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  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Synopsis

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Other Books by Melissa Price

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Dedication

  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

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Bella Books

  Synopsis

  When the anonymous rock star Steel Eyes was shot onstage, the world assumed she was dead. But Kenna Waverly—the real woman and super spy behind the Steel Eyes persona—is alive and well, living off the radar in Jamaica.

  Now Kenna is forced back into the spy game when a foreign hack sabotages America’s cyber security. She must infiltrate a foreign embassy to retrieve the source code before the identities of American agents worldwide are compromised. Along the way, Kenna finds herself partnered with Alice, the woman with whom she shares an erotic past. Then in the midst of her mission, Kenna finally learns the truth about the assassination of her very own parents.

  The stakes are high and the only way Kenna and Alice can survive the operation is to put their lives on the line—and their skin in the game.

  Copyright © 2017 by Melissa Price

  Bella Books, Inc.

  P.O. Box 10543

  Tallahassee, FL 32302

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  First Bella Books Edition 2017

  eBook released 2017

  Editor: Vicki Sly

  Cover Designer: Judith Fellows

  ISBN: 978-1-59493-559-6

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Other Bella Books by Melissa Price

  Steel Eyes

  Acknowledgment

  I would like to thank the dedicated people in the clandestine services. I’m particularly grateful to those who allowed me a glimpse into their world. Along with people in microchip manufacturing, their information allowed me to envision and formulate this story’s plot. I remain grateful to the memory of Pierre Bourgeade: French man of letters, playwright, novelist, poet, director, and descendant of Jean Racine. What a gift to have called him a friend: L’âme de la campagne pense à toi.

  To the noble women at Bella Books—the caretakers of our stories.

  To Suzann Brent: True north is always right where I’ve left it. To Linda Lane and Oana Niculae: If you could sing we’d have been a girl band. To you, my readers: You are my raison d’être.

  About the Author

  Melissa is a novelist, who credits her former profession as a chiropractic sports physician with creating characters who make skillful leaps and bounds. She is passionate about animal rescue. Her novels include Steel Eyes and Skin in the Game. Melissa’s current works-in-progress include: The Right Closet—a sociopolitical farce, a children’s book, and a May-December lesbian romance. She co-wrote the screenplay Toma—The Man, The Mission, The Message. A lifetime guitarist and avid swimmer, Melissa hopes to be reincarnated as a mermaid. Her motto is: Write. Read. Swim. Repeat. While Melissa’s happy place is anywhere Caribbean, you can always find her at www.melissa-price.com.

  Dedication

  Dedicated to the memories of Nancy and Chick Price, who taught me to strive for excellence and originality in all its forms. And Andréa Price Goldsmith—to whose effervescent artistry I remain beholden.

  Prologue

  2003

  Kenna Waverly shivered when the Russian poked her bare back with the cold barrel of his Walther 9 mm. She stumbled on her high heels when he shoved her forward—her head still woozy from his chloroform cologne.

  “Get up on the stage now—both of you,” he said.

  “You don’t want to do this, Ivan,” the other woman began, “they’re going to come looking for us.”

  Ivan waved the Walther between them. “You’ll be gone by then. I take no prisoners.”

  Kenna glared at him. “And here I thought we had nothing in common.”

  She and Elana stepped up onto the stage in the abandoned strip club.

  Ivan tossed two pairs of handcuffs at their feet. “Cuff yourself to the pole.”

  “No,” Elana protested. “Why should I?”

  “Because I can make death quick and painless, or I can make it feel like dying a hundred times. Your choice.”

  Kenna put one cuff on her left wrist and slapped the other end around the pole. She looked at Elana and flexed her right eyebrow. “Do it, Elana.”

  Elana stared into Kenna’s eyes and then locked herself to the stripper pole, the handcuff scraping against the metal.

  The women stared into each other’s eyes, grabbed the pole with both hands and Elana followed Kenna’s lead as they performed a slow and sultry spin around it.

  “Yes,” Ivan said. “Now you dance only for me. I am the last person who will ever see you dance.” He stood at the edge of the stage and lowered the pistol while he watched them spin sensually in tandem. They stopped.

  “Can’t dance without music, Ivan,” Kenna said.

  Ivan lumbered off the stage, trudged to the boom box on the dusty bar and turned it on.

  “Pole Melt?” Kenna whispered.

  Elana nodded.

  “Dance!” Ivan shouted.


  “Well, turn up the volume!” Elana said.

  Kenna grunted. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “What?” said Elana. “‘She’s Outta Control’ by Steel Eyes is perfect for a Pole Melt.”

  They gripped the pole. “Top or bottom?” Elana whispered.

  Kenna hid her smile. “Seriously? Top.”

  “Dance,” Ivan yelled again over the loud music.

  Kenna whispered, “Don’t move until he’s close.”

  “I said dance!” Ivan stomped back to the stage, his face now crimson with anger when the women still hadn’t moved.

  “Wait for it,” Kenna said under her breath.

  Ivan jumped up onto the stage and nudged Kenna again with his gun. She stared at him playfully, seductively, as she and Elana began to rotate around the pole in their skimpy two-piece fringe stripper costumes.

  Ivan stood there smiling.

  They performed two full rotations and stopped.

  “Ivan, I can’t hook my elbow to the pole with this handcuff on,” Kenna said. “If you want us to do your favorite routine…”

  He unlocked the handcuff and Kenna climbed to the top position on the pole, hooked her elbow around it and extended her legs straight out in front of her.

  Elana began her Spinning Straddle, holding the pole with both hands. Below Kenna, she spun around it with her legs spread apart. Picking up momentum with each rotation, she pushed Kenna’s foot sending her into a spin where she turned upside down. In one perfectly timed simultaneous strike, Elana kicked the Walther from Ivan’s hand with her stilettos, and Kenna’s calves locked him in a choke hold. Ivan struggled, but not for long before he collapsed on the stage.

  Kenna straddled his body and stared down at the Russian. “You’re right, El, that is the perfect song for this.” Then she thought, though I never would have guessed when I wrote it.

  Kenna searched his pockets and tossed Elana the handcuff key while she fished out the keys to Ivan’s SUV—the vehicle he had used to kidnap them.

  “Is it me or is it damn cold in here?” Kenna said as she slid across the stage toward the Walther.

  Elana cuffed Ivan’s wrists behind his back. “Not according to the Steel Eyes song. We’re so outta control that we’re hot.”

  “Maybe that’s not what the lyric really means,” Kenna said a little defensively, her register almost a full octave above her natural voice.

  They both whipped around toward the clatter coming from outside.

  “What was that?” said Elana.

  Kenna kicked off her heels, chambered the Walther and slapped Ivan awake. “On your feet!” she commanded him.

  “It’s coming from the front,” said Elana.

  “Go out the back and get that SUV. I’ll use Ivan to hold them off and then meet you at the door.”

  “No—” Elana began.

  “Dammit, El. Go! Now.”

  Chapter One

  Three weeks earlier

  Sunset at Quarter Moon Resort in Montego Bay was always the end to a perfect day, because any day spent at Quarter Moon was inevitably perfect. Kenna sat quietly beside her old friend Myron—My-RON, as he pronounced it. She dug her toes down into the cool, end-of-day sand, then brushed dried Caribbean salt off her sun-drenched skin.

  Painfully quiet at times, Myron only spoke when he had something to say, and even then it had to be important to him.

  “Dark-night, ya know?” he said with a Jamaican accent as thick as his body was thin.

  Kenna nodded. “The waxing crescent will be back tomorrow. I miss the moon during dark-night. No glimmer off the waves.”

  Myron spoke with clipped words that were never kind to the American ear. “A few more minutes and I will be hard for you to see.” And even when he joked, his face remained smile-free.

  She grinned at the reference to their first meeting, when Myron’s title wasYoung Beach Man; when the hair on his head was black instead of snow white. Kenna had long admired his economy of expression, and his keen, mostly silent observations. Tall like a spindly tree, his skin blacker than anyone she had ever seen, a very serious young Myron gave eleven-year-old Kenna her first sailing lesson. Menacingly silent apart from the instructions he spoke, his dark and serious mood had unnerved her. He would observe her, saying little, and even then she could barely understand him.

  Offshore enough that everything on land had appeared dollhouse-size, they’d gotten caught—been engulfed—in a squall that swirled up around them without warning. The two-man sunfish they were sailing would have repeatedly capsized in the whitecaps and erratic wind were it not for the sea-savvy Myron.

  Frightened by the ominous cloud that had swallowed the sun, young Kenna hoped Myron knew what he was doing. But it seemed to her they were still heading out to sea and she said so. Myron glared at her, seemingly unfazed by the waves, or the wind, or the rain—or her. He fixed his obsidian stare, his expression cold. “Do you want to go to Cuba, little white girl?”

  “Myron, take me back to shore!” she answered.

  Myron laughed so hard that Kenna could see the spaces where teeth were missing in the back of his mouth. That moment sealed the deal on a lifelong friendship. The Cuba remark had been their private joke ever since. But Myron was much older now. They both were.

  They’d never been closer than the past few years, since her rock star alter ego, Steel Eyes, had gone underground. The assassination attempt on her at the height of her fame wasn’t part of her life plan, but then, in her experience, life had a crude way of doing whatever the hell it wanted to anyway. She had swum, windsurfed and stared out to sea for longer than she thought possible. At times longing to get it all back, she continually tried to bargain with the universe—tried to make peace in every breath that the music was gone—just up and gone.

  Not unlike her parents’ fate, an assassin had come after her too—with one exceptional distinction. She was still alive. Kenna questioned if at this point it wasn’t sheer fantasy, to think she’d ever find the people who had killed her family—and changed her forever. Then she wondered if revenge and vengeance were the same things, because if they weren’t, she wanted to double down on both.

  Myron flicked his hand in the direction of their windsurf boards. “You’ve become a good sailor, you know the good wind now.”

  “Thanks to you.”

  He reached into the pocket of his sand-coated beach shorts, took out a tiny bag and held it in his closed hand. “Miss Lola gave me dis fayou. The lady come and give it to her like you said.” He slipped her the velvet pull-string sack. “Miss Lola said to thank you for the money to fix her house after the storm. And for dat she’s going to find you the sweetest sugar pine ever grown on the island.”

  Still gazing out to sea, Kenna nodded. “Now there’s an offer I can never refuse, Myron. No one knows how to pick a sugar pine like Miss Lola.” She glanced at him and gave him a wink. “Don’t tell her I did it for the sugar pine.”

  Myron laughed. “You’re a good friend.”

  “You are too, Myron. Thank you for doing this.” She slid the sack into her pocket. “I wouldn’t have asked you unless it was important.”

  “Ya know, everytinggonna be okay as long as you nuh fall out of da tree.”

  “Meaning?”

  “When you live in da tree, life is good…life is beautifulup in da tree…as long as you don’t fall from da tree.” He reached out with his long arm and patted her shoulder. “You have a dangerous job. Don’t fall from da tree.”

  “I know.”

  Myron gazed up at the palm canopy under which they sat. Slowly, he lowered his eyes until they met hers. “I remember your parents—you, as a girl. They raised you to live in da tree. You stay in da tree, my friend.”

  She stood, hooked her sandals between her fingers and looked down at him. “You know what to do if it all goes bad.”

  “Yea, mon. I nuhfall from da tree!”

  “Exactly.” Kenna shook his hand and left toward the
eastern gate where she had parked her Jeep. She was in no rush to pass the prehistorically large foliage and bright flowers, nor the ackee tree that had survived every tropical storm and hurricane for as long as she could remember. Its hand-painted sign still warned guests to nevereat an ackee until it had opened naturally.

  Poison never looked so artful to her as an ackee. The pear-shaped fruit in all their colorful stages, turning from green to bright red, then to yellow-orange before naturally splitting open to reveal the creamy flesh. It seemed to her that ackee was the erotica of the plant world—both dangerous andbeautiful. Her favorite combination.

  Farther down she stopped and looked hard in every direction. Certain she was alone on the path, she reached up and snatched a ripe naseberry from its branch. From the shadows, Nathan, the young security guard appeared.

  “You picked a good one tonight, Miss Kenna.”

  “Nathan, how do you do that! I was sure I was alone this time.”

  “Ya can’t get anytingby me, miss.” He smiled. “Have a good evening.”

  She bit into the sweet fruit and waved as she passed him. The ritual of roaming this property flowed deep through her, slow and sweet like the viscous naseberry nectar on her lips. More than Quarter Moon’s inherent and manicured beauty, her bittersweet memories tied her to this place. Indelible flashbacks of her childhood were splashed on Quarter Moon’s canvas in fuchsia, yellow, turquoise and every imaginable state of green. The imprint of the way life once was before she was orphaned lived on in this place. Here, her parents were still alive instead of cheaply stolen by an assassin.

  The path ahead of her grew darker. The sun had finally set.

  Chapter Two

  Six months earlier

  Ivan Mikhailov made it under the radar into the United States by the pure luck of timing. Russian criminals were neither the thugs du jour, nor the commie spies of the Cold War that they once were. Although well beyond September 11, 2001, yet still in its emotional wake, the Eurasian Mafia became small potatoes to national security; more accurately, teeny tiny potatoes.