Hotwire Read online

  Praise for Hotwire

  “Every spare minute I had was spent reading, including during my lunch breaks at work. Solid and very well written.”

  ~MaKaela Howell, reviewer

  “Christy is a character that will make you want to be stronger, try harder at whatever you do, and learn how to disarm an enemy.”

  ~Tamara Borden, reviewer

  “This book has it all. Romance. Danger. Christy. Action. Adventure. Subterfuge. Christy. I can't say enough about how much I love Christy, her character just gets better and better with each new story.”

  ~Cathy Jeppson, reviewer

  “Hotwire kept me quickly turning the pages as I couldn’t wait to finish. Keeps you biting your nails while on the edge of your seat. Hogan cleverly created characters with detail, who are both relatable and grounded, making it easy to transport to the world of the high school students.”

  ~The Bookstalker Review

  “It’s a thriller that reminded me of a mix between Gone in 60 Seconds and the Gallagher Girls books.”

  ~Canda Mortensen, reviewer

  “A captivating novel that I couldn’t put down. Seriously, you’ll have to put aside house work and consider getting a baby sitter so that you don’t have to put the book down until you read the last word.”

  ~Brooke Stephenson at familyisfriendship. blogspot.com

  “A spellbinding, action-packed series of twisted events that lead our favorite agent into the clutches of the world’s most feared group of formidable, crass, and malignant men. Make your popcorn, unearth your horde of favorite snacks and drinks because you will not want to walk away from this intense series of events.”

  ~T. Russell, Summerfield, Florida, reviewer

  “Christy is like the female version of James Bond, only better! A clean spy novel that will have your heart racing, hands sweating, and feelings out of control!”

  ~Konstanz Silverbow, reviewer

  “A wild ride you won’t want to get off until the very end.”

  ~Cindy Roland Anderson, author of the bestselling novels Fair Catch

  Also by Cindy M. Hogan

  Audio, Print, and eBook

  Watched Trilogy

  Watched

  Protected

  Created

  Adrenaline Rush

  Gravediggers

  Sweet and Sour Kisses:*

  *Formerly called Confessions of a 16-Year-Old Virgin Lips

  First Kiss

  Stolen Kiss

  Rebound Kiss

  Rejected Kiss

  Dream Kiss

  Hotwire

  Copyright ©2014 by Cindy M. Hogan

  First Edition

  Cover design by Novak Illustrations

  Cover photography by Still Memories by Tomi

  Cover model: Hannah Hogan

  Edited by Charity West

  All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher, O’neal Publishing.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters, organizations, incidents, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are represented fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Layton, UT.

  ISBN: 978-0-98513187-6

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  Visit her at cindymhogan.com

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  Hotwire by Cindy M. Hogan

  Nineteen-year-old spy Christy Hadden can't wait for her latest assignment for Division 57 posing as a student at a prestigious New York City academy and car thief extraordinaire. It’s easy enough. Infiltrate the car-theft ring and retrieve a stolen car. No problem.

  The best part of the mission is her attractive handler, Jeremy. The worst part? The sociopath masquerading as the academy's most popular guy. The very one she’s supposed to get close to.

  But soon she realizes the thieves are much more than they seem. Her simple spying mission becomes more dangerous than anyone imagined and retrieving the car is the least of her worries. If the organization discovers her true identity, they won't hesitate to kill her, and if she fails, others will suffer the same fate.

  Chapter 1

  I stretched out a kink in my neck, readjusting my heavy surveillance headphones again, exasperated that none fit me right. “Ugh!”

  Agent Halluis Moreau whacked me on the shoulder bracingly. “Don’t worry, it’ll only be about ten years until big people things actually fit you,” he said, his lightly accented voice dripping with mockery.

  I turned and scowled at him, but it didn’t take long looking at his goofy face before I was fighting a smile. I blamed the mustache—who could take a guy seriously when he was sporting a pencil-thin mustache? It didn’t help that he insisted on always wearing all black, from his tight turtleneck to his shiny shoes. He looked more like a little boy playing spy than an actual spook. I turned back to my monitor before he could catch my lips twitching.

  “Really funny, Halluis.” I let the sarcasm drip from my voice to cover the smile. “Just pay attention to your feed. You don’t want to miss anything.”

  He scoffed and tossed his own headphones down on the table. “Mon oeil. As if these kids ever say anything important. Our time would be better spent practicing your French.”

  “My French? What’s wrong with my French?”

  “Your accent is terrible.”

  The van door slid open and slammed shut quickly, letting in a burst of frigid air. “You’re a Parisian, so you’re obligated to say that.” It was Agent Amédée Renaud, always known as Ace, returning from a quick bathroom break.

  The three of us were positioned inside a cramped surveillance van, parked on a crowded New York City street, listening to various audio feeds coming out of A.G. Bell Academy, an engineering prep school. The team had been monitoring activity at the school ever since they’d pinpointed it as a hub for car theft activity.

  “I find it hard to believe that any kids in this school could be stealing expensive, high profile cars all around the city. They’re kids.” Halluis looked at me, a sheepish look on his face, before tilting his head to the side. “What? They’re in high school. Sure, it’s an elite engineering high school, but still a high school.”

  “If it is them,” Ace said. “I can’t wait to see how they’re doing it. Whoever they are, they’re good at hiding their tracks.”

  “I don’t get why Division 57 is even involved in this. Shouldn’t the police be dealing with this?” I said, voicing a concern I’d had since they’d brought me on board a week before.

  “Yeah, but we’re not after all the cars. Just one. The police don’t seem to have a great handle on this—they’ve been after this group for months, with no leads. Our client, whoever he is, wants his car back, and he doesn’t want to wait around for the police to get it together.”

  “Well, I’m up for a quick in-and-out mission after the last one.” I leaned back and pushed a big breath of air through my nose. “Still, I don’t see why anyone would make such a big deal over one car.”

  “Do you have any idea what kind of car it is? A 1959 Mercedes Benz 300 SL Gullwing Coupe!” Ace whistled. “If someone stole it from me, I’d be hot to get it back no matter the cost.”

  “But Division doesn’t send us on operations to benefit one person.”

  “Ours is not to reason why,” Halluis cut in. “We don’t question our mission orders. But rest assured, we wouldn’t take on a client just for money. The car must be very important, or Division wouldn’t have invested all the resources, man-power, and money into tracking it down th
at they have, don’t you think?”

  I nodded. Everything I’d seen Division 57 do had huge impact.

  “I’m sure you’re right,” Ace said. “I might even get out from behind the computer to touch that beauty when we find it, but only for a second.”

  I considered the two men in the van with me. Before I’d joined them, Halluis and Ace had been a two-man team—Halluis as jack-of-all-trades, doing most of the actual intelligence gathering, and Ace as tech genius extraordinaire. He liked to call himself “glorified tech support,” but it was Ace who had found the only solid lead thus far. He’d written a computer algorithm that had analyzed the locations of the car thefts and had identified the academy as the center of the theft activity. The two of them had been trying to gather intel from the school and learn anything that would help track down the illusive car. But so far, no luck.

  That’s when they’d brought me on board.

  At nineteen, I was one of the youngest spies on Division 57’s payroll, making me a perfect candidate to go undercover in the school and learn things that surveillance feeds and computer algorithms could not. It was Friday, so we had one more day of monitoring the feeds, learning as much as possible. On Monday, I was going in, joining the ranks of future engineers as Amber Smith, transfer student.

  Only a few knew it, but my unique photographic memory had taken me through spy school and my other trainings in under a year. I had a natural knack for it. I only wished it hadn’t taken witnessing a murder when I was sixteen to put me on this path. I never wanted another terrorist or madman to hurt so many people. I loved being one of the good guys.

  Ace shook his shaggy blond hair, which despite being streaked with gray had a boyish quality to it—maybe because it always seemed to be in his face. “I could really go for a hot dog right now. What’s the point of being in New York if we can’t take part in all the beauty of the city?”

  Halluis just rolled his eyes. “You Americans. I can’t believe you call that food.”

  “Hey, I’m Canadian. French Canadian,” Ace protested. The two of them started to argue about what exactly it meant to be French, and I tuned them out, turning my attention back to the audio feed.

  What Halluis had said was true—we’d placed audio feeds as carefully as possible, using Ace’s algorithm to locate likely students to monitor, but so far all we’d caught was the typical teenage conversations about school, bands, TV shows, and of course the opposite sex.

  The one I was listening in on now, in fact, was a fine specimen of banal adolescent conversation.

  “…come on, man, it’s gonna be tight. We’re putting it on the big screen, four players, blowing up zombies all night long.” That was Nick Harris, one of the kids we’d tagged as a possible suspect. I sighed. Sounded like he’d be playing video games all night—no car theft activity there.

  I was about to change the feed and focus on one of our other targets when I heard the response.

  “Sorry—it sounds like a lot of fun, but I’m busy tonight. Got a hot date with a German model.”

  My scalp twitched, and my hand tingled; I waited another second before switching the feed.

  “Aw, what? Jericho—there’s no way you’re going out with a model. I call BS.”

  “Believe what you want. Doesn’t bother me. I’m just telling you I’m busy.”

  “Right, right. Still, man, you’re seriously gonna ditch us for some chick? I can’t believe you’d do that to your boys.”

  “Ha! I’d leave you in the dust for this one any day. She’s more than worth it. Older, high class, you know. Usually spends her nights with a rich doctor, but she’s seen my charm now. She’s as good as mine. And the payoff is gonna be so good.”

  Nick made the expected response of combined disbelief and awe, but I was too distracted by the storm inside me to pay much attention to his words. In my head, it was if alarm bells were going off. My senses were on high alert, and everything inside me screamed that something was going on here. It may have seemed like a totally normal conversation, typical teenage boy bravado and brag, but I knew—I just knew—there was more to it than that.

  “Quiet, quiet,” I hissed at Ace and Halluis, who were still arguing. “Pull up everything you’ve got on a kid named Jericho.”

  “Jericho Roman?” Halluis asked, turning back to his keyboard. “No, it’s a dead end. We looked into that kid. Total straight arrow. Class president, good student, très populaire, all that.”

  I shook my head. “I think something’s up with him.” I pulled my heavy headphones down and stared at the info sheet Halluis pulled up on his monitor. This Jericho kid certainly seemed clean—from a well-off family, good grades, everything Halluis had said. Yet, I still felt this intense pull, telling me to pay attention. Something occurred to me. “You did look into him, though. That means Ace’s algorithm tagged him.”

  Ace shrugged. “It’s not perfect, you know. The algorithm tags potential suspects, it doesn’t handcuff the culprits. There’s still some work actual agents have to do. We ruled him out.”

  I nodded slowly, but something still felt off. I sighed, massaging my neck. The giant headphones had really put a strain on my muscles.

  Ace chuckled. “Don’t worry, Christy, I’m working on some things that should make your life easier,” he said.

  I smiled distractedly. There was something Jericho had said…

  “Hey, Ace—didn’t you also make a list of possible targeted cars?”

  “Yeah, it was just a variation on the same algorithm I designed to—”

  I cut him off before he could get too wound up in techy-talk. “Will you pull that up for me?”

  A look passed between my two team members, then Ace shrugged as if to say, “Humor her.”

  Halluis pulled it up, and I scanned it quickly. “There!” I shouted, pointing at one of the cars on the list.

  “The Mercedes S63?”

  “Yes. Jericho said he had a hot date tonight with a German model, one who usually dates a doctor. And look, you tagged this Mercedes—a German car—owned by Dr. Robert Madison.”

  Ace shook his shaggy head, “I don’t know, Christy. That seems a bit of a stretch. It’s probably just a coincidence.”

  “The kid’s just trying to look good for his friends—dating a model. Please,” Halluis snorted.

  I held my ground. “No, listen—it was something he said. ‘The payoff is gonna be good.’ Something about that phrase… it just isn’t sitting right with me.”

  Halluis raised one eyebrow, his mustache making his face look exasperatingly smug.

  I threw my hands in the air. “Fine—you guys think it’s nothing? How about a wager, then?”

  Halluis leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms, eyeing me appraisingly. Ace just grinned, his boyish face alight with glee.

  “Name your terms,” Halluis said.

  “All right, here’s how it’s going to go down. Tonight, I’ll tail Jericho while you monitor the Mercedes. Ace, you'll monitor the operation from the van. If I’m wrong—if Jericho really does just have a date tonight and the car is nothing but a snooze-fest—then I’ll eat those fried crickets and snails we saw the other day in Chinatown.”

  Ace’s grin widened.

  “But if I’m right,” I quickly added, “Then you guys have to eat them—dressed up like sexy women.”

  Halluis’s eyes flashed. “You’re on if you do it dressed up like a bum.”

  “Fine.”

  Ace looked from Halluis’s face to mine. “So, who’s going to tell our fearless leader?”

  Chapter 2

  A few hours later, we were all sitting around our kitchen table in the brownstone townhouse Division had procured as our mission headquarters. There was an official conference room in the brownstone, but more often than not we found ourselves hashing out important mission details around the table over a meal. Jeremy McGinnis, my handler—the fearless leader Ace had mentioned—had brought a pizza, and we were now arguing over the evenin
g’s particulars between bites.

  It was insane to think that witnessing a political murder while on a school trip in D.C. three years ago had brought us together and propelled me into my life as a spy. I tried not to stare at the ropey muscles of his arms as he ate his pizza. A picture of him lying in a hospital bed after saving me from the murderer flashed through my mind.

  Maybe it was the fact that he’d saved my life more than once that made me feel such a strong connection to him. His calm voice always calmed me, and something in his earnest eyes assured me. I stared at them until he noticed me looking. I glanced away from him, pretending to look out the window, as his sexy, dark brown eyes fell on me. And when his hand brushed through his ever-so-perfectly rumpled light brown hair, I took a sharp breath in and forced myself not to think about my own hand doing that very thing.

  “If you’re right and he’s involved with the car thefts, we can’t risk him seeing you tail him. It would completely blow your cover at the school,” Jeremy said. Halluis and Ace had agreed to keep the bet just between us and to act supportive of the plan, and to my great relief Jeremy was immediately on board. That fact only slightly tempered my irritation at his objections to my tail.

  “He won’t see me! Come on, Jeremy, I’m a trained operative, same as the rest of you. I know what I’m doing.”

  I watched his jaw tighten, the only outward sign he gave that he was getting impatient. “It’s just not a risk I’m willing to take—he could catch a glimpse of you, just enough to make him wary of you later when he meets you at school. It could undermine your cover, and I just don’t think it’s worth it.”