He’d been an Army Ranger, though he’d been assigned to a special duty location for network defense when she’d met him—but he’d had the training of a warrior and it often came out when they went somewhere together. It was in the way he sized up a room, the way he mapped out the exits, the things he thought about. He’d wanted to be a Green Beret back then. So far as she knew, it had never happened. He’d disappeared from the regular Army around two years ago, but he was still stationed in DC—she knew because she’d checked with some of her contacts. But he didn’t appear to be with any special outfit that she could tell. Not Delta, not a Green Beret.
She saw him on her forums sometimes. His name was the same—Harvey Hacker. So many guys went for something sexy—Dark Knight, Silver Eagle, stuff like that. But not Sky. Harvey was for Harvard, where he’d gone to school but never finished.
She pulled up her email and chewed her lip. Sky was probably the most honorable person she knew. She trusted no one, not even him. But she trusted him more than most. And she still had his personal email address. She started a new message and began to type. If she made it out of here, she needed an ally.
She just had to hope he wasn’t still mad enough to shut the door in her face.
Chapter Two
Sky, I need to see you. Please. Bliss
* * *
Sky “Hacker” Kelley stared at the message on his laptop before snapping it closed with a growl. Why had he clicked it? Why? It’d been in his inbox for a couple of days now. He’d been steadfastly ignoring it, though he hadn’t been able to ignore the range of emotions it called up inside.
Fury, hate, desire, rage. More rage, more hate, more desire. The desire was the maddening part. He got up and headed for the kitchen, intent on getting another beer and getting drunk before the night was over. He’d been over at Garret “Iceman” Spencer’s house with his Alpha and Echo Squad teammates, drinking and having a good time. Except he hadn’t been having all that great a time, mostly because Bliss’s message was preying on his mind. The fact she’d messaged him at all actually, because he still hadn’t read it at that point. It took a lot of fucking nerve to contact him after so long.
After what she’d done.
He hadn’t taken three steps toward the kitchen when the doorbell rang. Fuck. It was almost ten o’clock at night. It could be Mrs. Ernst wanting to borrow a cup of sugar. The woman found an excuse to visit him every couple of days. Hell, she didn’t even bake because she’d never once offered him a brownie or a cookie, even when she insisted that’s what she needed the sugar for.
He never had the sugar because he didn’t cook. And he damned sure didn’t bake. He went to the door and looked out the peephole.
His heart stopped. Just stopped. A small figure stood on the other side. Dark, sleek hair, full lips, wide-set eyes, an air of innocence that was an absolute fucking lie.
He felt nothing at seeing that face. Nothing at all.
And then he felt everything. Anger, hot and swift, rushed through his veins. He started to leave her standing there, but he’d had enough to drink that his inhibitions were down. He jerked the door open before he could think better of it.
She blinked up at him, long dark lashes framing pretty blue eyes. She was wearing a pair of jeans, Chucks, and a tank top that clung to her breasts. A huge Louis Vuitton bag hung from her shoulder. Of course it did. Bliss liked her luxuries.
She smiled tentatively. “Hello, Sky. It’s been a while.”
Rage urged him to slam the door. Curiosity wouldn’t let him. He should, but he had to know. “What the hell do you want, Bliss?”
She arched an eyebrow. And then she wrapped a mantle of self-righteousness around her shoulders just like she’d throw on a blanket to ward off a chill. “Is that any way to talk to your wife?”
A strange kind of melancholy rolled over him. “We aren’t married. Got a divorce, remember?”
She nibbled her lip and threw a glance over her shoulder. “I know that. But we used to be.”
He gripped the doorframe and tried not to rip it off the hinges. “And now we’re not. Any obligation I had to you is over.”
She frowned and glanced behind her again. “Can I come in?”
His eyebrows climbed his forehead. “Are you kidding me? No. What for, anyway? You think we’re going to have a tea party and discuss the past?”
“I need your help, Sky. I think someone’s trying to kill me.”
“Good for them. You probably deserve it.” He started to push the door closed, but she launched herself at it. Wedged her small body into the opening. Her eyes were wide, frightened. Determined.
“Sky, please. I’m not kidding. Just hear me out. If you don’t want to help me once I’ve told you what’s going on, I’ll leave. Just give me a chance.”
He wanted to push her backward and shut the door in her face. He envisioned it. Relished it. But fuck, the fear on her face was real. He’d worked long enough in Special Ops to recognize terror when he saw it. Part of him wanted to throw her out anyway.
Bliss was a con woman. A brilliant hacker who had no problems stealing or lying or cheating her way to a paycheck. Sure, she’d been working for the government when she’d conned him, but it didn’t matter. She’d have done it for anybody who paid her.
And maybe she was doing it now. Maybe this whole thing was an act, and the fact he’d been drinking was messing up his bullshit censors and making him believe she was really scared. Or maybe her acting had improved.
But refusing to help people wasn’t what he did. It wasn’t who he was. He yanked the door open. “Five minutes, Bliss. And it better be good or I’m throwing your ass onto the street, and I don’t care what happens after that.”
She came inside and he closed the door behind her. But not before looking at the parking lot and the street. Nothing moved—or nothing that was out of place, anyway. A cat. A car that crawled past on its way out of the complex. A dog barked. Someone shouted, but he couldn’t see them.
He turned to face her. She stood in his living room, bag still on her shoulder, looking small and more vulnerable than he believed she was. There was a con here somewhere, but he couldn’t see it yet.
He headed toward the kitchen and retrieved the beer he’d been after. “Want one?” he asked, throwing her a glance from the coolness of the fridge.
“I shouldn’t.”
He shut the door and shrugged. “Suit yourself.” Then he strolled over and sank onto the couch, kicking up his feet and crossing them at the ankles. “So what’s the problem, Bliss? You piss somebody off?”
She sighed and perched on the arm of a chair, letting the Louis Vuitton drop slowly to the floor. Like wax melting from a candle. Her shoulders sagged. Her dark hair dropped over her shoulder and she pushed it back again. Her tank top was black, her jeans tight. She wasn’t dressed in anything special, but she tempted him more than he liked.
“I don’t know what happened. I only know I’m in trouble.”
He picked up the remote and flipped the channels, sipping his beer. Every once in a while, he cast an eye in her direction. She chewed the inside of her lip, and one leg bounced up and down. Whatever was going on with her, she clearly wasn’t comfortable.
But how could she be? She’d turned up at his house after four years. After she’d betrayed him and left him to deal with the fallout from her bullshit. He’d nearly lost his Army career because of her.
“Yeah? And? What do you want me to do about it?”
She suddenly stood and crossed the distance between them, snatching the remote from his fingers and stabbing the button to turn off the television. He stared at her. Her face was flushed as she tossed the remote onto the couch. “I want you to listen. And then I want you to use that brain of yours and help me figure out what to do.”
He sat up a little straighter. “Seriously? You fucking betrayed me, lied to me, and now you want me to help you figure out what to do? What happened, Bliss? You steal from the wrong person this
time?”
She frowned. Hard. Her cheeks flushed as she folded her arms over her chest and looked away. “Apparently so.”
He wanted to tell her to get lost. Curiosity got the better of him. “And?”
“I think I’d like that beer after all.”
“I said five minutes. You’ve wasted three.”
“Beer, Sky.”
“You know where to get it. You just saw me do it.”
She glared. “I’ll get it—but I’m not leaving for half an hour.”
He started to argue with her, but her eyes flashed and her cheeks flushed and he found himself more intrigued than he should be. “Suit yourself.”
She marched over to the fridge. God help him, he watched her ass shake all the way there and remembered wrapping his hands around those pretty little cheeks as he slammed into her. For six whole months, he’d lost himself in her. And then it all fell apart.
She grabbed a beer, twisted off the cap, and took a big swig. Then she marched back and flopped into the chair she’d vacated. Her pretty eyes studied him. “How have you been, Sky?”
Not what he’d expected. “How have I been? Great. I fuck who I want and I don’t worry that she’ll stab me in the back.”
He thought she visibly flinched, but he wasn’t sure. Her gaze dropped, long lashes covering the brilliant blue of her eyes. “That’s nice.”
Truth was he hadn’t fucked anybody in so long he thought his dick was probably getting rusty. Not that he didn’t give it a workout himself, but that was a damned boring way to go. He was tired of jerking off in the middle of the night, shooting semen onto his bare belly, and then feeling a strange kind of loneliness because he’d done so. He cleaned himself up and then fell into a sleep where he dreamed about random bullshit that had nothing to do with his life.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t pick up women—he could—but he found them more boring than he liked to admit. Even the fuck bunnies who hung around Buddy’s Bar & Grill, searching for a Special Ops badass so they could say they’d fucked a trained killer. Those women would do next to anything, but it was so empty and boring that he’d rather jerk off.
“You?” he asked. “You fuck who you want?”
Her eyes flashed. “Oh, of course. All the time. I stab him in the back too. It’s so much fun.”
His gut burned. “Yeah, sounds about right.”
She took a big gulp of beer and fixed him with a stare. “Have you seen the news lately, or have you been living in a dream world?”
Annoyance flashed through him. “Babe, I live the news. What do you think?”
“Home invasion in Arlington. Blood trail. Homeowner missing, but they won’t give out a name yet?”
He frowned, searching his memory banks. It had been a long day and he’d had a bit of beer. So he could feel numb. “I might have seen something about that. Why?”
“Because it’s me. I’m the missing homeowner.”
Bliss was ready to shake apart, like an ancient Greek pillar that wasn’t exactly earthquake proof and barely holding on as the earth danced beneath it. She hadn’t realized it would be so hard to see Sky again. To be in the same room with him.
She’d escaped her house two nights ago by waiting until dark, then she’d deployed her lights and music to distract her home invader. She’d had one shot at getting away, and she’d taken it. With her BMW running in the garage, she’d come out of the hidden room and tried to sneak down the hall while the invader was occupied with the lights and music elsewhere.
But he’d figured it out quickly and come after her. She’d been almost to the door when she’d heard him running toward her. She’d been pulsing the lights, so she managed to shut them off and they were plunged into darkness. She’d wished for some night vision goggles—and prayed he didn’t have any—when the moonlight slanted into the room and illuminated the shine of his pistol. Idiot was vain enough to carry a pistol with a polished slide. She’d taken aim and emptied a magazine. Then she ran.
She hadn’t realized she’d hit him until she saw something on the news later about the blood trail. He’d lived, clearly, and he’d gotten away. The police came because the neighbors reported gunfire. But there’d been nothing to find. No Bliss, no invader, no car where his accomplice sat. She’d watched the story unfold on the evening news later that night from her hotel room—where she’d checked in under a false name.
She’d changed rooms three times in the past forty-eight hours while she mined her contacts, trying to find a current address for Sky since he hadn’t answered her email and he wasn’t living at the last address she’d had for him. She’d ditched the BMW for a nondescript Honda. Fortunately, she had skills that dated back to her teenage years in Cricket Hollow. Wiring an old Honda was child’s play. The BMW was stashed away in a parking garage where it would stay until she could claim it again. The Honda was growing hotter by the minute. She’d parked it two streets over and walked through the bushes to get here, praying she had the correct address. She was tired and cranky and worried—relieved to see Sky, but still worried.
Sky frowned at her, forehead wrinkled in concentration. He seemed to have been drinking, so maybe his thought processes weren’t fast enough right now. Or maybe he was just pissed and trying to figure out her angle. Not that she blamed him.
He didn’t say a word as he grabbed the laptop computer sitting on the cushion beside him and flipped the lid open. He was a hacker, like her, so he was never far from his equipment. He typed something in and waited. She could hear the video playing as he watched the news report.
Then he slammed the lid closed and glared. “What the fuck are you into this time, Bliss?”
“Honestly?” She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Not good enough.” He stood and shoved a hand through his hair. He looked good with his faded jeans that clung to his hips and his dark polo shirt with the Ralph Lauren logo. Poor Sky, always a bit of a slave to the lifestyle in which he’d grown up. He simply didn’t know another way. He’d come from money and privilege, though he’d lost both when his father was arrested for fraud. Stockbrokers who cheated their clients, and their taxes, didn’t last long in the real world.
Sky wasn’t comfortable with cheating. She got it, though she hadn’t gotten it soon enough when they’d been together. She wasn’t a stockbroker, and she hadn’t been stealing money from people who’d entrusted her with their life savings. Hell, she hadn’t even been stealing. But she had been dishonest, and that was a hard line in Sky’s sand.
He stopped moving and fixed her with a cold stare. “I’m not playing this game, Bliss. I don’t want anything to do with whatever you’re a part of.”
She shot to her feet as fear and anger twined in her belly. “You’d send me back out there? When someone wants me dead?” Her belly clenched as reality doused her in ice water. “You really don’t give a shit what happens to me?”
He growled. Literally growled. Her insides did things they probably shouldn’t. Her pussy tightened as wetness flowed into her core. Why? This man despised her. And no matter how attractive he was, she wasn’t the kind of girl to fling herself at a man who hated her.
But her body sure didn’t seem to care. Heat rolled over her skin. Sank into her depths.
“I don’t care what happens to you,” he said. “I care that you’re in danger.”
She blinked. “That makes no damned sense.”
“Makes perfect sense to me.”
“You’re the only one,” she grumbled.
“You need to go to the police. They’re already looking for you. Go and tell them you’re alive, then let them do their job.”
Fear twisted inside her. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
She sucked in a breath. “Because I don’t trust anyone. I don’t know who’s working for whom—and I don’t know that I’d come out alive.”
“You’re here. Are you telling me that you trust me?”
She swallowed. “As much
as I can trust anyone, yes. I trust you. You’re the one person I know who will tell me the truth.”
He shook his head. “I don’t want to be part of your fucking madness ever again. You’re going to have to trust the police because I’m not playing.”
Desperation sank its claws into her. “Will you at least listen? I haven’t even told you what happened yet.”
He closed his eyes. A muscle in his jaw tensed. She found herself studying the way his polo clung to his chest and imagining her hands spreading over the muscles there. He was bigger than he’d been four years ago. Broader and more menacing. The computer geek gone rogue. Sexy.
“Fine, tell me what happened. And then get the fuck out.”
Chapter Three
It was madness to listen to a damned word she had to say. Madness to entertain anything as truth. He knew her better than that. Knew she lied to suit her own purposes. Yet here he was. Listening to her soft voice and reminding himself that she’d given him nothing but grief.
“I did a job,” she began. “For my CIA contact. He sent me to the Starbucks in Georgetown to lift files off a man’s computer. Bill Martin, an employee of Brighton Business Solutions—they’re a tech firm that writes software applications for businesses. They specialize in workflows and stuff like that. Anyway, Martin had been trying to shop information on the dark net—I don’t know what kind of information though. All I knew was that I needed to perform a man-in-the-middle attack, copy the files, and then take them to the designated drop-off once I heard from my contact.” She pulled in a breath, her mouth tightening so that her lips whitened. “I went home—and a man broke into my house. He knew where to find me, and he wanted something specific. I can only imagine it’s what I stole. He spoke with someone on the phone and told them he’d get the job done. When he couldn’t find me, he waited in my house—pawing through my life, Sky. Touching my underwear and eating my food. Talking dirty to a woman on his phone while touching himself. All while I watched and waited.”
HOT SECRETS: A Hostile Operations Team - Book 13 Page 2
