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Haven Caldwell squeezed her “date’s” arm. “You’re doing fine, Preston,” she assured him in a low voice, using the name of the reclusive computer developer he was pretending to be. “Just relax.”

“Easy for you to say,” Kenny Reardon responded, while tugging on the collar of his tuxedo and the black tie encircling it. He was only two years her junior, but his pale, baby face, covered in freckles, made him appear far younger than that. “You don’t have a target on your back.”

She cupped his chin and turned his head so he was looking directly at her.

To anyone else in the room, it probably seemed like she was seducing the socially-handicapped but rich man.

However, in reality, they were just friends.

She’d known Kenny for about eight years, ever since he’d been hired as one of the analysts at Deimos, five years after she’d been trained to be one of their operatives at the age of twenty-one.

He’d been assigned as the intelligence and communications contact for her and several other agents and, over the years, had become like a kid brother to her.

They spoke almost daily, and when she was in town, they occasionally went out to dinner or to a movie.

Some of the few times Haven was able to let down her hair and be herself—unfortunately, she had no idea who that person was anymore.

Some of the support staff and agents at the covert organization’s headquarters in California had become a close-knit family, considering most of them had been employed based on the fact they didn’t have any.

Few people in the world even knew Deimos existed—the CIA was a Boy Scout troop compared to it—and those who did, knew to keep their mouths shut.

Haven and her fellow operatives did the President’s and US government’s dirty work—not that anyone in power would admit it.

They took care of things, which the public could never know about, to keep the US safe from terrorists and other world powers who wanted to see the leader of the free world fall flat on its face.

Deimos was the Greek god of terror, so it was the ideal name for the black-ops agency that excelled in torture and assassinations, among other things.

For years, Haven had traveled all over the world, using various aliases.

Sometimes, like this evening, she hobnobbed with the elite, while on other missions, she could be in one of the worst hellholes on Earth.

It wasn’t hard to figure out which assignments she preferred.

But this was Kenny’s first time, and most likely his last, in the field.

They’d needed the super geek for his extensive computer knowledge, specifically about the Dark Web, in the event the operative was tested.

“Preston Ward” was one of hundreds of profiles the agency had spent years updating for times just like this.

There were few photos of the fictional man on the internet, all of which were hazy or taken from the back, and several members of the Deimos support staff could actually pass as “Preston” whenever the time came to use the profile.

Reardon had just happened to draw the short straw, and it was Haven’s job to make sure he got out of the mission in one piece.

“Hey, you know I won’t let anything happen to you. Just stick to me like glue, hot stuff.”

“Well, at least that’s not a hardship. I’ve got the hottest looking date here tonight. ”

Haven grinned. When she’d first gotten to know Reardon, a simple exchange like that would have had his cheeks and neck turning beet red as he stuttered through a response.

Even now, if a woman he barely knew just smiled at him, he would still have the same reaction.

But over time, he’d gotten comfortable with the female agents such as Haven and Jordyn Alvarez.

Sometimes they liked to tease him, but usually they preferred to build up his self-assurance around women.

He was a sweet kid, and she would love for some lucky girl to realize that someday.

In fact, not too long ago, while Carter was away on a solo mission, Haven and Jordyn had been at headquarters for some new training and had taken Kenny out to a bar for dinner after his shift had ended one night.

Both women were used to being hit on in most social settings, and that night had been no exception.

However, they’d given all their attention to their friend, making him feel ten feet tall and bulletproof.

She was sure the other women in the bar that night had been wondering what was so special about him that had Haven and Jordyn ignoring every other man in the place.

Kenny would probably always be shy around women he didn’t know, but, hopefully, they’d given him the confidence to get past that so he could talk to one he was interested in without getting tongue tied.

Hooking her arm around his elbow, Haven gestured to the main doors to the ballroom. “Let’s take a walk through the rest of the place. Hopefully, we’ll run into ‘Mr. Smith’ soon.”

Mr. Smith, undoubtedly not his real name, had popped up on the Dark Web a few months ago.

The Dark Web was the side of the internet most people didn’t know was a reality and not just something they read about in a spy novel.

Smith had been trolling for anyone who might have a specific software protection dongle with launch codes for a suitcase-sized nuclear device.

It was one of many that’d gone missing from Russia back in the 1990s.

Using the Preston Ward profile, the agents at Deimos headquarters had begun laying an intricate trail about how the developer/hacker had come into possession of the codes.

They were then contacted by Smith who wanted to purchase the codes for the tidy sum of $10 million.

After providing “proof” Preston had the codes, the agents had then engaged in a game of cat and mouse which was hopefully coming to an end tonight.

Once they identified who Smith really was, he’d be quietly taken into custody by Deimos agents, who would then stop at nothing to recover the device.

Haven sashayed toward the open double doors leading into a foyer that was larger than most high-end hotel suites she’d been in.

The long skirt of the shiny, gold Badgley Mischka dress she wore swished from side to side as she moved.

An above-the-knee slit exposed her left leg with each step, without showing the small handgun strapped to her right thigh just below her crotch.

Tucked below the deep V of the dress’s neckline was a garrote, which she could easily access in the event she needed to silently dispatch someone by strangulation.

It wasn’t a method she liked to use since it meant getting up close and personal with her enemy, but it was there in case she needed it.

The matching shoes also had some modifications the designer had never intended.

A three-inch stiletto knife slid through a small slit just below the seat of the four-inch heels and rested along the shank under the sole.

All she had to do was bend one knee, reach down, and slide the knife out from under the shoe, and she’d have instant weapon in hand.

If James Bond were a woman, she’d have loved the shoes as much as Haven did.

As they strolled throughout parts of the 50,000 square feet of the ridiculously opulent venue, Haven steered Reardon into areas with less people in them, giving Mr. Smith a better opportunity to approach them.

The wedding festivities were expected to continue well into the night, and she hoped it wouldn’t take that long for him to contact the “code seller.” Mixed in with all the wedding guests were bodyguards, the catering staff, and the event coordinator’s people, but even though most of the hired help were in tuxedos, it was easy for Haven’s keen eye to distinguish them—it was all in the harried or precise way they moved, depending on their job.

Passing through a room that housed a small bar and several intimate sitting areas for guests to enjoy, Haven smiled and nodded hello to several people who knew her as Hazel McPherson, “owner” of Simply Splendid, Inc.

, a moderate-sized, international cosmetics and skin care company that was another business Deimos used for its operatives’ covers.

Exiting into the hallway, she glanced to the right and then left, getting her bearings before deciding which way to go.

She’d studied the floor plans of the mansion for days, making sure she knew how to get out of there if the mission went south.

Other Deimos agents were among the guests and staff milling about as her backup, but Reardon was her main responsibility, and there was no way she’d let him get hurt or killed.

As she turned left down the long hall, she headed for the two-story library.

This far away from the main ballroom the lively music being played there had faded away and was replaced with the soft chamber music coming from their new destination.

More guests were entering another room further down on the opposite side of the hall that was designated as a cigar bar.

Having thought of everything, the venue had a special ventilation system in that closed-door room for the smoke to be removed and released up through the roof, three stories above it, without exposing the rest of the rooms.