Read Jaq’s Harp for Free Online Page B

it’d take him minutes while it’d take her maybe an hour by going through the forms and checks.
    “Stop chewing your nails,” Harp said in an offhanded manner as he nodded toward the couch.
    An operative always knew when to accept help to accomplish a mission. In this case, the mission was much more important than her ego. Much.
    “We need the antidote for V534b.” She plopped on the couch and grabbed the tablet with the visitor access request.
    Shrugging into the lab coat, Harp nodded and winked at her before he went through the door to the viral research lab.
    Alone, she swayed in her seat as anxiety waved over her, hot and suffocating. All these years at Mother they’d only worked together once, and it had been a simple, nonthreatening surveillance mission. She’d never seen him walk into danger. With a force of will, she kept her foot from tapping and her legs from forcing her off her ass to pace uselessly. The words on the form blurred in front of her.
    To grip the touchpen, she stopped chewing on her thumbnail and wiped her hand on her jacket.
    “Let’s see,” she murmured.
    Name. She couldn’t put Jacqueline Robinson.
    “Jackie English.” She grinned at what she’d written on the tablet before she erased it.
    The man who’d prompted her long-ago pastime of scribbling her dream married name had walked through security doors and out of her protection.
    She slammed down the tablet and stood in one motion. After crossing the waiting area once, twice, she plopped back down again and forced her glassy stare toward the tablet in her lap. She emptied her mind, relaxed, and tried to let the time flow by.
    She’d missed Harp.
    Missed the way he made her crazy, the way he made her melt at a touch, the way he made her feel at home, but she couldn’t let him be her home again. His leaving had nearly broken her. She didn’t have the luxury to fall apart. Merry needed her. Unsure how much time had passed, she jerked when the door slid open.
    A woman came into the waiting area. Skinny, long blond hair pulled back, bright red nails flashing, the newcomer didn’t glance at her. Identical to her surveillance photos, Madame Ochre brushed by into the viral research area and left behind a stream of floral perfume. Jaq wrinkled her nose.
    From all the reports, Madame Ochre didn’t involve herself in the work behind Giant Corp. There could be only reason she’d brought herself to the third level.
    Harp was in trouble.
     
    Harp headed straight for the medical storage room. He thumbed through the orderly files and grabbed the V534b folder, thick with sample blister packs. After shoving it into the top of his jeans at his back, the lab coat fit a little tightly, but it’d do for now.
    The door to the storage room darkened. It’d been too easy. He should’ve known.
    “I thought you were up to something, with all your sneaking around this morning. All I had to do was wait for your security code to come up. What on earth could my favorite singer want here in the lab?” The lights bore down on Vera’s slender frame, accenting the cruel twist of her glossed lips. She slung her long tied-back hair across her shoulder and petted the blond tresses over her pert breasts. Her type didn’t do anything for him—the type being “not Jaq”—but he recognized the beauty that entranced Ochre.
    With not so much as a shift of his shoulders beneath the coat, he responded as John Singer. “I wanted a lab coat for my routine this morning.”
    She smirked at him, eyes glinting. She didn’t believe the cover any longer. In the case of a blown cover, the less said, the better. He snapped his mouth shut with an audible click.
    “Let’s see this routine. Come.” With a turn, ponytail fanning around her, she left the storage room and passed back through the workers, who wouldn’t look him in the eye. They’d never hesitated to point her in his direction. For the first time he regretted his decision to keep to himself, remain