“It’s big” was all he said as they walked toward the green building. Cutter ran ahead to paw the automatic door pad, and the heavy door swung open. “Upstairs.”
The lights were already on in the big upstairs meeting room and office, so apparently that was where he’d been when Cutter had announced her arrival. He led the way to the large cubicle in the back corner, which had several computer stations with large monitors she’d noticed before.
“Your bailiwick?” she asked, looking at the array.
“Everybody’s got access but, yeah, my turf.”
“Why so many?”
“Different purposes. General inquiries, probability analysis, graphics, that kind of thing. Oh, and Bathys over there.”
He gestured with a thumb at an apparently separate machine in the corner.
“Bathys?” she asked.
“Like in bathyscaphe or bathysphere.”
She knew what the words meant, but what vessels designed for extreme ocean depths had to do with computers she didn’t—
Depths. They went deep. Deeper than anything else could. Down to where creatures never seen before lived and light was just a memory.
“Let me guess,” she said, looking at the computer as if it had a malevolence all its own. “The infamous dark web?”
“You are quick,” Liam said with a smile that made her forget for a moment why they were here. But then the reality flooded back.
“You have occasion to...use that?”
“Sometimes. It’s where some people hide. And dark can be a misnomer, in some cases. Sometimes deep is more fitting. As in having to hide deep.”
“But isn’t it where bad guys hide out on the internet, to put it generically?”
“Yes. But, then, so do some good guys. Dissidents fighting totalitarian regimes. Underground railroads, trying to save exploited or endangered innocent people. People who don’t dare show up on the surface web.”
From the way he was talking, it clearly didn’t have anything to do with why she was here, but it was scarily fascinating.
“But don’t the people looking for them know that and use it, too?” she asked.
“Yes.” He shrugged. “The routing protocol—they call it onion routing—where your search is sent to random other computers before it gets to the site you want, making it nearly impossible to backtrack, was originally developed for the US Navy. Gone way beyond that now.”
“Anonymous?” she asked, thinking of the hacking group with the famous mask symbol.
“Probably,” he said. “Gotta admire their skills, even though I left that game behind years ago.”
“Thank goodness.”
He gave her a sideways glance. Seemed to hesitate slightly before saying, “Quinn hired me in part for those skills.”
“You mean you still hack but for a good cause?”
He nodded. “All white hat now.”
Belatedly it hit her. “You found something?” A memory flashed through her mind, of him asking Dylan about a computer and telling him to leave it on so he could send him something. “You hacked his father’s computer.”
He nodded. And waited. For her to react, she realized. She thought about asking if he didn’t need a warrant for that, but two things stopped her. A little boy was getting hurt, and a student she very much liked was getting sucked down into a dark place.
And she trusted Liam. All white hat now.
In the end all she asked was, “Was it worth it?”
“I think so. It explains everything.”
After a moment she nodded. “I guess it’s good that his father’s a technophobe, then.”
She thought he smiled, briefly, as he turned back to the main bank of computers. He hit a couple of keys, and the image of a document popped up on the largest monitor, above the others. It was page with a column of letters and numbers next to two columns of hyphenated numbers.
“I have no idea what I’m looking at,” she admitted.
“It’s a DNA comparison.”
She blinked, drew back slightly. Shifted her gaze to his face.
“Bottom line?” he suggested.
“Please.”
His mouth tightened for an instant. Then he said bluntly, “It’s 97.8 percent certain that Kevin Oakley is not Barton Oakley’s son.”
Chapter 23
She was more devastated than he’d expected. He doubted she could be much more upset had she found such evidence on herself.
“Those poor boys,” she said as he handed her a mug of the coffee he’d had going since he’d gotten here.
“Makes sense of some things. Like why Cutter reacted the way he did the first time he saw the boys together at the park.”
“You think...he knew? That they weren’t...full brothers?”
“Sounds crazy, I know, but that dog knows things. And this would explain the way Oakley talked at the gym that day. It wasn’t ‘He’s my son’; it was ‘He’s my son’.”
“As Kevin isn’t.”
They’d moved down into the living room area. She’d been pacing at first, and when he noticed she was rubbing at her arms as if they were cold, he turned on the gas fireplace, even though it wasn’t really cold in the room. He doubted the extra warmth would ease the kind of chill she was feeling, but it couldn’t hurt. And finally she’d taken a seat on the sofa, still shaking her head as if in shock.
“It’s stronger than you like,” he warned her before she took her first sip of the coffee he’d given her.
“I’ll take it,” she said with a grimace. “Not like I’ll be sleeping tonight anyway, not after this.”
Cutter nudged him with a head butt behind his knees. He knew immediately what the dog wanted; he’d seen him pull this move before. But then he looked at Ria’s face, saw the tangled combination of emotions there and decided there might be a different reason for the Foxworth inveterate matchmaker to be urging him her way. She might just need the moral support to deal with the powder keg they’d just pried the lid off of.
Then Cutter went to her and sat at her feet, his chin resting on her knee. She smiled at the dog as she stroked the fur between his ears. “You,” she crooned, “would make a wonderful therapy or hospital-visiting dog, you know?”
“Hayley’s working on that,” he said. “He’s got his certification, breezed through it. Now she’s working on places for him to go visit.”
“He’ll be great at it.” She leaned over the dog and planted a kiss on his nose. “You have such a way of making me feel better.”
Liam hesitated before saying, “You’re taking this a bit personally, aren’t you?”
She gave him a surprised look. “Of course I am. I started this.”
“Well, you and Emily.”
“But I could have talked her out of it.”
“I don’t doubt that, but that doesn’t make you responsible. Besides, this makes sense of it, and now we know Kevin could really be in danger.”
He’d wondered if she’d made the final leap, but saw in her eyes that she indeed had. “From his...” Her voice trailed away.
“Non-father.”
“Yes.” She shook her head slowly, rubbed at her forehead as if there were a pounding ache behind it. “Do you really believe he would take this out on Kevin?”
“The guy I met? Absolutely.”
“I know, but he’s not usually like that.”
“But Dylan says his dad’s been like that since his mother died.”
“I’ve only met with him one other time since she was killed. He was pretty quiet then but not angry. Nothing unexpected, given the circumstances.”
Again she rubbed at her forehead. And again he felt the urge to sit beside her, put his arm around her. In comfort, not as a sexual overture. And t
hat unsettled him. Not that he hadn’t comforted people in stress before; it was part of this job. But he’d never had that urge tangled up with all sorts of other urges before.
It’s part of the job.
But she’s not the client.
But she’s part of the case.
He felt an itchy sense that made him shift his gaze. Cutter was staring at him. The dog looked utterly disgusted. If an animal could roll his eyes, Cutter was doing it. Then the dog made a low sound that sounded for all the world like “Well?”
He felt a rising inclination to resist the animal. But there was enough on the other side that he gave in. It was, after all, his job to keep all aspects of the case going.
You win this round, hound. But only this round.
Satisfied, the dog retreated to his bed and curled up contentedly.
The moment Liam sat down beside her, the moment he felt her warmth and caught that light, lovely scent he already associated with her, he wasn’t so sure. He schooled himself to businesslike comforting.
“Don’t worry.”
“How can I not worry?” It seemed she wasn’t suffering from his own kind of distraction. Or her worry overpowered it. His ego preferred the latter, he admitted silently. Which only further confused the matter. He didn’t want her feeling like this, did he? Because if it was mutual...
“I only meant we’ll figure it out.”
“If there’s even a chance Kevin is being abused, we have report it. Immediately.”
“Already did,” he said.
She blinked, drew back. “What?”
“I called Brett Dunbar as soon as I saw that DNA report. He’s a friend of ours, a sheriff’s detective. First thing in the morning he’ll talk to one of their juvenile detectives, who will take it from there.”
The look of relief that flooded her face made his doubts about the skimpy suspicions that were all he’d had to tell Brett vanish. It was the right thing to do if only for that.
“Maybe we should go get Kevin and Dylan right now,” she said.
“We have no standing in this,” he pointed out. “Besides, Oakley doesn’t know we know. Kevin won’t be in any more danger than he was.”
She frowned. “I suppose us confronting him wouldn’t help. He already thinks I’m interfering.”
He nodded. “It might just set him off. Better that it be someone with the weight of a badge behind them.”
She let out a breath. “I hadn’t thought of it like that. You’re right.”
One of the things he liked about her—one of the many things—was her levelheadedness when something made sense. Along with everything else she was.
“The legal wheels are turning now,” he said quickly, before his mind could veer down that path again. “Let them. Dunbar’s a good guy. He’ll see to this.”
She let out a long breath. “Thank you, Liam.”
The way she said his name sent a shiver through him. He told himself he should get up, get away. She was better now, now that she knew the boys she cared about would be okay and the matter put to rest one way or the other. She didn’t need comforting anymore.
And what he needed probably wasn’t even on her radar.
Her expression changed. “What were you thinking, just now?”
He dodged her gaze. “Things I shouldn’t be thinking.”
She was silent for a moment. He stole a glance at her. Her lips were parted. His body knotted as she bit at the full, lower one. “Funny. I was thinking things, too. Are you saying I shouldn’t be?”
He could barely get the word out. “Yes.”
“Why?”
He looked away again. “A lot of reasons. One, you’re a client.”
“Actually the client is Dylan, isn’t it? Or if not him, then Emily.”
“We’re still involved on the same case.”
“Foxworth has a rule about that?”
He laughed, even though it blew away his argument. “If they did, Hayley and Quinn wouldn’t be together.”
“They met on a case?”
“Actually, Quinn kidnapped her. And Cutter.”
Her eyes widened. “What?”
He relaxed a little as he told her the story. Surely a tale of black helicopters and a midnight mission would divert them both, her from questions he didn’t want to answer and him from feelings he didn’t want to feel.
He underestimated her, not for the first time.
“I see,” she said, shaking her head in wonder at the fantastical account but quickly went back to where they’d begun. “So it would be hard for Quinn to enforce a no-fraternization rule when that’s how he met the love of his life.”
“Hayley is that,” he said.
“So you believe in soul mates?”
“I believe Hayley’s his.” That was nothing less than the truth. He did believe it; he had to. He had evidence of it every day.
What he didn’t believe was that everyone had one. After all, hadn’t Amanda thought he was hers?
“I’m sorry,” she said unexpectedly.
He blinked, snapped back to the present, thankfully before his mind could wander down that old, worn, never-changing path.
“What?”
“I’m sorry for whatever you thought just now. It obviously wasn’t a happy memory.”
“No. No, it wasn’t.”
“Is it the real reason?”
He didn’t pretend not to understand. Somehow he couldn’t, not with those vivid blue eyes staring at him.
“Yes.”
“Is it who you lost?”
He blinked. “What?”
“The person you lost, who gave you that understanding of grief—is that what you were thinking about?”
And you thought Cutter was perceptive. Ria Connelly was on a whole ’nuther level.
“I’m so sorry, Liam. That you have that knowledge.”
Her words, the soft gentleness of her voice made him hungry for more from her, even as it soothed the old pain in a way nothing ever had. And in that moment he wanted to kiss her more than he could remember wanting anything in his life. And no amount of telling himself that he was footloose, unencumbered and intended to stay that way for everyone’s sake, stopped it.
He knew the moment he gave in that he would regret it. But he could no more stop himself than he could match Rafe’s skill as a sniper.
And then he was kissing her, and it wasn’t like he’d remembered from that night on the street. It wasn’t as hot, as sweet, as consuming.
It was more.
More, because she was answering in the same way, as if she couldn’t get enough. As if she were as hungry for the unexpected fire as he was. Just feeling that response, sensing it, sent him over the edge and he was tasting her, sweeping his tongue past her lips, reaching for the sweetness that was unlike anything he’d ever known.
She made a tiny, awed sound. It made his entire body clench with a fierceness that took his breath away entirely. He pressed her back on the couch as he deepened the kiss. She went willingly, and he lost all semblance of thought as she clutched at his shoulders as if to pull him even closer. That sign that she wanted this too, that she might just be as hungry for this as he was, shattered him. He was nothing but fierce, driving need now, as if all the years of denying he was capable of this had burst forth to show him the lie.
He felt every curve of her, felt the press of her breasts against his chest, the length of her legs tangled with his. He’d been painfully aroused before but not like this, never like this. He couldn’t stop himself from moving, pressing harder against her and feeling his pulse hammer in his ears when she arched upward to him, increasing the pressure on his aching body.
He wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life.
> The images slammed into his mind, the only things powerful enough to break this spell. Yes, he wanted her more than anything he’d ever wanted. Except to erase those pictures in his head. To erase the guilt. To erase the accusing glares of grieving families. To erase the memory of the hurt, disillusioned look in his mother’s eyes.
He broke the kiss.
He was aware, vaguely, of harsh breathing. His own? Hers? He wasn’t sure. She was staring up at him, looking a little stunned. That he’d kissed her? That he’d let it go so far? That he’d stopped?
“Liam...” She whispered it, her voice tinged with a wonder that stabbed at him.
He scrambled off of her, stood up abruptly. He couldn’t take this anymore. He didn’t have the strength to resist Ria on his own. He was going to need her help. And there was only one way he could see to get it.
“You should be more careful who you kiss,” he said, making his voice as cold as he could, a difficult task when his mind and body were so full of her warmth, when the need hadn’t even begun to ebb.
He’d startled her with that. It was in her face when she said, “If you mean you, I seem to remember it was you who kissed me.”
“But you didn’t stop me.”
“And I should have?”
“Yes.”
“Again, why?”
He drew in a breath, held it for a moment and then said the words.
“Because you’re the kind of woman who would mind kissing a killer.”
Chapter 24
Of all the things she might have expected, that hadn’t even made the list. And yet he was serious, she couldn’t doubt that, not when his eyes, normally that warm amber color, had darkened so.
Odd, she thought. She hadn’t even felt a chill, either at his words or at the fact that she was here, alone, in this isolated place with a man who had just told her he was a killer.
Killer.
Not murderer.
Her brow furrowed, and she realized she was more concerned with what he meant than what he’d actually said. Because somehow she knew that no matter what he said, the truth of it was much more complex.
“I don’t believe that. At least, not in the way you’re implying.”
Operation Alpha Page 15
