Play It Safe (The Safe House Series Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

reconfigured, the expanding red rings gradually shifting to green between 17 degrees west and fifty-one degrees east. Africa. A minute more until the screen was all green. Samson pointed to three words on his script: Keep him talking .
    “I’m ready.”
    “Third Street Promenade near Los Angeles. Tomorrow. You’ll find art that resembles a striped flag pole in the plaza. Someone will wait for you there with further instructions. Bring your passport and a viable sample.”
    “I don’t carry samples, Julian. Surely, even you can see the foolishness in that.”
    Samson winced. Generally not a good idea to insinuate captors are idiots. He supposed someone as intelligent as Angela may lack the stay-alive, common-sense gene. Fortunately, a slight chuckle came across the line.
    “High-spirited. We’ll do just fine, Angela. Just fine.”
    Samson motioned a circular sweep of his hand to remind Angela to keep Julian engaged.
    “I want to hear Mike’s voice.”
    “Impossible. He’s… indisposed.”
    “I want a live video feed of Mike tomorrow at the meet up location. I talk to him, and he talks to me. Otherwise, I unleash an email blast to every international law enforcement agency and embassy within a thousand miles of the equatorial zone.”
    Samson’s laptop map was almost entirely green over the bottom half of Africa.
    “Agreed. But Angela, you come alone. If we find out you alerted anyone—especially that Navy SEAL you insist on keeping around you—I’ll be forced to acquaint every single person you care about with my latest neurotoxin.”
    Ten seconds.
    “Renders a person trapped in the wooden shell of their body until insanity taxes the heart. There is poetic beauty in science, is there not, Doctor McAllister?”
    The call ended.
    Damn it.
    A frigid exhale skated from Angela’s lips. She brought both shaking hands to a steeple over her nose and mouth. “Ohmygod…ohmygod…ohmygod.”
    “You did good, Madam Curie.” A few seconds shy of perfect, but good, nevertheless. He pulled her into an embrace because it broke his heart that some fucked-up, psychotic terrorist had the reach to make someone as innocent as Angela believe he could harm her.
    Not as long as he still drew breath.
    He expected her to turn away, wiggle free. She didn’t. Doctor Angela McAllister, with the wit of a dive-bar comedian and the intelligence to change so much more about the world than he ever could, melted against him like the space was created just for her. Her eyeglasses bumped against the powerful lines of his chest. She backed away long enough to remove them to the counter then burrowed her forehead deeper against him. Slow, soundless sobs wracked her body.
    “I’m sorry,” he whispered against her hair. That someone so untainted could get mixed up in something so dark. That he said no man could stand her. That he couldn’t be that one to darken her door, just once, to show her that humans weren’t meant to live exclusively inside their heads and in lab results—that passion and intimacy aren’t meant to be repressed. All he could offer her was his blanket apology and his protection.
    He hoped that would be enough.
    She pulled away and looked up at him with round, glassy, vulnerable eyes. Without frames cluttering her features, she was cute, the way a sparrow is cute when it lands, unexpectedly, on your windowsill and holds your attention and makes you mourn when it leaves. He knew the instant she leaned in what would happen—she all but scrambled up his body to make it happen. She planted her lips on his in a rigid kiss that spoke of the rushed inexperience he knew her to have. No tongue, no acquiescence. Simply the collision of two fleshy folds of the body. It was like kissing a best friend’s sister at fifteen.
    Only not entirely.
    A slight awakening shivered through him. The first thought that cleared his awakening libido: Dear God, has it been that long? His second: Why can’t I give her this? Just this?
    She