Critical Density

by Desiree Holt

  “We have to find out what’s next.”

  “Yes, we do, and very carefully. And listen to this. Two of my sources very quietly told me one of the top people pulling the strings has a code name. The Conductor.”

  “The Conductor?” Rocket frowned. “Sounds like some spy game. A black ops operation.”

  “Well, it’s no game, that’s for sure. None of them know who this Conductor is, just that he carries a lot of the power. I also learned there’s someone nicknamed Diesel who I guess partners with him, but he didn’t have any other information.”

  “Or didn’t want to give it to you,” Rocket pointed out.

  Tom nodded. “That, too. My sources are pretty tough people, in many ways. There’s not a lot that scares them, but I had to pry and cajole every nugget out of every one of them.”

  “I’m not liking the sound of this at all.”

  “Join the crowd. We have to get to the heart of this, my friend, and find out who is behind it all. Then find a way to just shut it down, because more than just Hannah Modell’s life is involved. And knowing who in the government is involved is going to take a whole lot of digging.”

  “You know Lowden Tactical has to be right in the thick of this to play such a key role in Hegman’s murder. I’d love to know exactly what their role is. A lot of people told me they wondered where the huge amount of startup money came from. Someone needs to look at their other activities, because having a drone company under your control gives you a big edge in a lot of things. Viper better be on the alert where his woman is concerned.”

  “His woman.” He stared at Tom, then nodded. “Guess that’s right. Damn. It sure happened with him just the way it did with Blaze.”

  “You guys must have something contagious.” Then he sobered. “No sweat. It’s what you do. What all of us do. And if the people who are after Hannah think they’ve got all the power, we’ll just show them they’re wrong. But without letting them know where Hannah is so you all can keep her safe.”

  “If these people are as powerful as you seem to think, they have ways to find things out.” Rocket hated to think about that. “There’s always that chance, no matter how farfetched. People like you’re talking about have far-reaching power. And they use it no matter who gets hurt, as long as it isn’t them.”

  “But Galaxy is good,” Tom reminded him. “Better than good. That’s why people come to you. You do what others can’t. If my life was in danger and I needed someone to save me and get the bad guys, the Galaxy crew is the only team I’d turn to.”

  “We like to think so. We just have to be better than these people. Which we can be. Okay, I’d better call Viper to round everyone up so we can put an action plan together. We’ll also do some digging and see what we can find. Our amazing software that Zander designed can do just about anything.”

  “I’ll keep digging, too,” Tom assured him, “but I have to do it carefully.”

  “Just don’t get your dick caught in a wringer.”

  “Believe me, I plan to be very careful. And keep in mind, Hannah may not even be safe in Viper’s house,” Tom pointed out. “These people are capable of anything.”

  “We’ll be alert,” he acknowledged.

  “Good. And I’ll let you know when I find out something else.”

  The minute Rocket was back in his car, he called Viper.

  “Better gather the troops,” he told him.

  “Why? What did Tom have to say?”

  “This isn’t stuff to discuss over the phone. Just get everyone to your house. And I mean ASAP.”

  All he could think as he drove was, what a shitstorm. The likelihood that Hannah Modell would find herself in the middle of an international conspiracy had been slim to none, yet here she was. And Galaxy right with her. Not that any of this was her fault. Hell, no. What scared him was that could happen to any unsuspecting person and they might not have Galaxy to help them.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Hannah stared at the faces of the men seated around the table in the dining area and a chill raced the length of her spine. She had seen them serious when they’d first gathered to begin their work on her situation, but this was more than that. They wore the hard faces of men going into battle, a ‘take no prisoners’ look. It was not lessened by the presence of their guns on the table next to their laptops. It gave her a real sense of why SEALs were considered the world’s fiercest Special Forces.

  “I know I asked this the other day,” she said, “but do you guys always have those guns with you? Even at a meal?”

  “Darlin’,” Viper drawled, “it’s who we are. Always prepared.”

  “And a good indication of how seriously we take protecting you,” Rocket added.

  She could get on board with that. It had become more and more obvious to her, as information unfolded, that if Lowden got its hands on her, she’d be dead before she could blink.

  “It’s hard to make a plan,” Eagle told everyone as he looked around the table, “when you have no idea what your enemy’s plan is. Hell, we don’t even know who specifically is after Hannah or who the head guy is. Maybe there’s even more than one. And now Tom says even this house may not be safe. Talk about a goatfuck.”

  Listening to them talk, Hannah was seized with a sudden fear she hadn’t felt up until now. She must have a guardian angel that had connected her with Viper just when she was in desperate need. If she were still on her own, she’d be a sitting duck for these people, with no help, no resources and no place to hide. She’d been lucky. Nobody could protect her better than these four battle-hardened former SEALs.

  “We’ll take care of things here at the house,” Eagle pointed out. “We’ve been in worse situations before.”

  “Do you think this Conductor is in charge of everything?” she asked.

  “Possibly,” Rocket told her. “But he may not be powerful enough. But let me tell you, this is the first time I’ve seen Tom Hernandez uneasy about anything.”

  Blaze raked his fingers through his hair. “Which makes me uneasy.”

  “But it will also make us twice as alert,” Eagle pointed out. “So where are we here? And please don’t tell me no place.”

  “You don’t need me to say we need to find a way to go after these guys. That’s what we do. But we need to have the other names and the details of what’s on their agenda next so we can put a tight plan together.”

  “We need a starting point,” Blaze told them. “We have Baumann’s name, so let’s begin there and trace back every day of his life beginning with today. Eagle, how about coordinating everything on our all-powerful search engine? We’ll divide up Baumann’s life among the rest of us, and every time we come up with a name, we’ll throw it at you and you can slide it into the machine.”

  “Sounds good. Okay, here we go.” Eagle tapped the keyboard to access the program. “A program called Stargaze was designed exclusively for Lowden by a computer whiz they’d known for years. One of the first contracts Lowden took was to find his sister who everyone had insisted had just left home on her own. Lowden turned the world upside down, following leads everyone else had said were just indications of the prevailing theory.”

  He paused while he typed something.

  “They rescued her just in time from a sex trade group, and Zander French had promised them anything they wanted or needed computer-wise for the rest of their lives. He’d set everything up on their laptops and on the plane, and had everything feed into a very secure cloud that he monitored for them. Plus, with every new innovation, he was always tweaking their setup.”

  “Okay,” Viper nodded. “We’ve got that much, Let’s start digging.

  Hannah knew that the more people were working on this, the more information they’d be able to dig up. She’d insisted on participating, so once again Viper set her up with his secondary laptop. Because she knew more about Lowden and the people there, they gave her that assignment. The hope was that she’d find some place where Baumann and Eric Lowden had
hooked up.

  Sitting next to Viper, she felt the heat from his body and the scent of the aftershave he’d slapped on after his shower drifted across her nose. Even this many hours since the previous night, she could still feel the touch of his hands on her skin, his mouth on her nipples, his fingers inside her. His cock inside her.

  She’d heard about the kind of sex she had with Viper—even read about it when she isolated herself with her growing collection of romance novels, her secret vice. She’d had hard sex and fast sex and unsatisfying sex, but nothing had even come close to what she shared with Viper. There was an intense connection that made what was happening to them way more than physical.

  She hoped it wasn’t just the hyperintensity of the situation. She was smart enough to know that that could escalate things beyond reality. But while her analytical brain told her there was a good chance of that, her intuition told her this was real. She just hoped she got out of this alive so they could make a life together.

  She methodically fed in the names of everyone she knew at Lowden from Eric Lowden down and including the executive veep, Greg Kingsley. It was a long, tedious task, even with the super-duper system Zander had created, and most of it was exactly what she expected. Dull and useless.

  She tried using different key words and groups of words, searching the media. She tuned everything out, ignoring the back and forth between the guys so she could focus on what she was doing. Every so often, Viper would reach for her hand and give it a squeeze, and her nerves would settle. She’d been at it a while when an article in an obscure newspaper caught her eye.

  “Hey, guys.” She cleared her throat.

  Everyone stopped what they were doing to look at her.

  “What’s up?” Viper asked. “Did you find something?”

  “I think so. Maybe.” She clicked her mouse. “I almost missed it because it’s so off the beaten path. It’s an article in this magazine about a party weekend on someone’s yacht. Baumann’s front and center, but standing off to the side is Eric Lowden.”

  “Let’s see that. Can you turn your computer?”

  “I can do better than that. I’ll send the link for this to all of you.” In seconds, it was done.

  “Shit.” Rocket was staring at his screen. “Did anyone ever hear of this gossip rag?”

  “If you look them up,” Hannah told him, “they have a very low subscriber rate. Even their Twitter account doesn’t have a huge number of followers.”

  “So this says the party was held on Aaron Jacobs’ yacht. I’m not into this stuff, so anyone know who he is?”

  “Got it,” Eagle told them. “It’s one of the largest aerospace and defense contractors in the world by revenue and market capitalization. Their products include missiles, air defense systems and…get this…drones.”

  “Drones?” Hannah narrowed her eyes. “Is that Eric Lowden’s connection to them?”

  “Looking it up right now.” Viper’s computer keys clicked away. “Okay, Lowden worked for Jacobs before he got the job at Bright Star. But this party happened between him leaving Bright Star and starting Lowden Tactical.”

  “There’s gotta be a real thread there somewhere. This is not just coincidence.” Rocket looked around the table. “We need to dig into it more.”

  “And if Baumann is at a party on Jacobs’ yacht,” Eagle mused, “there’s a good chance Jacobs is funding his campaigns and wants something big in return.”

  Hannah stared at the picture on her screen. “They targeted me, didn’t they?”

  It wasn’t even a question, and the realization of it made her nauseous. How stupid she’d been, so flattered she’d been offered the primo job with Lowden.

  “Hannah,” Viper began.

  She held up a hand to stop him. “Don’t bother. I’m not sure anyone could have foreseen this, so I’ll only beat myself up a little. But it makes me realize how long they’ve been planning whatever this is. I wonder how many so-called candidates they checked out before they decided I’d make the best patsy.”

  “You can’t give yourself shit over this,” Eagle said in his soft drawl. “Trust me when I say no one would have seen this coming.”

  “You had two forces at work here,” Viper told her. “Military contractors who wanted a bigger share of defense spending and who also didn’t want to be called on Mark Hegman’s hot seat. They played to Baumann’s ego and manipulated him, then did what they had to for him to move into the position as chairman of that committee. You can’t decipher people who are that devious unless you are expecting it. Trust me.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing. Just read your own resume, Hannah. Talk to yourself for a while. You are not a stupid woman, so please give yourself a break.”

  She was still trying to digest it all when they finally quit at the end of the day. All of them were shocked at what they’d pulled from the list of party attendees—the connections between military contractors, private security and Henry Baumann.

  “The thing is to take them down before they can find Hannah,” Viper reminded them, “and I don’t have a lot of time. We need to reach out to our own military contacts and see what they hear.”

  Eagle slapped Viper on the arm and gave Hannah a hug. “We’ll get it done. We always do.”

  Hannah said goodbye to the men and watched as Viper reset the security codes.

  “It’s a good thing you have a backup generator in place,” she told him, “because using an EMP is going to be the first thing they’ll do. They’ll want to knock out your security system before they do anything else. Give themselves whatever edge they can, like we already discussed.”

  “Yup. And besides the backup generator, I’ve got a shielding system in place, but I also know nothing is perfect.”

  “So what happens if you’re actually attacked?” She shook her head. “Listen to me. Attacked.”

  “Not so farfetched, as a matter of fact, especially after what Tom passed along. In that case, my entire system signals me, and I get out my fire power. And call in the troops. We’re all hooked up in a way that we can alert each other at once.” He brushed a kiss over her forehead. “Not to worry. We’ve got things under control.”

  “I believe you. Don’t get a big head over this, but I’ve felt safe with you since you kissed me in the bar in Houston.”

  He chuckled. “I didn’t realize my kisses were that powerful.”

  “I think I could use some now.”

  She wrapped her arms around his waist and leaned into him. Her brain was frazzled from trying to decipher all the information they’d pulled together and she wanted nothing more than to shut out the world and be locked up with Viper.

  He leaned down and brushed a light kiss on her forehead.

  “And I think that can be arranged.” He nipped the edge of her ear. “All my kisses belong to you now.”

  “Good. I need them.”

  “Tired?” He studied her face. “Learning all this stuff made for a stressful day.”

  “I think part of it was just realizing how blind I’d been to everything.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up about it,” he insisted. “Everybody’s been there at one time or another.”

  She buried her face against his solid chest. “I just feel like such an idiot.”

  “Well, you’re not. You’re the smartest woman I have ever met.” He tilted up her face and his mouth curved in a grin. “But don’t tell Peyton I said that. Or Blaze. He’s convinced he’s got the prize, which is the way it should be.” He brushed his thumb over her bottom lip. “But the real winner is me.”

  He lowered his head and pressed his mouth to hers, his lips firm and warm. Tingles sizzled through her just from the contact, and, as with every touch, heat streaked straight to her core. Her nipples hardened and ached and her panties dampened. When he opened his lips over hers, she thrust her tongue deep into his mouth. The heat ratcheted up about twenty notches.

  Viper thrust his fingers into her hair, holding her
head steady as he fucked her mouth with his tongue. She sucked on it hungrily, scraped it with her teeth then bit down gently. He moaned, the sound vibrating along her nerve endings.

  He slid his hand down her back until he reached her ass, squeezing and kneading it, the movement of his fingers making the inner muscles of her core automatically flex and liquid gather at her center. Lord! It seemed as if all the man had to do was touch her and she heated up.

  Viper cupped her chin, tipping her head so he could touch his mouth to hers. The moment their lips connected, she opened her mouth to invite his tongue. He swept it inside, licking the entire surface and dancing his own tongue over hers. Her inner pulse throbbed harder, enough that she had to squeeze her legs together or she thought she’d explode.

  The kiss went on, tongues twisting together, his one hand continuing to knead and caress her ass. When he moved his hand and wriggled it inside her jeans and panties, she moaned and pushed herself against him. He slid two fingers into the crease between the cheeks of her ass, rubbing them up and down before teasing her opening with the tip of one.

  “Soon, Hannah. Soon I’m going to take you right here. Then every bit of you will be mine.”

  She wanted to tell him to do it now, tonight, but she wasn’t sure she was ready. Almost, and just the thought of it sent a dark thrill racing through her.

  “Soon,” he growled again and clutched her body more tightly to his.

  Even with the thickness of his jeans, she could feel the hard, swollen outline of his cock, and she rubbed herself against it.

  “Jesus, Hannah,” he breathed, tearing his mouth from hers.

  “I want you inside me.”

  She wasn’t a shy flower by any means when it came to sex, but it seemed with Viper there was a connection that made her bolder and more aggressive. She’d liked the slow, delicious sex, but right now she wanted hard and fast. She wanted to lose herself in him completely and forget about this mess she was in simply because she’d been recruited for an exciting job.