Secure Target (Elite Operators) by Rebecca Crowley Read Free Book Online Page B

your boyfriend. Maybe we met on the Internet. It’s up to you.” Bronnik shrugged.
    “Whatever you think you can say with the most conviction,” Agent Carver added.
    “All right then.” Lacey turned to Bronnik, unable to stop the wry smile that tugged at her lips. “You can be my Internet boyfriend.”

Chapter Five
    Two stores and just over an hour later, Lacey felt like she was on the worst date of her life, except she couldn’t plead a headache and make her way home.
    Bronnik had hovered around her as she’d made her way through the aisles of a department store. Sometimes he drifted ahead, motioning for her to stop if he thought he saw something. At other times she almost lost track of him, he lagged so far behind, and then when he’d completed his surveillance without result he jogged to catch up, scowling at the distance she’d put between them. When she suggested they move to another shop he just shrugged, barely looking at her in his haste to rush ahead and check the area outside the store’s entrance.
    After five minutes in the second location didn’t promise anything different, she whirled on him with an exasperated sigh.
    “Bronnik, I’m sorry, but you’re driving me crazy. If moving through big stores is going to be too difficult for you, maybe we should just go sit in a cafe.”
    If his surprise wasn’t genuine, he was one hell of an actor. “What are you talking about? I’m fine. Carry on shopping.”
    She let her eyes fall shut for a brief second as she reined in her temper. He’s trying to save your life , she reminded herself. He’s here to keep you safe .
    “I don’t actually need to buy anything, and it’s obvious that you’re not enjoying this. Let’s get a coffee, or go for a walk instead.”
    A flash of sulkiness marred his handsome face for barely a heartbeat before his features took on the cold, detached smoothness that was more familiar. “I thought I was doing well,” he remarked with a hint of petulance. “But if you’d rather walk around, that’s all right with me.”
    “I would. And if you could try to look normal? Like my companion as opposed to my Secret Service bodyguard? That would be a huge help.”
    As soon as the words left her mouth she realized how harsh she sounded, but it was too late. He fell into step beside her, his silence stony and complete. With a roll of her eyes she led them down the wide, second-floor walkway, trying to pace herself to make their stroll last—the mall was not very large.
    For eleven o’clock on a snowy Wednesday morning, the mall was more crowded than she expected. She wondered if her fellow shoppers were taking care of all of the errands they’d skipped during the bad weather yesterday, or if it only took an afternoon cooped up indoors to make people seek out any excuse to leave the house.
    She tried to imagine a different reality, one in which their cover story was true, that she really had fallen in love with a tall, sexy blond, and that he was so enamored of her that he was willing to fly thousands of miles to visit her in her no-frills, typically Midwestern hometown. He’d surprise her with a proposal on his last night in town, and the tearful parting at the airport would be redeemed by a hasty but sincere courthouse marriage a few months later. They’d move into a bigger house, he’d get a construction job while he waited for a place in the police academy, and before long they’d be hanging a “Baby’s First Christmas” ornament on a light-strewn tree.
    As they passed store after store of affordable, practical and decidedly unglamorous offerings, Lacey almost laughed out loud at the image of this lethally skilled man with his exotic accent weaving his way through the crowd pushing a stroller, or comparing the prices of garden hoses while she picked out a new microwave.
    The man was a trained killing machine. She’d seen it herself. It would take a special woman to tame him, and she very much doubted that a dental