Body Checked (Center Ice Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

coffees to Frederica’s supporting agents, I shuffle off to the makeshift desk they gave me when I arrived: a card table with a laptop wedged between the copier and the fax machine. I have absolutely no privacy here—can’t so much as check my email without someone breathing over my shoulder. Twelve hours a week of office drone hell. I always stop off at my martial arts gym as soon as my internship mornings end just to work all the knots out of my body from being on public display.
    After checking my email, I poke around aimlessly on the FBI’s internal network. Agency policy dictates that I’m supposed to report any unauthorized contact with non-U. S. citizens, to ensure we’re not having secret rendezvouses with foreign spies or the like. I pull up the reporting form and try to shrink the browser dimensions down so the people constantly walking past me can’t see what I’m doing. As invisible as I am, the last thing I need is for the sole thing my co-workers know about me to be: HEY! I HAD A ONE-NIGHT STAND WITH A FOREIGNER!
    God. Forget a one-year plan. I need a plan for the next three hours of my life. And hopefully that plan involves escape.
    Name of non-U. S. citizen (if known):  
    I type in Sergei’s full name. DRAKONOV, SERGEI ANTONOVICH. At least, I hope that’s his real name. It’s certainly the name everyone in DC knows by now. What if the person who receives the report starts laughing and thinks I made it up? Right. Like that loser intern in the Organized Crime unit could really score with the most famous hockey player in America right now.
    “Hey! Pereira!”
    I instantly hit the minimize button on my browser and nearly jump out of my skin. Frederica is rushing toward me, her sensible loafers swishing on the moldy old carpet. “Yes, ma’am?”
    “Come take notes for me in this meeting.”
    I grab my spiral-bound meeting notebook and fall into step behind Frederica. “Yes, ma’am!”
    Meetings at the FBI are hit or miss. Okay, they’re mostly miss. Occasionally I’ll get a juicy tidbit about someone threatening to blow up a mall or a weird cultist compound in the Appalachians, but more often than not, it’s just a bunch of the Special Agents getting together and complaining about archaic software (rightfully so) or arguing over who’s to blame for the latest slip-up (never, ever one of them, naturally). So I’m expecting to waste the next hour silently jotting down minutes chronicling the latest database glitch or Agent Shannon talking about himself and how much better his office is than ours. And never, ever opening my mouth, no matter how valuable what I have to say is.
    But I’m not expecting this.
    Oh, god, am I not expecting this.
    A giant photograph of Sergei Drakonov greets me when I step into the room, projected onto the smartboard at the far end of the conference table. The same twinkling blue eyes I looked into two nights ago while he nailed me against the wall are now staring me down inside the FBI.
    I’m so screwed. For a minute, I’m utterly sure that the FBI knows I slept with him, and this is all an elaborate ruse to embarrass me as much as possible before kicking me out. But I glance toward Frederica, and her face is as calm as ever as she takes a seat around the conference table. She brushes at a nonexistent piece of lint on her blazer lapel and busies herself with tapping on her work phone while waiting for the other agents to arrive.
    I take a deep breath and sit in a chair against the back of the wall, behind her, and await my fate.
    The other agents stride in and assemble around the conference table, a few other interns in tow. One snorts to himself as he looks at Sergei’s picture on the wall. I arch one eyebrow at him, but I have to keep my mouth shut—I always have to keep my mouth shut.
    Finally, the Chief of the Organized Crime Division, Roger Ha, enters the conference room and shuts the door behind him.
    “Sergei Antonovich Drakonov. The new forward for the