Nichole Severn - Rules In Deceit

Nothing would’ve stopped him from finding her.

“I’ll keep that in mind next time.” Her knuckles tightened over the steering wheel. There wouldn’t be a next time. Not if he had anything to say about it. She turned the SUV east, leaving the park and memories he’d worked hard to bury behind. “So are you going to tell me where this safe house of yours is or are we going to drive around all night?”

“Make one more loop around the neighborhood.” Braxton studied the cars behind them. They hadn’t been followed. Whoever had taken shots at them in the parking garage probably hadn’t been able to make it past the wall of police officers and emergency personnel surrounding the building. At least, not in a hurry. On top of that, her team had seen them race from the scene. His pulse hammered at the base of his skull, and he wiped at the dried patches of blood along his forehead. He should’ve known the bastard would come at her at Blackhawk Security. As far as he’d been able to tell over the last few days, that was where she’d spent most of her time. Day and night. Protecting her clients just as she’d protected millions of lives during her contract work for the NSA. And now with a baby. “Have you told your team?”

“No. Not yet.” Her shoulders rose on an audible inhale. Hesitation tightened the cords running down her neck. She made another turn, seemingly refusing to look back at him. “I was thinking of telling Sullivan about the baby today, but then someone blew up the conference room and it sort of slipped to the back of my mind.”

A laugh escaped from his control. She always did have a way of downplaying stressful situations with sarcasm. “Understandable.”

“I work in network security now.” Liz ran a hand through her hair and levered her elbow against the driver’s side door. “My clients come to me to assess their firewalls, encrypt the information on their servers, basically make their networks unhackable. I analyze shell corporations and perform background checks for everyone on my team. I can’t think of a single person who would want me dead.”

“All I know is someone tried to kill you back there.” He wouldn’t discount the possibility the threat was tied to Blackhawk Security. They had to consider all the angles. Past, present, someone invested in the outcome of the firm’s military and private contracts. The list of suspects with the kind of knowledge and training that shooter had to have was endless, but military training was a definite. He needed access to her client files. “And I’m not going to let them succeed.”

“Do you think this could be linked to my contract with the NSA?” Her voice wavered. To someone who hadn’t memorized every inflection, every emotion, it would’ve gone unnoticed. But not to him. He knew her inside and out, down to a cellular level. Even with filtered moonlight coming through the SUV’s tinted windows, he noted the color draining from her face. Hell. The nightmares. How could he have forgotten about her damn nightmares? Her throat worked to swallow. “Maybe a family member or someone who’d gotten a look at the files?”

Her fear slid through him, and his body reacted automatically. Ready for battle to protect what was his. One breath. Two. “You still have nightmares.”

Not a question. He was there during Oversight’s trial run. He’d witnessed how it’d affected her.

“Assuming the person who shot at us in the garage is the same person who hacked those feeds, which might not be the case, you should be able to use my backdoor access to narrow down a location.” Him? Liz twisted the steering wheel to the right a little too hard. He fell back against the seat and reached out for his gun before it fell to the floor. Okay, so she didn’t want to talk about what kept her up at night, but he couldn’t find this bastard on his own. He needed her to run the program. “The only problem is the access opens a two-way door. The second you lock on to a location, he has yours.”

“Don’t you mean he’d have our location?” he asked.

“No, Braxton.” She set her jaw, chancing a quick glance into the rearview mirror. “I told you the day I terminated my consulting contract with the NSA. I’ll never touch that program again. If you want to trace those feeds, you’re doing it alone.”

Braxton didn’t answer.

“Turn right at the next street. Third building from the end of the road.” The apartment he’d leased under a fake name off one of those online sites where home owners rented out their homes wasn’t much. Two bedrooms, two bathrooms. But it would get the job done while he was back in Anchorage. However long that would be. He studied Liz as she pulled the SUV to the curb then shouldered his way out of the vehicle behind her. She stepped onto the pavement, hand supporting her head where shrapnel had cut into her during the explosion. A groan worked up her throat, and his blood pressure spiked. He stepped into her, her rough exhale skimming across his neck as rain pounded onto his shoulders. “You okay?”

“It’s nothing.” She dropped her hand and stepped away. Her right hand shook slightly. She tried to hide it by curling her fingers into her palms, but she couldn’t hide from him.

She was scared. Rightfully so, but he’d die before he let anything happen to her. Or their baby. “I’m not going to let that bastard lay a finger on you. I promise.”

Silence settled between them. Tight, thick and full of distance.

“I only agreed to your help because someone was shooting at us, and I didn’t want to die.” Liz shook her head. “So I don’t need your promises. I need you to keep me alive until I figure out who wants me dead.”

Elizabeth hefted the SUV’s gate above her head and lifted the black duffel bag standard for all Blackhawk Security operatives from the dark interior. Mostly supplies. A couple changes of clothes, ammunition, food storage, emergency flares. The basics of her new profession. Never knew what kind of weather or client would come calling. Although they’d borrowed Elliot’s SUV, and the clothes weren’t going to fit her. “If you’re not going to trace Oversight’s feeds on your own, fill me in on your plan.”

They’d wound a lot of circles through neighborhoods, parks and strip malls, finally ending up at what looked like an apartment complex. The shooter hadn’t followed them. She would’ve spotted him through the maze of routes they’d taken. The SOB who’d taken a shot at her was most likely licking his wounds and devising another way to kill her. If Braxton had been telling the truth about the shooter’s target. She paused at the thought. She took care of network security for a start-up security company. Wasn’t exactly the kind of job that would land her in a killer’s crosshairs. But if this had anything to do with her work for the NSA…

No. It couldn’t. She’d left that life behind months ago. Besides, those files were classified. It’d take someone with much higher security clearance than the director of the NSA to access them. That’d been part of the deal. She’d signed dozens of nondisclosure agreements about the program’s trial run, and the federal government would hide Oversight’s existence at all costs.

“First, I want your forensics guy to analyze those bullets in the windshield.” Braxton leaned against the back quarter panel mere inches from her, arms crossed across that broad chest of his. The weight of his attention pressurized the air in her lungs. He watched her carefully, as though he couldn’t miss a single moment. “Maybe we’ll get lucky with an ID on the unsub trying to kill you, and—”

“And you go back into hiding.” That was the deal. She’d agreed to his protection, and as soon as they had a viable lead on that shooter, he’d go back to whatever rock he been hiding under for the last four months and let her move on with her life. Alone. Storm clouds shifted overhead as the last remnants of rain pelted against her leather jacket, but the crisp, cleansing atmospheric scent did nothing to clear her head. Unzipping the duffel, she reached in, wrapped her shaking hand around her teammate’s backup weapon, and loaded a fresh magazine. Full.