She and Mike weren’t just hunting. They were being hunted.
Her neck tightened with the impulse to look over her shoulder. But she kept her eyes directed at Mike’s broad back and reached out her senses, probing the shadows around them.
Her short blonde bob and skintight sequin dress blended in with this crowd. The wig hid her hair, and heavy makeup covered the tattoos on her arms and chest and completely altered the contours of her face.
She looked like a drag queen, and Mike played the role of her gay lover. He’d grown out his brown hair and dyed the shaggy mop black. His fashionable linen suit, yellow bowtie, and lopsided Bruce Willis grin underscored the facade. Who knew he could look so adorable?
Every week brought a different city and a different disguise. Through Romania, Italy, Spain, England, France, and Moldova, they tracked the highest-ranking made members of the Romanian crime family, all the while staying one step ahead of the threat on their heels.
Vincent Barrington’s men.
She’d already killed two of his assassins since leaving the states. More would follow. Vincent needed that hard drive. His livelihood depended on it, and his only means to find it was through her, Mike, or Cole.
Since she’d betrayed Vincent and escaped with Mike and Cole, Vincent’s objective would be to kill them all—and hope to get the hard drive’s location from one of them before they died.
She assumed Cole was faring better than her. He had money, powerful friends, and wasn’t out in public, stalking the Romanian mafia. He’d disappeared that day in the desert, and she hadn’t seen or heard from him since.
Sometimes, she thought she sensed him. When the hairs on her nape prickled, when a flutter stirred in her belly, when the shadows of an alley or dark corner of a pub seemed darker, more intense, she felt him. But she never saw him.
She needed to forget all about those bottomless brown eyes, the sinful slide of his tongue, the guttural sounds of his groans when he fucked. God, she needed to stop torturing herself.
Not that she had the time or resources to look for him. Every second that she wasn’t running reconnaissance and surveilling the Romanian mob, she was trying to outrun Vincent’s men.
Tonight, she was doing both.
The discotheque sat on the Tiber River with a stunning view of Rome. The mirrored decor was grungy, vintage, the space almost exclusively black. The rafters vibrated with the electronic beats of techno, funk, and dance tracks. But she wasn’t here for the music.
She’d heard this was the place to spot a Romanian mercenary or two. To penetrate Darius Skutnik and steal the hard drive, she needed more than her body. The job required stealth, and she had a particular sort of criminal in mind. A technically trained criminal with a passion for cybercrime.
But first, she had to deal with whoever was following her.
Bodies swayed, gyrating and grinding and bumping against her as she followed Mike deeper into the horde. Amid flawlessly dressed ladies and trendy, aftershave-scented men, he stopped walking, pivoted around, and brought her chest and hips flush with his.
“Hi.” She smiled and slid her hands up his strong neck.
“Hey.” His lips crooked up, and his body caught the thumping rhythm.
She rolled with him. Or tried. He was a much better dancer, his movements natural and loose as he pulled her tight and placed his mouth at her ear.
“Black shirt, black tie. Crooked nose.” He splayed a hand over her tail bone, the other curling around her waist. “At your seven o’clock.”
Spinning slowly with the music, he turned them in a full rotation so that she could cast her gaze about the room without appearing obvious. She spotted the man Mike noticed, recognizing him immediately.
He leaned against a high-top table off to the side, pretending to stare at something behind her.
Mike shifted her away, letting the throng of dancers sweep them into the undulating wave of heat and sex.
“He was in Paris last week.” She hooked her arms around his neck and rested her cheek against the clean-shaved curve of his jaw as her hips reeled and plunged with his. “In the train station, when we were leaving.”
“And in London the week before that.”
“He’s our guy.”
One of Vincent’s. They had to kill him. Once they did, it would buy them a few months to infiltrate the Romanian mafia before Vincent deployed more hired guns.
It was a fine line they walked, trying to get close to the mafia without Vincent figuring out who they were tracking. If he learned the location of the hard drive, all would be lost.
“The veranda out back is ideal.” She stretched on her toes to speak in his ear. “Last I checked, no one was out there.”
All the smokers congregated on the huge veranda in front with a full bar.
“I’ll go.” It was easier for her to do it since she could employ her feminine wiles—give the man a look, flash a little cleavage, lead him into a dark corner, and slide a steel blade between his ribs.
“No, you did the last two. I want this one.” He squeezed her hip, his breath against her neck. “I’ll have a smoke on the veranda and wait for him. Stay here in the crowd. Keep an eye out. Don’t fucking wander off.”
They were both armed. She wore a stiletto strapped to her garters on her inner thigh. He had multiple blades concealed beneath his suit, as well as two pistols.
The guns were for emergency. The last thing they needed was a showdown with the polizia.
“Do it quietly.” She narrowed her eyes then danced off into the fray.
The gunman wouldn’t engage her in a crowd. Vincent didn’t pay his employees enough for them to risk getting arrested. The last two had been run-of-the-mill street thugs, looking for quick money. They’d waited until she was alone, where there were no witnesses, before they attacked.
Sidling up to a group of laughing women, she danced with them while watching the man out of the corner of her eye. His gaze discreetly tracked Mike through the nightclub. He took a sip from his cocktail, watching over the rim of the glass long after Mike vanished beyond the doors of the veranda.
Mike was alone in a poorly lit area. An easy target. Why wasn’t the man going after him?
Maybe she and Mike hadn’t been marked after all. They’d changed disguises since Paris and London. Was she just being paranoid?
No, it was too coincidental. Of all the nightclubs in all the cities, why would this guy come to this one, if not for her and Mike?
People bounced and whirled around her, blocking and unblocking her view. Her heart rate quickened as she repositioned, trying to keep an eye on the threat while remaining inconspicuous.
In her periphery, he finished his drink and set it on the table. Then he stood.
She held her breath, her hips twitching, barely dancing.
He didn’t turn toward the veranda. Without looking in her direction, he prowled directly toward her.
Goddammit!
What was he going to do? Drag her off the dance floor? Shoot her in front of all these people?
Mike wasn’t here. She was alone among strangers. Maybe that was the only incentive this guy needed?
The din of clinking bottles, pouring liquor, shouting, chatter, laughter, drunken revelry—it all melded together and swirled around her as she held her position. Running would be the absolute worst thing to do. She needed the cover and protection of the crowd.