Over the Edge

Jake didn’t have a chance to consider the possible answers because the mystery woman suddenly spun and looked directly at him. She could have only sensed his presence. Her back had been to him and he hadn’t moved, had barely breathed.

The black mask covered her face and neck. He couldn’t make out her eyes but got the impression they were light, that she must be Caucasian, although he couldn’t see even a sliver of skin to support the impression. Something about her suggested she was as surprised to find him as he’d been to come across her. Something about the way she squared her shoulders and raised her chin…

He stepped into the foyer that connected the offices with the warehouse, expecting her to run. He’d catch her and deal with her accomplices later.

But his mystery woman didn’t run. She only lifted a gloved finger to her mouth and gestured him to silence as she approached. She clearly wasn’t worried that he’d hurt her, and Jake thought that said a lot about her confidence in her abilities. Though she couldn’t know he’d wrestled through high school and still made time for the sport in college, he was a full head taller and outweighed her by at least eighty pounds.

But her hands were free. If she was armed, she hadn’t gone for a weapon.

He stopped and waited, the more impulsive side of his brain noticing how she even walked as if she were making love, all toned muscle and sleek grace. There was no panic about her, or violence. He had the feeling she was challenging him. As if she dared him to play a dangerous game.

So what was his next move?

Jake wasn’t sure about anything except there were other burglars around somewhere, and he wanted very much to see what this woman’s next move would be.

The eye slits in the ski mask were wider than he’d realized, but she’d blackened the skin below, like a television cat burglar. He could see two pale-green eyes, so clear a green they seemed to laser through the darkness.

She didn’t utter a sound, though he half expected her to say something. The occasion seemed to warrant a verbal exchange, but she only assessed him with a challenge in those eyes.

Jake assessed her as carefully, calculated that she stood just out of his reach. A few inches closer and he could’ve taken her down with a leg drop that she wouldn’t have seen coming. He still could, but he’d have to spring on her to cover those extra few inches.

Holding her gaze, he tensed for action….

In one sleek burst of motion, she pounced, covering the distance between them while dragging up the edge of her mask. A glimpse of clear ivory skin, a daintily pointed chin and a kissable red mouth stopped him short.

He could see enough of her face to shoot sparks through him even as the rational half of his brain recognized that she hadn’t revealed enough for him to identify her to the police.

That was his last thought before she slipped leather-clad fingers around his neck, raised up on tiptoes…

And kissed him.

Her moist mouth slanted across his and parted enough so their breaths literally collided.

Jake gasped, but she only laughed, a sultry sound that gusted against his lips, a sound that annihilated reason beneath a blast of testosterone that made his bones melt and his glasses fog.

He should take her down and restrain her for the police.

But that thought dissolved the instant she swept her warm silk tongue into his mouth, prowling inside boldly, engaging him in a kiss so hot that she shut down the rational half of his brain as if it had never existed.

Her fingers anchored his face close. She thrust her body against his, a sleek motion that caught him in all the right spots…firm breasts against his chest, her stomach cradling a hard-on that shouldn’t be happening given their situation. Everything about her was daring him to take what she offered.

Jake practically vibrated with his reaction, a hunger unlike anything he’d ever felt. Instinctively, he lifted his hands, slipped his fingers along the ski mask and forced her to tilt her face back so he could drive his tongue into her mouth.

The hot taste of passion chased away any worries, any reasonable thoughts…including all awareness of the surveillance camera that was angled at them, recording every second of that incredible kiss.

1

MALLORY HUNT wanted a piece of Jake Trinity’s ass.

Literally.

The way she saw it, the man owed her for some very good reasons. For one, he’d sent her dad on a four-year stint in prison. For another, he’d sent her on a six-month stint in foster care. And forced her dad’s burglary crew into retirement.

All because of one lousy kiss.

Well, the kiss hadn’t exactly been lousy. If it had been, she might have forgotten it after ten years. She hadn’t.

Of course she wouldn’t admit that to her dad, so she simply said, “You heard right. Jake Trinity contacted me about a job.”

An understatement if ever there was one. The man had blasted back into her life with the force of a gunshot, insisting she drop everything to consult with him.

And Mallory intended to consult…oh, yeah, she intended to do a lot more, too, but she wouldn’t tell her dad that, either. She didn’t want to invite any questions when she knew for a fact that her dad didn’t know Jake Trinity had been the informant who’d gotten him busted on the Innovative Engineering job all those years ago.

As far as Mallory was concerned, if her dad had survived the past decade in the dark, dredging up memories of that painful time in their lives would serve no good purpose.

She’d handle Jake Trinity herself. And she had some very specific plans to pay the man back for his interference in their lives. Very specific. She’d make him regret the day he’d taken the moral high road by triggering the silent alarm that had changed the lives of everyone she cared about forever.

She’d make him pay for being the reason that her dad had lied to her for the first and only time in her life.

Yes, Mallory had it all under control…but she didn’t want her dad around to interfere with her plans, or to get any wrong ideas. He’d been dropping way too many hints about her finding a husband lately. He wanted her to settle down in a house with a white picket fence, and the last thing she needed was for him to decide Jake Trinity might make an acceptable candidate to share her happily ever after.

No, her dad didn’t need to know this job was anything more than a normal troubleshooting gig.

Which meant she wasn’t answering any more questions.

As a diversionary tactic she glanced to where he was perched precariously on the wall beside her, and asked, “Are you doing okay? How are you holding up? This is a long climb.”

Her dad peered down the sixty feet of man-made rockclimbing wall separating them from their belay partners below. “I’m going all the way today, babe. How about you?”

“If there’s no challenge, I don’t see the point.”

Today’s rock-climbing challenge had limits. She and her dad both were harnessed and roped with their belay partners clinging to their lines, ready to control the descent if either one fell. As she barely tipped the scales at one hundred and ten, a fall wouldn’t be much of a challenge for her belay partner, either.

Following her dad’s gaze down to the high-tech foam floor far below, she experienced a rush of vertigo that made her tighten her grip on the handholds and suck in a tight breath to chase the thrill that coursed through her.

She smiled.

While indoor rock climbing might not be the greatest of challenges, it was a great workout.

“That’s my girl,” her dad said. “No guts, no glory.”

“No risk, no reward,” she agreed.

“No pain, no gain.”

That comment made Mallory slant her gaze his way again. Her dad winked, alleviating any cause for worry with one charming glance.

Although Duke Hunt had been scaling man-made walls with her three times a week ever since the Vertical Playground rock-climbing gym had opened in their hometown of Atlanta, the fact still remained that he was a man on approach to his sixtieth birthday. Like her dad, she wasn’t one to dwell on impending maturity, but Mallory did have to face the occasional reminder that he was getting older. With a lifestyle as active as theirs, it would have been impossible to ignore the fact.