Charis Marie McKoy.
And she’d come to see him, to be with him. “So it was you who figured it out. Oh, my lover. It’s so good to see you take an interest in my work.”
She stiffened. He flicked his gaze over to another monitor to see what she saw. A slow and steady smile spread across his lips. No doubt she discovered the lack of hard drive space and memory on the server. He couldn’t fit it all in there with the bomb. There simply wasn’t enough room.
“I can’t slip anything past you, can I?”
Her stature changed as she hunched over the keyboard. This time he stiffened. What was she doing? He glanced back at the monitor to watch her keystrokes.
What the fuck was she doing? “No. Charis, my love. What are you doing?” He raised his hands and watched helplessly as she started the process to uninstall the server. “No!”
She shook her head. As she turned to her side, he saw her lips moving. What was she up to? Who the hell was she talking to? Why couldn’t he hear her? What was going on?
His answer came then in the form of that fucking TREX agent, David Snyder. He bolted into the server room and pulled Charis to her feet. She jerked out of his grasp.
Good girl.
Then she sat back down and continued to uninstall the server. Snyder grabbed her around the waist and unceremoniously threw her over his shoulder.
How barbaric. Surreal fisted his hands at the sight.
She kicked. She looked like she screamed. Why couldn’t he hear her? His equipment never failed. He’d already confirmed the audio feed earlier this morning. Why didn’t it work now?
Of course. Snyder had overridden the feed. No, it couldn’t have been him. He was all brawn and no brain. Intel must have done it. No, not intel. Charis was now in TREX’s cyber division. He thought being cyber would tie her hands, but no. She had everything at her disposal to track him down. Clearly, he’d underestimated her.
Charis pounded her fists against Snyder’s back as she screamed. Surreal’s heart seized at the sight of his lover being manhandled and bellowed at his monitor, an all-consuming rage taking over. “Leave her alone! You leave her alone or I’ll kill you! I. Will. Kill. You!”
Snyder dropped her. She landed on her feet. As she ran back to the keyboard—diligent little thing—he yanked all the cables out of the back of the server, killing Surreal’s connection.
“No!” He hit the space bar. And again. Over and over. Nothing happened. He then realized he would have blown up the love of his life if the bomb had detonated. His heart leapt to his throat. “Oh, Charis. I’m so sorry. My baby. I’m so sorry.”
Shaking, he pulled her picture off the monitor and held it to his chest. His breath was ragged, labored, and he’d started to sweat. He hated to sweat. But look what he’d almost done. It was Snyder’s fault. His hatred for Snyder had almost cost him his Charis.
Now, seeing the TREX asshole treat her like that only made his hatred grow into a blinding fury. He had to protect her.
Snyder turned to the camera. Looking Surreal square in the eye, he smiled smugly and approached. Reaching up, he mouthed fuck you and ripped the camera off the wall. Surreal’s monitor went black.
“No! Fuck you! Fuck you!” Surreal punched his desk as he screamed at the monitor. He pushed back from his desk and jumped to his feet, kicking his chair over. Picking up his scrambler, he threw it at the screen, cracking it.
He chanted the same words over and over as he tore his workplace apart. CPUs went flying. He threw all his monitors to the floor and jumped on them until they were nothing more than a pile of broken electronic components. He overturned his desk and kicked and punched until it broke into several pieces.
When he’d destroyed every piece of his system, Surreal stood above it, gasping and dizzy from his rampage. He looked around in utter disbelief at what he’d just done. His system, his entire life. Destroyed at the hands of Snyder.
“Look what you did,” he rasped, his breath still ragged as he gasped to fill his lungs. His hands hurt. Looking down, he opened and closed his fingers, baffled as to how his knuckles had gotten so bloody. Oh, that’s right. He had tried to fight off Snyder as the man destroyed his system. But he was no match against a bully asshole like the TREX agent.
And the way he’d grabbed Charis like that...
Charis.
Spinning in all directions, he searched for her picture. “Charis? Darling? Where are you?” He openly cried and fell to his knees when he couldn’t find her. “Charis? Where are you?”
There. Buried under one of the monitors. He threw the debris off her and choked on a sob. His Charis. His lover. He picked up the picture, now torn in two. Shaking, he tried to fit the pieces back together. He sobbed uncontrollably when he realized the futility. She was gone.
“No! I’m so sorry. So sorry.” He pulled the torn pieces of her picture to his chest and rocked back and forth. “I love you. So. Much.” The grief washed through him. He’d lost her. Because of that TREX agent, he’d lost the one connection he had to his true love. Or did he?
She obviously wanted to be with him. She reached out to him, begged him to save her. That’s why she’d been tracking him. Not to find him, but to have him find her.
Of course! Why hadn’t he seen it? She even wore a disguise. That TREX agent had her. He used her to get to him. Surreal couldn’t let that happen. No, he’d save her from that barbarian.
He’d be her hero.
TWENTY-TWO
She hated him. She loved him, but she hated him. She’d never had anyone throw her over his shoulder before. Hellooo? Can we move into this century, please?
“Sweetheart, I had to,” he explained again, as if whatever he had to say would lessen how much she wanted to strangle him. She shifted to face the window. “Would you please look at me?”
No, and she wouldn’t answer him, either. She settled into the plush leather seat and stared at all the clouds as they headed to Seattle in one of TREX’s leer jets.
“You were hysterical.”
She crisply folded her arms across her chest, her gaze firmly fixed on the window. He had no idea how hysterical she could be. In the span of two seconds she was going to show him.
A voice came over the speakers inside the small jet plane. “SAC Snyder? Sir, there’s a call for you. I’ll patch it through the SatCom.”
“Think of it this way,” he stated as the phone next to him rang. She kept her gaze fixed on the clouds. “At least it worked.”
She growled. She actually growled. Shocked at how he drew all kinds of primitive sounds from her, she slowed her breathing to stop herself from lunging at him.
“Snyder.” A long pause as he listened to the details of how they’d captured Surreal. Good. Great. She could go home. David Snyder could go back to Hawaii. They’d have the Pacific Ocean separating them. Right now, that didn’t even feel far enough.
“Son of a fuck!” He slammed the receiver down.
His reaction forced her around. “What?”
“He wasn’t there.”
“What?” She exchanged glances with the Neely brothers before looking back at David. How could he not be there? She’d tracked him to that location. She didn’t have any flaws in her plan. He attached that IP to hers like a tick. She had him. He had to be there. He had to.
David closed his eyes and rubbed them almost angrily. Okay, very angrily. “He must have known. When our team moved in, they found a pile of destroyed equipment, but no Surreal.”
He disappeared again. She huddled in her seat, making no response. What could she say? They’d lost him. Again. With a pang, she realized what that meant. Without them being able to track his movement, he could be anywhere by now.
She needed to get into his head. If she were Surreal, what would be her next move? He knew they were on to him. It would only be a matter of time before TREX caught up with him. Would he go quietly?
Not just no, but hell to the no. And neither would she. “I had my tonsils out when
I was ten. I spent an entire weekend building a house out of cards. At ten, that’s quite the feat. The house was as tall as I was. I was so proud of that thing. When I finished, I wanted everyone to see it.”
David nodded as he picked up on her story. “It was your masterpiece and gave you bragging rights. The more people you could show your work to, the better.”
“Exactly.” She smiled, loving that his mind worked as fast as hers. “Logan and Mitch walked in and plowed my house over, laughing and kicking until every last card was flat on the floor. They knew I couldn’t cry out, couldn’t tell on them.”
“They destroyed your work. What’d you do?”
“Instead of getting them in trouble, which I would have paid for later anyway, I took pictures of them both playing with my dolls, made copies, and posted them all over school. The two months restriction was totally worth their public humiliation.” She paused and let that settle between them.
“You made it personal,” David put it all together.
Charis nodded. “A man like Surreal will spend months perfecting the minutest detail. Only this time he doesn’t have months and he knows it. He also knows I’ve cracked his code, so chances of him following through with the next bombing are very slim. We’ll be there waiting for him again.”
“What about finding another building that starts with an ‘I’? He didn’t get what he wanted this time.”
“Yeah,” one of the Neely brothers, though Charis couldn’t remember whether he was Ron or Rich, spoke up. “Maybe he had a back-up plan.”
She shook her head. “That’s not the way he works. He doesn’t create contingencies.”
“Why the hell not?” the other Neely barked.
“Like I said, he plans. And he plans. And he plans. By the time he’s ready to carry it out, he’s already gone through it so many times in his head, he’s positive nothing will go wrong.”
David grunted. “And when it does?”
“I don’t know.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “What do you mean, you don’t know?”
She shrugged.
He cursed.
They sat there in deafening silence as the plane started its descent into the SeaTac Airport.
One of the pilots’ voices sounded throughout the cabin. “Agent McKoy? Please pick up the receiver to your right. SD Weber would like to have a word with you. Make it quick. We’re about ten minutes from landing.”
What now? After the day she’d had, she was in no mood to deal with the director. With a huff, she grabbed the receiver and brought it up to her ear. “Director, now’s not—”
“Hello Charis, darling.”
Oh, shit. This wasn’t the director. “Thomas?”
David perked up. She swung her gaze over to him as he hurried to her side. He motioned for her to hand him the receiver. She shook her head.
“Give me the phone,” he insisted in a hiss of a whisper.
“No,” she bit back, covering the mouthpiece with her hand. She gave him a hostile glare. “Is it really you?”
“I know Snyder is there with you. I know he has you.”
Her heart jumped to her throat. Could he see them? She darted her attention in every direction, looking for some sort of camera. “How did you get this number?”
He laughed. The sound sent a shiver through her. “You taught me well. If it’s in the system, I can find it. Even TREX’s satellite communications link. I just listened in on how unhappy Snyder was when I wasn’t there to greet those men.”
“We will find you,” she promised. David tried to grab the receiver out of her hand. She turned just in time.
“I’m counting on it. I know how much you need me. I have a plan, darling. I’m going to get you out of there. I’ll save you. And then, you and I can finally be together again.”
She stiffened as his comment seized her heart. That scared the hell out of her. Really scared the hell out of her. Again? They were never together. “You plan to come after me? Why?”
David’s features hardened to stone. “Like hell he will.”
“I heard that,” Surreal droned in her ear. With a laugh, he continued. “He thinks he can stop me? My love, I know you’re trying to escape from that monster. You need me to help you get away from him. He can’t treat my Charis that way. I’ll save you.”
He risked a trace just to talk to her, proving he’d taken her destroying his plan personal, just as she predicted.
The fear gripping her heart squeezed painfully. “And how do you plan to save me?” She had to keep him talking while they traced the call. Deep down, she knew it would be a futile attempt. Judging by the clicks over the line, he skipped the call from tower to tower. David tried to grab the phone again. She smacked him in the knuckles with it before bringing it back to her ear.
He rubbed his knuckles and gave her a hard look.
“Stop it,” she whispered, her hand over the receiver.
“Charis, do not insult me by talking to him while on the phone with me. You know how I hate not having your undivided attention.”
“What do you want?”
He laughed again. The sound made her skin crawl. “What do I want? What do I want?” The volume of his voice rose, as did his temper. “How can you ask me that knowing me as well as you do?”
“Know you? I don’t know you. You, Surreal, are a stranger to me.”
The pause on the line made her wonder if he’d hung up. But then he started heavy breathing. Hard and heavy. “You’ve never called me Surreal. Not once. Having you call me that now seems so impersonal. And you, Charis my love, are so far from impersonal to me. You’ve earned the right to call me by my other name.”
“You mean your real name?”
“No!” he bit at her. “You don’t understand. Surreal is my real name. But the way you say my other name... The way it rolls from your lips...” He breathed harder.
“Oh God.” She closed her eyes against the vision forming in her mind and swallowed the bile floating at the back of her throat. What was taking the trace so long?
His breathing grew labored. “We’re making love. I’m buried inside you right now, lover. You’ve got me so close. Touch me again, baby doll. Oh. Oh, yes. Charis! I love you!” he cried out.
With that, the line went dead.
* * * *
David held his finger on the button to disconnect until she acknowledged him by placing the receiver in the palm of his other hand. He clicked it into place and sat back just as the jet touched down on the tarmac. Shaking with anger, his chest tight as he attempted to control his temper, he couldn’t even look at her, he was that pissed.
As they taxied over to the hanger, he finally had enough restraint to not scream at her. He kept his voice low and even, despite the turmoil still twisting in his gut. How in the fuck did Surreal hack into TREX’s SatCom? So much for a secure link.
“Once we get back to my system, I’ll find out how he got in.”
He glared at her. Yes, he wanted to know the answer to that, but he had more pressing matters, like the fact she went against her SAC, and in front of other members of the team. “Never ever go against one of my direct orders again, got it?”
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
“I’m your SAC.”
“Not right now, you’re not.” She thinned her lips. “You’re acting like an overprotective boyfriend.”
He shot a quick look to the Neely brothers. They quickly found interest in anything but him. Goddamn her for pulling this shit in front of them. The more he and Charis argued, the worse it would get. He dropped it, but not before adding, “We’ll talk about this later.”
“Oh, goodie.”
Son of a fuck. He snapped, his anger too much for him to control. “If you would have just listened to me—”
“I was trying to get something out of him.”
He unbuckled as the plane came to a stop. He needed to step away from her before he wrapped his hands around that delicious little ne
ck. “From the sound of it, you did.”
He exited the plane, Charis close on his heels. “For your information, he told me his next move,” she defended as soon as they jumped into the back of the sedan taking them to HQ. The Neely brothers stayed behind to unload the equipment, leaving them alone while the driver took off.
“And as soon as I listen to the conversation, I’ll know, too.”
Vibrant color hit her cheeks. Her nostrils flared which, damn it, was attractive as hell. Her dark curls stood up all over the place thanks to the wig. After she’d ripped it off on the plane and threw it on the seat behind her, she’d run her fingers through her hair. For the life of him he couldn’t take his eyes off her, then and now.
“Where do you see this going?”
Her question caught him off guard. “This?”
“This,” she repeated. “Us.”
Now wasn’t exactly the time to have that talk. “Can we talk about this later?”
“There may not be a later. I need to know.”
“We’re in the middle of an op.”
“And we have an hour before we’ll be at HQ. Please, David. I don’t know the next time we’ll be alone. I need to know. What am I to you? A girlfriend? A plaything? What?” Fear, clear and vivid, shined in her pretty eyes.
After a quick glance at the driver, who seemed more interested in the game on the radio than their conversation, David nodded. He needed to tell her something. “I already told you I love you, Charis. More than you could possibly know.”
Emotions flooded her eyes. She worked her throat. The pulse at the base of her neck jumped sporadically and his gut clenched. “That isn’t an answer, it’s an admission.”
“But—”
“It isn’t enough, David.”
Jesus and Christ. She was killing him here. “What more do you want?”
She drew in a shaky breath. “I want to be married, have a zillion kids. I grew up in a big family and couldn’t imagine not having one of my own.”
Seek and Destroy (TREX, #5) Page 28