Hidden Steel by Durgin Doranna

Author:Durgin, Doranna [Durgin, Doranna]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Bought Efling, suspense
Publisher: Blue Hound Visions
Published: 2010-09-12T05:00:00+00:00

* * * * *

She didn’t have an answer for him. They’d gone to bed without such things, sleeping in the unfamiliar silences of the hotel room with mere feet separating the beds and an overwhelming and awkward awareness of each other’s presence. Mickey felt it; she heard it in his voice. But soon enough his breathing deepened, and the sound of it lulled her into a light sleep.

Not for long.

She woke straight into alertness, so alert that she felt for the knives she’d left on the bedside table. But moments of listening revealed nothing other than Steve’s deep breathing, his occasional soft snore. Moments of listening revealed that the noise was all in her head, panicked clamorings of responsibility and need.

A man was dead in her wake.

NaiaNaiaNaia …

She’d learned very little about Naia on the web. Stanford was close-mouthed about her, and wisely so—Irhaddan’s president wouldn’t allow his daughter to attend a school where she was easily exposed to examination and speculation. Stanford had already established its ability to keep high-profile students away from the limelight—various actors, another president’s daughter—they’d been vulnerable, too, and they’d been protected.

From basic news sources she only gathered that the girl had been home-schooled and yet passed her college prep tests with flying colors, that she returned to her country at every break, and that although she wasn’t worldly, she was plenty intelligent.

The perfect asset.

Mickey stiffened, her hands clenching around the covers. The perfect asset? What did that mean? What part of her had said that?

And thinking about it, as usual, made every trace of the memory flee into the inaccessible recesses of her mind.

She could have screamed. Would have screamed, if not for her sleeping companion—a man drawn into Mickey’s shifting world of too many dangers and too few answers.

She shoved the covers aside, baring her legs to the cool air-conditioned room. She wore her stretchy sport top, but had rinsed the bottoms out and devoutly hoped they would dry before morning. Because come morning … she had to do something. Anything. And for that she needed a hook … something that would help her answer Steve’s question of the night before. Where do we go from here?

That’s how she found herself on his bed, a queen-size with plenty of room for her to ease beside him and sit cross-legged on top of the covers. On second thought she pulled a stray pillow onto her lap, and then she just sat there. Getting here had been so easy, so natural—but waking him up was another matter.

Finally, she whispered into the darkness. “Steve. Wake up.”

He slept on.

No wonder. Still recuperating from that beating, and she’d dragged him across town on foot. Quietly, she leaned over to rap a knuckle against the headboard, not far from his ear.

His hand flashed up to close around her wrist. Her startled gasp turned into a grin quickly enough. Steve, for all his caring save-the-world ways, underestimated himself when it came to his physical nature. “Shh,” she said, all too aware of what those first, disoriented moments of wakefulness could be like.

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