No Stranger to Danger by No Stranger to Danger (Evernight) Page A

of the covers, reclining back and crossed his feet at the ankles, interlacing his fingers over his stomach. They lay in the quiet of the room, the only sounds coming from the street outside and the other inhabitants across the hall. A light glow from the daylight outside bled in past the curtains to cast muted shadows over them.
    "Nothing has changed about you," Mara said quietly.
    Logan turned his head to her and found her staring across his chest to the M-9 on the nightstand.
    "Everything has changed. I'm not the same man you knew."
    Mara lifted her stare to his eyes and shook her head against the pillow, tousling her dark hair. Seeing her in bed beside him sent a hot pang of desire bolting through his groin. Logan swallowed hard. He had no right to those feelings. No right to her.
    His gaze ran down her arm where the thin strap of her slip had fallen off her shoulder and left her bra strap exposed, down the curve of her hip under the sheets.
    "Well, not -the-same-man-that-you-used-to-be kept my picture around for some reason. I still want to know what madness drove you to do such a thing." She gave him a gentle smile. "We both know you knew better."
    Logan looked back up her slowly. "I kept it to remind me how far gone I am." There was so much more he wanted to say, but couldn’t. "Goodnight, Mara." He turned his head back and stared at the ceiling.
    Mara sighed gustily and flopped to her other side, bunched the pillow under her head and squirmed until she was comfortable.
    "You're such an ass," she muttered.
    Logan smiled at the ceiling.
    It was nice to know he still got to her the same way she still got to him.
    He tensed his jaw.
    Yet, it hurt him that he could never let her know how he really felt about her.

Chapter Nine
     
    1400 hours, Wednesday
    Caracas, Venezuela
     
    Mara slid from the taxi behind Logan and looked on the Catia barrio of Caracas. She could breathe a little easier after leaving the dangers of Africa, and took a deep breath of the Venezuelan air.
    Mid-breath, a gunshot ricocheted through the top of the brightly colored, stacked barrio.
    Mara choked on that breath, and she gaped as she looked up. The shouting that erupted filled the streets and sent a flock of nesting pigeons cooing out into the bright sky that was equally as colorful as the barrio filling the entire hillside. Homes climbed up one another all the way to the top of the hill, making her wonder just how they stacked so precariously without toppling or caving in.
    Mara winced, her brows pulling together as she glanced up to Logan with a worry-filled expression. "You're sure MacKall is living in there?" she asked.
    The place looked like the slum of slums, a den of corruption. If her memory served correctly, that wasn’t a place the classy, well kempt soldier she remembered would live. However, on the flight, Logan had briefed her on MacKall's part in the mission in Brazil and his fall from grace. Perhaps, Connar MacKall wasn’t the man she used to know.
    It didn’t surprise her, after having met Conyers, that he would stoop to pinning everything on MacKall when forced to cover up what the Special Forces team had uncovered.
    For such a scumbag, it would be nothing to Conyers to destroy a good man.
    And destroy he had.
    Her eyes glided over the graffiti painted walls alongside the street as her mind flashed back to the lunatic gripping her hair and putting a gun to her head.
    Only a little over two days had passed, but it seemed an eternity.
    Logan pulled his head from the cab window and turned to her as the car pulled away. "That's what I've been told."
    "By who?" she asked.
    He glanced down at her. "I have my sources still. I keep up with everyone, even you. Your little house in the mountains is quite nice, but that boyfriend you had last year—" he squinted his eyes, his lips pinching together "—I didn’t care for him too much."
    Mara frowned at his back as he stepped around her, and her lips fell apart. "Thanks," she said, a bit