She shook her head. “What did you give to this woman during the year? What kind of secrets?”
I dragged my fingers through my hair, trying to recall. “Just information on what some of the other programmers were working on, inside information on the current programs within the company. Information on my own project.”
“And none of this was public information?”
“No.”
She nodded. “What if someone at the company found out what you were doing? And what if the agency this woman was working for wasn’t a federal agency or even another company, but a foreign country interested in acquiring your work?”
I stood, needing to move now that all this nervous energy was suddenly filling my body. It had never occurred to me, the thing she was suggesting. What if I was simply caught up in a big conspiracy that had more facets than I could ever imagine? What if I was just a pawn in a game I didn’t even know I was playing? The whole thing was insane, but it wasn’t outside the realm of the believable.
“Peter said that what you were doing made you a lot of enemies. He said that you were creating ground breaking technology that would turn the robotics industry on its head. Is it possible that this woman worked for someone simply interested in getting your work? Could she have been getting you to hand over these secrets not to use them to stop some corrupt CEO, but to get you to unwittingly confirm what you were working on?
“Is it possible her country intended to steal your code, but she was discovered by some other power or the company itself? Is it possible that whoever killed her was just trying to stop your work? And that whoever shot up my house and caused the bus accident was trying to frighten you into coming forward, into going into police custody so that they could get the real passcode from you? So they could steal your code directly?”
It made sense in a weird sort of way. I listened to her theory and found myself walking a line of logic I’d avoided before. I’d known that Rachel wasn’t who she said she was, but to steal my work for her country … could they have killed her to stop me? Who would have done that?
The company. Maybe they’d figured out what she was up to and would rather stop me than have me sell the code to the highest bidder.
Another country? Maybe someone was close to making the same breakthroughs I’d made and they didn’t want me to finish.
Another company? Maybe they were on the verge of the same breakthrough and needed to discredit me before they went public.
But that left the people who shot up Amelia’s house. They could have killed me. They could have killed us both. When Amelia opened the front door and fired at them with her handgun, they could have simply cut her down with their superior weapons. They didn’t. They drove away. What other explanation was there for that other than that they weren’t interested in killing me? But what other purpose did their attack serve?
And the bus accident. Was that about me, or was it a coincidence? Logic told me there was no such thing as a coincidence, but the world was not a logical place. There was that guy who chased after us when we took off in the stolen car. I’d assumed it was the owner of the car, but Amelia asked me if I knew the man. Why would she think I knew him?
“The guy at the bus accident …?”
“He was looking for you. He had your picture on his cellphone.”
My heart sank a little at that unwanted news.
“Someone wants you dead. Or running scared. I don’t know if it’s all one group, or if there are two groups at work here, but someone wants you running scared and we need to figure out who it is.”
“How do we do that?”
She dragged her fingers through her hair, making it fall oddly around her face. I went to her and smoothed it back into place and she smiled, her eyes bright with something like fear. She was a beautiful woman, kind and gentle in a façade that exuded this tough, independent spirit. I’d never met anyone like her before and a part of me was afraid I’d never meet anyone like her again.
“I should have told you the truth from the beginning.”
She tilted her head slightly. “You’re telling me now. That’s what really matters.” She stood up on her tiptoes and kissed me gently. “I’ll get dressed and we’ll go back to the mainland. Maybe we can figure out a way to draw these people out, figure out who they are.”
“What about Dragon? What about the team coming to get you out of here?”
She bit her lip, a slight bit of doubt rushing over her face. “Hayden would understand, I think.”
“What did he tell you on the phone?”
She touched my bottom lip. “Doesn’t matter.” Then she kissed me again, pressing her supple body against mine. For a moment I gave in to the need that was suddenly rushing through me. I slipped my hands around her, sliding them under the loose confines of that bathrobe, touching her bare skin in places that made her moan softly against my lips.
I’d been so frightened for her since I realized how bad her injuries from the bus accident were. To be able to hold her again like this was like a salve on a bad burn. It was a relief. But it was also a distraction we didn’t need at this moment.
“Get dressed,” I growled, extracting myself from her.
A knowing look filled her eyes and I swore she moved with a little more purpose as she search out and found the clothes I’d laundered and set aside for her. I grabbed the gun and shoved it into the duffle Tarek had given me along with the clothes he wasn’t aware I took from his office closet. I hadn’t known how long we’d be on the run, but I knew we’d need supplies.
When she was dressed we left, driving down to the other side of the island where the ferry would arrive at any moment. She chewed on her lip, clearly worried that her coworkers would be on the arriving ferry. But they weren’t. It was fairly empty, carrying only those people from the other islands who had jobs on the mainland. No one looked twice at us. No one seemed to care who we were.
We stood at the railing and watched the birds hunt for their morning meal and the water churn under the boat’s propellers. I slid my arms around Amelia and she pressed back against me, her body warm against mine. She tilted her head and welcomed my kisses on her temple, a peaceful smile on her beautiful face.
I found myself wondering—and I knew it was a bad time, but I couldn’t help myself—if there was the possibility of a future between us. Whenever I looked at her, I could believe that she felt the same way about me. But then she would mention Hayden’s name and this little voice in the back of my head would remind me of the pictures she’d hung of him on her refrigerator door and the tone of admiration she would adopt whenever she spoke of him.
Was I enough to sway her away from her feelings for him? Me, with my ridiculous situation that only seemed to be getting further and further out of control? Would she want to be with me when this thing was over and we were no longer running for our lives? Would she want to even see me again, let alone enter into some sort of relationship when she was no longer forced to be at my side?
I should have been afraid for my life. And I was. I was scared to death that neither of us was going to get out of this situation with all our limbs and our lives intact. But I was more afraid that when Hayden came rushing in to take control, I would disappear as the focus of Amelia’s days and nights.
Maybe my mother was right all along. Maybe I would have been better off staying in Ireland, working by her side in the bakery and marrying some young, naive village girl.
Chapter 15
Hayden
“Fuck!”
I tossed my cellphone onto the nightstand and stood, searching around on the dark floor for my pants.
“What’s going on?”
I glanced back at the bed to where Waverly was tangled in her silk sheets, her hair a tumbling mess around her face. A small part of me desperately wanted to climb back into that bed and pull her body under mine, but the larger part was focusing on the call I’d just received.
“Amelia called.”
W
averly sat up. “She did? Where has she been?”
I shook my head, still searching for my damn clothes.
“She said something about being in an accident. I don’t know, but I need to send a team down to extract her. I think Kasey’s in the area, but I’m not sure. It’ll probably take him hours to get there and if she decides to bolt again … I can’t believe this is happening!”
“I’m sure she can handle herself, Hayden.”
“I’m sure she can, too. But she has no idea what this guy is dragging her into. I don’t think she believed me when I told her what we know.”
“What can I do?”
I finally found my pants tangled into a ball at the end of the bed. I yanked them on, my thoughts still jumbled with sleep and all the things that had been happening—or not happening—over the last few days.
The virus on my phone … I was still trying to figure out where it had been compromised and who might have done it. I’d figured out when to speak freely with my phone in my pocket and when to lock it up in a drawer before having a meeting. I couldn’t stop carrying it and I couldn’t ask Waverly to get rid of the virus because that would alert whoever had done it to the fact that I knew it was there. And that would cut off the only avenue I had to figure out who’d done it. But I also couldn’t allow it to compromise any more of my operatives.
Waverly had managed to check the phones of a few other people working at Dragon—I’d used stupid excuses to take their company issued phones—but hadn’t found the virus on any others. Not even her own. And that just seemed to confirm to me that whoever had done this was targeting me in particular.
Could it be related to the weird murders? Could this have something to do with my fucked up past?
I wished I understood better what was happening with those murders. I still didn’t understand why the killer had chosen Rosalie Matthias, but instinct told me that she wasn’t just a random victim. There was something particular about her. And when I figured that out, I might figure out who or why this was happening. But the truth continued to elude me. And Waverly was having no luck learning anything else in her computer searches.
Whoever this was was keeping things close to the chest. The credit card numbers this person used were all stolen; the names all led nowhere. They didn’t exist. The only thing we knew was that seven people were dead and the next victims would likely be here in Houston.
Not a lot to go on.
And now this.
I needed to call Vincent. He was liaising with the police regarding McGregor. He’d need to know that he’d been found. But it was Waverly’s background check that really gave us insight into McGregor. The new tech specialist at Dragon had run a check, but it had been cursory. Waverly managed to dig deeper and she discovered that McGregor had been involved in some political scuffles during his university years.
It appeared that he was a member of a group that supported freedom of technology and free energy, a group that believed all technology should be free to the public. This group attacked a couple of government instillations in Ireland, created chaos at a couple of internet companies, and shut down a private energy company over one weekend because of their outrageous billing practices.
It was Vincent’s theory that McGregor had come to America to create his robotic code outside of the restrictions of the government regulations in Ireland, but then became disillusioned by the restrictions placed on him by Johnson Robotics. He believed that McGregor had decided to sell the code to the highest bidder in order to punish big business for trying to hold advancements back.
How that all worked I had no clue, but when I described Vincent’s theory to Waverly it seemed to make sense to her.
I snatched my shirt off the floor and tugged it over my head.
“Let me make you a cup of coffee.”
Waverly climbed out of bed, her naked body like a shining beacon in the dimly lit room. I grabbed her around the waist as she tried to move around me, drawing her close to me, my mouth sliding over her throat.
“No time,” I said against her ear, not sure if I meant the coffee or the other thoughts that were rushing through my head.
She moved close against me, her lips scraping my throat before she nibbled gently at the lobe of my ear.
“Will you come back tonight?”
“Depends on how things go in Florida.”
“Florida?”
She pulled back to look me in the eye. I brushed her hair away from her face, loving the depth of those hazel eyes.
“Didn’t I tell you? Amelia took refuge in your house in the Keys.”
She chuckled. “Glad my little house could serve so many of your operatives so well.”
“It has been convenient. Dragon will compensate you, of course.”
She shrugged her narrow shoulders. “Not really worried about it. Maybe it’ll give me an excuse to make a trip down there and spend a couple of days on the beach.”
An image of Waverly in a bikini suddenly flooded my mind, taking my breath away for a second. A knowing smile filled her delicate features as she pressed her hip against my hardening cock.
“Would you like to come hang out on the beach with me? Or is vacation something you don’t do?”
“I could do with a vacation.” I kissed her neck again, taking a deep breath of her warm, sleepy scent. “We’ll talk when everything’s said and done.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
I kissed her, drawing a deep breath of her before I reluctantly untangled myself from her touch.
“Got to go.”
“I hope Amelia’s okay.”
I glanced at her and nodded, the weight of the situation suddenly coming down on my shoulders again.
“Me too.”
Chapter 16
Amelia
We found a crowded parking lot and changed cars, managing to slip away in a Prius that would save us on gas. When you were on the run, using money stolen from hard-working Americans, it was always good to save a little gas. I managed to get us another wallet, too, full of cash from some business man who was showing off inside a little diner near the docks.
I could have made a good career as a pickpocket. Thank you, Hayden, for teaching me your style.
I never would have thought having such a skill would come in handy. But, as he said when he told me I needed to learn, there was never a situation in the security business that can be easily predicted.
“How did they find us in Louisiana? How did they know we were on that bus?”
Rowan shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“Could it have had something to do with you using the computer and accessing your work terminal?”
He glanced at me as he navigated the highway that would take us back up to the heart of Florida. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“Then we need to do it again.”
The car slowed a little as Rowan tried to focus on me in the small car. “What do you mean, do it again? You want me to access the terminal again?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“We need these people to come out of the woodwork. We need to identify them so that we can figure out what they want from you. Only by doing that can we find a way out of this situation.”
Rowan gripped the steering wheel of the car and sighed. “Maybe we shouldn’t do this alone, Amelia.” He glanced at me again. “Maybe we should just go, just disappear.”
“You mean go on the run permanently? Where would we go?”
“I don’t know. Switzerland? South America? Does it matter?”
“With what money?”
“I have money.”
“But the police probably put a hold on your accounts. You’ll set off a million alarms if you try to access them.”
“We can find a way, Amelia. Maybe we could get work down there. I’m pretty proficient with a computer. I could write code for someone.”
The idea of running away with Rowan wasn’t as unpleasant a though
t as it might have been a week ago. A week ago I never would have imagined that I would consider running away with a client, breaking the rules that I’d held close to my heart since I’d taken the job with Dragon. Since I joined the military, really.
My life was ordered, a well-oiled machine that offered me comfort in its predictability. Ever since leaving the chaos of my father’s house, I’d valued order. That girl, that person who lived that life, would never consider running away.
But I wasn’t that girl anymore. Things had changed. My ordered life had imploded and I was left standing in the debris with nothing but Rowan. And I was okay with that. More than okay, I was happy with it.
“You would really do that? You’d really want to run away with me?”
He reached over and took my hand. “In a heartbeat.”
For a moment I allowed myself to imagine it. Living on a beach somewhere, living a casual life with no worries. It would be nice. But then reality snuck in, the idea that we would forever have to look over our shoulders and worry that someone would eventually catch up with us. It would not be a carefree life if we were always afraid.
“How about this: we make an attempt to draw these people out. If it goes bad and we don’t get the answers we need, then we’ll discuss running.”
Rowan squeezed my hand but didn’t say anything.
“I don’t want you to live your life being afraid.”
He nodded. “I know.”
“We need to end this before your life is irrevocably ruined. If the cops catch you or these people manage to really hurt you—”
“I know.”
His words had a touch of finality to them that frightened me a little. He pulled his hand away to place it on the wheel and guide the car around a curve in the road. There was a new tension between us and I didn’t really understand what caused it. I knew he was disappointed, but surely he understood. Surely he saw that I was doing this for him as much as for any other reason.
But it didn’t feel like he knew.
We drove into Orlando a little before dusk. We found a large mall and used a newly stolen credit card to buy a new laptop and another prepaid cellphone, intending to not only draw out Rowan’s enemies, but to have a way to contact Dragon should things become uncontrollable. I suggested food, but Rowan—who’d been unusually silent most of the afternoon—insisted he wasn’t hungry.
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