Ultimate Weapon
Extreme Danger
Behind Closed Doors
Hot Night
Return to Me
Shannon McKenna
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Table of Contents
Ultimate Weapon
Extreme Danger
Behind Closed Doors
Hot Night
Return To Me
SHANNON
MCKENNA
ULTIMATE WEAPON
KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
Praise for Shannon McKenna
“Sensual, hard-hitting love scenes, and underlying themes of hope, faithfulness and survival.”
—Romantic Times on Extreme Danger (4 starred review)
“A passionate, intense story about two people rekindling lost love in the middle of a dangerous, heart-pounding situation. Intricate storylines give the book depth and power, tying in the edge-of-your-seat ending with flawless ease.”
—Romantic Times on Edge of Midnight (4 ½ starred review)
“Wild boy Sean McCloud takes center stage in McKenna’s romantic suspense series. Full of turbocharged sex scenes, this action-packed novel is sure to be a crowd pleaser.”
—Publishers Weekly on Edge of Midnight
“Highly creative, erotic sex and constant danger.”
—Romantic Times on Hot Night (4 ½ starred review and a Top Pick!)
“Super-sexy suspense! Shannon McKenna does it again.”
—Cherry Adair on Hot Night
“[A] scorcher. Romantic suspense at its best!”
—Romantic Times on Out of Control (4 ½ starred review)
“Well-crafted romantic suspense. McKenna builds sexual chemistry and tension between her characters to a level of intensity that explodes into sexually explicit love scenes.”
—Romantic Times on Return to Me (4 ½ starred review)
This book is dedicated to my magnificent critique partners
Elizabeth Jennings and Lisa Marie Rice. Thank you for being
my adjunct brains! Couldn’t have done it without you.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter
1
Find the weak spot. Then exploit it.
The brutally simple directive repeated in Val’s head until it was meaningless babble. Val pushed the white noise to the back of his mind and clicked “play” on the footage he’d collected that day.
For the twentieth time, he watched the woman unload the wriggling toddler from the SUV and head toward the waterfront park playground. He had memorized their every move—the swings, then the slide, the merry-go-round, the jungle gym. Then came a horsie ride on the woman’s shoulders through the trees. And the moment when she held the child up to swipe and grab the brown leaves that clung to the branches. He had memorized every nod, every smile, every hug.
The jeans, hiking boots, and shapeless down jacket the woman wore did nothing to hide the feline grace of her slender body. Her brown hair was twisted into a loose, thick dark braid. She wore no makeup. The child reached higher to grab for the leaves, giggling.
Children were always a weak spot—but not one he could bring himself to exploit. He hated when there was a child involved. It made him tense, anxious. It destroyed the hard-won professional calm that usually rendered him such an effective operative. Had he known about the existence of the child, he would have refused the job, no matter how Hegel blustered and threatened. The worst they could do to him was kill him, no? Let them try. Others had already, several times. Eventually someone would succeed. It wouldn’t matter a damn who had done the deed after he was dead.
The job had seemed straightforward when Hegel presented it to him. Locate this woman who was in hiding—one of Val’s specialties, considering his hacking abilities and his skills at social engineering. Deliver her to Georg Luksch, willingly, if possible, under false pretenses if not. Failing that, by any means necessary. Coercion. Abduction.
He did not like working for Luksch or having any dealings with the mafiya. Too much history, too many ugly memories. But Hegel had pulled rank, yanked strings. And Val had convinced himself that he could stay cool and just get the job done. Wrong.
The first thing he had done was to send out feelers to all of the best sources for fake identities. Using a judicious blend of threats and bribes, he had obtained a list of the passports that Steele had procured for herself and her daughter. A few telephone calls and some discreet hacking into Homeland Security databases had ensured that Steele was never going to be traveling with any of those documents, at least the ones he knew about. Now he wished he had not been so efficient.
He wanted her to escape. Damned unprofessional of him.
The room was cold, growing dark with the onset of the early January sunset. He wore nothing but a pair of baggy sweat pants, but he stayed motionless on the floor in a meditative position in front of the computer monitor, trying in vain to settle his mind down to the stillness necessary to perform his personal technique of data processing.
It was based on the way Imre had taught him to play chess years ago as a boy. Deceptively simple, but requiring profound concentration. He put the information, no matter how irrelevant or superficial, into a floating