She swallowed and fought the urge to step back. Damn, he was big. Instead, she lifted her chin, a necessity if she wanted to meet his gaze directly. “That’s what happens when you double-cross Russians.”
A low rumble of a laugh barked out of him. “Russians? Seriously? Fucking Russians.” Dark amusement filtered through his tone and glittered in those amazing eyes. “You’re not as smart as you look, green eyes.”
She was a fucking genius, actually. Even though most of the world believed Russia was contained, her limited experience at the NSA during her internship proved otherwise. “While I appreciate your attempts to get into my head, I should get back to work to save your life. You know, in time for the court martial.”
His smile revealed even white teeth. No dimples. Shouldn’t a fallen angel have a dimple or two? “There’s no way to fix the chip, as it was damaged physically by a bullet. No router problem, no way to repair the connection. Setting to WAP personal won’t work and neither will setting to mixed network mode.” He shrugged massive shoulders.
Interesting. She stilled and studied him closer, if that were possible. Intelligence filled his eyes, which she’d overlooked because of his hulking size… and his incredible looks. “So you know a little bit about computers, do you?” If he was as knowledgeable as he seemed, he could’ve sold all sorts of state secrets to their enemies.
“A bit. Don’t waste time using stumblers or sniffers. The last techs they sent wasted too much time trying.” He sighed. “Then they tried a wireless honey pot. Idiots.”
She shook her head. He seemed to have the world at his feet, just from brains, brawns, and beauty. “Why?” she asked, her voice croaking.
Furrows dug into his forehead, and he stepped closer to the glass. “Why what?”
Although impossible, she could swear she felt heat from his body through the partition. “Why would you do such a thing? Betray your own people?” Sure, she’d made mistakes—big ones. But disloyalty wasn’t one of them.
His gaze softened. “I have never betrayed my own people. Ever.”
The words had to be a lie, but truth echoed in the low tones. She sighed. “So your people aren’t the citizens of your own country.”
One massive shoulder lifted. “I’d never turn against this country, but no. My people share my blood.” He paused and rubbed his scruffy chin. “Well, and the women they might love—I’d never betray them, either.” His smile returned at the last.
For some reason, the statement both intrigued and irritated her. “So your people are only men.”
“More than men and never only.” He didn’t appear to move, but suddenly seemed taller. Bigger. More formidable. “Is there anybody you’d die for?”
“Yes.” Absolutely and without question.
His lids half lowered. “How about kill for?”
She blinked. “Y-Yes.” The order of his question as well as the flash of sorrow in his dark eyes bespoke of hidden hurts and unplumbed deaths. “Who are you?” she whispered.
“I like that about you. A lot.”
Her chest warmed, and warning clanged inside her brain. “Like what?”
“The way you blurt out what’s in your head without thinking. You’ve done it twice already.” His full upper lip quirked. “While you’re definitely on guard, your natural state is unguarded. Very appealing.”
Oh, he did not get to read her so easily. “Maybe I’m working you.”
Now his eyes darkened, swirling with something… male. “Baby, you could work me any day.”
Laughter rolled out of her, quick and unexpected.
His eyebrows lifted.
She forced her lips out of a smile. “That come-on voice you use, trying to be suggestive. It’s such baloney.”
He rubbed his bottom lip, studying her. Deep. Before he’d seemed merely curious, now it felt like he dug deep and mined her brain. Maybe deeper. She wanted to step away, to get back to work, but the guy was like a refuge in the middle of chaos. Even trapped, a sense of calmness surrounded him.
When was the last time she’d been calm?
“Jory? Is that your real name?” For some reason, knowing his real name mattered. Why, Piper would figure out later.
“Yes. Always has been.” Jory flattened his platter-sized palm against the glass. A wicked and faded white scar marred his life line. “Is Piper your name?”
Her head jerked back. “Yes. Always has been.” An urge to press her palm against his, even to just marvel at the difference in size, propelled her back a step. “If you tell me who implanted the chip, maybe I could figure out where it came from and study the design so I can somehow reconnect wirelessly with it. So the damn thing doesn’t go active, slice your spine, and kill you.”
No physical reaction whatsoever from the hard-ass prisoner.
“If I told you, they’d kill you.” He kept his palm in place, the scar a deadly reminder of who he was and what he might do. “Get out now, Piper.”
A chill skittered down her spine. “Nobody will kill me. We’re both protected here.”
He sighed.
She shook her head. Yeah, she wanted to save him, and not just to cement her place in the organization. To be truly useful and needed. Maybe there was a good reason he’d betrayed the people she now trusted? She shook her head. There was no good reason. “You’re just too good-looking. Bad guys shouldn’t look like you.”
His cheek creased. “I’m not a good guy, I admit. But in this world, in the place you’re standing in right now? I’m not even close to the baddest. Unfortunately.”
Fanatics believed wholeheartedly in their cause and in the rightness of their crimes. She knew better than to trust him, and she was too smart to be manipulated. “I can see you believe your statement.”
A line formed between his eyebrows. “What exactly did Dr. Madison tell you about me?”
Piper paused. There didn’t seem to be a good reason to withhold information. “She told me you were an American asset, one trained in assassinations, who turned against our country and sold secret information to the highest bidders and then ended up working with the Russians. Apparently your new friends didn’t trust you, so they implanted a kill chip next to your spine, and a bullet impacted the device, rendering it off-line.”
Jory quirked his upper lip. “Great story.”
She studied him. What if the story was untrue? Dr. Madison was a stone-cold bitch and probably had no problem lying. Especially since she couldn’t stand Piper. “Want to counter?”
“No.”
An odd regret weighed down her shoulders. “So it’s true.”
“No.” He shook his head. “The less you know about me, the safer you’ll remain.”
What a bunch of baloney. “If you cared about my safety, you wouldn’t have sold my country’s secrets to our enemies,” she shot back.
He shook his head. “You’re really a patriot, now aren’t you?”
She lifted her chin. “Yes.” Although her reasons for working at the compound were definitely personal and not professional, she loved her country and couldn’t understand how anybody could betray their homeland. “I studied computers and coding through college and graduate school just to be able to work here.”
“So you’re here voluntarily.” Whatever openness had been in his gaze moments ago snapped closed—hard and fast, like a bank vault door.
She bit the inside of her lip. “Yes. I trained at the NSA, and that made me appealing for this organization.” Of course, she’d already been in contact with the organization when she’d earned the NSA internship, but since the NSA didn’t know that fact, neither should the prisoner. Now saving Jory was her assignment.
“Does the NSA know about this job?” A low thread of something dark wove through his words.
She blinked and told him the first lie of the day. “Yes.”
His chin lifted. “Ah. Interesting.”
She crossed her arms. “What is interesting?”
“You’re a terrible li
ar, Piper. I like that.” His eyes warmed.
She kept silent, not wanting to compound the lie. What was wrong with her? Every time the guy said he liked something about her, flutters heated her abdomen. He was the bad guy.
Now she worked in a covert military organization, and she needed to learn to lie better. When she’d moved to Utah, she’d known of the job’s secrecy. Sometimes duty required sacrifice, she’d been told. Something whispered inside her head that the man in the cell had seen plenty of sacrifice. “I’m not lying,” she muttered.
He lowered his chin. “You seem like a smart woman, so I have to ask you, does lying to the NSA seem like a good idea? Does an organization, one that professes to be part of the U.S. military, lie to the NSA?”
The back of her nape tickled. Sometimes, the NSA didn’t want to know everything, which was why it hired out organizations such as the one she now worked for. That much, she’d figured out on her own without the covert training she was currently undergoing. “Nobody is lying to the NSA,” she said evenly.
He snorted.
She cleared her throat. Time to get back to the job at hand. That’s what he was, and what he had to remain. Merely a job. Her time of rescuing stray pets had ended, and she had to stop his attempts to dig into her head. “So far I haven’t been able to reconfigure the code algorithm or to gain a connection between the computer and the chip. The code changes every thirty seconds, so you need the connection to make it work and to pause it. Help me to save you.” Maybe he didn’t want to be saved.
“You really want to help?” he asked, his gaze intent.
“Yes.” She had to prove her usefulness in order to stay, and more than anything, she needed to stay. Plus, now she wanted to save the man in the cage. The Russians didn’t get to decide when and how he died. The American courts would.
“Then give me the codes and the computer,” he said.
They’d warned her he’d try to work her, and she’d scoffed. Now she saw the reason for the concern. Nobody should be that charming. “How exactly am I supposed to get you the computer?” she asked.
“Help me get out of here.” He dropped his hand. “You’re good, I admit it. But I’m better, and if I had the chance at the computer, I could fix this.”
He was lying. She shook her head. “If you could save yourself, they would’ve given you the chance. You want the computer to contact your allies. The commander warned me.”
That easily, that quickly, Jory turned from an amenable charmer into something… impenetrable. Cold swept the gray warmth from his eyes, and his jaw firmed into a shape harder than granite.
The mask slipped to reveal the killer deep inside.
For the first time, she had no problem imagining him as the bad guy. “I knew you were in there somewhere,” she murmured.
His chin lifted, and his nostrils flared. “You have no idea who’s in here, green eyes. No idea at all.”
“Was it the mention of your allies that did it?” Her knees trembled with the raw need to escape danger, even though he was contained. The hair sprang up on the back of her neck, and her fight or flight instinct bellowed for her to flee. Would a mere cell wall keep a man like him trapped? Somehow, she didn’t think so.
“No allies. Just how well do you know the commander?” Jory asked, his lip twisting.
Piper shrugged again and swallowed over a lump in her throat. “Pretty well. Considering he’s my father.”
CHAPTER
3
PIPER STRETCHED HER neck while her heels clicked on the hard tile in rapid succession. She shouldn’t have told Jory about her father, but as usual, her mouth moved faster than her brain. Considering the neurons in her brain fired quicker than the speed of light, her mouth was a freakin’ miracle.
The brief file she’d studied about Jory showed his proficiency with making connections with people—especially women. Charming them and gaining trust. He’d tried with her, and damn, she’d seen the appeal.
But she had a brain, and she wasn’t some dumb girl to be manipulated. She had to prove that to herself as well as to her father.
Her strengths lay in her mind and computer skills, and she wouldn’t allow any feminine, romantic silliness to get in the way. Not this time.
A swipe of her key card opened a heavy metal door into another secured area in the compound. While gorgeous mountains surrounded them, she’d been spending too much time surrounded by concrete blocks and alarm systems. Yet the computer facilities, the hardware and software, the sheer connection of the place filled her with warmth and pleasure.
These were better than the systems at the compound two hours into the flatlands, but those were being upgraded. She bit her lip. Right now she had the perfect setup and didn’t want to move two hours from town. Why couldn’t they just stay there like they had the last two months?
If she saved Jory, maybe she’d be allowed to work in the satellite office and stay put, which would also keep her mother happy. Her mom was still pissed she’d taken the job. Finally, Piper reached a closed office door at the end of the lonely hallway. She knocked.
“Enter.”
The powerful voice straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin. She opened the door and stepped inside, instantly assailed by the scent of gunpowder. Her hands shook, but she forced herself to stride inside and stand by a sprawling wooden desk. “Commander.”
Dressed in a black soldier’s uniform, his unfathomable eyes serious, he nodded toward one of two metal chairs. “Sit.”
She obeyed, crossing her legs and keeping her shoulders back to match his ramrod straight posture. Being nervous was just silly, but her hands sweat, anyway. Taking a deep breath, she braced herself. “I haven’t been able to fix the connection to the prisoner’s chip yet.”
“We only have a week until the chip engages.” The commander sat back, his sharp gray buzz cut gleaming in the harsh fluorescent lights. “I thought you were the best.”
Actually, after talking to Jory, she might be second best. “The bullet’s impact damaged the chip. I plan to write a new program tonight that may bypass the safeguards put into place earlier, which will hopefully reengage the chip. Hopefully awaken it, if you will.” Her stomach swirled with the need to please him.
His eyebrows drew down. “Is there any chance the chip is completely dead and not just off-line?”
“It’s possible, but I certainly wouldn’t count on it.” The chips had been expertly designed to withstand external pressure, but nothing could remain damage-free from a direct impact from a bullet.
“Then I suggest you remember the clock winding down.”
She swallowed. “I’ve only been close enough to the prisoner to try a wireless connection for a day.” Before that, she’d spent her time rewriting the program, trying to find a different program, or trying to destroy the program, as per her instructions. Letting her get so close to the prisoner with a computer and a wireless connection was their last shot at saving him.
“Humph.” Disappointment rode the grunt hard. “A couple of years ago, when you decided to hack into my system and then taught yourself the chip program and how to manipulate it, I figured you’d be dedicated to solving my problem.” A light that looked suspiciously like pride glittered in his dark eyes.
She shook her head. “I hacked into your servers trying to find my father, you, after an old college roommate of my mom sent her a box of stuff she’d never retrieved from their storage unit. Finding the chip program had been a coincidence.” She’d found the picture of her father and had instantly begun investigating the mysterious commander. Of course, the second she’d discovered the intricate program, she’d set to figuring it out.
And had gotten caught.
She’d never forget the military soldiers showing up to arrest her and toss her in a cell. The lawyer she’d met had urged her to make a deal for ten years in a federal prison.
Then her father, the one she’d never met, had stepped in and saved her ass.
She owed
him, but Jory’s questions about the NSA swirled around her head. “How come you didn’t want me to tell anybody at the NSA that I went to work for you?”
The commander shrugged. “You earned your internship with them on your own, and you should be proud of that. Then you went back to school and graduated before earning this job. Right now, is there any reason to let the NSA know you’re working here?”
She wiped her hands off again. Was there any reason? “I guess not.”
He leaned forward. “We provide vital assistance to the United States government, and some of our work is off the books, as is necessary when defending a country and way of life. I have little care if you let the NSA know you’re working here, but I don’t see the reason.”
It wasn’t like she’d really made any friends there between the work, her schooling, her part-time job, and her mother. And it seemed like the commander didn’t really care if she contacted the NSA, so obviously he wasn’t hiding anything. “I understand,” she said.
“Good.”
If he needed her, she could stay and actually get to know him better, and he seemed impressed with her talents. Every time he’d given her a glimpse into himself, she’d found herself intrigued and wanting to know more. For years, she’d dreamed of her heroic father, and when she’d tracked him down, she’d been thrilled. “I’ll fix the chip.” God, she shouldn’t make that promise. What if she couldn’t keep it?
“I hope so,” he said, no expression on his hard face and the light disappearing from his eyes.
Piper swallowed, her gaze sliding to take in the large office and myriad of antique guns, all killing machines, decorating the walls. Nothing but the desk and two chairs sat in the room, leaving the overall effect as masculine and stark. Just like her father. Would he have been the same—so distant—if she’d known him as a child? “I could also use another pair of hands tomorrow using the second computer in the room. Any ideas?”
The commander nodded. “Yes. I’ll have an aide sent to you as soon as I can have it arranged, as I assume the new program will be written by then?”
Total Surrender Page 3