Free DeliciousDanger by Desiree Holt Page A

it’s off the wall at all. Start from the beginning and
tell me everything about the dog. And Kelly.”
    Maybe he could take care of two things at once—add another
weapon to the agency’s Psi arsenal and at the same time learn more about the
woman who kept haunting his dreams.
    When he hung up he was sure Harry was more puzzled than he’d
been when the conversation started but that warning itch that had been burning
his neck for days suddenly grew stronger.
    “What’s up?” Mike asked, wiping his hands on a paper towel.
    “Let’s eat and I’ll tell you. Then we need to make some
phone calls.”
    * * * * *
    Zarife al-Dulami was not at all pleased with the phone call
from Gabir.
    “I give you a simple task to perform and you cannot seem to
get it right. Perhaps I need to make you disappear completely. Erase my
mistake.”
    “No, no, no.” It was hard to miss the fear in Gabir’s voice.
“This is just a little glitch. I am working on another plan as we speak.”
    “That man cannot be allowed to be on the plane with those
weapons.”Zarife was having difficulty controlling his anger. “Are you so stupid
you cannot find a way to get rid of him without creating a major incident?”
    “Believe me, it’s not so easy,” Gabir cried. “The man is
like a shadow. Here, then gone. With eyes in the back of his head and lethal
men always around him.”
    “I don’t care if he has the whole damn armed forces of the
country protecting him. We have to find a way to eliminate him. Now.”
    He slammed down the telephone. His orders from the unknown
man had been very clear—make sure Rick Latrobe was dead. So far he was batting
zero. He had a disastrous premonition that this was going to turn out to be one
huge clusterfuck.

Chapter Four
     
    It was an unusual sequence of events and circumstances that
found Faith and Mark Halloran and Mia and Dan Romeo living in San Antonio
rather than Maryland where the Phoenix Agency headquarters was located.
    When Mark Halloran had been captured by al-Qaeda terrorists
in Peru, his long-time ability to communicate telepathically with Faith Wilding
was his only means of getting messages out. Like a bulldog with a bone in her
teeth, Faith had blown down doors and knocked over people, finally stumbling
over Rick Latrobe and Phoenix in her desperation to mount a rescue. After Mark
left Delta Force, he’d joined the agency and married Faith. They had decided to
make San Antonio their home base as he and Faith had both grown up there and had
family there. Often it meant flying back and forth to Maryland for meetings
when a mission was in process but it was something they both were comfortable
with. And Faith, a best-selling author, was often immersed in her latest
thriller anyway.
    Dan and Mia had met when her precognitive visions had helped
Phoenix retrieve a top-secret new robot designed by a friend of Dan’s. Mia
Fleming had been living in San Antonio for some time then, in a house left to
her by her grandmother and working as an art historian. They’d also decided to
make that city their home base, even though Dan, as the agency’s senior
partner, would need to make even more frequent trips back and forth to Maryland
than Mark.
    “That’s why we have our own planes,” he joked to his wife.
    The one adjustment they had made was to convert a room in
the Romeo household into a high-tech electronics studio, so Dan and Mark could
teleconference with the others and receive whatever information they needed by
secure email or fax. Often they could avoid leaving home that way.
    The fact that the two couples lived barely ten minutes apart
in upscale Alamo Heights made it easy for both business and socializing.
Tonight, the men having returned only the night before from Maryland, they were
having dinner at the Romeos’ graceful two-story house. The topic of discussion
centered not just around Rick Latrobe and the sudden danger to him but on the
wonder dog, Xena.
    When Rick had called Dan that