Black Jack

Praise for bestselling author Lora Leigh’s

HEAT SEEKER

“Leigh’s pages explode with a hot mixture of erotic pleasures.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews

MAVERICK

“A phenomenal read.”

—Romance Junkies

“Scorching-hot sex, deadly secrets, and a determined assassin add up to another addicting

Leigh thriller. Leigh’s ability to credibly build damaged characters who are both intriguing

and intense gives her stories that extra punch.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews

“Sex and violence power the satisfying second installment of Leigh’s Elite Ops series.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Full of wrenching emotion and self-flagellation by the hero, the new series of Elite Ops

promises to be even better than the sexy Seals at this rate.”

— Night Owl Romance

“With her customary panache for emotionally intense, sensual characters, the author attracts

readers into every world she creates. This fabulous follow-up to
Wild Card
is no exception to

the rule.”

— A Romance Review

WILD CARD

“Highly emotional and addicting…an intoxicating first installment of a brand-new series.”

—Romance Junkies

“Ferocious passion!”
—Romantic Times BOOKreviews

…and the novels in her sexy SEALs series

KILLER SECRETS

“A smoldering hot new espionage tale.

This chapter of Leigh’s SEAL saga reverberates

with deadly danger.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews

HIDDEN AGENDAS

“Treachery and intrigue combine with blistering-hot sensuality in this chapter of Leigh’s

SEAL saga. The title of this book is particularly apt, since many of the characters are not what

they seem, and betrayal can have deadly consequences. Leigh’s books can scorch the ink off

the page.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews

“An evocative and captivating read.”

—Romance Junkies

DANGEROUS GAMES

“A marvelous novel of suspense and raw passion.”

—Romance Junkies

“Lora Leigh ignites the fire...with steamy heat added to a story that makes you cheer and even

tear up.”

—Fallen Angel Reviews

“Leigh writes…tempting, enchanting romance[s] that readers are certain to devour.”

—Romance Reviews Today

St. Martin’s Paperbacks Titles By

Lora Leigh

Elite Ops Series

Heat Seeker

Maverick

Wild Card

SEALs Trilogy

Killer Secrets

Hidden Agendas

Dangerous Games

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either

products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Black Jack

Copyright © 2010 by Lora Leigh.

All rights reserved.

For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

ISBN-13: 978-1-4299-5513-3 | ISBN-10:1-4299-5513-9

Printed in the United States of America

St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / March 2010

St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Dedicated most thankfully and with the utmost love to my daughter, Holly, and my son, Bret,

who are growing up much too fast.

You are two of the most enduring and most special lights in my life. You bring me laughter,

joy, and love, and I thank God for the very special gifts he sent me when he sent to me my

babies.

Black Jack

Lora Leigh

St. Martin's Press

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to CO2 Donna, a nearby correctional officer, for the information on the

modified Glocks. Any mistakes I’ve made in the translation are my own.

Special thanks as well to Randy, the owner of Friendly’s Sports Bar at Franklin and Walnut

Streets in Hagerstown, Maryland, for the use of his bar. Good friends and good bars are

wonderful research sources, and he has one of the best. And the food is out of this world.

Try the Chicken Wings.

a steady, rain-filled
wind whipped around the dark

helmet covering Travis Caine’s head, sang around the leather pants and jacket he wore, and

whispered a caress over the full, face-shielding helmet he wore. Heavy boots covered his feet,

protecting him against the elements as rain poured down from the skies, and lightning lit the

darkness with jagged forks of power.

The Harley he rode roared down the open highway, throbbing with the increased power it

had been customized with. The display beneath the handlebars was lit with a muted glow

indicating speed, time, and location. The embedded electronics in the night-vision shield of

the helmet provided other readouts considered imperative in his line of work.

According to that information, he was growing closer to his destination and a mission he

still wasn’t certain he was prepared to be a part of, because of the woman he was partnered

with, because of a night they shouldn’t have shared.

He shouldn’t have loved her.

No, he shouldn’t have fucked her, he corrected himself. He immediately felt an edge of

distaste at his attempt to make that night into something unemotional. Something less

powerful than it had been.

It was a night he hadn’t been able to forget. In the past two months it had tormented him,

torn at him, and left him hungry for more of her in ways he had never hungered for another

woman before. She was the last woman he should have ever touched.

What the hell was she doing to him?

Elite Two and the women that were a part of that team were a hidden, rarely mentioned

section of Elite Ops.

The Ops was more than the one team Jordan commanded, Travis had learned. For years he

and the other agents under Jordan’s command had believed that Elite One was the only

sanctioned operation and that the women they had helped train were meant to be backup,

nothing more.

They hadn’t realized just how good those women were.

Elite Two had hidden even the slightest sign that they, too, were agents. No one had told

Elite One what those women’s true purpose was, nor had anyone explained the full extent of

the Elite Ops and the units that comprised it until after the Warbucks mission months before.

Warbucks had been stealing and selling top-secret military weapons as well as agents’

identities. He’d managed to infiltrate government agencies as well as the companies his father

had had interest in to acquire the stolen resources.

Elite Two had gathered the information that had led them to Warbucks because of their

covers as very exclusive, well-trained escorts.

Once the mission had revealed Warbucks’ identity, Elite Two had also managed to reveal

his associates, his buyers, and his silent partners in many of the sales.

It was then he and the other agents had begun questioning the organization that had taken

them in, that had saved them, and created new lives for them.

They’d learned it was much more extensive than they could have imagined. And the

missions were drawing together slowly, linked by a thread of information here, a suspect

there. Travis could feel it edging toward a single denominator, which made him begin

questioning all the missions they were given.

This latest one had him questioning even himself.

It was a damned dangerous game he was getting ready to participate in, and thinking about

it left a sour taste in his mouth. Despite all the good it was doing, there were times the Elite

Ops had little tact and even less taste. To use a woman in the manner they were prepared to

use her had his back teeth clenching in anger and a sense of injustice rising inside him.

The fact they were using his woman, despite her agent status, only pissed him off more.

And he was damned if he could figure out why he was letting it bother him. It wasn’t as

though he hadn’t learned the hard way how easily a woman could betray a man. He’d “died”

with that lesson pounding in his head years ago, and when he’d been reborn, he’d sworn to

himself that he wouldn’t forget it.

He’d lost everything in his life because he’d trusted a woman and it wasn’t a lesson he

cared to repeat. It was one he had sworn time and time again he wouldn’t repeat. But the

minute he’d learned how the Elite Ops was forcing this woman to face her past, he’d become

enraged.

Lilly was different, his heart swore, though his mind fought that instinctive knowledge.

He shouldn’t have been surprised, though. He should have expected it at some point once

he’d managed to uncover her former identity. She was the perfect asset to use to find the

individual or individuals involved in the death of the powerful, influential Lord Harold

Harrington, Lilly’s father.

But they were prepared to use her in a way that Travis feared would end up destroying her.

Returning her to her old life, to the family she had left behind, wouldn’t be a cakewalk for her.

Sure, Lilly had already been training to follow in her father’s footsteps as an MI5 agent

before her “death.” But even then, she had been a Harrington and had been entrenched in that

blue-blood life. She had been raised to be a lady and to assume all the responsibilities that

entailed. However, once she had joined the Elite Ops, she left all of that behind and had

become someone else entirely. An outsider, a rebel . . . a lost soul who had seen and done

things others only saw in their nightmares. Like him, she no longer belonged in that rarefied

world. And making her face what she had been forced to leave behind was damn cruel.

Facing it himself wouldn’t be easy. There was an added painful element for Lilly, though.

They were returning to investigate the death of Lilly’s father and the attempt on her own life

when she had been Lady Victoria Harrington. Lilly remembered very little about that final

night of her old life. She remembered seeing her father lying in a pool of blood when she

entered his study, and nothing more.

The next day Lord Harrington’s body had been pulled from his car, which had gone over a

cliff. The fuel line had cracked upon impact, and in a matter of minutes the car exploded.

Harrington’s body had been burned beyond recognition. They’d had to identify him by his

dental records. Lilly’s body had never been found. It was believed that she had been thrown

from the car upon impact and that her body washed out to the sea at the bottom of the cliff.

They believed that whoever shot Lord Harrington had tried to cover up the crime by

making it look like he and his daughter had gotten into a horrible car accident. And because

he had been wealthy and titled, and because MI5 would have preferred not to have anyone

looking too closely into why Lord Harrington might have died, he had been laid to rest

quickly and Lilly had been declared dead. Unfortunately, the ones responsible still had not

been identified.

As a covert agent for MI5, Lord Harrington had been investigating the electronic theft of

thousands of pounds from trust funds and legitimate companies in England. The situation

came to his attention when he had launched a probe into his own company when funds had

gone missing.

Those funds had been diverted to accounts overseas, transferred again and again until they