He rubbed the back of his head hard, as though to tell the thing there to cool

it. He didn’t need a loss of control right now. That would ruin everything.

 

And he had waited far too long to be stopped now.

 

Chapter 19

 

WHAT ARE YOU doing here?” said a clearly stunned Puller.

 

Veronica Knox slid off the hood of his Malibu.

 

His gaze roamed over her. She was tall, around five-nine, with a lean, athletic

build topped by auburn hair that had grown out some since Puller had last seen

her. He also knew that she carried scars from a shrapnel wound on one of her

hips and butt cheeks from a too close encounter with a mortar round in the

Middle East.

 

She worked in American intelligence. Puller had never been fully clear for which

agency. They had parted ways at Thomas Custer’s tombstone at the graveyard at

Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. In his dress blues he had invited her to spend a

week’s leave with him in Rome. She had politely declined. And he hadn’t seen her

since.

 

He had finally told himself he no longer cared. But seeing her, his gut was

telling him that that was not true. Just the sight of the woman made his skin