“Please. I need this.” She rolled her lips between her teeth and bit down. This wasn’t an attempt to get him to stay after the investigation ended. It wasn’t an attempt to satisfy her own attraction. Pure, unfiltered need coursed through her. The need to be touched, to be cared for, loved, even. If only for a night. Her throat dried. Before she lost him forever. “I need you.”
Braxton threaded his fingers through the hair at the back of her neck, pulled her into him and set his mouth over hers. His clean, masculine scent clung to her borrowed clothing, to the sheets, became part of her, and she couldn’t get enough. He maneuvered over her, pushing her onto her back, and slid his hand along the outer part of her thigh. He hiked her calf around his hip. Tightening her grip on him, Elizabeth breathed a bit easier despite his added weight. Patience was a virtue, but they didn’t have time for that. She cocked her head to one side and opened her mouth wider for him.
Any second now reality would work its way back, but she’d stretch this night to last as long as possible. With a freshly painted set of toenails.
* * *
HE’D LIED TO HER.
The changes he’d made over the last four months hadn’t been about the realization he couldn’t protect her. If he’d known being part of her life would end this way, Braxton never would’ve recruited her for the NSA. But there was no changing the past. As for the future... Hell, he needed her as much as he needed oxygen in his lungs. And that was a very dangerous thing.
Braxton buried his nose at the crown of her head, lavender and woman fighting to drown the guilt clawing its way through him. He should’ve ended it on that cliff side, gotten her free of this nightmare. Gotten her free of him. A murder charge would’ve kept him out of the country for the rest of his life and put a digital target on Liz’s back, but at least then she’d be safe. He’d underestimated the shooter, banked on the SOB taking the intel on Oversight and staying the hell out of her life. Braxton had been wrong.
Wouldn’t happen again.
Muted sunlight lit the room enough for him to make out the handle of his Glock across the room. He’d shed his shoulder holster and gun before getting in the tub with her, literally let down his guard for her. But it was time to end this. Maneuvering out from beneath Liz’s warm body, trying not to wake her, he crossed the room in three steps and reached for his clothing. He’d track Oversight’s feeds himself and finish this today. The bastard had tried to hurt his family, and Braxton would make him pay. He’d make sure the guy never touched her or their baby again.
He dressed fast then fastened his shoulder holster into place and collected a backpack of supplies and a secure laptop he’d stashed in the closet. Liz shifted beneath the sheets, a small moan escaping her throat as she rolled onto her side, and Braxton froze. The backpack in his hand worked to cement him in place. As though it knew the repercussions of leaving her in the middle of the night after taking her to bed yet again. But what choice did he have? Whoever’d kidnapped her would try again. And would keep trying until her pulse stopped beating. Braxton forced himself to breathe evenly through the thought. No. He’d end this now. He’d do what he had to, to keep her safe.
He followed the edge of the bed until he stood over her. Planting a kiss on the top of her head, he memorized the way she smelled, engraved the memories of their night together in his mind. Ran his fingers through the ends of her hair one last time. Dropping his voice, he crouched beside her and whispered more to himself than to her. “It’ll always be you, Liz.”
Braxton pushed to his feet, out of time, and scanned the surveillance monitors on the other side of the room before making his escape downstairs and toward the front door. He tossed his burner phone onto one of the couches in the living room to his right as he reached for the doorknob. He’d start with the fingerprints recovered from the rooftop shooting. Justin Valentin had been buried back in Washington, DC, but there had to be somebody—a family member, an old partner, a friend—who knew of his work for the CIA and had access to his personal belongings. The only other option was that the agent had faked his own death after Oversight’s trial run. He gripped the doorknob hard as metal grew warm beneath his hand. Exhaling hard, he squeezed his eyes shut. Focus. Find the shooter. Keep Liz safe. He’d gone off the grid once, he could do it ag—
“I must be horrible in bed if you have to make a quick getaway in the middle of the night every time you sleep with me.” Heat shot through him at the sound of her sleep-ragged voice. Soft footsteps padded down the stairs, but Braxton didn’t dare turn around. He dropped his hand from the doorknob as Liz stopped short behind him. “But to be fair, I guess it’s morning now, isn’t it?”
He turned his head toward her. “Liz—”
“Don’t worry, Braxton. I’m not mad.” Her voice hollowed. “In order to be mad, you’d have to disappoint me in some way, which implies I had expectations. And I didn’t. I knew you’d have to leave.” She studied him. “But for the record, you don’t have a promising future in clandestine work. You’re the noisiest dresser on the planet.”
“I can end this.” The muscles down his spine tensed, ready for battle. “I can make sure he never comes after you again.”
“What happened to us ending this together?” Liz circled into his line of sight. Exhaustion played a wicked game in her expression, but she’d never let it control her. She was determined, strong. Stronger than he was. “Brolin might not have been able to describe the man who’d taken him, but we can trace the fingerprints back to where they originated. We’ll find him—”
“I’m not going to lose you again!” The words left his mouth harsher than he’d meant. His ears rang as she flinched. He fought to breathe evenly, rage exploding through him. She wasn’t the only one who had nightmares because of what happened on that cliff side. “I almost didn’t make it in time when he took you. If I’d been one minute later...”
Braxton wouldn’t play the what-if game. He shook his head to dislodge the memories. Reliving the past would only slow him down, consume him, and he’d lose the war before he had a chance to finish it.
“Do you really think I’d let him touch me again?” Liz locked onto his wrist and, faster than he thought possible, twisted his arm up and back. His childhood home blurred as she spun him head over heels. He hit the ground hard, the air crushed from his lungs. The chandelier above the entryway shook in the middle of the blackness closing in around the edges of his vision. He rolled onto his back, a groan escaping. What had just happened? She moved over him as pain radiated up his spine. His head throbbed, shoulders ached. Crouching beside him, she brushed his hair out of his face. “I didn’t fight back when he put me in the trunk of his car because I want this baby more than anything, Braxton. I don’t want to lose her. But don’t mistake my decision for compliance. If he comes after me again, I will do what I have to, to survive.”
She offered her hand, and he took it. Shoving to his feet, he ran his fingers through his hair to get it out of his face. “Where the hell did you learn to do that?”
“You’re not the only one who’s changed.” Crossing her arms across her midsection, Liz shifted her weight against the mammoth wood banister lining the stairs. The sweats he’d dressed her in hung off her lean frame, but damn if she wasn’t the epitome of everything he wanted. Everything he’d die to protect. “Let me guess. You were going to attempt to trace the feeds yourself from a laptop you stashed in your bag. Public place. Maybe a coffee shop close to the Anchorage police department that offers free Wi-Fi in case shots were fired.”
Braxton slipped the backpack from his shoulder and set it on the floor. Rolling one shoulder back, he ignored the pain of landing on his own arm. “It crossed my mind.”
“Except it won’t work.” She put one foot in front of the other, closing in on him slowly. Her mouth parted slightly, giving him flashbacks to the night they spent together, and his gut tightened in response. Liz dropped her voice. “
You can try to convince yourself otherwise, but you need me in order to access Oversight.”
Amusement hiked his eyebrows a little higher, his head still pounding from her little move that’d landed him on his back. “Wasn’t hard to guess your password.”
Just as it hadn’t been hard for him to uncover her new name. He’d only had to think like her and home in on what she valued most in her life.
“But even you can’t fake a retinal scan,” she said.
Retinal scan? “I did not know you’d added that level of security.”
“Give me the laptop.” She stretched out her hand, a weak smile playing across her mouth. “Vincent already forwarded the ballistics report on those bullets from the SUV. They’re clean. So the shooter was sending me a message leaving the casings on the rooftop at the park. He wanted me to know this has to do with Justin Valentin. I’ll dig into Agent Valentin’s background, see if there’s a connection there the NSA might’ve missed.”
It was a start, and her plan wouldn’t put her in immediate danger unless the shooter was monitoring Justin Valentin’s records. Even then, Braxton’s network rerouted his IP addresses all over the globe. The shooter would have a hard time nailing down their location for at least a couple of days. Braxton hefted his backpack up, handing it off to her. “And what am I supposed to do in this plan?”
She shouldered the pack and leveled her chin with the floor. Brilliant beams of light stretched through the wall of windows to his left, highlighting the spots of amber in her eyes. “You’ll tell me you’re going to stay.”
His stomach dropped. Stay? That wasn’t part of the deal. “It’s not that easy—”
“Say those words, and I will do everything I can to make sure the NSA can’t touch you.” Stepping into him, she framed the side of his face with one hand. “I’ll make sure you can come home. We can raise this baby. Together. We can give her a family, and whether or not that includes your father is up to you.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking, Liz.” Air stuck in his throat. Curling his hands into fists, he put a few more inches of space between them. He slipped out of her reach, her eyebrows drawing together in confusion. “You need to know the truth before you ask something like that.”
A half-hearted smile stretched across her mouth. “What are you talking about?”
“The reason I left four months ago.” He stroked one hand down his beard. Hell, it wasn’t supposed to be like this. She wasn’t supposed to want him to stay, not when they both knew it couldn’t last. Braxton dropped his hand to his side. “I’m the one who sold classified intel on Oversight.”
Chapter Twelve
He’d...sold the intel on her program. “To the man trying to kill me and our baby?”
“Yes,” he said. “The transaction was anonymous. I had no idea what he was going to do with the intel or that he’d come after you...”
His voice faded in her ears. Her knees shook as she stepped back. Despite the size of his childhood home, the entryway wasn’t that big. There was only so far she could go and stay within reach of slapping him as hard as she could. “So all those interrogations the NSA put me through...when I told them you weren’t the leak, I was committing treason.”
Elizabeth ran a hand through her hair, fisting a tight knot between her fingers. No, no, no, no. None of this made sense.
“Everything that is happening is one hundred percent my fault, and you have my word I will never stop trying to make it up to you.” He took a step forward, but she countered almost instantly, and he froze, hands raised.
“You make it sound so easy.” Think. Focus. No. Fury exploded from behind her sternum, and all rational thought disappeared. Elizabeth dropped the laptop bag and shoved at him with her unbroken hand as her lower lash line burned. “You put my life in danger.” Pushing him again, she fought to keep the tears from falling. “You put our baby’s life in danger.”
The head wound, the bruised ribs, the broken wrist. She could take the physical injuries. But the emotional? She couldn’t put a cast on that. Nausea rolled in her stomach. Oh, hell. Not now.
The three notches between his eyebrows deepened as Braxton dropped his hands to his side. He made another attempt to close in on her. “Sprink—”
“Don’t call me that.” She forced herself to breathe evenly around the bile working up her throat. Around another wave of betrayal. Around the stabbing pain in her chest. How could she have been so stupid? When Braxton had first informed her the feeds had been hijacked, she’d said it was impossible. Because it was. Less than a dozen government officials had clearance to know about the project. Without chalking it up to luck, a civilian wouldn’t have been able to uncover her darkest secret. Unless someone handed them the information. She studied Braxton now and, for the first time, saw him for what he really was. “The intel you sold. It was how to hijack Oversight’s feeds, wasn’t it? Only in order take control of my program, you knew he needed me. That’s why you came back. You realized the second you handed over that intel, he’d hunt me down.”
“He already knew about the program. Knew exactly what he wanted and how to get it. I don’t know how.” Braxton nodded. “But when Dalton Meyer was killed, and the feeds were rerouted, I thought him coming after you next was a possibility.”
“Why? Why would you do this to me?” She shook her head. “No. Don’t answer that. I think I have a pretty good idea.” Her hands shook at her sides. Elizabeth dug her toes into the hardwood to keep her balance, but her entire world had been upended. Slinging the bag over her shoulder once again, she maneuvered around him toward the front door. She didn’t care she’d left her clothes and boots upstairs. She’d stop for supplies along the way. Reaching for the door, she turned her head enough to put him in her peripheral vision. “When you realize the mistake you’ve made, don’t try to find me. I don’t ever want to see you again.”
Shattering glass ripped her attention to the living room on her right. Then a hard thunk of metal against wood. An M84 grenade rolled toward her. Elizabeth caught only a glimpse of it before a wall of muscle crashed into her and pinned her against the floor. The oxygen knocked from her lungs as she covered her ears and closed her eyes. The thump of detonation reverberated through her. The backpack fell from her arm. Before she could take her next inhale, Braxton ripped her and the pack off the floor.
“Come on!” Smoke filled the room, stung her eyes as he led them toward the back of the house. “Cover your face with your shirt and keep your eyes closed. I won’t let you go.”
Another grenade broke through the window above the kitchen sink as they rushed through, and she didn’t have enough hands to cover both ears without losing Braxton in the smoke. A white flash, an ear-deafening blast. Her ears rang, a high-pitched keen that worked to unbalance her and overwhelm her senses. Her shoulder hit the wall beside her, and she dropped Braxton’s hand.
They were under attack. The shooter had found them. Found her.
His rough grip wrapped around her arms and thrust her forward. She jerked to the right into the downstairs office and dared to crack her eyes open. Smoke worked its way under the door, but not enough to sting.
Braxton pushed the black backpack toward her. She held on to it, heart pounding at the back of her head as he unzipped the bag and removed a gun. His lips moved. Nothing but muffled words reached through the ringing in her ears. He checked the gun’s magazine, clicked off the safety and chambered a round. The movements were automatic, something he’d obviously worked at over the last few months.
She shook her head, pointing to her ear.
He took her hand then and mouthed, “I’ve got you.”
A third percussion grenade shattered the office window as though the shooter were following them through the house from outside. She reached for Braxton, spinning them both inside the closet, and closed the door a split second before discharge. They had to get out of th
e house. Breathing ragged, head pounding, Elizabeth pushed out of the closet and went for the hallway.
Braxton’s hand on her shoulder stopped her short of passing the large full bathroom on this level. She poked her head around the door frame from the hall. The bay window around the tub provided a perfect view into the spacious backyard.
And of the single masked man waiting for them outside.
Two taps on her shoulder spun her head around.
Braxton signaled them to the ground.
Getting to her hands and knees, she slipped past the bathroom, safeguarded by both walls that constructed the hallway. The garage was straight ahead, less than ten feet away. The backpack weighed her down and there was a chance they’d slip on the hardwood floors, but they didn’t have a choice. They had to run for it.
Sliding against the wall, she sat back and closed her eyes, her hand across her lower abdominals. One breath. Two. They were going to make it out of this. She had to believe that. One tap on her arm brought her back into the moment. A combination of guilt and violence swirled in Braxton’s gaze. He traced his fingers down one side of her face, and a shiver shook through her.
Elizabeth ripped away and pushed to her feet. No. He should feel guilty. He was responsible for all of this. She pumped her legs fast, panting through her mouth. The strain at the back of her head increased. Her ribs protested, and her legs felt spongy and untrustworthy. Shattering glass and gunfire exploded from every direction the instant she left the cover of the hallway. She covered her head in a vain attempt to keep a bullet from turning her brain into mush and dropped, sliding into the garage door like an MLB player hitting home plate.
Rules in Deceit Page 13