Blurb:
Mallory Scott is an espionage operative,
working for the British government. She’s travelled all over the world, often
going undercover and infiltrating criminal organisations in order to extract
the intelligence needed to dismantle their operations and bring the
perpetrators to justice. Given her usual targets are terrorists,
people-traffickers, drug-traffickers and arms dealers, her latest assignment
should be relatively simple. A small group of Brits is raking in serious money
in the diamond-scamming business—and although their MO is theft and forgery,
rather than hurting people, they still need to be stopped. But up until now,
they’ve proved elusive—no one can catch them in the act, or find a shred of
evidence against them.
That’s where Mallory comes in. She follows
the group to Amsterdam, planning to get her claws in to one of the gang. Luck
is on her side, and within twenty-four hours she’s lunching with Baxter
Collinson, the youngest—and most handsome—diamond thief. What she’s not
expecting, however, is to get on with him quite so well. Attraction bubbles
between them—and for once, on Mallory’s part, it isn’t an act. For the first
time in her career, Mallory struggles with what she must do.
Can she ignore her heart for the sake of
her career?
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*****
Excerpt:
Mallory Scott spotted the people she was
looking for as soon as she walked into the hotel bar. Hell, she hadn’t even
needed to search; they were being so loud and obnoxious they were practically
screaming for attention.
Stupid, in Mallory’s opinion. If you were
running an international diamond scam, surely you’d want to keep a low profile?
But no, apparently these guys didn’t give a shit. Not only were they screaming
for attention—and getting it, she noticed, as other patrons of the bar shot
them the occasional glare—they were also projecting the fact that they were
filthy rich. They were supping on the most expensive champagne money could buy
and demanding oysters and caviar be brought in. The overwhelming arrogance made
her blood boil, but she consoled herself with the fact that by the time she was
done with them, they’d be taken down by more than a peg or two—they’d be at
rock bottom.
Heading for a table in a position where she
could watch them, but remain partially hidden behind a pillar, she shook her
head. She could hardly believe they’d kept their multi-million-pound enterprise
going for so long. If they ran their operation as sloppily as their current behaviour
indicated they might, it was a miracle indeed.
Not that it mattered. They could be running
the tightest ship ever known to man, and she would still find a way to take
them down. It was what she did. For years now, she’d been successfully
infiltrating illegal operations of varying kinds, then gradually dismantling
them from the inside. Before the criminals realised what was happening, it was
too late—their wrists were practically in the handcuffs, their arses on their
way to jail.
This project was different from the ones
she usually handled. Her past takedowns included terrorist plots, kidnappings,
drugs, people-trafficking… that kind of thing. She’d been involved because
sending in police or military personnel wouldn’t work. Not in those particular circumstances.
To be truly effective, Mallory needed to infiltrate the organisations at the
top, gain their trust—or at least enough trust to allow her to snoop—and
acquire evidence of their involvement to ensure their convictions. Otherwise,
rushing in and stopping the terrorists, saving people and so on, important as
that was, would only affect a tiny part of the organisation. It was vital to
dismantle the whole thing, from the big bosses and the money men, right down to
the minions doing the leg work.
An added bonus to this approach was that
the victims of these organisations, as well as being saved, would know that
justice had been served to those that hurt them, and the knowledge that they’d
never get the opportunity to do it again. It was dangerous but fulfilling work,
and Mallory couldn’t imagine doing anything else. She loved the adrenaline
rush, the challenge.
And the challenge element was precisely why
this job was different. In as much as it wasn’t supposed to be particularly
challenging. Intel gathered over the past year had pinpointed the what, the
who—though they couldn’t yet put faces to names—the where and the how, and that
had been done covertly, without the need for an undercover operative. All that
remained in this case was to find out the when, so they could be caught in the
act. It should have been simple, really. But the group was careful, exceedingly
so. One of their number was a hacker, meaning that trying to access their
emails, internet search histories and voicemails, or tap their phones without
being detected was almost impossible. They were smart.
Which meant the only option remaining was
the old-fashioned approach.
A honey trap. It was Mallory’s mission to
attract the attention of one of the men in the group—hell, even one of the women
if any of them swung that way—and slowly, slowly cultivate and exploit their
relationship in order to get the information she needed. Then boom, another
international criminal enterprise would bite the dust.
Which brought Mallory to her current
position, dressed up in ludicrously expensive designer gear and half-hiding
behind a pillar in the bar of Amsterdam’s most exclusive hotel. Someone less
experienced than Mallory might have found the idea of staying out of sight
ridiculous. The aim was to get the attention of one of the gang members, after
all. But Mallory was at the top of her game, the very best of the best, and she
knew damn well that putting in a little groundwork early on would pay off in
spades. Before she did anything, before she so much as batted an eyelash in the
direction of the gang, she needed to identify her target. It was pointless
trying to eye-fuck with a bloke from across the room, only to discover he
preferred men, or was happily married and the faithful type. That would attract
the wrong kind of attention. When she did get noticed by the group, she wanted
it to be for the right reasons, and on her terms. If they caught even so much
as a whiff of her deception, it would be game over.
So she would watch, and wait. Then as soon
as she decided which one of the group was going to be her new boyfriend, she’d
move in for the kill. Figuratively speaking, of course. Killing wasn’t her job.
She was capable of it, and over the course of her career had ended more than
one life in self-defence, or in order to protect others, but she was no
cold-blooded murderer.
She was something much more dangerous;
something that no one ever saw coming.
*****
Author
Bio:
Lucy Felthouse is the award-winning author
of erotic romance novels Stately
Pleasures (named in the top 5 of Cliterati.co.uk’s 100 Modern Erotic
Classics That You’ve Never Heard Of, and an Amazon bestseller), Eyes Wide Open (winner of the Love
Romances Café’s Best Ménage Book 2015 award, and an Amazon bestseller), The Persecution of the Wolves and Hiding in Plain Sight. Including
novels, short stories and novellas, she has over 160 publications to her name. She
owns Erotica For All, and is one
eighth of The Brit Babes. Find out
more about her writing at http://lucyfelthouse.co.uk,
or on Twitter or Facebook. Sign up for
automatic updates on Amazon or BookBub. Subscribe to
her newsletter and get a free eBook: http://www.subscribepage.com/lfnewsletter
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