“I suppose the problem would be if it got away from him,” she said, not really thinking about the fact that she was talking to a machine. “We have to make a decision before we get back. Either we give it to him, or we don’t.”
Before she’d laid eyes on Exile, she’d been told he was an enigma. But she could never have imagined how she’d be drawn in by the man.
Her attraction to him had been undeniable from the beginning, but he’d been so resistant to it that she’d really believed he was indifferent to her. Now she understood that the man who’d claimed to be afraid of nothing, was afraid, of her.
Just like she’d thought in his presence once, fearing he could hurt her heart, he’d feared the same thing.
If Strike wanted the Point, he’d have come for her full-throttle. But now that she had it in her possession there was only really one way to find out where Strike’s loyalties lay. Like she’d said to him in the bathroom the previous morning, it would always be hanging over them until she knew for sure.
She could hand it to him and ask him to destroy it. But she’d have no way to know if he really had. With all the tech he had at his disposal, it would be easy for him to tell her he’d destroyed it, but actually be copying it or sending it to himself for later use.
Trust.
That’s what this came down to.
Rora hadn’t trusted Benjamin not to return to the Point after they’d hidden it. That was why she’d switched the devices and hidden the true Point on her own. She’d trusted Benjamin more than she’d ever trusted anyone, but she’d learned even that trust had a limit when she chose to lie to him.
In truth, deciding to deceive him wasn’t about his technical capabilities; she’d believed she was protecting him. Benjamin had a pure heart, but could be naïve, just as she had once been. If he’d kept the Point or used it with hackable networks, then others may have got hold of it without him knowing.
He might have returned to it, retrieved it, and believed that he was only accessing the code for educational purposes, but he didn’t understand there were malevolent people out there.
“Strike understands it,” Rora said, sliding a hand onto Opal. “He’d know how to isolate it, wouldn’t he?”
Junker hadn’t meant to give her such clarity. But he’d put it in such simple terms that she didn’t know how she hadn’t seen it before.
Holding onto righteousness was ridiculous. Who was she trying to impress? Her parents were gone. Her career was over. There was only one thing in the world that mattered to her and she’d lost that because of her own misguided integrity. But if she had the chance to fix that mistake, shouldn’t she take it?
Was that it? Had she been the one to make the mistake by not trusting Strike’s heart? Maybe he hadn’t made a mistake at all.
This was a hell of a decision. To throw her lot in with Strike and trust him all the way or give up on any chance of having someone to rely on. If she couldn’t make herself trust Strike when she loved him as much as she did, she’d never be able to trust anyone.
“Opal,” she said and breathed out again, returning her hand to the wheel. “You have to help me out here, honey, we need a really ingenious idea, or I may as well drive both of us off the road right now.”
Rora hadn’t asked for this responsibility, Benjamin had given it to her long before he took his own life to protect it. Every day she missed him, or something reminded her of the man. But while she’d been with Strike, it had been easier; he’d carried some of the burden for her. But it was his motives that perplexed her… just what drove a man like Exile? Could love ever be his priority?
NINETEEN
It was almost midnight before Rora got back to the motel room. Still hoping that the men hadn’t killed each other without her around, she knew that leaving them alone had been a necessary risk. No one else could do what she’d just done.
Yawning, she started to regret not getting more sleep. She’d been on the road for almost forty hours, and while she’d taken breaks for power naps, and to grab food, she could feel exhaustion creeping in. Thankfully her addiction to coffee and loud music had kept her going for the last few miles, and adrenaline had a lot to answer for too.
The nearer she’d gotten to the motel room, the more concerned she’d been about what she’d find when she got there.
Her concerns turned out to be justified because when she opened the motel room door, every man she’d left here had a gun trained on another.
Rora’s hand fell from the slightly ajar motel room door. “Seriously?” she asked.
Torres was still cuffed to the radiator, sitting on the bed that had been moved to the corner. But somehow, he had a weapon in his hand.
Strike was at the end of the other bed, and he had two guns, one pointed at Torres and another pointed at Junker who was closest to her, angled with his back almost to the door and a gun trained on Strike.
“Baby, come over here,” Strike said, his voice low and his dangerous eyes creeping from Torres to Junker.
“No,” she said, shoving the door into the frame and rounding Junker to stand in the middle of the triangle, no doubt blocking someone’s shot.
“Ro!”
“No,” she said and glared at each man in turn, but none of them were looking at her, they were all busy scowling at each other. “What the hell happened? I told all of you to get along, and this is what I come back to?”
Pinning Torres in her sights first, she crossed to him. With one leg hanging off the bed and an arm stretched to the radiator, he had to use his injured arm to hold the gun and it was obvious that it was beginning to tire from the shake in the barrel.
“Get out of the way, Kero! I will shoot!”
“Me?” she asked, walking right up to him until the end of the barrel almost touched her stomach. “You’re cuffed to the wall. You put a bullet in me and both those men will empty theirs into you. What would be the point of that? Where did you even get a gun?”
“Your idiot bitch,” Strike said. “Put his little friend on the nightstand.”
The gun in Torres’ hand did look like the one Junker had called his little friend. “You can shoot me, Torres, or you can help me diffuse this,” she said. “Do you think Exile or Junker will try to shoot you if I’m standing in front of you?” She opened her hand. “Give me the weapon.”
He didn’t want to and didn’t appreciate being the first one asked. But he huffed at her and slapped the weapon onto her palm. Proud that she’d achieved something, she spun around to switch her focus between the other two men.
“Junker, will you please—”
“He has two guns,” Junker objected.
Strike did, though he’d lowered one to his side now that she was in front of Torres. “If Exile was going to shoot you, he’d have done it already,” she said and then exhaled. “Will you put your gun down if he does?”
“I… I suppose,” Junker said.
She nodded once and went to Strike. Without speaking to him, she slid a hand up his chest and around to the back of his neck. Though he resisted a little when she tried to guide him down, it didn’t take him long to relent. When he bowed, she matched their lips and took her time about kissing him slowly.
With every second that passed, he relaxed more until they both sank into the rhythm of the kiss. When she felt his knuckles on her back, she eased away to smile at him. He might still be holding the guns, but they weren’t pointed at anyone anymore.
“What would you do without me?” she whispered against his lips and then spun around to look at Junker. “Are we good?”
Junker had the weapon at his side and nodded. “Yes.”
“Good,” she said. “Does someone want to tell me what started this?”
“We had a… disagreement,” Torres said.
“Yeah, no shit,” she said. “About?”
A few tense seconds passed, and she wasn’t surprised that Junker was the first to acquiesce. “Each of us has a different idea about our next move.
I say we should get to Leandra, your friend Torres wants to go after his boss, and Exile—”
“Wants to go after the Black Jewel,” she said, nodding. “You know, you can disagree with each other without shooting at each other… Maybe having guns around is a bad idea.”
“Or bullets,” Strike said, and she heard him opening a gun which made her turn. “We trash the ammunition and we can’t kill each other.”
He looked to Junker after emptying a gun, and though he hesitated, Junker lifted his gun to unload it too. Strike emptied his other gun and all the ammunition was tossed onto the empty bed.
Rora looked at the gun in her hands. “I don’t know how to do it,” she said and passed the weapon off to Strike.
“Wouldn’t want you shooting anyone by mistake,” Strike said, unloading the gun for her.
With the weapons empty, they weren’t much use, so while Strike went to stow them in a pack, Rora went to gather up the bullets, wondering if it was possible just to put them in the dumpster without causing problems.
“So we need a deciding vote,” Torres said. Rora glanced around to see all three men were looking at her. “Wonder whose side she’ll take.”
He said it like her decision would be a foregone conclusion. She sank down on the corner of the bed. “I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that,” she said. “A lot of time…”
“And?” Junker asked.
“What did you decide?” Torres asked.
Her gaze floated to Strike who was peering at her. She hadn’t come to any conclusions about where they should focus their efforts, though that might be because she was exhausted and kept talking herself out of her decisions.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?” Junker asked her.
She tore her gaze from Strike and forced herself onto her feet though she really just wanted to lie down on the bed and sleep for a week.
“Sure,” she said, leaving the bullets on the bed and crossing to him.
Junker stepped back and opened the door, so she went outside onto the porch they’d talked on the morning she’d decided to go on her mission alone. Though she stopped just outside the door, he took her elbow and drew her down to the corner.
When they stopped, he moved in close. “I think we should leave.”
“Leave?” she asked, trying her best not to sigh or fall asleep on her feet. “I think everyone agrees with that, but we need to decide who to pursue—”
“You know who we should pursue,” he said. “But I wasn’t talking about leaving as a group.” The gravity of what he was suggesting erased some of her tiredness. “How could you kiss him like that?”
“Exile? You think we should ditch him… because I kissed him?”
“Because the man is unhinged,” Junker said. “He has no conscience, no morals, no integrity.”
All Rora could think was that she was too tired for this. “He has plenty of integrity,” she said. “It just doesn’t align with yours.”
“You don’t know the kind of man he is, you can’t know.”
She’d expected the big brother act from Junker a bit sooner. Then again, until now, she hadn’t been as open to kissing Strike as she had just been inside. “I do know.”
“And this mission, did you tell him where you went? Does he know what—”
“Yes.”
“And what was it?” Junker asked, his patience wearing thin, and his anger beginning to bleed through. “What was so important that you had to leave the three of us together? You must have known it was a recipe for disaster.”
“It was a risk worth taking,” she said, reaching into her cleavage to pull out the USB. “This is what everyone is after and as long as it was out there in the world, it was at risk. Now I have it, we’re a step closer to—”
“That’s Benjamin’s work,” he said, his mouth open, his eyes glued to the USB. “The Point. Exile wants it. This Burke guy. Bella. All of them want it.”
“Yes, I…” Despite her exhaustion, his words piqued her awareness. “You called her Bella… you’ve never done that.” She took a step backwards. “Did Exile tell you her name?”
“I, uh… yeah,” he said. “Yeah, he—”
“I’ll ask him, Junker and he won’t lie to me,” she asked, her awareness edging toward panic. “How do you know her real name?”
Lunging forward, he grabbed her arm to pull her toward him. “You think this is what we should focus on now? I don’t fucking know. One of you said it or—”
“You’re lying to me,” she said and tried to pull her arm away from him.
“Doesn’t feel good, does it?”
Rora had never seen such dislike contorted on his face. “What are you doing? Who are you?” But the more she tried to pull away, the tighter his grip got. “Let me go. You’re hurting me!”
“Ro?”
She managed to turn enough to see Strike thirty feet away, outside their open motel room door. Junker tugged her back to his chest and she squealed when a blade suddenly touched her neck.
“Back off, Exile!” Strike went from curious to irate in a flash and started toward them, but he only got a few steps before Junker pressed the blade deeper into her. “Stop!” Junker demanded. “Take one step closer and I’ll gut her.”
“You’ve just signed your own death warrant,” Strike snarled, a malevolence in his tone that made even her cold. “Take your fucking hands off her and I’ll give you a head start. You hurt her—”
“You did this!” Junker said, shaking her, but shouting at Exile. “I care for Aurora! I tried to protect her! This is you! This is all on you! You don’t even see it! You fucking asshole!”
“What do you want?” she hissed.
“Let’s start with what’s in your hand,” Junker said. “Give it to me. Slide it into my hand.”
Holding her breath, she pushed the USB up into his palm, hoping it might loosen his hold on the blade, but it didn’t. “You’re going to regret this,” she said.
“I could’ve helped you,” he said into her hair. “I could’ve saved you…”
Shoving her, he spun and sprinted away. Rora stumbled forward a few steps, and a moment later was against Strike’s chest, wrapped in his arms. “You good? You ok?” he asked her and eased her aside. “I’ll catch that fucker and—”
“No!” she said, throwing her arms around him. “Let him go.”
“What?” he spat. “He hurt you! He has the Point.”
She smiled. “Does he?”
Strike’s heart was hammering so hard against her chest that she knew adrenaline was coursing through him, so it made sense he wasn’t thinking too clearly. Rora kept looking up at him until he caught on to her sly confidence.
He breathed out a laugh and brushed his knuckles against her jaw. “You switched it out,” he said. “For me?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Because having something like that unsecured on a device that anyone could access was just insanity. Let him go. Let him find out on his own that he blew his cover for no reason.”
Moving past him, she started for the motel room. “Ro… if he doesn’t have it… where is it?”
Widening her smile, she didn’t answer his question, just let him wonder while she felt pride in herself. “We have to get out of here.”
“Torres was telling the truth, or some version of it,” he said. “According to everything I’ve found so far, all reports suggest he’s a wanted man. Could be true or Burke could be setting him up… or it could all be bullshit. I’m still looking.”
“Ad-hoc us a car, would you?” she asked. “I’ll start packing.”
She started toward the room again but paused when he spoke. “I fucking love you, Ro,” he said. “Every goddamn thing about you.”
Smiling to herself, she didn’t look at him, but continued walking toward the room. She was exhausted, but she’d sleep once they got on the road, and then she had to talk to Strike, her Strike, about so many things.
TWENTY
&nb
sp; Torres didn’t get a choice about being put in the car. His hands and ankles were tied, and he was given a shot to make sure he was easy to maneuver. Strike packed up, leaving her to sleep in the front seat. She was already out by the time they got moving.
When she woke up, the sun was intrusive, blazing through the windshield. Rora whimpered and turned her head to bury her face in Strike’s groin. But it was only after he reacted to her squirming that she realized she was rubbing her face on his dick through his jeans.
“You woke up in a good mood,” Strike said, his fingers drifting through her hair.
Choosing to let her eyes close against the light, she rolled to her back and smiled up at him. “Killed anyone today?”
“Not yet,” he said, his wrist resting on the top of the wheel. “I’m open to suggestions.”
“Why are you always talking about hurting people?” Torres’ voice came from the back seat. “Is that the only time you’re happy? When you’re hurting someone?”
“Only time I’m happy is when I’m inside my girl,” Strike said, and she noted how his chin rose, so she’d guess the men were making eye contact in the mirror. “That’s right, my girl, let that sink in, and don’t forget it next time you get near her.”
Rora rubbed her face, choosing to ignore the tension between the men. “We might need more help… now we’re a man down,” she said, waiting for Strike to glance down at her again.
“Anyone going to tell me what happened with Junker?” Torres asked, his tone suggesting he didn’t think he’d get an answer, but he asked anyway.
Thinking about Junker, she had more questions than answers, and couldn’t wait to get Strike alone so they might actually begin to make sense of this.
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