a guttural sound of pain, Ryan’s grip eased and the other man pounced on the opportunity to counterattack. He flipped on top of Ryan and wedged his head between the stair and the bar of the rail.

      Ryan let out a wheezing breath that shook Avery from her fear-frozen state. Anger and irritation bubbled in her throat like acid. How dare those shooters threaten her and her coworker. And on New Year’s Eve, no less. She was supposed to be partying with her friends to celebrate the end of a crappy year that included catching her boyfriend in bed with another woman, not running for her life or watching her office crush get the snot beat out of him.

      Trembling with rage, she rose to her full height. She couldn’t die yet. Not when she hadn’t crossed a single thing off her bucket list. And she couldn’t let Agent Reitano die either, even if he barely noticed she existed.

      She reached back and grabbed hold of the paper clip chain, yanking as hard as she could. It snapped free of her dress, popping the zipper off with it. Whatever. The damn thing wasn’t even wrinkle resistant. Rushing forward, she wrapped the chain around her palms and held it taut between her hands.

      She hurled herself onto the bad guy’s back and dropped the chain around his throat. Tucking her elbows, she pulled the chain with all her strength. Caught unaware, the man let out a strangling noise. Avery rose to a crouch, straddling his legs, and pulled harder, until she felt the paper clips bending and giving way.

      Time to give this guy a taste of his own medicine. Maintaining her hold on the paper clips, she jammed the toe of her shoe into his crotch and twisted. He reared back, howling, then keeled sideways onto the stairs. She kicked him onto his back and ground her spiked heel into his crotch. His eyes rolled back in his head.

      That’s right, buddy. No one messes with Avery Meadows’s bucket list.

      With a nod of satisfaction, she swung the chain out and grabbed hold of a single paper clip that had pulled straight. Without giving it a second thought, she jammed the paper clip into the assailant’s shoulder. She heard his shriek of pain as if from a distance and pushed the metal in deeper as the image popped into her head of Zach in bed with that two-faced pole-dancing instructor.

      A hand on her arm shook her out of her trance. She whirled around, wielding the paper clips.

      It was Agent Reitano. He eased the chain out of her hand, his eyes huge, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he’d witnessed.

      “Avery, stop screaming.”

      Screaming?

      He put a finger on her chin and pushed her mouth closed.

      Confused, she met Agent Reitano’s eyes with a look of challenge. “I wasn’t screaming. Don’t be ridiculous.”

      Amusement flashed in his eyes. It was the first time that night he’d looked at her without accusation. “My bad. You were as stealthy as a ninja.”

      She smoothed her dress. Cold air nipped at her back, where the dress now gaped with a broken zipper, but she couldn’t find it in her heart to care. Power and energy like she’d never experienced buzzed through her system, pushed along by her pounding heart.

      She chanced a look at the assailant. He’d passed out cold. Good. “Any chance that guy was a criminal mastermind?”

      “Not quite. More like a hired gun. Anyhow, thank you for coming to my rescue.”

      Looking over her shoulder, she studied the limp form of the man more closely. Then reality crashed over her. “Oh, my God. I saved you, didn’t I? I kicked that bad guy’s butt. Wow.”

      Ryan retrieved Cross Tattoo Man’s gun from the floor, popped it open and inspected the inside, then put it back together and stuffed it into his jacket. “More like ground his nuts to a paste, but yeah, you saved my bacon.”

      “I saved your bacon,” she echoed in a whisper of disbelief as a bone-jarring shiver racked her body, bringing with it a hefty dose of nausea. Desperate for a distraction so she didn’t give up her butt-kicking status by spewing her martini all over Agent Reitano, she paced to one end of the landing and back, trying to calm down.

      He glanced up from where he was sifting through the pockets of the man with the broken neck. “Avery, take some deep breaths.”

      She stepped over the men’s legs, rubbing her jittery arms. “Trying. Not working.”

      The next moment, his hands clapped onto her shoulders, his thumbs stroking the straps of her dress. “Your adrenaline’s crashing. Totally normal. It’ll fade soon.”

      She dropped her forehead onto his shirt and concentrated on the rise and fall of his solid chest to distract her from her queasiness. His hands slipped from her shoulders to her head. He smoothed her hair in slow, easy strokes.

      All the years she’d dreamed of gadgets and high-speed chases, clever riddles to solve and fake identities to assume, she’d never once stopped to think what it would actually look like to watch someone die. Nor what it would feel like to listen to a man scream in pain that she was causing.

      Her mom would say no human being deserved to be the victim of violence, no matter how repugnant his crime. Avery knew, logically, that her mom was wrong, that some men were evil and had to be stopped by whatever means necessary when there were no other options.

      But growing up the child of two grassroots pacifist leaders, she’d come to understand that believing in the occasional necessity of violence and letting go of the guilt about feeling that way were two entirely different issues. She’d wrestled with both for most of her life, but that struggle hadn’t prepared her for the way she felt tonight.

      Watching Agent Reitano battle the bad guys had certainly frightened and shocked her, but what she’d felt when she joined in the fray was a hundred times more potent. She’d liked the way it had felt to wield power. It had given her satisfaction to do harm to another person. The realization scared her to her core.

      “Maybe I should stick to being a secretary.”

      Against her forehead, she felt the rumble of his chuckle.

      She pulled back, annoyed. “Are you mocking me?”

      His smile fell. “No, I... Absolutely not.” He rubbed his neck, his expression turning guarded again. “I’m going to finish searching these guys, and then we’ll get