by Misty Evans
The trembling eased. She smiled and gave his hand a squeeze. “I trust you.”
“Good.” He didn’t want to turn loose of her so he used his other hand to take out a tiny plastic bag of more trackers. “We’re going to put one of these in your bra, your shoes, and your watch.”
“My bra? Seems like overkill.”
“Clothes and accessories can be removed or damaged. The more trackers I have on you, the more likely I am to find you. If I had my way, I’d inject a GPS tracker under your skin.”
One of her pretty arched eyebrows quirked and she released his hand. “Give me those. How do I attach them?”
The spunk was back in her voice. He liked that. For the next several minutes as Emit wove his way through DC traffic, Trace hid the tracking devices in her left shoe and inside her expensive watch.
And then it was time for the bra. He handed her the tracker.
“Here?” she asked as she touched her left bra cup.
“Not near your heart. It’s highly unlikely, but the electric pulses the device gives off could interfere with your normal heartbeat.”
“Great.” She made an exasperated sound and moved it to the right side, sliding it under the bra’s fabric. “So here? It sort of cuts into my skin.”
She was holding open her shirt and bearing her cleavage. The tops of her luscious breasts peeked out over her pink sports bra. He tried not to look—or rather, to look only where she was pointing—but that was impossible. There was nothing remotely sexy about the bra, but damn if it didn’t support those heavy mounds perfectly and make him ogle.
His fingers itched to touch her, even if it was only to direct where the tracker should go. “I, um, why don’t you put it…” he touched the fabric in between her breasts, “here.”
“Oh, okay.” She fiddled with it and dropped the tracker into her lap. “Crap.”
Retrieving it, she handed it to him. “Maybe you better do it. I can’t seem to get it to attach to the material.”
Trace felt eyes on him and glanced up to see Emit copping a peek. Annoyed, he leaned over and blocked the man’s view as he took the tracker and zeroed in on the tiny area of bra between her tantalizing breasts.
Her skin was warm, a tiny gasp escaping her lips as he touched her.
“How’s that?” he said. “Too invasive?”
She didn’t say anything and he glanced up to meet her eyes. They were round in her face, a seductive curve to her lips that were only a few inches from his. The brim of his ball cap was nearly touching her forehead. “It’s…uh…” She shifted ever so slightly under his fingers. “Can you move it a little to the right?”
Swallowing the sudden wedge in his throat and ignoring the tightness in his pants, he did what she asked without taking his eyes off her face.
His voice came out low and rough. “Better?”
Her hand came up to cover his, her fingers moving between the fabric and his fingers, guiding him. “I think maybe…here.”
“Whatever feels good,” he said, and the curve of her lips grew.
Emit cleared his throat from the front seat. “Everything okay back there?”
“Yes,” Savanna said, her voice sexy and rough. She cleared her throat. “We’re good.”
As Trace started to draw away, she clenched his hand again, leaned forward, and kissed the corner of his mouth. “Thank you,” she murmured. “For everything.”
It took every fiber of his being not to kiss her back. Hard. To resist taking those full lips between his teeth and sucking on them. To not let his hands touch and squeeze and tweak those beautiful breasts of hers.
He licked his lips at the thought and saw her gaze drop to his mouth. “Just doing my job,” he said.
And then he forced himself back upright, shifting the briefcase to cover his raging hard-on as he started pulling out files.
Savanna’s phone rang and she glanced at the screen. “It’s Lindsey.”
She finished buttoning her shirt as she cupped the phone between her ear and shoulder. “I know,” she said to Lindsey. “I’m sorry…yes, I’m fine.”
Trace could hear Lindsey’s voice through the phone, upset about Savanna’s abrupt departure and rattling off a change of plans.
“What?” Savanna said. “I can’t do that. I won’t do that. The Hopland segment isn’t ready.”
“I spoke to Hopland and I have a script for you. I was going to go over it in the car with you and then your bodyguard screwed it all up,” Trace heard Lindsey say. “What’s his deal, anyway?”
“He’s protecting me. That’s what I hired him to do. It’s his job.”
“Protecting you from who? Me?”
“He believes the accident today wasn’t an accident. That someone tried to hurt me.”
“Oh, jeez! Who would do that?”
“I don’t know,” Savanna lied, “but like I said, he’s doing his job. And my job is to follow through on the Westmeyer investigation. So while I appreciate your work on getting a decent Hopland script up and running, I won’t be needing it tonight.”
Savanna disconnected the phone. Trace pretended to be engrossed in his files. Which he sort of was.
“You ran background checks?” Savanna said, fiddling with her phone.
“Those who interact with you everyday.”
“Why?” She lowered her voice a notch. “We know who’s after me.”
“He has minions. And not the cute cartoon kind.”
“And you think one of these minions is watching me.”
Randy, the doorman, seemed innocuous. Definitely keeping an eye on him. Trace closed his file and opened the next one, the building manager. “Probably more than one. What’s up with work?”
She let go of a tight sigh. “The station manager is upset I didn’t take the night off and now he’s pressuring the show’s producer to cancel the piece on Westmeyer and run the Hopland show instead.”
“The president got to him.”
“Well, dammit. You think so? God, I detest that man.” She shook her head. “But I’m not giving in. I refuse to be intimidated, and besides, the Hopland story isn’t ready and I won’t air anything until I’ve fully done my homework on it.”
Except apparently when it came to him.
Trace kept that thought to himself.
Lindsey’s file was next. Beatrice had red-flagged her college attendance with a note in the margin. Trace didn’t like coincidences. “Did you know Lindsey attended Vassar at the same time Parker did?”
“No.”
“She majored in Russian Studies. What did your sister study? Something about brains, wasn’t it?”
Savanna nodded. “Cognitive Science with a double major in Behavioral Science.”
Trace glanced at her. “Doubtful the two of them ran in the same circles.”
“You think Lindsey is in on this?” Savanna chuckled. “I can’t see her being a spy for the president. She’s extremely organized and efficient, but doesn’t strike me as someone you would trust with government secrets.”
“Why would someone with a degree in Russian Studies work at a cable news station?”
“She’s the niece of Executive Producer, Mariah Olsen. Mariah took pity on her when she couldn’t find a job. I’m sure there aren’t many that require a Russian Studies degree.”
“Except maybe at the CIA.”
Savanna’s face blanched. “Oh, crap. I hadn’t thought of that. Do you think she’s in on this with Linc Norman?”
He scanned the rest of the notes. “There’s nothing else here that suggests she’s anything but what she says she is. No travel to foreign countries, no other jobs except for some waitressing in college. She has two cats, no car, and hasn’t dated since a long-term relationship with her high school sweetheart ended six months ago.”
“She was seeing someone? I didn’t even know she had cats, much less a boyfriend.” Savanna glanced out the window, still fingering the phone as if she regretted being curt with the gal a moment before
. “I haven’t been very nice to her. I should make her brownies or something. She likes chocolate. That I do know.”
Trace smiled down at the papers in his hand. Savanna was this big superstar who didn’t even realize her fame. She tipped the doorman twice the going rate and fixed meals for near complete strangers who showed up on her doorstep two hours late. “I’m surprised you haven’t already. Why is it you don’t like her?”
“I do like her. Well, sort of. I try to like her. She’s just so…”
“Over the top?”
“In this business, that’s status quo. I’m not sure what it is exactly. Just a feeling. We don’t click, you know?”
He nodded. “The 80/20 rule.”
“The what rule?”
“Eighty percent of the people you meet you click with. They like you, you like them. The other twenty percent, you don’t click with. No matter what you do to change or do things their way, they will never like you and vice versa.”
“Now you sound like Parker. She’s always got some scientific reason for why people don’t get along. Why criminals do what they do and the best ways to prevent that behavior.”
Sounded like he and Parker had a few things in common. Except his job was to stop the criminals after they’d done the crime. “Has Lindsey ever done anything to make you suspicious?”
Savanna thought for a moment. “No.”
Trace moved onto the next file. “Let me know if you think of anything.”
She was still staring out the window, her countenance clouded. “I can’t really trust anyone, can I?”
You can trust me. But he didn’t say it out loud.
Because, really, the truth was, he was the biggest liar of them all.
SIX BLOCKS FROM the studio, Parker pulled the limo over.
The drivers of the cars tailing her were good, but she’d spotted them. They probably didn’t expect the limo driver to be acutely aware of every car in the three block radius.
But she was.
“I told her she couldn’t do the Westmeyer segment,” Savanna’s assistant said into her phone. “She insisted she is, so be prepared.”
Westmeyer. The name made Parker sick to her stomach. She had to stop her sister from stepping her toes into that murky sludge of quicksand. Parker knew all too well there was no coming back from it.
The assistant’s head came up and she looked around. “Driver? This isn’t the studio.” She returned to her phone. “I know, I know. She’s stubborn, but maybe if the big guns all talk…” A pause ensued. “Fire her? You can’t fire her. The network’s ratings—”
Parker kept the black chauffeur’s cap low on her forehead. They would fire her sister without blinking an eye. They—the ones behind all of this—would do worse than that. If only the man with Savanna hadn’t screwed up Parker’s plans to talk to her.
“She’s coming by a different car,” Lindsey said to the person on the other end of the phone conversation. “Her bodyguard didn’t want to take chances on a repeat from earlier. You’ll have to intercept her once she’s in the lot.”
Parker grabbed her gun from under the seat and flicked off the safety.
The assistant hung up and leaned forward. “Driver, what are you doing?”
Parker had seen the news about Savanna’s accident. The wolves were closing in. “The man with Ms. Bunkett. What was his name?”
“Her bodyguard? Total stud, right? He doesn’t have a name.” Lindsey started tapping her phone’s screen. “You’re going to make me late. We need to go.”
Parker wanted to rub her tired eyes. Or maybe bang her head on the steering wheel.
Savanna was about to get hit with a hailstone, especially if she did the Westmeyer story, but the bodyguard…he might not be who he seemed. “The man has to have a name.”
“What?”
“I said, the man has to have a name. What is it?”
“Why do you care?”
“Just answer the question. What is his name and what security firm does he work for?”
“I don’t think that’s any of your business and if you don’t put this car in gear and get me to the studio in the next five minutes, I’m going to call your boss and report you.”
Parker turned in the seat, leveling her small, black handgun at the assistant’s face. “His name. Please.”
The girl went rigid, the cell phone in her hand dropping into her lap. “Coldplay.”
“What?”
“He goes by Coldplay. Savanna isn’t allowed to know his real name or ask him any personal stuff.”
Coldplay. “So he works for the Rock Stars?”
The gal nodded. “Are you going to shoot me?”
Parker hit the unlock button on the door and motioned with her gun. “Get out.”
“But…”
“Get. Out.”
“It’s freezing out there!”
God. She didn’t want to shoot this pain in the ass but… Parker gave the assistant a dead serious look and put both hands back on the gun. “Are you right-handed?”
The woman swallowed and nodded.
“You like walking?”
“I don’t have a car so I bike when the weather is decent. Better for the environment, too.”
Kill me now. “Well, I’m going to count to three. If you’re not out of this car, I will shoot you in your right shoulder. If you don’t get out then, I’ll shoot you in your left knee. Your right hand will be useless and you won’t be able to walk or bike for a long time. One…two…”
The woman bailed, fumbling with her phone on the way out.
Parker didn’t even wait for her to shut the door. She peeled away and headed south. Trace Hunter had disappeared and Savanna’s safety was at risk. Staying in hiding was no longer an option. Parker had to do something.
Two options and only two. Do the job Linc Norman had commanded her to do or expose the nation’s leader for the scumbag he was.
She couldn’t kill her fellow scientists, regardless of what the president threatened to do to her and her family. But no one would believe her about Project 24 unless she had proof. Proof that the program had gone too far, created more problems than it had solved. All but one file had been destroyed; the soldiers selected for the experiment were all dead.
Except Hunter.
Parker drove on, the White House an imposing figure off to her left as orange rays of the setting sun made it look like it was glowing from some internal fire.
The fires of hell. If Parker wanted Savanna and her parents to live, she had to kill the three scientists who had been on her team. None of them knew all the details about Project 24—they thought it was just another experiment with soldiers to see if they could train their cognitive responses the way the armed forces trained their physical responses. Each scientist had handled one section of the experiment, but put them all together and they knew enough to be dangerous. A dangerous group Linc Norman didn’t want falling into the wrong hands.
The experiment, funded by Westmeyer, Inc., hadn’t worked except for Navy SEAL Trace Hunter. His reflexes had been off the charts and he hadn’t experienced negative side effects. His ability to out think the enemy was staggering. He’d been her brightest star, her best pupil, and yet, she’d never met him face to face. Like any good scientist, she’d stayed objective, only reading about his outcomes from the comfort of her desk.
She’d given the okay to turn him loose. He was going to secretly make history by eliminating threats to America with the speed and efficiency of a one-man army.
The experiment was initially deemed a success as Hunter took out more than thirty threats in the span of six months. Each looked like an accident, a suicide, a natural death.
And then he’d refused a direct order. That’s when Parker learned that the other participants, the ones who’d experienced negative outcomes, had all been terminated. On orders of the president himself.
She wasn’t supposed to know. No one was.
Parker didn’t know what order
Lt. Hunter had refused to carry out, but something in Hunter’s psychological makeup made him defy the president, defy the elusive and ominous Command & Control. He didn’t go AWOL, just came back from the mission and met with Norman behind closed doors. Whatever happened in there, the president emerged and ordered Hunter’s incarceration. The next thing Parker knew, Norman had her hand Savanna the file on Hunter exposing him as a traitor, and Parker was being told to quietly eliminate the scientists on her team.
Or else.
Like Hunter, she’d been trained to kill, but unlike him, she’d never expected to have to do it. She was an analyst, a scientist. Yes, she’d done undercover ops, extracting sensitive information from specific targets, but only from men and women like herself—scientists developing programs for their countries to increase the value of soldiers in the field. Every major country in the world was working on similar experiments, but none had the pharmaceutical drug cocktails Westmeyer did.
At first, Parker had resisted using the drugs, but her outcomes were dismal. She knew the experiment would work, but time was of the essence if she was going to prove that every man and woman in the armed services had value. Not just as a warm body but as an incredible resource of brainpower. If Parker could develop a program that enhanced their mental prowess, their decision making and combat readiness by rewiring the neural pathways, she could decrease the number of casualties, decrease the number of soldiers returning with PTSD.
So she’d used the drugs to speed up the results.
She knew better. The whole thing backfired and now she had nothing. Her life’s best work had failed, her sister and parents were in danger. She’d voted for Linc Norman and not because he’d offered her a place by his side in the war on terror. He’d been the next great president, she was sure of it.
And then something had changed in the man’s psychological profile. The power, or the pressure, or something else had reared its ugly head and turned him into a monster. Secretly, Parker wondered if Linc had been helping himself to some of Westmeyer’s drugs.
In a not-so-nice neighborhood, Parker ditched the limo and the cap, found a corner drug store where she bought a prepaid phone and a new hat. It was fully dark now and she stole an old, rusty Cutlass from behind a bar and drove to the nearest library.