THE GUARDIAN (Taskforce Series) Read Online Free PDF Page B

mentioned the book in Ibrahim’s office, the one with the familiar logo on the spine. It was probably nothing, even though his gut told him it might be something.
    Putting away his ear bud, he eyed the dark track ahead of him. Twelve miles away, in a riverside rental on the Patuxent River , his daughter Naomi and her grandmother awaited his first visit “home.” Rather than waste time driving back to Northern Virginia , he’d installed them at a nearby waterfront rental. He couldn’t wait to see them this weekend.
    But, hell, by then the Taskforce’s efforts could be blown out of the water by one slippery, hot-as-hell tabloid journalist. They needed to find her fast. Jackson couldn’t risk his cover being blown, not before he learned whether Gateway had ties to terrorism.
     

 
    Chapter Three
     
    With a gasp of horror, Lena lurched awake and found herself in the four-poster bed in her rental cottage. Her heart still raced. Plumbing the unfamiliar shadows, she was relieved to find herself alone. Rupert Davis, who had been choking her to death in her dream, was nowhere to be seen .
    Just a dream, she assured herself, though her sweat-soaked nightshirt suggested it was actually a full-blown nightmare. Snatching up her cell phone, she checked the time—3 A.M.—before swinging out of bed and crossing to the door to flip the light switch.
    As the lamp blinked on, her gaze went to the curtains fluttering at the open window. No wonder she hadn’t slept well. Open windows left a city girl feeling exposed. But, as it turned out, the cottage didn’t come with central air. She should have checked that out, too, before signing the lease.
    Slipping into the adjacent bathroom, Lena tried emptying her mind with a cool, cleansing shower. But it didn’t work. Had the dream been a warning? she wondered as she soaped herself. Like most Greeks, she believed in signs and portents. This one suggested she should throw her clothes back in her suitcase and head straight for home tonight .
    Only, she’d gone too far to turn back now. Everything she had done for the past ten years from majoring in journalism, to monitoring Davis ’s incarceration, to hiring detectives in the hopes of finding the missing Curtis—it would all be for nothing if she gave up now .
    Wrapped in a towel, she returned to her room, snapping off the light so she could dress with no one outside watching. When daylight came, she would toss her line into the water and see if Davis took the bait.
    If his ego was bigger than his brain, she’d have him right where she wanted him.
     
    **
     
    Jackson spotted the black Jeep out the corner of his eye, barreling up the 235 toward Gateway. Hot damn, the bombshell was back!
    Ducking back inside his dorm room in the converted motel, he tabbed the blinds to verify that the woman he’d confronted yesterday was behind the wheel. Indeed, she was. There was no mistaking her shoulder-length curls as she slowed at the intersection and turned right into the gas station.
    Thankful for his roommate’s absence, Jackson pulled out his cell phone while she parked near the store’s entrance. Why the hell had she returned?
    He accessed the camera application and snapped off several shots as she stepped out of the car, glancing over the hood in his direction. The sensible clothes she wore today didn’t come close to disguising her shapely curves. Even with fifty or so yards between them, she made his temperature rise, but the distance would compromise the quality of the photos .
    Nonetheless, he sent them with a message apprising Ike and Toby of the circumstances. Hopefully the Taskforce analysts could enlarge the image and use their state-of-the-art facial-recognition software to ID the woman. Once they knew who she was, they would put a swift end to her cat and mouse game.
     
    **
     
    With her feet already aching from just five hours on the job, Lena pushed out of the store into the afternoon heat, a bottle of iced tea in one hand