by Pam Godwin
“Why didn’t Mike meet your dad?”
“Dad was protecting him and Shannon. He kept their existence a secret. Something he couldn’t do with me because I didn’t have a mother.”
“Who was he?”
“Richard Pictam.”
“That’s your real name? Lydia Pictam?”
“Yeah.” She looked down at the table and picked at a deep scratch in the wood. “I loved him so much I idolized him. He was my entire world. My protector. He had this rugged rebelliousness about him, an air of danger, but he made me feel safe. Untouchable. Like I could do anything because he would always have my back. My own personal action hero.” She sucked in her cheeks. “I wanted to be just like him. So I ran the streets, got into trouble, picked fights, and acquired some bad habits. But he’s the one who taught me how to defend myself. Combat training, weaponry, tactical skills—he taught me everything I needed to know to protect myself.” She looked up and met Cole’s eyes. “He was an NSA agent, part of the Special Collection Service.”
“Ah.” He sat back and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “An intelligence spy.”
“Yeah. He worked jointly with the CIA abroad to penetrate foreign communications networks.”
“That explains how you got access to those customized bugs. But how the hell did he hook up with a Russian sex spy?”
“No idea. He never talked about my mother. I don’t even know how she died.” She shrugged. “Shannon O’Sullivan held his heart, and he protected her and Mike until the day he was killed.”
“How did he die?”
“That’s a critical question.” A dull pain pressed behind her breastbone. “With a dangerous answer.”
“Come here.” He pushed back his chair and gripped her hand, pulling.
She went into his arms, her heart so swollen with years of grief and anger she didn’t know how her ribcage continued to contain it. He slid an arm behind her legs, and in one swift motion, he hoisted her up and onto his lap.
And just like that, her chest felt instantly lighter.
“I used to have a pet snake.” He rested his mouth against her head. “My foster family gave it to me.”
“Foster?”
“I’m one of those unlucky few who spent eighteen years in foster care. But I always considered myself lucky. I lived with nice families. Good people.”
“But none of them were permanent.”
“No.” He rubbed his hand up and down her arm. “I said I would tell you about the snake tattoo, if you told me about the swallow. You told me about the swallow.”
“And now you have two snake tattoos.”
“I used to have more on my arms. I had them removed after I faked my death on Thurney Bridge.”
“What?” She jerked back.
“A story for another time.” His fingers found her hair, absently playing with the tangled strands. “The pet snake I had in high school gave me a dangerous reputation, especially with the girls. It got me laid. A lot.”
“Bullshit.”
“I swear.” He laughed. “What I learned was that snakes represented danger, and having a dangerous reputation earned respect and elicited fear. No one fucked with me. It gave me the confidence to take what I want.”
He held out his arm, punctuating his point with the tattoo of the serpent taking what it wanted. Her.
She traced a finger over the ink. “I don’t know if I should be honored or scared.”
“You’re safe with me.” He cupped her face and pulled her in for a deep kiss. “Always. I protect what’s mine.”
“I do, too.” She kissed him in turn, tongues entwining, deep and languorous. Then she leaned back and combed her fingers through his unruly brown hair. “Twelve years ago, my dad was involved in an operation with a CIA informant in Russia. I don’t know the details, only that it pertained to Russia’s interference campaign in U.S. elections. My dad was sent to Russia to meet with someone, to do something. I don’t know. It’s all classified. But he never came home. He was murdered in a hotel room, and the murder was recorded on a hard drive.”
His entire body tensed beneath her. She twisted on his lap and studied his expression, watching as he absorbed and processed her words.
“My dad’s colleague and loyal friend in the NSA was there,” she said. “He was the tech guy, monitoring from another room. He turned in the hard drive, but it was stolen and sold by Marie Merivale.”
“To the Romanian mafia.” He narrowed his eyes. “How did you get this intel? It’s classified.”
“My dad’s NSA friend has done a few things for me over the years. He told me about the hard drive, gave me those customized bugs, and erased my identity and Mike’s so that we wouldn’t be connected to our dad.”
“That’s why I couldn’t find anything about you. Neither of you exists.”
“I don’t know the identity of my dad’s friend and have no way to contact him. He wishes to remain anonymous and separated from all this. I imagine he’s protecting his own family and his career. I get it, and I’m grateful. Without him, I would’ve never learned the truth about how my dad died.”
“Who murdered him?”
“Vincent Barrington.”
“What?’ He stopped breathing, and his hand clamped down on her leg. “I don’t think I heard you correctly.”
“Yes, you did.”
“Vincent Barrington, the United States President-elect. That Vincent Barrington?”
“Yeah.”
With a thudding heart, Lydia stiffened on Cole’s lap, watching his expression morph from shock to confusion to steely resolve.
This was it. She’d given him the single most important secret of her life. He could choose to help her. Or he could fuck her eight ways to Sunday, steal the hard drive, and sell it to Vincent himself.
“Why?” he asked on a heavy exhale.
“Why did Vincent do it? Why was he in that Russian hotel room twelve years ago? Why did he kill my dad? I don’t have those answers, but I can confirm that he wants that hard drive as badly as I do.”
“It was Vincent who hired you to capture and torture me in Texas?”
“Yes. Fifteen months ago, he hadn’t announced his intent to run for U.S. President, but I knew it was coming. Mike and I spent a fucking decade investigating him, watching his every move. All that effort, and we could never get close enough to kill him. He has so much wealth and power. Mike was on his payroll for years as part of his security team, and even then, he couldn’t get near the man.”
“How did you get on his payroll?”
“Through Mike. He suggested using a Russian swallow and offered up my contact information.”
“You’re the daughter of an NSA agent who was murdered by Vincent Barrington. You should be in protective custody, not working for him!” A vein bulged in his forehead, his entire body rigid. “What if he learned your identity? Jesus fuck, Lydia. Do you know how fucking dangerous it was to put yourself on his radar?”
“Yes, Cole.” She pushed off his lap and paced through the kitchen, clenching her fists. “That’s why I wore all that makeup and dyed my hair and learned Russian. I concealed my identity. Doesn’t matter anyway, because he’s already sent eight people after me since my stint in Texas, and more will come. He wants me dead.”
“Fuck.” He leaned over his lap, elbows braced on his knees, and shoved a hand through his hair. “Fuck!”
“It’s a lot to take in. The President-elect put a hit on your friend, Rylee, and her neighbor. And God knows who else? But he couldn’t kill you, because he needed you to surrender the location of that hard drive. If the video goes public…”
“He won’t just be impeached. He’ll be arrested.”
“Instead of living in the White House, he would spend the rest of his life in a 6x9 cell.”
“We need that hard drive.”
“Now more than ever.” Uncertainty buzzed through her, clashing with hope. “Does that mean you’ll help me?”
“I’m committed
one-hundred-percent. To this. To you.”
“Okay.” She released a ragged breath and reached for the kitchen cabinet. From within, she removed a package of Twizzlers. “He’s not the President yet. We still have time to expose him before he becomes the most powerful person in the world. This is no longer about revenge for my dad. It’s about keeping an extremely dangerous, corrupt man from taking control of the most important position in our country. He won that election with Russia’s interference campaign. Imagine what he’ll do once he takes office. He’ll rip our country apart.”
He slowly nodded as if coming to terms with the stakes and the gravity of the situation. “You must have a plan, but I can’t for the life of me figure it out. What have you been doing for the past fourteen months? Besides driving me completely insane?”
“You’re the one stalking me, Cole Hartman.” She bit a rope of licorice out of the package, smiling as she chewed it down. “I couldn’t infiltrate the Romanian mafia. I’m not a super-secret spy or government operative or whatever you were. I’m just a girl.”
“With a really great rack.”
She glanced down at her chest, which was exposed in the wide-open gap of her silk robe. She spread the material wider and cocked her head. “Is it great enough to seduce a high-ranking member of the mafia?”
“Not without getting your ass blistered.” His gaze turned to stone, his voice gravelly. “Remember that part about me being jealous and possessive? You don’t want to see what happens if you try to seduce anyone but me.”
She arched a brow. “Moving on. What does the mafia want with that hard drive?”
“Profit. They sat on it, waiting for its worth to reach its highest potential.”
“Which is now. It incriminates the President-elect. So they’ll sell it to the highest bidder?”
“Yes, and the highest bidder would be Vincent Barrington.”
“Yet they haven’t sold it to him.” She rubbed her nape, frustrated. She’d turned this round and round in her head so many times. “Vincent doesn’t even know they have it.”
“Good point.” He drummed his fingers on his knee. “So they must intend to use it as blackmail. To control him once he’s in office.”
“They’ll have a huge goddamn bargaining chip if that’s the case. Do you know what the Romanian mafia is known for?”
“ATM-skimmings and cybercrime.”
“Yep.” She gnawed on her candy, her mind spinning. “That brings me to my plan. Do you want to hear it?”
“I’m on pins and needles,” he deadpanned.
“PaulVer.”
“What?”
“PaulVer Rize. You haven’t heard of him?”
“No, should I?”
“I’m disappointed, Cole. He’s only the most notorious hacker in the world. He stole more than 200 million payment card accounts from major retailers in the U.S. He created back doors in several corporate networks and pocketed an estimated 300 million dollars from one company alone.” Her pulse accelerated, and her hands fluttered through the air as she talked. She could feel herself getting excited. “He’s on fire.”
“You want him to hack into the mafia and steal the video file?”
“Yes. They would’ve made copies as a safeguard and stored them on a server somewhere. I just need PaulVer to hack in, snatch the file, and blast it all over the Internet.”
“Wow.” He leaned back and clasped his fingers behind his neck, his expression thoughtful. Then his lips curled into a smile. “That’s fucking brilliant.”
“Thank you.” She released a slow breath. “Only problem is no one knows who he is. PaulVer is his hacker name.”
“I’ll start digging around, see what I can find on him.”
“Already did that. For fourteen months, Mike and I have chased him and his hacker friends all over Europe. You know where he spends his time?”
“In strip clubs.”
“And nightclubs and anywhere there are dancing girls. No one knows what he looks like, and those who do would never say. There are a lot of rumors about him, but the one that is consistent in every club in every city he visits is that he’s drawn to talented female dancers. When he sees one that impresses him, he gives her a painted Easter egg.”
He stared at her, incredulous.
“What?” She widened her eyes. “I’m not making this up.”
“It’s ridiculous.”
“I thought so, too. At first. Until I saw one of these Easter eggs with my own eyes. Then I saw more. Mike and I have literally been on an Easter egg hunt for the past year. After bouncing between strip clubs to dance clubs all over Europe, we know which clubs are his favorite and the type of girl he approaches. He targets the most beautiful, most talented dancer in the club, comes up behind her, and slips a painted egg in her hand. By the time she examines the strange object and turns around, he’s gone. No one has ever seen him.”
“Have you ever witnessed it happening?”
“No. I’m always watching for it. But I never spot an occurrence until after a girl makes a fuss over the egg in her hand and waves it around. Of course, these women have no idea the meaning or that it has anything to do with a notorious hacker. It’s not like they’re dancing in these clubs to win a painted egg. They just shrug it off. Most of them just leave the egg on a table.”
“So that’s your plan? Try to catch him handing off an egg and confront him? Then what? Make him an offer to hack the mafia for you?”
“Yes. I’ve also been trying to draw him to me. With enough glamour and the right dance moves, I was hoping he would put an egg in my hand.”
He laughed. The mean son of a bitch actually threw his head back and laughed.
“Fuck you.” She crossed her arms over her chest and flung him her most venomous glare.
His amusement cut off, and in its place rose a brooding, stony-faced, intimidating man. He stood and prowled toward her, getting right up in her face. “You are undeniably the most gorgeous woman in all of those clubs. But you can’t dance.”
“Yes, I can.” She slammed her fists on her hips and met him stare for stare, noses touching.
“Let me clarify. You can’t dance as well as the dancers I’ve seen in those clubs.” He kissed her lips. “But you can learn.”
Her chest hitched. “You like my plan.”
“I fucking love your plan. It offers the least amount of risk with the greatest chance of success. If this hacker is as good as you say, he can snatch that video file and transmit it all over the world in one night from the safety of his computer.”
“I just need to learn how to dance. You think you can teach me?”
“No. But I know someone who can.”
“Danni Savoy.” Her stomach clenched beneath a fist of insecurities.
“You good with that?” He narrowed his eyes.
“Will she agree to it?”
“I can convince her.”
Why? Did he see this as an opportunity to rekindle old flames?
“Whatever you’re thinking, stop.” He cupped her face and drew her mouth to his. “She’s a solution to a problem. That’s all. How badly do you want this hard drive?”
“You know the answer to that.”
“Yeah. You wanted it badly enough to capture an innocent man, lock him in the dark for thirty days, and torture him with the worst thrash metal song ever created.”
She cringed. “I said I regretted nothing, but I really do regret that. I’m sorry.”
“I survived. And I’ll take hot dogs and terrible music over that stonecutter any day.”
She wrapped her arms around his strong shoulders and rested her forehead against his. “So you’ll call Danni?”
“I’ll call Trace and have them meet us in Missouri. I have a safe house there.”
“We only have until Inauguration Day. Less than a month.”
“Danni will have you dancing like a pro in less than a week. Then you’ll get your Easter egg.”
Her heart melted, fal
ling, crashing, and breaking open for this man. “Take me to bed.”
His eyes made hungry promises as he lifted her. “I’m going to take you on this table first.”
Hours later, Cole lay in bed, staring into the sleepy, sea-green eyes of Lydia Pictam. Such an exquisite creature. Arresting. Rebellious. Fearless. Mine.
He ghosted his fingers along the outer curve of her breast, savoring the soft noises each caress drew from her cherry lips. Every touch reinforced their connection. A connection forged so deeply inside him his bones thrummed with it.
After he took her on the kitchen table, he fucked her again in the shower. Still, he couldn’t stop touching her, looking at her. She was a dream. An erotic Christmas angel.
And a remarkably good listener.
He’d spent the last couple of hours talking her ear off. He told her everything, holding nothing back. Thurney Bridge, his fake death, Danni and Trace, his career in the activity, and his current endeavors with his vigilante family.
His activities and relationships with the Freedom Fighters fascinated her the most. Her questions were hungry, her attention enraptured. She wanted to meet them, get to know them, and she would.
After their shower, he’d made several phone calls.
The first was to Matias, requesting transportation on the private jet back to the states. He wouldn’t risk putting Lydia on a commercial flight. Not with Vincent Barrington gunning for her. Matias gladly agreed to pick them up the day after Christmas and fly them to Missouri.
He called Romero next, inquiring about PaulVer. No surprise that the kid knew of and admired the notorious hacker. Romero validated PaulVer’s expertise, saying that if anyone could break into the Romanian mafia, it was the Romanian hacker known as PaulVer Rize.
The final phone call was to Trace, the conversation terse and to the point as always. He checked in with Trace several times a year, but he never asked for anything. So his request had taken his friend by surprise.
“I need a favor.”
“Are you in danger?”
“No more than usual. I need you and Danni to go to the lakehouse.”
“Are we in danger?”
“No. But this is important. I’ll explain everything when I arrive in two days.”
