Agent Zero

An agent risks everything for a love he shouldn’t feel in New York Times bestselling author Lilith Saintcrow’s thrilling new romance!

After barely surviving an IED, former US Army soldier Reese was whisked away by a shadowy agency and genetically enhanced. Now a “Super Agent”—smarter, faster, stronger, deadly—Reese executes his missions with precision. But when he’s inexplicably drawn to a down-on-her-luck waitress, Reese learns he’s not the emotionless man he once thought.

One minute, Holly Candless is getting fifty-buck tips from her favorite hunky customer. The next, she’s kidnapped, injected with something and rescued by Reese. Suddenly, they’re on the run from the very government agency that wants Reese reprogrammed—and Holly dead. Keeping Holly alive is not only Reese’s primary mission—it’s his sole chance at love...and survival.

“Come on, open your eyes again, honey.”

Holly did her best to obey.

There, silhouetted with sunlight, was a familiar face. Dark eyes, a baseball cap shielding them. Nose slightly too long, cheekbones slightly too high, the charcoal shading on his cheeks from stubble answering one question—he did get a shadow well before five o’clock.

Reese examined her critically, staring into her eyes for what seemed like forever. He nodded, slightly, as if he’d found what he expected. “How did they get you? Where were you when you were taken?”

Taken? Her arms were heavy, but she managed to rub at her eyes. He pulled her up, wiry strength evident in his grip on her arm. Despite that, he was gentle, and she was glad, because she ached all over. “I... There was a van. I was...I was going for coffee. With you.” The fog in her head was breaking up, but not nearly quickly enough. “Why are you in my house?”

“I’m rescuing you.”

Dear Reader,

This book started as a gift to my writing partner, who really needed a story to get her through some stressful days. Now it’s a gift to you. I had so much fun writing about a waitress and a superspy, and in the end, Holly’s strength and Reese’s tenderness worked their way into my heart. I hope you enjoy their story as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Sincerely,

Lili

Agent Zero

Lilith Saintcrow

www.millsandboon.co.uk

LILITH SAINTCROW has been writing stories since the second grade and lives in Vancouver, Washington, with two children, two cats, two dogs and assorted other strays. Please check out her website at lilithsaintcrow.com.

To Mel, from the beginning.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Part One

Extract

Copyright

Part One

Fourteen hours after the hit, he was out of the stink and the heat of Mosul, stitched up and stinging from the antiseptic, and the debrief was going...well. Or as well as could be expected, in this airless white-painted concrete-floored room with the one-way mirror on the east wall. There wasn’t anyone behind the mirror—Reese would have outright smelled an onlooker—but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a camera. Recording him and combing frame by frame might give them an edge, and they weren’t idiots.

Idiots couldn’t build agents—it took civilian eggheads to do the drafting and drill instructors to do the training—but they could certainly run them.

Which explained Bronson, sort of.

“And that’s it,” Reese heard himself say, dully. Now that he was coming down out of redline, he felt the little vicious nips and bites all over him. Scrambling over the scorching clay rooftops to avoid mujahideen and other surprises, not to mention getting almost blown out of the safe house because his contact was compromised...it could have been much worse. The deepest of the cuts had already closed, with the almost painful itch of wounds sealing themselves faster than they should. “Target, secondary target, collateral.”

“Collateral.” Bronson was a hatchet-faced, bespectacled wall, but that’s what they wanted in wrap-up. He’d debriefed Reese several times now, and it was always the same. No surprise, no affect at all. Bad skin, probably from the fried food coming off him in invisible waves, but a great poker face. Even his ties were all the same, a maroon that looked dirty under fluorescents.

If Reese hadn’t been able to smell the fear on the man, he might even have believed him unaffected. “Nobody told me there’d be guests.” Armed, nasty guests. As well as not-so-armed, innocent ones.

“Ah.” A single syllable, that was all.

Reese decided to prod a little more. “In other words, I took out the entire installation.”

“And?” Bronson’s tone plainly said he considered that the whole point of the job, which was reasonable enough. From an operations point of view, that was.

Not from an agent’s, but who ever asked one?

And if I needed a psych eval, now would be the time for you to suggest it. The physical evals had been daily during training, the psych ones every other day. Looking for a weak spot, checking for breakdown, degradation, a sign that the virus wasn’t going to play nice forever.