Exhaustion pulled her under.
* * *
THE SHRILL RING of his burner phone ripped him out of Liz’s warm hold.
“What is it?” The grogginess in her voice revealed she wasn’t entirely awake yet, and he smoothed his hand over her shoulder.
“Just my phone. Go back to sleep.” Four hours. That was all the peace they’d gotten. Braxton threw the covers off and collected the phone from where he’d left it on the desk with his surveillance equipment. Unknown number. Warning spread through him. He checked the monitors. No movement along the tree lines or around the house. But that didn’t mean Liz’s stalker hadn’t found another way to get to her. Studying the steady, slow rise and fall of her shoulders, he swiped his thumb across the screen then headed for the bedroom door, closing it behind him. If the shooter had somehow gotten ahold of yet another of their burner phone numbers, she didn’t need to hear the shooter’s voice after what she’d been through. “Talk.”
“Hello to you, too, sunshine.” Vincent Kalani’s voice eased some of the tension climbing up Braxton’s spine. He’d handed the operative one of his old preprogrammed burners while Liz had been recovering in the hospital after they discovered cloning tech on Vincent’s device, but had pushed the investigation to the bottom of his priorities. New phone. New number. No chance the shooter could listen in on their calls this time. “Guess you didn’t get my message.”
Memory of his phone chiming earlier—before Liz had walked away from him with tears in her eyes—rushed forward. It hadn’t been important then. “Guess not. What do you have?”
“We got a hit on the fingerprints from bullet casings recovered after the shooting at Town Square,” Vincent said. “I sent the report to your phone, but looks like you’re not checking email right now. Is it safe to assume you two hooked—”
“Say another word and I’ll change your name to Veronica Kalani in every federal database I can hack. Which is all of them.” Braxton checked over his shoulder. The door to the bedroom was still closed, and he moved farther down the hallway so this conversation wouldn’t wake the woman in his bed. What’d happened between them a few short hours ago, her apparent fear of him leaving again, had left him hollowed out. Useless. The dark, raging creature inside him, the one that would do anything to stay with her, even if it put her in more danger, had taken control then. And he’d been lost. Seeing her in the tub, so vulnerable, so lost... It’d broken him. He never wanted to see her that way again. Not Liz. Him leaving had been part of the deal they’d struck before the shooter had tried to take them out in the parking garage. But everything had changed since then. “What does the report say?”
“Can you really change anyone’s name?” Vincent asked. “Elliot thinks I don’t know he’s been stealing my lunch out of the refrigerator here at the office, and I’m currently looking for ways to make him pay.”
Braxton took a deep breath, running his hand over his jawline. His normally groomed five o’clock shadow had thickened over the past few days. No time to shave when a shooter had put the woman he’d die to protect in his sights. “As tempting as that sounds, let’s go back to the fingerprints.”
“Right. Prints match a CIA agent named Justin Valentin,” Vincent said. “You heard of him?”
Braxton dropped the phone away from his ear. It wasn’t possible. Justin Valentin had been the field operative killed during Oversight’s test launch. None of this made sense. Had the NSA identified the wrong corpse? Had Justin survived? The moment Liz heard about the evidence... He didn’t know what she’d do. Vincent’s voice reached through the haze threatening to suffocate him. Raising the phone to his ear, he pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. “Are you one hundred percent sure those fingerprints match that name?”
“I ran it twice. Why?” Vincent’s confusion reached through the line. “Isn’t this good news? You got your man. Liz can put this behind her.”
“Not in the least. Did you run a background check after you matched the prints?” If the forensics expert had, they wouldn’t be having this conversation. Braxton looked up and froze. Every cell in his body caught fire at the sight of Liz staring back at him from the bedroom door. “I’m going to have to call you back.” He lowered the phone again, hitting the end button.
“Vincent found something.” Not a question. Liz crossed her arms over her midsection, one of her textbook moves when she slammed her invisible guard into place. Dark circles still haunted her beneath those chocolate-brown eyes, exhaustion evident in her features, but the tears were gone. She’d gotten only a few hours of sleep over the last few days. With the added strain of the baby and the stress of being kidnapped on her body, it was a wonder she was still standing. “Tell me.”
“We don’t have to do this now.” Braxton’s bare feet stuck to the cold hardwood floor as he closed in on her. “You can go back to sleep—”
“I’m fine,” she said. “Just tell me.”
He nodded.
“Vincent recovered bullet casings from the shooting at Town Square. He was able to match the partial fingerprints on them to a CIA agent who died last year.” He opened Vincent’s email on his phone and handed it to her. “He matched them to Justin Valentin.”
“That’s not possible.” Her exhale swept over his bare neck and chest. Her voice gained strength with each word out of her mouth. “I was there where Dalton Meyer ran the trial run, Braxton. I saw Agent Valentin die on the screen right in front of me. I watched as they lowered his coffin into the ground a week later. Justin Valentin is buried in Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, DC.”
“I was there, too, remember? I know what happened.” He remembered every minute. Oversight’s first real-world test run would stay ingrained in his memory forever. The program had identified a group of Afghan rebels intent on taking out the US Embassy in Kabul. What the program failed to identify, however, was the CIA agent deeply implanted within the group when the order for neutralization came down from on high. Liz had told them the tech wasn’t ready, but her supervisor, Dalton Meyer, hadn’t listened, and an American life had been lost on the program’s first test run. Liz had never forgiven herself. “Vincent ran the prints twice. Unless you’ve got another explanation, we need your boss and whatever connections he has to get a court order to exhume whoever is in that coffin.”
“No. The shooter...whoever is doing this is trying to mess with my head.” She thrust the phone back at him, not bothering to read the ballistics report. Liz ran a hand through her short hair, and she took a step back. The past three days had her spiraling and, hell, he couldn’t blame her. But ever since her stalker had tried to kill her with a bomb, they’d been reacting. The explosion, the shootout in the garage, her kidnapping. It wouldn’t end until Liz was dead. And that wasn’t an option. Not for him. “He must’ve known about that mission and somehow gotten access to those confidential files. Justin Valentin is dead.”
“You think Justin’s prints were planted.” What was the point of trying to set up a dead man? It didn’t make sense.
“In the last three days, there’s only been one man I know of who’s trying to kill me. He’s planned this out for months, if not years.” Liz crossed her arms again, accentuating all the mouthwatering curves under his T-shirt. “Do you honestly believe he’d be stupid enough to leave his own fingerprints on those bullet casings where we could find them?”
Not a chance. They were dealing with a professional. No way in hell he’d leave evidence behind without reason. “How do you get a dead man’s prints on a bullet casing?”
“That’s the million-dollar question,” she said.
Braxton checked his phone for the time. “It’s too late to have Sullivan get a court order from a judge. But I’m not going to wait around for this guy to take another shot at you. We need to trace Oversight’s feeds and attack him head-on.”
“That’s not a plan.” She dropped her arms to
her side. “That’s a death sentence.”
Frustration built. “I don’t want you to spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder, Liz. Especially not with our daughter in tow. She deserves better than that.”
Liz stepped back as though she’d taken a direct hit, and his stomach dropped. Waves of pinks and greens filtered through the wide expanse of windows, highlighting the sharp angles of her features. Aurora borealis rippled across the night sky, brighter than he’d ever seen it before. “Are you willing to bet your life on that?”
“I know why you won’t touch Oversight’s code, but running for the rest of your life is no way to live. I know that better than anyone.” Braxton stepped into her range. He couldn’t think with her so close. But he was tired of thinking. Tired of running.
“Dalton should’ve listened to me.” Liz shook her head. “Oversight wasn’t ready. I told him that the day before the scheduled trial run. I told him the programming kept skipping the background checks because of a broken line of code I hadn’t been able to find, but he didn’t care. A man died because of my mistake. You really want to take that risk?”
“I’ll take my chances on you every day for the rest of my life.” He countered her retreat, and his body temperature hiked at least two degrees. “Because of all the variables I bet the shooter calculated before making his move on you in that conference room, I know he didn’t account for you fighting back.”
Chapter Eleven
She’d stick to her end of the deal. Elizabeth would let him protect her until the threat was neutralized, then he could go back into hiding until the NSA forgot his name.
Her gut tightened at the thought, and she squeezed his hand draped across her hip. He’d convinced her to come back to bed, but she couldn’t sleep. The sooner they ended this investigation, the sooner she’d have to watch him walk away. Again. But as much as she wanted to drown in fantasies of Braxton helping her raise this baby—of them becoming the family their daughter deserved—he couldn’t stay. And the sooner she realized that, the better. For her and their baby. She trusted him enough to keep her alive. That would have to be good enough.
“You’re still awake,” he said.
She pressed her shoulder blades against his chest. His body heat tunneled through her borrowed sweats. What’d happened on that trail...she couldn’t get that dark gaze out of her mind. “I see him when I close my eyes. I can’t get him out of my head.”
Braxton hiked her against him, dropping his mouth to her shoulder. “You’re not responsible for any of this, Liz. This guy might be doing this out of some sick need for revenge, but I know you. You’d never deliberately put anyone in danger.”
“Except I did. On the dozens of missions I let the NSA use my program.” She turned her heard toward him, only the glow of the surveillance system highlighting one side of her face. “He used the Sovereign Army to take credit for the bomb, but what if this is about Oversight like we originally thought?”
“If this guy is connected to the work you did for the NSA, we’ll find out who he is.” He traced his fingers down her arm, coaxing goose bumps in his tracks, and placed his mouth at her ear. He slid his hand beneath the hem of her shirt, right over their growing daughter. “But right now, you and this baby have been through hell. You need to sleep.”
“I can’t sleep.” Not when every time she closed her eyes, fear gripped her throat to the point she couldn’t breathe. Elizabeth turned into him, framing one side of his jaw with her palm. His beard prickled against her skin. Images of their one night flashed through her mind. He’d been comforting her then, too, right after Oversight had failed its first test run in the field. A CIA agent had lost his life that day, the same man whose fingerprints Vincent had found on those bullet casings. Justin Valentin. And Braxton had been there for her. How many more mistakes had her program made since she’d told the NSA she’d never work for them again? How many more lives was she responsible for? She didn’t want to think about it.
Four months. Such a long time, yet not long enough for her feelings to disappear as fast as he had. She hadn’t expected that. That chaotic tangle of emotions should’ve left by now. But they hadn’t. He’d become part of her a long time ago. And there weren’t exactly exorcists for this kind of thing. When it came to Braxton Levitt, she had the feeling he’d never leave her system entirely. But maybe that didn’t have to be a bad thing. “Where have you been all this time?”
“Everywhere. Cambodia, Taiwan, Russia. I made it a point to stick to nonextradition countries.” A shiver rushed down her spine at his touch, and Braxton flashed her that gut-wrenching grin of his. “But that’s not what you want to ask me, is it?”
He could read her so well. Too well. Nervous energy exploded through her. All she’d been able to think about when the shooter had held her at the edge of the cliff had been Braxton’s name. She didn’t have any right to ask. He’d moved on. So had she. New city, new job, new name. She’d fought to leave her old life behind, a life that had included him up until the end. But the question still nagged at her. Clenching her teeth against the oncoming disappointment, Elizabeth studied the shadows lining his collarbones. “What was...” She swallowed around the growing lump in her throat. “What was I to you?”
He set her chin between his thumb and index finger, urging her to look up. The color of his eyes was lost in the blue light of his surveillance system a few feet away, but she read every change in his expression. Because she’d learned how to read him, too. “Everything.”
Her breath came too fast. Her heartbeat seemed to shake behind her rib cage. Everything she’d done to this point—refusing to work with him, laying out the rules, putting up her guard—had been to protect herself, but he’d figured out a way around all of that. He’d buried himself beneath her skin and become part of her. Would it always be like this? When the smoke cleared, could this work? When someone wasn’t trying to kill her, when the NSA wasn’t trying to put him behind bars for the rest of his life.
“Come here.” The lines at the edges of his mouth deepened with his smile. Braxton offered her his hand, sliding off the bed when she took it. Rough calluses caught on her skin, but right now, she only had attention for the slow burn of desire swirling in his gaze.
Her bare feet hit the cold hardwood floor, and he tugged her into him. Right where she needed to be. Without letting go of her hand, Braxton turned toward the desk and pulled open the top drawer. He handed her a small glass bottle with a long neck, the weight of his attention crushing the air in her lungs. “Black fingernail polish?”
“You’ve been through hell the last few days.” He closed the short space between them, crowding her until her knees hit the edge of the bed. Collapsing back, she held her breath as Braxton sank to his knees in front of her. He tugged her sweats up around her calves, his touch somehow hot and cold at the same time. Or had her nerve endings started playing tricks on her again? “Let me take care of you.”
“You happen to have black fingernail polish on hand?” Of course he did. Just as he’d put her favorite brand of lavender soap in the bathrooms, how he’d stocked the freezer with chocolate ice cream and the drawers with rainbow-colored sprinkles. He’d gone out of his way to ensure her small comforts came first. At first, she’d thought it’d been to manipulate her, to get her to trust him again. But now? Now a familiar feeling climbed up through her insides. The feeling of falling.
“I’ve got supplies stashed in this house you can’t imagine.” He feathered his fingertips down the tight muscles in her left calf then applied pressure. Her grip tightened on the edge of the mattress as she tipped her head back against her shoulders. “We could stay here for weeks without stepping outside this bedroom.”
Elizabeth leveled her gaze with his. Her leg jerked beneath his hands as he pressed into one of her more sensitive ticklish spots. A laugh burst from her between her lips. “Sorry. I don’t normally let people massage
my calves. I’m afraid I’ll kick them in the face, I’m so ticklish.”
“I’ll have to remember that.” Half a smile stretched his mouth thin, and her stomach shot into her throat. Setting her foot on top of his thigh, he reached for the glass bottle and twisted off the lid. In the glow of his surveillance system, he touched up the tips of her toenails effortlessly. But what couldn’t he do? He’d saved her life from a gunman, tracked her down to the edge of that cliff, fought a professional shooter as though he’d trained to fight all his life, established safe houses to keep them off the grid and learned to cook a turkey and vegetable soup she still couldn’t stop tasting at the back of her throat. Blowing on her wet toenails, he sat back on his heels then swung himself up to stand. “Good as new.”
Elizabeth couldn’t take her attention off him. Something had changed. Some defining moment had altered his life that night he’d disappeared. “The night you left. Something happened, something to make you want to change your appearance, to learn to fight, to handle a gun.” Because the man she’d known had never picked up a gun in his life or learned how to throw a punch. He’d been an analyst, glued to his computer screen. “What happened to you?”
His rough exhale reached her ears. The mattress dipped under his weight as he sat beside her, elbows on his knees, the little black bottle of nail polish gripped between his hands. He nodded once. “You happened to me. I couldn’t protect you then. That needed to change.”
Her lips parted to ask every question running through her mind. Protect her from what? Why hadn’t he told her the truth? Did it have something to do with the NSA? But did any of it matter? Not really. This moment, that was all that mattered. “Kiss me.”
“Don’t start something you can’t finish, Sprinkles.” He shifted at her side, his dark hair skimming over his shoulders. Braxton moved a strand of hair off her forehead. The past four months living off the federal government’s radar had hardened his features, but she still recognized the man beneath the guarded exterior and new muscle. And she wanted him now more than ever. “I have very little control when it comes to you.”
Rules in Deceit Page 12