The Hero and the Hacktivist

by Pippa Grant

  Ka-blam. Right here. They’ll be picking Eloise bits out of their walls for months.

  “Now you want a taste?” he asks when his hand dips just inside his waistband.

  All of my erogenous zones are lit up like Times Square, and he hasn’t so much as touched me. His skin is glistening, his eyes are so dark I could probably see whole constellations inside them, and his breath is coming uneven, like he’s turning himself on by watching me get turned on.

  He licks his finger, and yeah, that’s a shot of electricity straight to my clit.

  I’d get up and attack him—in the sexy way, of course—except my knees are mashed potatoes, and not because of my workout, which I miraculously recovered from after the hairspray exploding incident. “Turn around and rub it on your bare ass, and I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

  “Everything?” His voice is sex on a chocolate buffet. “Or are you going to lie to me again?”

  “If I lie, do I get spanked?”

  “Twenty lashings with my dick up your pussy.”

  Yeah, my pussy totally just offered herself as tribute. “Promise?”

  He turns, watching me while he pulls his pants down, exposing the top curve of his ass, and rubs coconut oil over the firm, tight muscles. His hands dip into his pants and stop.

  “I send glitter bombs to dudes who fat-shame women on social media,” I whisper.

  His eyes go dark and he pushes his pants down another inch, rubbing his ass more.

  I want to be rubbing his ass. “And I once crashed a pirate book server and replaced all their files with loops of the lyrics to ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ so that when they were back online, they didn’t have any of the books they had before.”

  “That’s fucking hot,” he tells me.

  “Want to hear about the time I sold a bunch of erectile dysfunction spammers plastic spoons that they thought were dick stretchers?”

  Every cell in his body goes tense. He cocks his head at the door, narrows his eyes, and scoots across the room to beside the door so fast, it’s like watching a panther.

  “Wha—” I start, but before I can finish, the door bursts open.

  Three masked men in black crash in.

  I scream, a gun flashes, and the whole world spins into a blur.

  Within seconds, Rhett has the first one tied up like a pretzel, takes the butt of the gun to the second one’s head, and karate chops the third across the throat.

  Pigpen appears, panting, and the two of them whip out zip ties and truss the three intruders like Thanksgiving turkeys.

  “Got four in the stairwell,” Pigpen grunts.

  “More?” Rhett asks.

  Something electronic squawks in one of the dude’s pockets.

  Both men look down, then at me.

  “More,” they say together.

  They look at each other again. Pigpen makes a quick sweep of Rhett’s body and curls his lip.

  “Shut the fuck up and grab the cats,” Rhett mutters.

  They make quick work of disarming the three men, and suddenly there’s a pile of knives and guns and phones on the table.

  Plus a stuffed hamster.

  Yeah. A stuffed, taxidermied hamster.

  I have no idea what that’s about, and I don’t want to know.

  Pigpen shoves two laptops in a bag, gives my cats the stink eye, and they both run on their own to their carriers. Rhett cleans out one of the kitchen drawers, grabs a roll of twenties from the freezer—told you so—tosses on a shirt, and hefts me over his shoulder before I realize what’s going on.

  I’m a little distracted by the weaponry on the table.

  There’s a big difference between sending a glitter bomb and realizing there are guns loaded with real bullets that were meant for you.

  I might actually be hyperventilating.

  Brooks appears, dragging two men, also trussed like chickens, which is impressive, because they’re the kind of chickens who are probably fed hormones based on the size of their moobs. He takes the cat carriers from Pigpen.

  “Two hours,” Rhett says.

  Pigpen nods, and then we’re off, leaving Pigpen behind.

  “Wha—” I start.

  “Shut up if you’re not going to be helpful,” Rhett says.

  They tricked me.

  They let me use a computer knowing I’d do something to lure the bad guys here.

  I’m simultaneously offended and impressed, and also back to hyperventilating, because they shouldn’t have been able to track me.

  I wasn’t doing anything in my normal channels.

  Mostly.

  We hit the street, and I’m tossed in the back of a black Porsche Cayenne. Brooks settles in the driver’s seat and grins back at us. “That was fucking awesome.”

  “Shut up and drive,” Rhett orders.

  “I’m not saying I’m glad she’s in danger,” Brooks clarifies as he pulls out into traffic. “But that was still fucking awesome.”

  “Davey!” I gasp.

  Rhett looks at me.

  Just looks at me.

  So now you want to talk, that look says.

  It’s do or die time.

  Maybe literally.

  “Ground Peace coffee shop. We have to go. Now.”

  “No,” Rhett says.

  “He’s my brother, asshole.”

  More staring. More crackling energy. More panic.

  “He has Downs. Our mom died when I was seventeen and he’s a year older than me and I’m literally all he has left in this world and if anything happens to him because of me this world is going to get a crap-ton darker, because I will avenge every fucking wrong ever done to anyone who doesn’t fit into that little box labeled normal and I don’t give two fucking fuckity fucks who gets hurt in the aftershocks.”

  Rhett stares at me a beat longer. “Wasn’t so hard, was it?” he says dryly.

  I punch him in the arm, and suddenly get why the whole family is into the arm punching thing.

  And because he’s a fucking god, he doesn’t say a word as he hands over a tissue.

  I have no idea where he was hiding the tissue, and I don’t care that it’s a little greasy and smells like coconut, I just care that I get a grip and stop crying before we get to Davey.

  Sweet, innocent, deserves so much better than me Davey.

  Rhett pulls out Prince Snufflesaurus and drops him on my lap, which should make me feel better, but instead, it makes me full-out sob.

  Right there.

  Dripping tears on my cat, who understands his lot in life and goes to work kneading my thigh like he has to make biscuits for the whole world by five tonight.

  And if that’s not bad enough, Rhett does the one thing that can make everything even worse.

  He wraps an arm around me and tugs me to his side.

  His greasy, coconutty, hard side.

  He presses a kiss to my head, even though he’s probably putting his eyeballs in danger from my spiked hair. “You’re all in good hands, you pain in the ass,” he tells me quietly.

  I know I am.

  And that’s what terrifies me most of all.

  25

  Rhett

  We pick Davey up at the back of an apartment building three blocks from Ground Peace. He’s obviously related to Eloise, because he’s in a black T-shirt featuring a giraffe playing video games, and when she hugs him, he wrinkles his nose and says, “You stink, brat.”

  She’s not crying anymore, which is a huge load off my shoulders.

  Eloise crying?

  I’ve been on missions I wasn’t sure I’d survive that were less terrifying.

  We load up, Eloise in the middle of the backseat with me on one side and Davey on the other, and I tell Brooks to take us to Crunchy headquarters.

  “The organic grocery store?” he asks. “Parker’s job?”

  “No,” Eloise says. “We’re not bringing Parker and Sia into this.”

  “They have security, food, beds, and computers. Plus, Parker wou
ld kill us if we went anywhere else that’s possibly less safe. We’re going to Crunchy.”

  Brooks meets my eyes, and for all the fucker annoys me sometimes, he’s still my brother, and he’s still got my back.

  You’re fucking insane is the message I’m getting right now.

  Along with, We need to hang more often.

  He’s not wrong.

  Parker’s not either. I’m not home enough.

  We fight traffic the entire way to Crunchy headquarters, Eloise’s spicy scent tickling my nose the whole way. Davey—who goes by Dave unless you’re Eloise, apparently—has exactly three questions.

  What did you do now?

  Is he your boyfriend?

  Am I going to miss work tomorrow?

  Watching Eloise answer his questions is like watching another person entirely. No dirty jokes, no hip thrusts, no requests to stop at the nudey bar. She’s still the same though, wielding her wit, just twisting it to lighten the sarcasm and add more heart. Occasionally, she adds sign language while she’s speaking. Also?

  She’s laughing.

  It’s the cutest damn laugh I’ve ever heard. Like a tweety bird mated with an evil cartoon villain. It’s her. And it’s amusing as hell.

  I could spend months with her and not learn all her secrets and quirks.

  Years, even.

  Brooks meets my gaze again.

  You’re such a weirdo.

  Fuck off, tight pants.

  He just grins.

  Security is waiting for us at the back door. Parker talks a lot, which is how I know these guys are all retired military or retired hockey players, all hired by Sia within the last year. Parker’s a marketing VP here, and Sia runs the entire company. The two of them together are terrifying.

  Not in an Eloise kind of way, but in a take-over-the-world-through-organic-food-someday kind of way.

  “Ms. Berger said to make you all comfortable,” the head dude tells me. His neck’s thick as his head, but his eyes are sharp and just dubious enough for me to respect his intellect.

  He should be wary of us.

  “She’s on her way,” he adds.

  We get a tour of the snack bar and the employee lounge across the hall, where there’s both a kitchen and a side room with individual pod-rooms for naps.

  Naps.

  Pansy-ass organic food people take naps at work.

  But it means we have beds to sleep in if we need them, so I’m not going to dwell on the pansy-ass part.

  Much.

  The place is basically deserted, probably thanks to the sign flashing on the television monitor in the corner of the snack bar. The Fourth Floor is closed for cleaning and inspection.

  I wonder if the elevators can even stop on the fourth floor now.

  Eloise gets orders to keep her cats in one of the pods so they don’t go crawling through the vents to the floors where they grow organic lettuce and bok choy and shit.

  Seriously. Indoor farming. It’s fucking cool.

  But not if Eloise’s cats shit in the dirt.

  “You know you’re whipped when you bring the chick’s cats,” Brooks murmurs to me.

  I punch him in the arm.

  He just smiles and hooks an arm around my neck. “Happy for you, bro. Don’t always understand you, but I’m happy for you.”

  I’m looking forward to the day he makes an ass of himself over a woman too.

  Not that I’m making an ass of myself over a woman. I’m good at making an ass of myself just because, any day of the week.

  Also, I’m not making an ass of myself over Eloise.

  I’m protecting her sweet ass.

  There’s a difference.

  My phone buzzes with a text from Pigpen. He got all the intelligence he could out of the goons, including two more who showed up after we left, and he’s vacated the apartment. Used the neighbor’s landline to call in a disturbance across the hall.

  Neighbor across the hall works second shift. Most likely isn’t home.

  I text him the Crunchy headquarters address in code.

  He texts back that he’s headed to a meeting and will catch up with us after a bit.

  I don’t realize how worried I’ve been until my shoulders relax at the message. He’s still going to his AA meetings. Hasn’t had a drop to drink at my place since I dragged his ass to New York.

  And I know he loves being in the thick of shit as much as I do.

  Have to wonder what kind of note he left for the cops, because no doubt, those fuckers are in pretty damn good shape.

  And by pretty damn good shape, I mean probably rolled up like burritos and sporting some new bruises.

  “What’s with the grumpy face?” Eloise asks. She lowers her voice. “You’re still pissed because I didn’t lick off your coconut oil, aren’t you?”

  “Is that why you’re all greasy?” Brooks asks.

  Dave covers his ears. “I’m going to play with your cats.”

  “Good idea.” Brooks nods. “I’m going for cookies.”

  “Bring me six,” Dave tells him.

  They both disappear—Dave into the pod with the cats with orders to not let them out, Brooks across the hall to the snack bar, and I’m alone with Eloise again. I fold my arms and glare at her, mostly because if I don’t, I’m going to grab her and kiss her and grind Mr. Pokey Pants into her hips until I get some relief for this boner that just won’t quit.

  Plus, I like kissing her.

  I don’t usually waste time kissing women. But I want to kiss Eloise.

  I’m getting a clue as to why, and I don’t want to think about it. Not yet.

  Not until she’s safe.

  And I figure out what that why might actually mean for my future, which is even fuzzier today than it was a week ago.

  She meets my gaze like she’s ready for a staring contest, but then drops her head and mumbles, “Thank you. For everything.”

  “Who’s Dirk Lemonson?” I fist my hands and keep them crushed under my arms so I can’t reach for her, because if I touch her, I’m not going to keep interrogating her.

  She opens her mouth.

  “Dave needs you to tell me the truth,” I growl.

  Her entire face contorts into twitching. Her lips twitch. Her cheeks twitch. Her nose twitches, making her nose ring wiggle. The vein in her forehead twitches. Some of her spikes twitch. Her left eyelid is twitching.

  “Ugh, you’re cheating.” She throws up her hands and stalks to the far end of the room, where she throws herself onto a couch. The lighting in here is soft, the walls a deep brown, the couch plush suede with thick cushions and red throw pillows. There’s a teapot and a water dispenser, along with a selection of disposable eye masks and a wicker basket full of used blankets. Soft, relaxing music filters in from the ceiling.

  This room is booby-trapped to make you fall asleep.

  Damn good thing I’m a highly-trained operative who can resist this kind of torture. I sit at the other end of the couch and wait for Eloise to talk.

  It doesn’t take long.

  “What are you going to do with the information if I tell you?”

  “Neutralize the threat.”

  Her eyes narrow. “How?”

  “That’s classified. Do you trust me or not?”

  She pinches her lips together and looks away.

  “It’s me or the cops, Eloise. You pick.” I push to my feet. I’m not turning her over to the cops, but she doesn’t know that. “Which way’s better for Dave?”

  “I’m thinking,” she mutters.

  “Think faster. Can’t stay here forever.”

  She doesn’t tell me to fuck off, that she can disappear just fine on her own, even though we both know she has the money to do it, or the means to get the money to do it.

  It’s Eloise.

  She also doesn’t stop me when I head into the pod nearest to the couch.

  I don’t expect her to, and it’s not like I’ll be coaxing confessions out of her here with another coconut o
il striptease.

  It’s not that I’d be embarrassed.

  It’s that Parker would kill me, and she’s undoubtedly also on her way in for an update since I didn’t give her much information when I asked if we could hide out somewhere at Crunchy for a while.

  Sounds like water running in this little room, and there’s a fresh stack of blankets and pillows on a bamboo stand beside the cot.

  The one thing not in here?

  Relief.

  Not for the worry that I’m basically running a blind op, not for the suspicion Eloise is going to disappear and try to handle this on her own, and not for the raging hard-on that I haven’t been able to work out in the last week.

  Parker’s right.

  I leave. It’s what I do.

  So there’s no point in getting more attached and fighting harder to solve Eloise’s problems if she doesn’t want the help.

  Only place that leads is to emotions getting involved, and that’s not going to fix anything.

  I throw myself onto the cot and close my eyes.

  Because I can’t control Eloise, but I’ve been a SEAL long enough to know you get your rest when you can.

  And I have a feeling I’m going to need it.

  26

  Eloise

  It takes me all of three minutes to decide I’m being an idiot. And it probably should’ve only taken two.

  There’s a dude who knows what he’s doing who wants to help me, apparently without the end result being me in an orange jumpsuit. A hot dude who’s into me, by all indications, despite my best efforts to discourage him.

  And I’m being a shithead.

  Not without reason—I have trust issues, and I also know there’s this thing called legality that I’m bending, and he’s a military guy, which means following the rules is obviously in his DNA—but being a shithead won’t get Davey safely back to his job.

  Davey could get a new job in a new city and a new apartment in a new independent living facility, but he shouldn’t have to pay for my screw-ups. He likes his job. He likes his apartment. He likes his life.

  If Rhett can fix things so Davey’s life can stay the way he likes it, then I need to let Rhett fix things.

  If he screws me, I’ll do what I did the last seven times someone screwed me.