Excerpt of Deep Blue by Suzanne McMinn

Cade Brock lowered the binoculars he had trained on the
house down the street, his grip tightening on the cell
phone at his ear as his pulse froze. "What did you say?"

The PAX League chief, Harrison Beck, let a beat draw
out. "It's Adal Chaba. I wanted to tell you myself."

"Keep going." Cade continued to watch the target location
from the parked car he'd positioned down the block even as
his jaw clenched and something dark banded his chest.

"We nailed Kerbasi," Beck told him. "We got the data off
his hard drive that links him to Chaba. I'm taking you off
the case."

"No." The word burst tightly out of Cade's mouth. His
fingers moved of their own accord to the rigid slice of a
scar not four weeks old on the side of his throat. A
parting gift from Harmon Kerbasi. If he hadn't wanted this
case for revenge already, knowing Kerbasi was linked to
the terrorist kingpin Chaba clinched it.

"You sound like hell," Beck said. "As much as we need you
on this case, it's too soon. This is too personal already,
and now —"

"No." He knew he sounded like hell. He felt like hell. But
he had people to put in hell. And yeah, it was
personal. "You need me."

"You need some R&R."

"I had enough R&R." The last month, in the hospital then
recovering at home on enforced leave, had been more R&R
than he'd ever wanted or intended to suffer again. He
needed a case to work on. Downtime was nothing but an
invitation to nightmares of guilt and loss so deep he
didn't want to relive them. And yet he did. Every time he
closed his eyes. And sometimes when they were open.

"You need to come in for more testing."

He was sick and tired of testing. And he knew the PAX
chief didn't just mean the endless scientific probing he'd
endured for most of his life. Beck meant psychological
testing. He knew what they thought of him. They called
him "The Machine" as if he weren't even human. And maybe
he gave that impression. Good enough. He didn't have
buddies in the League. He worked alone, no other agents at
his side. He liked it that way. If they thought that made
him an emotionless machine, so be it. He was respected but
not befriended. He kept his emotional distance. It was
better for everyone that way. Especially him.

Changing any of that wasn't on his agenda. "I'm not coming
in for more testing. I'm not going back on R&R. And you
can take me off the case, but I'm not taking myself off."
He had a slippery relationship with the League.
Technically, he was their agent. They'd raised him from
age six, and some people would say that made them his
family. But they'd never owned him, and the last thing
they were going to do when it came to Chaba was control
him. "Now tell me about Chaba."

Another moment passed in which he was certain Beck was
considering the ten different ways he wanted to throttle
him. The PAX chief respected him, though, and he knew what
getting Chaba meant to Cade.

"The hard drive didn't have much on it," Beck said
finally. "Kerbasi'd been ditching his laptop regularly.
Chaba's careful. He would have insisted on that. Unless
Kerbasi starts talking, all we've got are a few e-mails
that link him up the chain of command. We need the woman.
She's the key."

A red compact car slid down the street toward the house
and stopped. Tall and leggy, the woman stepped out of the
car then turned to scan the quiet, palm-lined Key Mango
street. Cade lifted the binoculars again.

"And I've got her," he said.

He punched the phone off, leaving the PAX chief without
the time, or the connection, to change one damn thing that
was about to happen. Cade watched the target stand,
rooted, for a few moments in the driveway of the house.

It was almost too convenient. Not even a challenge. It
couldn't have been easier if she'd tied a ribbon around
her slim, pretty neck and handed herself to him.

He waited, adrenaline burning, in the nondescript sedan
he'd rented, parked several houses down and across the
street from the two-story house. There was an apartment on
bottom, another on top. Nothing was this easy, and he
wasn't taking any chances. He'd tangled with Tabitha
Donovan before, and she'd nearly cost him his life when
she'd left him to Kerbasi. There would be no repeats of
that scenario.

She stood there, as if she were waiting for someone, too,
as he'd been waiting for her. Or did she fear someone was
after her? For a second, he thought she was going to get
back in the car and drive away. If someone was after her —
someone besides him — well, he might have a chance to kill
two birds with one stone, because the people she was
dealing with were even more elusive than Tabitha Donovan —
or whatever she was calling herself today. And they were
definitely a hell of a lot more dangerous.

Cade knew from personal experience that mass murder was
Chaba's stock in trade.

"Run, baby. Run!"

His mother's wild eyes seared him as he wob-bled,
panicked, on the fiery beach.

"Take care of your brother. You're a big boy."

"No, Mama." He clung to her arm even as she pushed him
away.

"I have to find your father, baby. Take your brother. Run!"

She shook him off, and turned....

Fire, then blackness and screaming, so much screaming —

Cade squeezed his eyes shut for a horrific beat. For the
millionth time, he couldn't stop the screaming, couldn't
go back and make it different, couldn't change the lives
that had been lost, couldn't bury the memories and anger
deep enough. Even blowing Chaba to hell wouldn't do that.
But it would be a start.

He opened his eyes and focused on the present, the woman,
the link to the evil that had haunted him all his life.

Even from a distance in the clouded twilight, she was the
most gorgeous terrorist he'd ever seen. She wore hip-
hugging pink cropped pants and a white camisole top that
clung to curvy breasts and a trim waist. Blond hair fell
free to her shoulders, and even in the soggy Florida Keys
heat, she looked fresh as the proverbial daisy.

He tipped the binoculars to his eyes — the better to see
her deceptively lovely oval face in the scant light,
slender with intriguing hollows that made her look
delicate...when she was anything but.

She nibbled her lip as she hesitated in front of the
building. Did she see him, even from this distance,
through the tinted windows and murky shadows of the
oncoming night and a brewing storm?

A breeze whipped the lush palm fronds up and down the
street and the first plops of the storm front hanging gray
in the sky above hit his wind-shield. She turned to
retrieve an overnight bag from the rear of the vehicle.
She hadn't seen him. She didn't have a clue.

She was about to get one.

He lowered the binoculars, satisfied. She'd be spending
the rest of her life in a government lockup if what the
PAX League believed about her was true. And considering
the evidence he had already, he didn't have any doubts. In
the meantime, they needed her.

Alive, not dead, and with the dangerous double-crossing
game she was playing, she was on borrowed time already.
She didn't know it, but he was about to save her sorry
life.

Getting to the truth, and to her secrets, including her
real identity, was his job, and unfortunately, that meant
keeping her alive. He watched as she swayed her wickedly
sexy hips, crossing to the wooden outside steps leading up
to the second-story apartment, overnight bag in hand. The
small island community of Key Mango that she'd apparently
chosen for her home base was hardly exclusive housing. The
tiny key was made up primarily of locals, shrimp trawling
seamen and dive fanatics, with a sprinkling of Bahamian
rental homes and run-down duplex apartments that attracted
tourists going for economical over trendy. Not that
anything came cheap down here. Even a one-bedroom weather-
beaten studio on the least fashionable island in the coral
keys would cost a pretty penny this close to the water.

Tabitha Donovan had plenty of pretty pennies tucked in her
secret Swiss bank account, no doubt courtesy of Chaba, but
she wasn't showing them off, not with the used car she was
driving and not with the less than stellar housing she'd
used a credit card in her made-up name to lease. It was
how PAX had tracked her here. Mistakes. Criminals always
made them, even the beautiful ones.

The street lay quiet in the early evening, nothing but the
beat of palm fronds in the wind and the rush of gathering
rain hitting the steaming street. This late in the summer,
the vacation renters were heading out and more than half
the homes and apartments were empty, their distant owners
putting months at a time on sale to attract off-season
travelers who would be arriving in the coming weeks. The
cute blonde wasn't planning to leave, though. She'd booked
her rental through the fall. The better to search for the
ancient secret she was planning to sell out at the cost of
thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of lives.

But her plans were about to change. Whether he liked it or
not — and he didn't — she was going with him, and going
alive. She was a pawn on his way to the top, and now that
he knew that top was Chaba, he'd do anything to get there.
Even put up with the woman who'd set him up to die.