Rules in Deceit

by Nichole Severn

  He pulled the SUV into the shoulder, barely able to see through the thick smoke coming out of the edges of the hood. He wouldn’t make it to her—not in time. His feet hit the pavement, and he rounded to the front of the vehicle. After hauling the hood overhead, he braced himself against the white-hot temperatures as he reached for the radiator cap. Pain scalded across his hand, but he got the cap off and looked inside. Empty. Damn it. “Nothing. I’m coming for you.”

  He tossed the cap on top of the radiator then extracted Vincent’s cell phone from the interior of the SUV. He’d trained day in and day out for this. Come hell or high water, he’d get to her. Slamming the driver’s side door behind him, he checked his weapon and started running, phone in hand. The shooter might never pull over, but Braxton would never stop looking for her.

  “We’re slowing down.” Rustling filtered through the open line as she shifted inside the trunk. Then stopped. “He’s pulling off the highway. I can’t tell where we are. I can’t see anything.”

  “That’s okay. I know where you are.” He confirmed her location on Vincent’s phone, air tight in his chest as he tried to keep his voice even. A half mile up ahead, the shooter had pulled into the trailhead for McHugh Trail, a heavily wooded and rocky journey to McHugh Peak. Without snowshoes this time of year, the bastard would have a hard time getting very deep into the wilderness with a hostage, but there were plenty of places to disappear.

  Or to hide a body.

  Braxton spotted a distant pair of red lights down the highway. Cliffs and trees backed against the highway on one side, Turnagain Arm on the other. Every second he lagged behind, the higher the chance he’d lose them altogether. “Listen to me. I have your location. I’m going to find you. I promised I would protect you, and I will.”

  A loud thud resembling the slamming of a car door reverberated into his ear.

  “He’s coming.” She lowered her voice to a whisper, a plea on her lips. “Braxton...”

  His grip tightened around the phone in his hand. His muscles burned, but he pushed the pain to the back of his mind. “I’m coming, Liz. I’ll be there in two minutes. Fight back. Run if you have to. I’ll find you.”

  The high-pitched protest of metal reached his ears. The trunk lid? Muffled static claimed his attention, an all-too-familiar voice growing louder. “You’ve been holding out on me.” Another round of static drowned out Liz’s response as though someone was handling a microphone. “Whoever this is, you think you’re coming to save her. Well, I’ve got news for you. You’re too late. Elizabeth is mine.”

  The deafening crunch exploded in his ear.

  “Liz?” A quick glance at Vincent’s phone said it all: the shooter had destroyed Liz’s earpiece. And any chance he had of tracking her location. “Liz!”

  Chapter Eight

  Her hands shook as the shooter pulled her from the trunk of the Mercedes. He’d found her earpiece almost instantly and crushed it beneath polished shoes. No passing cars. No hikers out as the sun started to lower in the sky.

  No one to hear her scream.

  Rough hands maneuvered her around the car and toward the trailhead up ahead. Clear skies gave way to a few twinkling stars this far out of the city, but where Elizabeth normally would’ve taken a few minutes to appreciate the view, now she was being forced deeper into Alaskan wilderness. “You don’t have to do this.”

  She didn’t know what else to say as branches from pines scraped across her jacket and the exposed skin of her neck and face. He’d gone out of his way to find her. Tortured her former supervisor, hijacked Oversight’s feeds, stalked her for weeks. Something deep in her gut said no matter what she said, he wouldn’t listen.

  “Walk until I tell you to stop.” His voice remained calm, collected. Dangerous.

  Her boots scuffed against rocks and downed branches along the trail. She couldn’t see more than five feet in front of her. He hadn’t bound her. She’d catch herself if she fell, but she couldn’t do much else with her broken wrist. And running into the middle of the wilderness as temperatures dropped for the night in the middle of January would be as lethal as taking a bullet to the head. Braxton had promised he’d find her, but freezing to death out here, where he couldn’t track her anymore thanks to the man with the gun pressed into her back, wasn’t a chance she was willing to take. Elizabeth checked his position back over her shoulder. “You obviously plan on killing me and leaving me out here for hikers to discover later. Don’t I deserve to know why?”

  “You don’t deserve anything but what’s coming to you.” He pressed the gun deeper into her back, nearly to her spine despite the padding of her coat.

  Freezing air burned her nostrils the higher they climbed up the trail. What did he expect her to do, make it all the way to McHugh Peak with a bullet graze, a head injury and a broken wrist? Her lungs fought against the climb in elevation, her breaths getting shallower with each step. “The Sovereign Army took credit for the bombing at Blackhawk Security, but you’ve made this personal. This isn’t about protecting the American population’s privacy, is it? You’re using an extremist group as your cover.”

  She was only guessing, but from his lack of response, Elizabeth bet she had hit the nail on the head harder than she’d estimated. “Somehow you figured out I’d created Oversight for the NSA and changed my name. Then you tracked me down here in Anchorage and started planning my murder.” She kept pushing forward. She’d only hiked this particular trail once during one of Sullivan’s mandatory wilderness survival trainings, and it was difficult to decipher their location along the trail as shadows crept across the path, but there should be a branch heading off soon. At least a place she could gain the higher ground. She couldn’t fight him physically, but she could disorient him long enough to buy herself time to run back toward the trailhead.

  Toward Braxton.

  “Why go through the trouble?” she asked.

  “That’s far enough.” How the man determined to kill her breathed through the thick ski mask over his face, she had no idea. She chanced another glance behind her. The effect of his pressed suit combined with the mask chased a tremor down her spine. Like Death coming to collect the next soul in his crosshairs. Too bad she’d sold her soul to the father of her unborn child a long time ago.

  She stopped in her tracks, about four feet ahead of him. Her pulse beat hard at the base of her throat. The only people who knew about her facial recognition program worked for the NSA or in the Oval Office. Which meant the shooter had either hacked his way into the NSA servers—which was unlikely given she’d set up the latest security—or he’d worked for them. Then again, he’d hijacked Oversight’s feeds. Or he had a partner. Her toes tingled, going numb from the dropping temperatures. If he wasn’t going to kill her soon, the wilderness would. Elizabeth wiggled her fingers to keep the circulation flowing. She strained to hear footsteps—anything—that indicated someone was coming. A hiker, police. Braxton. The man had a gun aimed at her, and there was nothing Elizabeth could do. “Is this where they’re going to find my body?”

  Keep him talking. Keep him distracted.

  A gloved hand gripped her arm and spun her around, and her breath caught in her throat. Those dark eyes seemed black now with only muted sunlight coming through the trees. His hold on her hurt, bruised. “You’re trying to stall, but it won’t work. I’ve been waiting for this day for too long.”

  Without hesitation, the shooter hauled her off the worn path into shadowed darkness of thick pines and underbrush. Thorns pulled at her jeans and boot laces, but he dragged her along with ease. Dry branches cracked under her boots as they got farther from the trail. Nobody would think to look for her out here. Nobody would find her.

  Trees thinned ahead. The muffled sound of passing cars grew louder. He wasn’t going to leave her for a hiker—or worse, her team—to find. Elizabeth swallowed hard as they cleared the tree line. The cliff rushed up to meet h
er before she was ready. Her heel slipped off the edge, her knees buckling as panic spread through her. Loose rocks and dirt cascaded down below onto Seward Highway, but she never saw them land. Too far down. Only the shooter’s tight grip on her arm kept her from falling, but she had a feeling that anchor wouldn’t last long. Her breath lodged in her chest. She couldn’t take her eyes off the black ocean of pavement a few hundred feet below where he intended to let her drown. Gravity pulled at her, but she fought against it.

  “Tell me why. You’ve tried to blow me up, tried to shoot me on more than one occasion now.” She didn’t dare move, didn’t dare face him for fear of taking the wrong step. She wasn’t a profiler like Kate, she wasn’t trained to read people, but the gunman at her back had certainly made this personal. He wanted her dead, wanted revenge. There was only one reason a man acted so passionately. “There has to be a reason.”

  “Give me the override password to Oversight’s security and I’ll make this quick.” The slight exhale from behind her barely reached her ears over the sound of passing cars below. Silence settled. His voice became rough, fierce, as her arm tingled from her cut-off circulation. He placed his mouth against her ear. Too close. Intimate. She closed her eyes against the flood of nausea taking hold. “Or I can draw this out until you’re begging me to end you.”

  That was why he hadn’t killed her yet. While he might’ve been able to reroute the feeds, he hadn’t been able to get past Oversight’s security to operate the program himself. Her insides suddenly felt hollowed out, the rest of her body heavy. Her heartbeat echoed through her. The work she had done for the NSA haunted her every time she closed her eyes at night. She never should’ve agreed to build that damn program. Never should’ve let them use it before it was ready. The secrets, the lies, the deaths. Oversight saved lives, but at what cost? Elizabeth licked at dry lips, the dropping temperatures wicking moisture from her mouth. Opening her eyes, she internally braced herself. “It won’t do you any good. The password is only the first level to gaining control. You won’t be able to hack the second. Not without me.”

  And not without a retinal scanner.

  “Then this is going to be a long night for you.” The slightest movement at her back threatened to launch her over the side of the cliff. “You know a person can sustain a three-story fall and live to tell about it. But not much else. You see, your body will be so broken, you’ll never be able to do more than blink from your hospital bed until you finally give up on life.” He jerked her against him then maneuvered her closer to the edge. “So save us both the time. You have five seconds to give me the password.”

  The back of her heel slipped off the edge of the cliff, and she held on harder to the man threatening to throw her over the edge. Panic consumed her. Her breath came quick. Her heart rate rocketed into dangerous territory. She didn’t want to die. Elizabeth squeezed her eyes tight, fought to keep her balance. One wrong step. That was all it would take and everything would be over. Her stomach pitched as her mind put on a nausea-inducing slideshow of what that meant. She’d never meet her baby girl. Never protect another client. Never take control of the life she wanted.

  “Two seconds,” he said.

  Braxton.

  His name slipped between the layers of panic and demanded her attention. Her heart rate dropped, the flush of cold sweats dissipating. She opened her eyes. Fighting to breathe through a rush of dizziness, she shook her head. The shooter wouldn’t be able to get past the second level of security. Not without her. So if giving him the password saved her life—saved her baby’s life—there wasn’t much to think about. “All right!” She licked at dry lips. “The password is ‘Inicial Lake,’ from my favorite TV show.”

  His laugh slithered down her spine.

  “Your government turned its back on you the same as they did me. Tell me, Sprinkles,” he said. “How does it feel turning your back on them now?”

  “Don’t call me that.” Something shot down her spine, like an electric shock. Her fingers tightened as fury exploded through her. Elizabeth dug her heels into the dirt and shoved back into his chest. Her momentum knocked him off balance, but his grip still around her arm pulled her down with him. The tree line blurred in her vision as they rolled, locked around one another, in a fight for the gun. A scream worked up her throat as her already broken wrist sandwiched between them, the gun’s barrel pointing straight at her forehead. He was stronger, so much stronger, than she was. But she wasn’t going to die out here.

  She slammed into a nearby pine, bark and dried needles scratching the skin along the back of her neck. A wave of dizziness unbalanced her as she tried to stand. The shooter fought to straighten, the gun missing from his hand.

  There. Discarded in a bed of pine needles and leaves, the weapon stood out against the washed-out foliage and ice. Elizabeth lunged, but she wasn’t fast enough. A leather-gloved hand wrapped around her ankle, and she hit the ground hard. Clawing at the ground, she fought to reach the gun. Dirt worked under her fingernails, but she didn’t care. Without that gun, she was dead.

  The shooter pulled her back against him, the weapon farther out of reach than before, and flipped her onto her back. She kicked at him, punched. He was too strong. That same gloved hand wrapped around her throat for a second time and squeezed. She clamped one hand around his wrist as leverage, trying to get oxygen, and reached for his left eye with the other despite her broken wrist.

  “Get the hell away from her.” Braxton’s voice pierced through the darkness. She fought to scream though no sound left her mouth. The few stars above transformed into indistinct balls of light as Braxton raised his own weapon, taking aim. “Or I put a bullet in your head.”

  * * *

  “I SAID GET away from her.” Braxton widened his stance, pulling his shoulders back to make himself a smaller target. Pure rage filled his lungs, pure fire burning through his veins. Didn’t matter the sun had dipped below the trees. He’d rip this SOB apart blind for coming after Liz. Family wasn’t who he’d been born with. It was who he’d die for, and he sure as hell was ready to die right here, right now for the mother of his child if that was what fate held for him. But he wouldn’t make it easy, either. He motioned the bastard up with the barrel of the gun.

  The shooter released his grip around Liz’s throat, and she fell back against the dead pine needles and foliage. Her gasps reached his ears, but Braxton never took his attention off the man standing above her. “You’re nothing but a disgraced analyst, Levitt. You might’ve put on some muscle. Learned some fancy new moves, right? But I’ve been doing this for years. You can’t stop me.”

  A smile curled at one edge of his mouth. Braxton tossed the gun, his fingers contracting into the center of his palms. Adrenaline dumped into his blood and hiked his pulse higher as he relaxed his stance. “Why don’t we find out?”

  The shooter took that as his cue, pulling a blade from an ankle holster. Her attacker headed straight for him, that mask still in place.

  Braxton met him halfway, the small amount of sun providing enough light for him to make the first strike. The shooter lunged for him blade first. Catching the operative’s wrist, he hauled the blade upward and swept the shooter’s legs out from under him. They hit the ground hard, the air crushed from his lungs. His elbow made contact with the shooter’s sternum, and the knife flipped into the underbrush. Out of the corner of his eye, Liz turned over onto her stomach, struggling to her feet. She searched for something in the grass. Maybe a weapon.

  The shooter took advantage of the distraction and wrapped a forearm around Braxton’s neck, his back pressed against the bastard’s chest, and squeezed. His heartbeat pulsed hard at the base of his throat and grew louder in his ears. He leveraged his fingers between his own neck and his attacker’s forearm and took a single deep breath. “Give it up, Levitt. You can’t save her. Not this time.”

  Liz was the one he’d lived for. And he’d fight for her un
til the end.

  A growl resonated through him. Braxton shot his knee directly back into the shooter’s face, and the SOB’s grip disappeared. He rolled out of range then pushed to his feet, fists up. The shooter closed in on him before he could take his next breath. He blocked the first punch. Blocked the second. But a hard kick to Braxton’s sternum sent him sprawling head over heels through the dirt. Dead pine needles and something wet clung to his clothing. He forced himself to his feet as the shooter went for Liz again.

  “Braxton!” She threw her hands out behind her as she backed herself toward the tree line, those mesmerizing brown eyes wide and filled with terror.

  Braxton closed the distance between them, fisting the shooter’s suit in his hand, and shoved a boot to the back of the operative’s knee. He followed through with a punch to the face for good measure. His muscles ached, his head pounding hard from the accident. Blood still clung to the side of his face and wouldn’t come off with the swipe of the back of his hand. Didn’t matter. Getting Liz out of here. Protecting their baby. Ending this sick game. That was all that mattered.

  The shooter went down, narrowly missing Braxton’s boot to his face as he rolled. A glint of sunlight flashed before the assailant came at him with another blade. Damn it. How many other weapons was the bastard hiding in that suit? They faced off again. Hard exhales and the faint hooting of an owl cut through the groan of dodging the knife. Black eyes locked on him as Braxton sank lower into his stance. “Not just an analyst after all. Where was this fire when you practically begged me to take the intel on Oversight four months ago?”

  Braxton straightened a fraction of an inch. Four months ago. The night he’d left his entire future asleep in his bed and walked away. The anonymous transaction had saved Liz’s life, but how many others had been destroyed because of his moment of weakness? His attention shot to Liz as she sank to her knees near the tree line, out of hearing range, seemingly out of energy. She couldn’t find out the truth. Not yet. Not when they were so close to moving on from the past. Not when the chance of them being a family—a real family—stared back at him through her eyes. “You.”