Free Stolen Vengeance: Slye Temp book 6 by Dianna Love Page B

finally have a break. You have to keep what I tell you confidential until I give the word that it’s on. Deal?”
    He dangled Rikker in front of her nose and she couldn’t let that pass. “Deal.”
    “First, Rikker was recently seen in LA.”
    Her blood pressure zoomed up so fast it should have blown the top off her head. “ Where ?”
    “Downtown on another traffic cam, but it’s not a good shot and it was ten days ago. He may be in another country by now, but I think he’s still stateside.”
    Now she got it. The information wasn’t that Rikker was around, but why he was still here. “What’s he up to?”
    “I’m not sure yet, but I need you to know everything I do right now so that you don’t walk into a trap. The Orion Hunter who killed Bergman was found dead with both eyes shot out. That was Rikker’s MO. The agency warned him about making signature kills, but Rikker’s ego had to be fed constantly. He wanted his hits known.”
    “That’s what a serial killer does. Why would he do that?”
    “Because he is a serial killer who’s a legend in his own mind. He wanted the reputation of being the agency’s deadliest asset.”
    Her mind tossed all this new information in on top of what she already knew and sorted pieces, shoving them into categories, drawing lines and making connections. Was Rikker with the Orion Hunters or after them for some reason?
    “Why do we need to keep all this secret?” 
    “You can tell your people you have intel that the Orion Hunters might be involved in the hits, but don’t share the tie to Rikker, because he’s making mistakes and he thinks no one is catching them.” 
    How could he ask her to let this opportunity pass? “Gage, think about it. I could put together an ace team and–”
    Gage stepped over every invisible boundary she’d thrown between them when he slid his hand into her hair, crowding her personal space and pulling them together.
    She could feel the tension in him when he took a breath and let it out carefully, along with his words.
    “You’re one of most skilled operatives I’ve ever known, but the deeper I dig the more terrifying this all becomes. The people connected to this are in-their-own-league powerful. There’s no way to prove their connections. It’s more of a gut feeling I have as I push the pieces around. I told you I only trust two people in the agency right now and they’re not a part of my division. I haven’t told you much before now because I feared you’d go tearing off after a lead and uncover something you wouldn’t survive.”
    She couldn’t think with him so close.
    His gaze roamed over her face, tracing every inch the way a blind man reads a shape with his hands. He kept talking in that low, seductive voice that wrapped around her mind and shut the world out.
    “I know who wasn’t involved and those are the names you want. This runs deep and giving you names might have gotten innocent people killed, but more than that I care about what happens to you. And if you went after the agency personnel the way I know you, Josh and Dingo would, I’d learn about it when your bodies turned up. I’d eventually find the bastards doing all of this, but it would be for naught without you here. I’m so afraid of losing you again.”
    This man feared nothing, or so she’d thought.
    He’d fought his way out of third-world hot spots where he should have died. She’d hated when he went dark for months, but it had been part of his job just as going on missions had been hers.
    To him, she’d gone dark for two years and she’d felt justified the entire time.
    Until this moment.
    Her resolve splintered and ripped apart, shattering under the weight of what she’d done to Gage. She’d been so sure he had known who did this to her and the team, that she couldn’t just pick up where they’d left off. But Gage had taken his time, inching his way back inside her heart, slowly piecing it back together from the devastation she’d suffered