Is it wrong to fall in love with your villain? I must admit to succumbing to just such a thing while I was writing I Spy. While Race Gardner, my CPA for the CIA, falls clearly on the side of good, gunrunner Nic Sabre was only out for himself. Only, from the minute Nic walked onto the page and told his story of how he had managed to survive his childhood as one of the “trash heap” kids in Caracas, Venezuela, I started thinking, “Hey, I really like this guy!”

I mean, think about this: your impoverished parents abandon you at a tender age at a garbage dump, hoping that you—like the many other children there—will be able to survive by foraging in the trash for food and shelter. In truth, they have so many more mouths to feed and so little money to feed them that you have simply become a burden they must rid themselves of or they, too, will die. So you’re not even out of diapers when you’re left to fend for yourself. You soon learn that the trash heap has a society all its own. Older kids prey on the younger ones. When food is scarce, you either become competition for resources or a source of nutrition yourself. You figure out how to survive, but that’s all you’re capable of doing. You don’t allow yourself to have friends, because the last one you had was raped and murdered and tossed on the trash heap like human garbage . . . and no one but you cared that he died.

But then you manage to escape the horror of the dump. And it doesn’t matter to you that how you earn your money might be illegal. Other people may have the luxury of morality, but not you. You learned early on that one must do whatever is necessary in order to survive.

I could really identify with Nic’s way of seeing the world. I understood him. That’s not to say that I agreed with his choices (and in the end of I Spy, he pays for those choices with the only thing he’s ever really loved), but I was sympathetic to him. Nic wasn’t brokering weapons deals because he was a sociopath. He was doing it to make money. With no education, no training, no one to help him or encourage him or guide him, he was doing his best to make a living for himself and his daughter.

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“If you are looking for an exciting new romantic suspense author then run don’t walk to your nearest book store and grab a copy of I Spy and Dangerous Curves and settle in for a thrill a minute ride in the world of Jacey Ford.” Barbara, A Romance Review  5-Rose Review!

“This is without a doubt one of the most creative and enjoyable romantic suspense books that I have read for quite some time and I can very easily give it my highest recommendation.” Laurie, Romance Junkies 5-Ribbon Review!

This is a powerful story told by a powerful story teller. Jacey Ford, also known as Beverly Brandt, has a definite gift for the suspenseful side of life. Her ability to delve into the psyche of her characters is most impressive. Her forays into the mindset of the children within her stories is intense and incredibly real. When you become engrossed in one of her tales, and you will, you find yourself so involved mentally that you are anticipating every last word, breathing with the characters.” Thia McClain, The Romance Readers Connection --Ms. McClain gives I Spy TRRC’s highest review award!

"Hard-edged excitement and thrills are served up hot by the very talented [Jacey] Ford. Her Partners in Crime series is proving to be both loads of fun and wonderfully exhilarating." Jill M. Smith, Romantic Times BOOKclub

"Hot, intriguing romantic suspense with great characters." Morgan Chilson, The Best Reviews

"Jacey Ford writes a fabulous suspense laden thriller that will keep readers interested form start to finish." Harriet Klausner, www.barnesandnoble.com

"I Spy is an exceptional novel of great depth and will appeal to anyone who appreciates a well-written book. Book three of the series, Dead Heat, will be released this summer, and highlights another member of the Partners In Crime agency. I Spy dazzled me with every facet of its story, and I am pleased to award it RRT's highest honor, a Perfect 10. You will not be disappointed in the world you enter into when you purchase I Spy.” Carolyn Crisher, Romance Reviews Today

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Chapter One

[As our] spies we must recruit men who are intelligent but appear stupid; who seem to be dull but are strong in heart; men who are agile, vigorous, hardy, and brave; well versed in lowly matters and able to endure hunger, cold, filth, and humiliation.

—Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“We’ve had a breakthrough on the propulsion system for the MC-19 fighter jet. Engineering is hopeful that we’ll be able to step up production and get the aircraft to market a year before we anticipated. I don’t think I have to tell you all that this could mean billions of dollars in increased revenue. The defense department’s already told us that they’ll buy as many MC-19s as we can produce. If we win this race to the market, we just might be able to put Rockton Aeronautical out of business.”

Aimee Devlin sat in a corner of McConnell Aerospace’s boardroom in San Antonio and transcribed the speech Joe McConnell was giving to his executive team. As her fingers moved almost silently across the keyboard of her laptop, she studied the six men and two women seated around the well-polished table. Her employer was convinced that one of these eight people was a spy, and he was paying Aimee a hefty sum to ferret out the traitor.

As the tiny clock at the bottom right hand of her screen rolled over to one o’clock, Aimee stifled a smile. Damn, but she loved billable hours. Getting out of the FBI—where she figured her hourly rate was about half of minimum wage, given the long hours she put in—was the best thing she’d ever done.

 “I’m going to need details of the production process and what’s involved in stepping up the rollout in order to make sure we have proper financing in place,” Horace Gardner, McConnell’s new chief financial officer, said.

Without turning her head, Aimee typed what the CFO had said into her Word document, then sent an instant message to her boss: Too eager for information?

She saw Joe’s gaze flutter to the computer beside him before he looked back up and nodded almost imperceptibly. He was paying her to be suspicious, to note anything that struck her as odd. And their new CFO, who had joined McConnell just before Joe began to suspect that someone within his organization was engaged in corporate espionage, was number one on Aimee’s watch list. Something about the man seemed off, though Aimee couldn’t put her finger on exactly what it was that bothered her about him. There was just something that made the tiny hairs on the back of her neck prickle whenever he was in the same room.

Her background check hadn’t turned up anything out of the ordinary, which Aimee thought must be the perfect word to describe Race Gardner: ordinary. He had medium-length brown hair, gray eyes hidden behind thick, wire-rimmed glasses, and an unremarkable physique concealed by the equally unremarkable blue suits he wore nearly every day. His résumé showed a steady rise in job responsibilities, from controller to VP of finance, and then to CFO. He hadn’t job-hopped, but hadn’t remained stagnant in one position for too long, either. He’d ranked in the top 20 percent of his class at Duke and had just-above-average SAT scores, but nothing that really made him stand out.

Aimee wondered if it was this utter blandness that had tempted him to sell McConnell’s secrets to their top competitor. Perhaps he’d been wooed by the excitement of it—an element of danger in his otherwise dull life.

“Janine, give Race everything he needs,” Joe said, waving a hand in the direction of his chief operating officer, who bobbed her head in agreement. Then Joe stood up, signaling an end to the meeting.

Aimee remained seated in the shadows as the executive team filed out of the room. Joe made small talk with several people as they left, then stopped Race at the door and asked if he’d wait for a minute so they could talk. Aimee stayed motionless against the wall. Fading into the woodwork was her particular specialty, a skill she’d honed over the years to the point that even she was sometimes surprised by her ability to make herself invisible.

“How are this quarter’s financials looking?” Joe asked when he and Race were seemingly alone.

Race sat back down at the mahogany table and set his yellow notepad in front of him. “Not so good,” he replied. “Without the low-interest government loans that were available to us last year, our cost of borrowing has increased significantly at a time when our needs for funding are on the rise. Do you have a sense of whether Congress is going to approve another round of loans for the aerospace industry? Because, if not, we may be overreaching by trying to step up production of the MC-19. I know you don’t want to hear this, but we may have to slow down this project.”

“We can’t do that. Getting our jet to the marketplace first is the only way we can beat Rockton and recoup our research and development costs on the MC-19. If we wait, that gives them more time to catch up.”

“I understand that,” Race said, his voice as bland and unemotional as the rest of him.

A vein in Joe’s forehead began to throb as he slammed a fist down on the table, making Race’s pad of paper jump. “You may understand, but do you care? I built McConnell Aerospace from nothing forty years ago. I’m not about to watch it self-destruct because you think it’s bad timing. Now, it’s your job to figure out how to keep us adequately funded. If you can’t do that, I’ll find somebody who will.”

Race straightened his pad of paper until the bottom was perfectly aligned with the edge of the table. “I didn’t say that I couldn’t find creative, low-cost funding opportunities. I simply asked if you had any idea if Congress was going to come through with an aid package as they have in the past.”

Watching him from the corner where she sat, Aimee had to admit that she was impressed by Race’s ability to remain calm in the face of Joe’s anger. Of course, if he were the spy, Joe’s belligerent behavior would probably help Race to justify selling classified information to Rockton. Aimee was constantly amazed at how criminals managed to convince themselves that what they were doing was somehow warranted, as if the world owed them something for every slight.

“I don’t know what Congress is going to do,” Joe said with a frustrated sigh as he pulled out a chair and sat down across from the CFO. “Our lobbyists are doing the best they can, but with the economy being what it is, the Democrats are screaming for an end to corporate aid so that money can be diverted into welfare and day-care assistance programs and the like. I think we have to move ahead with the assumption that there will be no low-interest loans available to us from the government.”

Race made a note on his pad of paper and nodded, then stood up to leave. “I’ll put some ideas together so we can go over them at our meeting on Friday.”

“All right,” Joe said, not getting up as Race left.

When the door closed behind the CFO, Aimee felt a strange emptiness, as if all of the energy had left the room. How odd.

She set her laptop on the floor beside her and stood up to stretch. Remaining unnoticed for long periods of time often demanded that Aimee stay completely still, which wasn’t as easy as one might think and caused her muscles to ache.

Joe swiveled in his chair, looking surprised. “Oh, Aimee, I forgot you were still here.”

Aimee laughed. “Good. That means I’m doing my job.”

Joe chuckled and stood up as Aimee bent to retrieve her computer. “Well,” he said. “The trap’s been set.”

“Yes,” Aimee agreed. “Now we just have to wait and see if our rat takes the bait.”

“We’re going to have to step up our operation. They’ve had a major breakthrough on the propulsion system,” Race said into his cell phone, looking around the sunny courtyard outside McConnell Aerospace headquarters to make certain no one was close enough to overhear his conversation. “Did you get a chance to check out the documents I sent on McConnell’s new assistant?”

“Yes, and I found something you might be interested in,” Jake Haven, Race’s partner on this operation, said. “That diploma you sent is a fake, although it was a fairly good reproduction. Rogers University changed the design of their diplomas in 1992, the year after Ms. Devlin supposedly graduated. The diploma you gave me, with a 1991 graduation date, is the new design, which means that whoever forged the document was working off the wrong version.”

Race rubbed his jaw and frowned. So it looked like his hunch about Aimee Devlin was correct. She was not who she appeared to be. “Did you find out anything else?”

“I still have more research to do, but the social security number you got from her personnel file is fake. It doesn’t match the number I got after running her prints through the computer. I traced her real SSN to a bank account opened in Atlanta a year ago. She’s made two five-figure deposits into that account in the past month. In cash.”

“What kind of five figures are we talking about? Ten thousand?” It was difficult to believe that an executive assistant at a Fortune 100 company could make that kind of money, but Race had to admit that he wasn’t exactly up on the latest pay scales for secretaries.

“No,” Jake said. “More like thirty thousand. Man, if that’s the going wage for support staff these days, we’re in the wrong line of business.”

“Yeah, being a spy ain’t what it used to be,” Race agreed dryly.

“So, did you get the surveillance equipment I left at the dead drop?” Jake asked.

“Yes.” Their dead drop—a place where Jake could leave, or “drop” something at one time, only to have Race pick it up later, so the men never had to meet face-to-face and risk blowing their cover—was a hollowed-out tree trunk in the park where Race jogged every morning before work. “I’m going to plant a camera in Ms. Devlin’s office tonight. As McConnell’s assistant, she has access to classified information about the propulsion system—information I intend to uncover.”

During her years at the Bureau, Aimee had learned to leave nothing to chance. She couldn’t shadow Race Gardner twenty-four hours a day, so she was going to have to rely on technology to give her investigation an edge. She’d seen the lights go out in his office about an hour ago and had patiently waited to give him plenty of time to make a final trip to the men’s room or stop to chat with one of his subordinates before leaving for the evening.

Clicking off the lights in her own office, Aimee set her briefcase down on the floor in the hall and turned to close and lock her door. Then she pulled a credit card out of her wallet and folded a small piece of Scotch tape over the edge, being careful to leave the ends loose. She slid the card through the crack between the door and its frame and quickly pulled it back out again. The tape stuck to the door and frame on the inside. If the door was opened, the tape would either break or would not adhere back to the door, and she’d be alerted that someone had broken in.

Satisfied with her handiwork, Aimee picked up her briefcase and headed down the hall to the deserted finance department. She checked all the cubicles surrounding Race’s office to be certain that there were no other employees lurking about. Finding no one, she hauled a chair over from one of the cubes, withdrew a small round flashlight from her purse, got up on the chair, and shined the light into the crack between the door and the frame. She moved slowly, checking for a “trap” similar to the one she herself had just set. Even so, she nearly missed it.

There, just above the lock, was—of all things—a piece of Scotch tape stretched across the crack.

Aimee shook her head and chuckled wryly. She had thought her tape idea was so clever, but it seemed she wasn’t the only one to have thought of using a standard office supply to booby-trap a door. She shrugged. Well, at least he’d chosen something she knew how to re-rig.

She dragged the chair back to its cubicle, smoothing out the telltale tracks in the carpet on her way back. Then she got out her key ring and used the master key Joe McConnell had given her to open Race’s office door. The tape came free from the doorframe, and Aimee made a mental note of where Race had positioned it so she could put it back in exactly the same spot.

Taking a moment to let her eyes adjust to the darkness, Aimee looked around Race’s office. It looked exactly the same as always—boring and impersonal. His bookshelf was stocked with such thrilling titles as Fundamentals of Corporate Taxation, Strategies in Corporate Finance, and Investing Essentials Vol. 10. There were no pictures of a wife and kids anywhere to be seen. He’d listed a woman as his emergency contact in the application that personnel made every employee fill out, but Aimee didn’t know if she was a sister, a girlfriend, an ex-wife, or just a friend.

And it didn’t really matter. She wasn’t interested in dating the guy, she was interested in nailing him . . . in the criminal justice sense, that is. Aimee certainly didn’t think of drab, dull Horace Gardner in that way. Though only her closest friends knew it, Aimee possessed a wild streak and was attracted to guys who promised fun and excitement—preferably wealthy guys who promised fun and excitement. Her own ambition to make a fortune had led her to learn what she could from the FBI and then take that knowledge out to the business world, where companies were willing to pay dearly to stop illegal activities that impacted their bottom lines.

Her eyes now adjusted to the darkness, Aimee swiftly took a dime-sized listening device out of the pocket of her suit jacket and planted it in the one personal item in Race’s office—a Zen garden complete with a mini-rake and several smooth stones. Aimee pushed the bug deep into the sand and smoothed the surface with her thumb. Then she pulled a piece of tape from his dispenser, removed the old piece from the door, and left his office, shutting the door behind her. She did her credit card trick again, leaving the tape right where she’d found it.

As she headed back toward the elevators that would take her down to the parking garage, Aimee felt a conflicting array of emotions. On the one hand, she was pleased to have discovered the source of McConnell’s security leak so quickly. That would only reflect well on Partners In Crime, Inc., the corporate services firm she, Daphne, and Raine had started seven months ago. Still, it would have been nice to have the steady income that came with this job for a while longer. While Aimee didn’t mind scouring the streets for new business, making cold calls didn’t exactly pay well.

“Aimee, what a surprise. I didn’t expect you to be working so late.”

Startled, Aimee gasped. What the hell was Race Gardner doing here? And, even more importantly, had he just seen her come out of his office?

Aimee put a hand to her heart as if that would help slow her racing pulse. “You scared me,” she said, eyeing the man across from her.

He smiled benignly, but for the first time Aimee noticed something in the gray eyes he hid behind those thick glasses. Something different. Something . . . dangerous.

A shiver ran through her body. “Someone walking over your grave,” as her mother would say.

“Well, I’m going to call it a night,” Aimee said, suddenly aware that she and Race were alone in the deserted building. Not that she wasn’t confident in her ability to protect herself in most situations, but she wasn’t foolish enough to dismiss the slight prickle of fear that raised goose bumps along her arms.

“Why don’t you wait a second and I’ll walk you to your car? I just need to get something out of my office.” Race paused for a second, then added, “It’s dangerous to be wandering around alone at this time of night.”

Aimee forced herself not to shiver again at the slightly menacing tone of Race’s voice. She swallowed, reminding herself that the guy was a harmless accountant. Even if he were stealing corporate secrets, it wasn’t as if that made him capable of violence.

Did it?

“Oh, don’t worry about me. I work late all the time. And I have pepper spray on my key chain,” she bluffed. “Besides, it’s not that late. It’s only eight thirty.”

Race studied her for a moment and Aimee was struck again with the niggling sense that she was missing something crucial in her analysis of Race Gardner. Finally, after what seemed like a long time but was probably only seconds, Race shrugged and started down the hall toward his office.

“Okay, then. I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said, tossing the words over his shoulder.

As she headed to the bank of elevators and pressed the call button, Aimee let out the breath she’d unconsciously been holding. It was only as the elevator doors slid closed that Aimee realized what was nagging at the back of her mind. When Race had startled her out in the hallway, he hadn’t just emerged from the elevators. He’d been coming from the direction of her office.

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Aimee woke from a troubled sleep with the sound of a buzzer going off in her ear. She bolted upright, thinking it was her alarm clock and that she was going to be late for work. Disoriented, she slapped the off button of her alarm, but the buzzing continued.

As she glared at the digital clock cheerily glowing the time of 2:13 a.m., she realized that the buzzing was not coming from the alarm clock. It was coming from the building’s fire alarm.

She threw back the covers, her mind suddenly alert. Was there anything here worth risking her life to take with her? She thought briefly about running back into the living room to get her laptop, but discarded the thought almost immediately. Raine backed up their network nightly, so all she would lose was the laptop itself, which was covered under their insurance. With no idea where the fire might be, it just wasn’t worth the risk.

Aimee unlatched the locks of her bedroom window and pushed it up. Looking down, she saw that many of her neighbors were already milling around on the ground. The fire escape was clear, with no sign of danger. Aimee clambered out the window and hopped onto the cool metal grate of her balcony. She was glad now that her only choice of clean nightwear had been red silk tap pants and a matching camisole. She hadn’t realized she was so far behind on her laundry and all her other pajamas were in the wash. Some of her neighbors would have gotten quite an eyeful as she climbed down the fire escape if she’d had the choice of one of her favorite short nighties instead.

She hadn’t made much of an effort to get to know anyone in the building and, with her case complete, this early-morning gathering didn’t seem like the place to start. Instead, Aimee stood away from the crowd as the fire department arrived, one of their gaily colored trucks pulling into the alley followed by a white ambulance. Aimee stepped back as the vehicles approached, cutting a swath in the crowd.

“Hell of a time for a fire drill,” a dark-haired young woman whom Aimee had never met said.

“Yeah,” Aimee agreed, not really interested in conversation. She was too drained by the events of the last twelve hours, by doubting the decision she’d made to break it off with Race before they’d even had a chance. Rationally, she knew she’d done the right thing, but—

“Oh, God, I must have cut myself climbing down the fire escape,” the young woman said, holding out one blood-soaked hand. She looked at Aimee with wide, saucer-round brown eyes.

Aimee instinctively grabbed the woman’s arm. “Here, the ambulance driver should be able to help.” She led the woman toward the ambulance, but the driver wasn’t sitting in the front seat so she headed around the back, hoping the EMT would be there. She saw the legs of the white-uniformed man, his body hidden by the open back door of the ambulance.

“This woman is bleeding,” she said.

The next seconds passed like a slow-motion movie being played out in Aimee’s head. The woman at her side stepped away as the man came out from behind the ambulance door. She recognized him instantly from the bar. Bill, wasn’t that his name?

What a coincidence, she thought. Then, no.

Aimee gasped when the hypodermic needle was stuck into her arm and the plunger depressed. One of her neighbors turned.

“Help,” Aimee heard herself say, as if listening to the words from the end of a long tunnel.

Her neighbor started toward her, but the woman at Aimee’s side grimaced and held up her hand. “It’s okay. She cut herself on the way down the fire escape.”

Aimee’s head bobbed on her neck like one of those bobble-head dolls that were so popular a few years ago. She saw the blood on her own arm and had trouble figuring out how that had happened. She didn’t remember cutting herself.

No. She wasn’t hurt. The other woman was. But why was she bleeding if she wasn’t injured?

Aimee tried to think but her brain just wouldn’t seem to focus on any one thought long enough for it to make sense of anything. She needed Race. He would help her make sense of everything.

Race. Her CPA. With the CIA. Aimee fought the sudden urge to giggle. The letters echoed in her head. CPA . . . CIA . . . CFO . . . FBI. Aim . . . e . . . e . . . e.

And then, nothing.

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