Page 8 of High-Priority Asset

No one could touch his property. Not a mugger and especially not riffraff who wasn’t fit to lick her shoes, even if he had intervened on her behalf.

“Yes.” The background noise on Olga’s end changed as if she had moved outside. “She’s alone.”

He released a breath of relief.

It had better stay that way.

Good girl, Isabel, for not letting him escort you to your car. Such foolishness would demand punishment.

Remind her who she belonged to.

So far, he’d played along with the restraining order, the long tease. As if a slip of paper would keep him away from her. Every woman loved the chase, but none more than Isabel.

Deep down she knew that he’d never stop pursuing her. This game was fun, foreplay, building the anticipation until they were reunited. She needed time to miss him, appreciate him, to realize no one could ever love her the way he did. When she came crawling back home to him things would be different, better than they’d been in the beginning.

Only he was good enough for her, understood her standards, how to take care of her, what she really needed.

“But the man is still in front of the gallery, watching her head to the valet,” Olga said.

“Stay on Isabel. If that man comes sniffing around her again, call me immediately.” He’d handle it personally.

After he hung up, he checked the lunar calendar app on his phone and smiled, satisfaction seeping through him. In the meantime, he’d pay Isabel a visit later tonight.

STANDING IN FRONT of the Kismet art gallery, Dutch watched Isabel limp away and thought about Karma. How he was going to be its instrument and make sure that jerk got what he deserved.

Anger washed through him in a cold fury, the burn hard.

He stormed across the street, hurried around to the back side of the empty building that was up for rent, past his parked motorcycle, and entered from the rear rather than using the main entrance off Santa Monica Boulevard. Flying up the stairs, he took them three at a time. He threw open the door and charged into the surveillance hub the US Marshals Service had set up.

Dutch had reached his limit. He’d been yanked from the Fugitive Apprehension Response Team out at Camp Beauregard in Louisiana and given this undercover assignment only two days ago. Apparently, he was at the top of a short list of potential candidates fitting the right profile—whatever the hell that was supposed to mean—to accomplish the job.

But he was unprepared. Exposed.

With an eleventh-hour assignment, there hadn’t been time to create fake credentials. The best they could do was alter the dates for his actual prior service military record and his type of discharge, from honorable to general, which meant he’d done a good job until he engaged in misconduct or received nonjudicial punishment under Article 15 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. After that, it was easy enough to make it appear as if he’d never been a marshal.

Not only was he forced to use his real name, but his support team were marshals he’d never worked with before.

So far, the operation was off to a shaky start.

“Where is he?” Dutch asked Allison Chen, a slim Asian deputy marshal from the San Diego office, supporting this operation.

Alarm widening Allison’s dark eyes, she tipped her head toward the left.

Dutch marched across the wide space past tables with surveillance equipment and his gear—riding jacket and helmet. In the adjoining open space, he found Deputy Marshal Jake Prindle, assigned to the LA office. The blockhead who decided to hit a woman.

Prindle was seated in a chair, his head hung over his lap with a compress to his nose, forearm resting on his leg. His eyes flashed up at Dutch and he straightened.

Dutch seized him by his T-shirt and yanked him up from the chair, ripping the cotton. “What in the hell were you thinking? You used a knife! You punched her!”

“Hey, dude.”

“You call me deputy or Haas.” Dutch’s voice dropped low, turning menacing. “Not dude.”

“The knife was authorized. It was a dull blade no sharper than a butter knife and I only held the spine to her throat. She wasn’t in any real danger.”

“Why’d you hit her?” Dutch wanted nothing more than to pound his fist into Prindle. Pulverize his face, finishing the job that Isabel had started. “What kind of man does that?”

What kind of well-trained marshal?