For His Eyes Only Read Online Free

hostage—imprisoned and tortured him, is what the bastard had done. Jesse had gone in for him.
    She smiled gently. “I know.”
    “ I hadn’t expected to hear from you so soon,” he said.
    “ Good. I’m counting on Green Leader thinking the same way. The longer I wait, the deeper he’ll burrow. Not to mention, he’s got his wife’s family connections. The last thing I need is for him to call in favors. He’ll bury me six feet under and piss on my grave if I give him the chance. Right now, it’s still early. He’s got to figure I’m running scared.”
    “ I don’t know how scared he is. They’re keeping quiet. But I heard he tracked you, and you stayed ahead of him.” Tom put his cigarette in his mouth and clapped softly. “Bravo.”
    Jesse frowned. “Those things will kill you.”
    He took a long drag, then snuffed out the butt in an ashtray on the floor beside the sofa. “They’re my only vice. Besides, our friends have enough of my DNA to grow me new lungs.”
    “ They probably could, at that.” Jesse folded her hands on a knee. “As for me, I’m expendable. He cleaned out my safe deposit box.”
    The Professor scrutinized her. “I hope the information he’s after is somewhere safe.”
    Jesse nodded. She had debated whether or not to tell him about the disc, and decided against it. She'd dragged him into this mess, but wouldn’t take him down if she fell. If Lanton deciphered the encryption, she would never confess that Tom had been involved in it ending up in her possession.
    In the meantime, Lanton would drive himself crazy trying to break the encryption, but wouldn’t chance handing it over to anyone for fear it contained evidence that would incriminate him. Too bad she hadn’t saved the article written by DC’s most prominent gossip columnist Zoe Shelby about a certain RL who had been spotted in an off-the-beaten-path restaurant with a swanky uptown escort. The information was public knowledge, but the look on his face when he found the article in her safe deposit box would have been worth a year’s salary.
    Gossip columnists thrived on stories that turned a boring marriage between a civil servant and socialite into a debutant done wrong by playboy husband story. They weren’t off the mark this time. The pre-nup Helen Beaumont’s family insisted Lanton sign hadn’t stopped him from squandering her considerable fortune over the past eighteen years on women and fast living that had graduated into BDSM at its best.
    Jesse could imagine Helen’s face when she received the first consoling phone call from one of her socialite friends. Pissing away a woman’s fortune was one thing. Being seen about town with prostitutes was another. Lanton’s penchant for BDSM had yet to leak. Would that be enough for Helen Lanton to divorce him?
    At five-ten, two hundred pounds, and a balding head, he didn’t fit the profile of a playboy with a rich wife and lovers. High priced hookers and exclusive BDSM clubs would be a thing of the past if his wife cut him off. At best, his GS-13 salary would buy him a back alley fuck.
    “ How’s Amanda?” Tom asked.
    His question pulled her back to the present and the fear that hovered too close to the surface. “No one’s bothered her.” Jesse pictured Amanda’s face as it lit up whenever Jesse appeared. Despite Amanda’s chronological age of thirty-five, her smile was that of an innocent eight-year-old—hell, she was an eight-year-old.
    “ She’ll be all right,” Tom said.
    Jesse smiled with affection. Tom was one of the few people who appreciated Amanda’s special gift of statistical calculus. He would want to help keep her safe, but Jesse wouldn’t drag him any deeper than this one meeting.
    “ Madrid and Hong Kong convinced me Lanton was dirty, but massacring his own team shocked me.” She blocked the mental picture of the two Green Team members’ deaths before it rose this time. “He deserves a slow death.”
    The Professor raised both