Free Second Chances (Athena Group Novel Book 1) by C.W. Stokes Page B

very well the night before. Just being under the same roof with Shelby was playing havoc with his hormones. He seemed to walk around with a hard on anytime she was within earshot or general vicinity. Even now he had to straighten himself before he walked into her office. There was no way he was going to let her see the effect she had on him as he followed her into the office and sat next to her. Watching her work for a minute, he realized she was an even more beautiful in her environment. Some men might be intimidated by her quiet intellect, but not him. No sir, if anything he was turned on even more. Her hair was pulled back into a loose bun at the nape of her neck, and she wore silver wired glasses that were perched on the middle of her nose. Those glasses only enhanced the green hue of her eyes. He remembered how her eyes had dilated when he was buried deep inside her. How her lids would look heavy and just as she would let go her eyes would open wide in wonder as they both went over the edge, collapsed and came back down to earth.
    “Max are you listening?” Max snapped out of his thoughts when she waved her hand in front of his face. “Max, I have a lot of questions to ask you so that we can determine if Hawk had anything to do with Agent Le’s death and where Agent Young may be. Pay attention, please.” Max narrowed his eyes at her. It was her fault he had a raging hard on in his pants that only she could make go away. He shifted in his chair, opened his laptop and got to work.
    “What would you like to know?” he asked.
    “Ok, I need you to tell me where the agents were working. That would be a good start. Do you have a picture of either of them that I can put into our system?”
    Max nodded and turned to his laptop and emailed her a video photo of Kim and Patricia. She pulled it up on the top right monitor in the center of the wall and watched as their faces rotated on the screen. On the screen next to it, she launched the facial recognition software to begin to scan Hawk’s businesses and homes as well as the places he frequented for a match.
    “This part may take a while. His holdings are pretty wide spread, but if they had any dealing with any of Hawk’s organizations or associates, then this will find them.”
    He looked skeptical but kept quiet. He watched as the computer program notated the different angles of their faces pinpointing the distance between their eyes, and then measured down to the tip of the nose. It created a face print in which to compare to the images in the videos.
    “Tell me where the last known locations of your agents were?” she asked him.
    He pulled up his notes on his laptop and saw their last location had been in New York City. “Both of their GPS locations show their last location being New York City. Somewhere on 3rd street and 6th avenue close to Washington Square. They were supposed to check in that evening, but they never did.” His brows furrowed. She could see the torment on his face at thought of the agent’s death.
    “Max, you can’t do that. You can’t blame yourself for her death. The person who killed her is the only one responsible for that.” She placed her hand on his arm and felt the muscles tense at her touch.
    “Shelby I don’t need anyone feeling sorry for me.” He bit at her.
    Pushing back, “You big jerk, I wasn’t feeling sorry for you, I was trying to state the obvious. I’ll keep my mouth shut from now on.” She turned back to the computer screens.
    He knew he should say something to her, but didn’t know what to say. He saw it in her eyes how she wanted to help in that moment.
    He reached out to her, “Shelby.”
    “Look…. Back to work” She snapped. “How long have they been undercover working on this specific assignment?” she asked him.
    “Patricia has been undercover for the past year. She travelled all over the world and as far as I could tell she’d been getting some good Intel.  The last communication to me was that