C.J. Miller - Delta Force Desire

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.