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“No fatalities. From what we can tell, most suffered only minor burns and scrapes from the blast.” The forensics expert—Vincent—checked a gash on his forearm, swiping the blood away against his long-sleeve shirt. The muscled, tattooed Hawaiian ran a hand through his shoulder-length brown hair. “Was anyone else in the conference room with you?”
Liz shook her head. “No. Just the two of us.”
“Good. As much as I’d like to scour through debris for evidence of who attacked us, let’s get to the street. Then you tell me who the hell detonated a bomb in my building.” Sullivan turned down the long hallway leading past several now-empty offices, a med clinic and the elevators and stairwell.
“Whoever it was targeted Liz,” Braxton said.
Liz rounded into his vision. “There’s no evidence proving that bomb was meant for me.”
Sullivan twisted around, lips thin, hands ready to tear into the person responsible. “You used to work for the NSA, right? Sold classified intel and disappeared?” The CEO closed the distance between them, expression hard, calculating. “How do I know it wasn’t you who set a bomb in my conference room? Some sick game to get Elizabeth back in your life.”
“I’d kill any one of you before I let something happen to her. Is that a good enough answer for you?” Braxton straightened, surveying Vincent’s position in case the ex-cop made a move, then centered on Sullivan again. “The only thing that matters is this guy is going to keep gunning for her. I’m not going to let that happen.”
“Let’s move out.” Sullivan didn’t take his attention off Braxton. “I don’t trust you, Levitt.” Veins pulsed under the skin of the CEO’s arms as he pointed a dirt-smudged finger at him. “If anything happens to her, I will find you, understand?”
“I get that a lot.” Despite the threat, Braxton didn’t take offense. Liz had an entire team watching her back. He couldn’t fault the former Navy SEAL for protecting a member in his unit.
Vincent rounded behind him and Liz to take up the rear with silent obedience.
The sirens grew louder. First responders had arrived on the scene.
But Braxton didn’t move. The bomber hadn’t attacked Blackhawk Security. Not directly. The bastard had had only one target in mind, and he was staring right at her. The bomb was just the beginning. Whoever had set it would try again as soon as they realized Liz had survived. And what better way to ensure a target had been killed than enter the building as an EMT or firefighter for confirmation? Braxton lowered his voice, instincts prickling. There was more at stake now. They had a baby to consider. He shifted closer to her, pain radiating at the base of his skull as they made their way down the hallway, and lowered his voice to prevent the security cameras from picking up their conversation. “Listen to me, Liz. We can’t go to the street.”
“Wow, you do remember my name.” Liz moved to follow her colleagues.
He threaded his fingers around her arm and pulled her to a stop, holding her against him. The small fires burning around them had nothing on her body heat tunneling through his clothing right then. He covered his mouth and nose in the crook of his arm. “The garage. The only way in is with a key card, right? One exit? He’ll expect us down on the street with the others. Not exiting the garage.”
“What are you talking about?” She wrenched away from him as though his touch had burned her, his fingertips tingling from the friction against her jacket. Those dark brown eyes locked on him. One second. Two. Wisps of her uneven exhales tickled the oversensitized skin along his neck as she turned on him. “You’re insane if you think I’m going anywhere with you.”
Damn her stubbornness. One day it was going to get her killed. And then where would he be? He couldn’t find the bastard hunting her down without her. No matter how many times he’d tried to keep his distance, every road, every move to stay off the Feds’ radar had led him to Anchorage…to her. He didn’t care that her program might’ve already recognized him and reported his location to the NSA. He wasn’t going to leave her unprotected again.
The floor rumbled underneath his feet. The explosion had most likely damaged the building’s structure. They didn’t have a whole lot of time.
“We need to get moving.” Vincent stepped toward them as Blackhawk Security’s CEO disappeared into a cloud of smoke toward the stairwell. Close enough for Braxton to reach out and touch him.
He didn’t want to have to do this, but the hard determination in Liz’s gaze said he didn’t have any other choice. “All right. If you’re not going to come with me willingly—” Braxton spun, wrapping his grip around the Sig Sauer in Vincent’s shoulder holster, and twisted the weapon out of the cop’s reach. With one hard swing of the butt of the gun to the operative’s head, Vincent went down. Hard. Braxton hefted the gun up, attention leveled on the shocked woman in front of him.
Liz lunged for the unconscious operative. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m kidnapping you. Once the bomber realizes you’re not dead, we lose the upper hand.” He pointed to her jacket with the barrel of the gun. “Toss your sidearm. Please.”
“Do you honestly expect me to leave him here?” Digging beneath the leather, she tossed her handgun to the floor.
“Of course not. Rescue is already on the way.” He kicked the weapon out of her reach and motioned her to her feet. “Head for the garage.”
“You should shoot me now, because I’m sure as hell going to shoot you when I get the chance.” She rose slowly, expression controlled, voice dropping into dangerous territory. Her almond-shaped eyes narrowed on him. Exhaustion—maybe a bit of pain from the blast—broke through her movements as she stepped around the unconscious forensics expert at her feet.
“Wouldn’t expect anything less from you.” The muscles in Braxton’s arms and neck tensed. In the thousands of times he’d imagined this moment, this wasn’t how he’d expected their reunion to turn out. But there was a killer on the loose, and he wasn’t about to lose her again. Not Liz. And not their baby. She shifted in front of him. Every second she stayed out in the open notched his blood pressure higher. “I’m trying to save your life, damn it. Trust me.”
“Stop asking me to trust you.” Liz headed for the stairwell, fire reflecting in her dark gaze. “I’m still trying to get over the last time you betrayed me.”
Chapter Two (#u91195bcc-8762-5a6b-b75e-14e24253278a)
A wall of cold slammed into Elizabeth as they hit the parking garage. Only a handful of Blackhawk Security vehicles waited in their assigned spaces. There was no mysterious bomber waiting to ambush them as Braxton had suggested upstairs, but the illusion of safety never settled.
Could have had something to do with the fact the man she’d thought she’d loved all those months ago—the man whose child she carried—had a gun pressed against her spine. Smoke still registered on the air, the flashing of emergency lights bouncing off the cement walls from the street. There were only two ways out of the garage, and a bomb had taken out one of them. The other was the gate leading to the street, but she didn’t reach for the key card all operatives were required to carry. And she wouldn’t. Not until she had some answers. Scanning the SUVs, Elizabeth stopped dead in her tracks. “What’s the plan now?”
“Now we get out of here.” Braxton pressed his hand into the small of her back, bringing her into his side as he moved them toward one of the SUVs. His natural scent wrapped around her, but she didn’t find comfort there like she used to. “Don’t suppose you brought a set of car keys?”
“Must’ve left them in the jacket that doesn’t smell like smoke.” Pain washed through her. She glanced down at the gun aimed into her rib cage then quickly back to their surroundings as they closed in on the nearest SUV. Safety still on. Interesting. Sweat dripped down her spine as rain struck the cement at the edges of the asphalt. Him coming back here, the explosion… Her pulse throbbed at the base of her skull. This was insane. That bomb could’ve been meant for any operative on the team. For all she knew, it could’ve been meant for him. So why come back? Blackhawk Security wasn’t in the habit of filling in the authorities on their clients, but her boss should’ve made an exception for Braxton Levitt. The NSA wouldn’t stop looking for him. He’d never be a free man as long as treason charges were on the table. “What makes you think whoever set that bomb is targeting me?”
“Someone tortured your project supervisor and hijacked Oversight.” He kept his attention on the prize ahead, occasionally studying their surroundings as they moved. Ten feet until they reached the nearest SUV. His expression tightened beneath the shadows cast from the baseball cap. “Call it instinct.”
“Tell me you’re joking.” Elizabeth ripped away from his touch and shoved him away. He wouldn’t use the gun on her. This entire kidnapping was a charade. “That’s not enough evidence to insert yourself back into my life. You left, Braxton. You lost the right to pretend you care about anybody other than yourself.”
The green-gray eyes she’d been trying to forget for the last four months locked on her, those mountainous shoulders deflating beneath his heavy brown jacket. “Liz—”
The stairwell door slammed closed behind them. Braxton twisted back over his shoulder, hefting the gun up and over toward the imagined threat. He stepped in front of her as though he intended to protect her from harm. But he wasn’t a protector. No matter how many times he claimed he’d come back to keep her safe.
Thrusting her knee into the back of his, Elizabeth pushed him forward. The gun dropped to the pavement, metal on asphalt loud in her ears as he fought to balance. Lunging for it, she barely wrapped her fingers around the grip before he pulled her upright, his grip on her wrist cutting off circulation. Damn, he moved fast.
His breath fanned across the sensitive skin along her collarbones. Warmth spread from her neck up into her cheeks as he held her close, his mouth mere centimeters from hers. A mouth meant for spilling lies. “I’m not here to hurt you, Liz. I would never hurt you.”
Did she really have to remind him there were more ways to hurt her than the physical? He’d destroyed her career, gotten her pregnant and disappeared. It wasn’t until Sullivan Bishop and the Blackhawk Security team had offered her a place as their network security analyst three months ago that she’d started pulling the shattered pieces of her life back together. Without them, who knew where she would be right now.
“Let me go.” She fought to free herself, but Braxton only held her tighter. Once upon a time, she would’ve enjoyed that strong grip around her. Her insides instantly clenched. Now, the only thought running through her head centered on getting as far from him as possible. “What do you want from me?”
Her hand shook around the warm steel of the gun. She couldn’t let him get inside her head.
“I want you alive, for starters.” He pressed her against him, his fingertips leaving impressions in the small of her back. He studied her from forehead to chin. “If that means I have to knock you unconscious and throw you over my shoulder, I will.”
Air rushed from her lungs. The sincerity in his gaze, in his voice… He meant it. A short burst from one of the police sirens tensed the muscles down her spine but brought her back into the moment. “You actually believe someone is trying to kill me?”
“I have the proof.” Braxton released his hold on her wrist but let her keep the gun. Offering her a hand, he gave her the space to make the choice for herself. “All you have to do is trust me.”
“You make it sound so easy.” Every cell in her body urged her to take his hand. The sharp angles to his jaw, the heavy five o’clock shadow, the slight bend in his nose where he’d broken it playing football one summer, even the thin slice of scar across his palm where he’d slipped on ice in elementary school… It was all so familiar. Comforting. But she didn’t know this man. The Braxton she’d known never would’ve deserted her in the first place. She forced her attention to his eyes. “If I agree to go with you, you will answer every question I have.”
“I give you my word.” His voice dropped an octave. Sensual, compelling.
Her chest tightened on a deep inhale. She loosened her grip around the gun, the tingling sensation in her fingers subsiding as she leveled her chin with the asphalt. Handing over Vincent’s stolen Sig Sauer, Elizabeth drew back when his fingers closed on top of hers. In an almost militaristic manner, he cleared the loaded round, dropped the magazine, slammed it back into place and chambered another. No. Whoever stood in front of her wasn’t her Braxton. This man was hardened, muscled. Dangerous. She exhaled against the nausea churning inside. “And when this is over, you’ll crawl back to the rock you’ve been hiding under for the last four months. Are we clear?”
The lines etched between his dark eyebrows deepened. He dropped the gun to his side, so casual she’d believe he’d handled a firearm all his life. Which wasn’t the case. “Do you remember what I said to you that first day we met?”
The words forced their way forward from the back of her mind. Her throat tightened around the memory of her first day of working for the NSA, the day she’d met him. She swiped her tongue across her dry lips. “I sat down at the desk next to yours with my ice cream from the cafeteria, and you made fun of my choice of topping.” Rainbow-colored sprinkles. The nickname he’d called her ever since. A smile pulled at one edge of her mouth. “Then you said, ‘One thing you need to understand here, Sprinkles. This place will eat you alive. Stick with me, and no matter what happens, you can count on me to get you out of it.’” A hint of smoke coming off his clothing singed deep into her lungs as she focused on him. “And I believed you.”
“Do you still believe me?” he asked.
Yes. No. Her stomach flipped. If someone was trying to kill her, she wouldn’t stand around here all day waiting for it to happen. “I don’t know what to believe.”
Movement registered in her peripheral vision at the automatic gate. A firefighter. He’d presumably been assigned to check the rest of the building for signs of structural damage and flames. Dressed in full protective equipment, including face shield, he stopped just outside the gate and tried to pull it up manually. Wouldn’t work. That gate didn’t open for anybody unless they worked in the building. He’d have to get the fire code from her boss, Sullivan Bishop. Stiffness drained from the muscles around her spine a split second before the gate lifted on its own. “Everything okay down here?”
Braxton turned, maneuvering the gun behind his back. Out of sight.
“We’re fine. How’d you get in? That gate is supposed to be sealed.” Warning bells rang loud in her head. That wasn’t right. Nobody could access that gate—not even emergency personnel—without a Blackhawk Security operative key card or individualized code. She dropped her voice as the firefighter advanced. Too fast. Alone. “Braxton…”
The firefighter lifted a handgun and took aim. At her.
A strong hand pushed her to the ground as a bullet ripped past her ear. The garage turned on its axis. Braxton took position in front of her as he returned fire. Pain shot up through her knees, loose asphalt ripping holes in her leggings, but Elizabeth didn’t hesitate. Digging in her jacket pocket, she wrapped her hand around the keys to her company SUV near the shooter and hit the panic button.
Headlights flashed; the alarm blared. It’d only distract the shooter for a few seconds, but that was all she needed. The gunfire died. She shoved to her feet and sprinted for Elliot Dunham’s SUV. Blackhawk Security’s private investigator usually left his keys in the front seat, and she silently prayed he hadn’t changed up his routine. “Come on!”
Footsteps echoed close behind her as bullets two and three barely missed their mark. Chunks of cement nicked at her exposed skin, and she raised her arms to protect her face. Wouldn’t do a damn bit of good against a bullet, but instinct and adrenaline drove her now. She rounded the tail end of Elliot’s SUV and wrenched the door open. No keys. She dived inside, ripping the visor down. The keys dropped into her lap.
Braxton took cover behind the hood, squeezing off another shot. Then a third.
“Get in!” Elizabeth pulled the driver’s side door closed and started the engine. Shoving the SUV into Drive, she paused as the shooter positioned himself directly in front of them.
Hiking himself into the back seat, Braxton tapped on her shoulder. “Liz, go!”
The firefighter raised his gun, taking aim. One second. Two. And fired.
She froze as the bulletproof glass held against the shot. Then unfroze as rage coursed through her. The shooter had come for her, targeted her. Lifting her foot from the brake, she slammed on the accelerator and steered directly into the shooter. The growl of the engine drowned the pounding of her heartbeat in her ears. Pressure built in her lungs. “Hang on back there.”
Her leather seat protested against his grip on the headrest. “Liz…”
The shooter pulled the trigger two more times, each bullet caught in the windshield, a split second before he launched himself out of the way of the vehicle.
Elizabeth spun the steering wheel toward the still-open security gate. Bouncing in her seat as they catapulted over the gate’s tracks, she fishtailed out of the garage. Blackhawk Security grew distant in the rearview mirror. Two familiar faces stepped into the middle of the road behind them, but she didn’t have time to stop and explain everything to her team. Braxton had been telling the truth.
Someone was targeting her, but she wasn’t the only one she had to worry about now. She lifted her gaze to the rearview mirror, to the father of her unborn baby. “Fine. You can take me to whatever safe house you’ve set up until we figure out who you think is trying to kill me. But to be clear, it’s not because I trust you.” Elizabeth took a deep breath, her ribs aching from the explosion in the conference room, then forced her attention back to the road. “It’s because you got me pregnant.”
“I STILL CAN’T believe it.” Braxton couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. Someone had tried to kill the woman he vowed to protect, but it was more than that. Adrenaline drained from his veins in small increments, but not enough to clear his head.
Wow. Liz was pregnant. And he was the father. She’d told him before the explosion, but he hadn’t been able to process that until now. It’d been kind of hard to think when the bullets were flying. Reaction—that was what he was good at. But…he was going to be a father. A smile threatened to overwhelm his features, pure joy exploding through him.
“Someone just tried to kill us. Twice. Can we please focus on that?” The weight of her attention pinned him against his seat from the rearview mirror. “I think we have bigger problems to talk about.”
“I think the fact you’re pregnant is pretty big.” He swayed with the SUV as she wound through neighborhoods, around strip malls and into the edges of the city. Days of staying off the grid, months of grueling physical training, years of working for the NSA…none of it had prepared him for this. A baby. He compressed the safety button on the stolen gun and set it beside him on the seat. They were going to have a baby. “Might as well not have used protection at all.”
“Yeah, apparently, latex wasn’t strong enough for your swimmers.” A hint of a smile played across her mouth, the first softening of her guard since he set sights on her in the conference room. “If you’re thinking about asking me whether or not I’m sure the baby is yours, I’ll save you the time. Yes, Braxton, she’s yours. No, Braxton, I haven’t been with anybody else since the night you took me to bed then disappeared without a word. And, yes, I’m keeping the baby. I plan to raise her on my own without help. Any other questions?”
“It’s a girl?” He ran his palms over the baseball cap and interlaced his fingers at the crown of his head. He turned away from her, surveying the curve of the street but not really seeing where they were. The muscles across his back strained under the self-induced pressure. He didn’t know what else to say, what to think. They were having a girl?
“I found out the sex a couple days ago.” The vulnerability in her voice compelled him to face her again, but she’d turned her gaze back to the road. Snow and ice kicked up along the SUV. She rolled her lips between her teeth. “This wasn’t how I wanted you to find out. I tried to find you, but four months is a long time waiting for you to come back. Figured you’d moved on and I could do the same. When I got tired of the NSA interrogating me about your whereabouts, I changed my name in every federal database I could hack and relocated.”
He’d known about her search effort but ultimately decided to stay away. It’d been the hardest decision of his life and the only way to keep her safe. Until four days ago when he’d learned about Dalton Meyer’s murder and that Oversight’s feeds had been hacked. Until he’d uncovered the program’s surveillance logs. Someone had put her in their crosshairs.
Intense pressure built behind his sternum as she took a sharp left. The city came into focus for the first time since Braxton had gotten in the vehicle. A familiar line of bare trees surrounding Fairview Lions Park cut off his air. A good foot of snow covered the all-too-familiar horseshoe pit and most of the green and purple playground where he’d spent countless nights as a kid after his father had lost the house to the bank. Right there, under the small rock wall. He forced his attention back to the rearview mirror as a group of homeless made their way down the street, back to her, his anchor. No point in studying the weathered faces as they passed. His old man had most likely died from his addictions a long time ago. Wasn’t important. The past was dead, and he sure as hell would make sure it stayed that way. “Did you also figure moving here was enough to keep me from finding you?”
“I’d accepted you weren’t coming back.” Liz cocked her head. “In retrospect, I guess Anchorage had been on my mind since you told me you’d never step foot in this city again. It’d worked until an hour ago.” She glanced at him—almost too fast for him to catch it—then back to the road. “You never told me how you managed to find me.”
“You’re predictable. I knew you’d never change your first name.” Not after what she’d told him about her mother and the long line of Elizabeths in her family. “As for your new last name, I remembered your favorite TV show growing up. Wasn’t hard to sift through the short list of Elizabeth Dawsons and track you down from there.”
Nothing would’ve stopped him from finding her.
“I’ll keep that in mind next time.” Her knuckles tightened over the steering wheel. There wouldn’t be a next time. Not if he had anything to say about it. She turned the SUV east, leaving the park and memories he’d worked hard to bury behind. “So are you going to tell me where this safe house of yours is or are we going to drive around all night?”
“Make one more loop around the neighborhood.” Braxton studied the cars behind them. They hadn’t been followed. Whoever had taken shots at them in the parking garage probably hadn’t been able to make it past the wall of police officers and emergency personnel surrounding the building. At least, not in a hurry. On top of that, her team had seen them race from the scene. His pulse hammered at the base of his skull, and he wiped at the dried patches of blood along his forehead. He should’ve known the bastard would come at her at Blackhawk Security. As far as he’d been able to tell over the last few days, that was where she’d spent most of her time. Day and night. Protecting her clients just as she’d protected millions of lives during her contract work for the NSA. And now with a baby. “Have you told your team?”
“No. Not yet.” Her shoulders rose on an audible inhale. Hesitation tightened the cords running down her neck. She made another turn, seemingly refusing to look back at him. “I was thinking of telling Sullivan about the baby today, but then someone blew up the conference room and it sort of slipped to the back of my mind.”
A laugh escaped from his control. She always did have a way of downplaying stressful situations with sarcasm. “Understandable.”
“I work in network security now.” Liz ran a hand through her hair and levered her elbow against the driver’s side door. “My clients come to me to assess their firewalls, encrypt the information on their servers, basically make their networks unhackable. I analyze shell corporations and perform background checks for everyone on my team. I can’t think of a single person who would want me dead.”
“All I know is someone tried to kill you back there.” He wouldn’t discount the possibility the threat was tied to Blackhawk Security. They had to consider all the angles. Past, present, someone invested in the outcome of the firm’s military and private contracts. The list of suspects with the kind of knowledge and training that shooter had to have was endless, but military training was a definite. He needed access to her client files. “And I’m not going to let them succeed.”
“Do you think this could be linked to my contract with the NSA?” Her voice wavered. To someone who hadn’t memorized every inflection, every emotion, it would’ve gone unnoticed. But not to him. He knew her inside and out, down to a cellular level. Even with filtered moonlight coming through the SUV’s tinted windows, he noted the color draining from her face. Hell. The nightmares. How could he have forgotten about her damn nightmares? Her throat worked to swallow. “Maybe a family member or someone who’d gotten a look at the files?”
Her fear slid through him, and his body reacted automatically. Ready for battle to protect what was his. One breath. Two. “You still have nightmares.”
Not a question. He was there during Oversight’s trial run. He’d witnessed how it’d affected her.
“Assuming the person who shot at us in the garage is the same person who hacked those feeds, which might not be the case, you should be able to use my backdoor access to narrow down a location.” Him? Liz twisted the steering wheel to the right a little too hard. He fell back against the seat and reached out for his gun before it fell to the floor. Okay, so she didn’t want to talk about what kept her up at night, but he couldn’t find this bastard on his own. He needed her to run the program. “The only problem is the access opens a two-way door. The second you lock on to a location, he has yours.”
“Don’t you mean he’d have our location?” he asked.
“No, Braxton.” She set her jaw, chancing a quick glance into the rearview mirror. “I told you the day I terminated my consulting contract with the NSA. I’ll never touch that program again. If you want to trace those feeds, you’re doing it alone.”
Braxton didn’t answer.
“Turn right at the next street. Third building from the end of the road.” The apartment he’d leased under a fake name off one of those online sites where home owners rented out their homes wasn’t much. Two bedrooms, two bathrooms. But it would get the job done while he was back in Anchorage. However long that would be. He studied Liz as she pulled the SUV to the curb then shouldered his way out of the vehicle behind her. She stepped onto the pavement, hand supporting her head where shrapnel had cut into her during the explosion. A groan worked up her throat, and his blood pressure spiked. He stepped into her, her rough exhale skimming across his neck as rain pounded onto his shoulders. “You okay?”
“It’s nothing.” She dropped her hand and stepped away. Her right hand shook slightly. She tried to hide it by curling her fingers into her palms, but she couldn’t hide from him.
She was scared. Rightfully so, but he’d die before he let anything happen to her. Or their baby. “I’m not going to let that bastard lay a finger on you. I promise.”
Silence settled between them. Tight, thick and full of distance.
“I only agreed to your help because someone was shooting at us, and I didn’t want to die.” Liz shook her head. “So I don’t need your promises. I need you to keep me alive until I figure out who wants me dead.”
Chapter Three (#u91195bcc-8762-5a6b-b75e-14e24253278a)
Elizabeth hefted the SUV’s gate above her head and lifted the black duffel bag standard for all Blackhawk Security operatives from the dark interior. Mostly supplies. A couple changes of clothes, ammunition, food storage, emergency flares. The basics of her new profession. Never knew what kind of weather or client would come calling. Although they’d borrowed Elliot’s SUV, and the clothes weren’t going to fit her. “If you’re not going to trace Oversight’s feeds on your own, fill me in on your plan.”
They’d wound a lot of circles through neighborhoods, parks and strip malls, finally ending up at what looked like an apartment complex. The shooter hadn’t followed them. She would’ve spotted him through the maze of routes they’d taken. The SOB who’d taken a shot at her was most likely licking his wounds and devising another way to kill her. If Braxton had been telling the truth about the shooter’s target. She paused at the thought. She took care of network security for a start-up security company. Wasn’t exactly the kind of job that would land her in a killer’s crosshairs. But if this had anything to do with her work for the NSA…
No. It couldn’t. She’d left that life behind months ago. Besides, those files were classified. It’d take someone with much higher security clearance than the director of the NSA to access them. That’d been part of the deal. She’d signed dozens of nondisclosure agreements about the program’s trial run, and the federal government would hide Oversight’s existence at all costs.
