Page 57 of Special Ops Seduction

As if they were long-lost friends.

“I hear we’re in the same business,” Dominic said. Jovially.

He looked exactly like every picture Jonas had studied of him, which was rarely true. He was neither overly jacked with muscle nor soft and paunchy. He had the sort of face that could belong to either a middle-manager accountant from a pleasant suburb somewhere or a CIA agent. He was perfectly friendly—so friendly, in fact, that it took Jonas a moment to process that they were roughly the same size.

An interesting tidbit, because if asked, Jonas would have docked the man a few inches and some width based on the khakis he wore and one of those strange collared T-shirts that made Jonas automatically consider a man soft and useless. But it also had to have something to do with the way the other man held himself.

Meaning it had to be deliberate.

Then he took Dominic’s hand to shake it, and he knew instantly that everything about the way this man presented himself was a lie.

Because there was something about the way he shook Jonas’s hand. There was a certain tension, maybe, orunderstanding that flared there between them. The kind of knowledge that could be transmitted only physically—and that couldn’t be concealed. Dominic Carter was going out of his way to appear soft and meek, but he’d seen some action.

More thansome, Jonas would bet.

“Were you in the service?” Jonas asked.

The other man grinned self-deprecatingly. “Not me. I work with a lot of military folks, but never had the honor of serving myself.”

But Jonas didn’t believe him.

“I’m based in Annapolis,” Carter continued conversationally. “I don’t get out to Seattle much, but I’d love to get a good foothold on the West Coast. We should sit down sometime, throw a few ideas around.”

“You looking to expand?” Jonas asked, grinning widely, the way he would if he were running a security company.

Dominic Carter laughed. “Always looking to be better, friend. Isn’t that the meaning of life?”

Jonas did not say that as far as he knew, life had meaning only if it was lived honestly, because that seemed a little hypocritical under the circumstances.

They both laughed heartily, then shook hands again, which was the universally preferred method of communication among a certain set of wealthy, connected men. But when Carter got caught up in another group of far more important people making their way to the next stage of the party, Jonas held himself back.

He waited until most of the crowd had vacated the first courtyard, took out his phone, and went out into the street.

Where he did a quick head-to-toe check to make sure no one had planted any listening devices on him with all that shoulder-slapping and handshaking, and then he called in.

“Report,” Isaac said when he answered.

“This is a gut feeling,” Jonas replied, looking back toward the courtyard he’d just left as if there were eyes on him, even now. “But I think we found our guy.”

Fifteen

Bethan woke up early on the day of the wedding and crept out of the vineyard house before dawn. Her sister was still sleeping off the rehearsal dinner’s slight overindulgence in the vast king bed they were sharing, and Bethan thought Ellen might wake up when she moved—but Ellen only flopped over, then began to snore.

Bethan slipped out into what was left of the night, taking another moment to breathe in what could only be California, smelling sunbaked even in the dark. The last of the night-blooming jasmine, the hint of sage and rosemary, and the rich earth all around. Maybe not the place she wanted to call home, but part of her nonetheless.

Jonas met her by the pool house, as arranged. And if anyone saw them, they would look like lovers who couldn’t bear to spend a night apart. Bethan told herself that attempting to get intothatcharacter role was her hardest challenge yet.

“I think he’s hiding something,” Jonas said after he gave her a breakdown of his interactions with Dominic Carterthe night before, and what he and the rest of the team had concluded while Bethan had been off singing ridiculous sorority songs and generally making a fool of herself.

That she’d laughed a whole lot and actually valued getting the opportunity to spend time with her sister—more than she’d thought she would—was neither here nor there. Bethan wasn’t supposed to feel these things while she was on a job. She did her best to shove it all aside.

And while she was at it, also not ogle Jonas in his running gear.

“Like, hopefully, our scientist and his sister?” she asked instead, the way an operative who was focused on the mission might.

“I wouldn’t be surprised.” Jonas moved closer to her and took her hand, which Bethan knew perfectly well was about optics, not inclination. She knew that. And still his touch jolted straight through her. “He’s lying about his background, and I don’t understand why. Not in this group, anyway. He must have known that pretending he didn’t have any kind of serious action in his background is unbelievable.”

“Wouldn’t we know if he had military service in his background? Even if he tried to downplay it?”

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