White Knight

by Nicole Flockton

  Derek folded his arms over his chest, widening his stance. A fighter. A sexy fighter.

  Not sexy. Dammit. What was wrong with her? She couldn’t afford to find him sexy, though the heat still coursing through her from his kiss belied that thought. Something she refused to acknowledge in any way, shape, or form.

  “You must be a witch,” he muttered. He moved toward the lift. “That, or I’m definitely crazy to keep this job.”

  He didn’t mean it. The honor ingrained in him meant he would never just give up. Even on relatively short acquaintance, she knew that much about him.

  On the other hand, she was probably crazy to stick around. With the dwarves watching her more closely and the fucking sorceress who put them all here possibly involved, Sasha should cut her losses and run.

  She for damn sure wasn’t whom the dwarves suspected her to be. Oh, she’d heard all about the legend, had practically been raised on it. No way could she be one of the fated women destined to love them, to fulfill the prophecy that made the Knights the powerful men they were, thus realizing the promise of Camelot. Something they’d come painfully close to fully achieving, until Arthur and Lancelot couldn’t agree as to whom Guinevere was fated to belong. If Sasha were supposed to be one of their fated loves, they would’ve figured it out fifteen hundred years ago.

  She couldn’t run now. Not when she was so close to ending the continual loop of living a solitary life. There were only so many shows on Netflix she could binge on. Who knew what state the world would be in in five years’ time, let alone another hundred. She could only endure so much, and fifteen centuries was more than enough.

  If she wanted this nightmare of a life to end, she needed to destroy that stone, before Morgan could lay claim to it.

  Chapter 7

  Derek’s eyes burned. Blinking only made it worse. His shoulders ached from being hunched over his laptop for nearly forty hours straight. Burying himself in work helped him forget the bomb he’d dropped on Sasha. What the fuck had he been thinking to blurt out the secret he’d kept hidden inside of him? Except it hadn’t mattered to her. She’d believed every single word he’d said. Could he trust her not to blab it to everyone?

  Damn, he was so tired of overthinking what had taken place in the boardroom. He’d shattered a fucking table. His hands shook above his keyboard. He needed to concentrate on the screen in front of him, not on past events he had no control over.

  Work was his solace. He’d gone over the building schematics, installing additional measures and pouring over every detail of the data provided from all his cameras and software. Freeze-framing the footage taken by the vault cameras, looking for any little detail that could explain the suspected robbery. He’d even walked around the vault in the hopes of finding a stray hair, something to explain the unexplainable. And what had he found?

  Nothing.

  Abso-fucking-lutely nothing.

  Not one damn reasonable explanation of how a stone larger than his clenched fist could, for all intents and purposes, vanish into thin air, leaving no trace. Walking into Lance’s office in a few hours’ time and presenting that, after scouring all the data he had on his computer and his own investigations, Derek had failed to prevent the very thing he’d been employed to do. Stop a burglar.

  Saying he’d failed to Lance and the other six owners of Chevalier would go down like a rock in a lake. But it sure beat saying, Yep, Caspar the Friendly Ghost came in and stole the stone. Or You know that well-known boy wizard . . . well, yeah he cast a spell, making the stone disappear to places unknown.

  Like they’d believe something magical had happened.

  They’d never believe him if he came clean and told them he possessed some mystical power that wrecked their fancy, glass boardroom table. Sasha had believed him, though. And she hadn’t laughed at him like he’d done when she’d said a witch had killed her friend.

  Maybe they would believe him.

  They hadn’t asked him a single question about how their table lay in a million shards on the carpeted floor when he walked back into the boardroom after Sasha had calmed him in the car park. In fact, the moment they returned, all conversation had ceased.

  Lance had merely reiterated his expectation that Derek have the answers they needed by 9 a.m. Monday morning. They provided a few more details—a timetable, insurance info on the rock—then Lance declared the meeting over, and he and his fellow owners walked out, leaving Sasha and Derek alone.

  While Lance’s commands grated on him, Derek let them pass. After all, Lance was his client. Plus, Derek had still been reeling from everything that happened, including the kiss he’d shared with Sasha in the car park.

  For a beat of time, he’d felt as though he existed in two places at once: kissing Sasha in present time and standing in a cold, stark room of ages past. While his body had yearned to possess her sweet body, the emotion that filled his mind as they kissed wasn’t lust or need, but more hurt. Not his hurt now, but a past hurt long buried . . . All those deceitful emotions were directed at a man dressed in a tunic of medieval times whose face seemed vaguely familiar. He stood proudly by a round table with rough-hewn wood legs and a large stone top, his hand on the hilt of a broadsword, an ice-blue gaze daring Derek to come at him.

  Thinking it over now, Derek could only describe the sentiment as betrayal—as though the man in that memory had betrayed him in the worst possible way a man could ever do to a friend. In what he now referred to as the dream—because any other explanation made even less sense—Derek had stormed out and spied a young woman, standing in the shadowed alcove next to the room.

  Sasha—or someone who starkly resembled her.

  The moment Sasha had broken their kiss in the garage, reality had crashed through his mind, taking with it any hope of his finding out if the woman in the shadows was indeed the woman he’d been locking lips with.

  Since he’d met Sasha, weird shit had been happening around him. He was losing his mind. His visions, or dreams, or whatever the hell they were, were as damn confusing as the glowing stone and the thefts. He should stay the hell away from her. A pity working with her was part of his assignment.

  A sharp dart of pain in his neck made him groan, and he pushed back from the desk he used in Sasha’s office. Standing, he rotated his neck and did a couple of squats to loosen his tight muscles. What he needed to do was go home, have a searing hot shower, and change into clean clothes. The rest of the staff would be arriving in a couple of hours. The last thing they needed was to see or smell him. Even he didn’t want to hang out with him in his current state.

  “What are you doing here this early?”

  Sasha! His cock twitched against the cotton fabric of his pants, like only an hour had passed since they shared their kiss and not two days. He took a moment to adjust himself before facing her. A single glance revealed her long legs encased in black leggings with leather boots up to her thighs, topped with a cream-colored sweater that barely covered her ass, and his dick twitched again.

  Damn. For the sake of his sanity, he needed to control his body’s reactions around her.

  “Whoa. You look like shit,” she started before he had a chance to answer her question. Her gaze took in his gi. “Have you been here since Saturday?” She came a couple of steps closer, and her perfectly straight nose wrinkled in disgust. “And you smell like shit, too. I hope you don’t plan on staying in this office like that.”

  If he had the energy, Derek would’ve laughed at her revulsion. How could he blame her for her reaction? He knew he had the stench of a rubbish dump. Instead, he reached out and shut his laptop. “I was just about to leave. What are you doing here so early, Sasha?”

  A quick flick of his wrist and his watch flared to life, showing the time as 5 a.m. Hell, no wonder exhaustion was doing its best to drag him down. He hadn’t gone this long without sleep since his last deployment when he and his troop had to watch a suspected terrorist compound for three days straight. He’d learned to live on five-minu
te power naps.

  “It’s, uh, you know, Monday. I always get here early on Mondays. Good way to start the week and all.” She waved a vague hand before touching her lip.

  Derek narrowed his eyes. She was babbling. Sasha never babbled. But she touched her lip, an action he’d seen her do more than once. Her words didn’t ring true, but in his lethargic state, attempting to decipher a deeper meaning and question her was nigh on impossible. All he wanted to do was get home. At this time of morning, he should be able to get to his apartment twenty minutes away in Homerton without encountering traffic and snatch a couple hours of sleep before being back for the 9 a.m. meeting with everyone.

  “Right.” He popped his laptop in his bag and slung it over his shoulder. “Well, I’m out of here. I’ll see you in a couple of hours.”

  “Wait. Before you go, I want to talk to you about something.”

  The last thing he wanted to do was hang and chat. “Can it wait until I come back?”

  “Not really.”

  “Fine.” He hooked his leg around his chair and sank back into it, dropping his bag on the ground. “Fire away.”

  “I’ve been thinking about what happened with the stone that was stolen.”

  He tensed. “What about it?”

  “We need to be more visible on the gem cutters’ floor. If we’re there, you can observe to see if anyone is acting differently.”

  Sasha had a good point. The only problem he could see was having to be so close to her. Sharing an office was bad enough, but he’d seen that work area. The cutters shared tables that were bunched together. He wouldn’t be able to move a muscle without part of his body connecting with hers.

  If he disagreed, she’d ask him why, and because around you, freaky shit happens wouldn’t work.

  “Yeah, we can do that. Let’s talk more when I return.” He stood and stretched again.

  “Sounds good, I’ll see you then. Bye.” Sasha stepped away as he walked past, no doubt in an attempt to stay downwind of him.

  He chuckled. He’d do the same if he were in her shoes.

  At the back of his mind, he had the uncomfortable feeling he was forgetting something but couldn’t work out what. He made his way down to his car, hoping against hope he didn’t fall asleep at the wheel and have an accident.

  He still had so much he needed to accomplish.

  Chapter 8

  Sasha stared at Derek’s retreating form as he disappeared down the hall, battling the strangest urge to follow and ensure he made it home in one piece. The way the lights dimmed as he passed didn’t seem like a good sign. The man was barely functional, exhaustion evident in his sunken eyes and pallor.

  Wrinkling her nose again, she propped open the door to air out the room. Based on the smell in here, he hadn’t left since Saturday. She bit her lip, glancing again down the hallway. What was she thinking? Derek Arthur was a grown man, fully able to take care of himself. The man was fine to look at, when he didn’t smell like last week’s leftover Chinese, but he was her adversary.

  She rolled her shoulders to shake off the worry. She meticulously put away her purse and hung her black wool coat, which she’d removed in the lift, behind the door. Hand raised, she froze mid-movement.

  No way.

  There, on the ground by Derek’s chair, sat his laptop bag. Had the man seriously just given her the opportunity to troll through his information and figure out what security measures he’d put in place? Fate never gave her any handouts. In fact, the bitch seemed to have it in for her on a daily basis.

  Sasha almost didn’t trust her luck. Almost.

  Hmm, getting down to his car would take Derek at least five minutes, so she’d give him fifteen to remember and return. She patted her coat, then returned to her desk and pulled up her email.

  For someone essentially immortal, time could move both incredibly fast and agonizingly slow. The fifteen minutes she forced herself to wait fell under the second category. The tiny clock on her computer screen mocked her at every glance, barely budging. Finally, her self-imposed wait was up. Even then, she strolled to the door and closed it before taking Derek’s laptop bag back to her desk.

  She refused to examine too closely the small prick of guilt that made her hesitate before extracting his computer. Derek had shared with her how this job could make or break his fledgling security company. Why should his success matter to her in the slightest? It didn’t.

  She fired up his computer.

  His fault for leaving the thing in the first place.

  Being a jewel thief searching for that damn rock for more than a thousand years, she’d learned and grown with the times to become more tech savvy to keep up with the advances in security systems. Luckily, she and computers got on like tea and scones. The machines, with their cold logic, made total sense to her. Computers didn’t need emotional attachment to get the job done.

  As she expected, Derek had installed extra security measures on his personal laptop. She spent the first forty-five minutes of his absence simply trying to hack her way in. Thank goodness she got in to work early. She’d about given up when the final barrier, a complicated password, crumbled beneath her prowess.

  Maybe after she broke the Immortality Stone, in theory making her life mortal once again, she could live out the rest of her numbered days as a programmer.

  Sasha chuckled at herself. “Like hell.”

  She’d go to some tropical island and spend the rest of her life in an all-inclusive resort, enjoying well-earned, pampered peace. One of the benefits of working with jewels for centuries . . . she’d accumulated enough wealth to support herself in lavish comfort for many lifetimes, not just one. It helped that her father, able to produce wealth and riches with a whispered word, had left her a wealthy woman to start with.

  Quickly, Sasha copied Derek’s files to a flash drive. She’d look at them closely on her own computer at home, without the concern of his returning any second, though she wished she had more time now. If Morgan was after that stone, nothing Derek did would stop her. Sasha needed to get to it first.

  After getting the files, she spent another hour investigating the equipment he’d installed throughout the offices, the vault, and . . . Bollocks. They’d moved the stone to a private safe in Lance’s office, the one she already tried to get into but failed. Now Derek had added additional measures around it.

  Shit.

  Infrared sensors were damn difficult to fool. She could deal with cameras—adjust the feed or memorize the timing. But she could not fool sensors. Fine. She’d get in touch with one of her contacts on the black market and see what options she had to get around this issue. At least she had the specific make and model number for the devices. Everything had a weakness.

  More concerning was a new, more complex entry code for the safe. Derek had not noted the code anywhere that she could find on a quick glance through. She’d search his files more carefully tonight.

  Urgency pressed down on her. She’d been a distracted mess all weekend, worrying about Morgan beating her to the stone. If Morgan got it first, Sasha was shit out of luck. But what could she do? It’d probably take days to go through Derek’s documentation and work out her plan. Possibly more time to set up a trial run or two—time she did not have.

  Maybe she’d have to employ her mind-compulsion power on the dwarves, plant the seed to give up the stone to her. It was what she should’ve done in the first place, but the idea of getting close enough to Lance to do so made her skin crawl. That arrogant bastard had messed everything up. All interactions thus far indicated he hadn’t learned any humility in the last fifteen hundred years. Take how he’d treated Derek. If the dwarves suspected Morgan had a hand in this, why come down so heavy on their human, non-magical security man? Mortal means would be no match against a powerful sorceress like Morgan. Which was another reason to get away as quickly as possible.

  A shiver zinged down her spine along with a memory.

  She’d observed through her charmed looking g
lass as Morgan captured her father. Without a clue as to how she could help, Sasha had run to the castle, where, hidden in the alcove, she’d watched in abject horror from the shadows as Morgan killed Arthur. His seven knights, held immobile in their seats at the round table by some spell, could do nothing. She’d heard with her own ears the curse that had changed the Knights into dwarves, the same curse apparently bouncing back on her somehow. Morgan probably didn’t realize that, or Sasha would’ve been discovered, tortured, enslaved—or some other grisly consequence—centuries ago.

  Instead, she’d passed out in the hallway. When she’d come to, Morgan was gone, the Knights were gone. Arthur was gone. Sasha had searched the whole damn castle before running back to find her cottage ransacked, every magical object except her ring, which she wore, also gone.

  She needed to nick that flipping stone and clear out. No way did she want to ever encounter Arthur’s sister again. Ever.

  White noise suddenly filled Sasha’s ears. What the hell? Where had that come from? In a rush, she shut down and replaced Derek’s laptop.

  She’d barely sat down at her desk, when the shadow of a figure in the hallway caught her eye.

  Derek.

  She glanced at the clock hanging above the door: 8:15. He must’ve finally realized what he’d left behind and come back a bit early. As exhausted as he’d looked, hopefully he at least had gotten some sleep. Adrenaline spiked through her blood—she’d come so close to getting caught. Because this fluttering in her chest couldn’t be her irrational concern for Derek or the small thrill running through her at his presence.

  Face thunderous, Derek hustled inside their office. Spying his laptop, he slowed his steps and let out a long, relieved breath. “Thank God,” he muttered.

  He glanced over; she arched her eyebrows in what she hoped was appropriately mild surprise.

  “I thought you’d get more sleep,” she said.

  He gave a rueful smile, and attraction sucker-punched her right in her chest. How could a man, rumpled and still exhausted, look this appealing? Though he’d obviously showered and dressed in fresh clothes—grey slacks and a sinfully attractive black button- down—they looked thrown on in haste. But, damn, he smelled good.