Winter Hawk

by Rachel Grant

  Raptor operative Nate Sifuentes isn’t thrilled to find himself back on the job on the first day of his winter vacation, but he can’t say no when his brother asks a favor. At least he’ll earn an easy Christmas bonus—after all, driving a fired military contractor home after she’s been escorted off base by military police can’t be that hard.

  In a matter of minutes, Leah Ellis has lost everything, and now she’s stranded in the nation’s capital on the first night of Hanukkah without money, phone, or bed. All she has is a mysterious driver who might be after her technical knowledge of the US military’s drone operations.

  The former Green Beret’s protective instincts—and skills—kick in when he discovers the alluring AI engineer is being hunted. On the run, they escape the winter cold by generating their own heat, but will they find answers in time to stop a terror attack on Christmas Day?

  Contents

  Books By Rachel Grant

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Epilogue

  Incriminating Evidence Excerpt

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books By Rachel Grant

  Flashpoint Series

  Tinderbox (#1)

  Catalyst (#2)

  Firestorm (#3)

  Inferno (#3.5)

  * * *

  Flashpoint Series Collection

  * * *

  Evidence Series

  Concrete Evidence (#1)

  Body of Evidence (#2)

  Withholding Evidence (#3)

  Incriminating Evidence (#4)

  Covert Evidence (#5)

  Cold Evidence (#6)

  Poison Evidence (#7)

  Silent Evidence (#8)

  Winter Hawk (#8.5)

  * * *

  Evidence Series Box Set Volume 1: Books 1-3

  Evidence Series Box Set Volume 2: Books 4-6

  * * *

  Romantic Mystery

  Grave Danger

  * * *

  Paranormal Romance

  Midnight Sun

  19.11-2

  This one is for Serena Bell,

  I can’t imagine where I’d be without our plotting sessions and monthly cocktails and tapas night. Thank you for becoming an integral part of my writing world and for letting me be part of yours.

  1

  Virginia

  December

  Nate Sifuentes wished he’d silenced his cell phone before crawling into bed at three a.m., but he’d had no reason to expect an early call the morning after Raptor’s official company holiday party. Everyone knew that even normal Sundays were for sleeping in.

  But this wasn’t a normal Sunday. For the first time in company history, the corporate office was closing down for a full two weeks to celebrate Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, and the New Year. As Nate didn’t have any ongoing security clients at the moment, the closure meant he couldn’t be called in on new jobs, giving him an unscheduled two-week vacation.

  Whoever was calling just before eight a.m. this morning needed to be shot. With a pellet gun, because he wasn’t a monster. But still. Shot. At short range. At least a dozen times.

  He checked caller ID and changed his mind. Two dozen times. And forget the basic pellets. Paintballs. At least one hit to unprotected junk.

  Seriously, after forty-one years, his older brother knew better than to call this early on a Sunday.

  The phone went blessedly silent, only to resume ringing a minute later. Freddy had a death wish. Nate picked up the phone. “Someone better be dead or in the hospital.”

  “Think of how shitty you’d feel if that were really the case,” Freddy said, his voice far too cheerful for the early hour.

  “Fine. Tell me what you want and I’ll decide if hospitalizing you is warranted.”

  “Stop being so dramatic, baby bro. I just need a favor.”

  “My first staycation when I’m not stranded in Alaska in six years, and you wake me at eight to ask a favor? It better be a kidney you need, man, or you’ll regret this. Like, worse than you regret your mullet years.”

  “That’s the worst you can come up with? My ultracool, retro-nineties mullet?”

  “I was up until three. I’m not exactly bringing my A game to this, but for the record, you should regret the mullet. There is no decade in which they were ever cool.”

  “Listen, one of my regular clients called this morning with an urgent job. Because it’s the weekend before the holidays, none of my regular drivers can take it, and I promised Angelica and the kids we’d do Christmas in the city today—see the National Christmas Tree, the works—or I’d do it myself. But it’s big bucks. Like…Christmas bonus big. For two hours work, tops. I know you could use a bonus.”

  That got Nate’s attention. Freddy owned a car service that catered to the powerful and wealthy who worked in or visited the nation’s capital, and his big brother was right, Nate could use a bonus. He did okay with Raptor, but he was an oddity among employees, one of the few hires from Robert Beck’s era, before Alec Ravissant bought the company. As a result, he’d never been quite trusted by Rav, CEO Keith Hatcher, or anyone in the DC home office.

  Six months ago, Nate had transferred to Virginia so he could be near Freddy and his family. Now that he was situated at the heart of the company, the disparity was obvious, and he was fed up. He had more seniority and experience than Sean Logan, but Sean was the golden boy, one of Rav’s very first hires, while Nate, who’d been in the military—and Special Forces—and with Raptor longer, lingered at the trainer and occasional operative level while Sean dabbled in management and got to cherry-pick his assignments. As of a week ago, the guy was officially engaged to Rav’s cousin.

  Might as well make him heir apparent.

  Yet, Nate had no beef with Sean. He liked the guy and would trust him to have his back to the end of time. But it still rankled that he was waking up to a holiday bonus offer, and it wasn’t coming from the company he’d given the last eight years of his life to.

  “Dude. I’m on vacation.”

  “Please, man. Seriously, it will be two hours tops. Probably only thirty minutes. A quick assignment. Given that it’s the Sunday before Hanukkah and Christmas and this is a special case—a person is getting fired and they need a ride home—the base rate is a grand. You pocket seven fifty, ExecRides gets the rest. You can’t tell me Raptor pays that good.”

  Freddy had a point. Raptor paid him well, but not seven-hundred-and-fifty-for-two-hours well. There had to be a catch. He rubbed his hand over his face in an attempt to wipe the sleep away. Too much wine and too little sleep made for a fuzzy brain.

  “You charge a grand for a two-hour job? What kind of car service are you running, bro?”

  “This is a high-security job. The pickup is at a military base.”

  “Which base?”

  “Washington Navy Yard.”

  “It must be a contractor getting fired,” he said. It was the only scenario that made sense, given that military personnel didn’t get fired, they were discharged, and it didn’t happen on a dime.

  “Yeah. They’ll be escorted to the gate by security. My job is to have someone on the other side to take them home. It’s standard procedure for government and private sector firings in touchy circumstances.”

  “You do a lot of these kinds of fi
ring pickups?” Nate asked.

  “Two or three a month. Usually these jobs are short and sweet and bill out for a few hundred. More than we get for the average grocery run. But because this one is happening on the Sunday before Christmas, I asked for more and got it.”

  “Why do you think they agreed?”

  “My guess is the employee is being blindsided and will cry or curse for the entire drive. The client wants this done neat and clean and over with.”

  “Sounds like a party.”

  “It will definitely suck.”

  “Being canned before the holidays can also make a person very vocal with company secrets. Your client could be hoping to buy your loyalty.”

  “Oh, that’s part of it for sure. They’re probably worried word will get out the company is being fired by the military. The guy stressed several times what a good customer they’ve been and if this is handled well, there will be more high-end jobs in the future.”

  “Who’s the client?”

  “Hathaway-Hollis. Better known as HH.”

  “The drone manufacturer? They’re making military-grade goods now?”

  “Yes, word is the military requested a prototype after seeing what the toy models could do.”

  Nate drummed his fingers on his leg. Since before Thanksgiving, he’d been seeing news reports saying the metallic silver drones with the bright red HH logo were the must-have toy this holiday season. With Christmas and Hanukkah happening in the same week this year, the skies were about to be flooded with the irritating things.

  It appeared at the same time HH was seeing record-breaking sales, they’d screwed up a government contract. No wonder they wanted this handled discreetly.

  He closed his eyes, but sleep no longer beckoned. He’d be lying if he claimed he wasn’t intrigued. The Navy Yard was just thirty minutes from the Raptor compound, so at most he’d lose three hours of his life. “Wait. Can I drive my Raptor SUV? I’d lose an hour each way if I have to pick up one of your vehicles.” Freddy’s business was based in Maryland, on the opposite side of DC from the Virginia compound where Nate lived and worked.

  “If it’s cool with your boss that you use a Raptor vehicle, I don’t care. But ExecRides still gets a quarter cut.”

  “I’ll clear it with Keith.”

  “So you’ll do it?”

  Nate sighed. There was never really a chance he’d say no. And hell, he’d give ExecRides his share because Freddy and his family were the only people he bought Christmas presents for anyway. He could put up with an angry or crying employee for an hour or two if it meant a grand for Freddy. He imagined Mikaela and Max waking up on Christmas morning to see new bicycles waiting for them and said, “Yes. I’ll do it.”

  Leah Ellis glanced at the clock, then rolled her shoulders and cracked her neck. She’d been sitting hunched over too long. But she was so close to finishing this module. She had an hour before she needed to leave for the tour.

  She felt positively wild taking a few hours off for herself this afternoon and evening. Her New Year’s resolution would be to find work-life balance, but she had ten days before she needed to worry about that and far too much work to complete in such a short period of time.

  She’d be further along on the government contract, except for the last week she’d had to clock out at six so she could go home and work on fixing the code for the holiday drones.

  She hadn’t gotten more than five consecutive hours of sleep in days because that idiot Dex had screwed up the firmware update. Now, she’d had to fix it while still being expected to hit the government contract milestones.

  The job should have gone to Kevin if it was too much for Dex, and anger stirred every time she remembered the words in Dex’s email explaining why the task should fall on her: You don’t celebrate Christmas and don’t have family. You don’t need time off now like the rest of us.

  She’d stuffed the resentment and done the work, not for the reasons he gave but because Peacemaker was her baby and she couldn’t let Dex—or Kevin—screw it up. She’d finished at two a.m. this morning and now could give all her attention to the military.

  She’d come in today to put in a few hours and get caught up. She’d missed Friday’s deadline, but she’d have the beta test ready by tomorrow afternoon. Given that nearly everyone in the Navy Yard offices had opted to take Christmas week off—one of the benefits of government use-or-lose vacation time that she didn’t get to enjoy as a contractor—her slight delay was a nonissue. Captain Sullivan had waved her off when she’d explained the problem on Friday, saying his in-laws had arrived in town the day before and he wouldn’t be able to review the beta test until after Christmas anyway.

  With that assurance, she was being downright reckless and going forward with her plan to take a few hours off to enjoy the candlelight tour of Mt. Vernon. It was fitting that she’d see George Washington’s home by candlelight on the first night of Hanukkah. Her mother would have loved that.

  She stared at the computer screen. She was so damn tired. Maybe she should cut out now. What good would another hour do? She had days to finish setting up the beta test.

  Instead of quitting, she pulled out her sketchpad and ink pen. The drawing was abstract, boxes and lines, but it organized her thoughts, helped her focus on what remained to be done in the system design. Almost without realizing it, she set the notepad aside and her fingers were back on the keyboard, moving variables around, connecting lines of code in new ways.

  She worked alone, but her office had windows on three sides. It was a security measure necessary for the type of work she did at the Navy Yard and had taken some getting used to in the last three weeks, but on days like today—when only workaholics or coders close to a breakthrough were working—she didn’t feel like a fish in a bowl. There was no one in the outer offices. The only people in the extremely secure building were likely the marines who provided security at the front door, so it surprised her when movement on the security monitor that faced her desk caught her eye. Two marines approached the outer office.

  The monitor had been another security feature to get used to. It showed the office exterior in case armed gunmen stormed the building and she needed to shut the system down before they found a way to hijack military drones.

  The pair moved closer, and Leah saw the letters “MP” on an armband. These weren’t just marines; they were military police. They crossed the room with purpose, faces blank. All at once, she knew why they were there, and a cold chill ran down her spine.

  Captain Sullivan had been fine with her missing the deadline, but others in the chain of command weren’t so forgiving.

  Her belly clenched. She had mere seconds to decide what to do. Her fingers flew across the keyboard. She needed to delete the beta test. Incomplete as it was, it could be compromised. But if she was wrong about why the MPs were here, she’d be fired for destroying her work.

  So instead she buried three weeks of work in the system and generated a code for the file path, then yanked open her desk drawer looking for something, anything, she’d be allowed to remove from this room.

  Nothing in the desk. There was no way she’d be allowed to keep the sketchpad, plus it was bound. All at once, it hit her. The printout of her ticket to the candlelight tour. She grabbed it from her coat pocket and smoothed it out, then put it in the manual feed tray and hit Print.

  The outer door opened, but the printer was beneath her desk, not visible to the MPs—a Black woman and an Asian man—as they crossed the room.

  She pulled the ticket from the output tray and slipped it into a desk drawer.

  The MPs reached her office door and her hands were back on the keyboard, erasing code and killing the beta test.

  The door opened. “Remove your hands from the keyboard, ma’am,” the Asian MP said.

  “I can’t leave my files open. It would violate all security protocols.” She kept typing.

  “Step away from the computer,” the woman said. She placed her hand on her weapon but
didn’t draw. Leah appreciated that consideration.

  A glance at the screen showed the files disappearing. She raised her hands and stood, facing the two MPs. “So, what’s going on?”

  The man gave a faint smile. “I’m pretty sure you’ve guessed.”

  She shrugged. “Until I get official word from my supervisor, my guesses mean nothing.”

  “You have five minutes to collect your personal belongings,” the woman said.

  The phone on the desk rang.

  “You may answer that,” the man said.

  Government phones didn’t have caller ID, but she didn’t need to see the name on a screen to know it must be one of her bosses at Hathaway-Hollis. They’d have been told what was happening before the MPs were called.

  She picked up the handset. “What’s up, Tim?” she said in a cheerful voice.

  “Uh…um…” The man stumbled, clearly caught off guard by her casual greeting. He cleared his throat. “We’ve been informed by your supervisor at the Washington Navy Yard that your services are no longer appreciated. You are terminated immediately and are to hand over your Navy ID, your company-provided cell phone, and the keys to the townhouse.”

  Fear shot through her. They weren’t messing around. “You can’t lock me out of my home.”

  “As the townhouse is provided by Hathaway-Hollis and is not in your name, you know we can. Given the nature of your work for the military, the NSA is sealing the townhouse. It must be searched before you’re allowed reentry to collect your belongings. With the holidays, this will likely take several days. I’m sure you understand why this is necessary.”