Rules in Deceit

by Nichole Severn

  She’d survived Braxton leaving once. She wasn’t so sure she could do it again.

  Get ready and come up with a plan. That was all she had to think about right now. Elizabeth froze, arched over her duffel bag, and cocked her head toward the door. Was that...? No. It couldn’t be. Straightening, she headed for the bedroom door and opened it slowly, careful to avoid the creak in the floorboard right outside the guest room. The low plunk of guitar strings filtered down the hallway, and she set her head against the door for support, just listening. How long had it been since she’d heard him play? A year? More? The muffled sound of strings from down the hall made it hard to recognize the song but pulled her toward the end all the same.

  Before she understood exactly when she’d made the decision to push open his cracked bedroom door, there he was. Her insides constricted at the wide expanse of ridges and valleys of muscle flexing across his back as he played, his hair brought back in a loose ponytail to keep it out of his way. Despite the release and contraction of muscles in his broad shoulders, he looked completely at ease, relaxed. And hell if that didn’t vault her heart into her throat.

  “Did I wake you?” His voice barely registered over the low chord of music, only one side of his features visible from her position at the door.

  “No, I can blame that on your daughter at all hours of the night.” She shifted her weight into the door frame and crossed her arms. He kept playing, kept pulling at some part of her she thought she’d buried for good when he’d left. The same part that had protected her against wondering where he’d gone, who he’d been with, if he’d ever had feelings for her. “I wasn’t sure you’d kept it. When I searched your apartment after...” Elizabeth dropped her attention to his discarded shirt at the edge of the bed and centered her focus. No point in rehashing the past. Wouldn’t change anything. “Everything was still there.”

  Except the guitar she’d bought for him for his birthday last year, the one he held now. That alone had clued her in that something hadn’t happened to him. He’d left.

  “You are the only person who’s ever given me a birthday present. Did I ever tell you that? We never had a lot of money growing up, but after my dad lost his job, then the house, we had nothing. My mom tried. Collected aluminum can tops for me—one for every year—and strung them on a necklace my dad had given her when they were dating. But this...” Braxton paused, sliding his fingers up the guitar’s neck, across the engraving she’d had done in the guitar shop. Everything is better with sprinkles. They were supposed to be best friends forever. Her fingernails dug into her arm, keeping her in the moment. He finally locked those brilliant green eyes on her as he rocked forward on the edge of the mattress, and a rush of heat flooded through her. “Do you remember the chords I taught you?”

  A burst of laughter escaped from between her lips as she shook her head. He’d spent hours trying to teach her to play. Didn’t work. She was the least musically inclined person in existence. “Not a single one.”

  Braxton shifted on the mattress, making room at the end. With a single nod, he beckoned her forward. “Come here.”

  Her lungs seized, but the rest of her body refused to follow her brain’s orders to fight. They needed to come up with another plan to identify the man trying to kill her. Not mess around on his guitar. Still, she put one foot in front of the other until the backs of her knees hit the mattress, and she sat down beside him. Warmth flooded down her left side as his arm brushed against hers.

  Braxton set the instrument across her lap, one hand wrapped around the neck, the other sliding between her arm and her rib cage. A shiver chased down her spine despite the fact she was burning up inside. Goose bumps pimpled down her arms as he set his mouth close to her ear. And the world disintegrated from in front of her, leaving only the two of them and his guitar. He fit his fingers over hers, the calluses rough against her, as she settled against him. Flashing her that gut-wrenching smile, he studied her face from forehead to chin as he forced her fingers to move with his. “You got it.”

  “It sounds like I’m skinning a cat.” His laugh reverberated down her side, and Elizabeth tightened her grip on the guitar. She stilled, heart threatening to beat out of her chest, as she turned her head toward him. She rolled her lips between her teeth. His gaze shot to her mouth as the thick ring of green around his pupils disappeared.

  One breath. Two.

  “You’re doing great.” He strengthened his hold on her, almost pressing her into him as he had the night before. He felt so good right now. Her head begged her to run, to not go down this path again, but her body had taken control the second she’d walked into that conference room. After the explosion, the shooter in the garage, she needed this. Needed him.

  The shrill ring of her burner phone from the other room brought her back to reality.

  She blinked, shook her head. Shifting forward, away from him, she cleared her throat and ran a hand through her hair. Wow. What the hell had she been thinking? Elizabeth shoved to her feet. “That’s Vincent. I gave him the number in case he made progress in the investigation.”

  Setting the guitar up against the wall, Braxton reached for his discarded long-sleeve shirt. “Better answer it then.”

  She nodded, escaping down the hallway. The problem was she hadn’t been thinking. That’d always been the problem when he was around. She shook off the rush of comfort that’d settled into her bones and hurried to answer the phone. “Vincent, hey—”

  “Elizabeth Bosch,” an unfamiliar voice said. “Or should I call you Elizabeth Dawson now? Remind me, which one of you created Oversight and single-handedly destroyed over a thousand people’s lives with one press of a button?”

  Her blood froze in her veins. She hit the speaker feature on the screen and dropped the phone away from her ear. Hitting the home button, she raced to record the call and took a deep breath to steady her nerves. “How did you get this number?”

  “You’re not the only one who can run a trace. I’ve got my sources, too.” Static reached through the line, making it hard to identify any kind of background noise. But the man from the garage—maybe the same one who tried blowing her up—was a professional. If that same man was on the other side of the line, he’d thought this through, made contingencies. There wouldn’t be any mistakes on his end. “I almost had you back at Blackhawk Security. I would have, too, if it hadn’t been for your new bodyguard. Have to admit, I hadn’t accounted for him.”

  Confirmation. They were dealing with a professional.

  A tingling sensation climbed up her spine, and she turned.

  Braxton stood in the doorway, rage and violence carved into his features.

  “You set the bomb in the conference room. You knew I had a meeting in there and timed it just right.” She needed confirmation, needed to know they were looking for a single suspect in a numberless group of possibilities. She tipped the phone’s microphone closer to her mouth and forced herself to focus on the caller, the man who had tried twice now to kill her. “Well, not perfectly. I was halfway out the door when you triggered the explosion. So you had to make sure your target wouldn’t get away. That’s why you came after me in the garage.”

  “I’m not going to let you get away with what you’ve done.” Heavy breathing interrupted the static through the line.

  Elizabeth swallowed around the dryness in her throat. “What do you want from me?”

  “I want you at Town Square Park in one hour. Alone,” he said.

  Glancing up at Braxton, she licked her lips. The man she’d known—the man she’d loved—had disappeared in the span of a few seconds. All from an unknown voice on the other line. Tension tightened the muscles down her spine as she considered the situation. “And if I don’t show?”

  “I know who you’ve been spending your nights with, Elizabeth. I know why your grocery bill has nearly doubled the past few months, why you visit the park so often after wor
k.” Another flicker of static from the other line, then muffled words. Then the undeniable sound of a bullet loading into a gun chamber. “Would you really want him caught up in the middle of this?”

  No. No, no, no, no. Elizabeth straightened a bit despite the urge to collapse back on to the bed nearly consuming her. “He has nothing to do with any of this.”

  “One hour,” the shooter said. “I’ll be waiting.”

  The call ended.

  She stared at the phone. Either she walked straight into what was undoubtedly a trap or she risked losing the only family her daughter might have left once Braxton disappeared.

  “Who have you been spending your nights with, Liz?” She almost didn’t recognize Braxton’s voice. Too distant. Too dangerous. Her stomach flipped at the sight of the violence still burned into his expression, in the tightness of all those new muscles. “Who was he talking about?”

  “Okay. I was going to tell you earlier, but the timing never seemed right.” She tossed the phone onto the bed. Braxton wouldn’t hurt her. Never her. But the thought of telling him the truth dried her mouth. A wave of nausea threatened to unbalance her, but whether it was from the possibility of revealing what she’d been doing in her spare time or morning sickness, she had no idea. Elizabeth straightened. He deserved to know. No matter how hard the truth would be to get out or how much he’d hate her afterward. “Since I moved to Anchorage, I’ve been looking after your father.”

  * * *

  HIS LUNGS PROTESTED as though he’d been hit in the chest with a two-by-four. She what? “That man literally put us out on the street when I was a kid to support his habit, and you’ve been visiting him? Bringing him food?”

  “He’s not the man you remember, Braxton. The drugs...” Liz took a step closer, but where her proximity usually relieved the pressure coursing through him, it now made it stronger. She seemed to realize her effect on him and froze, that full bottom lip dropping open. “Sometimes he recognizes me, asks about you, asks about the baby. Most of the time I’m the only person keeping him alive.”

  Was that supposed to make him feel better? She’d never met his father when they’d worked together at Fort Meade. Which meant she’d come to Anchorage and tracked the old man down. She’d spent night after night making sure he had a roof over his head when the addict hadn’t even had the guts to do the same for his own flesh and blood. “And now whoever is coming after you is using him as leverage.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know the shooter was watching me—”

  “Why?” His head spun. His vision was a blur, a haze of everything but the woman in front of him. A woman who’d betrayed his deepest secret. The old man he’d called Dad for years had never chosen his family over the poison he could buy on the street. Never even bothered to show up to his mother’s funeral after she’d caught a cold and died from pneumonia lying in a cardboard box. Because of his father. Because of what he did to their family. Braxton had grown up without the support he’d needed at the time, and he’d vowed never to fall back into that old man’s manipulations again. The SOB was selfish. Only looking for a way to score. “I told you about what that man put me and my mother through, what happened to her. Why would you look for him? Why would you try to help him?”

  “You weren’t here, Braxton. You left.” Her lips thinned as she rolled them between her teeth. “And this baby deserves a family.”

  His blood pressure spiked. Of course she deserved a family. Every baby did. Someone to sing to her at night, to kiss her in the morning, to help her count her fingers and toes. “You don’t need him. I can give her that. I’m her father.”

  “For how long?” she asked.

  “What?” What the hell did that mean? She’d told him he was the father.

  “How long are you going to be around?” Liz pulled back her shoulders. The oversize T-shirt and baggy sweatpants did nothing to hide her mouthwatering curves underneath as she interlaced her fingers under her lower abdominals. “The NSA interrogated me after your disappearance. They claimed you sold classified intel to an anonymous third party. They’re not going to stop looking for you until they’ve got you in cuffs. So how long are you going to stick around before you choose to go back into hiding?”

  He didn’t have an answer. The idea of being a distant father—having practically grown up with a shell of one himself—was too much. He couldn’t do that to his daughter. And no way would he do that to Liz. Anxiety wound itself through his gut. But serving a possible life sentence behind bars for treason wouldn’t do them a damn bit of good, either.

  “As much as you might hate that man, he’s still your father. He has a lot to answer for, but right now, he needs our help. And I’m going to give it to him.” She nodded, her expression resigned, as she strode past him toward the bedroom door. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to find a hammer to smash this phone to pieces before it gives up anything else today.”

  He couldn’t fight the smile pulling at his mouth as he envisioned her with a hammer in one hand and her burner phone in the other. The shooter shouldn’t have been able to get a lock on that number so easily. Braxton had checked that phone personally, along with the others in his stash. No spyware. They were new numbers, too. Which meant her Blackhawk Security teammate Vincent Kalani, the only person to reach Liz at that number, could’ve been compromised and not even know it. Or if he did... What had he read in the ex-cop’s file? Something about taking bribes. The forensics expert had some explaining to do. He called back over his shoulder but didn’t follow Liz from the room. “Check under the kitchen sink.”

  Hell, he couldn’t face her yet. Disbelief still coursed through him as he studied the personal belongings she’d left in plain sight from her duffel bag. She’d been taking care of his father these last few months. Every night. And now his old man was being used as leverage against her, and Braxton was expected to risk Liz’s life for a man who’d done nothing but disappoint him for years. The meeting was a trap. If he lost her...

  No. It wouldn’t happen. Without her, there would be no one else. And that wasn’t an option. He’d already lost too many people in his life. He wasn’t about to lose her, too.

  Heavy thumps echoed down the hall, and he worked to shove his own selfish need to keep her in his life to the back of his mind. Sounded like Liz had found the hammer. He spun toward the door to survey the damage but froze as the edge of a photo stuffed into her duffel bag claimed his attention. Not a photo. A black-and-white sonogram. Checking back over his shoulder as another round of hammering reached his ears, he closed in on the bag. His hand shook as he reached for the single piece of thin, glossy paper. Liz’s name, the date of the sonogram, the doctor’s office and the measurements in centimeters stood out in white lettering around the edge of the dark background. But there, right in the center of the cone-shaped ultrasound, was a baby.

  His baby. Sixteen weeks old.

  Her perfectly shaped head, her knees drawn up almost to her nose. Braxton couldn’t make out much else, but he didn’t have to. She was perfect. Sliding his thumb over where he thought her right ear might be, he exhaled hard at a block of letters he hadn’t seen before. His heart dropped.

  Baby Karina.

  Liz had named their daughter after his mother.

  He rubbed his free hand over his face and turned toward the door. Five steps. That was all it took before she came into sight. He couldn’t breathe—couldn’t think—as he closed in on her. Catching her wrist before she swung the hammer down into the debris of what used to be a cell phone, he twisted her into him.

  Her eyes widened. “Braxton, what—”

  He crushed his mouth against hers. Fire burned through him, raising the hairs on the back of his neck. Sliding one hand around her back, he fought to bring her closer, make her a permanent part of himself. The scent of lavender worked through him, filled him as her pulse beat hard in her wrist beneath hi
s fingertips. Forget the explosion. Forget the shooter. Forget the charges he’d face once the NSA realized he’d stayed in the country. Braxton only had attention for this moment. Only had Liz.

  And she kissed him back.

  Her grip loosened around the hammer and it fell, barely missing her bare feet. He released his grip on her wrist then held his breath as she planted her palms against his chest. But not to shove him away. Her lips, soft and silky, pressed into his. He licked the edge of her bottom lip then drew it between his teeth.

  A gasp escaped her control, and his blood pressure skyrocketed. He thrust his tongue into her mouth, every cell in his body determined to make her his. He set the sonogram on the counter behind her then threaded his fingers into her hair at the base of her skull in a tight grip. Exploring, memorizing, claiming, he consumed her as a dehydrated man consumed water. Damn, she tasted good. How had he been able to live without her all this time? How had he been able to walk away?

  Desire blazed inside him as he kicked the hammer out of the way and maneuvered her toward the same countertop he’d caged her against last night. He felt too rough for her, too punishing, but he couldn’t stop. Not until he’d claimed every inch or she told him to back off. She tasted too good, and he’d become addicted to that taste a long time ago. What he wouldn’t give to kiss her senseless every morning.

  The calluses on his fingertips caught against smooth skin along her midsection.

  Hell.

  Braxton pulled away then set his forehead against hers. His lungs fought to catch up with his racing pulse. As much as he wanted to strip her bare and help her forget the past two days, he couldn’t...they couldn’t. They’d run out of time. “The meeting.”

  He couldn’t say much else. Not when she was still pressed against him, when her touch seared him down to his core.