Spy in the Saddle

“Ryder and Keith are coming in early,” he told the others. Maybe Jamie was wrong. Their leader would have the correct information.

Keith, the youngest on the team, came through the door first, tired and rumpled after a long night on the border. He did the best with people they caught sneaking over. One of his grandfathers was Mexican. He had the look and spoke the language like a native. People told him things they wouldn’t have told the rest of the team.

He looked around and apparently picked up on the tension in the air because he raised a black eyebrow. “What’s wrong?”

Shep couldn’t bring himself to answer. He sank into the nearest chair and reached for a slice of cardboard pizza, then stared at it for a second. He wasn’t even hungry.

“The FBI agent who’s coming... She’s a woman,” Mo said. “She’s—”

Ryder pushed in. “I was just talking to the Colonel, too. Lilly Tanner. Isn’t it great?”

Shep’s jaw tightened. “How do you know about Lilly?” He shot a dark look at Jamie. Couldn’t he keep his mouth shut?

But Jamie shrugged with wide-eyed innocence.

“She’s Mitch Mendoza’s sister,” Ryder said.

A moment of confused silence passed as the men looked at each other, processing the unexpected information.

Jamie spoke first. “The one he’s been looking for?” His sister was married to Mendoza, so this was family business for him. “I thought her name was Cindy.”

“Got changed at one point along the way. You can ask her all about it when she gets here.”

Mo clapped Jamie on the back. “Hey, that makes her your sister-in-law, doesn’t it?”

A stunned smile spread on Jamie’s face as he nodded. “Kind of. Yeah.”

Ryder headed to the back for coffee. “Mitch found her just recently. Different name and everything, but it’s definitely his sister. They had the DNA test done to confirm it.”

Shep rubbed his temple where a headache pulsed to life suddenly.

Mitch Mendoza, another member of the SDDU, Special Designation Defense Unit, the large team that Shep’s smaller group belonged to, came from a family destroyed by drugs. He’d been a teenager when his father had sold his little sister for coke. Mitch had been looking for her ever since.

And now he’d found her at last.

Except that through some bizarre turn of events, Mitch’s Cindy Mendoza was Shep’s Lilly Tanner. Shep swallowed. And she was coming here.

He tried to remember if he had any aspirin in his desk drawer. “They’ll have to send someone else.”

Jamie lifted an eyebrow, a warning look forming on his face. “She’s my family,” he said, in case somehow Shep didn’t get that.

He did. Shoot me now.

“She can’t be my Lilly Tanner. There must be a hundred Lilly Tanners out there.” He stubbornly clung to denial.

“She’s yours.” Jamie extinguished that hope with ruthless efficiency. “I ran a background check on her when I got the name. Right age. Came from the juvie system. Right city.”

Shep pushed to his feet.

“Where are you going?” Mo wanted to know.

“Taking a break.” He needed an hour at the gym.

He needed a little time to clear his mind so he could focus fully on his work. His thoughts were all over the place, and he had plenty to get done today.

No distractions. He had to erase the picture that filled his mind: the seventeen-year-old bundle of holy terror that had made him quit the juvenile justice system. Sort of. Okay, fine, they fired him because of her.

But even as he moved toward the fridge to grab a bottle of water to go, another car pulled up outside. A throaty engine rumbled, sounding nothing like the team’s SUVs. A car door slammed.

He had a hollow feeling in his stomach.

The urge to run hit him, but he stood immobilized as he listened to heels clicking on the floor in the main office area. On reflex, he cataloged the weapons within range: his gun at his hip, his backup firearm in the ankle holster, the knife in his pocket.

Then the door swung open and a pair of familiar devil-black eyes, fringed with thick lashes, scanned the break room before they zeroed in on him.

Oh, holy hell. She was definitely his Lilly Tanner.

Yet she was nothing like the girl he remembered.

Her full lips stretched into a smile that made Ray stare openmouthed. Shep considered throwing the water bottle at the idiot to snap him out of it. Then he realized that the rest of them were just as bad, staring at her, more than a little dazed. Great.

“Good morning, gentlemen.” Her voice was a sexy purr, enough to make a man sit up and pay attention, nothing like the disdainful teenage tone Shep still heard sometimes in his nightmares.

She had stretched up and filled out, and somehow managed to look like a Playboy Playmate even in a straight-cut charcoal FBI suit. She wore her wild, dark curls pulled back into a no-nonsense bun, her five-inch heels a somber black, yet everything about her somehow spelled sex, which made Shep feel all wrong and uncomfortable.

She’d been his charge once. He was pretty sure he shouldn’t be standing there thinking how she was the hottest thing he’d ever seen.

Good thing he knew too much about her to fall for the new look. Hell, he even knew where her tattoos were—

He caught himself and tried to backpedal out of that thought. Too late. A strange heat flooded him.

She strode straight to him on endless legs, her hips swaying in a mesmerizing way. “Hey, Shep. Long time no see.”

Enough roundness was happening in that skirt to make a man’s palms itch. And her breasts, too, had come into their own since he’d last seen her. Definitely. His brain was short-circuiting, unable to reconcile his old image of her with the new.

“Are you going to introduce me to your friends?” she asked when she stood close enough for him to catch the light scent of her perfume, her head at a slight tilt, an amused look in her eyes.

He had a hard time recalling his friends.

“Ray Armstrong.” Ray came around the table and took her hand, held it longer than necessary.

Keith deftly pushed Ray out of the way. “Keith Gunn.”

She shook his hand, too, then Mo’s and Ryder’s as they came up to introduce themselves. Then she turned to Jamie. “You must be Jamie Cassidy, then.”

Jamie stood with a bigger smile than Shep ever remembered seeing on him, and walked over to her, then enveloped her in a hug that made Ray and Keith look decidedly unhappy.

“We’re family,” he said when he pulled back. “I’m glad they found you. Now maybe Mitch will learn to relax a little.” He grinned. “What are the chances?”