Third Hour

by Lisa Phillips

  “What is it?” Victoria’s voice echoed like she was in a hallway.

  “Alvarez needs cover. He was in the hacker’s crosshairs.” She had to stop and take a breath to push back the sparks at the edges of her vision. Passing out would not be helpful.

  “You think I let him go unprotected?”

  Dakota tapped Talia on the shoulder. “What’s she saying?”

  Talia turned. The whole team watched her. Great, an audience for her breakdown. He thought he was tormenting her, putting people in danger? This was worse. Their concern, and the fact they weren’t off bringing in bad guys right now. Rounding up evil. No, they were taking care of her.

  That wasn’t how their team was supposed to work.

  Talia did the support stuff. Not the parts where she was in the middle of everything, the center of attention.

  “Put me on speaker.”

  Talia lowered the phone and tapped the button. “Go ahead.”

  “Everyone is there?”

  Haley called out, “Yes.”

  “And Special Agent Armstrong?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Victoria chuckled. “You make your mama proud.”

  Josh snorted. Talia wanted to smile, but she couldn’t. “Alvarez.”

  Another one of her teammates was in danger. Well, given the cases they took, it was probably true that they were always in danger. It was how their line of work went. No social media presence. Living quietly. Being careful. Safe.

  She’d done so much to help them in this, never thinking it would be her turn next. That they would be here, determined to keep her safe. But she still had to do that for Alvarez. As much as he knew the life he lived was not a safe one, she wasn’t going to stand around and do nothing.

  “As I was about to say to you, Talia, I made a call a few hours ago. Welvern has a friend. He’s been a help in the past and has private investigator papers. His skills are in the neighborhood of contract undercover work for the FBI.”

  “Hours ago?”

  “Alvarez has protection, and the guy is already in play.”

  Talia said, “We need that guy’s number. So we can warn him.

  “I’ll send him a text.” Victoria paused. “Okay, done. Our marshal shut off his work phone. He has the burner you gave him, and that’s all.” She went quiet again for a few seconds. “Drew says they’re both good.”

  “Oh.” So Alvarez hadn’t even gotten her message? “He’s okay?” She could text the other cell, though. She could mask her information and get him secure communication. She’d be able to let him know again if his life was in imminent danger.

  “There’s nothing to worry about, Talia. He’s good.”

  Talia blew out a long breath. There was plenty to worry about. “I’ll keep you posted if my old team finds this hacker’s whereabouts.” Because it apparently wasn’t here.

  “Good.” Victoria paused. “You guys all right?”

  “Yes.”

  A couple of the others chimed in. Mason said, “Yes, ma’am.”

  Victoria’s voice came through the phone speaker again. “The hacker is just trying to get you riled up. You know that, right?”

  Talia figured that question was for her. “It’s working. And we’re still two steps behind, the same way we’ve been this entire time.”

  A hand touched her shoulder. She knew without looking that it was Mason, so she reached up and squeezed his fingers. The urge to run was strong.

  People she loved kept getting caught in the crossfire. She could hardly stand to think about watching Mason get washed away again. Right there behind her one second, helping her out, and then he was gone. Whooshed out of sight by a rush of water.

  She swallowed down the lump in her throat.

  Victoria said, “I’ll light a fire under the NSA director. He owes me a favor.”

  Who didn’t? Talia certainly couldn’t repay her for everything she’d done. “Okay.”

  “We are going to find him.”

  Talia bit her lip. Her vision blurred as tears filled her eyes. Victoria didn’t know that. Since the bank, she had assumed they would get him. Eventually. Soon. Now. None of those things had happened so far.

  Maybe they weren’t going to catch him at all. He would continue tormenting Talia for years to come. Until he had destroyed her career, the people she cared about…everything.

  Gone.

  Talia hung up on her. She couldn’t talk about this anymore. Not if she wanted to keep from screaming out her frustration at all of them. Given Victoria was the one who had rescued her from the worst day of her life, that wasn’t exactly a showing of grateful thanks. Not that her boss would regret having done it. But still, Talia didn’t want her to have to deal with that.

  None of them were supposed to.

  “Talia—”

  She shook her head, already moving away. She figured they all saw it on her face. That urge she had to just up and run. Get as far away from them as fast as she could.

  If he was going to keep coming after her—and wasn’t it just delay tactics to keep them busy?—then maybe he should find her alone when he did. The rest of the team could get back to work.

  In fact, that was a great idea.

  Talia spun around to face them all. She lifted her chin. “You guys should go.”

  “We only brought one car.” Dakota stuck her hand on her hip. Beside her, the dog shifted into a sit and leaned against her leg.

  “That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”

  Mason glanced between them. “I’ll stay with you.”

  “No—”

  Before she could finish, he cut her off.

  . . .

  “You really think any of us are going to let you go off by yourself?”

  “I’m not a child.” The pain in her eyes was stark. Plain for any of them to see. “It’s not like I want to be by myself. But it’s safer.”

  He tugged her away from the others.

  Dakota saw his intention and jerked her thumb in the direction of the trail. “We’ll see you guys at the car.” In her gaze was a direct order for him to make sure Talia got there, whole and hearty.

  Mason gave her a tight nod and wandered a couple of steps to the side with Talia. He was drenched, head to foot and shivering from the cold, but he still didn’t want to be anywhere else except here. Talking to Talia. Helping her through this.

  She looked down and surveyed the state of him.

  “I probably look like a sorry sight.”

  The corner of her mouth shifted. Not quite a smile, but he took it for the victory it was.

  “I’m not going to tell you that everything will be fine. Not when I don’t know that for sure.”

  She bit her lip.

  “But I’ll be with you. Even if that means you and me, together, while the team goes and does their thing.”

  He just couldn’t bear to think what might happen to her if she went off on her own. Probably exactly what she was worried would happen to him, considering he’d been abducted. But that guy was dead now. The threat was still real, though. This hacker definitely had something going on, and Prometheus was loose.

  “You’d really do that?” She looked up at him.

  “I don’t want you out there, alone, swinging in the breeze.”

  “Neither do I.” She started to say something else, but evidently thought better of it.

  “But..?”

  She sighed. “I don’t want anyone else getting hurt because of me. It’s too much. Too—” She ran her fingers through the hair on the sides of her face and grasped handfuls.

  “Talia.” He had to shake her out of her own world. This mess she felt like she was drowning in.

  Mason dragged her toward him and slid his arms loosely around her. “You’re not doing this alone.”

  “And if something happens to Rayna? What then?”

  He’d been right. This was about her fear for his daughter. “Rayna might be fine, or she could get hurt tomorrow in a w
ay she’d never recover. But I still have to live my life—even though the possibility is literally in my mind every single day. That’s what parenting is. It can’t paralyze me with worry over what might happen to her. I have to live now.” A tear fell from her eye and tracked its way down her cheek. He swiped it with his thumb. “Please don’t turn out to not be the woman I thought you were.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Stick with me,” he implored her. “I know you’ve gone through so much.”

  Whispered words spilled from her lips. “I thought you were dead.”

  Mason leaned his forehead against hers and shut his eyes. “I know. For a second there I thought I was as well.”

  “He’s never going to quit.” She sucked in a breath that hitched in the middle. “He’ll keep coming and coming, giving me the runaround until I lose my mind. It’s never going to end.”

  This guy had to have some sick obsession with her. Mixed up with a furious need to compete with her in the realm of network security. They’d been wrapped in a battle since he’d met her in the bank, and before.

  Talia said, “Your hands are freezing.”

  He let go of her face. “Sorry.” Had she heard what he was saying? Mason needed her to understand. To be the kind of woman he could trust to not leave when things got intense. The need to know whether she would or not was driving this passion in him. He could almost understand this guy, in a weird way. Mason wanted something from her, and he was going to stick around until he got it.

  The two were not the same, at all. But he had to admit that he did understand the hacker’s persistence.

  Talia snagged his hand and held it with hers. “It’s okay.”

  “Promise me something?”

  He watched her lips form the word. “What?”

  “Talk to me first. Because if you go, I want to go with you.” He’d say they should do it right now, only they’d all shown up here in one car. “I just need you to talk to me.”

  “That’s all? Just communication?”

  He nodded, and her expression softened. She liked that. A fact which warmed his freezing body from the inside. “We should catch up with the others.”

  “First…” She shifted closer to him. “There’s just one thing.”

  Talia set her hands on his shoulders. She lifted up and pressed her lips to his. All thought escaped his mind for a few seconds, but he had the wherewithal to not pull her against his freezing wet body. She didn’t need to show back up to her teammates with her clothes soaked all down the front. They’d know exactly what happened.

  But he pulled her close enough. Tilted his head to the side and stayed there for a minute. When he could feel it wane, he leaned back. Opened his eyes. “Wow.”

  Talia giggled.

  “That was nice, too.” Before she needed to ask, he said, “Hearing you laugh.”

  “We should go. They’ll wonder what we’ve been up to.”

  Mason rubbed at his lips with the back of his hand. When he lowered his arm, he saw purple lip color on his skin, “I doubt it.”

  She reapplied as they walked, then stowed the makeup tube back in her purse. “Maybe I should just leave my devices out here.”

  “My phone probably won’t recover, given how waterlogged it is.”

  “We could both get new phones. I could try and catch him from a new source.” Her voice had a thread of exhaustion running through it.

  Mason squeezed her hand. “It’s not just you. It’s all of us, and your old team at the NSA. Right?” When she nodded, he continued, “I know it feels like it’s aimed at only you. But we’re all standing here, trying to shield you. We aren’t going to let anything happen to you. Not like what happened before.”

  A shadow crossed her gaze. “I hope so.”

  They neared the SUV, door open. The team probably all buckled in. Mason slid his arm around her and kissed her temple. He’d made enough promises. It probably wouldn’t be good to make any more and not be able to keep them. He didn’t know what would happen, but he trusted that God had both of them—and everyone they cared about—in His hands.

  Mason caught a muffled sound.

  He twisted around and saw two men holding Haley, one with a hand over her mouth. He drew his gun and spun to see where the rest of the team were. He had to get Talia behind him.

  Then he saw Niall lying on the grass, face down, blood in his hair. Gun discarded a few feet away. Was he dead, or just out cold?

  Talia let out a sound, full of fear.

  Mason shifted both of them so that he faced what was coming first. Always. He looked at the man walking toward him and lifted his chin. “Whatever you’re doing, it’s over. You’re done.”

  The man grinned. “I’m just getting started.”

  Chapter 22

  She didn’t want to look at him, but she did. Younger than her—probably late twenties. Slender. Scars on his cheeks that she assumed were from acne he’d had as a teen. Talia wanted to see some evidence of evil in his expression. A menace, or ill will toward pretty much everyone. Not just her. She didn’t want him to have singled her out, but he had.

  All she saw on his face was…nothing. Maybe an edge of frustration, but that was all.

  “Where are Dakota and Josh?” Why wasn’t the dog barking? Chaos should have erupted. Instead, it seemed like they’d been hit hard and fast. No time to react. Now Niall was on the ground, out cold. Haley was about to take down the guy who held her. And Mason.

  He shifted in front of her. Steady. Solid. Unmovable. Her shield, and a gift from God—she thanked Him again. She had to lean to look around him in order to see the hacker. She motioned with a glance at Haley. “Have your guys let her go.”

  The skin around his eyes flexed. It took a minute, but the hacker finally spoke. “Very well. As a show of good faith.” He motioned to Haley with a flick of two fingers.

  The men holding her released their grip. Haley scrambled to crouch beside Niall. She touched his back, and the back of his head. She didn’t flip him over. Whatever she saw there in his condition only made her more anxious.

  “What do you want?” The quicker they got to that, the quicker Haley could call for medical help for Niall.

  The hacker sniffed. “Just you.”

  “After what you did to me?”

  Mason’s body stiffened further. Like he hadn’t already been completely tense. “That isn’t going to happen.”

  “Don’t worry.” The hacker shrugged. “You’ll get paid this time. We both will.”

  Her stomach flipped over. She wanted to be sick, but it had been so long since she’d eaten that she figured all she had were dry heaves.

  “Let’s go.”

  Mason shook his head.

  Talia didn’t want to. Too bad she had to face the fact they weren’t going to get out of this in one piece—along with whatever Niall’s injuries were—if she didn’t move this along. Dakota and Josh could be crouched in the bushes. They might jump out at any second and take these guys out.

  Then again, they might not.

  Otherwise, wouldn’t they have already done it?

  The hacker motioned to the guys who’d been holding Haley. “Let’s go.”

  Both moved. Guns held in a loose grip, they skirted the hacker and came right for her. She knew what was going to happen right before it did. Mason was exactly that kind of man. So it didn’t surprise her in the least when he grabbed the first one’s gun, swiped out with his other arm to punch the guy in the head, and at the same time kicked at the second man.

  Talia swung her purse and batted the second guy’s gun to the side. Yes, that made it aim across her body and she could’ve been shot in the stomach. But the first bullet shot right between them. The second flew past her right side.

  She swung the purse again.

  The guy lifted his hand, slapping the purse away from his head, then grabbed for her.

  Mason’s guy was on his knees. The man rallied quickly and launched up. Tackled Mas
on in the stomach. They both went down, a tangle of limbs and grunts.

  Mason cried out.

  “No!” Her guy grabbed her around the middle and lifted her off her feet. Breath forced from her lungs in one gush.

  He strode past the hacker, still holding her off the ground. Talia kicked out and slammed borrowed running shoes into his shins. She should’ve never worn them. She could have done far more damage with her heels.

  The man grunted, but appeared to find her attempts to get him to let her go amusing because his whole chest shook with the force of his humor.

  Talia screamed out her frustration.

  “Shut up.” The hacker was right behind them. And apparently still frustrated.

  “No. I won’t.”

  The man let go, and she crumpled to the ground. He grabbed her elbow and hauled her to her feet. She snapped her head around to look at Mason.

  The man he’d been fighting had the upper hand. Mason kicked at the guy as he brought his gun around. Two shots blasted. She saw a flash of teeth edged in blood, and then Mason kicked again. The gunman’s weapon swung to the side. Mason punched him in the head, then dove on top of him.

  A hand grabbed her bicep, hard enough she winced. The hacker dragged her around. “It’s not like I want to do this. I have no choice.”

  “No choice but to hurt my friends?” She shook her head. “There’s no way I’m going to believe that. Not ever.”

  A dull thud drew her attention, in time to see Mason fall back on the grass. The other man pushed out heavy breaths from the exertion of the fight, his chest expanding and contracting rapidly.

  Talia bit down on the inside of her lip as the hacker dragged her toward a path. She looked again, but Mason was out of view. On the far side of the SUV, two more gunmen stood over Dakota and Josh. Both were out cold. Beside them, Neema lay panting.

  “What—”

  “Get moving, or we’ll be late.”

  She struggled against his grip. Were they dead? She didn’t even know. Neema didn’t look good. Haley whimpered, still crouched over Niall as though she needed to protect him.

  The two men standing over by her friends started toward them. One called out, “Let’s go, Batts,” over the SUV.