by Vanessa Kier
“It will be about fifteen or twenty minutes, Ms. Murphy,” the guard said. “I’ll come get you when it’s here.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
Greedy to touch him again, Siobahn slipped her arm through Ryker’s. “Did you just arrive? I didn’t see you earlier.”
“Why Ms. Murphy, were you watching for me?”
“No, of course not.” Watching for him, no. Thinking about him, yes. She cleared her throat. “But, you know, we journalists are always paying attention to our surroundings.”
“Which, of course, is why I was able to sneak up on you.”
She grimaced, then shot him a look. “You did that on purpose. Admit it. You wanted to get back at me for nearly knocking you over this afternoon.”
Ryker put his free hand over his heart. “Ms. Murphy, your lack of confidence in my gentlemanly conduct wounds me. I would never be so petty.” Then he glanced down at her and his expression sobered. “I can feel how tense you are,” he commented, stroking his fingers over her forearm. “Is something wrong?”
To her surprise, she discovered that she’d curled her fingers tightly into the sleeve of his suit coat. “Um…” Oh, brilliant. Dazzle the man with your witty, intelligent conversation why don’t you?
Ryker stopped and turned toward her. “I know we’ve only just met, but if you’re in some kind of trouble, I’d like to help.”
“I—” She glanced toward the dark street visible through the glass panes of the front door. “This is probably going to sound crazy, but I believe I was followed here.”
Great. This was so not how she’d pictured her next encounter with Ryker. A romantic dinner was more what she’d had in mind. Maybe some dancing. Not confessing to him that she didn’t feel safe.
“No. It doesn’t sound crazy. I’ve researched you, Ms. Murphy. Given your background, I expect you have excellent instincts when it comes to your personal safety.” He paused, then looked over at the guard before meeting her eyes.
“Would you allow me to drive you home?” He nodded toward the door leading into the gala. “I can find at least half a dozen character witnesses in tonight’s gathering if you need proof that you can trust me.”
Her cheeks heated and she stared at her feet. “Yes, well, my father speaks quite highly of you.”
Ryker’s low chuckle had her raising her gaze. “Checking up on me? I’m flattered.”
Her damn blush only grew hotter. “What can I say? Running into an attractive, mysterious man piqued my interest.” The amusement in his eyes made her realize what she’d said. She opened her mouth to clarify, when he raised her hand to his mouth and placed a kiss on the back.
“I find you attractive too, Ms. Murphy. Now, about my offer to drive you home?”
“I—” She frowned. “Don’t you have to make an appearance inside?” She nodded toward the gala.
“Yes, but my business should only take five, ten minutes tops. Would you be willing to wait?”
For more time alone with him? He had no idea how long she’d wait. Trying not to appear too eager, she said, “Of course. Thank you. I accept your offer of a lift home.”
“Good.” Ryker gave her hand another kiss, then they walked over to cancel her taxi request.
“Um,” Siobahn said as she and Ryker approached the door to the event. She withdrew her arm from his. “It’s not a good idea for us to walk in together. My father’s already warned me away from you.”
The flare of amusement in Ryker’s eyes quickly turned to something hotter. He leaned down to whisper in her ear. “Do you always do what your father says? I find that hard to believe.”
“No. Of course not. But unless you want to endure a lecture from him, we should walk in separately.”
Ryker took her arm again and steered her firmly toward the door. “Ms. Murphy, you’ll find I don’t intimidate easily. I can handle your father.” He crooked one brow. “Unless you’d rather not be seen with me?”
She squeezed his arm. “Don’t be ridiculous. What woman wouldn’t be proud to be with you?”
Despite her brave words, Siobahn was relieved that her father was nowhere to be seen. He must have left by the other exit while she’d been talking to Ryker.
True to his word, after leaving her at the nearly depleted refreshments table, Ryker returned within ten minutes. Then he escorted her outside and waited while the valet retrieved his car.
Siobahn shivered.
“Do you feel eyes on you?” Ryker asked.
She nodded.
“Don’t worry, we won’t be followed back to your place.”
“Doesn’t matter. I got the sensation of being watched as soon as I hit the sidewalk in front of my house. Whoever is spying on me knows where I live.”
“Would you rather I take you to a hotel?”
She shook her head. “No. I refuse to be run out of my home by some amorphous feeling, no matter how uneasy it makes me. Besides, I have a state-of-the-art security system.”
“All right. But let me put my contact information into your phone.”
“Because?”
“Because it’s faster for me to type it in than have me tell you while you type. And because I want you to call me if you sense further threats.”
With a raised eyebrow, Siobahn dug into her purse and handed over her cell phone. Then she held out her hand. But Ryker just shook his head. “You’re already in my contact list,” he admitted.
“Oh really? Hmm… That was fast.”
Ryker just shrugged and glanced down at her phone. But she thought she’d seen a hint of guilt in his eyes. That vulnerability made her decide that she was flattered rather than alarmed that Ryker already had her contact details.
To her surprise, Ryker typed his information into her phone with all the speed of a habitual texter. “I’ve entered both my personal cell phone number and my office number. Call me if you get scared,” he said as he handed back her phone. “No matter what time of day or night.”
Touched by his concern, Siobahn glanced down. Damn him. He’d put Ryker under the nickname field. So much for learning his full name. With a wry smile, she returned the phone to her purse, then wrapped her arms around her torso, wishing she could snuggle against Ryker instead. A few minutes later, the valet pulled a silver Lexus to a stop in front of them.
“Whatever work you do must pay well,” she murmured as Ryker helped her into the leather covered passenger seat.
“My job involves enough networking with the power players that I have to look like we’re not constantly hurting for money.”
“And are you? Always needing money?”
He smiled and shot her a look out of the corner of his eye before pulling out onto the empty street. “I think I’ll save details about my job for our next encounter, Ms. Murphy.”
“Siobahn, please. And are you so sure we’re going to have a next encounter?”
“All right, then. Siobahn.” Another one of those warm smiles that set her senses reeling. “Oh, we’ll definitely meet again. I’d like to take you to dinner.”
“I think I’d enjoy that.” She laughed, giddy as a girl.
“Good. I’ll contact you tomorrow to set it up.”
Staying true to his word, Ryker took a long, random route through the city before pulling up before her house, which was only a few blocks from the busy heart of Georgetown.
Ryker escorted her up the concrete stairs leading to her front door, then waited patiently while she disabled the alarm.
“Well, I guess this is good-night,” Siobahn said. Part of her wanted to invite him in, not ready yet to say good-bye, but she thought that might seem too forward. Maybe—
Ryker moved closer and cupped her shoulders in his hands. “I’m going to kiss you now, Siobahn.”
Touched by his old-fashioned manners, she only had time to nod before his mouth covered hers.
Oh, God. Her hands gripped his forearms as the sheer pleasure of his kiss set her world spinning. The kiss was much more
tender and respectful than she wanted, yet at the same time her blood ignited and she strained against his hold on her shoulders, wanting to move forward and press her body against his.
But Ryker stepped away from her. Those intense gray eyes now appeared to glow with desire. “I’d better stop before I lose my good intentions.”
He backed up. “Remember, call me if you feel unsafe. No matter what time it is. Promise me.”
“I promise.”
“Thank you.”
He turned and walked down the stairs with the grace of a well-trained fighter. Then stopped and looked up at her. “Close and lock the door. Now.”
“Yes, sir!” Throwing him a mock salute, she followed his order. Leaning back against the closed door, a silly grin broke out on her face. Oh, yes, she was definitely going to see Ryker again.
She didn’t move until the purr of the car’s engine faded. Then she slowly made her way upstairs.
The grin stayed on her face until the moment she fell asleep.
“How’d it go on the Hill today?” Rafe Andros asked Ryker the next evening during their check-in call.
Bluetooth headset in place, Ryker stared out the window of his office, watching the last of the light fade beyond the Washington Monument and trying to fight off another bout of the melancholy that had been plaguing him recently.
“About how I expected,” he answered. Having an office here in Washington, D.C. was a necessity in order to keep in touch with the government agencies that not only kept the SSU employed, but provided assistance with equipment as well. Yet lately Ryker had found himself missing the community of the SSU’s Oregon compound, which was where Rafe was calling from. “A lot of blustering, but no one wants to take responsibility and everyone is scared that if they push too hard their name will suddenly be dragged into the open and linked to Kerberos.” An even greater possibility with Siobahn Murphy hanging around. He found himself oddly reluctant to mention Faith’s reporter friend, but Rafe would eventually hear what he’d done and it was always better to get the truth out in the open.
“Yesterday, I ran into Siobahn Murphy, Faith Andrews’s former colleague at the newspaper.” Ryker reached for the antique globe in the corner of his office and gave it a spin. “Until we’ve determined if the President’s death was murder, and if so, who was behind it, there’s still a real danger that the remaining members of Kerberos will clean up after themselves by eliminating anyone who might possess information on their illegal activities. In fact, Ms. Murphy expressed concern that she’s being followed. So I’ve assigned a guard to her.”
“Faith will be happy to hear that.”
Ryker smiled. Rafe had been captured by Kaufmann and put through the enhanced soldier program six weeks ahead of Faith’s brother, Toby Andrews. Once Dr. Gabrielle Montague had restored Rafe to nearly his pre-capture self, he’d taken a special interest in the remaining victims. Along the way, he’d become friends with both Toby and Faith.
Not to mention falling in love with Gabby.
When the globe stopped, Ryker’s finger hovered over South Africa. Hmm. He had a few good memories from Johannesburg, but hadn’t really seen much of the rest of the country. He spun the globe again.
“How’s Alexis doing?” Ryker had spoken to his designated successor before Rafe called, but he wanted another opinion. Rafe had been in training for the director position before his capture by Kaufmann, so he understood the complexities of running the SSU better than Alexis, who had only accepted the position recently.
“He’s still working on being tactful,” Rafe said. “But he’s improving. I think he’ll work out a lot better than I would have.”
Ryker shook his head. “No, you would have settled into the role just like I did. I wasn’t always the boring diplomat.”
Rafe snorted. “Boring is the last thing any of us would call you, sir. I know several of the guys are still waiting for a rematch on the dojo mat so they can kick your ass.”
Leave it to Rafe to dispel his somber mood. Ryker laughed. “Remind them that I have a few more decades of practice and that martial arts happens to be one field where youth isn’t necessarily an advantage. How about Alexis? Does he participate?”
“Yeah. But he’s still too wary about his new status. He’s at the awkward phase where he doesn’t know if he’s an equal or a superior. The men kind of keep him at arm’s length, not sure how to treat him. They’ll work it out.”
The unspoken truth was that Rafe should have been ready to step in part-time as Director of the SSU, but falling into Dr. Kaufmann’s program had altered him too much. Gabby had reversed the worst of the side effects, but Rafe’s mind still tended to process data at an extraordinary speed, giving him an occasional migraine.
Ryker had no doubt that Rafe could run the SSU even with the headaches, but in a job that required more diplomacy than aggression, the lingering rages that flared up out of nowhere disqualified him. True, the rages happened very rarely, and Rafe was getting better at taking himself away from others in order to work through the episodes safely, but neither of them wanted to risk Rafe scaring off a potential funder or one of the crucial political allies who advocated for the SSU within the halls of government. An even worse outcome involved Rafe’s mental condition deteriorating to the point that he couldn’t make rational decisions. While he and the other victims appeared stable now, no one knew what the long term consequences of Dr. Kaufmann’s drugs might be. If Rafe took over as director, then degenerated to the point where he decided to use the extensive firepower of the SSU in an irrational way, lives would be at risk.
So Ryker had put off his plans for retirement. Instead of transitioning out within the next year, he would remain as director for at least another three years.
This time the globe stopped with Ryker’s finger over Antarctica, one of the few places he hadn’t been. Hmm… Someday he’d like to rectify that.
“What’s the report on your latest mission?” Ryker asked. Rafe and his team had been working with the DOD and the FBI to track down the remaining Kerberos teams made up of enhanced men from Kaufmann’s lab.
Rafe snorted. “False alarm, sir. Yeah, the men were bulked up a bit, but only through normal steroid use. Turns out their leader had heard about the enhanced Kerberos teams and thought he’d try to achieve similar results using high doses of regular steroids on his men. Idiot.”
Ryker stared at the globe. As a former soldier, he knew all the ways a man could be worn down during war. Intellectually, he understood why leaders constantly strove to overcome these obstacles. But needing a good night’s sleep, feeling pain, experiencing empathy—all of those were part of being human.
What Kaufmann had done to the men in his program had nearly erased their humanity. He gave thanks every day for the skills of Gabby, Kai Paterson, and the rest of the SSU’s medical team for bringing Rafe and Toby back from that edge. “Any more prospects?”
“Yeah. We leave tonight.” Ryker heard the weariness in Rafe’s voice. “Enough time has passed that any men who went through the entire program will have deteriorated to the point of being dangerous.”
“You have procedures in place for handling them?” Ryker asked.
“Of course.”
Ryker knew it would hurt Rafe to put down a fellow victim of Kaufmann, no matter how violent the man’s rage or how close the man was to complete organ malfunction.
That was the hidden truth that Jamieson had ignored and Kaufmann had tried desperately to change. After two weeks of torture and chemical injections to break the men’s minds down while beefing up their bodies, Kaufmann’s subjects only achieved four weeks at their optimal physical and mind control level. After that, their minds and bodies rapidly deteriorated. If the insanity and rages didn’t drive them to kill themselves, their bodies quickly stopped working and they died from massive organ failure within two to three weeks.
“All right. Keep me updated.” Ryker refrained from telling Rafe that he didn’t have to do this. The
younger man had made it his mission in life to save as many of Kaufmann’s former subjects as possible.
“Will do, sir.” With that, Rafe ended the call.
As Ryker stared at Antarctica’s coastline on his globe, he realized he was jealous. Not just of Rafe’s fire, which Ryker seemed to have lost recently, but because Rafe had Gabby in his life.
Giving the globe one last spin, he turned his back on it. Yes, he could admit it, he was jealous. Rafe had found Gabby. Rafe’s brother Niko, also an SSU agent, had fallen in love with Jenna Paterson, the daughter of Ryker’s murdered best friend. Jenna’s brother Kai, who was going to head the SSU’s new research facility into biochemical weapons, was in a steady relationship with Dr. Nevsky’s daughter, archaeologist Susana Dias. Hell, even Mark Tonelli, the former CIA agent who’d once worked to bring down the SSU and now worked with them, had found his lady in Faith.
Is that why I’m so interested in Siobahn Murphy? Because I’m lonely?
Thinking about their kiss, Ryker knew that wasn’t it. If he just wanted a companion, there were plenty of interested candidates, even at his age. Yesterday’s blonde in the elevator being a prime example. No, it wasn’t loneliness that pulled him toward Siobahn. Combustible chemistry, courage, and intelligence made Siobahn irresistible.
Chapter Four
“Sorry I didn’t show at the gala the other night,” Lieutenant Brian Golding said over the phone when he finally contacted Siobahn at her office two days after his no-show.
“You worried me, Brian,” she chided.
“Sorry about that. Lizzy had a bad asthma attack and we spent the entire night at the hospital with our phones turned off. I shot you a quick text before we went radio silent, but never checked to make sure it got delivered.”
“Is she okay?” Brian’s six-year-old daughter had only recently developed severe asthma.
“Yeah, she’s going to be fine. The doctor is trying her on some new medicine that should help.”
“So, what was so important that you wanted to meet in person, Brian?”