by Elsa Jade
But Tyler couldn’t know any of that.
When she started to slide into her seat, he hooked an arm under her elbow and levered her back upright. “No more tonight.”
“Don’t we want to know what they did?”
“Nothing we can do about it right now,” he pointed out with what he hoped was a reasonable tone. “The rest needs to wait until we talk to Evens.”
Her brows crashed down. “You don’t think it’s weird that they added something instead of stealing? Were they trying to confuse me?” Her eyes flared wide again. “Or did they want me to know something?”
“It’s weird,” he agreed. Which is exactly why he didn’t want her looking any deeper into it. “But you’re not staying here until I find out how someone got past my scans. So grab a go bag and come with me.”
“I need my computer too.”
“No.” When she drew a breath to argue, he added, “We don’t know what else they did to it.”
After a last, longing look at her tech, she nodded and hurried into the bedroom. He eyed her machines. Should he blank them all now before she found something incriminating?
She returned quickly, still binding her hair into a tighter knot at her nape, just as he decided he’d wait. One focused EMP would wipe everything, should that become necessary.
He locked the door behind her, even as she grimaced. “Too late,” she muttered.
“Never.” He had to believe that or he’d have surrendered to battalion command when ordered.
Keeping a watchful eye on the night, he ushered her across the street.
She tucked her chin down with a shiver. “Why does it seem creepy now?”
Furious at whoever had made her afraid—and made mockery of his patrols, scans, and already precarious reputation—Cross wrapped his fingers around her elbow. “I have a place. You’ll be safe there.”
“Shouldn’t I have been safe here if you were watching me?”
He gritted his teeth. But of course she wasn’t wrong. “This other place, no one knows about it except my crew.”
She shot him another hard glance over the rim of her glasses. “Are you implying you suspect Evens?”
“He hasn’t told us everything, has he?”
When he held out his hand to take her bag, she tucked it higher on her shoulder. “Should I be as suspicious of you?”
He sighed. “There is no answer I can give here that will reassure you,” he pointed out. “But you did trust me with a kiss, so I hope you trust me with your data.”
After a moment, she let out a snort just short of a laugh. “Maybe I’ll add that to the terms of service for this matchmating program.”
Assuming the project hadn’t been terminally sabotaged.
If that happened on his watch, he’d have killed Tyler’s belief in him, the reopening of the Big Sky IDA, and his beast battalion.
Chapter 7
She followed him out because she wasn’t quite sure what else to do. If she lost this job and her tech, she’d be finished, and Brett’s last words to her would come true: you’re nothing without me.
He’d been her everything for so long, professionally and personally, that she feared he might be right. Numb and distracted, she didn’t realize they were heading to her rental car until Cross stood at the driver side door. She reached for her key, but the keyless entry beeped and the engine started before she could make a move.
“What…”
He gave her a crooked smile. “Just trying to regain some of your faith in my security qualifications.”
With a resigned sigh, she slipped into the passenger seat. “Just so you know, I wouldn’t necessarily categorize hijacking someone’s vehicle as a reassuring characteristic.”
“It’s good to be conscious of the dangers of inherent bias and the constant need to reassess when new data becomes available.”
She gave him a look. “It’s good to be biased against potentially being kidnapped and knocked unconscious and taken away to some unknown location by a stranger. Gimme some new data so I can reassess.”
He inclined his head. “I found an abandoned cabin on Sunset Lake. No one knows about it except the three on my crew and now you. Normally I assign one of us to active patrol in Sunset Falls while one of us monitors remotely from a rented room on this street where we maintain an anonymous watch, and one of us has downtime at our safehouse.” He pulled out onto the quiet street. “Tonight I was scheduled to cycle to my off hours, so we’ll have the retreat to ourselves.”
She leaned her head back staring at the fuzzy feeling above her. The whole night felt fuzzy, actually. “Maybe aliens would explain it,” she mused.
After a moment of awkward silence, he said, “Not sure what you mean.”
“Or maybe an alternate timeline? Anyway, everything is all messed up from what I thought it would be.
“I admit, Sunset Falls is a little stranger than I had anticipated.”
“I meant my life.”
“Did you have it all figured out before yesterday when you drove into town?”
“Not quite yesterday, but up until recently, yeah.” She rolled her head against the cushion to gaze out the window. “I quit school after I met my boyfriend and he told me we’d build one of the greatest computer systems in the world, to rival Microsoft and IBM and Google and all the rest.” She closed her eyes. “I had a crew too, and we were on our way. We worked so hard, got so far. We had offers like you wouldn’t believe. But Brett said we were destined for greater things. He held out when everyone else was begging him to take the money and run. I felt like something was wrong, but… I believed in him. No, worse than that—I gave everything to him.” She fell silent as the few-and-far-between street lights of Sunset Falls disappeared behind them. “What none of us knew is that he was going to take all the money and run—away from all of us. He’d put everything in his name and sold the company. A couple of our corporate officers sued him, but…” She shrugged. “It’ll be years. Maybe they’ll settle. I don’t know, can’t care anymore. It just reminds me what a fool I was.”
“You gave him your best because you were a team. That he betrayed you wasn’t your fault.”
“And I didn’t see it, couldn’t believe it, even though the truth was right there in front of me. What kind of programmer can’t see such simple data?” Only a few low clouds reflected the lights of town behind them, and then even that was gone.
“So you doubt yourself.”
“Stupid, right? To give him that too.”
“You didn’t give it to him. He stole it. That’s not the same.”
The vehemence in Cross’s voice made her look back at him. Something she’d said struck a little too close to home. “Who took yours?”
Picking up some reflection of the dashboard lights, his amber eyes glinted like hot coals. “I made my own mistakes.”
Was that supposed to make her feel better? Despite his reticence and those unnerving ersatz flames, she kept her gaze on him. “I’m telling you why I need this job to work out. So that you understand why you and Evens are not going to keep me in the dark.”
“The universe is mostly dark,” he muttered, more to himself than her.
“Stop it!” When he jerked around to stare at her, she glared at him. “No cryptic comments about secrets that I’m supposed to just let whoosh on by me.”
He glared back. “I’m protecting you from what shouldn’t affect you.”
“Yeah, that’s what Brett told me too.”
That made him flinch. “I just want to keep you away from the dangers you can’t know.”
“Have you considered that I want the same thing but might be able to help if you gave me a little more information?”
His brow wrinkled. “No.”
She stared at him a moment then burst out with a laugh. “Your conceit might be cute if it wasn’t getting in my way.”
His chin jutted. “There’ve been times when only keeping control of the situation kept my crew alive.”<
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Her own jaw ached at the tension in his. “Cross,” she said gently. “You told me that Evens promised you access to this algorithm, and you said it was important to you. Well, I told you it’s important to me too. And if you let me, we could work this problem together. You don’t have to do it alone.”
Of course she’d meant teamwork on this job, nothing more intimate, and yet the offer rang with some unintentional power, as if she’d opened some doorway with its own warning bell above it.
Dangers you can’t know.
Why did she have the feeling he was the danger to her? Or were the feelings themselves the real danger?
He let out a harsh breath, as if her offer had hit him someplace vulnerable too. “My pledge to Evens is sacrosanct, and I’d risk anything for my crew. But I will not sacrifice my charge: you.”
The way his head was turned to focus on her should’ve refracted the dashboard lights away, but for some reason the red-gold intensity was even brighter. She swallowed and turned her gaze back to the road. Somebody should be watching where they were going.
From the corner of her vision, she saw him do the same. Which left them at an impasse as her little rented car hurtled onward into the dark. When the road turned to gravel and then pine-needle dirt track under her tires, she let out a resigned breath. Certainly if he was going to murder her, he could’ve done it in a more convenient place. It wasn’t like she could do anything about it now, and her poor parents wouldn’t even know to look for her for another week or so since she often went incommunicado while working. “This car isn’t really equipped for off-roading,” she told him and then winced as a branch scraped against the side of the car with a piercing screech. That was going to cost her on damage fees. Assuming she ever returned.
“It’s not much farther.” He held his hand out to her, twisting it to flash the heavy smart watch-style tech bracketing his wrist. “If you want to send a message to someone, you can use my system. It will be encrypted and bounced, so keep your message simple. And it might be briefly delayed since delivery has to circumvent the local interference.” He slanted a quick glance over at her, this time with the fire in his eyes. “I don’t want you to be afraid of me.”
Was he really letting her in? Or was this an empty gesture she wouldn’t actually be able to verify? But some uncertainty was always at the heart of a new relationship, wasn’t it?
She dug her phone out of her back pocket, useless brick that it had been lately—and held it poised. “What’s your hotspot login?”
He waggled his wrist again. “There’s a cable in the corner. Connect it to any port on your device.”
Her brows shot up, but she fumbled at his wrist, more aware of her fingertips brushing his skin than the impressive tech wrapped around it. The thin wire was hardly more than a string of floss between her fingers with a strange little cap. “I don’t think we’re compatible.”
“You have no idea,” he muttered.
“Cross,” she said in a warning tone as she fit the cap over her phone jack.
“Not being cryptic,” he objected. “Much.” He slanted those amber eyes at her again. “Unless you think we are compatible?”
She let out a scoffing breath. “One kiss doesn’t make us compatible.”
That gold glint was back in his eyes. “Place and time,” he reminded her. The low thrum in his voice sounded like a promise. They were heading off into the dark night together, after all.
She distracted herself with a quick text to her parents plus a heart emoji. Her phone showed it as sent, and she’d just have to hope that was true.
The trees and underbrush crept closer, and after a few more eerie screeches across her paint job, he brought the Jetta to a halt. When he opened the door, the cool quiet rushed in with a whisper scented of pine and wet stone.
Grabbing her bag, she followed him.
The darkness was almost absolute, although faint starlight filtered between low, heavy clouds. She was just about to turn on the flashlight option of her phone when she caught a glimpse of palest silver between the dark bars of tree trunks.
“Is that Sunset Lake?” When she’d read about Sunset Falls, the lake had been the only water feature of any size in the area. “I thought it was hike-in only.”
“It is, mostly. There are a few paths wide enough for a motorbike or small vehicle like yours. All but forgotten, along with a few old buildings like this one.”
She followed his gesture but could still barely make out a small, dilapidated cabin that might’ve been someone’s fishing shack a hundred years ago.
Cross consulted his smart watch and made a sound of satisfaction. “Still secure,” he announced. As if she might be questioning that.
She was questioning a lot but not his work ethic.
He let them in and closed the door, and finally turned on a light. The soft orange glow of a low-watt bulb suggested a simple solar-powered system. Small windows covered in blackout curtains guaranteed even that low lighting wouldn’t be visible outside despite the dark night.
She turned to him. “You seem to have been anticipating a lot of trouble when you came here.”
“I always do.” He angled toward a small, hand-planked table where a bottle of Sunset Springs water was lying empty on its side. He muttered under his breath as he cleared the table. “How many times have I told him…”
Her lips twitched in amusement. For a change, that wasn’t a cryptic comment, as anyone who’d ever lived with roommates knew well enough. “Why, it’s practically outright insurrection from your people.”
“Sol tells me that Zenith leaves these little clues so that I know he’s still alive and don’t go to the effort of actually hunting him down.”
Sol and Zenith? Probably he wasn’t sharing their real names as part of his man of mystery persona. And now that she thought about it, didn’t Cross seem a little unlikely for a real name? But if this was all the evidence of the crew he’d brought on this job, and apparently had brought from wherever they left, no wonder he also carried that air of loneliness.
As circumscribed as her life had been for the last seven years, at least she’d had the interactions her development team and the group that Brett had built around him. Even if it had all fallen apart in the end.
She glanced around the tight space. In addition to the table and lone chair, there was a small upright armoire and a potbelly stove even smaller than the one in her upstairs apartment—the pot part not even big enough to boil unbroken spaghetti noodles. Cross was igniting a petite fire in its belly.
She turned another quarter circle and stared at the single twin bed.
She did another one-eighty sweep. But no, there was no second door to another room, no stairs to a loft bedroom.
The stove belly wasn’t the only place heating now.
Cross reached for another chunk of firewood. The matte black of his shirt stretched across his strong shoulders, and his crouch showed off the hot cross buns that she’d admired before.
Even if he stuffed that small stove full of firewood, it wouldn’t burn through the night. They’d probably have to snuggle to keep warm… Oh noes, this was exactly what happened in the rom-coms she refused to read or watch. Okay, maybe she’d voraciously consumed a few such stories, but not recently. Maybe she needed to reassess her data.
Her heart beat a little faster.
He rose smoothly to face her. “What can I do to make this place all right for you?”
“It’s late,” she said, and although she tried, she couldn’t keep the husky note out of her voice. “Wash up, sleep, and get answers from Evens tomorrow.”
He nodded. “Outhouse is around back. I’ll make sure there’s water at the sink for when you get back. Might even be a little warm left over, unless Sol took it all.” When she hesitated, he glanced over at her with an assessing look. “Should I escort you there?
She pursed her lips. “Well, you seem pretty resistant to porch lights, and this is Big Sky Country, so I’m assumin
g it’s also big bear, big wolf, and bigfoot country.”
He frowned. “I know most of these, but not bigfoot.”
Except for the slight accent that glinted on some of his words like the gilt edges of antique books, she sometimes forgot he wasn’t from around here any more than she was. “Bigfoot is also known as yeti or sasquatch,” she told him. “A lot of cultures have some reference to a big wild man running free in the hills.” Even knowing that he’d been so reticent to share, she couldn’t help but ask, “Do you have something like that where you come from?”
His frown cleared. “I wasn’t aware that you knew of them. I was told not to speak of such things.”
She blinked at him. Maybe it was getting late and she was just too tired, but… Was he saying that he believed in bigfoot? She didn’t want to be one of those ugly Americans questioning the beliefs of other cultures, so she just shook her head. “I think I can find my way to the backyard. But if I fall into the hole in the dark, I’m going to blame you.”
He straightened. “Of course. It must seem very dark out there to you.”
She gave him a look. “Because it is very dark. It’s the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere.”
“If you need a light—”
“And you don’t?”
He went on as if she hadn’t interrupted. “We’re safe enough out here for now. Take this.” He handed her a tin lantern retrofitted with a solar panel on top. “If you encounter any bigfeet, please let me know. I’ve seen the others you mentioned, but not that one.”
With one more searching glance at him, she let herself out the front door.
She couldn’t decide what worried her more: that he acknowledged seeing wolves and bears in the area or that he was hoping to meet bigfoot. Or maybe the fact that he wasn’t worried about her trying to leave. Because really, where would she go?
Yes, she might get away from him, or even away from her own conflicted feeeeelings that she hated so much. But she couldn’t leave this project she needed so badly herself.
