Page 65 of Until the End

He pressed the barrel to her hip and pulled the trigger, inserting the microchip. She gave a little yelp. Castle rubbed the tiny red spot, and when she threw him a naughty smile, he let his hand roam freely over her tight, silky-soft bottom. Hunger, savage and possessive, surged inside him. He drew her closer. Their bodies brushed, hips, belly, thighs.

That smile of hers widened, brightened. And so did his world.

The mission, he reminded himself, his stomach muscles tensing. The mission first. “We’ve got to get a move on.” His voice was low and rough with need.

“Upstairs to your room?” Her eyes gleamed with an irresistible playfulness.

It pained him to stop touching her, but he forced himself to drop his hands. “Not together.” Not tonight, anyway.

Sighing, she lowered her dress. “I really need to up my irresistibility quotient.”

“Believe me, you don’t. If your quotient were any higher, I’d burst a blood vessel.” Being this close to her took hold of his sanity and tore it to shreds. If there wasn’t a terrorist attack pending, with lives on the line, nothing would’ve stopped him from whisking her into his arms and carrying her straight up to his bed. He’d kiss her until neither of them could breathe, make love to her until neither of them could remember why it was a mistake. “Take a warm shower while I dry your clothes. Then we’re going to get those hard drives.”

“All right.” Face pale except for the flush on her cheeks and the rosy-pink hue of her lips from kissing, she looked certain, resigned.

Maybe this truce might be real. The third time was the charm, right? But he wasn’t letting his guard down again until he had those hard drives in his possession.

“Where are they?” he asked.

Without prevaricating, none of the hemming and hawing he’d expected, she said, “I mailed them to someone who doesn’t have a direct connection to me. An old professor of my brother’s.”

“What’s his name and where does he live?”

20

Washington, DC

10:40 p.m. EDT

“Run a search for Saturday between four and five p.m. and tell me what packages were mailed,” Bravo said, pressing the tip of the suppressor to the back of the lone FedEx clerk’s head.

Katherine Westcott knew someone was deep-sea-fishing in cyberspace for her and never would’ve used her real name, knowing it’d pop up like a four-hundred-pound blue marlin. But the surveillance footage was timestamped. No way to cover those tracks with her limited resources.

“Why is this happening to me again?” Shaky fingers clacked across the keyboard. “Two packages went out between those times. One from a Thomas Potter to Ruth Giles in Ohio. The other from Knight Industries Two Thousand.”

“That must be it.” Bravo nudged the clerk’s skull as his mind homed in on the first letters of each word: KITT. Clever woman. “Where was it mailed?”

“Massachusetts Institute of Technology.” The middle-aged man hyperventilated, quivering from head to toe. “EECS Department. Attention Professor Lenny Mendoza.”

“When is it scheduled to be delivered?” Bravo asked.

“Tomorrow.” The clerk sniffled pathetically. “No later than nine a.m.” He looked ready to come apart at the first boo. “Why do you people keep pointing guns at my head over this package?”

Everything inside Bravo stilled. “Someone else came in asking the same thing?”

Charlie and Echo both perked up.

Holding his hands up in the air, the clerk’s glassy-eyed gaze darted over his shoulder to Bravo. “That’s what I just said, isn’t it?”

There was another team on this. But whose? The wheels in his head started spinning. “How many of them were there?”

“Ten. A short, stocky man was in charge. They cleared the place out.”

“Who were they?” Bravo asked.

“How am I supposed to know?” The clerk shuddered, his voice choking. “They…they didn’t leave a business card. Who are you? So I can tell the next group of scary thugs who come in asking questions.”

Bravo cracked the butt of his gun across the back of the clerk’s head, rendering him unconscious. The man collapsed in such a wretched heap on the carpet, Bravo almost felt pity for him.