Renegade Read Online Free Page A

auditions for a spring concert. This will give me a chance to interact with some of them one-on-one.”
    “I know I don’t have to tell you to keep your eyes open.”
    She nodded. “I want you to know that I’m not going to be around next weekend.”
    He sat up straighter, his blue-green gaze suddenly alert. “Where are you going?”
    “Down to the Cape. Gabriel Cole and I will be working together planning the spring concert.”
    Lucas’s expression was impassive. “Try not to get caught up with his superstar status, Renegade.”
    Summer went completely still. “You forget who I am and why I work for you.”
    “I’ll say it again. Stay focused.”
    She offered him a false smile. “If we’re finished, then I’d like to get back home and showered.” She stood up. “I’ll meet you here in two weeks.”
    She walked out of the diner, swallowing back the curses she wanted to hurl at Lucas. Despite her many successes, he still viewed her as a woman rather than an agent. Even though it was against department policy to become physically and emotionally involved with a target, she knew her superiors would look the other way if it resulted in a successful mission.
    Even though Gabriel Cole wasn’t a target, she consciouslydid not plan to become involved with him other than on a professional level.
    The truth was she hadn’t had a serious liaison with a man in years. The last one had been an attorney she’d met after she had returned to St. Louis for an extended vacation. He wanted marriage, a house in the country, two children, a dog and a cat, while she wanted to continue her personal war against those who had taken the life of her younger brother. Charles Montgomery had died at the hands of drug dealers feuding over turf while he stood on a corner waiting to cross the street on his way from school.
    The single encounter seemed to age her parents within seconds. Grief-stricken and disillusioned with American justice when the police failed to identify their son’s murderer, retired Peace Corps Drs. Robert and Mildred Montgomery applied to the World Health Organization for an overseas assignment.
    Summer’s rosy world also came crashing down when she abruptly left a Broadway production for which she had earned a Tony nomination to return to St. Louis. She took the test for the St. Louis Police Department and was hired within months of the list being posted because the SLPD were actively recruiting to add female officers to their rolls. Three years later she was accepted by the DEA as a basic agent trainee. She had come to them with prior law enforcement and a graduate degree in Criminal Justice.
    She had distinguished herself in the sixteen-week resident training program at Quantico, Virginia, excelling in the rigorous one hundred hour physical fitness and defensive tactics regimen at the facility shared by the DEA and FBI for firearms and tactical vehicle training.
    Any reference to her law enforcement experience waswithheld from the Weir faculty booklet, replaced by information fabricated by the DEA’s Boston Division.
    A watery sun had broken through the clouds by the time Summer jogged up the steps to the building where she lived. All she wanted to do was shower, wash her hair, and then go back to bed and sleep until hunger forced her to get up again.
    She knew she was tired—deep down bone tired of the undercover assignments, aliases, the risk that her cover would be blown, and her fascination with her own violent death. If she was lucky, a bullet in the head would assure a quick dispatch, but there were times when she had nightmares that she would be tortured like several other agents she had known.
    Ten minutes later, she stood under the stream of running water; she closed her eyes and turned her face upward. For the first time in her life, she longed for a husband, the house in the country, children, dog and cat. She wanted to be a PTA mom and bake cookies for the holidays.
    Summer showered quickly,