Nerds in Force

by D. R. Grady

  “But blowing up people and seeing personally to shipments of weapons probably surprised her.” Verity’s take probably hit close to the truth.

  “She’d have had no clue how the adrenaline flows and how dangerous those sorts of people are. While illegitimate, she still had a wealthy father and grandfather who likely saw to her care. She certainly didn’t lack for anything materially,” Harlow said. “I don’t know if her family were embarrassed by her or not.”

  “She hates you for all you represent.” Hunter spoke quietly.

  “I suppose.” Harlow didn’t sound too concerned. “Feeding resentment eats away at your soul until you’re like her.”

  Facts had to be faced if a person wished to be honest with themselves. “She’s eventually going to kill you.”

  Chapter 30

  Thursday evening found Harlow out at the Horgate house. She’d made certain to let everyone know in town and the surrounding areas that she and Keith planned to move into her house. The ironic bit of all of this is everyone believed the house belonged to the Horgate family and stated pithy remarks about the Nunes family stealing the house.

  This would surely rankle Nesla. Harlow had also needed to spend the remainder of Tuesday, all of Wednesday, and today at the Horgate Industries offices. With her grandfather still in New York she had been required to make important decisions with several suppliers and take meetings.

  The biggest board meeting had happened Wednesday morning so she’d dressed in her new office appropriate clothing for a CEO and headed into work. If Nesla’s feelings for her were true then she’d be aware of Harlow’s activities.

  “I still can’t believe how the community has rallied around me and my family.” She shook her head at Verity, who remained in the shadows.

  “Don’t get a big head.”

  Harlow laughed softly and both of them became aware of the change in pressure in the house. An indication someone had entered.

  “It’s go time.” Verity sank further into the shadows, blending with them and should be undetectable to most people.

  Harlow stepped to position, keeping the wall to her back, and a good distance from the windows. Their visitor might not have come alone.

  She waited.

  It took their quarry time to find her. She had selected this room for one feature only. And it was more welcoming to greet a visitor in the family room. When she entered the doorway, Nesla aimed a hefty handgun at her.

  Harlow had no difficulty noting the make and model. “Seems a little extreme to threaten someone in their own home.”

  “This is my home, not yours. You are the one stealing.” Nesla’s slim fingers gripped the handle with easy familiarity.

  She stepped into the room, but had to venture to the center in order for her weapon to make any impact.

  “My ancestors built it. That means it’s the Horgate House. Not the Nunes house.”

  “It’s my house. I deserve this house and it’s mine. You’ve been a thorn in my side for a long time. But no more.” Nesla’s fingers contracted. Harlow raised a hand.

  “You’re just going to shoot me and not explain why you killed my father, great-grandfather, and all those Horgate employees? What did you hope to gain from those deaths?” Nesla wouldn’t have had anything to do with her great-grandfather’s death or the engineers’ deaths. She’d have been a child too. It didn’t hurt to rattle her.

  She needed Nesla to come just a little closer. Hmm.

  Harlow took a step back.

  Nesla snarled. This face contortion did not alter the woman’s stunning beauty.

  “Don’t move.”

  “It’s common sense when someone points a weapon at you.” Harlow offered a shrug.

  “You don’t need to know anything about your beloved, perfect family.” Nesla still hadn’t taken that much needed step forward.

  Harlow sidled to the side.

  The gun in Nesla’s hand didn’t waver. “I said not to move. You just moved.”

  “Do you think anyone is going to listen to that? You’re threatening my life, idiot.” She poured as much disdain as possible into her statement.

  Another snarl and a low throated growl and Nesla took that one needed step forward. She also pulled the trigger.

  Harlow jabbed the knot in the white wood paneling at the same time as she ducked. The floor boards beneath Nesla opened wide and swallowed her. The crazy woman screamed as she disappeared but she also fired another shot.

  Oh no. Harlow scurried to the side. Nesla had the sense to shoot to that side and fire licked across her arm.

  She jabbed the button again. She didn’t need to glance at her arm to see the blood pooling there. The familiar burning told her she’d been hit.

  Stupid rookie mistake. Maybe it is time to retire…

  Verity leaped across the room to check her arm.

  “Don’t worry about me. Tell the police we have their package.”

  Harlow used the pressure bandage she found in her first aid kit to help staunch the blood and ignored the pain that blasted across the wound.

  Heavy footfalls pounded across the hard wood floors as uniformed men burst into the room. She explained what happened.

  “That trapdoor still works?” The older officer questioned.

  “I oiled it and made sure the downstairs room is still secure first thing.” Harlow didn’t go into details. They’d set this trap with care and deliberation. Or, Keith had. The man was a very good planner. Although they had been forced to spur him to speed up the process at multiple times and intervals. They’d still be in the early planning stages if Keith had been left to his own devices.

  She led the police downstairs to the basement and the cell where Nesla had landed. “She is armed.” But the awkward way Nesla held her arm indicated she might have injured it on the way down the slick slide into the cell.

  Nesla clutched the gun in her other hand and fired. They all had to duck away from the doorway.

  “Police. Drop your weapon.” One of the older police officers used the voice of authority.

  Being the sociopath she was, Nesla fired again. She didn’t have many bullets left in the gun.

  The hatch opened in the ceiling again, abruptly. One dart shot from the gun held in Verity’s competent grasp. The winged fins of the tranquilizer dart stuck out from Nesla’s shoulder.

  “No!” She screamed and grappled with the dart. An officer Harlow recognized as being around her age raised his own dart gun and fired. This one jabbed into Nesla’s other shoulder.

  She shrieked, a high pitched, aggressive sound that made them all wince. “No, this is my house. I deserve…” Her blue eyes rolled into the back of her head and Nesla crumpled. The gun thudded when it landed on the floor nearby. It fired again.

  The padded walls that surrounded this holding room absorbed the bullet then belched it back out.

  “Your ancestor had an interesting sense of humor.” The younger officer had no trouble seizing Nesla’s weapon now that she’d dropped it. He tidily packed it away in an evidence bag.

  “My team and I added the padding. That’s a recent addition. But this room and slide were my ancestor’s idea.” Harlow surveyed the area with satisfaction. It was good to be home.

  The older officer secured the unconscious Nesla. It could be said he wasn’t particularly gentle. Then again, she’d be out cold for a while, with two doses of tranquilizer.

  “Both are ingenious.” An officer wearing dark, trendy glasses inspected their security measures in the room.

  “Thank you. Pirates were a problem back when my ancestors built this house. There are traps all over this place, but you have to have been family to be told those secrets. I’ve known about all of them since childhood.” She leveled a look at the unaware Nesla. “Anyone else is just a thief.”

  The police hauled Nesla out of the house, for the last time.

  Harlow breathed a sigh of relief as she stepped into Keith’s waiting embrace. This man was home, not the
walls of the building in which they stood. This revelation made her start.

  Who she spent her time with, who she chose to be her family were home. No matter how nice these walls were, they meant nothing if she only lived for herself.

  Nesla Nunes van den Roos was testament to that.

  §

  “What did you just discover?” Keith searched Harlow’s upturned, surprised face, his heart beating out of tune.

  “That this isn’t home. You are.”

  It took long moments for that to sink in. Then he gathered her even closer, scooped her off her feet and twirled her. “You know, you’re right. Where you are is home.” He set her on her feet again. “Although this is where we can sleep and cook.”

  “You can cook. I’ll eat.” She raised up on her tiptoes to kiss his nose.

  He loved when she showed affection like that.

  His entire future lay right here, in this woman. “I love you.”

  “I love you too.” Her eyes turned turbulent with emotion. “More than I ever thought possible.”

  He drew her closer and she winced.

  Keith released her as though she’d burst into flames. “Did I hurt your arm?” Horror shot through him.

  “No. I bumped it.” She held up a hand to forestall him. It worked. “It’s a surface wound. I have experienced plenty worse and this is nothing more than a nuisance.”

  “You weren’t supposed to get shot in the first place.”

  “Right, but we certainly didn’t factor in the true level of crazy.” She shook her head.

  Harlow might be in denial about underestimating Nesla, as well. He hadn’t anticipated the crazy woman’s skill level with a weapon. She probably had been the shooter on the beach at their first meeting.

  “Okay, there is that.” Sometime during the time she had moved out of the house and now, Nesla had turned a corner into full blown Crazytown.

  “She wasn’t the mastermind behind this whole ordeal, was she?” Harlow’s upper teeth worried her bottom lip before she caught herself.

  “I don’t think that’s likely. However, she made an excellent pawn. At some point, someone far more wily than her recruited her or at least used her to further their cause.”

  “So what we’ve learned is that she wanted to be a legitimate member of the Nunes family and be counted as a respectable member of the community. Too bad that she didn’t realize respectability has nothing to do with the means of one’s birth.” Harlow frowned. “It’s the choices we make that make us respectable. And that define who we are. Not our circumstances.”

  “Correct. She wanted to be somebody here on the island but she went about that goal in the worst way possible.”

  Harlow grimaced. “She couldn’t have chosen worse to achieve her goals.”

  “No. It’s a shame. Any news on her husband?”

  “He remains missing. As does Savannah and Eric’s father. And his assistant and my father. Speaking of Eric, is he still okay?”

  “He said he, Riley, and her supervisor are all now safe.”

  “That means they’ve encountered interference of some sort?”

  “Eric’s findings prove that someone else is pulling the strings behind the scenes. Nesla had her own agenda, and maybe went rogue, but someone else is likely still after that research project, at the very least.”

  “This is not good news.” She breathed him in and he tugged her closer.

  Keith couldn’t believe how easy it was to fall in love. How well their relationship worked. The easiness of it astounded him. No one had ever mentioned that the right relationship sprung on you with the speed of a mousetrap. With only the death of your singlehood to show for the speed. He had no intention of escaping this.

  “No, it’s not. It means we still have some work to do to locate who is after that research material.”

  “They might be seeking more than the research material,” Harlow said.

  “Yes. Who knows at this point? But Verity and Hunter are working hard and Chad helps them when he’s not distracted. I think we’ll eventually get there.”

  “Wait, isn’t Riley and her boss also digging into computer files?”

  “They are. I believe they’re seeking to trace this from the military records end.” Keith figured that. He wondered about a potential traitor. Someone had fired at Savannah while she and her team stayed on the Rurikstani base.

  “Ah, a different perspective.”

  “That’s what I took away from the little Eric could tell me He hadn’t actually talked to Riley about any of this.”

  “How long have they known each other?”

  “As far as I know, they only just met when he and company came to the island. They met at the pool.”

  She leaned back in his arms and peered into his face. “Is that true?”

  “It is. From what I gathered from Savannah, little brother fell hard and fast for Riley.”

  “He has good taste in women. She’s spectacular.”

  “I keep forgetting you know her.”

  “I do. She’s excellent on a computer but she’s also got the field skills that Verity can’t use.”

  “So she’s more like you.”

  That made Harlow pause. “I suppose she is. She has computer skills but can also head undercover and the like and live to tell the tale. If she was allowed to talk about her job, which she isn’t since most of her missions are classified, I expect her experiences have been more like mine.”

  “How do you know this stuff?”

  “She’s a buddy. We talk. I can’t disclose most of what I do either. Classified Horgate Industries info.”

  “Right.” He leaned down to kiss her and she met him halfway.

  He loved that about Harlow. She met him halfway and would always have his back.

  A man couldn’t get much better than that. Yet Harlow offered so much more.

  “I love you.” She snuck it in before he could. But that was okay.

  “Harlow, will you marry me?”

  “Yes, yes I am going to do that.”

  Six weeks later

  Epilogue

  Of course Keith carried her over the threshold into their new home. Harlow still wore her wedding gown. He waited for her to lock the door and secure their new security system.

  They had decided against a honeymoon for now because they were still learning their new jobs.

  “Are you going to show me the traps in this house?” Keith hadn’t set her on her feet yet. The perks of marrying a huge man were endless. He wasn’t even breathing heavy as he bypassed all the rooms and headed for their bedroom upstairs. She guessed their destination was their bedroom closets. They didn’t have long before the family descended on them as the reception had ended and now there would likely be a party as they opened their gifts and enjoyed some time with their loved ones.

  Their friends and family would also stay for dinner. She hoped they didn’t mind wedding reception leftovers or pizza. He swept into their bedroom and she leaned forward to kiss him. That made him drop her legs so she wriggled closer, her arms still locked around his neck.

  The first real kiss after their wedding was all she wanted. “I love you more than I ever thought possible.”

  “I feel the same.” His deep voice reverberated through her and she loved it.

  Their second kiss infused her with love and happiness. She stood in the newly renovated master bedroom of her ancestral home with her new husband. The man of her dreams. Harlow was set to officially take over Horgate Industries within the month.

  Keith’s consulting business had taken off to the point he’d been required to hire help as he focused on the Horgate research project they had managed to keep under wraps. He’s also been offered a government contract.

  Hence the decision to postpone their honeymoon.

  “We have to change.” He muttered this against her lips.

  “Yes.” She stepped back and eyed him. “I’ll race you.”

  His grin proved to be
everything she wanted. “You’re on.”

  “Who ever loses has to kiss the other one.”

  “Deal.” His breathless agreement made her laugh as they scurried into their own closets. She exited hers immediately.

  “I can’t unzip this dress.”

  He met her outside her closet. “I’ll help.”

  “Thank you.” Now she sounded breathless.

  “You’re welcome.”

  The noise of tires on pavement outside reminded them that they didn’t have long to change.

  “People.” He said against her lips.

  “Yes.” Neither of them moved.

  “We’re supposed to greet those people.”

  “We locked the door.” They parted and he unzipped her dress, then hurtled out the room and down the stairs to greet the first of their friends and family.

  She guessed he’d ask Eric and Riley, the first to arrive, to greet the rest of their guests while they changed out of their wedding finery.

  Harlow wiggled out of her wedding dress and into the gauzy maxi dress she’d planned with Verity, Savannah, Riley, and Molly’s help. When she exited her closet she landed right back in Keith’s arms. He wore his wedding shirt, pants, and shoes. It worked.

  “Who lost?”

  “Neither. Looks like we both won.” Their third kiss contained all the promise, love, and hope they possessed for their future together.

  Harlow smiled at Keith with all the stars in the sky beaming from her. “I love you.”

  “I love you.” And he took her hand as they made their way downstairs to greet their guests. Together.

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