Fallen Angel Read Free

slowly said, "You’re safe. I wouldn’t ever hurt you."
    Bending at the knees without taking her eyes from him, Geneva dipped low to rescue her purse from the hallway floor. She located her key chain as she straightened, slung the leather bag over her shoulder, and quickly inserted the correct key into the lock. Shoving open the door, she slipped inside without a backward glance.
    Thomas stood in the hallway long after she slammed the door in his face. He wondered again about the now deceased Jamal. He wondered, too, why she’d appeared so stunned by the news of his demise. And, finally, he wondered why she had chosen to live what sounded like a solitary life.
    What kind of woman was she?
    Have you lost your mind? a voice in his head inquired. Have you forgotten that you’re trying to simplify your own life?
    He
had
forgotten, he realized as he walked out of the building and climbed into his Jeep. Driving down the snow and ice–encrusted streets of Cedar Grove to his hotel, Thomas Coltrane couldn’t stop thinking about the woman called Geneva.
    She remained with him throughout the day and far into the night that followed, her image still lodged in his mind when he awakened the next morning. She intrigued him to a degree that no other woman ever had.

2
    Although Geneva Talmadge had been accosted by strangers more than once in her life, that fact provided little consolation to her rattled emotions. Once she secured the deadbolt lock on her office door, deposited her purse on her desk, and sank into the nearest chair, she struggled to reclaim her composure. She’d always made sure the world never saw her as anything but totally poised.
    Geneva knew she could have moved past the startling encounter with ease had it not come on the heels of learning that the contract on her life, in force for nearly ten years, was no longer viable. She still found it difficult to believe that the threat of assassination was over or that the malevolent creature admired by terrorists across the globe and known to the world as Jamal was, in fact, dead.
    Other than the few close friends whom she trusted with her life, neither the residents of Cedar Grove nor the seasonal visitors to the surrounding ski resorts knew anything about her past. People speculated, of course. Geneva suspected that they always would. She’d long ago resigned herself to that particular fact.
    As had the other men and women who lived within the protective confines of the extensive acreage owned by ex–mercenary–turned–bestselling author Nicholas Benteen. Friend and mentor, he vigilantly shepherded his flock of retired warriors. Geneva knew he would until he drew his last breath.
    She sighed, the sound ragged in the early morning silence of her Talmadge, Inc. office. Her pulse rate slowed to normal, and her hands finally stopped shaking.
    Geneva wasn’t paranoid, just cautious. Despite being urged by Nicholas to embrace a future that included a relationship with a man, she wondered how one discarded more than a decade of self–protective behavior.
    It didn’t really matter that the life she’d once lived had been nothing more than an accident of fate. Neither did it matter that the missions she’d been a part of had been sanctioned by a clandestine arm of the U.S. government. She felt certain that what would really matter was a man’s reaction to her life and the choices she’d made. A sane man would reject her.
    After all, what man could be expected to deal with the reality that the woman in his life had once been an explosives expert? And what man who learned she’d spent her childhood as the companion of a vagabond, soldier of fortune father known for his bomb–making skills would want her? Few, if any. Damn few!
    Geneva recalled the tumultuous days of her youth following her mother’s funeral. Her father had appeared from out of nowhere like some modern day Pied Piper.
    While most young girls her age attended high school, she had traveled the world,