Deleted Bits – MORE THAN A MISSION

**SPOILER ALERT for MORE THAN A MISSION**

Elizabeth Moore has a twin sister in MORE THAN A MISSION — Danielle Moore — known by everyone as Dani. Dani’s first appearance in MORE THAN A MISSION was cut because there was concern that it would immediately give away who was actually the world-renowned assassin known as The Sparrow. I liked the scene because it let me show Dani’s caring for her sister Lizzy Bee and also hinted at the fact that maybe Dani wasn’t the killer that everyone believed her to be.

The scene where Dani is dying in Lizzy Bee’s arms was one of the hardest I’ve ever had to write. There was not only the emotion between the two sisters to deal with, but I also hated to let Dani go as a character.

Which is the reason I was so happy when Harlequin gave the go ahead to do Dani’s story which will come out in August 2007 and is titled SECRET AGENT REUNION.

So, without further ado — here’s a Deleted Bit from MORE THAN A MISSION (also, there’s more Deleted Bits from THE CALLING over at the new site at www.thecallingvampirenovels.com. Check them out since some are rather sexy!):

* * * * * *

“Bullocks,” her English mates would say about this situation.

From the look on her sister’s face as she slowly inched away from the injured man now flat on his back on her sofa, there was no doubt Lizzy Bee cared for him.

Dani cursed under her breath again as she wondered what the man wanted with her sister and who he was.

Definitely not a local, she thought, mentally flipping through the faces of the men from town and unable to recall this one.

Definitely worth worrying about. She had no explanation for how he had managed to find her passageway into the tunnel nor for why her sister’s restaurant and home had been bugged. She had noticed the earpiece on the man when she bent to examine him after knocking him out in the tunnel. Wanting to make sure that signal wasn’t going anywhere, she turned on a jamming device as she had dragged him back through the passage and into the cellar.

Determined to see what information the unknown man was sending with that wire, she had snagged her laptop from the safe and hurried to an alleyway close to the restaurant. Powering up her machine, she quickly found a signal, only not the one she’d expected. A video signal. Encrypted by an expert. Hard for just anyone to crack, but she wasn’t just anyone and luckily possessed the latest and greatest encryption software.

It had taken only minutes for her to confirm the exact frequency of the video signal. Another ten minutes to break through the encryption.

As she had watched her sister and the man who was obviously spying on Lizzy, she realized that by coming back for the information on their parents’ killers, she may have created bigger problems for her sister.

Damn. That was the last thing she’d wanted to happen.

She had never wanted anyone to connect her twin with Elizabeth Cavanaugh, more commonly known as the Sparrow.

Had this man made the connection? she wondered as she watched him fiddle with the earpiece, which reminded her of her initial objective.

After she minimized the video window, she used the software to once again search out the frequency, this time for the audio feed from the wire. A lot of interference from the many devices using the approved frequencies made it difficult at first. Garage door openers. Wireless phones and home networks. She searched upward beyond those airwaves to the ones people weren’t supposed to use.

There it was, she thought as she picked up another protected transmission. As she had done before, she attempted to decode the signal. Once again, she had to admire the work of whoever had created the equipment. It took a while to crack the encryption, but once she did, she could hear the exchange as the man lay on the sofa, clearly not feeling 100%.

“Maybe you should return to base.” A woman’s voice. Her tone deep and very husky, but not as wrecked as a smoker’s. Youngish. American, but with a slight underlying accent. English wasn’t her only language. The rhythms and hints of another tongue flavored her speech. Latina, she guessed.

“If I could, I would. What did you see?” The man’s tone was irritated and filled with pain. If he was doing wrong to her sister, that would be but the start of the pain, Dani thought.

“Nothing. Someone jammed the signal,” the woman replied.

Good. It had worked. Hopefully they hadn’t picked up that she was jacked into their current transmissions.

“Before or after Elizabeth decked me?”

Not good. Lizzy had been busy in the kitchen the whole time she had been hauling this guy’s unconscious ass through the tunnel.

“As far as I know, she was up in the kitchen until I lost the signal. But I don’t know how that fits into when you were attacked,” the woman answered.

“Great. So she knows how to jam us,” he said with a tired sigh.

“Have we been compromised?”

She watched as the man shook his head, but then winced from the movement. His voice was tight as held the ice bag to his face and replied. “Don’t know. Easy to jam. Harder to break in.”

Wrong, Dani thought with a broad smile that quickly vanished as the woman said, “How much more proof do we need that Ms. Moore is the Sparrow?”

Merde. These people could not possibly believe that her kind, gentle and totally honest sister was a supposed assassin. Supposed because in her world of covert operations, things were never really the way they seemed.

“We need concrete proof, Lucia. Not just circumstantial evidence,” the man responded curtly.

Thankfully a voice of reason, Dani thought.

“That knock on your head do some damage, Aidan?” the woman responded with some sass. These two clearly knew each other well enough for that kind of familiarity. And thankfully, now she had a name for the man making moves on her sister. Maybe she could check him out. Find out what he and his colleague wanted.

“No damage, only . . . It just doesn’t feel right. My gut tells me we’re missing something here.”

“Copy, Mix Master. When are you returning to base?”

Mix Master? Lame.

“Give me half an hour or so. First I need to check on Lizzy in the kitchen,” he answered, closed his eyes, and shifted the ice bag on the side of his face.

Half an hour. It wouldn’t give her time to do anything other than sit and wait for him to make his move.

Once he did, she would follow. After all, the single most precious thing left in her life — one which had unfortunately been filled with too much loss — was her sister.

And she wasn’t about to allow anyone to mess with Lizzy Bee.