Texan Undercover (Romantic Suspense) Read Online Free PDF

gone."
    The door to the apartment closed. Dillon
finished his soda. He and his partner usually got along fine. But
six months on an assignment made the nerves stretch thin.
    He liked Stan Brozek. Respected him, too.
Eight years ago, they had started A & B Investigations.
Internet surveillance and computer crime was a growing area of
concern. Hunting down hackers, con artists, even terrorists in the
infinite void of cyberspace proved challenging and rewarding.
Dillon could play with his computers and catch the crooks. Not a
bad way to make a living.
    "All right. Okay." Dillon found the error,
typed out a command and corrected it. They were closing in on the
hacker; he felt it in his gut. With this program and a little luck,
they'd nail the bastard.
    Brozek had worked non-stop on this case from
the beginning. Right away, it was obvious the hacker never used his
own computer. He bounced his communications around the world
through different servers. Brozek traced every bounce point one at
a time until he'd discovered the origin: the computers at
e*Claire's. Subpoenas and court orders were obtained so they could
proceed through proper channels. Everything had to be legal, so the
evidence would hold up in court.
    For the past week, Brozek worked backup to
Dillon's undercover operation. When he wasn't minding the
surveillance van two blocks over, he came into e*Claire's. The
cybercafé kept long hours catering to the college crowd. Brozek
relieved Dillon sometime during the day, every day. No one knew
Brozek was working with him. Not even Claire.
    Dillon hadn't seen her for over a week. A
couple of days after he started working at e*Claire's, she left
town. Before that, she'd avoided him like the plague. But he'd
watched her--covertly--when she'd made the rounds among her
customers. No, Claire Maxwell was definitely not a snob. She joked
with everyone and helped students with homework.
    Dillon told himself he was glad she had left
town. And he told himself he wasn't glad she'd be back
tomorrow.
    ****
    "Here's your breakfast." Natalie set a
steaming mug of raspberry tea and a pastry on Claire's desk. "How'd
it go? Did you hire another tech?"
    "Yes," Claire said. "I found a computer
science major to work part-time in Huntsville. I thought we'd share
duties for a while before having tech support at each cafe. See how
it goes, you know?"
    "Sounds good to me. The hunky tech here is
doing a bang-up job. A couple of computers crashed last week and he
had them running in no time."
    "Great." Claire sipped her tea. She hadn't
seen Dillon since she'd returned. Monday mornings were always
hectic, especially when she'd been gone for a while. "Any more
troubles with Richard? Has he been getting to work on time?"
    "Pretty much."
    Claire didn't like the sound of that. "What's
going on? Why are you covering for the guy?"
    "Because he's an artiste ." Natalie
waved her hands vaguely in front of her.
    "An artiste ? He's a pastry chef,
Nat."
    "Chefs can be temperamental, can't they? And
his éclairs and lady fingers are dreamy," she sighed. "I can
forgive him his little discrepancies and eccentricities, why can't
you? He's the best chef we have. I don't think we can afford to
lose him."
    "All right, all right. You obviously have a
soft spot for him. Or more likely, his pastries. Just make him
understand he needs to be more punctual."
    Natalie gave a mock salute. "Will do,
boss."
    "Cut it out. So what else has been happening?
You've kept me informed through email, but it's not the same."
Claire told herself she wasn't fishing for information about a
certain private eye. The one who had been taking up way too much of
her thoughts this past week.
    "Frank is back," Natalie said.
    "From Colorado? How did the dig go?" Frank
Winslowe was an instructor at UT, working on his Ph.D. in
archeology. He was a regular customer in the cafe.
    Natalie shrugged. "He said it went well. It
wasn't really a dig though. He spent the Christmas holidays
cataloguing artifacts and