The Midnight Hour - Brenda Jackson [11]
Closing his eyes briefly as tension seeped through him, he slowly opened them moments later after he'd gotten his mind and thoughts back on track. It was then that he noticed he stunning-looking woman was gone. He was again hooded with an unfamiliar feeling. There was something about her that had piqued his interest and already he had marked her as someone he intended to get to know.
He would definitely make it his business to find out who she was.
Tori stepped into the elevator cautious and alert. Her senses were seldom off and for a few moments while standing in the lobby she had felt someone watching her, although when she had glanced around she had seen no one.
Because Diamond Bay was set up like an actual resort, the first five floors were exclusive-looking condos used as temporary housing for agents coming and going on assignments. The sixth through the tenth floors were where the administrative offices were located. Diamond Bay's sister resort, The Blue Topaz, was located on the West Coast right on the Pacific Ocean in San Diego. The two resorts also housed new recruits for training.
Tori wondered about the summons she had received to cut her vacation a month short and return immediately to Diamond Bay for this urgent meeting with her new boss, CIA Station Chief Ronald Casey. Casey was Hawk's replacement and she hoped he was at least half the man Hawk had been.
Hawk had known the agents who worked for him like the back of his hand and had always been open to their ideas and suggestions and oftentimes it seemed he had the ability to read their minds. He also understood the dangerous demands some missions could make on a person. Most of the senior agents who worked for him had once served under him while in the marines and although they knew he was tough, they'd always known he was fair.
From Tori's last conversation with Hawk when she had talked to him on the phone from her home in Stinson Beach, California, he had told her the Agency had decided to bring in Casey, a man who had headed up an operation on the West Coast instead of going with Hawk's recommendation of the man who'd been second in command under him. That announcement hadn't set too well with Hawk but he felt that things would eventually work out.
He told her he would be retiring to a ranch he had purchased years ago in New Mexico and had given her his phone number just in case she ever needed him for anything. Finally, he told her that he had made a decision not to tell Casey about her past history and that she should consider his suggestion that she transfer to another operations so her and Drake's paths wouldn't cross.
When the elevator stopped on her floor she glanced at her watch. She would have time to shower and change clothes before she was due in Ronald Casey's office.
Ronald Casey released a long, mental sigh. It was obvious that the man standing across the room was madder than hell. It was just as well they cleared the air between them now so Drake Warren would know what Casey expected in the way of tolerated behavior. Everyone had warned him that working with Warren wouldn't be easy and that Abram Hawk had pretty much let the man do whatever the hell he pleased. But Warren was going to find out that he wasn't Abram Hawk and under no circumstances would he allow him run roughshod, which was something Hawk evidently had done if all the stories he'd heard about Warren were ^e. And looking at Warren he had no reason to believe they weren't.
News of Drake's daredevil antics had spread all the