Contracted Defense Page 14

  She raised her gaze to his finally, that striking blue stopping his heart the way it had been over and over for the last twenty-four hours. He wanted to get used to it. Hell, he’d give up caffeine and take this feeling as a daily hit instead. It’d be worth it.

  “I guess I’ve got a lot to learn from Tegan, then.” She smiled. “And you, if you’ll be patient.”

  Her smile changed her entire expression from the elegance of sculpted marble to the breathtaking beauty of wild things. He loved seeing her smiles even more because they were fleeting. Almost immediately after she gave a smile, it slipped away, disappeared. All he wanted to do was give her more reasons to smile.

  “Well, there’s only so much you can learn from a dog. They’re straightforward, simple souls that way.” He leaned back in his chair, going for a lighter banter. He’d cheered up considerably with her willingness to talk with him more. If she was asking him for patience, they were going to continue to work together. “I, on the other hand, have all sorts of skill sets and ideas to lead you out of your comfort zone.”

  He watched her carefully. Even if she’d come back with an implied apology, she might not be willing to continue to pursue other aspects of the chemistry between them. As nonchalant as he was trying to be, he wanted to know.

  She raised an eyebrow. “I’m not afraid to step outside of what’s familiar to me.”

  Good. He grinned. “Not afraid, no. But I’m guessing you haven’t been challenged very often. It’s easier to let you take the lead. How long’s it been since someone stood toe to toe with you?”

  She shrugged. “Present company excluded, most people can’t. If they’re in my way and I have a mission to complete, I take them down.”

  He stood. She pushed away from the desk to face him. They stared at each other for a long moment, inches apart. It was more than sharing space, they were savoring each other’s presence and he was hyperaware of every breath she took. “We have a mission, but this is outside of it, separate. You can walk away, but you are not going to take me down.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Victoria steadied herself as she matched Adam’s gaze. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  There, she’d said it. She’d been deciding all this time, struggling with whether or not to let this thing between them go on. It wasn’t the right thing to do, but it wasn’t precisely wrong either. It was complicated.

  She wasn’t going to back away from Adam just because it was complicated.

  He stood, waiting, a mountain of a man. She wanted to climb all over him—his broad chest and shoulders, delicious muscles and wonderfully bronze skin—but they were on-site with the client. The professional Victoria would’ve reminded them both of the agreement they had to wait until the mission was over. There was a part of her telling professional Victoria to experiment a bit.

  “What’s next?” he asked her, his voice low and dark. It was the tone he used with her in the boathouse and in the hotel the first night they’d met. His voice, more so than his question, resonated in her sternum and made her nipples tighten.

  She let her gaze fall to his lips, tempting and curved in an incorrigible grin. He could do amazing things to her with that mouth of his. He had devastated her in the best of ways in the boathouse not long ago. Obviously what her professional self considered the correct course of action was already a lost cause. Instead of doing what she ought, she desperately needed to do what she wanted.

  Lunging forward, she captured his mouth with hers. His arms caught her around the waist and steadied her against him. He opened for her immediately, letting her explore with her tongue and drown them both in the hunger the kiss awakened for both of them. She reached up and cupped his face in her hands as she nipped at the corner of his mouth. He responded by ducking his head and sucking the spot where her pulse beat below the skin of her neck.

  She tilted her head back, eyes closed, reveling in the feel of his hard body against hers. “This is going to get us in all sorts of trouble.”

  She’d kept her voice low. Opening her eyes, she glanced out the doorway and into the dining area where Tegan still snoozed in blissful peace. The dog couldn’t care less.

  “Trouble can be good.” Adam squeezed her butt with both hands, lifting her up and against him slightly.

  She pressed her face into his shoulder to stifle her groan. “How so?”

  Even though her words were muffled, he’d heard and understood her. He brushed his lips over her ear, nibbled at the sensitive lobe. “Sharpens your reaction time when things take an unexpected direction. You learn to think quick.”

  He’d dragged one hand over her hip and up her side. His fingers wrapped over the curve of her ribs and his thumb caressed the underside of her breast. Damn, he had big hands.

  She sucked in an unsteady breath. “This is a serious risk to keeping our focus.”

  He shifted, his other hand sliding between them until he cupped her between her legs. His palm pressed against her, moving and applying more pressure until she gasped and clutched at his shoulders. He curved his fingertips until she wished her pants weren’t stopping him from entering her. His palm continued to stimulate her clit as his other hand squeezed her breast in a matching rhythm. “Say the word and this stops. Until then, this is going to be all about what you need.”

  He was going to bring her over the edge, and they were both fully clothed. She opened her mouth to say something—ask, beg, try for logic—she wasn’t sure what.

  In the other room, Tegan leaped straight out of sleep to his feet and barked, staring up at the top of the stairs.

  “Stop.” She gulped in air as priorities clashed inside her head and her body cried out for more of his touch, more of him. “I need... We have responsibilities. Things. We have more things to finish before the night is over to secure the property.”

  She hadn’t wanted to stop. Honestly, she would’ve gone where things had been leading naturally, and client site or not, they’d have had their clothes off. The dog had saved them both from an incredibly compromising position.

  Adam stepped away from her, struggling every bit as hard. “Yeah. We do.”

  “But.” She dared look up into his stormy gaze. “Once we close out the day, we might be able to pick up where we left off.”

  It was unprofessional. It was a conflict of several different things. But it was what she wanted with every cell in her body, and if they could do their job and feed this insanity for each other, she couldn’t resist giving it a chance.

  A wicked gleam shone in his gaze as he leaned in for a lingering kiss. “Let’s get to work, then.”

  * * *

  It took a few hours to install the new motion sensors in critical locations. They’d chosen key areas not covered by other aspects of the initial deter-or-detect perimeters. These were areas where intruders would seek to bypass the physical infrastructure of the outermost perimeter. Places where the fencing ended at the water’s edge and the small dock area were some of their choices and best installed in the dark while the in-house security couldn’t necessarily see them.

  It also gave them an idea of how much the patrols needed to be altered. If Ray and Brian or Dante and Jay didn’t encounter them, then intruders would have as much of a chance to proceed onto the property. They made the necessary notes to recommend to Dante along with suggestions for expansion of the security staff, then headed back up to the main house.

  With the new visual security and the drones in place, detection of movement on the grounds from the outer perimeter right to the main house had been significantly improved in the space of twenty-four hours. If they worked quickly, detection directly inside the house was going to be brought up to a satisfactory level before dawn.

  “I’m still surprised the stores in town had carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide detectors at a level of sensitivity we were
looking for.” Victoria carefully marked the spots on the interior walls for drilling, choosing the optimal locations to place the detectors but trying to take into consideration the impact to the interior design. These detection units should be as unobtrusive as possible.

  Adam shrugged, following her with a small, powerful drill in hand. “There’re some older buildings on the island, and they are used to doing things for themselves. They might not have had them in stock for the same intended purpose as we’re using them, but they work with some minor mods with our system.”

  He marveled at her work ethic. She’d been going nonstop, and it would do no good to suggest a rest. He’d also enjoyed moving undetected over the grounds with her under the cover of night. It’d been good practice and an opportunity to observe her in action.

  “Installing detection on the water supply will be more complicated, but I think it’s necessary.” She stood, stretching her arms and rolling her shoulders to ease the muscles across her back. “This place is not off the grid, and we’ll want to know immediately if anyone is trying to get to them via the water supply.”

  They had sensors to give them the earliest warning possible should anyone try to gas Roland—and them—in the house too. It’d been easy to pick up a gas mask for Roland. They’d gotten creative to set up a safe enclosure for Tegan with a blower unit and filter to provide positive pressure. If a gas situation came up, they just needed to toss the dog into his crate and seal the enclosure. If they had to, they could move him and the enclosure as a whole. Far better and quicker than to try to wrestle an untrained dog into an ill-fitting gas mask.

  Roland was their priority, but neither of them had been willing to leave Tegan behind in a worst-case scenario.

  Victoria sighed. “This entire wall can’t be load bearing. There doesn’t seem to be a single stud in the entire thing.”

  “Well, this detector isn’t particularly heavy. We could install it with screw anchors instead of finding a stud.” Adam bent to drill the prerequisite holes into the dining room wall. He pressed the tip of the drill to the wall, expecting the same resistance as the others, but almost at contact the wall gave way and the drill point shot through. “What the—”

  “What is that?” Victoria was at his side in moments.

  Tegan had rushed up and sniffed at the tiny hole made by the drill. The small dog actually whined, his stocky body literally trembling with eagerness.

  There was too much air pressure in the wall. Footsteps from upstairs rushed from the direction of Roland’s private rooms toward the top landing, toward them. Victoria rose to face their client and Adam drilled another hole, higher and bigger, enough to shine a light and see inside the wall.

  “Stop.” Roland’s voice was tight with anxiety, fear, desperation. All of that wrapped tightly into one word as the man hurried down the stairs.

  Tegan didn’t go to greet his owner the way he usually did. Instead, the corgi was glued to the lower hole. Something was inside the wall, and Tegan wanted very much to get to it.

  Victoria stepped to intercept Roland. “This is not the time to be hiding things.”

  Roland continued toward them anyway, ignoring the warning in her voice. “You don’t understand. This, all this, you’ll ruin it.”

  They froze.

  Tegan whined again.

  A faint, impossibly quiet shuffle came from inside the wall. Someone was in there. They’d been there the entire time.

  “Lock down the house.” Victoria gave the order; whether it was to Adam or Roland, it was Adam who rose and moved toward the controls near the front entry. “We need to talk.”

  In moments, the final perimeter designed to deter intruders had slid into place. Every window was covered with the plates of metal. Victoria had stepped into the study and returned. “The outer security feeds are on loop. They can’t hear or see what is going on inside. You have as much privacy as we can give you, but we should go to one room in this house to discuss this. You choose.”

  Roland was pale, and there was a somewhat wild look to his eyes, but he pressed his lips together and balled up his fists. “The kitchen, please.”

  Victoria nodded and indicated he should lead the way. Once they were all in the kitchen, she moved to turn on the water at the sink. Adam casually activated a signal-disruption device to ensure any bugs they might’ve missed in a sweep were useless. He gave her a nod, and she turned the water off again, her motion designed simply to distract Roland.

  “Please.” Roland didn’t require prompting at this point. He was trapped in his own house, had been for a long time. “It was important that no one know, the safest way I could protect us.”

  Us.

  Roland was not referring to him and Tegan.

  “Open the door.” Victoria was the one to say it first.

  Adam studied the walls carefully, realizing the artwork hung on the walls wasn’t just modern. Each of the pieces had reflective surfaces, could be small two-way mirrors. There’d been someone in the wall, watching and listening for a while now.

  Roland ran his hand along the edge of the lone wall separating the dining room from the sitting area. It stood alone in the house, not joining to any of the other walls. Now that Adam was studying it, he realized it was subtly thicker than normal walls. There weren’t any other walls nearby to compare it to, and he’d have assumed it was because the wall was load bearing. But no, it was deep enough to allow a man to stand inside them sideways.

  When the door into the wall was opened, they could see precarious stairs leading downward. The wall was a stairwell to a lower level.

  “There is no basement in the building plans.” Victoria shook her head. “How can we develop a complete security system for you when there’s an entire level we didn’t know about? It could be a point of entry.”

  “It’s not.” Roland said it too quickly. “There’s no way out from down there. It’s a safe room. No entry or exit except through here.”

  Tegan had rushed down the stairs as soon as the door was open. It took a minute for their other host to come up. Those stairs weren’t easy to climb sideways, the space too close for free movement. The entryway wasn’t designed for quick enter or exit. The man was slight with dark skin and hair, and he moved very quietly. Dressed in dark clothes as he was, he emerged from the shadows literally only clearly visible once he’d stepped away from the wall. The corgi rushed up at his heels, the tiny stub that was all that was left of his tail wiggling madly.

  This was Tegan’s special person. Not Roland.

  As the man emerged, he stood uncertainly until Roland held out a hand. Standing together, the two men faced them.

  “This is my love.” Roland made the statement with quiet pride backed by determination. “You were hired to keep him safe.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “We require additional clarification.” Victoria struggled to keep her temper in check. The result was a cold, flat tone when she spoke, and even Adam flinched.

  Roland and his companion deserved it, both of them. Yes, they were standing there as a pair and very vulnerable. But no professional in the world could protect two clients when they didn’t know about one of them. They’d set her and Adam up for failure.

  It was one thing to take responsibility for one’s own failure, but when lives were the consequence, the weight of it would stay with them for as long as they lived.

  The new client looked at Roland and gave him a small shake of the head, then stepped forward a half step. Roland did not let go of his hand.

  “My name is Manny Okonkwo. I met Roland years ago at a dinner party.” Manny placed his free hand over his heart. He had long fingers, aesthetic hands. His high cheekbones were rounded, and his dark eyes held a sharp intelligence despite the weary circles bruising his dark skin. Yet, his full lips formed a gentle smile as he faced her
. “I had just taken a position at a biotech company designing and coding for a long-term project.”

  Biotech company. The words set off red flags and alarms in her head. She wanted to reach for her smartphone and message Gabe at Safeguard immediately. But she needed more information. There were many biotech companies in the Seattle area. The chances of it being the particular company they’d crossed twice now were still small.

  “At first my project specifications were so specific, I didn’t see how my portions would fit into a particular whole. The potential applications were broad. There were many ways my work could be helpful in support of pharmaceutical device and research studies.” Manny dropped his eyes in embarrassment, perhaps, but lifted his gaze to hers again as he continued. “Recently, it became clear that my portion of the code and design was contributing to a weaponized delivery system for a biologic drug. Instead of using my work to help bring lifesaving drugs to patients in need, it would be used to snuff people out of existence. I tried to resign.”

  It was too coincidental. Worse, someone out there—most likely the Edict organization—had intended for Safeguard to take this contract. Kill two birds with one stone. Recover their wayward asset and discredit the Safeguard team while they did it. It would be payback for the two times Safeguard had upset both Edict and Phoenix Biotech’s plans in the recent past. First, when Gabe’s fire team had led the recovery effort to locate and extract Maylin Cheng’s kidnapped sister from a Phoenix Biotech covert research facility, and even more recently when Lizzy had kept Kyle Yeun alive to testify against Phoenix Biotech in court.

  The previous times, the Safeguard team had stumbled across the paths of Phoenix Biotech and their preferred mercenary contractors, Edict. This time, it was too much of a coincidence. It had to have been orchestrated. All the rumors had been the lead-up. This was the trap.

  As she remained silent, Adam prompted Manny. “What happened when you tried to resign?”