COLE (Dragon Security Book 1) (30 page)

Kate

I couldn’t stand the way he was looking at me. I didn’t deserve the naked affection I saw in his eyes. I didn’t deserve to be loved that way.

I dropped my utensils and stood, grabbing my wine glass as I made my way inside the house.

“Kate,” he called, as I disappeared from sight.

I didn’t know where I was going. There was nowhere to go. I paced in front of the massive fireplace, my thoughts so wild and unorganized that I found myself wondering why someone would need a fireplace so large. What do you burn in something like that? You could probably fit a dozen people and an entire tree trunk. What do you need with that?

“Kate,” he said again, coming into the room but staying back, not even trying to touch me. If he had, I would have lost it. I would have become a blubbering fool.

“Why are you here with me? Why are you putting yourself at risk for me?”

“It’s my job.”

I glared at him because I could hear the laughter in his voice. I drank the last of the wine in my glass—and, oh, my God! It was so good!—and thought about tossing the glass at the stone of the fireplace. But it didn’t belong to me, and I couldn’t intentionally bring myself to break something that looked so expensive, especially when it wasn’t mine. So I set it down, carefully, on the mantelpiece.

“You shouldn’t be here. After the things I said…such awful things!”

“You’ve never said anything that bad.”

I shot another glance at him, only growing more agitated when I saw the twinkle dancing in those clear sea blue eyes.

“You know what I’m talking about. I told you to disappear.”

“You were hurting.”

“We were both hurting.” I shook my head, the memory of the scar on his back haunting me. “You went to war, and you could have been killed!”

“A little dramatic, don’t you think?”

I spun around, gesturing at my own back. “I’m not blind. I’ve seen the scar.”

He crossed his arms over his chest, looking so formidable that it was almost hard to believe someone so strong could be wounded. And that wall that he wore when I touched a sore spot, when I asked a question he wasn’t ready to answer, came over his eyes.

“You were wounded.”

“Lots of soldiers were wounded over there.”

“But if you had died, I never would have known. No one would have come knocking on my door.”

“Would you have wanted them to?”

I groaned, that question wounding me more than anything else he could have asked me in that moment. I turned, again not sure where I was headed. I couldn’t even see where I was going for the tears that were blinding me. He caught me before I’d gone very far, grabbing my upper arm and yanking me around at the same time he pushed me backward, and shoved me up against the wall.

“Tell me what this is about.”

I tried to turn my head, but he grabbed my jaw and forced me to look at him.

“Tell me,” he said, almost begging.

“You left me when I needed you most.”

I saw the pain burst open; I saw the rawness of his heart right there in the middle of some stranger’s house. And it hurt so badly that I needed to get it out. I hit him, not because I wanted to hurt him but because I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I hit him over and over again, slamming my fists against his chest. And he let me, standing there with his arms down at his sides. I hit him until the strength went out of me and my knees buckled. He caught me, like he’d always caught me before that night, before Joshua…he caught me and carried me to the bedroom.

I think his intention was to just leave me on the mattress, but I wrapped my fist in his shirt.

“Please, don’t go.”

He stared at me for a long moment, searching my eyes. And then his lips were on mine, the weight of his body slowly settling on mine. Clothes were just an impediment. We tugged and pulled and ripped, needing to be close, needing to be one together.

It wasn’t until he was inside of me, until we were as close as we could ever be, that the pain in my chest began to dissolve. I wrapped myself around him, refusing to close my eyes, refusing to lose any connection with him. And he was there with me the whole way, his eyes glued to mine even when they filled with tears, even when he collapsed on top of me and cried like a child. I held him, cradled him against me, determined to never let go.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered hours later, as we lay in the darkness, our limbs still tangled together.

“For what?”

“For blaming you. I always knew it wasn’t anything you’d done.”

He kissed the top of my head. “It was no one’s fault but the bastards who attacked him.”

I was quiet for a minute, my finger playing in the fine hair on his chest.

“Kate?”

“I know what started the fight.”

And then it was his turn to be quiet. “What do you mean?” he asked after a few minutes.

“I went with my dad to the district attorney’s office every time they had a meeting. I know what was in the police reports, what the witnesses said. And I know what John Kyle said.”

He held his breath a moment, then took a slow, unsteady exhalation.

“You knew all this time?”

“Yeah. I know Joshua was just trying to defend my honor.”

“Because of me.”

I sat up, surprised to hear those words on his lips. “Not because of you. Because of a mutual choice we made to hide our relationship.” I touched his face, caressed his cheek. “But it wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t mine. It was just Joshua being Joshua.”

“If I’d been there—”

“It might have been your funeral we attended that spring.” I settled back down, my head resting on his chest. “It’s stupid, the way fate works. But I’m glad it wasn’t your funeral.”

He tugged me closer against him. “So am I.”

We fell asleep a bit later. And we both slept soundly.

No more bad dreams.

Donovan

I woke from a sound sleep and found Kate nestled against my chest, her breath warm against my skin. I watched her for a few minutes, happier than I could express to find myself waking beside her each and every morning.

If only this could translate into the real world.

I couldn’t let myself forget that we were still hiding out from some sort of threat. In fact, I was due to call and check in with Ash this morning.

I carefully slid out from under her, sitting silently as I waited for her breathing to return to that deep, satisfied breathing of a soundly sleeping person. When it did, I grabbed my cell phone and a pair of jogging pants and headed out to the back deck.

“Nothing new,” Ash said when I called a few minutes later. “The police think that the explosion was caused by some homemade device placed in the garage. Probably some small device placed near a few gas cans.”

“That seems a little risky.”

“I think this was meant as a warning. The perp was just saying, ‘Hey! Look what I can do!’”

“Yeah, that would be my guess, too.”

“Emily says they have a few suspects, but she doesn’t seem too confident that they’ll make an arrest any time soon.”

“Okay.”

“How are you?” Ash asked. “How are things going out there?”

“She’s had a few little memory breaks, but nothing significant.”

“But it’s a good sign. Means she might recover her memory before too much longer.”

“That’s what she’s hoping.”

Ash was quiet for a second. Then he said, “That wasn’t really what I was asking though.”

“I know it wasn’t.” I cleared my throat. “We’re enjoying your wine collection.”

He chuckled. “Go for it. Someone should be having a little fun right about now.”

Kate was standing in the doorway when I turned to go back inside.

“Any news?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Nothing worth talking about.”

There was a tightness that crossed her face, a tension she was fighting.

“Are they keeping my dad informed about what’s going on? Does he know where I am?”

“Not specifically. But he knows you’re safe.”

“Okay.”

She turned to go back inside, and I watched her, wondering why someone would want to hurt her. What could somebody possibly have against her, someone who knew computers and explosives? That would have to be a unique person, someone with an eclectic background. Who, besides me, could be a part of Kate’s life and know those things?

The thing was, everyone was still fixated on the idea that the perp coming after Kate was someone who was caught in the act of robbing cars, or someone who wanted to rob the bank, who killed the security guard when he happened upon this person by accident. But it didn’t feel that way to me. Not anymore.

Kate’s car was broken into two weeks before the security guard was killed. Why? What was the thief looking for? And why her car? It couldn’t be just a coincident. Someone was looking for something. Or trying to see how hard it would be to get into her car there in the bank’s employee lot.

And then her memory of the night of the murder. She said she saw something in the parking lot and instinctively knew something was wrong. Why? What was it about what she saw that she knew it was wrong? Did she recognize something? Or someone?

Then there were her dreams. She saw herself in familiar places. The feelings of fear and dread didn’t come until later. Was that because she knew who the perp was and her subconscious mind was trying to tell her where she’d met with that person before?

It all seemed to lean toward someone in Kate’s life. And I had a list of the people in her life that Daniel gave me when we took this case. But I knew most of those people, and I couldn’t think of a single person on it who met the criteria we’d worked out.

Unless it was two people working together.

And that opened a door I wasn’t sure I wanted to walk through.

At the Compound

David studied the screens of his computer monitors, watching for the anomaly he knew was coming. And there it was.

Shit!
How did he let such a big hole in the programming go unnoticed? He should have checked it, should have plugged it up long ago. Closing it now was just like closing the barn door behind the horse…a metaphor he hated.

He worked quickly, modifying the code so that no one could use that particular door to hack his cameras again. And then he ran through the code of his program, looking for any similar holes that could be used to manipulate their security protocol. He’d been going over it again and again over the last few days. He felt like the kid whose clothes were stolen during gym class. But this felt more like he’d handed the clothes over to the bullies rather than them breaking into his locker.

He was always so careful. Always. This never should have happened.

“Listen up,” Ash called, “we’ve got two new, high-priority clients coming in. So I need everyone on deck.”

David ignored him, still staring at the computer code as if it would suddenly stand up and start talking to him.

And then it did.

“Shit, shit, shit!”

“Watch your mouth, brother,” Kirkland called to him from where he was sitting at the kitchen table.

Ash stood up from his desk, his eyes moving straight to David. He knew him well enough to know that if he was cussing, there was something deeply wrong.

He crossed the room in half a dozen stride, not walking quickly, just with long strides.

“Find something?”

David almost didn’t want to tell him, but if he didn’t, he might be putting someone’s life in danger.

“There’s a breach.”

“What do you mean, a breach?”

“Whoever got into the camera feeds, also got into my program. This person…” David sighed. “He’s good.”

“You almost sound like you admire him.”

“I do, in a way.”

Ash’s eyes narrowed, but he understood. David knew he did. Ash respected his enemy. In a way, this was the same thing. This person was David’s nemesis, but also his equal.

“What did they have access to? And are they still there?”

“I’ve just shut the door,” David said, his fingers moving so quickly over the keyboard he knew Ash was impressed. “But I don’t think he was there anymore. I didn’t hit any resistance in closing it, and I would have if it was still an active door.”

“Can you tell when the last time it was used was?”

David plugged in a few more values, staring at the code until he felt a headache begin to ache behind his eyes. “Twelve hours ago.”

“You’re sure.”

“I’m sure.”

“And what were they doing then?”

A few more keystrokes and…David’s heart sank.

“They were looking for Donovan and Miss Thompson.” David looked up at Ash, watching the tension push the color from his face.

“We better warn them.”