Storing the bag in the back compartment of the motorcycle, Lilly turned to the remainder of the clothes.
She dressed quickly in leather pants, t-shirt, and jacket. Flat leather boots pulled above the knee, and she found the key to the cycle hanging in the ignition.
Fear was ever present, but so was excitement. It pounded inside her, raced through her bloodstream, and sent adrenaline flying through her system.
She didn’t remember who she had been.
She didn’t remember what she had been.
But maybe those memories were now growing stronger, moving closer, and were almost within reach.
Friendly’s Sports Bar sat in the perfect location for assignations such as the one Travis had set up with his favorite former Elite Ops counterpart.
It sat on a corner. Across the street were an assortment of closely built inner-city brick houses that served as apartments, homes, and offices.
Franklin Street was a busy area, especially on a Friday night, which allowed for greater anonymity, as well as plenty of traffic, both by vehicle and by foot, which could be used as a distraction as the other agents positioned themselves to watch every corner of the tavern.
They wanted to know who was following Lilly, how she was being followed, and who they could be traced back to.
Sitting at the bar, Travis nursed a beer, his gaze trained on the side entrance of the building from the short end of the L-shaped bar. At the other corner, Nik sat sideways on a bar stool as the red-haired Tehya, one of the team’s communications experts, sat beside him and flirted outrageously.
Farther down the bar Clint McIntyre, a former Navy SEAL and now part of the Elite Ops independent backup team, sat with his wife and tried playing the drunken male on the make while his wife, Morganna, her long dark hair pulled back in a braid, pretended not to be amused.
The rest of the team, backup as well as the agents, were positioned outside along with Jordan and Santos Bahre, one of Lilly’s commanders.
“She’s not showing.” Santos’s voice came through the tiny earset that linked communications between the agents and the commanders. “I warned you she wasn’t this predictable.”
Travis glanced around the bar.
“She’s here.” She’d been here for a while, he suspected. He could feel her watching, those green eyes narrowed on him as she waited to see what he’d do.
“Doubtful.” Reno Chavez, commander of the backup team that had been with the Ops for years, now spoke into the link. “Macey and I both have the entrances covered. There’s no way she slipped in there without us knowing it.”
There was a way. Lilly always found a way.
Travis pushed back the warm beer he had been nursing and made to rise when he felt the small hand that pressed between his shoulder blades, indicating he should remain in place.
Settling back on the stool, he turned his head, restrained his smile, and watched as Lilly slid onto the bar stool that had been vacated beside him.
“I didn’t think you were going to show.” He motioned for the bartender to take her order.
Waving the man away, Lilly turned back to him, her gaze suspicious as she watched him closely.
She was wearing her riding leathers. Leather pants, boots, a short jacket, and a black silk shirt that bared her midriff if she moved just the right way.
“Neither did I.” Her green eyes were dark in the shadows. “Tell me who you are and what do you have to do with me?”
There was something about him, something familiar, something she couldn’t put her finger on. She should know him, but she couldn’t remember him. She couldn’t remember meeting him.
But her body seemed to know him. Each time she had seen him, this morning as well as tonight, her body had responded with heated warmth and that familiar sense of remembrance.
This man had touched her, he had kissed her. Her body remembered it and she ached for more. That ache had followed her through the day, the remembered feel of his body behind her, at the store, impossible to recover from.
“I’ve had many things to do with you.” His smile was rakish, his brown eyes filled with sexual knowledge. A sexual knowledge of her.
Lilly looked up at the bartender as he set a cold beer in front of her.
“Good to see you back, Lilly.” The grizzled bartender gave a wide smile and a wink. “I see your friend found you.”
“That he did.” She lifted the beer to her lips and took a long, cold drink.
The bartender moved away, leaving her with the man watching her now. She didn’t even know his name.
“Travis Caine,” he whispered at her ear as though reading her thoughts. “In case you were wondering.”
She was doing more than wondering. It had been driving her crazy not knowing even that scrap of information. “I know your name then,” she said quietly. “Who are you to me?”
“We met six years ago,” he told her. “We’ve run together at odd times since.”
Lilly pushed the fingers of one hand through her hair.
“We traveled together then?” Her heart was racing, her lungs starved for oxygen as she fought not to breathe too hard.
He nodded and Lilly tipped the beer to her lips, and finished it quickly before setting it rather hard on the bar and flicking her fingers at the bartender to the empty bottle.
He’d obviously been watching for her. Within seconds there was another bottle in front of her. She wondered what tip she usually left him for such excellent service.
She finished half the beer, set the bottle on the bar, then glanced back at Travis.
“I fight?” she whispered back at him.
“Rather well.” He gave her a strange half smile. Strange, because she felt she should know what that smile meant.
“What did I do when I fought?” she asked him. “Did I kill?”
She knew she had. She rubbed her finger and thumb together, knowing her fingerprints weren’t there any longer and they weren’t there for a reason.
“You don’t remember anything about the past six years then?” he asked as he turned more fully to her, the backs of his fingers stroking down her lower arm.
Did she remember anything?
She remembered her nightmares. They were filled with pain, rage, and fear. She remembered a sense of drowning, of icy water closing over her head as she fought to breathe.
She remembered a kiss, a touch and an underlying anger that made no sense.
She remembered the sharp retort of a gun, and then nothing.