Dangerous Protector (Aegis Group Book 5)

by Sidney Bristol

  “A whirlwind romance.” Marco finished chopping the vegetables and glanced up.

  “Not really.” She hadn’t fallen for Scott any harder than she’d fallen for any other man.

  “Then…what?”

  “We liked each other. We got along. We spent time together. He stayed here more nights than he didn’t. We were more like too-friendly roommates.”

  “When did it go wrong?”

  “It was never really right.”

  “What? Fiona, I’m trying to understand this. You mean to tell me you met a guy, you sort of liked each other then he moved in here?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “That…okay. Okay.”

  “I don’t like being alone.” And the hilariously pathetic thing about it was…no one, not a single man who’d been in her life, had ever known the real her. They knew Fiona. A person she was supposed to be, but not her.

  “Okay.” The way he said that word was anything but.

  “You think I’m stupid.” But he’d also probably never had to pretend to be someone he wasn’t for so long he forgot who he really was.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  Marco gripped the edge of the counter and stared at her. Like she was something foreign and strange.

  “You think I’m stupid for letting this man I barely knew, and who was clearly a bad choice, into my life. Because it’s not safe. It’s not…whatever. But I’d rather take the chance on someone I won’t work with than wonder if maybe it would have worked. Maybe we’d have been happy. Now I know, in a really big way, that Scott was a mistake. An awful mistake. And I always…there was always something off about him. Us. It just never got to that this is right feeling with him.”

  “You broke up. Then what?” Marco cracked the eggs into the skillet and started in earnest on breakfast.

  “He kept coming by, saying he’d left this or that.” She rolled her eyes.

  “How many times? Once, three times, six?” He added the other ingredients, making quick work of the meal.

  “I don’t know. More than four. I caught him snooping around in my office, where he had no reason to be, so I went around the house and boxed up all his stuff and didn’t let him in after that.”

  “And this morning’s display. Is this normal? Has this happened before?”

  “Once. I haven’t seen Scott in a week.” She sniffled and swiped at her cheeks. Marco found somewhere else to look.

  “He always said it was for something he’d left. Did you make sure what he was taking each time?”

  “He always waved it at me. But it…I never recognized the stuff. It was like…almost like…”

  “Were they large items? Small?”

  “Stuff he could have fit in a pocket.” She swallowed. “What do you think he was doing?”

  “Plates?”

  “Cabinet behind you, next to the fridge.” The napkin was still there, framed by magnets.

  “You kept my number, I see.” Marco turned and pulled down two plates.

  Neither of them spoke while he dished up the two omelets.

  What would Scott have been doing in her place? Had the U.S. Marshalls sent him? Nova? Someone else? She’d always expected that someday, as the world continued to shrink and become more and more connected, Nova would find her. There was no way to be completely offline anymore. Between work obligations, and even communicating with the Marshall assigned to her, the internet was now a necessary part of her life. So long as she had even a finger on the net, she would always be in danger.

  “I want to have a look around. You said he was in your office? Can you show me after we eat?” Marco was nearly halfway through his food.

  “What do you think you’ll find?” Fiona couldn’t eat. The food was great, but her stomach wasn’t having any of it.

  “Don’t know until I look.”

  “You’re…you work in some sort of security, right?”

  Marco chewed slowly, his gaze giving away nothing.

  “What? It’s on your Facebook. I know how to Google.”

  “Fucking Facebook. I don’t know how the hell you did that, but I’m going to have to turn it off.”

  “Security settings.” Didn’t people pay attention to that stuff? Or was she the only nut in the nuthouse?

  “Yes, I work for a private security company. Making sure people are safe is my job.”

  “Am I going to get a bill for this?”

  “No. Eat.”

  “I can’t.”

  “What’s so awful you think Scott found out about you? What could he want to find out that’s worth getting his ass kicked?”

  “I…I don’t know.”

  Lila Hershel watched the two people on the screen. The audio was delayed by a few seconds, but she had a pretty good idea where the conversation was going after last night’s aerobic exercise.

  Whoever Fiona Goero was, she didn’t matter. At least not to Lila or her bosses. She was the door, and as good gatekeepers they liked to watch all the entrances and exits.

  She didn’t know what Fiona was caught up in, but Lila had seen enough to know that when the cows were called home in this woman’s life… Lila’s employers needed to ensure every bit of their equipment was gone.

  The tech had alerted her last week to the…it wasn’t a break in. The two men had entered Fiona’s home without triggering her elaborate security system. Watching them work, go over her place, she’d known without a doubt they weren’t run-of-the-mill thugs. The two men had turned the house over, then put everything back the way it’d been with such precision. They were good. Too good to be a private job.

  Oh, yeah, the FBI got a bad wrap for being underpaid and overworked, but these guys…they went over the FBI’s head. After making a career in the CIA, she’d gone into the private sector, but Lila still had connections. She’d hoped to use those connections to put some agency or another on NueEnergy’s ass, making way for Lila’s employer, except she had her doubts now. If Fiona had this kind of attention on her, Lila needed Scott to pack up and clear out. Yesterday. Because someone else was watching her.

  That good-for-nothing hacker had better do his job, or Lila was going to have to do something drastic. Something she didn’t want to do. But she had her orders, and that was to make the asset surveillance disappear, one way or another.

  Marco looked around the office for the second first time.

  “Is this supposed to be a bedroom?” he asked.

  “Yes, but the air flow up here is…stuffy. Besides, it’s just me. What do I need two stories for?” Fiona’s answer was easy, practiced, and rolled off her tongue so well he almost believed it.

  He did a walk-around of the room, glancing in the bathroom, peering out the windows. Orienting himself. She was hiding something, and he wanted to know what it was.

  “Did Scott ever work up here? Spend time up here without you?” Marco was growing to like Scott less and less the more Fiona talked about him. And then there was her… She wasn’t his client or his responsibility and yet…he was going to see this through.

  “Yes. He telecommutes to work so I let him use the office sometimes. It…it made the evenings easier if he was already here…” Fiona wrapped her arms around herself and glanced away. She’d put on clothes, yoga pants and an oversized shirt, as though they could shield her from what was going on.

  Marco almost wanted to stop the search right there, kiss her, and strip her clothes off until she remembered the passionate, beautiful woman she was deep down. She really was something else when she forgot her inhibitions.

  If I were a dirty, rotten bastard…

  Scott clearly wanted something bad enough to make a scene. Had his earlier expeditions to get things been about retrieving equipment? Or something else?

  NueEnergy was in the news a lot lately. Something that grated on every single nerve in Marco’s body. Their newest, latest wind energy designs were being touted as the thing that would save the earth.
Unless Moab was factored in, and then what they really meant was they’d just pile up all the shit in one spot. In his back yard.

  “Do you have a modem? Router?”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” She frowned and raked her fingers through her ponytail.

  “Where are they?”

  “In the closet, but I don’t know why it matters.”

  He opened the master closet and stared.

  The words modem and router typically meant small box-like contraptions. This…this was…Zain or Ghost’s territory.

  “Is that it?” He pointed at the wall-mounted system. There were several boxes with blinking lights and way more cords than he’d expected.

  “Yes, I have to have it to remote into work on the rare occasion I work from home.”

  If it was so normal, why wasn’t she looking at him?

  “Come in here and tell me if it looks like it’s been tampered with.” Marco stood back, orienting himself to the pieces. He knew enough about electronics to get himself hurt. His specialty was putting people back together. After he’d broken them. Not exactly useful in this situation.

  “It looks normal.”

  “Run through every piece. Follow every wire.”

  “Why?”

  “Because there is a man who wants into your house to do something, and unless there are secrets you aren’t telling me, the motivator is always money. Either you’re filthy rich, or he’s going after NueEnergy.” Or Scott knew about whatever mystery Fiona wasn’t telling him about and wanted to exploit it.

  “How do you know I work for NueEnergy?” Fiona frowned, her gaze decidedly leery.

  Shit.

  “It’s a guess. Those yuppies you were with Friday were talking very loudly about how great their employer was.”

  Fiona gave him a bit of side-eye, but wasn’t calling him on the lie. So maybe she did work with a bunch of big-mouthed idiots.

  Piece by piece, she pointed out which box did what and its place in the data flow. She never told him why such an elaborate set-up was necessary, and he couldn’t think of a good reason to ask. Yet.

  “What’s this transmit?” Marco picked up a small device hanging off the back of the modem. The antennae sticking up off one side were a dead giveaway to its purpose.

  “I…I’ve never seen that before.” Her lips were parted, eyes wide.

  “Are you sure?” He held the transmitter in his hand. The brand was different from the rest. It was worn, as though used, relocated and used again. It stood out, and that was bad spyware.

  “No, no I don’t recognize that at all. What the hell is it doing in here?” Her voice rose, the pitch high and thin.

  “And what’s it transmitting?”

  “Pull it out. Turn it off!”

  “No, no, Fiona.” He turned and grasped her shoulders until she looked at him. “We want to find what it’s sending. If we turn it off, we might not find all the devices. Got me?”

  “So—what? We leave it on?”

  “Transmitters send electromagnetic—”

  “I know what a fucking transmitter does,” she snapped.

  “Okay. Okay. Sorry.” He let go of her and took a step back.

  “Sorry—I’m sorry—it’s just…this is crazy, right?”

  “Maybe. Now, I have two friends that can maybe reconfigure the transmitter to send the data to us.”

  “Oh, fuck it. Move.” She pushed him out of the way and jerked the transmitter cords out of the modem.

  “Fiona!”

  “I can’t change the signal without taking it apart, so—just move.” She pushed past him into the depths of the closet stacked with boxes and other storage containers.

  She hauled a black laptop bag and a tool box out of the depths and marched past him, out into the office.

  Just what was the pretty lady going to do?

  Marco wanted to find out, so he kept his trap shut.

  Whoever was using her modem to send stuff would no doubt be aware that their transmitter was offline. Unless it was unmonitored on a weekend. But then, if it was, why would Scott be here on a Saturday to get it? What did Fiona know or have that was so important someone would spy on her?

  Shit, he’d picked the wrong mark.

  Whatever Fiona was involved with, whatever was going down, Marco was pretty sure he’d just stepped in it.

  Fiona pulled apart the transmitter, laying its internal components on her desk. It wasn’t the cheapest piece of equipment, but it wasn’t highly sophisticated either. Easy to operate, easy to fix—this was a workhorse device. Something someone used. A lot.

  Were the U.S. Marshalls watching her? Observing her activity? Was this part of their security? She knew they weren’t telling her everything, that they were very active on the fringes of her life. They wanted Nova, still, after all these years, for reasons she didn’t understand, and the best way to find him was through her. Which was why she needed to be the one to reconfigure the transmitter. If Marco’s friends did it, if they figured out what was going on…

  Nope.

  “You sure you know what you’re doing?” Marco asked.

  “Hush.” She wasn’t about to explain herself to him. She couldn’t. There was no way to explain why an executive administrative assistant had any reason to know how to do this.

  Fiona carefully examined the inner workings, the wires, the mother board and processor.

  “So?” Marco hovered.

  “So—what?”

  “What’s it doing?”

  “It’s…basically taking wireless signals from somewhere in probably thirty yards of the transmitter and sending them somewhere else. There will be a sister receiver that gets this data.”

  “Okay, so we re-route them.”

  “You know how to do that?”

  “No…”

  “Be quiet, then. Give me a moment.”

  Rerouting the devices would be difficult. The transmitter wasn’t that sophisticated. She’d need to replace pieces. Unless…unless she used her kit.

  Marco was going to exit her life soon. Probably today. And he’d never give her a second thought, as much as that stung. He didn’t know her well enough to realize she was behaving out of character. She could risk it.

  Fiona opened the laptop case and began setting up her rig. Or as good of a rig as she kept these days.

  In her hacking prime, she’d had a considerable amount of equipment. Now she got by with the basics because it was more about the memories than hacking.

  “What’s this?” Marco asked.

  “I’m going to plug the transmitter into my offline laptop and route all the feeds here. See what they’re doing.”

  Since the transmitter was hardwired into the modem, it couldn’t transmit on its own, but it would still receive signal if it had power.

  She held her breath, booted up her laptop, and plugged the transmitter in. It took a little massaging to get the device to play nice with her set-up, but a few tweaks and…

  “Holy shit.” Fiona sat back, four video screens filling her display.

  “It’s…” Marco turned around.

  She didn’t have to watch him, she could see him in the video feed.

  Holy fucking shit.

  Someone was watching her.

  Fiona could only sit there, dumbfounded as all the nightmare possibilities whistled through her mind.

  Marco crossed the room, climbed onto the spare chair and unscrewed the vent with nothing but his fingers. Her mouth dried up at the sound of the ice machine humming from downstairs.

  Someone was watching her.

  Watching—and listening.

  She could see the office, her living room, her bedroom and the kitchen. The four areas of her house she spent all her time in. How long had they been watching? Was this what Scott was after? This? Why would he record her? Why would he need to watch her this closely? Was he jealous? Did he want to make sure she didn’t cheat on him? Or was this about NueEnergy like Marco had suggest
ed? Could it be…Nova? Was that crazy? Were the Marshalls involved?

  “What else is it transmitting? What are those other…things?” Marco leaned over her shoulder the microphone and camera device in hand.

  “I don’t know.” She clicked the data packet with the most recent time stamp.

  An error message popped up, warning her about encryption and zipped files. Her fingers flew over the keyboard. A little encryption had never kept her out of anything, and this wasn’t all that sophisticated. It was a formality. A proprietary stamp, more than a road block. If she spent time pouring over the encryption, she’d figure out who was behind it, but first she wanted to know what was so important they’d make her life public access. Whoever they were.

  What if it really was Nova?

  What if this was some elaborate plot to get back at her?

  She had no idea what Nova looked like. The FBI did, but they’d always kept him a secret in an attempt to protect her or to keep her from jumping at shadows, she wasn’t entirely sure. But the fact remained, Nova could be anyone. He could be Marco.

  Her throat closed up at that thought.

  But—no. Nova and Marco being the same person didn’t make sense.

  “I’m in,” she announced. “What are we sending?”

  She clicked on a file and another window opened, files upon files listed for her perusal.

  Some were familiar, because those project names were the stuff of nightmares.

  “Wait, wait, wait a second.” Marco was hovering over her shoulder now. “What is this?”

  “Oh, fuck.” She scrubbed a hand over her face and clicked the file for the project she’d slaved over Thursday and Friday.

  There it was.

  All of her work.

  Every bit of it.

  And the consolidated bits from every other team member.

  “How—?” She didn’t have to wonder how. She knew precisely what she’d do if it was her.