Deep Cover Detective. Lena Diaz
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He straightened, looking like a nervous stallion scenting a mare, wanting to grab her and flee from her at the same time.
His eyes had darkened like a stormy night as his warring needs fought inside him. He didn’t bolt.
But he made no move toward her, either. Instead, he fisted his hands at his sides. A slight hitch in his breathing was all that she needed to know that she had a chance to win this battle.
She rose to her feet, keeping her eyes locked on his the whole time. Slowly, she padded across the thick carpet to stand in front of him, with only a few inches and the heat from both their bodies between them.
“Colton,” she whispered. “I want you.”
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “We’re working on a case. We don’t have time—”
“We do have time. Hours to kill.” She slid her hands up the front of his chest, delighting in the feel of his muscles bunching beneath the thin fabric of his T-shirt. “And I’ve got the perfect way to spend at least one of those hours.”
“Silver …” His voice came out a harsh rasp. He cleared his throat and tried again, still not touching her, hands at his sides. “I’m not what you’re looking for.”
“Now, that’s where you’re wrong, Colton.”
Deep Cover Detective
Lena Diaz
LENA DIAZ was born in Kentucky and has also lived in California, Louisiana and Florida, where she now resides with her husband and two children. Before becoming a romantic suspense author, she was a computer programmer. A former Romance Writers of America Golden Heart® Award finalist, she has won a prestigious Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in mystery and suspense. To get the latest news about Lena, please visit her website, www.lenadiaz.com.
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This story is dedicated to Sean and Jennifer Diaz. My greatest, most rewarding accomplishment in life is having amazing children like you. I’m so proud of you both.
Thank you, Amy, Diana, Gwen, Krista, Manda, Rachel, Sarah and Sharon. KaTs rule.
Thank you, Angi Morgan and Alison DeLaine, for daily laughs and the magic room.
And, as always, a sincere thank-you to my editor and agent, Allison Lyons and Nalini Akolekar, for their constant support.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Colton shook his head in disgust and thumped the nav screen on his Mustang’s dashboard. It had to be broken. Either that or the GPS tracker he’d tucked under Eddie Rafferty’s bumper in Naples was on the fritz. Because if the screen was to be believed, the budding young criminal had driven his car off the highway and directly into south Florida’s million-and-a-half-acre swamp known as the Everglades.
Driving a car into the saw grass marsh and twisted islands of mangrove and cypress trees was impossible unless the car was sitting on pontoons. And Eddie’s rusted-out vintage Cadillac boasted bald tires just aching for a blowout. Not a pontoon in sight.
Colton pulled to the shoulder of I-75 near mile marker eighty-four, just past a low bridge over a culvert. This was the last location where the navigation unit showed Eddie’s car before it had taken the turn toward the swamp. So much for using technology to follow the suspect. He should have stayed closer, keeping Eddie in sight instead of relying on the GPS tracker. But when the kid had taken the ramp onto the interstate, Colton had worried that Eddie might get spooked seeing the same black Mustang in his rearview mirror the whole time he was on the highway. So Colton had dropped back a few miles.
Where was the juvenile delinquent now? Certainly not on the highway, and not on the shoulder. Heck, even if the GPS was right and he had pulled off the road here, there was nowhere else to go. Eight-foot-high chain-link fencing bordered this east-west section of I-75 known as Alligator Alley. The fence kept the wildlife from running out onto the road and causing accidents. And yet the dot on the dashboard screen still showed Colton’s prey continuing south, past the fence.
He eyed the tight, solid-looking chain-link mesh twenty feet away. No holes, no skid marks on the asphalt to indicate that a vehicle had lost control. The safety cable along the bottom was intact. But he supposed that could be misleading.
Twice now, that he knew of, vehicles had managed to go airborne after clipping a guardrail and had sailed over the cables and slid under the chain links—without triggering the cable alarms that would automatically notify the police and the department of transportation to send help. Had the same thing happened to his burglary suspect? If it had, the GPS would