Tall, Dark and Lethal,New

Excerpt. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. He would kill a man before the day was out. And God help himCade Palmer hoped this would be the last time.He'd done the job before and didn't like the strange heaviness that settled on him. Not guilt or second thoughtshe'd been a soldier too long for that. But still, something grim and somber that made little sense, especially today. He'd been waiting for this moment for months. Today he would put an old nightmare to rest and fulfill a promise.In an hour, Abhi would hand him information on David Smith's whereabouts, and there was no place on earth he couldn't reach by the end of the day. He'd hire a private jet if he had to. Whatever it took. Before the sun comes up tomorrow, David Smith will be gone.He headed up the stairs to his cell phone as it rang on his nightstand. Wiping the last of the gun oil on his worn jeans, he crossed into his bedroom. He was about to reach for the phone when he caught sight of the unmarked van parked across the road from his house.The van hadn't been there thirty minutes ago. Nor had he seen it before. He made it his business to pay attention to things like that. At six in the morning on Saturday, his new suburban Pennsylvania neighborhood was still asleep, the small, uniform yards deserted. Nothing was out of placeexcept the van, which made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.The only handgun he kept inside the housea SIG P228was downstairs on the kitchen table in pieces, halfcleaned. He swore. Trouble had found him once againpar for the course in his line of work. Just because he was willing to let go of his old enemiesexcept David Smithdidn't mean they were willing to let go of him.'Happy blasted retirement,' he said under his breath as he turned to get the rifle he kept in the hallway closet. From the corner of his eye, he caught movement. The rear door of the van inched open, and with a sick sense of dread, he knew what he was going to see a split second before the man in the back was revealed, lifting a grenade launcher to his shoulder.Instinct and experience. Cade had plenty of both and put them to good use, shoving the stillringing phone into his back pocket as he lunged for the hallway.Had he been alone in the house, his plan would have been simple: get out and make those bastards rue the day they were born. But he wasn't alone, which meant he had to alter his battle plan to include grabbing the most obnoxious woman in the universeaka his neighbor, who lived in the other half of his duplex and dragging her from the kill zone.He darted through his bare guest bedroom and busted open the door that led to the small balcony in the back, crashing out into the muggy August morning. Heat, humidity and birdsong.At least the birds in the jungle knew when danger was afoot. These twittered on, clueless. Proximity to civilization dulled their instincts. And his. He should have known that trouble was coming before it got here. Should have removed himself to some cabin in the woods, someplace with a warning system set up and an arsenal at his fingertips, a battleground where civilians wouldn't have been endangered. But he was where he was, so he turned his thoughts to escape and evasion as he moved forward.Bailey Preston's half of the house was the mirror image of his, except that she used the back room for her bedroom. Cade vaulted over her balcony, kicked her new French door open and zeroed in on the tufts of cinnamon hair sticking out from under a pink, flowered sheet on a bed that took up most of her hotpink bedroom. Beneath the mess of hair, a pair of blueviolet eyes were struggling to come into focus. She blinked at him like a hungover turtle. Her mouth fell open but no sound came out. Definitely a first.He strode forward without pause.'What are you doing here? Get away from me!' She'd woken up in that split second it took him to reach her bed and was fairly shrieking. She was good at thatshe'd been a thorn in his