Atomic Beauty Read online

  “You wouldn’t call me angel if you really knew me,” Erika said.

  Erika Nile knows her devastating beauty always leaves men begging for more, but her lust for Jace Mitchell is raw and powerful. And although she's just obeying orders when she cozies up to the rogue agent, giving in to temptation is the worst possible idea. Still, how can she ignore what her body craves: to be with Jace, no matter the cost. And that cost will be high. Because there’s a lot more to this case than anyone is telling her—including Jace. Trust and feelings have no place in her work, or in her life. And yet there’s no denying Jace is a distraction. They're perfectly matched as adversaries—and as lovers—and if this mission goes wrong, it could be Erika’s undoing. Especially once the kill order comes in and it’s clear only one of them will get out alive…

  Barb Han lives in North Texas with her very own hero-worthy husband, three beautiful children, a spunky golden retriever/standard poodle mix and too many books in her to-read pile. In her downtime, she plays video games and spends much of her time on or around a basketball court. She loves interacting with readers and is grateful for their support. You can reach her at barbhan.com.

  Books by Barb Han

  Harlequin Intrigue Noir

  Atomic Beauty

  Harlequin Intrigue

  Rancher Rescue

  The Campbells of Creek Bend Series

  Witness Protection

  Gut Instinct

  Hard Target

  Atomic Beauty

  Barb Han

  Deepest thanks to Allison Lyons and Jill Marsal. Writing this book wouldn’t have been possible without the two of you. I’m profoundly grateful. Michelle Miles and Delores Fossen, you challenged me to shatter my walls and let the process take over. Heartfelt thanks to you both. Brandon, Jacob and Tori, the three of you fill my life with adventure, joy and, more important, unconditional love. I can’t think of three better gifts. John, you are the great love of my life, my true equal and the person with which I’m grateful to spend all of my days. I love you.

  Contents

  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

  “Where there is much light, the shadows are deepest.”

  —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Chapter One

  Vancouver, B.C.

  Searing, burning sunbeams crossed Erika Nile’s central line of sight. Flashing, brilliant lights in a zigzag pattern usually started in the middle of her visual field, progressing outward, creating a hole—a blind spot—before the full force of her migraine hit.

  Cartoonlike stars dotted her periphery. There was no medicine strong enough to combat the onset or the onslaught when it came. When they’d intensified two months ago, Erika figured she had two choices. The first being that she could phone this development in to her boss at Sanctuary, an off-the-books division of the CIA, and be pulled from her current assignment—the one she’d spent the past six months working on to track down the US’s most lethal weapon, Jace Mitchell, who’d gone rogue during a critical assignment.

  Then there was option two. Suck it up, power forward and bring justice to the man who’d betrayed his country.

  She’d picked door number two. She’d found him three weeks ago, or rather, let him think he’d found her. Now that she had him right where she wanted him, she had no plans to turn him over to another officer for all the glory. Besides, the aura gave her half a day’s notice. All she had to do was disappear at the first warning signs, then find a pitch-black room to provide shelter from the outside world until the raging storm literally blew through her.

  Her plan had been on course until last night. The aura had come on suddenly and was crippling. Vertigo, double vision and paralysis on her right side were the first in the five-course meal that had been served her body. After the soup course, salad came in the form of a viselike grip over her head as volcanic pressure built behind her eyes. Her brain had felt as if it was expanding, there was so much sickening pressure on her skull. Her eyes felt dry, sockets hurt and bright light was the devil in a red dress tap dancing across her forehead. Forget noise. Every sound was as if little monkeys holding tambourines were trapped inside her head clanking against her brain.

  The appetizer round had been served with a sensitive and achy body, as if she had the flu. Alternating ice packs and hot-water bottles had kept her skin from being engulfed in chills or burning up in flames. The entrée came in the form of a dark room, being hidden from light and distraction, enduring the intense pain while waiting for it to pass. She’d zoned in and out, sleeping in twenty-minute sprints.

  Dessert, the blurred vision, was a lot like lying at the bottom of a rippling pond looking upward at the world in one of those falling dreams—and last night, the world she looked up at was Jace.

  Recovery was a lot like a hangover. Erika felt as if she’d been hit by a bus and then left on the street feeling bruised, battered and drained. Where was the twelve-step program for that?

  Practically stroking out at Jace’s place could’ve gotten her killed. She could only be grateful he hadn’t insisted on slipping off her ankle boots last night or her KA-BAR would’ve raised an eyebrow. She couldn’t afford even a tiny slip around a highly trained killer like Jace.

  Maybe it was the first time she’d met a true kindred spirit, but God help her she respected him for it. Something else had been building between them for weeks, and if Erika were being honest, it had started the minute he’d walked across the bar and told her she wanted to buy him a drink.

  She’d known he wouldn’t look like the intelligence photos she’d been handed at briefing. He’d abandoned his clean-cut blend-into-the-background facade for something manly and virile and raw. Behind a day’s worth of scrub was a gorgeous face on top of his six-foot-one frame that was long, lean and stacked with muscles. He had biting wit and a wicked sense of humor. He’d laugh at her if he heard her call him gorgeous. He’d consider it a dig.

  He wasn’t a pretty boy. There was no hint of metrosexual in anything about Jace Mitchell. His typical outfit of jeans, dark T-shirt and work boots fit him to perfection. Half the time he had stubble on his chin, and she liked the way it felt when it grazed her skin as he kissed her neck.

  For a trained killer, his hands were rough, his eyes deep—a gentle shade of blue. And that was probably why he was so damn good at his job. His rough good looks might turn heads but no one stared for long. His tattoos and general disposition said he didn’t do caramel macchiatos or idle chitchat. People broke eye contact as quickly as they could, even in Downtown Eastside, or DTES, and walked the other direction.

  And yet, he’d sat by her side last night, touching her with a rare tenderness, making sure she made it through the tornado blasting through her. Then, he’d insisted she hang around this morning while he shot out to pick up grub.

  It wasn’t the headache hangover that had her agreeing. Nor was it the guaranteed alone time in his loft. She’d swept it the first night. She’d stuck around because she hadn’t found anything to send back to Sanctuary, and knowing why Jace had bailed on his last assignment and gone into hiding was a matter of national security.

  The key rattled against the door.

  Jace walked in balancing a food bag and two large coffees on his arm from the amazing place down the street with hash browns that had a kick all their
own.

  “That headache was one sick fuck last night.” He examined her, taking in her entire form as she leaned back in his home office chair. “You look better.”

  “Thanks to you.” She’d slept in his bed, and woke with his smell all over her. His micro loft in DTES was a perfect cover for the transient dock worker he pretended to be. He looked the part, all brawn and facial hair, and sexy as hell. The crackheads and addicts lining the streets wouldn’t dare approach him given his size and physical presence. He looked as if he could break a man in half with his bare hands. Given his background, Erika knew he could.

  “Since when did you start smoking?” Even after three weeks, the rich timbre in his voice slid through her like warm apple cider. And it had taken less than a month of spending time with him to develop feelings that, under different circumstances, could’ve turned into something interesting. Maybe even something special.

  “I didn’t.” Erika inhaled deeply, and then blew a smoke ring toward him. The tilted halo expanded and stretched around his face before thinning and then disappearing. Cigarettes burned her throat—a controlled pain—and an improvement from her childhood method of cutting. Being forced to witness her mother’s brutal rape and murder did strange things to a fourteen-year-old.

  The event, much like the migraines, had tipped her world on its axis.

  Her father had been career military which had translated to not home a lot, except that she’d known he loved her. They’d moved, changed everything familiar after her mother’s murder. He’d been killed in the line of duty two years later.

  When she’d blown her IQ test scores out of the water, the government didn’t have far to look for its next prodigy. Hundreds of hours of therapy coupled with thousands of hours of training, and she’d become the best, thanks to her dad’s best friend, Ted Murdock, who was now her mentor and boss. He’d taken in a lonely and lost sixteen-year-old, and turned her into something that would make her dad proud.

  Murdock and her father had served together in elite forces during the Vietnam War. When they’d returned home, Uncle Ted started Sanctuary and convinced her father to work for him. Uncle Ted had stepped up to be her guardian after her father’s death. And the day she went to work for him he became Murdock to her.

  He was tough, and she’d become stronger, more focused and lethal under his mentorship.

  The tenth anniversary of her father’s death was coming in a few days and she was no closer to figuring out who’d killed him—who’d taken away all the family she had—than she’d been before. March was the most depressing month of the whole goddamn year.

  Jace pulled the cigarette from between her lips, grazing her bottom lip with his thumb, and took a drag. “These things’ll kill you.”

  “So they say.” He instinctively knew what to do to put her at ease. Damn, walking away from him when this operation ended was going to kill her.

  He moved to the kitchenette and crushed the butt inside a dirty coffee mug, and then turned those gorgeous blues on her. Despite the fact she’d come across every kind of man in her line of work, not one had affected her like Jace. He was danger, excitement and sex appeal all wrapped into one—her true match in every sense. When he focused those light blues on her, her stomach BASE jumped off a cliff without a parachute.

  He handed her a coffee and she sipped it, enjoying the burn in her throat.

  “Guess we have a lot to learn about each other.” He dipped down and kissed her. Awareness jolted through her the instant his lips touched hers. The taste of strong coffee and Marlboro mingled on her tongue. Her body was already sensitized with him being in the room. His lightest touch sent heat swirling low in her belly, between her thighs. But his lips on hers were an orgasm of their own.

  “No reason to spoil the fun with reality,” she shot back. With his lips an inch away from hers, she could breathe his scent, a mix of salty ocean and fresh air. She stopped to look at him, really look at him, trying to decide whether or not she wanted to sleep with him before this assignment was over. Okay, that wasn’t entirely fair. There was no doubt she wanted to sleep with him. And they’d been close one too many times. She hasn’t been there for social reasons, no matter what she’d led him to believe when she let him pick her up in the club three weeks ago.

  In that time, he’d already chipped away at the stone casing around her heart. And she had to decide if the cost, the pain, would be worth the benefit. Until then, she needed to maintain some sense of control.

  “You’re not the only one with a few surprises.” He ate up the distance to the bathroom in three quick strides. All man, muscle and virility, she admired how the denim stretched around his thighs as he moved. “I have a few of my own.”

  She had no doubt. “Found an extra toothbrush under the sink in the bathroom still in its wrapper. Hope you don’t mind that I used it.”

  “You can have it. About time you kept something here, don’t you think?”

  She spun the chair around, facing his laptop, which was situated on a small desktop by a huge picture window, ignoring the sharp pain in her chest at the thought of leaving him.

  His space might be small, but it was new and had everything a person living alone needed—a fold-down bed, compact appliances, a flat-screen TV, sofa, several chairs and a coffee table. For eight-fifty a month, high ceilings, a wall of windows, cable TV and internet came with the deal.

  Of course, a man with Jace’s income could afford a place in Shaughnessy, but that would be visible and blow his dock-worker facade—a part he played to perfection.

  Three weeks of gathering intel and she wasn’t any closer to figuring this guy out. He had a few secrets, all right. And he was damn good at keeping them hidden.

  Having scoured his place multiple times, she was convinced whatever she was looking for had to be on his computer. She didn’t dare touch his laptop without his permission. There were too many programs ready to snap her picture if she failed to get the password right.

  Being alone at his place this morning had given her an idea. While his guard was down, it was time to make a move and see if he’d take the bait. “I need to check my email and I get no bars at your place on my phone.” She rolled her eyes. Her cover as a graphic designer for a small production company fit with her dark clothes and hair. “My boss has a hard-on for this new client and if I don’t check in, I’m out of a job. So, you got a password for this thing?”

  He turned; his blue eyes stared at her for a long moment as if he was deciding if he bought her act or not.

  “Hey, I don’t want to hone in on your turf if you’re afraid your girlfriend will catch you, or something.” She threw her hands in the air and shrugged as if she didn’t care. And yet the word girlfriend left a bitter taste on her tongue. “I can always go home and check.”

  He picked up the breakfast bag and moved to the small couch, opened her to-go box and set it on the small coffee table. “It can’t wait?”

  “Some of us are on the nine-to-five grind. You know, work when the sun’s still out,” she hedged, praying he’d take the bait. “If I don’t at least pretend to work at home today, you’ll have to get an extra job to support me when I get canned and move in with you.” Nothing scared a man faster than a woman talking about shacking up when he’d only known her a few weeks.

  “Good point. Scoot up.” He slid in the chair behind her, his hard-as-granite chest pressing against her back. God help her, but her heart stirred. When his arms encircled hers and his hand covered hers on the mouse, she may as well have jumped the Grand Canyon for the rush of awareness and adrenaline that jolted through her. “Then again, I can think of a whole lot of fun things to do if I came home to you waiting in my bed every morning.”

  She wasn’t the only one aroused. His erection pressed against her lower back, and she had no doubt that sleeping with him would blow her mind.

  But Jace wouldn’t be a case of sex for sex’s sake. She liked him. Too much. So much so, it’d be easy to forget she had a
job to do and everything he’d told her about himself so far was a lie.

  He leaned forward, his hot breath on the base of her neck. “The password is SexAndMore@69.”

  Go figure. Leave it to a man to make his password about sex. “Is that how you like it?”

  “With you? I’d take doggy-style, missionary…hell, baby-doll, I’d fuck you in any position you want until you the sun rose tomorrow and you begged me to stop.” His lips grazed the sensitized skin on the base of her neck, moving up. The heat between them was its own thick presence in the room.

  Under ordinary circumstances, the decision to sleep with Jace would be a no-brainer. This was the definition of complicated.

  “What’s stopping you?” she teased. Baiting an apex predator, a shark, was probably not her best move. Make one wrong move, and she was dead. Even if she lived, nothing good could come out of her sleeping with the man she was sent to spy on. He was a high-value asset who’d disappeared with government property.

  Now that she had his password, she could download his files and be done with this gig. Between the headaches and the effects he was having on her judgment, it was probably time to move on anyway. So, why did the thought of leaving make her limbs heavy and fill her with a sense of dread?

  On second thought, if she were about to walk out of his life forever, maybe she needed to reconsider her policy on sleeping with him. She was pretty sure Jace would be the best damn sex of her life.

  Off limits, her brain protested, reminding her that it was bad business to sleep with a target, especially since her feelings ran deeper than one night. Could she have more than that? She almost laughed out loud. Seriously, where could it go? A high-value target and the CIA’s best officer?

  It had disaster stamped all over it.

  Plus, getting sexually involved with a man like Jace would muddy her life. Once this mission was over, she didn’t want to lay in bed every night, awake, staring at the ceiling, thinking about him, missing him. She’d already regretted losing the scent of him all over her when she’d folded up his bed this morning.