Aegis Security 03 - Extreme Measures Read Online Free PDF Page A

was fucking with his head again, nothing was.
    He was just about to quietly end the call when Jake Ryder added, “Are you in Seattle, you moron? I’m staring at a news report right now that’s got your name written all over it. Goddammit, Archer. Fourteen injured? Are you fucking insane?”
    Zane’s temper flared. Of course Ryder, his ex-boss—although technically the guy wasn’t an ex anything since he’d refused to accept Zane’s resignation from Aegis six months ago—would assume he’d had something to do with that little explosion.
    “I’m sorry,” Zane said, working not to clench his teeth, “but the party you’re trying to reach is unavailable. Adiós .”
    “Archer, you son of a bitch, don’t you dare hang up on—”
    Zane hit End, powered down the phone, and shoved it back in his pocket. Fuck Ryder and his intel. Fuck Ryder telling him not to go after Eve in retaliation for what she’d done to their team in Guatemala. To Ryder it wasn’t personal. To Zane it was everything.
    He checked his watch, knew he needed to give the drugs a few more minutes to work, and moved over to the dirt-streaked window at the end of the corridor. It looked out over the construction site of a waterfront warehouse next door. Thirty feet separated this building from the naked beams of the next, and a tower crane between the two loomed above like an ominous threat. Zane leaned forward and glanced to the end of the building, toward the parking lot beyond, and noticed a man dressed in black, looking from one building to the next as if searching for something. Or someone.
    Zane’s already tightly strung nerves kicked up a notch. His spine stiffened as he watched the man take three steps into the construction chaos, look up and around again, pause for several seconds, and then jog back to the street and disappear from sight.
    One of Eve’s lowlife partners? The terrorists she’d pissed off who’d blown up that street? Or just a dumbass schmuck who didn’t realize what the hell was going down around him?
    Zane waited to see if the dipshit returned, the SIG Sauer cool and heavy where it was holstered at his lower back. When several minutes passed and the guy didn’t return, Zane told himself to stop being so jumpy.
    Jumpy, however, had saved his life on more than one occasion, so he didn’t push the incident totally from his mind. He remembered the look of the man. And the location of the crane. And the fire escape on this building. And the empty floors of the one next door.
    He headed back down the hallway toward the loft he’d rented, slid the key into the first lock, and turned. It opened with a click. After repeating with the other two, he pushed the heavy steel door open and stepped back inside.
    The building was used mostly for storage. This loft was nothing but a wide, empty room consisting of a handful of pillars holding the ceiling up and a bank of windows that gazed out to the parking lot. There was one small bathroom off to the right that looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in a year, and a table that held Eve’s gun and all the supplies he’d need. There was also a bed. A bed where Eve lay snoozing.
    He crossed to the bare mattress and stared down at her. Her head was tipped to the side, resting against her updrawn arm, her eyes closed, her chest rising and falling with her shallow breaths. Her face was bruised along one side, and small nicks and cuts marred her perfect complexion, but they didn’t take away from her beauty.
    Man, he hated that she still got to him, but even he couldn’t deny the woman was gorgeous. The shoulder-length curly blonde hair wasn’t bad, but he missed the straight chestnut locks she’d had when they’d been together in Lebanon. Had loved to wrap the strands around his hand when they’d made love.
    Fucked, he corrected himself, that familiar sense of betrayal whipping through him the longer he stared at her. There’d been no love on her side. And on his . . . just a