Safe Mode: Deep Six Security Series Book 4

by Becky McGraw

  “No, and I need to deal with that when I get back to Dallas. I owe him that. He’s done a lot for me, but the odds are I’ll be looking for another job when I come clean with him.”

  “You ran, because you were a scared kid…how old were you then?” Grace asked, because she had no idea. “Surely, he’ll understand too?”

  “Twenty-three, and I’m not sure he will. Dave is a former Recon Marine who was on the battlefield at that same age and he is every bit as rigid as my father.” He laughed, but it wasn’t humorous.

  Brennan didn’t know it yet, but he’d have that opportunity to talk to his boss sooner than he expected, because Grace had come to a tough decision too. Their flight to Baltimore was tomorrow afternoon, and she had to do what was best for herself and her niece.

  Tomorrow after they picked up their bags from the hotel, she was going to tell him to change his ticket to fly back to Dallas.

  This was all a nice fantasy, but she couldn’t let her niece become wrapped up in it. Tonight proved that to her after watching her niece soak up the Lowell family’s attention like a needy little sponge. If Grace let that continue by allowing Brennan into her life in Baltimore, let her niece get attached to him, let herself become dependent on his help, they would only be hurt when he left.

  “My brothers told me something interesting tonight,” he said, snapping her out of her thoughts.

  “What’s that?” she asked, loving the whimsical smile that curled his firm mouth.

  “They told me tonight they have always been jealous of me, because what they had to work so hard for, came easily to me. Can you believe that?” he asked, his smile turning into a grin.

  He sounded totally blown away that his brothers felt that way. This man really had no idea how wonderful he was. Love for him and his odd little insecurities flowed through her in a red hot wave.

  “I can believe it,” she whispered, dropping a kiss on the side of his pec and letting his masculine taste tantalize her taste buds. He sucked in a sharp breath and tensed when she kissed the rise to the right of his nipple.

  “You’re pretty damned special, Brennan Lowell, if you don’t realize that like everyone else on the planet does.” She kissed the outer ring of his nipple and it perked for her. Grace couldn’t stop herself from sliding her tongue across it and was pleased when he moaned and his hand moved to the side of her head.

  “You’re amazingly smart, incredibly handsome, and brave.” With a kiss to punctuate each quality, she moved to the inner side of his pec, closer to his heart, a place she wanted to take up residency, but had seen no sign of a vacancy.

  If only he’d have given her some clue about how he felt for her, Grace may not have made the decision to send him away. If he’d given her one sign that Vegas had been something more than sex to him. But he had his life, and she had hers. She was dreaming, and wasting precious minutes she could be spending showing him how she felt.

  She lifted up to put her finger to her temple. “Where was I?” she asked, and he laughed. “Oh, yes, kind,” she continued, lowering her head to kiss a spot near the rounding of his pec leading down into the valley that held his heart. “Compassionate…” she whispered, finally arriving at the space between his pecs where his heart pounded. “Loving,” she mumbled, before pressing her mouth there to let his heart beat against her lips.

  Emotion surged up to make her eyes burn as he put his hands on the side of her head and lift her face to meet his strangely glittering eyes. Purpose filled his intense gaze, his mouth opened and Grace held her breath as her own heart pumped at warp speed. It was there in his eyes, appeared to be on the tip of his tongue.

  But he didn’t say it. With a growl, Brennan rolled on top of her, and his mouth crashed down on hers. Grace’s expectations snapped, then recoiled into her heart and shattered it into a million pieces. It would be tough, but she would live through this too.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Why in the hell hadn’t Logan fired him when he told him he lied? Any other hardcore military-type boss would have. He even told him what he’d done was unethical and immoral, that he wouldn’t blame him if he fired him. Dex said he expected to be fired, and could be packed up in a few hours, but Logan just told him to get back to work, the conversation was over.

  What else did a man have to do to get fired from this place?

  Dex blew out a breath and opened up his favorite military electronics site in his browser. Maybe if he fucked off enough, Logan would fire him. A new laser scope he knew their sniper Caleb would drool over caught his eye. He clicked open that page and gasped when his eyes landed on the red price tag in the right-hand column.

  If he bought one of those, Logan would be pissed, so he changed the one in the quantity box to three and grinned as he hit the checkout button. Slade and Levi would probably love one for their assault rifles too.

  He’d been back from Boston two months and was bored out of his mind. Nobody needed him for anything—not even to change out the toilet paper when the roll was empty.

  While he was gone Izzy had taken over, made herself not only the efficiency queen, but an indispensable one. She finished the case she was working on when he left, then organized his storeroom, and even cleaned his freaking office. Once she finished that, she’d taken on two more cases that should’ve been assigned to him.

  The team didn’t need him here anymore with her at the controls. He was surprised that Logan didn’t see that and think about his shrinking wallet. Maybe he could ask him for a raise, Dex thought with a tight grin, as he jotted that down on the list beside his keyboard.

  He didn’t really want to be fired, but he needed something to do to take his damned mind off of Grace and Callie. He’d called her no less than fifteen times since he got back to Dallas after she told him in Boston she didn’t need him to go to Baltimore with her. It was a shocking ending to their time together.

  He was still in shock, and missing the hell out of both of them. Dex almost felt like he had in college when she left him in her cool and clinical way as soon as he pulled out, because she had to go study. Kind of used, even though she’d said it very nicely and thanked him profusely before she gave him the brush off. That left him with no closure, no time to disconnect his feelings then or now.

  Something else shocked him too.

  The fact that he had strong enough feelings for her, that he cared that she didn’t seem to care more for him. Much deeper feelings than he’d had for her in college, so disconnecting them was even more difficult now—no, impossible. Dex just didn’t know what to do about that either, because she’d never given him any indication her own feelings for him went deeper than sexual attraction.

  Well, you could have asked her dumbass, or told her how you felt.

  “And made myself look like a fool when she gave me the sympathetic brush off? I don’t think so,” Dex grumbled, clicking another item that piqued his interest, a small, but high-voltage Taser. Not only that, he didn’t want to add to her pile of present problems. She didn’t need another thing on her plate to deal with or worry about, and he knew she would.

  Having one of those Tasers in his pocket would’ve definitely come in handy at that studio, he thought. He was just damned lucky to have been angry enough, desperate enough, and adrenaline-filled enough to blindly go where he wouldn’t have gone otherwise.

  He’d also talked to Caleb about giving him shooting and weapons handling instruction. Knowing what the hell he was doing if he happened to ever accidentally have a pistol in his hand again would be good. In this line of work, even a computer tech could have that happen.

  Dex filled in the box to order four of them, one for each of the women in the office and one for himself, then added them to his shopping cart.

  Regardless of not having deep feelings for him, they were friends at the very least. Intimate friends. He knew she was probably very busy adjusting to her new responsibilities and finalizing that research she’d told him about. Surely she could spare five min
utes just to answer his call and let him know they were okay, though. After what he’d done for her, he deserved better than this. Anger might serve him better than this constant state of agitation he’d been in since he got back, so he allowed it to move in.

  Itchy and agitated described how he felt best. That’s the tag that Lou Ellen had put on it a few days ago and she told him he’d better scratch that itch and get with the program.

  Hmmm…maybe irritating Lou Ellen more might be the key to getting his walking papers.

  “Or it could be the key to getting a forty-five slug in my ass,” he grumbled, as he angrily flipped through the catalog on the electronics site.

  “You talking to yourself again?” the crotchety office manager asked as she walked in as if he’d summoned her with his thoughts. She strode to his desk, looked at his computer screen and frowned. “And screwing off too, I see.”

  “I’m ordering things we need for the office,” he replied defensively, as he closed the window.

  “No, you’re finding things to keep you busy so you don’t have time to think about it,” she shot back, moving to the door to shut it, which was never a good sign. Lou Ellen usually said what she had to say in the wide open and she didn’t care who heard.

  Dex’s eyebrows crashed together. “Think about what?” he asked gruffly.

  He did not need a lecture from his surrogate mother today. He’d had enough of those from his real mother in Boston after she finally accepted his seventh apology. Missing his mom and dad, his brothers, since they’d reconciled now was part of the problem too.

  “C’mon boy, don’t play coy with me. I know about her, and I heard what happened in Vegas. Susan and I had a long talk about it and have decided that must be it.”

  “What must be what?” he asked, his anger notching up that they’d been discussing him behind his back.

  “Never mind. I came in here to tell you that we don’t need you here anymore,” she informed bluntly.

  Why did his insides untwist when he heard those words? “Well, it’s about damned time someone noticed that fact.”

  She reached into the pocket of her slacks and produced an envelope. He saw his name scrawled on the outside in Susan’s precise script.

  “You’re fired,” she said, and a deep shuddering sigh escaped Dex, surprising him.

  “Oh, thank God,” Dex said, feeling like he could float out of his office chair and wondering why he felt that way. “This is good timing because Logan just saved himself six grand since I won’t be ordering those scopes and Tasers now.”

  Lou Ellen leaned across the desk to hand him the envelope. “This is six month’s severance pay, and an airplane ticket to Baltimore.”

  The severance pay was more than he expected, probably more than he deserved, since he’d spent the last four weeks doing nothing. But a plane ticket too?

  “Baltimore?” The prospect excited him because that meant he could find Grace and make sure she was doing okay.

  “Yes, we’ve decided that is the best place for you to go to get your damned head straight. You have six months to make that happen, because I need you to help me at the east coast office when it’s ready to open next year.”

  “So, I’m fired, but I’m hired?” Dex asked with a laugh, as he ripped open the envelope.

  “If you get your crap together, yes. If not, find yourself another job,” she said, lifting her chin and crossing her arms under her breasts. “I need Superman as my side-kick not the Joker.”

  “Yes, Wonder Woman.” Dex grinned as he snapped off a salute, and excitement filled him at the prospect of new surroundings and a new challenge—possibly a new start on life depending on what happened in Baltimore.

  ***

  Grace told Callie to finish packing up her stuffed animals in her room, before she grabbed a box and headed to the kitchen. Moving was an exhausting job, she thought, setting the box down beside the first cabinet. But it was worth every mundane moment, because this move would be a new and exciting chapter in their lives, one in which her niece might eventually be able to hear.

  There was no might about it, in Grace’s mind.

  She had a very good feeling that the gene therapy at Boston’s Children’s Hospital in Boston would successfully restore at least some of Callie’s hearing. She just prayed enough returned to allow her to hear with hearing aids. She prayed even harder that she wouldn’t need hearing aids, but that was wishful thinking. It was too new yet, not perfected. Clinical trials were just experiments on humans, BETA testing of sorts. And Callie didn’t even fit into their focus group for the trial.

  She had to stay pragmatic and not get her hopes too high, or if it failed, she’d probably lose her mind. Doing that was very hard, because she wanted it so badly for her.

  Grace opened the cabinet door, sat on the floor and pulled out her Crockpot, then put it into the box. At warp speed and in auto-mode, because this had to be the most dull task on the planet, she loaded one cabinet after another into the box that would be picked up by the moving company next week, along with her furniture. The house would sit vacant until it sold, but she signed the contract with the realtor last week.

  She glanced at the clock on the microwave and gasped, as she scrambled to her feet. She had to shower, be dressed and out of there at five-thirty to make it to the ceremony by six.

  Tonight she would be receiving not only a commendation, but a Meritorious Service Medal for her research on the drugs that caused Callie’s deafness. When she presented her findings in a detailed report with case studies to her Captain, the Surgeon General and FDA, they had been impressed with it. They were more impressed that she took on the challenge of doing the research, a daunting and unassigned task, on her own time. Both drugs had been immediately recalled, pending a permanent ban, which would take a little time.

  Her greatest reward, though, came from the Surgeon General himself. Because she mentioned Callie was her niece in the report, to be completely transparent when she included her as one of the many case studies to support her research, the Surgeon General called in favors at BCH to get Callie into their pediatric gene therapy trial study.

  That trial study was full, she’d checked two years ago and checked regularly to see if any new trials were open. When she called the team, they also said, because the cause of Callie’s hearing loss was not genetic, she didn’t fit their criteria for that trial. Her type of hearing loss would only be considered for a trial if the initial test group showed success, which could take a decade to determine.

  But the Surgeon General had worked a miracle. Callie would be the first child with this kind of hearing loss to receive the treatment. Another miracle happened shortly after her acceptance. When she tried to resign her commission, because she knew she had to move to Boston, her Captain got her transferred to a duty station in Boston working with the BCH research team instead. That PHSCC team hadn’t had an opening in years.

  The whole series of events was surreal…no, divine.

  Her life was so bright now she needed shades, but even with all the good things happening, she had to force herself to embrace them. To embrace them, and her newfound happiness, she had to force herself not to think about Brennan.

  During the day, declining his calls on her phone was easy because she was too busy to talk anyway, or at least that’s what she told herself. In reality, Grace knew if she answered his calls it would only peel off the scab that had just started forming on her heart. She couldn’t pretend to be just his friend, or even a friend with benefits anymore.

  It was better that she didn’t talk to him.

  The only time she allowed herself to think about him was when she closed her eyes and her mind rested. Then she had no choice but to let him into her subconscious. He was there, he lived there and probably always would.

  You did the right thing, Grace.

  “Then why in the hell does it feel so wrong?” she muttered, as she walked to her bedroom to get ready.

  It will get better
—just keep your mind on your goal.

  Thirty minutes later, Grace buttoned up her white dress uniform jacket with one hand as she walked into the living room with her shoes in the other. Putting on makeup was a pain in the butt, so she usually didn’t bother with it, but tonight she did. She also took time to get her hair just right, so it looked good with her hat. Twenty minutes of her life wasted that she’d never get back, minutes she could’ve spent packing.

  But her Captain, and representatives from the FDA and the PHS would be there. She’d also heard whispers that maybe even the Surgeon General himself would attend. Grace’s stomach was a bundle of nerves because she’d have to give an acceptance speech in front of those people, as well as everyone else who might be getting a medal tonight in their region.

  She wondered if maybe they would believe her if she called and said she had Legionnaire’s Disease, Smallpox or Typhoid—or maybe all three. That’s how bad she really didn’t want to go tonight. But she would, because she had committed to being there, they were depending on her to be there.

  Dropping her shoes with a sigh, she slid her foot into one just as someone knocked at the door then rang the doorbell that activated the light to alert Callie. It must be the sitter, she thought, quickly sliding her other shoe on before she walked to the door. Callie came out of her bedroom just as she opened the door.

  Grace’s mouth flapped, and Callie squealed as she brushed past her to throw her arms around Brennan’s legs.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “Why didn’t you answer my calls?” Dex asked gruffly, bending to pick up Callie and walk inside her house like he owned it.

  “I’ve been busy,” she replied, closing the door because it appeared she wasn’t going to be able to push him back outside.

  He dropped a kiss on her niece’s cheek, and she giggled swiping it away with her hand as he set her on her feet. Guilt, then anger rushed through Grace, but it couldn’t manage to overtake her incredible joy at seeing him.