Nichole Severn - Rules In Deceit

The firefighter lifted a handgun and took aim. At her.

A strong hand pushed her to the ground as a bullet ripped past her ear. The garage turned on its axis. Braxton took position in front of her as he returned fire. Pain shot up through her knees, loose asphalt ripping holes in her leggings, but Elizabeth didn’t hesitate. Digging in her jacket pocket, she wrapped her hand around the keys to her company SUV near the shooter and hit the panic button.

Headlights flashed; the alarm blared. It’d only distract the shooter for a few seconds, but that was all she needed. The gunfire died. She shoved to her feet and sprinted for Elliot Dunham’s SUV. Blackhawk Security’s private investigator usually left his keys in the front seat, and she silently prayed he hadn’t changed up his routine. “Come on!”

Footsteps echoed close behind her as bullets two and three barely missed their mark. Chunks of cement nicked at her exposed skin, and she raised her arms to protect her face. Wouldn’t do a damn bit of good against a bullet, but instinct and adrenaline drove her now. She rounded the tail end of Elliot’s SUV and wrenched the door open. No keys. She dived inside, ripping the visor down. The keys dropped into her lap.

Braxton took cover behind the hood, squeezing off another shot. Then a third.

“Get in!” Elizabeth pulled the driver’s side door closed and started the engine. Shoving the SUV into Drive, she paused as the shooter positioned himself directly in front of them.

Hiking himself into the back seat, Braxton tapped on her shoulder. “Liz, go!”

The firefighter raised his gun, taking aim. One second. Two. And fired.

She froze as the bulletproof glass held against the shot. Then unfroze as rage coursed through her. The shooter had come for her , targeted her . Lifting her foot from the brake, she slammed on the accelerator and steered directly into the shooter. The growl of the engine drowned the pounding of her heartbeat in her ears. Pressure built in her lungs. “Hang on back there.”

Her leather seat protested against his grip on the headrest. “Liz…”

The shooter pulled the trigger two more times, each bullet caught in the windshield, a split second before he launched himself out of the way of the vehicle.

Elizabeth spun the steering wheel toward the still-open security gate. Bouncing in her seat as they catapulted over the gate’s tracks, she fishtailed out of the garage. Blackhawk Security grew distant in the rearview mirror. Two familiar faces stepped into the middle of the road behind them, but she didn’t have time to stop and explain everything to her team. Braxton had been telling the truth.

Someone was targeting her, but she wasn’t the only one she had to worry about now. She lifted her gaze to the rearview mirror, to the father of her unborn baby. “Fine. You can take me to whatever safe house you’ve set up until we figure out who you think is trying to kill me. But to be clear, it’s not because I trust you.” Elizabeth took a deep breath, her ribs aching from the explosion in the conference room, then forced her attention back to the road. “It’s because you got me pregnant.”

“I STILL CAN’T believe it.” Braxton couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. Someone had tried to kill the woman he vowed to protect, but it was more than that. Adrenaline drained from his veins in small increments, but not enough to clear his head.

Wow. Liz was pregnant. And he was the father. She’d told him before the explosion, but he hadn’t been able to process that until now. It’d been kind of hard to think when the bullets were flying. Reaction—that was what he was good at. But…he was going to be a father. A smile threatened to overwhelm his features, pure joy exploding through him.

“Someone just tried to kill us. Twice. Can we please focus on that?” The weight of her attention pinned him against his seat from the rearview mirror. “I think we have bigger problems to talk about.”

“I think the fact you’re pregnant is pretty big.” He swayed with the SUV as she wound through neighborhoods, around strip malls and into the edges of the city. Days of staying off the grid, months of grueling physical training, years of working for the NSA…none of it had prepared him for this. A baby. He compressed the safety button on the stolen gun and set it beside him on the seat. They were going to have a baby. “Might as well not have used protection at all.”

“Yeah, apparently, latex wasn’t strong enough for your swimmers.” A hint of a smile played across her mouth, the first softening of her guard since he set sights on her in the conference room. “If you’re thinking about asking me whether or not I’m sure the baby is yours, I’ll save you the time. Yes, Braxton, she’s yours. No, Braxton, I haven’t been with anybody else since the night you took me to bed then disappeared without a word. And, yes, I’m keeping the baby. I plan to raise her on my own without help. Any other questions?”

“It’s a girl?” He ran his palms over the baseball cap and interlaced his fingers at the crown of his head. He turned away from her, surveying the curve of the street but not really seeing where they were. The muscles across his back strained under the self-induced pressure. He didn’t know what else to say, what to think. They were having a girl?

“I found out the sex a couple days ago.” The vulnerability in her voice compelled him to face her again, but she’d turned her gaze back to the road. Snow and ice kicked up along the SUV. She rolled her lips between her teeth. “This wasn’t how I wanted you to find out. I tried to find you, but four months is a long time waiting for you to come back. Figured you’d moved on and I could do the same. When I got tired of the NSA interrogating me about your whereabouts, I changed my name in every federal database I could hack and relocated.”

He’d known about her search effort but ultimately decided to stay away. It’d been the hardest decision of his life and the only way to keep her safe. Until four days ago when he’d learned about Dalton Meyer’s murder and that Oversight’s feeds had been hacked. Until he’d uncovered the program’s surveillance logs. Someone had put her in their crosshairs.

Intense pressure built behind his sternum as she took a sharp left. The city came into focus for the first time since Braxton had gotten in the vehicle. A familiar line of bare trees surrounding Fairview Lions Park cut off his air. A good foot of snow covered the all-too-familiar horseshoe pit and most of the green and purple playground where he’d spent countless nights as a kid after his father had lost the house to the bank. Right there, under the small rock wall. He forced his attention back to the rearview mirror as a group of homeless made their way down the street, back to her, his anchor. No point in studying the weathered faces as they passed. His old man had most likely died from his addictions a long time ago. Wasn’t important. The past was dead, and he sure as hell would make sure it stayed that way. “Did you also figure moving here was enough to keep me from finding you?”

“I’d accepted you weren’t coming back.” Liz cocked her head. “In retrospect, I guess Anchorage had been on my mind since you told me you’d never step foot in this city again. It’d worked until an hour ago.” She glanced at him—almost too fast for him to catch it—then back to the road. “You never told me how you managed to find me.”

“You’re predictable. I knew you’d never change your first name.” Not after what she’d told him about her mother and the long line of Elizabeths in her family. “As for your new last name, I remembered your favorite TV show growing up. Wasn’t hard to sift through the short list of Elizabeth Dawsons and track you down from there.”