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“I was worried about you,” she said.
He grunted. “Don’t worry about me. Focus your energy on living through this.”
He threw her on the back of a motorcycle and then climbed on. He handed her a helmet. She didn’t have it snapped and he was already taking off from the alley. As the cycle lurched, she grabbed his shoulders to steady herself.
She had too many questions. Was he planning to sell her or kill her? He had already sold her, but then had saved her. Why? What did he need her to do? What was his connection to the Locker?
The motorcycle drew to a stop on the side of a quiet street lined with boutiques closed for the night. Kit’s legs were shaking with fatigue, and her body was trembling.
He helped her off the motorcycle and she collapsed against him, unable to stand. Her dress was torn and dirty, and based on the way it was twisted, she must have looked indecent. She’d lost a shoe, and her foot hurt.
“I think there’s something in my heel,” she said, lifting it and trying to get a better look.
He set her on his motorcycle and knelt on the ground. Though his gaze dodged left and right, he examined her foot with surprising gentleness. “A piece of glass is in it.”
“Pull it out,” she said.
He held up his finger and reached into a bag on his bike. He removed a first aid kit. “Your shoe is the most impractical choice.”
“I wasn’t planning to run away from armed killers tonight,” she said.
She flinched when he removed the glass. Then he squeezed her foot and cleaned it with alcohol wipes. She held her teeth together to keep from screaming.
“It’s not too deep. We’ll have a doctor look at it later.”
What were his plans for her? If he took her to a doctor, could she find help? “Why did you save me?”
“I was sent to retrieve you.”
“You sold me to those men.”
He gave her a look that said, “Get real.” “I conned them out of two-point-five million dollars.”
“Aren’t you worried they’ll find you?” she asked. That was a lot of money to lose. Retribution would be paid.
“No.”
Just no? Not worried about it? Who was this man? She had left this confusing world years before with zero intention of returning. She hadn’t fit in then, and she didn’t fit in now. It had rules she didn’t understand. “Please let me go,” she said.
Compassion touched the corners of his eyes. “I didn’t plan for it to go this way.”
What had he planned? He’d shown up wearing two guns, a knife and a bulletproof vest. He had to have expected bullets would fly and people would be hurt. “What are we doing now?” They couldn’t wait on the street long. People were looking for them.
“We’re close to the safe house. Someone will explain more then.”
“You can’t explain now?” she asked.
“No.”
He was infuriating with his uninformative responses.
“I need to call in that I have you.”
Call in to whom? “What if I run?” she asked.
“You don’t want to do that,” he said.
Yes, she did.
“If you run, I will catch you. You are in danger, and it’s my job to take you somewhere safe. The sooner you accept that you need my help, the easier this will go.”
* * *
As a retrieval specialist for the West Company and as a former member of the Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta, Griffin Brooks knew not every extraction went well. During his time with Delta Force and then with the West Company, he could count on one hand the number that had.
This case was especially problematic. He was part of a team locating the group that had worked on a secret government project. Those individuals were being hunted by an extremist organization, and when the scientists didn’t comply with the terrorists’ demands, they were killed and their bodies dumped in various locations around the United States. The West Company had kept the murders, and any connection between them, quiet and out of the media. As the bodies piled up, the United States government became more nervous. They wanted this handled quickly and effectively.
The international terrorist group known as Incognito had started out as a cyber-only terrorist organization. In recent months, they had allied themselves with several mercenary groups and had shifted their focus to collecting the scientists who had worked on the Locker. Their means were no longer isolated to the computer. Kidnappings and murders were frequently tied to them. Griffin didn’t know what the Locker was, but it was important to keep it, and by extension the scientists who had contributed to it, safe. He knew the code names for three team members who were considered most at risk: Kit, who had gone by the name Lotus, Arsenic, and Stargazer. Arsenic and Stargazer had left the project before it had ended and were proving harder to trace.
Incognito was hunting the three lead scientists, and they wouldn’t stop. The United States had connected the dead bodies to the secret military project, and they’d called in the West Company to assist. Details were closely guarded, and every item was need-to-know.
Connor West, owner of the West Company, had deployed other specialists to retrieve the remaining members of the project, beyond the three leads. Some were deep in hiding. Griffin had been assigned the task to locate and bring in Kit Walker. He had studied her file, but she was more than a techie with a PhD and a love of computers. He had expected her to be smart, but he hadn’t expected her spunk or the red minidress and sky-high bedroom heels.
Dress and shoes aside, she wasn’t his type. Since his wife had died, he went for women who had looks over brains and were more submissive than bold. Griffin enjoyed the company of women, and he liked for them to play along with his desires. Being in control in the bedroom was a turn-on for him. Nothing wrong with that if the woman was willing. He was lucky that plenty were. He wasn’t lonely for company when he wanted it. Given what he did for a living, he wasn’t looking for long-term. He’d had that with Beth, and though it had been amazing, he wouldn’t find it twice in one lifetime.
Griffin dialed Connor on his secure line. While he spoke, Kit rubbed her arms and looked around. Was she thinking of running? He would catch her. If he had to bring her in wounded, it was better than bringing her in dead. She wouldn’t get far on her injured foot. He’d bandaged it, but any pressure and it would resume bleeding.
She shivered again, and he removed the sweatshirt from his motorcycle trunk and tossed it to her. She smiled at him gratefully and pulled it over her dress. The shirt was long on her, falling below the hemline of her dress. He was momentarily fixated on her pair of slim, toned legs.
Her legs weren’t her best feature, though. Her best feature was her eyes. He could get lost in their depths. He could see so much going on behind them. He liked that. He liked it a lot.
“Get her to the safe house. I’ll send a computer as soon as I can,” Connor said.
“Right. A computer.” Connor’s wife Kate, also known as Shade, had reasoned that Kit would be more comfortable and possibly of use to them in the immediate future with a computer in her hands.
Kit drew the hood of his sweatshirt up, and Griffin smiled. It worked on her. She had a sexy nerd look, her hair wild around her shoulders and her lips twisted in annoyance.
He wrapped up his call and disconnected. “Ready?” he asked her.
She glared at him from under the hood. “If I run, you’d have to chase me.”
“That’s right.”
“But you don’t want to hurt me.”
He didn’t want to hurt her. But if he had to tackle her, he would. “I will do what I need to bring you in.”
Chapter 2
She was going to run. Her muscles clenched. Her history with the Locker hadn’t indicated that she’d had deception training. In his line of work, Griffin expected liars. Kit was a refreshing change of pace.
Kit made it two steps before he caught her and pushed her against the brick wall of a nearby building. He exercised control as he held her wrists in his. He wasn’t looking to break her arms.
“You’re hurting me.” He loosened his grip. She pulled her arm free and punched him in the face.
It barely registered. He’d been struck harder—much harder—before. Tonight, even. “We need to work on your self-defense skills.”
Her mouth trembled. Her eyes welled with tears. Was she going to cry? He shouldn’t care if she did.
“Let me go, brute.”
Brute? He had been called a lot of names, but never that. “Will you run?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I know you’ll catch me. But I won’t stop trying to get away from you.”
“You won’t have to deal with me for much longer. After I drop you off, you’re someone else’s headache.” Maybe someone else could get through to her that she was in danger and needed protecting.
They walked back to his motorcycle, and she kicked it over. He looked at her in surprise. “Don’t like the bike?”
“Look at me. How do you think I feel right now?”
“I have no idea how you feel.” Angry, clearly. He righted the bike.
She folded her arms over her chest. “So that part of you is broken. You kill people and you manhandle me. You don’t care how I feel.”
“I am not paid to care how you feel. I am paid to keep you safe. How is your foot?”
“It hurts.”
“I’ll help you onto the seat,” he said. He lifted her in his arms.
“Everyone can see up my dress,” she said, squirming in his arms, trying to tug it and the sweatshirt down.
“There’s no one here,” he said.
“I’m never wearing a dress again,” she said.
He liked her determination and gave her credit for attempting to flee. “You look good in it.”
“It’s a designer dress,” she said.
“Whatever it is, it’s nice.”
“My sister bought it for me,” she said.
“You may have to explain why it’s damaged,” he said.
She rolled her eyes. “Please. She couldn’t care less. She has a closet full of dresses, and this one is four sizes too big for her.”
Her sister was supermodel Marissa Walker. Marissa had been on the cover of some sports magazines in a swimsuit and had traveled the world. Rare for two sisters to have such extraordinarily different talents.
“Are you thinking about sleeping with my sister now?” Kit asked.
He hadn’t been. “Are you thinking about me sleeping with your sister?”
“Don’t be gross.”
Not much about Marissa Walker was gross, but imagining a sibling with a lover was. “You brought it up.”
“I’m trying to figure you out,” she said. She touched the side of his face and then his ear, running her finger down the curve of it.
He turned his head. “Stop that.”
“You’re bruised, and your ear is bleeding,” she said.
His ears were ringing, but they would stop. “I’ll look at it later.”
He helped her onto the bike and then mounted it. It was a short distance to the safe house. He circled the block twice, ensuring he wasn’t followed. The safe house was a temporary holdover for the night. Kit would change hands many times to lose any trail connecting her to her final destination: a supersecret military base. Griffin hadn’t been told the location. From what he’d understood, few knew it existed.
Five more minutes and he could finish this job. Kit was alive, and that was how he would remember her. The beautiful, feisty hacker in the red dress. When he stopped in front of the safe house, he helped Kit off the bike and let her lean on him as they took the stairs to the back door.
Kit removed the sweatshirt and extended her hand to him.
“Keep it,” he said. He didn’t need it and she seemed to be more comfortable having it.
“Thank you,” she said. She knotted the sleeves around her waist.
He knocked once on the door, and it opened a couple of inches. “It is a truth universally acknowledged...” the voice said.
Griffin finished the quote. “...that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
He guessed Kate had picked the quote. Since she and Connor had married and were starting a family, she believed that their operatives were destined for the same happiness. Griffin had tried to tell her that happiness came in many packages, not all of them involving a spouse and children.
Griffin’s life had been made better by a woman, but most relationships ended with deep unhappiness. Even Beth, whom he had loved with his whole being, had broken his heart when she’d died.
The door opened all the way.
He set Kit across the threshold. “She needs shoes. She has an injury to her foot, and a doctor should look at it.”
The man inside nodded. Griffin didn’t recognize him, but he didn’t know every operative in Connor’s network. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Good luck to you,” he said to Kit.
She nodded once, sadly. “Goodbye, brute.”
She didn’t know his name, but by this point, it didn’t matter. It was probably better that she knew nothing about him. He didn’t want her searching for him via the internet and exacting revenge. Griffin sincerely hoped she would realize she was in danger and he had only been trying to help her.
“Don’t be a flight risk,” he said.
She stared at him. “Can you make sure my family is okay?”
It wasn’t part of the job, but he couldn’t say no. “I’ll check in.”
“Will you get me a message if anything is wrong?”
He nodded once. “My boss will know where you are.”
As he returned to his motorcycle, he couldn’t drive away. Leaving her bothered him. He didn’t get emotionally tied to his missions and he felt connected to her. Usually, he didn’t think about people he worked with past the ending of a mission. Emotions had no place in his world.
It was her eyes. They were the most expressive eyes.
He started his bike and then a small detail, one easily overlooked, hit him. A sick feeling swamped him and he instinctively checked his gun.
It suddenly registered that the man who had greeted them at the door had had a tattoo on his neck. A spear tattoo that was a sign of Incognito.
With the press of a button, Griffin sent an alert to Connor to let him know the mission was not going according to plan. Griffin was up the back stairs in seconds. He kicked in the door and rushed inside. They could have slit her throat. Left her for dead. Any horrible ending could have befallen her, and it would be because of his mistake.
An image of Beth flashed to mind, her dead body lying on sterile metal in a morgue, and Griffin fought to control the sadness and anger. Beth’s death was why he didn’t work protective detail. He was best at extractions. He couldn’t keep his wife safe. How would he keep a stranger safe?
“Kit!” he called, panic rising inside him. The panic drove him, sharpening every sense.
Silence. They had already fled the house with her or killed her. He heard a car engine outside.
Griffin cursed his stupidity and raced for his motorcycle. He climbed onto it. A navy sedan was driving down the street, and hanging out of the closed trunk of the car was his sweatshirt.
They had Kit in the trunk of the car. She had to be alive. He wouldn’t accept that she had been killed. Incognito wanted her alive, and they had no way to know if she would cooperate yet. From what he knew of the other victims, it had been several days from the time they went missing to the time their bodies had been found. No explanation given. The West Company suspected they had been punished for not providing the answers Incognito wanted. They had been loyal and had kept their mouths shut about the Locker.
Kit could be destined for that same fate. She knew more than most about the project. The other two leads on the project were insane and medically incapacitated, and the West Company was searching for them, as well. That left Kit in the hot seat.
Griffin raced after them. His bike caught up to the car. A man leaned out of the back of the car and shot at him. He swerved his bike. He couldn’t return fire at this distance. He couldn’t risk Kit getting hurt.
He sped ahead of the car and then slammed to a stop thirty yards past the sedan. He pivoted and pulled his gun, aiming at the driver’s head. A trained sniper, he could make the shot, but he could also be hit head-on by the car as it veered out of control.
One shot. Two. Clean through the head. The car skidded and crashed into a vehicle parked on the side of the road. If Kit was hurt...
Leaving his bike, Griffin ran to the car. He killed the other two men in the vehicle before they could exit, their punishment for kidnapping Kit.
He opened the driver’s side door, shoving the dead man to the side, and popped the trunk.
He lifted a very frightened Kit from the back of the car.
She was shaking and had a welt on her head. “Did you see the sweatshirt?”
An intentional message and a sign of her faith in him. “I did see it. That was quick thinking.”
“I hoped you would realize they were bad,” she said, curling her arms around his body and laying her head on his chest.
A strange sensation swept over him. He didn’t hug people in the field, but Kit needed him. He didn’t pull away.
“Did they say anything to you?” he asked.
“They want me to break into a system I built,” she said.
That was in line with what the West Company knew of their motives. “I know.”
“I can’t. I don’t think anyone understands. When we built that system, it was not hackable. It is not hackable. Even by the people who built it. We designed it to be unalterable and uncontrollable by any one person. It’s intelligently designed world-class technology. It changes with cybersecurity advancements and keeps pace with new viruses and exploitations without human intervention. Who is planning to hack the Locker?” Kit asked.
“Incognito.”
She drew her eyebrows together. “Oh. I’m familiar with their processes and their attacks in the cyber world. But how is Incognito finding people who worked on the project? We used code names, and our real names were never to be revealed.”
“Looks like something went wrong. Someone somewhere made the connection,” he said.
“Bank payouts. Initial hiring documents. That data was supposed to be destroyed,” Kit said, terror in her eyes.
Griffin understood the fear. He had underestimated Incognito and Kit had almost paid with her life.
* * *
Kit had voluntarily spent a year of her life confined to an underground military base. She was familiar with their processes and protocols, but she didn’t want to return to a military base of any kind. The fake lights they had used to replace sunlight, the restrictions and the sense of being closed in had been persistent. Kit had needed to lie a lot that year, too. She had told her family she was traveling overseas and couldn’t return home. Her sister offering to pay for her flight or to fly out to visit her had been brutal to turn down. It was as if Marissa had known something was amiss and had wanted to confirm.
Kit had first been recruited to work on the Locker out of graduate school. The project had sounded exciting: build a cybersecurity supercomputer, working with the most advanced technology and the world’s best computer scientists and engineers. It had seemed like a great opportunity. But the reality of being cut off from the outside world had worn on her. The work had kept her busy seven days a week, but she had been depressed.
Her rescuer had received instructions and had taken her to a military base. As the copter landed, it was pitch-black outside. Without her phone, she was disoriented about the time and place.
“This is the safest place Connor could arrange on short notice,” Brute said.
Kit stayed tucked close to Brute. Her brain hadn’t caught up to the events of the night yet. She was physically tired, but her thoughts were racing. “Where are we?”
“I can’t tell you,” Brute said.
“I’ll figure it out,” she said. Eventually. Would she be confined for long? Would Brute leave her? A couple of hours ago, being away from him was all she wanted. Now she was filled with fear. Men were gunning for her, and a classified project was no longer a secret. How many people knew?
They disembarked the copter and ran across the tarmac to a nondescript tan building.
“We won’t be here long. This is a stopover until more secure arrangements can be made,” Brute said.
“We? You’re staying with me?” she asked. It was a relief to hear.
“My orders have changed. Until my boss can find someone to take over for me, you’re stuck with me.”
Being stuck with him sounded good, too good. It dawned on her that she was developing a crush on her kidnapper. Or had he saved her? Kit didn’t know how to judge him. He was working with the military, but that in itself didn’t mean he was to be trusted or that he was one of the good guys.
Two men in army fatigues escorted them to a sparsely furnished room with two cots and barred windows high on the walls. The walls were gray, but not in a supertrendy, freshly renovated way. In a dull, depressing, covering cinder blocks way. At least the room was not underground.
The fatigues worn by their escorts were her first clue to where she was. An army base within a twenty-minute copter ride from the Los Angeles area.
“Can I get a change of clothes?” she asked. Her dress was torn, dirty and uncomfortable. She was cold and longed for sweatpants to match the hoodie Brute had given her.
“You hate that dress, don’t you?” he asked.
“I feel like a stuffed sausage.”
“You don’t look like one,” he said.
It was something. The compliment made it hard to stay mad at Brute, especially given that he had saved her twice that day. He had a gruff manner, but he was looking out for her. Without him, where would she be? In the hands of Incognito, no doubt.
“I’d love something comfortable and warm,” she said. What they’d have access to would be limited, but they could issue her a pair of military sweats.
“She also needs shoes and a doctor,” he said.
The men saluted and left to acquire the items they had requested, she hoped.
Her foot was throbbing mildly. “I almost forgot about my foot.”
“Let me look at it.”
She sat on one of the cots, and he knelt on the floor in front of her, setting her foot on his knee. “It doesn’t look good. Needs to be cleaned and dressed.”
He propped her foot on the cot and took a seat on the other one. He looked tired. The red welt on his face was turning a pale yellow. He was unbearably handsome with his piercing green eyes and the slight cleft in his chin. His steely demeanor was contradicted by the warmth in his eyes.
“Are you in pain?” she asked.
He rolled his neck, stretching his spine. “It’s manageable.”
What level of pain would be unmanageable for him? She had worked with military men who had seemed incapable of registering pain. What about the injuries she couldn’t see?
The soldiers returned with a stack of the requested supplies, and a medic entered the room behind them.
The medic examined her foot. “This needs to be cleaned,” he said. “I’ll take you to the infirmary.”
Kit stood, the pain shooting up her leg. She winced. Brute stood from his cot and lifted her into his arms as if carrying her across a threshold. “Lead the way, Doc.”
The medic brought them to a brightly lit room with a patient bed in the middle and medical supplies on the shelves around them. The process of cleaning her foot was excruciating. Kit wanted to cry, yet Brute had to have worse injuries, and he seemed calm. She thought of something else, something other than the pain in her heel.
She couldn’t watch the medic work so she stared at Brute. He was looking at her foot, but he lifted his gaze and their eyes met.
He intrigued her. More than muscle and brawn, he was smart. Not smart in a nerdy, tech-savvy way, but he was definitely street-smart, taking in details. Despite the intense time they had spent together, Kit didn’t know his name. When she had worked on the Locker, she had been trained not to ask names or for details of someone’s life. This man knew Shade. She hadn’t been active online in the circles where Kit floated, and internet rumors indicated Shade had gone to work for a white hat organization. Had Shade gone to work for the same company Griffin worked for?