Dangerous Protector (Aegis Group Book 5) (5 page)

Scott’s fist sailed through the air. Marco side-stepped, wrapped his hand around the guy’s wrist and jerked forward. He raised his knee, driving it into Scott’s stomach and delivered a hard right hook to the dick-for-brain’s jaw. Marco let go and Scott stumbled back, lost his footing and went staggering down the three steps to the sidewalk before gravity won over and he landed on his ass.

“You come back here again, I’m going to shove my foot up your ass so far you’ll taste it. Got it?” Marco stared at Scott for a moment longer, turned, and slammed the door. He twisted the locks, probably too hard, but he had to take that frustration out on something, and unless Fiona was hiding a punching bag around here, the locks were it.

Fiona stood where he’d last seen her, eyes wide, hands clutched to her chest.

Shit.

And now she was looking at him like he was going to snap her in two.

“Your water’s getting cold.” He curled and uncurled his fingers.

“You…you’re still in your underwear.”

He glanced down.
Yup.

A civil man would…say something.

“Sorry about that.”

“You don’t sound sorry.” Fiona regarded him warily.

“It’s what I’m supposed to say, isn’t it?”

“Don’t say something you don’t mean.”

“Fuck, what am I supposed to say? You’re looking at me like you think I’m about to…” He couldn’t even say it. “What did he do to you?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re white and shaking.”

“I’m always white.”

“Not what I meant.”

“Scott didn’t do anything to me. He was an ass, but he didn’t hurt me, if that’s what you mean.”

“Why do you have a reinforced door and kick plates?” He’d noticed that feature on his way in.

“I like being safe.”

“Fiona. I…”
I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s wrong.

Only
he
was what was wrong.

Marco should leave. He should get his shit and split, because very soon she’d know what he did. Or maybe he’d get lucky and she’d assume it was Scott. That was a long shot. A real long shot, and not something he should plan on.

Normal, single women didn’t have reinforced doors, high-tech security, and an automatic flinch response without a reason.

Fuck, what had he done?

What had they missed?

“I got scared, okay?” Fiona glanced away.

He’d been staring. He couldn’t do anything right.

“Scared of what? Scott?”

“Yes. No. Nothing.” She turned, disappearing around the corner into the kitchen.

Marco followed, because it was the only thing he could do. He stopped at the bar and watched her put the kettle back on. Silence had worked last time. Maybe it’d work again.

“Scott… Things started off…good. We met at a work thing. He was confident. Most people, they just talk over me. I’m the boss’ admin. They don’t really see me. And Scott was…he was what I thought I wanted.” The miserable, crestfallen look on her face said otherwise. “Scott almost got me fired a couple weeks ago.”

“What? How’d he do that?”

“He… I don’t know. I brought work home because I had this cold that kept going around the office and it wouldn’t go away. So I got sent home, but there was so much work to do I brought it here. And some files just…disappeared. I…don’t know that it was Scott…but…”

“Your gut says it’s him.”

“Yeah.”

“Then it’s him.”

“But…I don’t know for sure, but…”

“But?”

“But I’d open my work laptop and there would be emails read. Emails I hadn’t seen…”

“I’ve found that women’s intuition is rarely wrong.” So why weren’t her warning bells going off about
him
yet? They should be.

“Shit.” Fiona moved the kettle to the red burner and shook her head.

“Move. Sit.” Marco ushered her around to the stools at the bar, then turned to the refrigerator to see what was on hand. “Start at the beginning. Where did you meet Scott? What was going on?” And who the fuck had laid a finger on her?

He should go.

But he wasn’t.

No, he was going to make her an omelet and then figure out how to bury Scott. And after that, he’d get Ghost to put a stop to this mess. Whatever Fiona had survived, he wouldn’t put her through hell again.

5.

“ We were at a
Denver business summit. It’s a lot of people in suits posturing, networking, trying to seem like they’re better than everyone else.” Fiona wrapped her arms around herself and stared at the counter top. “My boss likes for me to go so he can schmooze and not have to remember the important things. I follow him around and write it down.”

She might as well be invisible at those awful meetings.

But then Scott had seen her.

She’d thought he was different. She thought every guy she fell for was different. The secret was, they were all the same.

Marco didn’t seem so bad. A lot rougher around the edges, but maybe that’s what she needed. Someone different.

He’d found her skillet, some eggs, the few withered veggies in her fridge, and some sliced ham. She couldn’t imagine eating right now, but she wouldn’t begrudge him a meal after his heroic display. It was the kind of thing a modern day Prince Charming might do. Protecting her. Taking care of her.

“My boss had to go into this closed-door meeting, so I was left on my own. It was cocktail hour, so I got a drink and was looking for a wall to hold up. The summits aren’t complete without some married CEO trying to hook up for a night.” She shivered, recalling one too many wandering hands. “Scott bumped into me, and he just pulled me into his conversation. He’s not funny, but…he’s… It’s the way he talks to people. He makes you listen. I remember standing there with these strangers, Scott talking, and…I liked him.”

Fiona rolled her eyes.

God, she sounded like an idiot, but there was no stopping her now.

“We traded numbers. Went out a few times. I fell hard and fast for him, because that’s who I am.” She glanced up at Marco. He was supposed to be gone already. If he wasn’t careful, she’d fall for him, too. Because that was what she did. She fell in love with men, sometimes men who couldn’t or wouldn’t love her back. If she was lucky, they usually liked her, but it never lasted. And it didn’t change how she loved. She was a serial monogamist with the scars to prove her loyalty. She never learned her lesson.

“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—”