by Geri Krotow
“We have a problem.” The abrupt statement aside, Bethany’s voice was like silk brushing over his skin. He wanted to wallow in it.
“Yeah, the security breach is inconvenient,” he began, pulling himself together. “But it’s not the end of the world. The odds are a million-to-one they’ll connect the two of us. We have some time to develop a strategy.”
“It’s already happened,” she said, her voice flat.
“What?” He couldn’t have heard her correctly. “What do you mean?”
“I received a creepy, handwritten threat today on official letterhead.”
Those two things didn’t mesh. “I’m not following,” Matt said.
Her soft sigh came over the phone, reminding him of the stolen moments they’d shared when they were younger. Moments that eventually became a wedge between them when she wound up pregnant.
How many times had he dreamed about convincing her to marry him? He hadn’t expected it to be a smooth road, but he’d been willing to navigate every pothole and speed bump with her. With her soft breath in his ear, he could imagine them in this bed right now, together, doing something far more fun than talking about a security breach.
“Matt? Are you there?”
“Yeah.” He sat up and pinched the bridge of his nose. Focus on the reality. “What kind of creepy threat?”
“Instead of the letter I expected about the security breach, this is handwritten. Two lines. The gist is someone has done the math and decided I’m banking more than I make. The threat is that my secret will become common knowledge.”
“On the agency letterhead?” That was as strange as sending a threat via baseball. “Weird.”
“Yes,” she agreed.
He could tell she expected him to say something more profound. “Legally, you’re good.”
“I know that,” she said. “I’m not worried about the job or the clearance—I’m worried about Caleb.” She paused and he could so easily picture her teeth nipping into her full bottom lip. “I’m worried about your mom.”
“That makes two of us,” he admitted.
“You’ve never told her?” Bethany asked.
Was she joking? “If I had, you would’ve known.”
“True enough,” she said.
His parents had a reputation for their unflagging emphasis on maintaining family and balance within the Military framework. “I got my breach letter today, too. Mine was standard issue,” he added. “I figured I’d make time to speak to my parents tomorrow. After I spoke with you. I didn’t feel right saying anything until we talked.”
“Thanks.”
“I would’ve called sooner, except I just got home about an hour ago and thought you’d be happier if I called in the morning.”
“Oh.” The single syllable stretched out. “I couldn’t sleep and just wanted to make a plan,” she said briskly. “I’d like to tell Caleb before you tell anyone else.”
Was she asking for his permission or advice on breaking this news to their son? “Of course. How is he doing?” The last real-time conversation they’d had about Caleb was over three years ago, when he’d broken his wrist during a soccer game. Otherwise, she kept things vague, only sending Matt his school picture and occasional noteworthy updates about his grades or sporting successes.
Those small glimpses of Caleb had never been enough for him, yet he respected her wishes, her rules, because she’d given up everything to protect his place at West Point and, subsequently, his Army career. Time and again, he capitulated to the limits she set, because anything else made him feel grasping and whiny.
“He’s great,” she was saying. “I just don’t want him hearing this from anyone else. I’m not entirely sure how he’ll react,” she added.
“Has something changed?” The worry in her words felt like a knife twisting in his gut. This was only the second time he’d heard anything less than full confidence out of her. The first was when she’d been debating how best to be a mom and fulfill her career goals. “What’s going on with him?”
“Nothing,” she said a little too quickly. “Nothing’s changed. It’s still soccer and school, school and soccer. He’s a teenager, that’s all.”
Matt opened his mouth to push her, to make demands, but bit back the hard words. Instead he changed the subject. “Is he driving yet?” The query was a transparent attempt to learn if there was anything of him in his son.
“He’s studying for his learner’s permit. We’ll take care of that next week, while he’s on fall break.”
Matt remembered how excited he’d been for that same day as a kid. “Has he had any experience behind the wheel?” he asked, wondering if Caleb would have any interest or appreciation for the restored Camaro. Assuming they met.
“My dad has let him drive the four-wheeler on camping trips, and he’s let him drive the tractor on their property. I’m told he’s still pretty rough on the manual transmission, but he’s improving.”
“That’s good. It takes time,” he said. “You have enough set aside to buy him a car? I can send more money—”
“When that time comes, we’ll talk about it,” she said in a stern voice that bore a striking resemblance to Patricia Riley’s mom voice. “It’s still a good year or more away.”
He’d always believed the two women would get along well. They’d met once during a family day at West Point and seemed to hit it off, though his mom hadn’t known how vital Bethany was to him at the time. If she hadn’t forced him to keep Caleb a secret...well, now Matt had no idea what his mom might say or do when they met again.
And they would meet. Once Patricia learned about Caleb, she would be adamant about welcoming him into the Riley clan.
“Look, Matt, I called to make you aware of the creep-factor in this note,” she said. “I’ll report it to the security team at my office tomorrow.”
“Good.”
“Matt, I’d like you to be here.”
“At your office?” He held the phone back from his face as if that would clear up his confusion. “Huh?”
“When I tell Caleb, I would like you to be here with me. Us.”
His hand tightened around the phone. “You mean it?”
“Yes. I think it will help him understand if we’re telling him together. Help him feel valued and that we’ve always wanted what was best for him.”
He was going to meet his son. His heart hammered against his ribs. “Sure.” He had to find some real words. After all these years of wishing and wondering, he’d get to look his kid in the eyes, maybe even hug him or shake his hand. “Tell me when and where,” he managed at last. Too many emotions were warring for dominance. “I’ll be there.”
“Here, please. He’ll be home from practice around six and we could eat at seven.”
Matt was already doing the mental juggling over the drive time from Washington to her place in New Jersey, calculating how early he might need to leave work. He’d speak to General Knudson first thing in the morning, but there was no way he was missing that invitation.
“Once Caleb knows, you’ll be okay with me telling my parents?” he asked.
“I have to be, don’t I?”
He would have preferred the catalyst for meeting his son wasn’t her feeling cornered by some vague threat in a letter. Bethany didn’t have enemies, not like General Knudson or even his dad had. In careers as long and storied as theirs, enemies of several varieties began to stack up, from disgruntled soldiers to politicians, both local and abroad. He sighed. He could hear the conflict and misery in her voice. As much as he hated to give her a pass on this, he felt obligated.
“I can’t think of any reason anyone would target the three of us,” he said. “If you’d like to ride it out, we can. Whoever sent that threat will know soon enough there’s nothing to be gained. If you want to wait a bit before we have these conversations, I will resp
ect that.”
“No.” Her voice was calm and steady, if not delighted by the prospect of tomorrow’s family dinner. “I’ve put this off long enough. I won’t risk him learning about this from another source.”
“All right.” Once more, he gave her full control, let her dictate how this played out. “I’ll be there at seven.”
“Thanks, Matt.”
“Thanks for the invitation.” She could have handled this mess alone and told Matt after it was done. She’d made it clear through the years that she could manage this parenting gig on her own.
He thought he heard a sniffle, but when she spoke, her voice was steady, if quiet. “I know this will change everything,” she began. “I only ask that it doesn’t change everything immediately. Caleb will need time to process this.”
“I understand.” She was warning him away from any abrupt changes over their custody agreement. “I’ve only ever wanted you and Caleb to be safe and happy.”
“Thanks for that,” she said, ending the call.
Matt held the phone to his chest. When he closed his eyes and thought of her, he still saw the athletic young woman he’d met when they were new cadets at West Point. Her big brown eyes had been full of nerves and excitement and eagerness for the challenges ahead. Like every cadet before him, he’d entered West Point with nothing more than his career on his mind.
Bethany had changed that. Success took on more meaning than simple pride in doing a job well for the sake of reaching his goals. She made him want to set and accomplish goals for the good of the team. Meeting her had made him a better person and student from that first day forward, though it hadn’t yet made him good enough for her to keep.
Matt reached up and turned out the light, but he couldn’t sleep. His mind flipped back and forth between the baseball lobbed at General Knudson and the creepy letter sent to Bethany. For both of them to get direct threats in the same twenty-four hour period made him question the motive behind the breach of the personnel records and who was buying the information.
Who would gain from exerting that kind of pressure? And how many other Military personnel and families were suddenly feeling exposed and vulnerable tonight?
* * *
He read the reports as they came in with cautious optimism and rising confidence. His first warnings had been successfully delivered. Shots over the bow, so to speak, and now he waited to watch their response.
He imagined them scrambling, racing about in circles and jumping at shadows. They would chase the leads he gave them all the way to inevitable dead ends, only to start over on another path of his choosing. Having the world’s best Army dancing to his tune was an excellent feeling.
His plans were finally coming together. Years in the making, he found a delicious irony in using the security breach to his advantage. His team had been handpicked and painstakingly groomed to the tasks ahead. He’d deliberately given them a cause they could understand and support as he moved both key players and pawns into place for his ultimate revenge.
His charisma was a skill his superiors had consistently undervalued. The pompous fools had been unwilling to blur their clear vision and mission parameters to improve the overall morale in a way that would practically guarantee success on any field of battle.
Their loss.
The skills they didn’t value, he would now use to wreak havoc at both the individual and institutional levels. This was going to be phenomenal fun, as well as a just reward for everything they’d taken from him.
He swiveled his chair away from his desk until he could gaze out at the gathering night through the floor-to-ceiling window. At this end of the compound, there wasn’t another person for miles. Not another soul from here to the horizon. He’d earned the solitude, worked alongside the others to carve this quiet, impenetrable place out of the desert.
Now it was merely a matter of time before his first target came out into the open.
Once he had Matt Riley centered in the crosshairs, the first shot in this war would be fired, with brutal, irrevocable accuracy.
Copyright © 2018 by Regan Black
Geek girl Lexi Carmichael thought getting engaged would mean calmer days ahead. But when her fiancé’s past brings up more questions than answers, she’s not going to let anything—or anyone—drive them apart.
Keep reading for a sneak peek at No Stone Unturned by Julie Moffett.
No Stone Unturned
by Julie Moffett
If my mom texted me a picture of my own engagement ring one more time, I was going to lose it.
Apparently she was trying to send them to her best friend, Candi Schmidt, but Mom and her new phone were still coming to an understanding, so she’d texted me the same picture seven times in the last five minutes. It was my picture to start with, and I’d only sent it to her after she bugged me for a week, threatening that if she didn’t get a photo, she’d post an engagement announcement on my behalf in the Washington Post. That horrified me enough to snap a photo of my ring and send it to her. Unfortunately she now wanted to share it with all her friends, which essentially meant the entire greater DC area. I had seriously been considering hacking her phone so it went exactly nowhere, but it seemed that wasn’t necessary. For now, I gritted my teeth and tried to be happy that the photo was coming back to me, over and over, instead of to her ginormous circle of friends.
My phone dinged again, but I ignored it. Mom was just excited for me, but she was telling everyone about my engagement, while I’ve struggled with telling anyone, even close friends and family. Her enthusiasm was starting to make me feel weird about the mixed-up feelings I was having about getting engaged. I’m a geek girl who loathes attention, and telling people that Slash and I are engaged inevitably leads to screams, hugs, and a thousand questions about a wedding I haven’t even thought about yet. The stress was getting so acute that not even reciting Frederich Karl Gauss’s Theory of Reciprocity could take the edge off my social anxiety.
My name is Lexi Carmichael and my life was a bit weird even before I got engaged. My fiancé and I are both uberhackers—me for a private cyber intelligence company called X-Corp and Slash for the NSA. His nickname is short for backslash in hacker lingo, and only a few people know his real name because of the covert nature of his intelligence work. He’s recently taken a much more visible position, and is now the youngest director of the Information Assurance Directorate in NSA history, followed around the clock by his own special Secret Service detail.
My own job isn’t exactly lacking in excitement either. X-Corp is based in DC, but despite the virtual nature of my job, I travel a lot to secure my clients’ assets. I used to think that being an expert in cybersecurity meant a safe, quiet job behind a desk. I’ve discovered that couldn’t be farther from the truth. It’s a new world out there, and security is more often than not managed by strokes on a keyboard. Since humans are often the weak link in cybersecurity, I’ve had to do considerable work with people to keep data safe and secure. All that means both Slash and I are at the forefront of protecting national security, as well as business interests. It sometimes puts a strain on our relationship, but we decided to take it to the next level and commit ourselves to each other anyway.
At this particular moment, national security wasn’t even on my radar. Instead I was focused on the engagement party Slash had informed me was inevitable. As the news of our engagement filtered out, our friends and family wanted to see us in person to congratulate us and see the new house we’d recently moved into together. Although we’d planned the party for this Friday, I was obsessing and stressing because this would be the first one I’d ever thrown in my own house. Slash was helping, which meant we were muddling along, trying not to kill each other in the process.
“Do we really have to allow people to bring a guest?” I asked him for the third time, studying the spreadsheet while chewing on the eraser at the top of my pencil. We were sitt
ing at the counter with mugs of coffee and a printed spreadsheet of all the things we had to do for the party. I’d carefully divided the spreadsheet into three parts—my responsibilities, Slash’s jobs and our joint tasks. Inviting people was part of our joint-task column, so here we were, hammering it out.
He glanced up from the spreadsheet and my breath caught in my throat. He was unquestionably the best-looking guy I’d ever dated. Okay, he was pretty much the only guy I’d ever dated seriously. Still, when he spoke with his sexy Italian accent and gazed at me with his deep brown eyes, all logic left my brain. I knew that sometimes he used that to his advantage.
His mouth quirked slightly at the corner, probably because he could see the glazed look coming into my eyes. Yep, Seduction 101, that’s exactly what he was doing. Even though I was fully aware of it, it was still working.
“Your brothers have girlfriends, right?” he replied. “Guest plus one is standard.”
“Who cares about plus one?” I groused. “I don’t even know who their girlfriends are this week.”
He didn’t respond, so I let out a loud huff of annoyance before reluctantly adding two extra people as the unknown guests of my brothers. “We’ve already got sixteen people, including my parents. “It’s too many guests. We’ll never fit them all.”
“We have a big house, cara. We’ll fit and have room to spare. Besides, it’s possible some people won’t come. You can stop worrying.”
I’d never stop worrying, because I’d rather endure a dozen Microsoft patches than attend a party. But here we were—party planning central.
Forcing myself to keep my mind on the task at hand, I resumed studying the spreadsheets. “Do I have to iron napkins?” I asked.
Slash looked up from the spreadsheet. “What?”
“The napkins. The book said formal events required ironed napkins. But now that I think about it, we don’t have napkins to be ironed.”
Slash started to say something and then shut his mouth. After another beat, he asked, “What book?”
