The Shaughnessey Accord by Alison Kent Read Free Book Online Page A

place of business for a drop point found your tight schedule advantageous, too."
    Tripp's mind raced like the wind. The kid was talking way too much. His gang had blacked out the shop's single security camera, had made entry without alerting anyone to their presence, had secured the scene and done it all while Tripp made love to Glory.
    Fuckin ' shit on a stick barely covered it. He'd been monitoring the shop for weeks and he'd never noticed the place being scouted. He hadn't been wise to the entire intrusion until the police bullhorn had sounded outside.
    A guy who followed through on such flawless planning didn't start yapping his flap unless he felt there would be no survivors but him. And Tripp had a feeling they were looking into the eyes of an animal who'd fight to the death before being taken alive.
    "I'm sorry," Glory was saying. Tripp heard the tears in her voice. "I really have no idea what you're talking about or what you want."
    She stood in the center of the room where minutes before the downed man had lain. The kid walked in a circle around her, clearly agitated now. An agitation that had sweat gathering in Tripp's armpits.
    He didn't like the look that had come into the other man's eyes or the tic twitching in the vein at his temple. It was a look that shimmered with the need for revenge. An ugly need. An ugly revenge.
    "Listen," Tripp started, cut off by the kid's sharply spoken, "Do not speak," which was followed by instructions called through the door in his own language. Seconds later, another man appeared and, on orders, approached. "Turn around. Hands behind your back."
    Now Tripp was beyond being pissed off. Especially when, at his hesitation, the kid pressed the gun barrel to Glory's head. His palms slick with sweat, Tripp turned and stared blindly at the storeroom's cinder block wall. Blindly, because all he saw was Glory's terrified expression.
    That solid reality, her fear, was what he needed to keep forefront in his mind. This wasn't a mission where he had others watching his back. This was a solo run. This was about her life. And he knew she had a lot better chance of coming out of this in one piece with him keeping his head.
    The thug at his back bound Tripp's hands together with a zip tie that came close to cutting off his circulation. He bit down hard on his anger and turned around, maintaining as passive an expression as his temper allowed while the kid's henchman patted him down.
    Once the third man was gone, Tripp asked, "Now what?"
    "Now you tell me your name."
    Unless undercover or disguised, all the Smithson operatives existed in the private sector as the engineering project consultants they were. " Shaughnessey ."
    The kid nodded. "My name is Danh Vuong . I find negotiations so much more effective when personalized. Does that make sense to you Mr. Shaughnessey ? Miss Brighton?"
    Tripp nodded without agreement, wishing Julian Samms were here. Julian could read people as if they were printed on paper. Tripp had only his instincts to work from.
    And those instincts were screaming at him to put this kid down. The way he was pacing and circling Glory. The way his forehead beneath his shock of black hair had beaded with sweat. He was on his way to careening out of control.
    Tripp needed to draw the other man's attention away from Glory and onto himself without blowing his civilian cover. "It's tough to negotiate anything when we don't know what it is you want."
    "What I want is something Miss Brighton is going to help me get." Vuong looked from Tripp to Glory. Or, more precisely, he looked at Glory's breasts where her chest rose and fell beneath the ribbed knit of her tank top.
    The fabric was a pale pink and it hugged her body the way any man liked to see a tight tank top do. Zippers that matched those on her skirt decorated both shoulder straps.
    With Tripp looking on, Vuong flipped one of the zipper pulls up and down using his gun barrel's tip.
    Glory literally threatened to shake out of