Oracle's Hunt

by A. Claire Everward

  “My choice.”

  She laughed. “You expect me to agree to a date without knowing what you’re planning?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s . . .”

  “You afraid?”

  Her eyes narrowed. Donovan knew she would go for the challenge. Because of who she was. And because it was him. He was counting on it.

  “Done.”

  “Good. I already had Agent Ben Lawson, my lead investigator on this—but you probably already know that—and my techs prepare for you everything they found every step of the way, DNA results included. They’re still running a search to see if they can get an identification on any of the DNA samples, both those that belong to the men who were killed and those of the men still at large. Contact Ben whenever you want, he’ll give you everything.”

  She sat up. “You already had your people prepare for me . . .”

  “Of course. What, you think I’d do anything to endanger you? Or hinder the search for Elijahn?”

  She settled back again. “Damn. I really should have known that.”

  “Lucky for me, it seems you have a blind spot when it comes to me. It comes from trying to resist what’s happening between us.” He pointed at her. “See? That look right there in your eyes, that’s exactly what I mean.”

  He was reading her like an open book. This was infuriating. And disconcerting. She absolutely did not know what to do about him.

  “It’s okay, focus on what you need to do now. You can deal with me later.”

  How on earth did he know what she was thinking? “That’s it. Go away!”

  He was still grinning when he walked out of her office.

  He motioned the agent standing by the outer door to keep watch over her and stopped beside Aiden’s workstation. “So what’s operations and unrests?”

  “Ms. Holsworth is involved in several standby missions she could be called to with little warning,” Aidan explained with unhidden pride. “And with the ongoing search for the man who attacked her and her role in this search, this time IDSD too could be the one breaking in with an unplanned mission. So she needs to have information about all operations currently in progress under allied control. To ensure that she won’t be disturbing an existing operation—whether she’s working on one of the standbys or her own—since she is authorized to override orders, retask satellites, ships, airplanes. Any security and defense measure, in fact. She wouldn’t want to interrupt a mission, or to impede the one she’s working on because something she needs retasked is unable to respond immediately. Too often there are time-critical points—if a pilot or a drone can’t fire a missile at the precise moment and location she indicates, someone on the ground could die, or if she can’t retask the right satellite at the right moment, she won’t have eyes when she needs them.”

  The aide was obviously well versed in anything Oracle. Donovan was impressed. “And unrests?”

  “Hot spots that could affect a mission. Both update types are standard. Ms. Holsworth is constantly provided information on a variety of matters, and among these, operations and unrests are updated regularly as well as immediately before a mission and during it, if anything new comes up. The thing about what we do here at IDSD Missions is, you never know when an incident might break in. And the thing about Oracle is, you never know when it will be needed. And when something comes up that requires immediate intervention, Ms. Holsworth needs to be free to focus on priority mission-pertinent information. Hence the regular updates.”

  Donovan turned to go, then turned back. “Does she ever let her guard down?”

  Aiden considered him. “Do you, Agent Pierce?” he finally replied.

  Donovan smiled. “Good answer.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Lara watched Donovan walk out of her office. She saw him motion to the agent and her lips curved up, saw him stop to speak to Aiden and looked on curiously. He was at her home, and he was here. He was making himself part of everything that was her, coming to stand beside her in everything she was and did. Taking her as she was.

  Taking her. She thought about that. Here, in her office, where Oracle carried far more weight than Lara, the woman she was, it should have been easier to look at what was happening between them in a more dispassionate way. Analyze, conclude, decide, the way she always did, the way she wanted it. Her decision only. Not his. But it wasn’t working this time. There were no logical processes involved, those she normally used so efficiently to push men away, no detached analysis, no final, unwavering conclusions. Only more reactions, despite herself. And this man, he wasn’t about to let anyone decide anything for him. He read her as easily as she read him, and he had a mind of his own about what was happening between them.

  Watching him now, she knew he couldn’t see her through what he would see as the tinted glass divide of her inner office, so she let her gaze linger. It flickered over his handsome face, the intense eyes, dark gray in this light, in this situation where he was assessing everyone and everything. He was dressed in black again, and his entire demeanor gave him that dangerous air she’d seen in him before. It occurred to her that he hadn’t been anything but dangerous since the attack, except in those rare moments with her, the looks, the touches. She felt that flutter again. But then that was the problem, wasn’t it? She supposed she could have expected her body to react. But not her heart.

  She followed him with her eyes until he disappeared from her sight, then swiveled her chair toward the wall-wide window behind her, her eyes thoughtful again. Throughout her contemplation of him the part of her mind that was Oracle never stopped analyzing, and she now brought it to the forefront again. Soon a day would have passed since Elijahn and his men had gone on the run, and the search for them wasn’t any closer to being over. It was, quite simply, like looking for four needles in an ever-expanding haystack. Elijahn had apparently reacted quickly, running while his people were still engaged in battle with the forces that had come to her help. That stroke of luck that had him intercept a motorcyclist sealed the search’s fate, giving him too much of a head start and allowing him to all but vanish. His three missing men who had been on their way from Edwards’s home had been far enough from the site of the attack on her when they had gotten the warning from their peers who had been on the way from Miles’s home, and who had died together with the rest of Elijahn’s men. They had easily gotten away, and they too were now always a step ahead of the searchers.

  A search was being carried out for possible ways for Elijahn to get out of the country once he got what he wanted. Donovan had updated Evans with what she had finally told him, and with what they now knew had been Elijahn’s intention, an abduction that would force him to disappear with an unwilling victim, US Global Intelligence was looking for a private jet or a boat, a yacht perhaps. Something Elijahn could use to disappear with his remaining militants. And with her.

  She pushed that unwelcome thought away. Then reconsidered and turned mentally to face it. Use it. That, precisely that, was the very heart of what she needed.

  In her mind, Oracle had everything she knew about Elijahn. Everything she had read, seen, done, and felt from the moment the first data batch on him and his group was given to her two years earlier. She now closed her eyes and gradually blocked out everything around her. Her breathing slowed, steadied, and her cerebral dynamics shifted as that part of her mind that she needed synchronized with the still raw reality of the attack on her, focused, and erupted in a powerful pulse.

  Inward.

  If normally when imminent danger loomed she would lock on the people on the screen before her who needed her help, use them to see the surrounding dangers, assess the situation, reach the conclusions she needed in order to act, this time she focused on herself, on the connection she’d created to Elijahn during the attack, and used it to find her own hunter. She saw herself that night, her fear, her decision, her escape, felt it as it had been, every all too real second of it. In his attack on Oracle, Elijahn had made it a target
like any other she had protected in the past.

  But when he had threated not to kill her but to take her instead, he had also made Oracle itself, the possibility that it would be used in the wrong hands, an unprecedented danger to everyone and everything she valued. And what he had then implied he had in mind for her, that made it personal, unthinkable on a whole new level. Which gave her exactly what she needed to work this unusual situation. It allowed her to use the emotional to focus and strengthen the logical. She had never done this before with herself as the focal point, but then what was it she had told Donovan? There were many firsts here.

  She focused.

  And took the leap.

  The feeling that erupted within her, drowning everything else, was something she would never be able to explain to anyone, not even to those who saw Oracle at work. So she never tried to. They had to feel it to understand, and no one could. Her very being changed in that moment, as those functions that defined human capabilities were exceeded in a fraction of a second, giving her the freedom to go further, faster.

  Time ticked by, unheeded.

  Finally, Oracle opened her eyes, swiveled back in her chair, looked at the globe rotating slowly on the screen.

  And smiled.

  Donovan came to stand just inside Scholes’s office in a way that allowed him to look out toward Lara’s. He leaned back on the wall, his arms folded across his chest. Alert.

  “I saw the two of you come in. Thought I’d let Lara settle in.” Scholes had come to the IDSD medical center himself the night before, after Lara had been brought in, and had been updated. Donovan had arrived shortly after him, and Scholes had seen the way he had walked in and simply gone through everyone there to get to her. He had blood on his shirt then. Lara’s.

  “She did. She needs to be here, do this. Fight him her way.”

  Scholes marveled at his acceptance. Over the years it had occurred to him that it would take a special man to get through to Lara. And to accept Oracle. By now he’d learned enough about Donovan to know that man was standing before him. He smiled, allowing himself a moment of respite in this as yet too complex a situation. “I bet you had no idea what you were getting into when you were handed this investigation.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “So how’s she doing?”

  “We’ll see after this is over. Right now she’s pushing it away to help get Elijahn, and that’s certain to have implications for her later. But she’s a strong woman.”

  “Yes, she is,” Scholes said softly. Donovan didn’t know the half of it. “I’m still worried about her, though. She’s been through too much these past days. It’s going to catch up with her eventually, in a bad way.”

  Donovan’s eyes flickered back out, to where he knew Lara was sitting. The agents were now both standing with their backs to the outer door, their eyes looking everywhere. Good.

  “I’ll take care of it,” he said. The finality of the statement resonated between them. “However, we do have another problem.”

  “Oh?”

  “She objects to any notion of manned security. Next time we want to put a protective detail on her again she’ll fight it. And I have no intention of letting her pull another runaway move like she did this time.”

  Scholes nodded slyly. “Next time.”

  “Next time you’ve got a security breach, next time you send her off to wherever.”

  “That’s not quite what I meant.” Scholes nodded. “I’ve already approved Carl’s request to run her security through you for this incident, and until the long-term arrangements are finalized, at which time you’ll have a say in her security along with him. This needs to be cleared with IDSD HQ in Brussels, of course, considering who Lara is. Shouldn’t be any problem, with your involvement in this incident and your job and training.” Donovan, he knew, was well versed in the security of high-profile ranks, and had the background, the training, to back that up with actual protection. “You’ll also have to go through our security clearance vetting process. If you’re with Lara, you’ll need clearance for what she does and, well, says.” He contemplated Donovan. “We’ll start with that, see where we go from there. I’m thinking eventually you’ll have a say in her IDSD security and authority over her security outside IDSD. It’ll be continuing our little security arrangement.” He sighed. “She’s going to love that.”

  “I’ll deal with it.”

  Yes, I believe you would. I believe you, finally, can, Scholes thought. “One thing I remind you,” he said aloud, “is that Lara isn’t supposed to be living where she is. She is supposed to live in a secure complex, but she refuses. IDSD security has had to approve where she lives now.”

  “Good. Then it’s either my security decisions or a secure complex. I’ll remember that, it’ll help. In the meantime, once this thing with Elijahn is over we’ll return—for now—to strictly technological security. Besides me, that is.”

  Scholes concurred. “No one can interfere with her new phone. And the newly-installed security system in her house is, frankly, identical to mine.”

  “Car? She’ll want to replace hers.”

  “Yes, that’s going to be tricky.”

  Donovan looked at him questioningly.

  “She can’t have the convertible again. It’s not secure enough. I’ve let it pass until now because she didn’t really give me a choice and she loved that car, but now she’s going to get an IDSD one. Once this is over she’ll be asked to choose out of the models approved for high clearance ranks.”

  Donovan knew what that meant. The car she would choose, or that would be chosen for her if she refused to do so herself, would be retrofitted to IDSD’s security specs. He approved.

  “In the meantime, she’ll be given a car and a driver—” Scholes stopped and sighed. “No, that’s never going to work. It’ll limit her. We keep secure cars for high-ranking visitors, I’ll assign one to her until she gets her own. She’s still going to hate that, though.” He shook his head. “She is going to hate all of it. Things will be different. It’s not what she wanted, not what we had agreed on.”

  “Not what you agreed on?”

  “Long, long story. Short version, when I recruited her she asked for very few things. Two of them were to be left alone and have her freedom to do as she pleased, and not to be ordered around. Otherwise, she can quit when she wants. Except she can’t, anymore, can she? She can’t quit and she knows it. I’m worried she would feel trapped. It’s not good for her, it will be impossible for her to deal with.”

  Donovan had already had more than a glimpse of that. “We’ll take it one change at a time. She won’t feel the status change all at once, certainly not until something warrants heightened protection again, and some things will stay the same.”

  “For now. The difference between five years ago when she started and now is staggering. What’s it going to be like in another five years? It’s not going to be easy for her.”

  “I’ll make sure she has what she needs.”

  “Donovan . . .” Scholes hesitated. He wasn’t sure how much he could tell him. It wasn’t his to say.

  “I know, Frank.” Donovan’s tone was calm, quiet. “I’ve seen the walls. I know she’s hiding something. Something that hurts her, that she’s struggling with. I don’t want you to tell me, it’s something she will do when she feels she can. But don’t expect me to just sit and do nothing while she goes through it alone.”

  “You love her.” Scholes simply stated the truth he saw in the man before him.

  “Yes.” Donovan looked outside again. It was easier to say than he ever thought it would be.

  “Do something for me then. Please. Don’t let go of her.”

  The heartfelt words took Donovan by surprise, made him wonder again what Scholes knew that he himself had yet to find out.

  And no, he had no intention of letting go of Lara.

  With Donovan there, Scholes took the opportunity to call Ericsson and get Donovan’s side in the process that would
add him to Lara’s security protocol started. By the time they were done and had received an update about the search for Elijahn and his men, the inner door to Lara’s office was open again. When Donovan walked in she was standing, leaning back on her desk, looking at the results of the DNA samples collected at the warehouse being displayed on one of the screens beside the people they belonged to. Unfortunately, these were all photos of their faces post mortem. Donovan cursed under his breath. He didn’t want her to see them, her dead pursuers.

  Ben was on the adjacent screen. “We’re running the DNA and the photos in the global databases and in ours, but it’s taking time. Nathan has gone back to IDSD, since the focus of the investigation has shifted, but I’m thinking I’ll contact him again, see if he can get us better access to what we need.” He acknowledged Donovan, and Lara turned to see him standing at the doorway.

  She nodded once, then turned back to Ben. “My aide will transfer this call to him, he’ll put you in touch with a team here that can check them against what we have from Elijahn’s past connections.” She touched her desk and updated Aiden, who took the call.

  Donovan came over and stood beside her, leaning back, as she was, on the desk. “I’m sorry you had to see them.”

  “They’re dead. It’s the live ones I need to think about now.”

  That tore into him. One of those DNA samples was of the man who would stop at nothing to get to her. He took an angry breath in. “I should have gone after the bastard myself.” He wanted nothing more than to kill Elijahn. To Know that he was dead. To see for himself that he was dead, that he would never come after her again.

  Lara heard his anger, his need to protect her. Thought about what he had done. Everything that he had done. He was, she realized, as affected by all this as she was. “You were,” she said slowly, her voice soft, “where you were supposed to be. Where you were needed most.”

  Surprised, he turned his gaze to her. She met his eyes. “I never could have gone through the hours . . . after, without you. I felt safe with you there. You made me feel safe. And you were so—” She tried to find the words. Couldn’t. Which was, for her, new. “I’ll be fine, and I’m able to do this now, because of you.”