Mystery & Suspense
The second tie-in novel to the successful USA Network Burn Notice TV series that has thus far drawn 5.39 million viewers!
Ex-covert op Michael Westen has a new client. Paolo Fornelli is Helmsman for a yacht in the Hurricane Cup—a winner-take-all race financed by the super-rich and preceded by a week of high stakes gambling, high-risk business, and high-class attitude. Paolo's family has been taken hostage. If Paolo ever wants to see them again, he must make it to the final race—and lose.
To find the kidnappers, Michael will have to infiltrate high society and enter a deadly game against deadlier opponents in a world where money isn't the only thing worth killing for…
Read an excerpt from Burn Notice: The End Game (continued...)
One moment, I was a covert operative in fine standing, negotiating a wire transfer with a Russian gangster over a Nigerian oil refinery. The next moment, I was an ex–covert operative in exceptionally poor status, running for my life. Subsequently, I've been ensnared here, in Miami, trying to figure out the truth behind who issued my burn notice, thus placing me on a blacklist the world over, my movements alternately watched by the FBI and ignored by the FBI. As long as I don't leave the surrounding area, I won't heat up. So for the last year, I've been forced to take jobs helping people while I try to gather evidence on the people who turned my dossier into a bible of lies, learning along the way that I've been moved like a pawn and how difficult it is to find the king.
That's the easy part compared to navigating my mother Madeline's emotional ballistics. I've spent nearly forty years on this planet, have dodged bullets and missiles, have killed men, have blown up buildings, have found myself disavowed by my own government. . . . And I would do all of those things again, twice even, if it meant I wouldn't need to find an appropriate Mother's Day card.
"Why don't I just take her out to dinner?" I said.
"You should make her dinner," Fi said, and handed me another card. "This one is nice."
On the front was a huge mushroom cloud erupting over a '50s-era tract home. I didn't bother to open it up. "This isn't, technically, helping,"I said.
"Suit yourself, "she said. "I'm going to the garden section. See if they might have anything I can later use to incinerate your loft when you invariably disappoint me again.
"That sounds like a great plan," I said.
I watched Fiona walk away. Both men and women followed her as she passed. She paused for a moment in front of a display of scented candles, let her fingers idle on one, leaned forward to smell it, like she was putting on a little show, letting people know she was in the building, in case anyone hadn't noticed her yet.
A Cuban kid wearing a wife beater and with a barbed-wire tattoo that climbed up the middle of his throat stopped behind her and ogled her ass. He didn't realize it, but depending upon Fiona's mood, he was potentially about five seconds away from losing a vital organ.
Fi must have been in a good mood, since when she turned around and saw the kid she just smiled and whisked away.
She had that thing. There wasn't anything physically imposing about her—she was small, really, barely over 5'3", maybe weighed a hundred pounds with a gun strapped to her ankle—but she walked like a panther, carried herself with a confidence that said she could sleep with you or kill you and it really made no difference to her which outcome won. In a different world, I suppose it would be a lot easier to just be with Fiona, but there's nothing easy about being in a relationship with someone recognized as an international criminal, particularly when you're a spy. Or used to be a spy. My own identity crises probably didn't help the situation.
I spent the next ten minutes thumbing through cards. None of them appealed to me. I kept looking for one that said something along the lines of I love you, despite it all, but Hallmark didn't seem to have that one available this season.
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Read more...Read the first book in the "Burn Notice" series:
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