Free Overnight Male by Elizabeth Bevarly

determination as an agent. A man she was tired of chasing.

    It was time to catch Adrian Padgett, she told herself, re-focusing her attention on the man it really needed to be on. Past time. She would catch him this time. And she would see him tossed into the most fail-safe prison in the country, if she had to slam the door shut and lock it behind him herself. Then maybe she could get on with other more pleasant pursuits. Like, oh…she didn’t know. Her life, maybe.

    For some reason, her gaze fell on Joel as that last thought formed in her head. Even though she told herself he was not going to be one of her pursuits, never mind have anything to do with her life. He wasn’t her type, he wasn’t her goal, he wasn’t her match. Hell, he wasn’t even her partner, not really. Providing Oliver survived his upcoming wedding to Avery Nesbitt, he and Lila would return to being a team. She hoped.

    Joel Faraday would just be a blip on the time line of Lila’s life. One man of many, and by no means the most important. That man was hiding somewhere in Cincinnati. And she was this close to bringing him down. For good.

CHAPTER FIVE
    L OUNGING WITH A SNIFTER of an exceedingly good Armagnac in the living area of his exceedingly luxurious suite at the Four Seasons Cincinnati, Adrian Padgett was exceedingly bored. But then, that was hardly anything new, was it? He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been intrigued/fascinated/captivated/even remotely preoccupied by anything intriguing/fascinating/captivating/even remotely worthy of preoccupation. Life could be so boring when one was corrupt. Where was the challenge in anything? Where was the mischief? Where was the sneaky underhandedness? When a man was amoral to begin with, there were no lines to cross, no rules to break, no crosses to double. If one had no allegiances to begin with, one couldn’t exactly betray them, could one?
    Truly, dammit, where was the fun? Taking the entire planet hostage wasn’t turning out to be nearly as diverting as Adrian had thought it would be.

    Of course, he thought as he contemplated his companions, it would have helped if he’d been able to amass some proper henchmen instead of the ragtag group of college students he’d collected over the past few months. The three young men draped over the furniture in his suite weren’t exactly Adolf Hitler and Genghis Khan when it came to villainy. More like Boris and Natasha. Only, without the elegant wardrobe and charming accents.

    Oh, sure, they said they wanted to take over the world with Adrian. And if they’d put forth half the effort to take over this world as they had taking over the worlds in their godforsaken video games, Adrian would be master of time, space and dimension by now. But that was just it. Unless something was a graphic on a game screen, they didn’t view it as a challenge. And it wasn’t as if Adrian hadn’t given them plenty of incentive. He’d promised them that once they had the world in their possession, the boys could have Daytona Beach, all incarnations of MTV, the Playboy mansion, Nintendo and Jessica Alba to divvy up however they wanted.

    He blew out an exasperated breath. Where were tomorrow’s despots supposed to come from, if not from today’s universities? Where were the future Slobodan Milosevics and Saddam Husseins? It was criminal how college campuses weren’t producing tyrants anymore. Well, except for the Young Republicans. But even they were more interested these days in making sound business investments than they were in global domination. At this rate, by the time today’s youth grew to maturity, the world wasn’t going to be worth taking over. Which was all the more reason why Adrian had to do it now.

    Unfortunately, the timetable wasn’t up to him, since it wasn’t he who knew the secret code that would finally put the world in his grasp. No, that was up to Moe, Larry and Curly over there. The ones currently focused on the big-screen television,