Sounds to Die By: Sensory Ops, Book 1

by Nikki Duncan

  “They told you that?”

  “Not outright.” Maybe she’d wanted to believe that was their plan. Maybe she’d missed something or read more into their attack than she should have. She didn’t think so.

  “Do you trust me?”

  She scrunched her brows. Trust him? “With what?”

  “I guess an all-encompassing trust is too much to ask for.” He stepped away and headed toward the sliding glass door. “So how about as far as it relates to this situation and finding out more information?”

  “What have you got in mind?” She couldn’t have hurt his feelings. They didn’t know each other well enough.

  “I’ve been working on something.” Without waiting for her to agree one way or the other, he headed through the kitchen toward the garage. On the way, he grabbed a phone from a table and punched in some numbers. “Yes,” he spoke into the phone. “I need to report an attempted break in.”

  He’d called 911, but wouldn’t call her team? At least her team could question the men to see who’d sent them. How they’d found her at Ian’s. She tripped a little. She’d have to admit to her team that she’d slept with Ian. They’d give her grief for crossing lines of propriety on a case, or assume that she’d used sex as a tool. It was the kind of thing they would applaud if she were a guy, but as a woman … Well, it wouldn’t compute for them.

  Ian walked to the garage as he rattled off his address and briefed the 911 operator on the basics of what had happened.

  “Thank you.” He hung up the phone and moved to a set of clear drawers on top of one of the cabinets. “Police are on the way.”

  “What are you doing? I haven’t agreed to do things your way.” He hadn’t waited for her to agree to whatever his plan was, so why didn’t it piss her off that he was taking over the control?

  He moved to another cabinet holding two strings that looked like little more than silver hairs between his fingers. He rummaged around for a second. “Shit. Where’d he set it?”

  She walked to him. “What are you looking for?”

  “An aerosol can. Small. Maybe five inches tall. Narrow like a…a votive candle.”

  She looked around and spotted the can a few feet away on a different counter. And he calls my sight a handicap. “Found it.”

  “Grab it and come with me.” He headed back to the patio and squatted beside Alpha. “Raise his shirt and spray a thin coating of the aerosol down the center of his chest.”

  Apparently, she did trust him because even though he irked her, even though she didn’t like doing things he could easily handle if he was sighted, she wasn’t fighting his orders. “What are we doing? What are those hairs?”

  “It’s a new listening device I’ve been working on.”

  She pulled the man’s shirt up and did as Ian said. “Done.”

  He handed her one of the hairs. “Smooth it over the adhesive. You only have a minute before the adhesive dries and we have to start over.”

  “How can this be a listening device?”

  “Because I’m good. It’s completely undetectable to scans, can be tracked any place there’s a cell signal, and once the adhesive dries you don’t know that you’re wearing one.”

  She wanted to ask how he’d developed it. How he’d built something so fragile and apparently high tech without sight. How he’d learned to use the technology he had, and even how to fight like he did. But whatever he was planning took precedence.

  He hadn’t steered her wrong yet, and though she was a little concerned that his father was somehow involved in the case, neither could she hold it against him since she wasn’t exactly neutral.

  She did as he said and then checked to make sure the adhesive was dry before pulling Alpha’s shirt back down. Wailing sirens grew closer. “Done.”

  “Now the next one.” He moved to the other man’s side. “Hurry. The cops are going to be here in less than two minutes.”

  She repeated the process on Beta quickly. Tires squealed in his driveway out front just as she pulled the man’s shirt down. “Done.”

  Ian stood. “Take the can in the house and put it under the kitchen sink.”

  Chapter Six

  Ian resisted the urge to shelter Kieralyn as they dealt with the cops. Her pounding heart rate slowed as she stood, telling the officers how she’d come out for some night air and had been taken by surprise by the men. Ian added details from his side as they were asked for.

  Neither he nor Kieralyn offered more information than was requested and the police quickly loaded the men in the back of their cruiser and drove away. Keeping the truth of who she was, what she was and what she was working on from the police seemed like a natural thing for Kieralyn. She hadn’t stumbled over her answers once.

  “Why aren’t we including my team?” Kieralyn followed him into the house. “What game are you playing?”

  He walked to his bedroom and went to the closet for a fresh change of clothes. Stepping out of his slacks and underwear, he listened to her behind him. She didn’t even try to hide the fact that she was watching him change.

  “Calling in the cops gets those men away from the house long enough for us to get someplace else.” He put the clothes in the laundry hamper, grabbed some clean underwear from a drawer and pulled a pair of jeans from a hanger.

  “The wires will track their location and allow us to hear who they’re talking to.”

  “Your agency doesn’t have the right to do that kind of surveillance.” She’d grabbed some tennis shoes from her car before joining him and the police. Her shields were back in place. The agent was back in control. “What are you doing with equipment that can do that?”

  “Who do you think develops most of the listening devices you use in the FBI?”

  “A team of scientists.”

  “Yeah. Me more often than not, with Dante’s assistance.” He pulled a V-neck T-shirt from a hanger and pulled it over his head.

  “Your security guard?”

  “He’s more than that. We’re still testing these. Why not test them with you to oversee the results?”

  “This is about more than testing a new product. You’re holding back the truth behind your interest in helping me with this case.”

  “My lover sneaks from my bed, most likely with intentions of running away while I sleep, but instead goes outside and has two men try to hurt her.” Her heart lurched when he called her lover. His hearing was a great tool at times. “And you think I don’t have an interest?”

  He walked to her, wanting to pull her close and entice her back into his bed. “No one comes on my property under similar circumstances without me finding answers.”

  “Then why didn’t you tell the cops about them going after me? Why make it sound like they’d only tried to break in? You could have kept them in a cage much longer.”

  “The one who held you when I came outside followed us from the club.” He brushed a thumb along her cheekbone and cupped her face. “We lost him at my office when we got into your car, but obviously they’re well connected to have found you here.”

  Which meant they’d tracked her and Ian and waited for an opportunity to take her. They’d gotten lucky when she’d gone outside.

  “So calling in the cops keeps us from having to drop them somewhere. It gives us time to get away from here in case they come back, but where are you thinking we’re going to go?”

  “We’ll go back to my lab. The surveillance I have there will alert us if anyone tries to come for us.” He took some socks from the dresser and sat on the bed to slip them on. “We can also monitor their movements.”

  “And hear what they say to the cops.” Kieralyn went to his closet and pulled his tennis shoes out. “But what about my car? If we drive it they’ll see it if they check your parking lot, or are having it watched. Then they’ll know where we are.”

  “We’ll hear what they say to the cops, but we’ll also find out who bails them out.” He smiled when she sat the shoes beside him. She was taking care
of him again, almost instinctively. She didn’t have to ask what he needed, or when he needed something. She just saw to the task of getting it for him. On one hand, her help irked him as if she saw him as incapable of seeing to himself. On the other, it pleased him. Made it easy to imagine that she cared enough to want to help. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. What about the car?”

  Her heart hammered as she straightened the covers on the bed. She couldn’t sit still. She needed to move, to feel like she was doing something. It had to irritate her that he held the control at the moment.

  “I’ll call Dante. He’ll meet us someplace neutral and swap cars with us. Though if anyone is still watching the office they’ll see us go in no matter what. Grab your purse.” He could only counter so many possibilities. Then again, they could swap cars, park in the neighboring lot and go in through Maximum’s kennel on the back of the building. It would lower their chances of being seen. “Oh, and there’s an extra garage door opener in the drawer beside the fridge. Grab that, would you? I’ll get Maximum and meet you in the garage.”

  “Hey, speaking of Maximum. Why didn’t he bark or make any racket when those men showed up?”

  “He went deaf a couple of years ago. His sense of smell is going too.”

  “You use a handicapped dog as your guide?”

  “We’ve been together a long time. Besides, what he can’t hear, I can.”

  She chuckled and slid her tongue over her teeth. “What you can’t see, he can.”

  “Yes.” He moved into the living room and gently nudged Maximum’s foot with his own. “He’s never led me astray, and a missing sense or two doesn’t make me love him less. He’s as valuable today as the day I picked him from the litter.”

  Just as his missing eyesight shouldn’t diminish him as a person in Kieralyn’s opinion, or anyone else’s. He’d long ago come to terms with the fact that someone would always see him as less of a man because of his sight.

  “How sentimental of you.”

  Maximum sat up and rubbed against his leg. He was ready to work. Ian strode toward the garage, Maximum and Kieralyn following. “Everyone has something that they’re sentimental about.”

  “Don’t bet on it.” She pulled open the kitchen drawer and grabbed the remote. “Sentimentality is a wasted emotion.”

  “You’re wrong.” He plucked up her bag and pile of clothes from the table and held them out to her before grabbing his cell phone. “Sentimentality is what’s driving you in your pursuit of this case.”

  “My desire to save lives drives me.”

  “That’s nothing more than a desire to make a difference. Emotions, motivations both personal and professional, are sentiments too. And in this case your loyalty to a friend is a driving sentiment for you.”

  “You’re wrong about me.” She raised the garage door with the remote and got in the car. Once he had Maximum in the backseat and joined her, she shot out of the garage.

  He wasn’t, but neither was he going to argue with her over it. She didn’t want to see herself as sentimental, or have anyone else perceive her that way. That was her business. But it made him curious to find out what had happened to make her that way.

  He called Dante and arranged the car swap.

  He had a high enough security clearance to run a background check on her and uncover every secret she wanted hidden. She would never know he’d done it. He would know the answers to all the questions circling in his mind. Beginning with her upbringing. But if he was going to know the answers, he would learn them over time as she volunteered them.

  His guess was that something had happened in her childhood that had formed her into the disciplined, controlled woman he so enjoyed verbally sparring with. She struck him as someone who’d never been shown the true measure of joy. If she had, she’d blocked the memory.

  She let herself go during foreplay and sex, which was amazing. He wanted to see her loosen up at other times.

  Control and focus rightfully needed to rule when working a case. People’s lives depended on her. Kieralyn didn’t seem to stop working. Even when nothing was actively happening in her case, she withdrew into herself. Her long silences and occasional murmurs she made to herself said that she never stopped thinking about the women unknowingly relying on her for help.

  “Sentimentality may work for you, Ian.” Sadness coated her voice. Or maybe it was regret. “It’s a luxury that I can’t afford.”

  “It’s a luxury that can fit into anyone’s emotional budget if they deem it important. Like love or happiness. You just have to want it—be willing to recognize it when you find it.” He leaned his head against the headrest and closed his eyes. Her heart beat steady and slow, like a metronome ticked off the beat for a beginning musician. He’d never heard a more appealing rhythm.

  “Easier said than done.” She eased onto the highway, gunning the engine for more speed.

  “No. It’s a matter of knowing what you want from your life and not being afraid to go after it.”

  “I know what I want from life.”

  “Eighty hour work weeks and no real personal relationships? Ulcers and no close friends to call on when you have great news to share?”

  “You presume to know so much about me.” Her voice trembled with frustration. He’d hit a sore spot. “Do you psychoanalyze every woman you take to your bed?”

  “I don’t go to bed with many women, never take them to my own, but no.” He laughed. “You, though, would make an interesting study.”

  “Like I’m some specimen to be dissected and discussed.”

  “I promise to only discuss you with you.”

  “Yeah, because I want to endlessly hear your perceptions about me.”

  Her bristly attitude excited him. He rolled his head toward her and inhaled deeply. “How about we discuss the way your scent turns me on? How it revives the sensory impressions of you standing against my kitchen wall? Or the way you felt beneath me in bed?”

  Her heart kicked. Blood thrummed faster through her body, heating her up, heightening her scent. With the distraction of Kieralyn close, and aroused, he needed a new direction for his thoughts. Something to minimize the impact of her on his senses.

  Kieralyn pulled into the parking lot where they were meeting Dante to swap cars. Grateful for his friend’s desire to return quickly to bed, the swap went fast.

  Settled into Dante’s car, which was slightly more luxurious than Kieralyn’s, Ian rolled his window down, leaned his head back and listened to the sounds of the early morning. Listening close, he heard the waves slapping the sandy beach. He would have liked to wake up to that sound with her at his side. To roll her beneath him and enjoy the feel of her body again. Or to pull her on top of him and give her complete control. She would thrive if he submitted to her. Hell, he’d let her tie him up if it turned her on.

  Maybe if he did she would see that he was worthy of her trust. He preferred to be a unit during sex. To share completely in the pleasure of filling one another’s desires.

  One day he would discover the joy of transforming sex into making love. He’d come close with Kieralyn. Felt more for her than any other woman before, but he hadn’t felt more from her. She’d held a part of herself back.

  A light breeze caught Kieralyn’s essence and carried it through the car. He gritted his teeth and pictured the way she moved. He could practically feel it.

  “Why are we going to your lab tonight if these two are in prison? We could stay at my apartment until morning,” Kieralyn said as she slid into the car. Her voice had grown strained. Tired. “It’s going to take those two some time to get through booking and then get bail posted. The apartment’s secure and I have a weapon.”

  “We could have stayed at my place too. But the perps will be talking to people, including each other, in the meantime.” Ian sighed, suddenly desperate for sleep. He’d love to take her up on her offer. To slip into the oblivion of sleep, but it would have to wait. “We need to get to the lab to
activate the listening devices. Otherwise, it doesn’t do any good to have planted them.”

  “Does it record after that?”

  “Yes. And I have an apartment attached to the lab. We can get some sleep after the listening devices are activated. If you’re after security, what’s more secure than the NSA compound?”

  “Why do you have an apartment at work? Do you stay there often?”

  “It depends on the case I’m working. A blind man walking alone in the middle of the night while he’s half asleep makes an easy target.” He stifled a yawn. “It’s easier to crash at the lab when I work half the night.”

  “I would think after watching you fight off that man this evening that you wouldn’t worry about stuff like that.” A traffic light pinged, signaling a change in color. Kieralyn eased to a stop.

  “The best self-defense is knowing how to minimize your risk of a fight.”

  “I’m curious about you, Ian.”

  “Ask your questions. I have nothing to hide.”

  “How did you learn to fight that way?” She rolled forward when the light pinged again. “When?”

  “My dad was an Army Ranger. He thought my sister and I needed to know how to protect ourselves, so he taught us some moves.” He wondered for a moment if he should tell her the full details of his training. The parts that revolved around his sight.

  “And you remember those few moves well enough to fight that man without breaking a sweat?”

  He smiled at the suspicion thickening her voice. Her questioning mind gave her a challenging attitude. It made her a pain, but it also made her more open to the possibilities. “It’s not hot enough to break a sweat over such a minor altercation.”

  “Seriously, Ian. How’d you learn to fight like that?”

  “Why does it matter?” Why did she want to know more about him when everything about her screamed anti-commitment?

  “You fascinate me.”

  Not what he wanted to hear, but he’d take it for now. “My dad and his unit would take me to the swamps when they weren’t on a mission. Essentially they took me through basic training obstacle courses, taught me tactical strategies and drilled me in hand-to-hand combat with some martial arts tossed in.”