Ice Cold Read Free Page A

message.
    He was immune…to blondes, fellow operatives, women with the personality and charisma of an ice cube. ’Nuff said.
    She was damned unemotional about the violent death of the man she’d worked with for years. Rafael watched her disappear into a room at the end of the long, wide hallway.
    The tight-ass had a tight, sexy ass.
    He walked through a sparsely furnished living room—one comfortable-looking, enormous, brown leather recliner, and a big screen TV. Wife must’ve taken most of the furniture, and Hansen hadn’t bothered to replace it. The room looked…lonely.
    Rafe clicked light switches as he went. The sprawling, ranch-style house, thirty-some miles from T-FLAC headquarters, was too big for a man on his own. Hansen’s wife of nineteen years had walked out with their three kids a few years before.
    Operatives shouldn’t marry. He thought that obvious, but apparently, some people needed hitting over the head to get the memo.
    Rafe searched each room. Neat. Most of them sparsely furnished and unlived in. Other than the two of them, the house was empty. Other than Jack’s mutilated body right inside the front door, there was no indication that the killer had gone any farther than necessary. Rafael went back to the front hall just as Winston returned. “Clear.”
    “Yeah.” He went to the sidelight beside the massive front door and fingered aside the curtain. The Garbage detail’s unmarked white van was pulling up out front in the snowy yard. They were nothing if not efficient. If there were any clues to find, they’d find them. When they finished, no one would be able to tell a man died there. “Let’s go.”
    She was pulling on her coat, a plain black number suitable for the frigid Montana weather. She zipped it then opened her large bag to fish around inside. For her keys, he presumed. “Thanks, but I have my car here, I’ll drive myself—”
    A Lamborghini, if the rumor mill was correct. The woman had serious bank, which had little to do with the lucrative salary T-FLAC paid its operatives.
    Shaking his head—she’d be going with him, not driving herself anywhere—Rafael held out his hand. “Keys.”
    At his tone of command, she automatically started handing them over then curled her fingers around them. “I’m perfectly capable of driving myself home. I see death every day.”
    They all did. Didn’t have anything to do with his request. “I need a computer geek on this op. You’re the number two choice. Number one, now that Jack’s out of the picture. Let’s go.” He turned to the guys entering the house. “Get Winston’s vehicle back to HQ.”
    “Sure.”
    “No problem.” The two men’s eyes lit up at the prospect of driving her kick-ass car.
    “Excuse me?” her tone was glacial. “I drive my own car.”
    “What’s the point leaving it at the airport? I’ll just have it retrieved from there.”
    Her opinion of his order was clear by the tightening of her lips and the annoyance in her cool eyes. She removed a key from the embossed leather holder and wordlessly handed it to the man closest to her. Nails manicured and buffed to a healthy sheen, hands smooth and slender. She looked and smelled expensive. Damned expensive, and if he were interested—which Rafael wasn’t—she’d be about a thousand miles, and several million dollars, out of his league. He was just fine with that. It annoyed him that he had to remind himself he wasn’t interested.
    He glanced at the complex, multifunctional watch on his wrist. “Wheels up as soon as we get there. Call ahead and have your butler pack your Louis Vuitton, we’ll swing by your place and pick it up.”
    “Pollack is my houseman, not my butler.” She slung the straps of her bag over one slender shoulder. “My go-bag’s in the car. I’ll get it.”
    Of course it was. “You do that.”

    Less than an hour after leaving Hansen’s house, the Bombardier Challenger taxied down T-FLAC’s private airstrip and smoothly lifted