The Midnight Hour - Brenda Jackson [7]
When Drake began working for the Agency a year after Tori had come on board, it was also decided that their paths could never cross. Since Hawk was the boss of both of them, he had worked hard to assure that their assignments took them to different parts of the world, which hadn't been a hard thing to do since Drake Warren was such a loner. Besides, if they had run into each other, Tori would have recognized Drake, but there was no way Drake would have recognized Tori. Her facial features were totally different from those of Sandy Carroll. And because of the extensive nasal and throat surgery she had undergone due to scarred tissue, even her voice was different. Only her eyes had remained a dark chocolate brown. When Hawk had first seen her after the extensive cosmetic surgery, he had been satisfied that there I was nothing about her features to indicate who she'd once I been. Her mannerisms had been another story and she had undergone an entire year of in-depth training for the once right-handed person to become left-handed. That had taken a lot of hard work on Tori's part and in the end she had I again mastered her skills in martial arts and marksmanship. I
Unfortunately, no matter how successful they had been with Tori's makeover, the one thing they hadn't been able to replace was her heart. Since Hawk at one time had been both her and Drake's marine colonel, he had been one of the first to detect the blossoming romance between them, although Drake had fought it like hell. Tori had been more accepting and Hawk would never forget how, following her rescue, Drake had been the one person she had constantly cried out for during all the pain she'd endured from the trauma of the fire and explosion before lapsing into unconsciousness for those three weeks. "I had to go see him, Hawk."
Tori's soft voice sounded defeated, filled with grief, loss, but held no remorse. He knew if this situation happened again she would risk everything for the man she still loved. "By going to see Drake you outright disobeyed my am orders, Tori. Sandy Carroll doesn't exist anymore. You know that as well as I do. She died in that explosion and for over five years now I've asked you to get on with your life."
Tori sighed deeply and wondered how she could get Hawk or anyone else to understand that she had tried getting on with her life and most of the time she succeeded. But there were those days when she wasn't consumed with work, when she suffered from bouts of depression, and she couldn't help but think about the man she had lost forever.
She fully understood that to let Drake know she was still alive would be a terrible risk, especially if Solomon Cross found out. The man was a cold-blooded killer and would hunt her down and kill her just because he would have felt he'd been cheated out of her death. Cross had eluded the DEA and CIA's clutches for more than eight years and was one of the most wanted men in the war on drugs. He had been in hiding for the past five years and for a while everyone thought he was dead, taken out by his own cartel. But recent reports that had been confirmed through several different governmental agencies indicated the man was still very much alive. But no matter the risk, she could not have stood silently by and watched Drake give up the will to live.
Struggling with a mix of emotions, Tori stood and walked over to the window and looked out at the Atlantic Ocean. To anyone looking in, this particular building, nestled on the ocean in Hilton Head, South Carolina, was a private vacation resort. Very few knew that the people who came to stay under the exclusive roof of the Diamond Bay Resort were CIA agents working on assignments that could take them anywhere in the country. Diamond Bay gave them the cover they needed to be linked as professionals to the outside world while camouflaging the true nature of their work.
The resort's proximity to the ocean made it easy when agents