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never have had such a reaction to a man she couldn’t see, only hear. A man who
    seemed more familiar to her than her own body.
    She followed her mother from the antiques shop, back to the busy tree-lined street. Pausing,
    Angelica Harrington made a quick call to the chauffeur, gave him their location, then turned
    to her daughter with a worried frown.
    “I tried to do too much at once,” Angelica said, the apology in her voice pricking at Lilly’s
    conscience. “I should have allowed you to rest a little longer.”
    “You’re going to have to get used to this, Mother,” Lilly informed her firmly as she let her
    gaze survey the busy street with narrowed eyes behind her dark sunglasses. “Just as I have to
    get used to myself.”
    Lilly didn’t catch her mother’s look of consternation. The older woman watched her
    daughter as one might watch an alien, waiting, watching for any signs of danger. But together
    with the wariness there was also pain.
    A mother’s dream had come true. The daughter she had thought she had lost forever had
    returned home. Her child lived and breathed. She was given the chance few parents who had
    lost children were given. A chance to say all the things she hadn’t taken the time to say before.
    A chance to kiss her daughter good night. A chance to see her smile. Hear her laughter.
    Perhaps.
    Travis wondered if Lilly had learned to laugh again. He knew the few times he had managed
    to pull laughter from her it was like seeing sunshine for the first time.
    He wondered if her mother saw sunshine when she saw her daughter’s smile, or heard her
    laughter. He wondered if she’d seen that smile or that laughter since her daughter had been
    home. God knew, Lilly deserved at least a few moments of happiness before the world went
    crazy on her again. And before her mother possibly lost her daughter all over.
    One thing was certain, beneath the impatience and flashes of irritation Angelica
    Harrington’s heart was also breaking as she watched the young woman she had been told was
    her daughter.
    There was no doubt Lilly was definitely Victoria Lillian Harrington. DNA proved it, her
    dental records proved it, but there were no fingerprints to back it up. Her fingerprints had
    been removed the day she signed on with the Elite Ops. With her return the blame had been
    lain on the fiery car crash.
    Standing well out of her line of vision, he watched her closely, a smile tugging at his lips as
    she slid her sunglasses on and continued to watch the street with what he knew were eagle-
    sharp eyes.
    She’d caught him following her several times throughout the afternoon. Each time she had
    stopped, arrowed in on him, and watched him with a familiarity he knew did nothing but
    confuse her.
    He’d seen that confusion. He’d felt it. He’d nearly tasted it as he stood behind her and
    breathed in her scent.
    She was fighting to make sense of the world she was in and the memories she had lost, but
    she was still game to fight for the answers.
    She would be there tonight. There wasn’t a doubt in Travis’s mind that she wouldn’t find
    the bar in time to meet with him. He wondered if she would make it there alone, or if her
    shadow, the bodyguard her uncle had hired, would manage to follow her.
    Lilly Belle, code-named Night Hawk, would never have allowed herself to be tracked to a
    meeting. She would have ensured she arrived alone, and if she didn’t, then she would ensure
    the one following her regretted it.
    That was his Lilly. She could be merciless, but in being so, he’d watched, year by year,
    another piece of her soul erode.
    Those wounds were still there, in her eyes, along with her confusion, her wariness.
    “What do you think?”
    Travis glanced over his shoulder at the towering former Russian who stood carefully back
    from the edge of the building.
    Nik Steele watched Lilly and her mother, his icy blue eyes lasered in on them intently.
    “I think we need to plan for when all hell breaks